My aim is to cover the history of Western art from cave painting to Jeff Koons and to provide detailed explanatory notes with background information and references.
I took a degree in art history and a masters at the Courtauld in nineteenth-century French and British art before completing a doctorate at the University of Bristol. I am now a guide at the Tate and my aim with these talks is to entertain and educate while guiding you round the history of Western art. I discuss the background to each artwork including the artist's biography and the artistic, cultural and political influences.
Each person will bring their own feelings and knowledge to their appreciation of a work of art and I hope I can add to that knowledge in order to increase your appreciation to show you how much fun art history can be.
Very interesting that last one you showed us....could he have felt he didn't have much time left? The painting seems to say, "now you see me, and now, you don't"...I never knew that story about his mother, it clearly haunted him for life her suicide. I'm happy to find out that he met the love of his life for the rest of his life. Thank you for this presentation.
The flamboyant gothic throughout Rouen is so exquisitely gorgeous. Could you please cover Spanish Gothic in greater detail, particularly cathedrals of: Burgos, Leon, Barcelona, Valencia, Valladolid, Toledo, Girona and Palma. As well as Plateresque and Isabelline gothic more generally.
Very interesting presentation Dr. Shafe. I like the way the visuals have been re-organized to give you a larger presence. This feels more natural I think. I would be very interested in a presentation focusing specifically on stained galss. It has always fascinated me and I think that some of the artists are among the greatest artists in any medium, although I suppose that many are unknown? The reconstruction of Notre-Dame would also be a fascinating subject. Merci.
Thank you for the feedback. I thought the "head on every slide" worked better with architecture but I will try it again later with a series of paintings. Stained glass is very tricky as it is so hard to represent the overall feel of a large stained glass window and hard to get high quality photographs of the individual panels.
@@LaurenceShafeThe best photographs I`ve ever seen of the inside of Notre-Dame are the ones I took years ago using colour slide film. The transparent nature of slides really works - much better than a flat reproduction in a book. Your lectures are very enjoyable.
I attended a mafor exhibition of Constable`s landscapes at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach Florida several years ago, and although I tend towards neo-impressionism and the Canadian Group of Seven, I was profoundly impressed with Constable`s mastery of light effects, and the richness of his palette. His paintings may be a little "academic" for my tastes, but "chocolate box"??? That seems to be a term that critics splash about when anything looks remotely realistic. Contemporary artists should all be capable of such "chocolate boxy" painting. Most are not. Enjoy your presentations always.
Yes, Romanesque is a bit of a tricky term, I often think it´s fair to include Carolingian as part of the Romanesque style. I often find that Romanesque is most similar to very late Roman architecture (that evolves into Byzantine in the East), there seems to be a big influence from some of the Mausoleum buildings in particular. One thing I´m not so sure of is if you can say there was a separate Norman Romanesque, I remember hearing a good talk by one of the directors of English heritage on this, it might be more accurate to call it "British Romanesque", "Sicilian Romanesque".
An excellent point but as the term "Norman" is so often used in the UK I would stick with "Norman" rather than "British Romanesque" but I would call the Norman architecture in Sicily "Sicilian Romanesque". I guess there is no perfect categorisation, as we find with most art historical styles and periods.
@@LaurenceShafe For sure, categorisation is always tricky. It´s a really good lecture, it´s always good to see photos of these churches and the civil Romanesque architecture. I think my personal favourite when it comes to Romanesque architecture is Maestro Mateo´s work, the architect of Santiago Cathedral, his sculptures are really brilliant. In terms of Romanesque civil buildings, the Palace in Estella, Navarra is really nice.
Makes sense, in my humble opinion, the Portico of Glory is probably the best work of art in history. Yes. Like that. The depth of meaning of all of it transcends christianity itself, the level of complexity and abstraction of its message and how it uses quality crafstmanship and materials, space itself, its architectural configuration and even the surrounding landscape and how the light hits it to communicate said message is... to my oppinion unmatched by any other work of art I know of.
Thank you for pointing that out. The mistake is at 6:39 when I say "watercolour" and the painting is also mislabelled. It is oil on canvas and at the Carnegie Museum of Art. He had worked in watercolour before then and produced 'Sailboats' in watercolour in 1895 but that is a very different work and is at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Enjoyed your analysis here! interesting that fumes from the oils and other oils/turps etc would then be maybe the reason why Aubrey was only using inks? Iwonder if his life lasted longer that he might have embraced colour in the work's? Doesn't matter though does it what a genius this man was thank you for a most interesting vid!!!
Thank you for your feedback. I have two more general talks to complete first and then I shall be returning to individual artists. My aim to to cover Western Art in about 250 one-hour talks starting with cave art and ending at the present day and before the Renaissance we know little about individual artists.
Before I watch the video I can't help but weigh in on the "Matisse." There's only one thing to say about these things--it's either a forgery or the worst thing Matisse ever did.
By far the best art history series I've found anywhere. Wonderfully comprehensive and thoughtful. Thank you so much for your great effort and expertise in putting these together!
Oh yeah! I love medieval artwork and architecture. Especially the doodles in the old manuscripts. I think they're great. Thank you Dr Shafe for another enlightening video!
@@maxlinder5262 Sorry, I cannot see a halo on ‘Christ in Madonna and Child with Saint Anne’ and the Wikipedia page on the painting en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_and_Child_with_Saint_Anne_(Dei_Palafrenieri) points out how unusual this is.
The short answer is we don't know. She married Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506) in 1453 when he was 22 and they had seven children. We believe it was a long and happy marriage and after she died he never remarried so she died well before 1506.
