Art & Society
Art is often used as a medium to convey messages and meaning, not just to entertain & delight. Artists play an important role in reflecting and commentating on the societies in which they live. But how does influence society?
4 talks in this Garden Series
Ep
01
The colour white has been associated with purity for millennia in religious iconography, architecture and art. But has it come to represent something darker too? Read more
Dr. James Fox
James Fox is a Cambridge art historian, writer, public speaker, curator and award-winning, BAFTA-nominated, broadcaster.
James fell in love with art at the age of six and hasn't looked back since. The first person in his family to go to university, he graduated with a starred first in History of Art at the University of Cambridge in 2004.
After completing an MPhil and PhD in the subject, as well as stints at Harvard and Yale, James took up a Fellowship in Cambridge in 2011. He specialises in modern art, British art, and the cultural history of colour.
He is currently Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Director of Education at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in Canada, and President of the Friends of the Stanley Spencer Gallery.
Convinced of art's huge social importance, James works with museums, schools, charities and the media to engage broader audiences in this most life-enhancing of subjects.
Read moreEp
02
Humans have always speculated about what a perfect world might look like, whether as a reward in the afterlife, part of an origin story like the Garden of Eden, or a real place on Earth. How do we see these ideas play out in the art we create? Read more
Dr. James Fox
James Fox is a Cambridge art historian, writer, public speaker, curator and award-winning, BAFTA-nominated, broadcaster.
James fell in love with art at the age of six and hasn't looked back since. The first person in his family to go to university, he graduated with a starred first in History of Art at the University of Cambridge in 2004.
After completing an MPhil and PhD in the subject, as well as stints at Harvard and Yale, James took up a Fellowship in Cambridge in 2011. He specialises in modern art, British art, and the cultural history of colour.
He is currently Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Director of Education at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in Canada, and President of the Friends of the Stanley Spencer Gallery.
Convinced of art's huge social importance, James works with museums, schools, charities and the media to engage broader audiences in this most life-enhancing of subjects.
Read moreEp
03
Irish-born painter Francis Bacon was one of the most important artists of the 20th century, his raw, unsettling imagery emerging from some of the most traumatic events of the modern age. Who was he, as an artist and as a man? Read more
Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan
The biographers Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have spent decades in the art and publishing worlds of New York, Mark as a veteran art critic and Annalyn as the former arts editor of Newsweek and a former music critic.
Their first book, de Kooning: An American Master, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2005, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book award for biography. The New York Times named it one of the 10 best books of 2005.
Their latest book, Francis Bacon: Revelations, won last year's The Times Art Book of the Year prize. It was ten years in the making and based upon newly-discovered diaries, hundreds of interviews, and extensive new research in Ireland, Tangier, Spain, England and France.
Buy 'Francis Bacon: Revelations' here.
Read moreEp
04
In 1988, art curator James Birch, travelled to Moscow to mount the ground-breaking Francis Bacon exhibition. How was Bacon perceived at the time & how did this exhibition change society? Read more
James Birch
James Birch is an English art dealer, curator and gallery owner. He is best known for his innovative championing of British art, in particular for exhibiting Francis Bacon in Moscow, in the then USSR, in 1988, and Gilbert & George in Moscow in 1990, and in Beijing and Shanghai in 1993.
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