Effective storytelling is an essential means of both documentation and inspiration. This is no more true than in the visual arts. This presentation considers successful visual storytelling across a variety of mediums, genres, and styles.
Archives
Robert Henri: A Lasting Legacy
Author. Traveler. Portraitist. Storyteller. Educator.
American artist Robert Henri is celebrated for much more than his paintings on the walls of museums. Explore his impact and lasting legacy on American art through an exploration of his portraits, including Her Sunday Shawl in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection; his musings; and works of those he taught.
Canaletto’s Perspectives of Venice
Canaletto played a large role in depicting Venetian lifestyles and cityscapes through his use of light, color, and detail in his eighteenth-century paintings and drawings. He was considered one of the first Venetian vedutisti, or view painters, and is most notably recognized for his creative interpretations of his native city, otherwise known as capricci. This study is a comparison of his images to the actual views in Venice, discussing the similarities and differences in content and style. Canaletto’s beautiful views of Venice played a critical role in the development of the new tradition of vedute, and his works came to be regarded as the supreme examples of a genre that combined reality with some elements of fantasy.
The Modern Aesthetic: Bauhaus Design and Architecture
In the early twentieth century, ideas of beauty and aesthetic were being drastically transformed, in part due to artists’ reactions and responses to the industrial revolution and mass production. The utopian ideal set forth by the Bauhaus was to create a total work of art in the world, one in which uniformity, affordability, and novel materials would be used and seen ubiquitously. Unadorned façades, simple lines, and rudimentary shapes were regarded as forward-thinking, and these fundamental design elements presented a variety of opportunities for artists to experiment with innovative and different forms and aesthetics.
Lines, Dots, and Color: Wassily Kandinsky and Abstraction
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was one of the great pioneering artists who led contemporary art of the early decades of the twentieth century into his unique form of pure abstraction. Ranging between subtly enigmatic and boldly explosive, especially in his use of color, Kandinsky’s art reflects his personal experimentations with the creative process. What will be studied here is how he independently produced a deeply intellectual art that was rich in visual and psychological sub-matter.
Looking Out, Looking In: Windows and the Impressionists
Under Emperor Napoleon III’s reign, Baron Georges Haussmann redesigned and reconstructed Paris by adding boulevards and green spaces, creating the city that we recognize today. The French Impressionists reacted to the new cityscape and painted in their signature style to capture Paris’ flourishing popularity and effervescent atmosphere. This lecture addresses the vantage points from which many Impressionist painters worked and includes a discussion of how they captured Paris’ major hubs through the use of windows and window-like perspectives, including: the expansive boulevards; the Gare Saint-Lazare; and the views and bridges along the Seine River.
Religious Art and Architecture in Colonial Latin America
The hybridization of indigenous and European arts in the colonial Americas can best be viewed through the lens of religious art and architecture from the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. The fusion of European and indigenous beliefs and aesthetics, and how these melded into a new style, can be viewed in architecture, retablos (altarpieces), oratorios (oratories), and paintings. Images such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the cornstalk Christ.
Mapas and Codices: Manuscripts in Ancient and Colonial Mexico
Writing has a long history in Mesoamerica from the early writing system of the Formative Period Olmec culture to the Aztec manuscripts of the early Colonial period. Less than 100 Mixtec and Aztec manuscripts are known from the pre-Hispanic and early Colonial periods that indicate the role of writing both before, during, and after the conquest of New Spain. This talk explores the Mixtec and Aztec manuscripts of the late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial periods, including an analysis of naming and writing conventions, toponyms, and their function as legal documents.
Ancient American Empires: The Art of the Inka and Aztec
In the early sixteenth century, the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mesoamerica and South America in search of wealth and fame. What they found, though, were the highly complex empires of the Mexica (now known as the Aztec) of Mesoamerica and the Inka of South America. Through their sensationalized writings, the Spanish left a legacy of misunderstandings and misinformation about these ancient American cultures. By using first-hand accounts and objects from the VMFA’s collection, this talk engages with sixteenth-century colonial accounts and considers them from the view of the Mexica and Inka.
Turquoise, Jade, Shell, and Feathers (oh my!): Materiality in the Ancient Americas
For Ancient American cultures, such as the Maya and the Inka, the materiality of the artwork held important significance. Materials like jade, turquoise, feathers, spondylus, gold, silver, and textiles were highly prized because of their association with life-giving forces, such as water, the sky, the sun, and the moon. Using examples from the VMFA’s collection, this talk explores how materiality in the Ancient Americas informs the artwork’s meaning.