Art Appreciation

Co-ordinator	Caroline Bagshaw
Day of the week	Second Monday of the month
Times	10.00 a.m. till 12 noon
Frequency of meetings	Monthly
Venue	Ecgwins Club
Contact	Telephone 41384
Email

In July we went en masse to Compton Verney, an old manor house with grounds designed by Capability Brown, and now an art gallery. There was an exhibition of Stanley Spencer, including his pram. It probably wasn’t the one he sat in as a baby in 1891, although it looked old enough. It contained his art paraphernalia, and his paint-stained umbrella.
Like many artists, Stanley Spencer had an interesting private life. He adored his wife, and another woman too. He wanted to live happily with both, but they weren’t having it, and nor was his mother-in-law. So he felt compelled to get divorced and marry the other woman. The second marriage didn’t make it to the honeymoon. He stayed at home, while the bride disappeared with his rival in love, her girl-friend.
His paintings show a similarly variable state of mind. Some are peaceful garden scenes, although there are hints of harshness, like barbed wire over the bedding plants. Some are visionary scenes, with distorted people. One, with two titles, “The Lovers” or “The Dustman” features the people he loved, and the people he was in conflict with, these being the same people. He is being carried like a baby, and rubbish from the bin is being presented to him.
It was, as the guide said, an exhibition of surprise and puzzlement.
Caroline Bagshaw – cb@u3a-evesham.org.uk, 422071

Scroll down for our 2011 programme

U3A Evesham U3A Art Appreciation – Programme 2011

Oct 10th	Scottish colourists – DVD
Nov 14th	Propaganda Posters
Dec 12th	Art we don’t like – we’re looking for artists who are praised and pilloried, and putting them up for debate. We need people to come forward to say they love/loathe Artist X, and be prepared to talk about how wonderful/dreadful they are. Please tell us about any artist you feel passionately about, one way or the other. We have a start, with a strong difference of opinion about Lucian Freud. Can you suggest others? We need three or four people to come forward. .
Other possibilities
Children in art Hiroshige – Japanese woodcuts Modern Sculpture		Naïve Art Pottery What did the Pre-Raphaelites have against Raphael?

We don’t need an art mausoleum to adore dead works – so said Russian artists when the revolution set them free. They formed the constructivist movement, going for technical functional work and rejecting fantasy. It only lasted a few years, yet it lives on in curious ways. See Below

Caroline Bagshaw (01386 41384)