Art Historian Dr Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation. The lectures can be attended as a series, but are also designed as standalone talks, which can be attended individually. Dr Whyte has lectured in Art History in University College Cork since 2014, where he completed his PhD in the art and culture of Renaissance Italy. Tuesday 16 September Week 1 The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of ModernismIn this first week, we explore the artists who looked back in order to move forward in the first breaths of modernism. Famously referred to as the Pre-Raphaelites, a name which these artists coined for themselves, the group looked back to the art of the Middle Ages as an act of resistance again the Royal Academy, whose control over artistic production and education was increasingly being perceived to be unjust. Pre-Raphaelite art draws inspiration from literature and nature, focusing on creating emotionally and spiritually evocative work. In this lecture, we examine the
innovation of artists such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and William Holman Hunt, also exploring the impact their thinking had in the 19th-century Arts & Craft Movement and the Gothic Revival. Meanwhile, in France, another group of artists looked to the here and now to drive change through their art. The Realists sought an innovative solution that would shed light on the social inequalities that defined modern life by doing something never done before: depicting working class life as it really was. In this way, Gustave Courbet, Jean François Millet, and others became artist-activists driving change through painting ordinary working people for the first time in the history of art. Tuesday 23 September Week 2: Impressionism & Modern Life This lecture explores the development of Impressionism, the style most commonly associated with the beautiful paintings of Claude Monet. These paintings and their loose style have become almost universally familiar. What drove these artists to paint like this? What does this new style seek to do? This lecture begins with the artist Édouard Manet, credited as one of the first artists to turn resolutely from the past and paint modern life. Following the advice of writer Charles Baudelaire, Manet resolved to make his art relevant by painting the present rather than the past. His focus on the fast and fleeting nature of French modernity spurred on the Impressionists to develop a new approach to capturing movement and atmosphere, the effects of modernity that would prove elusive to the new technology of photography. Tuesday 30 September Week 3: Post-Impressionism How do artists continue to capture a rapidly changing world? Following the birth of Modernity and the innovations of the Impressionists, artist continued to seek new ways to best capture and express the character of modern life. It was not long before the inventions of the Impressionists were subject to revision. In this lecture, we encounter artists such as Paul Cézanne, who attempted to tackle a problem that arose from the Impressionist focus on the fleeting: how could this art become like that of the museums if its subject was inherently impermanent? We also turn our attention to sculpture which, until Auguste Rodin, was still gripped by the Classical Tradition and had not yet met with the avant garde inventions seen in painting. Rodin’s sculpture is as novel as it is beautiful, proposing a fascinating solution to capturing the fleeting forms of Impressionism in the solid media of bronze and marble. Tuesday 7 October Week 4: The Artist’s Inner World – Expressionism & Surrealism This week, we catch a glimpse inside the mind of the artist as we explore painters who sought to bring their inner world to life through their art. First, we encounter the new Expressionism which emerged through artists Vincent Van Gogh whose use of vivid colour and increasingly abstract lines famously paved the way for the wild new styles of Henri Matisse and the Fauvists. These artists, in particular Van Gogh, produced some of the most beloved and enduring images in the history of painting. With this impulse for artistic expression came the desire to use art as a vehicle for the exploring the innermost reaches of the mind – we encounter this through the response of Surrealists like Salvador Dalí to interest in the subconscious as a source of truth. Tuesday 14 October Week 5: The New Industrial Era – Futurism to Pop Art How did art respond to new technologies and their impact on society and culture? This week we explore this question by examining artistic movements which sought to address our relationship with a rapidly transforming world. In Italy, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Futurism developed through an urge to turn away from the past and embrace the transformative power of industry for mankind. Soon after, World War I would demonstrate the full repercussions that industrial progress could have for humanity, driving artists to embrace concepts of futility and absurdity in creating new artforms. Finally, stepping into the post-war period of the 1950s, the emergence of Pop Art provides a fascinating insight into the transformation of culture in the age of commodity culture. Tuesday 21 October Week 6: The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art This week we discuss the progressive fragmentation and transformation of painting, beginning with the innovative approach to breaking down the visual world made famous by Pablo Picasso and his Cubism. Seeking to capture and convey the underlying structures of the perceivable world, painting began to reduce forms to geometric shapes and simple colours. This did not end with Cubism, however. By the early 20th century, artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian would continue this process, seeing increasingly abstract art as a way to produce a spiritual response in viewers, relying on pure form and colour to provide a transcendental experience. Leading to the first truly abstract art, these important movements paved the way for the rich diversity of styles, concepts, and approaches which continue to inform art today.
