Bat & Ball Centre, start 10.00am, lunch included.

This Study day will focus on the transformation of Istanbul from its conquest by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 through to its Golden Age under Süleyman the Magnificent and beyond.  Iznik ceramics, textiles and manuscripts will be explored, along with architectural treasures such as Hagia Sophia, Topkapı Palace, the Grand Bazaar, the Blue Mosque and the ostentatious Dolmabahçe Palace.

Bat & Ball Centre, start 10.00am, Lunch included.

In conjunction with The Arts Society Knole.

This study day will take us to coastal Spain,exploring how Pablo Picasso learnt his trade from his father in Malaga, how Joaquin Sorolla adored the light of Valencia, and how Gaudi shaped Barcelona with his quirky architectural style.

 At Kippington Hall, start 10.30am, Lunch included

Cost – £38 per head, to include coffee, lunch and a glass of wine.
Online application (preferred) – please email michaelcjones51@gmail.com - (application form) will open automatically in email.
Postal application – Please send to the organiser: Michael Jones 10 Burlington Mews Sevenoaks TN13 1FJ. Tel. 07887 645401 Download form by clicking here

This 3-lecture study day begins with an explanation of how the European art market evolved from a structure of commissioning and elite patronage by the wealthy princes of the Italian Renaissance, through to the commercial instincts of the merchant classes of Antwerp in the early 16th century. We then proceed to the flourishing art markets of the Dutch Golden Age and on to the impact of the Grand Tour on British tastes in the eighteenth century and the growth of fine art auction houses.. 

In lecture two we explore the gradual appearance of a professional ‘dealer’ class in France and England in the nineteenth century before focusing on the speculative activities at work in the  early and mid-twentieth century art market. It's a fascinating story of capitalist self-interest, connoisseurship, commercial acumen, occasional bad behaviour and frequent sleight of hand. The lecture touches on the emergence of an entrepreneurial middle class in the mid-nineteenth century whose members sought to emulate the aristocracy through their consumer choices, leisure activities and aesthetic tastes. 

Lecture three focuses on the 21st century art market and the eternal desire of successful people to display their success through the works of art they acquire. This instinct remains as powerful a driver of the global art market today as it was in Renaissance Florence. We look at how a culture of art investment began to take shape in the 1960s. We conclude with insights into some of the more outrageous and occasionally baffling occasions in the contemporary art market (such as when a simple banana taped to a wall recently fetched $6.2 million at a New York auction). Is this art, or something else?

Tom Flynn is a UK-based art historian, writer and art consultant. He holds a First Class Honours degree in Art History from the University of Sussex, a Masters in Design History from the Royal College of Art and a doctorate from the University of Sussex. His interests include contemporary art; sculpture history; museology and the history of  museums; art crime; issues in cultural heritage; and the historical development and professional practice of the European art markets.   He is Senior Lecturer at Christie’s Education, Adjunct Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London, visiting Senior Lecturer at Kingston School of Art, and teaches at a number of other UK and European universities. He taught for many years on the summer Post-Graduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) in Amelia, Umbria, Italy. A former Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sussex, he has written for numerous international art publications and is the author of The Body in Sculpture (Everyman Art Library, 1998), and co-editor (with Dr Tim Barringer) of Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Routledge, 1997). He has written monographs on a number of British contemporary sculptors, including Sean Henry, Terence Coventry and Charlotte Meyer. His most recent book, The A to Z of the International Art Market was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2016 and published in a Chinese edition in 2019.

At Kippington Hall, start 10.30am, Lunch included.

In a series of lectures, Hilary Guise explores the long history of Provence. First, as a Classical land through the Greeks and Romans. Then, as a centre of Christianity with pilgrim churches scattered through the region. Finally, study the “Landscapes of Provence“ through Cézanne and Van Gogh.

10.00-10.30 Registration and coffee

10.30-11.35 The Greeks and Romans – a Classical Land

11.45-12.50 A Centre of Christianity - Pilgrim Churches

13.00-14.15 Lunch (included in price)

14.15-15.20 Landscapes – Through Cezanne and Van Gogh

Cost - £38 per head, to include coffee, lunch and a glass of wine.

Online application (preferred) – please email your completed application form (see below) to michaelcjones51@gmail.com

The Huguenots were Britain’s first refugees. Following religious persecutions by the French Catholic government in the 16th and 17th centuries, they fled across Europe and established new settled communities where their skills and craftsmanship flourished. An estimated 50,000 Huguenots settled in the British Isles, and it is likely that one in every six of us has Huguenot heritage. Their impact on the arts in Britain was huge. In three lectures, this Study Day aims to give a picture of the artistic changes they ushered in, from silk weaving and metalwork to the introduction of the French Rococo style. Their work changed our material culture and became absorbed into British national identity.

Named ‘outstanding educator’ in 2021, Vivienne Lawes is an art historian, curator and author with a particular interest in Asian art and textiles.  

Lecture 1: Protestantism and Bloodlust

This lecture sets out the history of the violent religious conflicts in 16th and 17th century France affecting the Huguenots, culminating in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 in which 70,000 were slaughtered. The waves of persecution that followed led to the mass exodus of the Huguenot community, highly skilled and well educated people who greatly benefited the countries they travelled to, including Britain.

Lecture 2:  Silk and Silver: The Huguenots in London

In this lecture we will examine the industries established by Huguenot migrants in Britain. We will be focusing on the silk weaving and silver industries started and developed in London, in Spitalfields and Soho. 

Lecture 3:  Huguenot Genius at Court

This lecture will feature the work of Huguenot master Daniel Marot, who worked with the new constitutional monarchy of William and Mary to introduce into England the grand Baroque  Rococo style of Louis XIV’s Versailles, with its new emphasis on the exotic and the dramatic.

Application form

Vivienne is an art historian, curator, author and journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the art market. She teaches at several Higher Education institutions, including the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. In January 2021 she received the Geoffrey Bond Bursary for Art, an annual prize awarded by the Worshipful Company of Educators to an “outstanding educator” nominated by their institution.
Her articles, essays and reports have been published in numerous specialist journals, newspapers, catalogues, handbooks and websites, aimed at both the academic and general readership in print and online. The title of her current book project is The Bronze Horse: Themes in Equine Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present Day; in Spring 2021 I will embark on a critique and biography of contemporary Filipino artist Andres Barrioquinto.
Since 2011 she has been Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia and have co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. She is also Head of Education for the London Asian and African Contemporary Art Fair (founded 2020).

 

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey (hence the name Aslan) and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying Media and journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was kicked out as part of an anti-Western purge, and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. Next came a couple more years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford, and is now based in Cambridge, but with plans to move to North Cyprus. When he’s not lecturing for The Arts Society, he writes. His latest book, Unravelling the Silk Road, is published by Icon Books. Chris also takes tours to Central Asia, returning whenever he can, having left a large chunk of his heart out there.
Wool, cotton and silk have each played a crucial role in the fortunes of Central Asia. Wool created the clothing and housing needed by the great nomadic cultures that were to dominate Middle Asia. Silk was more valuable than gold and used as currency, creating a network of trading routes that led to the first outbreak of globalisation. Cotton was the cause of Russian and then Soviet Colonisation and continues to cause controversy today as well as human misery and environmental catastrophe The felts, carpets, embroideries, robes and veils of the Silk Road stratified wealth, displayed religious and political entrenchments and changed the fortunes of this fascinating part of the world; a meeting place between Mohammed and Marx.

The special interest day comprises three lectures, each exploring a textile and a road. We examine how textiles have changed the course of Central Asian history, politics and a way of life. We also revel in the intoxicating designs, colours, and techniques achieved with these three textiles, from breath-takingly intricate suzani embroidery and robes fit for a Shah, to world-class carpets, cheerful shyrdyk felts and diaphanous cotton, lighter than a spider’s web. Each lecture will also be embroidered with Chris Aslan’s own experience of living and working in the region for 15 years as he attempts to justify a rather bold assertion that everything is about textiles.

The Wool Road

How did tartan-wearing proto-Celts end up in China over 2500 years ago? We explore how nomads traversed the wool road, a vast corridor of grassland that stretched from Central Europe almost to the Pacific. With little fuel or shelter and winters down to minus 60 degrees, it was houses made from wool that gave these nomads the protection they needed. We focus on decorative felts, carpets and the way in which beautiful nomadic textile were perfectly functional as well.

The Silk Road

In this lecture we explore the birth of the Silk Road and how silk fuelled trade in goods, foods, art, inventions, commodities, religions, fashions and so much more, ushering in the first era of globalisation.

We explore how silk is woven into beautiful fabrics, such as, atlas, velvet, and adras, and how fabric was a major signifier of wealth and stratifying sedentary society. How did one item of women’s clothing spark a culture war which led to public burnings of silk? We marvel at the dowry embroideries produced in Bukhara and the magical and amuletic protection woven into most clothing. We explore how silk stratified society, through stunning robes and turbans, and Chris gives a brief overview of the silk carpet workshop he founded in Khiva, Uzbekistan.

The Cotton Road

The Cotton Road is inextricably interwoven with colonial exploitation and environmental catastrophe. We explore how British Rule caused the extinction of the most expensive fabric that had ever been woven, and how cotton became a form of anti-colonial resistance, leading to the overthrow of British rule in India. We explore the darker side of Russian chintz and that thieving Laura Ashley! We also witness how cotton has killed a sea, creating an environmental disaster even more devastating to human health than that better known Soviet disaster: Chernobyl, and the experiences of cotton-pickers today.   

In three lectures, Ian will trace the origins of Art Nouveau in the Arts and Crafts Movement, its blooming in France and Belgium in the 1900s and how it evolved into Art Deco, the brilliant and colourful style of the "Jazz Age" which swept the world.

At Kippington Hall, starting at 10.30. Lunch included.

Three lectures:

1.  The Origins of Art Nouveau Architecture.

        Art Nouveau had a brief reign from the early 1890s to around 1910.  Inspired by the English Arts and Crafts Movement, as an architectural style it first developed in Belgium, before rapidly spreading to France and beyond.  In this first lecture we look at the architects and designers who developed the style, and the inspiration that drove them.

2.   Art Nouveau Around the World.

        Although far from universal, Art Nouveau was taken up in many other countries, but local architects had their own take on the style, and it developed different characteristics - and different names - in various parts of the world.  From French and Belgian Art Nouveau, through Viennese Secession, German Jugendstil, Italian Liberty and Spanish Modernisme, we examine both the similarities and the differences of the style's many manifestations, from Brussels to Barcelona to Buenes Aires and beyond.

3.    The World of Art Deco.

        Art Nouveau in effect died with the outbreak of World War I, but it was already evolving into a new style before then, thanks again to British influence.  After the war, the empahsis was on the future - no-one wanted to look back to the dark days before the war.  Art Deco seemed bright, shiny and modern, and, unlike Art Nouveau from which it evolved, found popularity everywhere and truly was a universal style.  We look at the influences that inspired it, not just in architecture but in every aspect of design, with many examples from around the world.

Simon will give three lectures tracing the history and development of this unique house: two in the morning:

Passions, Personalities and Patronage: Chatsworth and the Story of the Devonshire Collections, 1549- Present  

The Duke of Devonshire’s Elysian Fields: Evolution of the Designed Landscape 1549-present

and one after lunch:

‘Debo’ – Mitford, Cavendish, Devonshire Duchess, Housewife 1920-2014

To be held at Kippington Hall. Coffee and registration will start at 10 am, followed by the first lecture at 10.30. The cost, including coffee, lunch and a glass of wine will be £38 per person for Arts Society members (any Arts Society), and £40 for non-members.

Jacqui’s first lecture is entitled ‘Pins and Poking Sticks’ – Decoding Dress in Shakespeare’s Time. Moral messages and secretive signals in emblematic jewellery and embroidery contributed to Elizabeth I’s image as the ‘Virgin Queen’.

In her second lecture, Fit for a King: Van Dyck the Ultimate ‘Spin Doctor’?, Jacqui explains how Van Dyck transformed the awkward and ungainly Charles: through his portraits, the tiny King (and his even tinier wife) seemed to grow in stature. 

In her final lecture, Big Wigs: Splendour at Court in the age of Samuel Pepys, we move on to the Restoration and Sir Peter Lely’s appointment as official painter to the court. Van Dyck’s legacy meant that ‘drapery’ rather than ‘dress’ appears in Lely’s work. .

Cost;  £38 for lectures, coffee, two course lunch and a glass of wine.

Enquiries:  secretary.sevenoaksartssoc@gmail.com

Jacqui read History of Art and Theory at the University of Essex before going on to gain an MA in History of Dress from the Courtauld Institute. Formerly an Education Officer at the National Gallery, London, and a tutor and writer for the Open University, she has a wide range of teaching experience.

She continues to lecture regularly on the public programmes of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery and to publish on court dress, Grand Tour portraiture and Welsh Costume as well as dress as a cultural marker and indicator of class, gender, national and professional identity. Jacqui is a senior lecturer at Christie's Education, London.

Since the birth of the earliest human civilisations, dance has been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations, a method of healing and a means of expression and entertainment.

Using stills and video clips Jennifer will take a look at dance as an art form from its earliest beginnings; through the birth and rapid development of ballet throughout Europe, the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century (a time of unprecedented creative growth for dancers and choreographers) and with the growth of post-modernism from the 1960s, the expression of street dance, hip-hop, break dancing and rock dance.

MS JENNIFER TOYNBEE-HOLMES

Jennifer Toynbee-Holmes is an experienced guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern and lectures at various art societies and institutions. She has a special interest in British and European art of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Having gained an MA in film and television practice, Jennifer had a long-standing career spanning twenty years as a television producer/director making documentaries and factual programmes for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. She was also a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College and Birkbeck, University of London and a senior lecturer at Southampton Solent University in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Society.