American movie directors D.W. Griffith and Edwin Porter developed the artistry of cinema in the early 20th century. Griffith even used the paintings of Jean Francois Millet to design his film A Corner in Wheat (1909). This presentation highlights the art of movies as Griffith and Porter created it. Excerpts from their films also shown.
Archives
Abe Lincoln’s Image in Movies
The movies have loved Abraham Lincoln and helped form his legend. He is the U.S. president who has appeared as a character in more movies and TV shows than any other, over 300 documented works. This presentation focuses on and includes images from Hollywood movies and of many famous and not-as-famous actors who have portrayed Lincoln on screen plus a nod to Mary Todd Lincoln.
What You Always Wanted to Know About Postmodern Art
Our current era of art and society is considered Postmodern. This talk will define Postmodernism and show its evolution throughout history with examples from art and architecture. Postmodernism is not necessarily the new; it is often a process of recovering popular motifs of the past. Sometimes Postmodernism is perceived as puzzling and avant garde but this talk approaches the subject in a user- friendly way that demonstrates Postmodernism as a triumph of the familiar with a sense of humor.
Roman Echoes on the National Mall: The National World War Two Memorial
The National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. is one of the most recent and popular destinations on the National Mall. Designed by the modernist architect Friedrich St. Florian, this monument’s overall design and its details are deeply rooted in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. In this lecture, Peter Schertz provides an in-depth examination of the WWII Memorial through comparison with the architecture of ancient Roman and a discussion of how Roman victory commemorations in art and architecture inform the visual vocabulary of St. Florian’s design.
“An Ornament to Empire:” The Temple of Herod as a Roman Building
The Temple of Herod in Jerusalem was one of the largest and most thoroughly documented religious sanctuaries in the Roman world. Described as an “Ornament to Empire” by its destroyer, the future emperor Titus, it is the Temple that stood in the time of Jesus. Working with archaeological evidence as well as ancient Jewish, Christian, and Polytheist literary texts, Peter Schertz explores the Second Temple in its Roman context.
Circles and Squares: The Fashion/Geometry Connection
Learn the secret formulas of the Bauhaus Designers. Use your Fashion design skills, dust off your rulers, apply basic geometry and viola, you have a new garment! Learn the art of math by calculating your next look! In this workshop students will make a garment while learning basic pattern drafting and sewing machine skills.
This workshop is appropriate for designers age 12 and older.
Class size limited to 12.
Drawing Machine- Basic Sewing Machine Skills
Collage and stitch your next masterpiece. Young designers will learn the basics of using a sewing machine, how to thread it, adjust tensions, start, stop and stitch while creating embroidered drawings inspired by the work of Sonia Delaunay. A small accessory embellished with machine drawing will be made during the workshop.
The focus of the Drawing Machine workshop is to give students the opportunity to create art that explores cultural trends, non-traditional materials and alternative use of media in to create art.
This workshop is suitable for middle school and high school students. Class size 10 students
Recruited to Record: Official Artists of World War I
This lecture explores the role of prints in portraying the preparations, combat, and aftermath of World War I. Rather than presenting a chronology of events, this talk focuses on how printmakers evoked eyewitness experiences of war. As European and North American nations expanded their campaigns, select artists were enlisted to create a visual record of the war that promoted the government’s perspective on the conflict to Allied and neutral nations. These recruits, called Official War Artists, depicted action along the mobilized home front, the Western Front, and far-flung campaigns in the Middle East and beyond. This talk examines how Official War Artists recorded varied experiences of endurance, sacrifice, camaraderie, trauma, patriotism, and even pacifism, derived from direct exposure to combat.
Commemorating the centenary of World War I, this talk highlights prints included in the recent VMFA exhibition THE GREAT WAR: Printmakers of World War I.
Mandalas
Mandalas are visual representations of the universe, imbedded with rich spiritual and cosmological meanings. Painted, sculpted, or even formed from sand, mandalas can take numerous configurations. In this discussion, learn how to read these complex geometric diagrams and their rich iconographic messages. Drawing from both Buddhist and Hindu sources, we will analyze mandalas from India, Nepal, and Tibet in the VMFA’s permanent collection.
Arts of the Silk Road
As a network of trade routes that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, the Silk Road has played a critical role in facilitating the global exchange of art, religion, and technology since the 3rd century BCE. In addition to transporting silk and spices, these routes spread new artistic and iconographic motifs throughout Eurasia. In discussing the cross-cultural exchange between the Hellenistic world and greater Asia we will examine the role of the Silk Road as the world’s first information highway, utilizing objects from the VMFA’s permanent collection to shed light on this period of global cultural exchange.