The Arts Society Falmouth
Our 2024-2025 Lecture Programme
Lectures begin at 10.30 a.m. at the Princess Pavilion, normally on the second Friday of the month. Refreshments are available in the Garden Room from 10.00 a.m. Lunches are available post lecture.
Below is a list of lectures and a brief synopsis of each. You can download a Printable Copy of the lecture programme.
Future Lectures
13
December
2024
MARY MARY QUITE CONTRARY: IMAGES OF THE VIRGIN MARY IN ART
Geri Parlby
The Virgin Mary is one of the most recognisable female figures in the world of art, yet this image we know so well has evolved entirely from the imaginations of fifteen centuries of Christian artists.
No visual or written evidence exists that can tell us how the Mother of Jesus may have looked and many people believe the early Christian artists used the familiar images of pagan goddesses as their inspiration.
In this lecture we will look at how her image has evolved from its early beginnings in the Roman catacombs, through to the miraculous images of the 21st century.
14
February
2025
CABBAGES, CARROTS AND LAMB SPANISH STILL LIFE FROM 1600-1812
Daniel Evans
Robert Hughes declared of Still Life painting; ‘Still Life is to eating what the nude is to sex’ (we won’t go there I assure you!), although he did also admit that Spanish Still Life painting is ‘more sacramental than gastronomic’.
The lecture will cover a cabbage that has been painted with such astonishing accuracy that the painted version is more alluring than the vegetable itself.
Goya’s painting of a pile of 6 silvery fish is a political commentary on the disasters of war. These bream have been abandoned on a beach in the middle of the night, left to rot in the sand, evidence of reckless waste at a time of famine. Through this and other paintings by Velazquez, Zurburán, and Meléndez, we shall explore several stunning key themes that can all be discerned from arrangements of simple food stuffs; religious fervour and symbolism, the absence of presence and that importance generates waste.
Details on Google Art Project, Diego Velazquez - An Old Woman Cooking Eggs - Google Art Project, Cropped, CC0 1.0
14
March
2025
THE POWER OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Roger Mendham
Photographs have the ability to stop time, to provide a freeze-frame of a moment in time and space. They give the observer the opportunity to think, to react, to feel and to soak in the details of the circumstances surrounding the image.
This talk examines some the most important images and photographers of the past century. It explores why these images are so powerful and influential in our understanding of history.
11
April
2025
BAROQUE ON A ROLL: CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE MODERN MEDIA
Tony Rawlins
I talk about the increasing popularity of classical music, especially amongst young people. I show examples of how classical music enhances the mood - the drama, the tension, the romance - of feature films.
I show examples of how it has made many TV commercials truly memorable. I describe how a piece by an obscure 17th century German composer has become our No.1 favourite at weddings and funerals. And to finish I show how classical melodies and chord sequences have been borrowed for a huge number of popular hit records (I play guitar and sing for this part).
9
May
2025
DIAGHILEV AND THE BALLET RUSSES
Rosamund Bartlett
This lecture tells the remarkable story of the fabled Ballets Russes company which Diaghilev established in Paris in 1909. Building on the achievements of Tchaikovsky and Petipa, Diaghilev and his associates brought about nothing less than a revolution in classical dance, which was dazzling to the eye and would have a lasting impact on all the arts.
The lecture will discuss how artists of the calibre of Bakst, Goncharova, Picasso and Matisse worked with composers such as Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel, choreographers such as Fokine and Balanchine, and dancers such as Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky to create ballet stagings of genius.
20
June
2025
GUSTAV KLIMT: IMPERIAL MURALIST TURNED RADICAL PAINTER
Gavin Plumley
Klimt was one of the most prominent figures in the Viennese fin de siècle, creating paintings whose sexual themes and bold use of colour and gold shocked an unsuspecting populace. Less is known about his early years as a muralist for the grand municipal buildings and royal and aristocratic palaces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
This lecture looks at the many changes in Klimt's life, his rejection of public pomp and the impact on his style and works.
11
July
2025
REMBRANDT’S ‘NIGHT WATCH’: THE ANATOMY OF A MASTERPIECE
Hilary Williams
'The Night Watch' of 1642 is Rembrandt's greatest painting and the most famous painting in the Netherlands. But why is it so special? It has become an icon of the Golden Age and of the modern Dutch Nation. Why?
How was it commissioned and constructed? How did Rembrandt paint it and where has it been hung throughout its life? Who are the characters represented? Why is there a lone woman and what is meant by the dead chicken trussed up in her waistband? What does this all tell us about changing Dutch society?
This work redirected how group portraits were conceived. The traditional Dutch 'schutterstuk', a military group or shooting piece, became majestic and grandiose in Rembrandt's hands.
'The Night Watch' has had a chequered history physically: it has hung in a 'doelen', a Town Hall and in Dutch museums. It was hidden in a cave in Maastricht in 1942, attacked with a knife in 1911 and 1975, then sprayed with acid in 1990. So, how has it survived as a masterpiece?
Previous Lectures this year
13
September
2024
EDWARD HOPPER PAINTER OF LONELINESS
Lydia Bauman
The American artist who has become synonymous with the isolation experienced by many in the covid era.
We looked at Hopper's unique contribution to American art in the 20th century with his haunting images of loneliness in the midst of urban life.
18
October
2024
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ST IVES AS AN ART CENTRE PRIOR TO 1914
David Tovey
St Ives has always attracted artists because of its splendid position, quaint houses, busy harbour and special light, but it is also unique amongst British art colonies for the international element ever-present within the artistic community. After analysing how the colony was formed by a group of artist friends of varying nationalities, who had worked together in Paris and Brittany, and how this group secured for the colony an early reputation in Paris, the talk discusses the initial connections between St Ives and the Newlyn School, culminating in the Cornish Artists’ exhibition at Nottingham Castle Museum in 1894.
Whilst figure painters in St Ives found the activities of the fisherfolk a never-ending source of subjects, the town’s north-facing situation was a boon for marine and landscape painters, who could paint light effects on the waters of the Bay from dawn till dusk. As a result, a number of Art Schools were established in the town and, in the period prior to the First World War, St Ives became recognised world-wide as a centre for both the practice and teaching of marine and landscape painting.
The works produced by this group of artists aimed to evoke a mood, drawing on the Victorians’ knowledge of Romantic poetry, and, whilst seemingly realistic, were intended to showcase the artist’s own individual vision/genius. They became known as lyrical, poetical or idealistic land- and seascapes. This is an era of British landscape and marine painting that has been totally neglected, so that its influence on leading American artists such as Elmer Schofield, Paul Dougherty and Frederick Waugh is unrecognised.
8
November
2024
HAMPTON COURT PLEASURE PALACE
Siobhan Clarke
Hampton Court comprises two palaces: the rose red brick of Henry VIII with the classical Baroque of William of Orange, surrounded by some of the world’s greatest gardens. Both kings employed the finest craftsmen and artists so that the palace, grounds and stunning works of art express the image of a magnificent monarch.
Powerful owners continued to shape the building and Victorian antiquarians preserved it so that it became the only great Tudor palace to survive. Dig a little deeper and you will find hidden stories, such as grace and favour, covering five hundred years of history in the corridors of royal power and pleasure.
