| Date | Title | Speaker | Synopsis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | |||
| 19 Sep | John Piper – Master of Diversity | Alexandra Epps | From cathedrals to churches, from cottages to coastlines – a true master of diversity. |
| 17 Oct | The Art of 1935 | Pamela Campbell-Johnston | An exciting exploration of the year’s artistic forms fittingly reflecting the period. |
| 28 Nov | Moorish Architecture - the Legacy of a Vanished Kingdom | Ian Cockburn |  The Alhambra is only one of many examples of architectural creativity revealed here. |
| 2020 | |||
| 16 Jul | Still Looking at Still Life – Lemons & Lobsters, Dutch Still Life from 1560 to 1650 | Dan Evans |  When it comes to Dutch Flower paintings, the only real experts in the field are the insects that live there. From meat stalls to mince pies and bubbles to bread rolls, this lecture will help you to discover the fascinating symbolism conveyed by everyday objects. Examining works by Aertsen, Claesz, Steenwyck and others, we shall explore the corruption of abundance, the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death. |
| 17 Sep | A Brief History of Wine ONLINE |
David Wright |  Wine has been part of our global society for over 7,000 years and the story tells of its origin and appearance in all societies across the Mediterranean and through Europe. There is rich evidence of the role that wine has played in these societies and how it became an important component of faith, well-being and festivity. From the kwevris of Georgia in 5000BC, the symposia in ancient Greece, the thermopolia of Pompeii and the hospices of Europe to the dining tables of fine society, wine has been ever present. Drawings, paintings, engravings, buildings, pottery and wine labels themselves all contribute to the story.In conjunction with Majestic Wines |
| 15 Oct | A Garden Like No Other – Edward James & Las Pozas ONLINE |
James Russell |  In the depths of the Mexican jungle lies what looks like the remains of a lost civilisation, with arches and stairways towering over waterfalls and pools. However, these were only built in the last century by a rich English eccentric and Surrealist, Edward James. This colourful lecture tells the story of his garden at Las Pozas, including an array of intriguing characters, and explores the wider theme of the modern artist-gardener. Review
Reviewer: David BettsI must say that “A Garden Like No Other “was a surprise because it told more about the West Dean Estate and Edward James, than the Gardens at Las Pozas. The title perhaps did not do justice to the content. The surprise raised more questions than answers for me but added to the scope of the lecture which seemed almost like a tutorial. Go and find out more. (see footnote). Furthermore, I confess I had not recognised the connection of James, West Dean and Las Pozas. The contrast of life in Northern Mexico, West Sussex and beyond, filled the screen and lecture with facts, interest, wonder and colour. The Zoom podium isn’t the easiest to take and James Russell took little time to warm to subject without a live audience. His easy manner and obvious love for the subject, helped involve the sofa audience. He enjoyed seeing his audience during the Q and A. The gardens at Las Pozas are full of exotic plants, cascades and surreal unfinished structures, perhaps metaphors for Edward James life. A privileged, extravagant and unstructured existence, deprived and denied love and affection by family and a short and fragile marriage. He was rejected by the society he desired to shape. His name and shame divorce went against the illogical morals of that time and emphasised his rejection. Edward James embraced the extraordinary world of Surrealism and by his patronage was instrumental in the development of a number of emerging artists, notably Salvador Dali. It could be said that without James the famous Mae West Red Lips sofas and the Lobster Telephones (there are 11 of them, 4 red and 7 white) would not exist. You can see examples at West Dean. The sadness of his rejection is that even his Surrealists are pictured without their great patron. So, a misunderstood, damaged and wealthy poet wandered the world leaving some near mystical structures, an art movement and a great heritage in West Sussex. There are many sources to that do the man justice for his sometimes misplaced and perhaps desperate efforts. YouTube has many items to follow up and learn more. Search for: Edward James and George Melly. The Secret Life of Edward James. The Extraordinary World of Edward James (The Dali Museum) Magritte and Dali. The importance of the Collector: Edward James. |
| 19 Nov | The Lute Within Old Master Paintings ONLINE TBC |
Adam Busiakiewicz |  Busiakiewicz, himself a lutenist, will look at the lute featured in painting. In the Renaissance, it was played by angels and in the 16th century, by educated courtiers. The 17th century, Jan Steens and Frans Hals painted the lute alongside intimate and debauched behaviour, while Vermeer depicted it in polite, romantic scenes. |
| 2021 | |||
| 21 Jan 2021 | Food & Art Through The Ages; from Renaissance Sugar Sculpture to 3D Painting | Tasha Marks |  This is a whistle-stop tour of the history of food starting with 16th century sugar sculpture to 3D dessert printing and beyond. Hosted by Food Historian, Tasha Marks, this lecture is a treat for those with a sweet tooth, as Marks feels the subject of food and art through the ages is most exciting in the realms of the dessert. Topics include the origins of the dessert, the crossover between sugar and art, architecture and the dessert, sugar and spectacle, food as an artistic medium and the future of food. |
| 18 Feb 2021 | Post-war Australian Painting | Paul Chapman |  Essential to the understanding of Australian modern art, we look at the naive and expressive stylists of the ‘Heide School’, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, while John Brack’s figurative paintings give a post-war social critique of Australian culture. John Olsen’s abstract expressions of landscape and Brett Whitley’s personal vision of his life in Sydney are also essential to the understanding of Western modern art from ‘down under’. |
| 04 Mar 2021 | The Inns of Court and Legal London | Emma Matthews |  Emma Matthews, a former barrister, who worked in the Inner Temple and Royal Courts of Justice, will uncover the secrets of crusaders and campaigners in a hidden part of London amongst cobbled streets, gas lights and ancient buildings and will explain the theatre of the court rooms where barristers and judges still wear their horsehair wigs and silk gowns. |
| 18 Mar 2021 | Taken by surprise; a Revolution in the Art of the Poster | Charles Harris |  The year is 1901. Toulouse-Lautrec has just died. An orange zebra sips Campari, a tiger tears at a tyre, a clown leaps out of a lemon and a woman on horseback heralds a new era of chocolate. Advertising posters have never been the same. Wit-lashed with their imagery, tongue-fooled by their visions, we ask, ‘Who were the first Mad Men?’. The word ‘nice’ was not in their vocabulary; that just meant ‘mediocrity’... |
| 15 Apr 2021 | James Whistler; the gentle art of making enemies | Douglas Skeggs |  James Whistler, the self assured, affected and irreverent artist with a razor sharp wit influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his artistic theories and his friendships with leading artists and writers, including Oscar Wilde. |
| 20 May 2021 | Is Less More? Rothko & the New York Colour Revolution | Kate Aspinall |  A master of Abstract Expressionist painting, Mark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears. Like his fellow New York School painters Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Rothko relied on colour, texture and composition to define a new and daring type of abstraction that propelled New York to take the lead from Paris, Vienna and Berlin after World War II. |
| 17 Jun 2021 | Frida Kahlo; A Life in Art | Fiona Rose |  This Mexican artist was queen of the selfies long before Kim Kardashian. Her work is often graphic and unflinching with subjects including murder, suicide, marital infidelity, miscarriage, revolution and living with a disability and imminent death.In conjunction with Chichester Festival |
| 15 Jul 2021 | Charleston, Sussex; Keeping House for Bloomsbury | Tessa Boase |  Grace Higgens joined the unconventional Bell household aged just 15 – and, for the next fifty years, propped up the ‘Bloomsbury Set’ in London and at Charleston. Vanessa Bell couldn’t live without her housekeeper’s cooking – or her regular posing as an artist's model. Virginia Woolf tried to poach her for her baking. Grace’s candid diaries paint a picture of bohemia rather different to the official narrative. Tessa Boase, author of ‘The Housekeeper’s Tale’, takes us behind the scenes of this most unusual farmhouse. |
| 15 Sep 2021 | The Art of the Cartoonist | Harry Venning | 
Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for over thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high profile UK publications, including The Guardian and Radio Times and was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist Of The Year for his Guardian strip ‘Clare In The Community’, which he adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom. In The Art Of The Cartoonist, Harry will be tracing the history of his profession through the work of artists who have made an impact upon language, culture, history, and most importantly, upon him, including James Gillray, Charles Schulz, Herje, Posy Simmonds and Ronald Searle. Harry will also be drawing live, so prepare to hear some tricks of the trade, learn where to put eyebrows for maximum effect, what a ‘plewd’ is and when you should use it and discover exactly what the Eskimo brothers said in The Funniest Joke Ever (possibly)... |
| 13 Oct 2021 | When Horses Ran London | Charlie Forman |  Take a trip into a horse-drawn city just as a revolution was motoring in. Without its horses, London in 1900 would have ground to a halt; no buses, no deliveries, no goods trains. Alongside London’s growing dependence on technology was a vast increase in the demand for horses. This eye opener to a lost city mixes what's still there - the mews, horse hospitals, cab shelters and drinking troughs with what’s less apparent - like the horsepower each bus route needed, and why flogging a dead horse wasn’t just a turn of phrase . In fact, in 1900, the end was nigh – as the internal combustion engine fired up and the Great War loomed. Buildings survive which show this abrupt transition; from the factory that built the buses to the Edwardian multi-storey carpark housing the first big taxi. |
| 17 Nov 2021 | The Enigma of Edward Elgar | Roger Askew | 
One of our greatest composers, Edward Elgar was an extraordinary man. He was a completely self-taught musician showing evidence of the strong determination behind his original and unique genius. His path to recognition was hard and bitter, having to contend with the prejudices of the British musical establishment, religious bigotry and with the entrenched class-consciousness of late Victorian provincial society. His wife, however, was his staunchest supporter, finally achieved national and international success with his “Variations on an original theme (Enigma)” of 1899. This work demonstrates remarkable technical mastery of form and orchestration and, above all, an individual and forceful personality. This lecture, illustrated with many notable musical examples, explores the development of this contradictory musician, always wracked with self-doubt, and explains how his music expresses a quintessential Englishness. |
| 2022 | |||
| 19 Jan 2022 | The Dust Bowl Through the Lens of a Photographer | Roger Mendham | 
The mid-1930s were desperate times in the US Midwest. The effects of the Depression were exacerbated by the Dust Bowl years with mass migration of over 3 million people from farming regions, many became migrant workers in California. This talk looks at the conditions that contributed to Dust Bowl, the implications for the communities involved and human consequences, as captured by a number of photographers working for the US Government and includes the story behind one of the most famous images of the 20th century, ‘Migrant Mother’ by Dorothea Lange. |
| 16 Feb 2022 | Joseph Wright of Derby | Scott Anderson | 
The widespread developments in art, industry, science, technology and social behaviour in the 18th century laid the foundations of the modern Britain that we know today. This was the age of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, events that were to change and mould British life for the next two hundred years. This was also the age of Joseph Wright of Derby who painted the very spirit of the Industrial Revolution and whose paintings are still familiar to his many admirers to this day. This lavishly illustrated talk considers his exceptional paintings of both industrial scenes and the many associated characters, such as industrialist Sir Richard Arkwright and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin, who were his subjects and friends. |
| 16 Mar 2022 | The Story of Modern Indian Art | Georgina Bexon | 
At the birth of Indian Independence in 1947, a group of talented and determined artists set out to create a new art for a new country. They drew on ancient artistic traditions and the influences of Euro-American Modernism but, most importantly, they also embraced a radical view of how Indian art could speak to its audience. This movement, known as the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, created art very much for and of its time – acting as witness to a country in turmoil and relating the fascinating story of transition and growth of the new India. This is an exploration of how art in the subcontinent threw off the yoke of colonial influence to create modern masterpieces and a thriving global business. |
| 13 Apr 2022 | The Art of the Steal: Nazi Looting during World War II | Shauna Isaac |  The Nazis looted over twenty percent of Western Art during World War II, confiscating art from Jewish families and emptying museums throughout Europe. This lecture will provide an overview of Nazi looting by setting the scene in Nazi Germany, discussing Hitler’s obsession with art and how the Monuments Men recovered art after the war. Several landmark cases will be discussed in detail, such as Gustav Klimt’s celebrated Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the stash of over 1,200 artworks found in possession of the son of a notorious Nazi dealer. |
| 18 May 2022 | 18th May Oleksander Bohomazov 1880 - 1930 The Lost Futurist of Ukraine | James Butterwick |
Having never left the Russian nor Soviet empires in his lifetime, this Kiev-based artist can only have heard about the new tendencies in Western Art through magazines or publications. Nonetheless, Bogomazov managed to create masterpieces no less exceptional or ground breaking than those of his European contemporaries. A difficult, at times tragic life, shaped by a passionate love story on a background of major historical upheaval - Oleksander Bohomazov is an artist of revolutionary ideas and unique style. James Butterwick examines the legacy of the genius who many consider the national artist of the Ukraine and how his work is finlly moving into the light. |
| 15 Jun 2022 | Art After Windrush: Post-Colonial Artists in Britain | Barry Venning |  This lecture looks at the contributions made by artists of African, Caribbean or Asian origin to British art since the SS Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury from the West Indies in 1948. It considers, among others, the work of Sir Frank Bowling, Francis Newton Souza, Eddie Chambers, Yinka Shonibare, Sonia Boyce, Rasheed Araeen, Lubaina Himid and the Singh Twins, all of whom have achieved international recognition and respect, their works collected by museums world-wide. They may not all be household names but their art is eye-catching and thought-provoking, and they have set much of the agenda for British art of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.This lecture is featured in the Festival of Chichester. See details about the Festival |
| 20 Jul 2022 | The Stirling Prize: The British Architecture’s Oscars | Brian Stater |  The Stirling Prize has celebrated the very best contemporary buildings since 1996, often celebrating the artistry of British architects, who are admired around the world. Some winners, such as Norman Foster’s Gherkin of 2004, have become popular with the public while other have proved harder to love. This lecture looks at some of the hits, some of the misses, and several buildings that arguably should have won, but didn’t. |
| 21 Sep 2022 | From Leonardo To The Bauhaus: The Rise And Fall Of The Artist-Scientist | Richard Whincop |  This lecture investigates the coming together of Art and Science in the person of Leonardo da Vinci, and his scientifi¬c approach to painting in the analysis of light, perspective, anatomy and human expression.It explores how Leonardo’s influence inspired later artists such as Dürer, Vermeer and Joseph Wright of Derby, and culminated in the rational aesthetic of the Bauhaus. |
| 19 Oct 2022 | Discovering Macdonald Gill: Architect, Artist And Mapmaker | Caroline Walker |  MacDonald 'Max' Gill, younger brother of the sculptor Eric Gill, was an architect, graphic artist and letterer. His pictorial map posters were at the forefront of publicity campaigns for organisations such as the London Underground while his painted map panels decorate many landmark buildings including the Palace of Westminster. He designed many arts and crafts cottages in Sussex and Dorset, and as a letterer he created the alphabet and badges for the British military headstone. Max lived much of his life in the Chichester area where a number of examples of his work can be found. This wonderfully illustrated talk by Max Gill's great-niece gives fascinating insights into the life and work of this remarkable but little-known Sussex artist. |
| 16 Nov 2022 | Women Artists of the Second World War | Magdalen Evans |  Some of the finest work of modern British art was produced during World War II. Many women were amongst the artists officially commissioned to record the Blitz and travel through Europe to record first-hand its devastation. One was the first civilian to arrive at Belsen after its liberation. Back home they painted land girls, women in factories, the ATS and the Red Cross. Some were shown at the National Gallery, while the Old Masters were hidden away for safety in the slate mines of Snowdonia. Our national collections would inherit work of great historical and propaganda interest; too little of it is on display. This lecture aims to remind us of the famous names like Dame Laura Knight and the Zinkeisen sisters as well as inform us of the artists who worked outside the official schemes and are not nearly so well known, with a particular emphasis on those working in Sussex and along the south coast. |