Our events are recorded and on-demand to ticket holders for a month. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit UK museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations.
Mathias Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece
Join Hilary Hope Guise for ‘Light’, the first of an exciting series of three beautifully llustrated talks on light, space and time in art.
We are surrounded by the air we breathe, the spaces we move in, and the light and colour travelling in constantly fluctuating waves through the spaces we inhabit. These core features of our physical world have been the same for millennia – and yet, down the ages, art has always found different ways to interpret them.
Light:
In the Dark Ages, Europe was covered in thick forests and fears abounded, while light was found only in flickering tapers and oil lamps. Not surprisingly, physical light took on a theological or philosophical meaning. As the Medieval age of Faith waned, shadows began to appear, confirming the physical source of light as being from the sun, and not from heaven. In art, sacred figures cast shadows for the first time, eventually leading to the extreme chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and reflecting the political upheavals of the late 16th century.
In the 20th century, Nihilism caused a plunge into total blackness in the all-black canvasses of Ad Reinhardt expressing a fear of light and human emotion. We then emerge into the 21st century with huge light installations by Olafur Eliasson, covering vast fields with coloured light, flooding buildings, churches, and landscapes.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live with Q&A, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.