“Invention and Design in Laurentian Florence”
Patricia Lee Rubin Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
The promotion of Florentine excellence in all of the arts was a mainstay of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s cultural politics. Bertoldo di Giovanni’s sculptural production took place in a context of intense creative competition, resulting in works that are innovative, inventive, and beautiful, qualities explored in this lecture. This lecture is funded by Dino and Raffaello Tomasso.
From a The Art Newspaper online release:
“People want to see photography and right now there are not a lot of places to do that,” he says. Showing “the best photography in the world” remains Fotografiska’s core mission, Broman says.
The global expansion of Fotografiska is finally taking shape. The Stockholm-based photography hub, founded in 2010 by brothers Jan and Per Broman, will open its New York outpost on 14 December, almost two months later than previously announced.
https://www.fotografiska.com/nyc/
This follows a venue launched in June in Tallinn, Estonia, and anticipates the arrival in late 2020 of Fotografiska London, billed as the world’s largest photography gallery by the British Journal of Photography.
To read more: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/first-fotografiska-takes-manhattan
The Historic Photographer of the Year awards showcase the world’s very best historic places and cultural sites from across the globe, capturing everything from the most famous national treasures to the obscure and forgotten hidden gems.
The 2019 Awards attracted a swathe of astonishing entries from amateurs and professionals who have climbed, hiked and trekked their way to snap stunning historic places from every corner of the globe.
The Overall Winner was an outstanding image of the ruins of the Arromanches Mulberry Harbour in Normandy and was shot by Stéphane Hurel.
The Historic England category was won by JP Appleton with his haunting shot of the Victorian era Roker Pier, while HISTORY’s Short Filmmaker of the Year was awarded to Dibs McCallum for a fascinating short documentary exploring the remains of the RAF Barnham nuclear weapons storage facility.
To read more: https://www.historicphotographeroftheyear.com/2019-winners/
In this episode of “The Way I See It,” actor and comedian Steve Martin looks at paintings by two early pioneers of American abstraction and takes us on a journey of seeing—shape and color transform into mountains, sky, and water. Find “The Way I See It” on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000…
An exhibit at South Carolina’s Columbia Museum of Art shows Vincent van Gogh in a new light. “Van Gogh and His Inspirations” presents the younger, wayward artist who learned from looking hard at the world — and the work of artists around him. A private collection of his inspirations is made public for the first time and presented alongside a dozen original van Gogh works. Jeffrey Brown reports.
Food defines us as individuals, communities, and nations – we are what we eat and, equally, what we don’t eat. When, where, why, how and with whom we eat are crucial to our identity. Feast and Fast presents novel approaches to understanding the history and culture of food and eating in early modern Europe.
This richly illustrated book will showcase hidden and newly-conserved treasures from the Fitzwilliam Museum and other collections in and around Cambridge. It will tease out many contemporary and controversial issues – such as the origins of food and food security, overconsumption in times of austerity, and our relationship with animals and nature – through short research-led entries by some of the world’s leading cultural and food historians.
Feast and Fast explores food-related objects, images, and texts from the past in innovative ways and encourages us to rethink our evolving relationship with food.
To read more and purchase:
Over 200 of the world’s leading international Modern and contemporary art galleries display artworks by over 4,000 artists, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, film, video, and digital art. Visitors can find works ranging from editioned pieces by young artists to museum-caliber masterpieces.
Website: https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach
Hokusai’s landscapes revolutionized Japanese printmaking and became icons of world art within a few decades of the artist’s death. Hokusai’s Landscapes focuses exclusively on this pivotal body of the artist’s work, the first book to do so. Featuring stunning color reproductions of works from the incomparable Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (the largest collection of Japanese prints outside Japan), Hokusai’s Landscapes examines the magnetic appeal of Hokusai’s designs and the circumstances of their creation.
The best known of all Japanese artists, Katsushika Hokusai was active as a painter, book illustrator and print designer throughout his 90-year lifespan. Yet his most famous works―the color woodblock landscape prints issued in series―were produced within a relatively short time, in an amazing burst of creative energy that lasted from about 1830 to 1836.
To read more and order: https://www.amazon.com/Hokusais-Landscapes-Complete-Sarah-Thompson/dp/0878468668
‘Nameless and Friendless’ was painted in 1857 by Emily Mary Osborn. It captures a single woman trying, and failing, to earn a living as an artist in Victorian England. In a trade traditionally occupied by men, she becomes nameless and friendless.
Osborn was actively involved in the campaign for women’s rights during the mid-19th century. She was supported by wealthy patrons, including Queen Victoria. But she used her position of power to help improve the lives of women like those depicted in her paintings.
Website: https://www.tate.org.uk/
From an Apollo Magazine online review:
One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the wealth of contextual material, which never feels digressional but illuminatingly sets the scene for Hilliard’s remarkable life and achievement. His early life in Exeter; the family networks of goldsmiths in Devon and London; the political, religious and cultural worlds he would have encountered in London, Geneva, Paris and also – usually overlooked – in Wesel and Frankfurt; all make for compelling reading. This book is not just the definitive biography of Hilliard but essential reading for anyone interested in late 16th- and early 17th-century England.
This year was the 400th anniversary of the death of the miniaturist, medallist, illuminator and painter Nicholas Hilliard, arguably the first internationally acclaimed English artist. This art-historical biography is both timely and exemplary. It presents Hilliard as a man and an artist, exploring his life in unprecedented depth but also with remarkable breadth. It creates an endlessly fascinating context for his extraordinary works, which are lavishly illustrated and perceptively analysed, and it casts new light on all sorts of other issues, events and individuals connected with Hilliard’s life and artistic output.
To read more: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/book-of-the-year-winner-apollo-awards-2019/
Intellicurious 