| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Leader: |
Robert Sedgley
|
| Group email: | History & Appreciation of Art group historyofart@u3aoliva.org |
| When: | Monthly on Tuesday afternoons 5:00 PM-7:00 PM |
| Venue: | Biblioteca de L'Envic |
| Cost: | Free |
The group is taking a break over the Summer, and will return in early October. Keep an eye on the website and our Facebook group for more information.
The activity of the group is to further our understanding and appreciation of art through an illustrated talk from the leader and with contributions from the group. All are welcome; whether expert or not come and join in the conversation, find out more about the wonderful and surprising world of art.
We have now been running for about eight years and have come in our chronological survey up to the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and are looking at the revolution in the visual arts that we call Modernism. For new members who wish to acquire a background understanding of what went before I recommend reading the notes of previous meetings. These are complete from the earliest paintings on the walls of caves, up to the early moderns: Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism. However, this is by no means compulsory – we are not an exam group!
All are welcome; whether expert or not come and join in the conversation, find out more about the wonderful and surprising world of art!
Leader: Robert Sedgley
Next meeting
The topic for the May meeting was SURREALISM
Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of the First world War in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas.
Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, photography, theatre, filmmaking, music, comedy and other media as well.
Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. – André Breton
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."– Salvador Dali
Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light.– Max Ernst
“Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.” – Renee Magritte
“Surrealism! What is Surrealism? In my opinion, it is above all a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject but in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical." – Paul Delvaux