The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

The first major exhibition about the Aesthetic movement takes place in the V&A Museum of London, from the 2nd of April to the 17th of July.

Organised with the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay (Paris), it includes paintings, photographs, drawings, portraits, dresses and jewellery of the era, books, and sets evoking the rooms of the typical Aesthetic houses.

The exhibition is arranged in four chronological sections:

The 1860s: focused on romantic bohemians, Pre-Raphaelites and "Olympian" painters: William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, James McNeill Whistler, and G.F.Watts, as well as paintings by Rosetti and Leighton inspired by their muses Lizzie Sidal and "La Nanna".

The1870s-1880s: focused on the influence between artists and designers for the development of innovative furniture inflenced by Greek and Japanese art: the painter's studio and The White House by James McNeill Whistler and the architect E.W.Godwin.

The 1870s-1880s: focused on decorative arts and its role in the decoration of Aesthetic houses: furniture, ceramics, domestic metalwork and textiles of Walter Crane and Christopher Dresser.

The 1880s-1890s: focused on black-and-white drawings of Aubrey Beardsley in The Yellow Book, bronze sculptures by Alfred Gilbert, concluding with painting masterpieces, such as Leighton's Bath of Psyche, Moore's Midsummer and Rossetti's The Daydream.

As well as the exhibition itself, interesting events are scheduled, such as a discussion about Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and its adaptation with the film, or a guided tour of Chelsea homes of famous Aesthetes and Tite Street artist's studio.

I will return from the exhibition with all the material and feedback I can obtain to feed this humble blog. Meanwhile, do not miss to visit the exhibition blog, where there is a nice video introduction to Aestheticism movement for the uninitiated in the fieldhttp://www.vam.ac.uk/things-to-do/blogs/creating-cult-beauty

 

A Hollywood's Golden Age star has died?

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Another Hollywood's Golden Age star has died, leaving us with the feeling that anyone will never bright as she did. In a time when the 7th art was focused on the greatness of humankind and such praiseworthy Renaissance motivations, in contrast with nowadays blockbusters based on special effects and complicated plots, actors were the sole protagonists of the screen, the center part of the picture frame. Either their characters and psychological motivations, or their appearance and body language were revealed fully to the spectator, thus interpretation had to be brilliant. These films were not action-packet, but in fact they did not need to, because they were just mere works of art, masterpieces. And it was due to the grandeur of its stars.