Wednesday 19 October 2011
Select your tickets below. Tickets include a pre or post talk drink at Tom’s Kitchen bar.
Frances Spalding
Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. An expert on 20th century British art, she has written about Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant and Gwen Raverat, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith.
"I hugely enjoy The Courtauld Gallery’s collection of French paintings. Some of the greatest were acquired during the 1920s, by means of the fund set up by Samuel
Courtauld. But the man who first promoted French Post-Impressionism in Britain was Roger Fry, and it is entirely appropriate that, in 1934 The Courtauld Gallery accepted from his sister Margery Fry, a bequest that includes several paintings by him as well as works by French and British artists which he bought.”
Frances Spalding will be speaking about Degas'
Woman at a Window (1871-72). Find out more about Frances on her
website, read her feature in
The Guardian.
Marina Warner
“I like the Courtauld because it's a school as well as an art gallery, a living, active arena for thinking about art…The building has its own surprises - the vaults, the gorgeous ellipses of the ceilings and the twisting staircase. The restoration has made the rooms glow, but not too strongly, so the paintings' colours aren't dimmed but look refreshed.”
Marina Warner’s works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005, and was made a CBE for services to literature in 2008. Best known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth, Marina’s books include the Booker Prize shortlisted The Lost Father, the Mythopoeia Award winning From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers and No Go the Bogeyman: On Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock which won the British Academy’s Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2000.
Marina Warner will be speaking about the reproductions of the original Royal Academy ceiling paintings in The Courtauld Gallery. Find out more about Marina on her
website, read her feature in
The Guardian.