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       Zoom Lectures in 2021

 

A History of Modern France - Politics, Society and Culture

Part One: The French Third Republic I

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Wednesday 27 January - 5pm Paris

From War to Revolution: A History of the Paris Commune of 1871

with Mariam Habibi 

 PhD Institut de Sciences Politiques, Paris. Professor of History at USC, Paris.

The far-reaching consequences of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1) are often left untold. It was a relatively short war, that nonetheless set into motion a Franco-German animosity that would drag the entire planet into the depths of tragedy for decades to come. This ill- fated war ended the Second Empire, forced Napoleon III into exile and allowed France to emerge as the sole ‘Republic’ in the midst of European monarchies. The advent of the Third Republic (1870-1940) was not easy. The new regime had to face a country occupied by Prussian troops, a capital exhausted by a long siege and a civil war that brought Parisians onto the streets, erecting barricades and proclaiming a revolutionary Commune.

Our lecture will walk us through these eventful months, starting with the declaration of War and the flight of Napoleon III (July 1870), the Proclamation of a Republic (September 1870), the Siege and eventual Fall of Paris (September-January 1870-71) and ending with the civil war (March -May 1871). This last event known as the “Paris Commune” captured the interest of writers, artists and revolutionaries.Karl Marx hailed it as ‘the glorious harbinger of a new society’ and indeed, though short and chaotic, it turned into a laboratory of many ideas. In 1871, Paris had, once again, fulfilled the role that Victor Hugo had assigned her’ (…) Paris goes her own way. France irritated, is forced to follow; later she calms down and applauds:  it is one of the forms of our national life.’ 

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Wednesday 3 February - 5pm Paris Art in a Time of War:  French Artists during the Franco-Prussian War & the Paris Commune                                             with Anne Catherine Abecassis                  PhD in Art History, Sorbonne, Professor of French Cultural Studies at USC, Paris July 1870 - June 1871 was a terrible year for Paris. Paris and its suburbs suffered two sieges, the first by the Prussian army, the second by the French and in the civil war that ensued, Paris was left in ruins. In the decade that followed, the depiction of the Franco-Prussian War by the academic painters of the Salon was the expression of a heavy wound on the one hand, and a gesture of resilience, on the other, an attempt to overcome the humiliation of defeat. The trauma of the war, the misery and famine that it caused, the harshness of the winter of 1870-71, the violence of the Commune and the ruined Parisian landscape will be widely illustrated at the Salon. For some artists of the “New Painting” - Corot, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Bazille - political commitment led to their direct involvement in the events of the day, whether politically, militarily or artistically and for a number of them, to produce militant works. Others, however, like Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Rodin chose exile. Fleeing the advance of the enemy troops and the impending siege of Paris, they also fled the collapse of the Paris art market to the safety and prosperity of the British capital – London. The works the French artists exhibited and, in many cases, sold to English collectors brought a breath of modernity to British art and its institutions. Conversely, the experience of exile across the Channel exerted a new influence on French art. Upon their return to France, these self-exiled artists chose to ignore the stigmata left by the war in the Parisian landscape. It was not the ruins that interested this generation of painters, but the new Paris rising from its ashes! Theirs was a commitment to another revolution, this time to art rather than politics. Initiated by the Realist movement before the war, this artistic revolution was confirmed, only four years after the disasters of the Commune, by the birth of Impressionism in the first Impressionist exhibition of April 1874. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday 10 February - 5pm Paris The Politics of Art:  Painting, Sculpture, Architecture & the Third French Republic, 1871-1895 with Chris Boïcos PhD in Art History, Courtauld Institute of Art, London Professor of Art History, USC, Paris  Having emerged out of the ashes of war and revolution in 1871, the French Third Republic turned out to be, beyond all expectations, a resilient regime lasting much longer than most post-revolutionary French governments, until its final collapse at the opening of the Second World War in 1940. Young and fragile in its first two decades it had to affirm itself and its legitimacy and one way of doing so was by creating a new historical mythology based on its vision of « la nation », the French Revolution of 1789 and its imagined roots in all periods of French history. Art, sculpture and  architecture contributed largely to this endeavor and provided the young regime with the imagery and symbolism that in many ways survives in modern France to this day. In our lecture we will study the visual symbols of the Republic most particularly in Paris and also see how monuments and historical figures of the past were smoothly absorbed into the iconography of the new regime by its official painters, sculptors and architects: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Alfred Roll, Léon Bonnat, Jules Dalou, Léon Lhermitte, Auguste Bartholdi (creator of the Statue of Liberty of New York), Gustave Eiffel and Garbriel Davioud among others. We will also see how the modern schools of the period responded to and sometimes undermined the artistic and cultural politics of the Republic by creating alternative styles or iconography - Monet, Seurat, Signac, Maximilien Luce and Rodin being among the most prominent examples of this reaction. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Wednesday 17 February - 5pm Paris Absinthe: The “Green Fairy” of 19th Century Paris with Sylvie Koneski PhD University of Southern California Profeesor of Literature, USC Paris “Paris makes absinthe, but absinthe makes Paris”. The era when alcohol played a dominant role within literature and the arts began in the mid- 19th century and continued throughout the 20th. Members of the working classes, as well artists, writers, scientists, whether rich or poor, had recourse to the use of drugs and alcohol, some stronger and more exotic than others. Few alcoholic beverages figure in literature, painting, and poetry as much as absinthe. “Artemisia absinthium”, a rather bitter plant, was known and used in the ancient times as medicine. Once a process was invented to use absinthe as the essence of a spirit in the mid-19th century, it became the favorite intoxicating beverage of all classes of French society. Absinthe drinking involved a fascinating ritual that attracted Bourgeois and Bohemians alike every evening from 5 to 7 pm in Parisian cafés during what used to be called “the Green Hour”. Poets like Musset, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine all fell into the arms of their new Muse. Absinthe soon earned a reputation for itself as a psychoactive drink and many artists turned to it in the hopes it would spark inspiration. As painters of modern life, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, all represented the grandeur and, later on, the decadence of the “Green Fairy”. It is no secret that alcoholic beverages, especially wine, has long been a component of French social life. But increasing alcohol abuse and absinthe addiction towards the end of 19th Century was the cause of many social problems. During the course of the 19th century, Paris was the scene of several uprisings and social revolutions. As a result, the now-empowered bourgeois class feared that alcoholism and especially absinthism would lead to more upheavals. As a result, temperance movements were born and increasingly gained strength within French society. The once fashionable and worshiped spirit had now become the favorite target of anti-alcohol movements, whose leaders insisted that it was a deadly poison and the cause of mental illness, especially among the working classes. But whereas in the US, prohibition led to the banning of all alcoholic drinks, in France, it was to be limited to absinthe. Absinthe was banned in 1915 … but not forever.     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Degas and the Stage: Dancers and Singers in the Art of Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas - Dance Examination 1880, Denver Art Museum

More than any other artist of the 19th century, Degas found inspiration in the figures of the ballet dancers of the Paris Operawhom he studied obsessively over many decades. His paintings, drawings and prints of the dancers offer us a complete vision, not only of their movements and performances on stage, but also their life in the rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, and the backstage of the theater, their grinding daily routines and their suitors. A less well-known theme in Degas’ art are his colorful depictions of the musical hall singers of 19th century Paris in the more « vulgar » setting of the café-concerts of the Champs-Elysées - a subject that will greatly inspire future painters of Paris night life like J. L. Forain and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. We will see how both subjects, in their great variety of composition, use of pose and artistic techniques, provide us with one of the richest examinations of femininity and the world of professional female performers in the history of art.

Edgar Degas - Singer with a Glove 1878, Fogg Museum, Harvard

Place: Zoom lecture Date: Monday 18 January Time: 5-6:40 pm French time Fee: 15 €  Payment Instructions:  Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend: 1. Payment after reception of an invoice  for several lectures by any of the methods below. 2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link. As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system. 3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos 4. By transfer if you have a European account to: Chris Boicos Fine Arts BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182      Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris Please quote your name in the transfer information. You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.

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Artemisia Gentileschi at the National Gallery, London  

In 17th-century Europe, at a time when women artists were not easily accepted, Artemisia was exceptional. She challenged conventions and defied expectations to become a successful artist and one of the great storytellers of her time.

In this first major exhibition of Artemisia’s work in the UK, are displayed her best-known paintings including two versions of her iconic ‘Judith beheading Holofernes’; as well as her self portraits, heroines from history and the Bible, and recently discovered personal letters.

According to the curators of the exhibition, “Artemisia painted subjects that were traditionally the preserve of male artists and for the male gaze; transforming meek maidservants into courageous conspirators and victims into survivors.”

We will follow her extremely successful career which beginning in Rome took her to Florence, Venice, Naples and, briefly, to the artistically blossoming London of Charles I. We will compare her paintings to those of her talented father, Orazio Gentileschi, to the other great Roman painter who inspired her early style - Michelangelo Caravaggio - and we will see what in particular distinguished her style and thematic interpretations from those of her male colleagues of the early Baroque age.

Place: Zoom lecture
Date: Monday 11 January
Time: 5-6:40 pm French time
Fee: 15 € 

 

Payment Instructions: 
Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:
1. Payment after reception of an invoice  for several lectures by any of the methods below.
2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.
As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.
3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:
https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos
4. By transfer if you have a European account to:
Chris Boicos Fine Arts
BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     
Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris
Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.   

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The Stories of Berthe and Eva

Édouard Manet met the future Impressionist painter, Berthe Morisot, while copying Old Master paintings at the Louvre in 1868. Between their meeting and her marriage to his brother, Eugène Manet, in 1874 he painted six portraits of her, a testimony to the great fascination her looks and personality exercised on him.

The painter Eva Gonzalès, who came from a bourgeois Spanish family settled in Paris, was introduced to Manet by their mutual friend the Belgian artist, Alfred Stevens. She entered Manet’s studio as a pupil in 1869 immediately provoking the jealousy of Berthe Morisot. She went on to a remarkable artistic career cut short by her early death in 1883. Unlike Berthe Morisot, but like Manet, she never exhibited with the Impressionist group.

The story of Manet’s relationship with these two women artists, to whom he was intimately linked, will be the subject of our next lecture. We will be analyzing key pictures by all three artists as well as portraits by their mutual friend and one-time suitor of Berthe, Edgar Degas. 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 4 January

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 € 

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice  for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

 

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 The Stories of Suzanne and Victorine

 

Suzanne Leenhoff (1829-1906) met her future husband, Édouard Manet when she was hired by his mother to teach the piano to her sons when Manet was 17. In 1852 she gave birth to a son, Léon, whose paternity is still in doubt as she seems to have had affairs with both the teen-aged Édouard and his father, Auguste. Manet married Suzanne shortly after his father’s death in 1863 and though not particularly faithful, remained deeply attached and fond of her until his death in 1883. In our lecture we will be analyzing the dozen portrayals of Suzanne painted through Manet’s career and how they define his vision of her and their relationship.

Victorine Meurent (1844-1927) was Manet’s most important model for the first half of his career made notorious by posing in the nude for “Olympia” in 1863. Manet met her when she was 18 and was immediately taken by her luscious red hair and luminous, pale complexion. She is the central figure in seven of Manet’s masterpieces of the period 1862-1872, where her attitude and costume (or lack of) came to define “la femme moderne” in mid-19th century France. 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 28 December

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 € 

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.

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Monday 14 December

        The Portraits of Edgar Degas

 

Edgar Degas (1834-1917), one of the key founders of the Impressionist group in 1873-74, was also the Impressionist painter most committed by taste and classical training to the human figure. Today he is considered one of the greatest portrait painters in the history of art.

Degas is also the first portrait painter of the 19^th century to drop the conventions of idealizing grace and sentimental femininity for his depiction of women, endowing his female subjects with distinctive and strong personalities that restore to the gender the individuality and psychological weight usually reserved for the depiction of their husbands.

 

Degas is also unusual for never having painted a portrait on commission. Most of his portraits are of family, friends, artistic colleagues, critics and art collectors, hence people that he was linked to intimately or professionally. This gave him the possibility to interpret his sitters with an absolute freedom and entirely according to his own vision, without regard to convention or the need to flatter. The result is one of the most distinctive and powerful galleries of human portraits in the history of art.

 

 Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 14 December

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.

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Monday 7 December

                 The Portraits of Amedeo Modigliani, 1907-1920

Amedeo Modigliani‘s (1884-1920) career in Paris was very brief – a mere 13 years – but his paintings have remained among the best known and most popular works of art of the early 20th century.

Modigliani was one the few early Modernists who concentrated on the figurative portrait as his main subject, at a time when most of his friends and colleagues were leaning toward abstract or near-abstract styles like Cubism. He painted virtually all the avant-garde artists, writers, poets, critics and art dealers of Paris in the heroic years of Modernism (1907-1920), thereby creating a gallery of portraits unparalleled in the history of modern art.

Though abandoning traditional realism, he remained sensitive to the individual features, personality, social class and psychological aura of his subjects, often infusing his depictions with a quality of wit and humor that show up the foibles and pretensions of the “monstres sacrés” – like Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau - of an extraordinary era.   

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 7 December

Time: 5-6:30 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.

 

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Tuesday 24 November

Conclusion: The Battle for Modern Art in Second Empire Paris, 1848-1870

 

Please see a description of this lecture below: Thursday 12 November

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Tuesday 24 November

Time: 6-7:30 pm French time

Fee: This lecture is free 

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Monday 23 November

The Story of Gwen John (1876-1939) 

Gwen John is by many measures one the great painters of the early 20th century, but little known outside of Great Britain. In her lifetime her own career suffered by comparison to that of her flamboyant, Bohemian and very successful brother, the painter Augustus John.

Though she studied at the Slade School in London (the only art school that admitted women in the 1890s) most of her artistic career was, in fact, spent in France where she arrived in 1903. Having to model for artists to make ends meet in Paris, she met and fell passionately in love with the most famous French artist of the day, the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

During her years in Paris she met many of the leading artistic personalities of her time, including Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi and Rainer Maria Rilke. But the new developments in the art of her time had little effect on her, and she worked in solitude. Her beautifully drawn and delicately painted portraits of herself and young models with cats have an intimate feeling and poignant subtlety unmatched by any artist of her time.

In our lecture we will follow the evolution of her art and life from the beginning of her art career in London in the 1890s through her years in Paris and Meudon, to her tragic death, ill and alone, in a hospital in Dieppe just after the outbreak of war in September 1939. 

 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 23 November

Time: 5-6:30 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

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Thursday 12 November

The Battle for Modern Art in Second Empire Paris, 1848-1870

The period between the revolution of 1848, followed by the advent of Napoleon III’s Second Empire in 1851 and its dramatic fall in 1870 is one of the most exciting for the history of French art.

In our lecture we will present the principal institutions of French art of the era, the Academy, the Paris École des Beaux-Arts and the annual Paris Salon. We will see how the artistic traditions and styles these institutions championed were increasingly challenged by the new artists of the period beginning with Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet and Henri Fantin-Latour and finishing with the rise of the future Impressionist group – Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Bazille and Cézanne - in the later 1860s.

We will see how the Salons and the art exhibitions the two Paris World’s fairs of the era - 1855 and 1867 - served as important showcases for the major artists of the Second Empire and their challengers. The pictures of many of the Salon artists we will be analyzing are also on view at the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre and they include major works by Ingres, Couture, Chassériau, Cabanel and Meissonier.

 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Thursday 12 November

Time: 6-7:30 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions: 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: 

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.  

 

Monday 9 November

In Praise of Painting - Dutch Masterpieces at the Met 

 

Dutch paintings of the 17th century —the Golden Age of Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer—have been a highlight of The Met collection since the Museum's founding purchase in 1871. This exhibition brings together some of the Museum's greatest paintings to present this remarkable chapter of art history in a new light. Through 67 works of art organized thematically, In Praise of Painting orients visitors to key issues in 17th century Dutch culture—from debates about religion and conspicuous consumption to painters' fascination with the domestic lives of women.

In our lecture we will focus on the division of Dutch painting into distinctive genres: Still Life, Landscape, Marines, Cityscape, Portraiture, Domestic scenes, History and Religious painting. We will see how taken together they offer a complete vision of Dutch society and its values in a manner that was absolutely unique in European art of the 17th century.

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 9 November

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: 

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

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Monday 2 November

Aubrey Beardsley 

 

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) shocked and delighted late-Victorian London with his sinuous black and white drawings in which he explored the erotic and the elegant, the humorous and grotesque.

The exhibition covers Beardsley’s intense and prolific career as a draughtsman and illustrator, cut short by his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Beardsley’s charismatic persona played a part in the phenomenon that he and his art generated, so much so that the 1890s were dubbed the ‘Beardsley Period’ in England. All of the notorious illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salomé” and Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” are on view as well as the romantic Pre-Raphaelite-style illustrations for Malory’s “La Mort Darthur”.

Originating at Tate-Britain this is the largest display of Beardsley’s original drawings in Europe since the seminal 1966 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which triggered a Beardsley revival in the late ‘60s.

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 2 November

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: 

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

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Thursday 29 October

Man and his Women: The Stories of Kiki, Berenice and Lee

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) arrived in Paris from New York in 1921. His best French friend in New York was the founder of the New York Dada movement, the notorious Marcel Duchamp with whom he had been collaborating since they had met in 1917. In Paris, however, he quickly switched from experimental but unsaleable avant-garde art objects to the more profitable field of photography. Man Ray quickly became one of the most popular portrait photographers of the “années folles” – the jazz age – in Paris and photographed nearly all of the French and Anglo-American celebrities of the art and literary worlds of the 1920s and 1930s.  In our lecture we will concentrate on his relationships with the three most important women of his Paris career: his lover and “it girl” of Bohemian Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse, his first studio assistant and future rival, the New York photographer Berenice Abbott, and the classic American beauty of the 1930s - model, lover and photographer - Lee Miller.

Through his portrayals of the three women we will see how Man Ray forged three different but essential visions of the “new” woman of the 1920s and 1930s. His photos emphasize the sense of radical transformation, new-found freedom and liberated sexuality that Paris represented for many women escaping their homes and families in the post-WWI era. From nearly one hundred years ago Kiki, Berenice and Lee remain iconic representations of the type of free woman that so many conservatives are still fighting against today. 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Thursday 29 October

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: 

https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

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Monday 26 October

Giorgio de Chirico and La Pintura Metafísica

 

The Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was born in Greece where his father worked as railway engineer. Greek light and classical culture but also the German Symbolism fashionable at the turn of the 20th century affected his early artistic experiments alongside his younger brother, Alberto Savinio. As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1906, he discovered the writings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer as well as the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger. After Milan and Florence, it was in Paris, in the autumn of 1911, that he established his unique visual vocabulary after discovering French Cubism. De Chirico was quickly taken up by numerous art critics and writers of the time: Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Raynal, André Salmon, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Jean Paulhan were among the first to discover and  promote his art. Paul Guillaume, whose collection is displayed at the Orangerie museum in Paris was his first art dealer.

On his return to Italy in 1915, de Chirico and his brother Savinio were incorporated into the Italian army at Ferrara where both continued their artistic experiments. It is in this Renaissance city of endless arcades and rectilinear architectural perspectives that de Chirico and Savinio met and had a great impact on the young painters Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi.  An entirely new Italian modern style was born of the encounter which came to be known as “La Pintura Metafísica”, or “Metaphysical Painting”. The strange figures and fragments that populate the dream-like spaces of de Chirico's works are fundamental also for the future development of Surrealist painting, notably the art of Max Ernst, René Magritte and Salvador Dali.  

 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 26 October

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15 €

Payment Instructions 

Please let me know which your prefer and please state the name or date of the lecture you wish to attend:

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you on the SUMUP system.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link:

 https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC : CMCIFRPP          IBAN : FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction. 

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Thursday 22 October

The Golden Age of Danish Painting Conclusion

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Thursday 22 October

Time: 5-5:40 pm French time

Fee: Free 

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Monday 19 October 2020

 

The Golden Age of Danish Painting (1801-1864)

 

The Danish Golden Age is traditionally thought of as a period of unparalleled artistic and cultural flourishing in Denmark from 1801 to 1848. Artists worked to forge an image of a proud and united nation by focusing on the Copenhagen bourgeoisie and the bucolic landscapes of their homeland.

The leading figure of the Danish Golden Age, Christoffer Eckersberg, was at the root of the remarkable artistic revival in Denmark. As professor at the Royal Academy, he trained an entire new generation of painters: Wilhelm Bendz, Christen Købke, Martinus Rørbye, Constantin Hansen, Wilhem Marstand among others.

 

The cultural scene was vibrant, more and more exhibition venues were opening, and a rising bourgeois class guaranteed artists a regular clientele of collectors. Commissions from the new bourgeoisie contributed to the growing trend for portraits, as did a taste for portraying intimate family circles. The artists themselves painted self-portraits that reflected their new social status. A great importance was given to children’s portraiture showcasing the importance of education and good upbringing in Danish culture. 

The exhibition also evokes the artists’ fascination with the world, from its breath-taking vastness down to its minutest detail. They created a new vision of the infinitely large, with pictures of wide-open skies, and the infinitely small, with extremely accurate botanical studies. The development of open-air painting allowed them to paint landscapes with new and unusual perspectives. 

The freshness and openness of the Danish painters’ visionof the world in this period, their attachment to middle class values of family harmony and propriety, the slow rhythms of city and country life, visible in their art, offer a unique and often nostalgic vision of a golden age - a bygone era as yet untouched by the turbulence, the social, economic and political tensions of the industrial modern world. 

 

Place: Zoom lecture

Date: Monday 19 October

Time: 5-6:40 pm French time

Fee: 15€

Payment Instructions (please let me know which your prefer):

1. Payment after reception of an invoice on 30 September for several lectures by any of the methods below.

2. By credit card via SUMUP if you send me your cell number for the transaction link.

As soon as payment goes through please send me the last 4 digits of your credit card which enable me to identify you.

3. By PayPal indicating the date of the lecture to this link: https://www.paypal.me/AMKEFriendsofPaxos

4. By transfer if you have a European account to:

Chris Boicos Fine Arts

BIC: CMCIFRPP

 IBAN:  FR76 3006 6100 1100 0103 7760 182     

Bank : CIC Paris République, 201 rue de Temple 75003 Paris

Please quote your name in the transfer information.

You will be receiving the Zoom meeting details as soon as you send me an email notice of the transaction.