Category Archives: History

Art, Arts & Literature, Culture, History, Videos

20th Century Art: “The New Realists – Radical Rebellion In 1960’s Europe”

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Sothebys LogoIn the 1960s, while America was being wowed by Pop art, Europe had its own answer to bringing life and art closer together. In this episode of Expert Voices, learn about Nouveau Réalism – a groundbreaking movement in which artists created radical and rebellious sculptures and paintings in protest against the rise of consumerism.

Our upcoming Art Contemporain Day Sale (24 June | Paris) features an exceptional private European collection of historical New Realist art, including works by Niki de Saint Phalle, Arman, Daniel Spoerri, Mimmo Rotella and Christo and Jean-Claude.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Art History Videos: Italian Early Renaissance Painter Sandro Botticelli (15th C.)

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An extract from the Christie’s Education online course, The Great Masters of European Art 1350–1850. Florence in the 1400s, a city of wealthy guilds and merchants, in particular the Medici family, who commissioned astonishing works of art to show off their success and cultivation.

Here we are introduced to one of the great artists the Medicis favoured: Sandro Botticelli, and his most famous works: ‘Primavera’ and ‘The Birth of Venus’.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his Vita of Botticelli as a “golden age”. Botticelli’s posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Art History: Rembrandt’s Portraits – “Love And Loss” At The National Gallery

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A revealing look at Rembrandt’s most intimate portraits, on display in the locked-down National Gallery in London. The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones reveals his favourite portraits, of vulnerable and unpretentious people the artist had known and loved. Jones asks what we can learn from these great masterpieces, especially during lockdown.

Culture, Health, History, Videos

Medical History: “The Facemask Through The Centuries (CBS Video)

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Originating during the Black Death of the Middle Ages, face coverings to protect against the transmission of disease are not just medical requirements; they’re now a fashion statement. Mark Phillips talks with medical historian Mark Honigsbaum (“The Pandemic Century”) about the purpose and style of facemasks.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Cocktails With A Curator: Barbet’s ‘Angel’ (The Frick)

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In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” discover the fascinating history of Jean Barbet’s Angel, an incredibly rare bronze from fifteenth-century France whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, discusses the royal cannon-maker who cast the sculpture and the possibility that it once resided in Paris’s Sainte-Chapelle. This week’s complementary cocktail is the Angel Face, customarily garnished with an apple slice.

To see this bronze sculpture in detail, please visit our website: https://collections.frick.org/objects/35

 

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Videos

Fine Art: “30 Sunflowers” By David Hockney (1996)

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Sotheby'sPainted in 1996, David Hockney’s “30 Sunflowers” is a bold and luscious still life of contemporary times. In this episode of Expert Voices, discover how Hockney was inspired to paint “30 Sunflowers” after a decade hiatus, and hear Hockney himself explain the influence of the Old Masters in this vivid work.

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Auto Racing, Automobiles, Classics, History, Videos

Greatest Cars Of All Time: “1961 Jaguar E-Type” (Video)

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‘Project ZP’ proved the Jaguar E-type was as fast as it looked.

Although the response to the E-type was frenzied, Jaguar knew that more than a pretty face was required to secure the model’s future. Under the veil of ‘Project ZP’, seven of the earliest E-types were transformed into racers. And this particular car stands today as the best of the bunch…

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Arts & Literature, Books, History, Literature, News, Travel

Literature: “Shakespeare And Company” Digitizes Reading Library Of Joyce, Hemingway & De Beauvoir

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Shakespeare and Company lending library cards

Shakespeare And CompanyGertrude Stein. James Joyce. Ernest Hemingway. Aimé Césaire. Simone de Beauvoir. Jacques Lacan. Walter Benjamin.

What do these writers have in common? They were all members of the Shakespeare and Company lending library.

In 1919, an American woman named Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris. Almost immediately, it became the home away from home for a community of expatriate writers and artists now known as the Lost Generation. In 1922, she published James Joyce’s Ulysses under the Shakespeare and Company imprint, a feat that made her—and her bookshop and lending library—famous around the world. In the 1930s, she increasingly catered to French intellectuals, supplying English-language publications from the recently rediscovered Moby Dick to the latest issues of The New Yorker. In 1941, she preemptively closed Shakespeare and Company after refusing to sell her last copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer.

The Shakespeare and Company Project uses sources from the Beach Papers at Princeton University to reveal what the lending library members read and where they lived. The Project is a work-in-progress, but you can begin to explore now. Search and browse the lending library members and books. Read about joining the lending library. Download a preliminary export of Project data. In the coming months, check back for new features and essays.

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Art, Arts & Literature, History, Podcasts, Profiles

Art: “The Lives Of Rubens” Through 17-Century Biographies (The Getty)

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Art + Ideas - Getty PodcastsPeter Paul Rubens was among the most influential artists in 17th-century Europe. Despite a childhood marred by a scandal that landed his father in prison, Rubens rose to become not only a prominent court painter in the Spanish Netherlands but also a lauded diplomat who worked across Western Europe.

With countless biographies written about the artist and exhibitions of his work continuing into the present day, the legacy of this Flemish Baroque artist is hard to overstate.

In this episode, Getty curator Anne Woollett discusses the life of Rubens through 17th-century biographies by three authors: Giovanni Baglione, Joachim von Sandrart, and Roger de Piles.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens’s highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Travel, Videos

Travels With A Curator: “Santa Maria delle Carceri, Prato” (The Frick)

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In this episode of “Travels with a Curator,” Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, brings us to the church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, Italy, to explore the original home of one of the Frick’s spectacular bronzes, “St. John Baptizing” by Francesco da Sangallo. Discover the family connections that link this important sculpture to the church and retrace the history of the bronze from its creation in the sixteenth century to its acquisition by Henry Clay Frick in 1916.