Mainie Jellett

One of the artists who featured in The Moderns exhibition was Mainie Jellett. Here's a short video I put together of some of her work. You can find more indepth biographies and other samples on www.hughlane.ie and www.crawfordartgallery.ie (both galleries have good online catalogues that can be searched by artist, date or category).

IMMA trip

We had a very interesting trip to the Irish Museum of Modern Art last Wednesday, hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. As well as being valuable for the gallery question, most of what we saw is also on the course for the Irish section. We had a quick look around the Novak/O'Doherty collection before attending a lecture on the staging to the Moderns exhibition, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition. Covering the period from 1900 to around 1970 we saw a multi-disciplinary display including painting, sculpture, film, photography, literature, deisgn, architecture and music which aimed to contextualise all that was happening in Irish arts in the period. On show were art and artefacts from such names as Eileen Gray, Samuel Beckett, Jack B Yeats, WB Yeats, Mainie Jellet, Robert Ballagh, Patrick Ireland/Brian O'Doherty, Paul and Grace Henry, Louis le Brocquy, Anne Madden, Mary Swanzy, Michael Farrell, Michael Craig-Martin and many more. We couldn't take photos inside, but here are a few of the outdoor sculpture, buildings and surrounding:

4th and 5th year Gallery Trip

Fourth and Fifth years are heading to Dublin for a gallery trip on 24th November. We are going to The Moderns exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, so you should be prepared by having a look at the gallery website www.imma.ie
As well as looking at the exhibition (under current exhibitions) you should download and read some of the What Is...? series booklets to find out about some different forms of modern art: www.imma.ie/en/subnav_112.htm
The Hugh Lane gallery have a useful guide to answering the Leaving Cert gallery question which you should all read before we go too. You can download it and more Leaving Cert notes here: www.hughlane.ie/education.php?heading=Guided%20Tours&type=Leaving%20Cert%20Groups&rsno=4

It would also be a good idea for  everyone (not just 4th & 5th Years) to have a look at gallery and museum websites to keep in touch with what exhibitions and events are going on and often get some useful exam notes. The main Irish ones are www.nationalgallery.ie, www.hughlane.ie, www.museum.ie and www.crawfordartgallery.ie (Cork) but there are many smaller ones worth investigating around the country too: www.backstage.ie (Longford) www.roscommonartscentre.ie (Roscommon) www.thedock.ie (Carrick-on-Shannon). Most exhibitions are free, try to make time to visit a few. There are also some great international gallery websites which have loads of valuable resources for the Junior Cert support studies and Leaving Cert art history, try searching and see what you find.

Self portraits almost finished

This year's TYs have taken the brief way beyond the formal self-portrait idea. They were asked to express their personalities in any form of mixed media that they thought best suited how they wanted themselves to be viewed. Most are now finished or near completion. There is a link to the Picassa web album that shows the work in progress in an earlier post, but here are a few other sample pieces (click on image for closer look):

Still-life drawings

Some more life drawing

One-minute gesture drawings from last Wednesday's class.

Drawing a head

Here's an easy to follow video tutorial with good tips for drawing heads:
http://media.academyart.edu/freeclass/index.html

Life-drawing examples

Fourth year and Leaving Certs have also been practicing some quick life-sketching in various media:

More visual brainstorming

The Wednesday group have also been doing some visual brainstorming recently. Here are a few examples:

The Secret of Drawing

I've been stressing the importance of drawing all year, both as a research tool and for itself. You should all be building up sketchpads (which I'm collecting this week) and experimenting with media and techniques as often as possible. I've just watched episode 1 and 4 of the BBC series The Secret of Drawing and recommend that you all try to watch them too:
http://art.docuwat.ch/videos/the-secret-of-drawing/the-secret-of-drawing-01/?channel_id=21&skip=0
Episode 1 explores research drawing from Leonardo's human and Stubbs' horse anatomy studies, Turner and Constable's Romantic explorations of nature, right up to modern council housing estate drawings. The interactions between science and art and the fundamental nature of drawing as a language are emphasised. Episode 4 focuses on the role of drawing in design from concert sets and fantasy architecture to fashion tracing the development from Renaissance mechanics to modern computer graphics. I haven't had a chance to watch the other two yet, but Episode 2 looks at storytelling in drawing (comic books etc.) and Episode 3 looks at how the artist portrays what's inside their mind to the viewer. I hope you all find time to watch at least one episode soon, you can post comments here if you do.

How Art Made the World

There is a very interesting BBC series, How Art Made the World, that is worth watching.
The first episode is linked below:
zSHARE video - Hartweltmacht01.flv
You can also watch the other four (links under How Art Made the World on list) and lots of other art documentaries at:
art.docuwat.ch/videos/?channel_id=0
There's loads of useful links there for the Leaving Cert art history course and other areas of art and design appreciation.