Picasso to Mid-Career : A series of four lectures presented by Lloyd Pollak
11 Aug 2011
Just as Michelangelo proved to be the supreme genius of the 16th century, dominating the High Renaissance and Mannerism, so Pablo Picasso (1962 - 1973) became the colossus straddling the 20th century and shaping its art. His constant experiment inspired Cubism, Russian Cubo-Futurism, Rayonnism and Constructivism, Italian Futurism, the European Neo-Classical Revival and Surrealism, whilst giving painting an almighty shove in the direction of abstraction.
DOWN AND OUT IN MONMARTRE
The Blue and Rose Periods
Thursday – 11 August Starting at 17:30
Although Picasso emerged as a great innovator, his juvenilia could not be more 19th century in flavour, revealing the influence of Symbolism, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, van Gogh, Burne-Jones and a host of others. Gradually Picasso’s work became more personal in Paris where the penniless artist identified with the urban poor and dispossessed. Les Misérables populate his canvases of the Blue and Rose periods which – unaccountably – remain his most universally loved works.
LADIES OF THE NIGHT
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Thursday – 18 August Starting at 17:30
When Picasso first unveiled Les Demoiselles d’Avignon before the cognoscenti of Paris, the painting was so in advance of its time, that all it elicited was horror and disgust, and it took years before this brothel scene of five naked harlots displaying themselves to prospective customers was hailed as one of the key paintings of the 20th century. Les Demoiselles paved the way to the Cubism, and made African tribal art and other primitive sources part of the fabric of Modernism.
THE SET SQUARE AND THE SLIDE RULE
The Cubist Revolution
Thursday – 25 August Starting at 17:30
Picasso described Braque and himself as “two mountaineers roped together” as they invented Cubism, the most revolutionary artistic idiom of the entire 20th century. Cubism unseated the single viewpoint, linear perspective, consistent light sources - the whole concept of a picture as a window on the world - which had prevailed since the early Renaissance. Cubism spawned a host of –isms, inspired Abstract artists like Mondrian, Malevich and Kandinsky and shaped the ethic of the Bauhaus.
PICASSO AND THE TUTU
Les Ballets Russes and Neo-classicism
Thursday – 1 September Starting at 17:30
Between 1917 and 1962, Picasso designed sets and costumes for no less than nine ballets, but his most glorious collaboration was with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. Picasso traveled with the company to Italy, Spain and London, married the dancer, Olga Koklova, and adopted a Neo-Classical style in response to this stimulus. The lecture examines his scenography and the Neo-classical style to which he constantly reverted in his paintings and exquisite graphics.
Venue:
SMAC Art Gallery
First Floor De Wet Centre
Church Street, Stellenbosch.
Fees:
Full Course : R 180
Individual Lectures : R 60
Student Fee for Full Course : R 150
Student Fee for Individual Lectures : R 40
Bookings:
Contact Nastassja Hewitt on
Tel : 021 887 3607 or email : nastassja@smacgallery.com
