Vincent Van Gogh: A Tragic Painter- The Asylum Year

On May 8 1889, Vincent Van Gogh was admitted to a mental asylum near Saint-Remy-de-Provence where he remained for a year. Upon release, two months later, he took his own life.

Vincent died and posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western Art.

In this program, we shall explore his most celebrated works of art, created during The Asylum Year. This time period saw Van Gogh at his most raw and vulnerable- but it resulted in an intensely productive chapter of his short life.

The Black Aesthetic: Black Artists and their Art

Art represents history, culture and society. My objective in this programme is to make the unique art understood through the voices of the Black artists

To view the art as an aesthetic and intellectual experience

I invite my viewers to peer through the keyhole; to catch a glimpse that will stimulate you to throw the door open and to view and study this significant art of black masters

Revisiting Rembrandt 350 Years Later

Museums across the globe are honoring

REMBRANDT HARMENZ van RIJN

Celebrating his extraordinary art and life; that was fit for a masterpiece

Rembrandt was a painter, etcher, print maker, draughtsman, lover, fighter, genius and a debtor

In this program, we will see that Rembrandt is not about impressing, he is about making you feel, making you live the moment. 

Interpreting the Pre-Raphaelites

This program depicts the historic, artistic movement:  Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The emphasis will not be on the individual artist, the focus will be on their meaningful ART, on the collaborative practice shared by a small band of 7 men in the years following 1848. The participation of women also shaped the collaborative practices of the movement in decisive ways.

This presentation is focused on the aesthetic of the Brotherhood; it will point out that Pre- Raphaelite ART should be studied alongside Modern Art

An Afternoon at the Barnes Museum

Dr. Albert Barnes assembled one of the world’s most important holdings of fine art. From the moment the gallery became available, Dr. Barnes excitedly installed his collection.

In this program, you the viewers will examine select works of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern works.

The Barnes Museum holds 3000 masterpieces: 181 Reniors, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis, 7 Van Goghs, and a myriad of decorative art objects.

The collection has been praised for the singularity, boldness, and independence of Barnes’ vision.

Please join our private tour…As you step across the threshold of the gallery entrance, the art will astound, provoke, and overwhelm you.

The Woman, The Garden, In Art

Analogy between the female and a blooming garden. Unforgettable paintings; studies of extremely private states; you will view the elegance of the absolute solitude of the garden.

Like all great art, we will view the beauty and mystery in ways that transcend the simplicity of format and subject matter.

Viewing the paintings by foremost artists, you will imagine the life of the woman and what led her to the garden---a place of immortality, pleasure, solitude and sorrow.

The paintings echo of a time past; all the echoes will be heard by the viewers. In this presentation, you will see paintings by: W. Homer, P. Gauguin, A. Botticelli, C. Monet, U. Hiroshige II, E.B. Jones, J.W. Waterhouse, J. H. Fragonard, J.B. Lepage, P. de Hooch, G. Caillebotte; and many more… 

A New York Experience - A Constant Affair

New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world converge. This presentation, in concert with an illuminating lecture, offers a visual survey of America's greatest city. You will enjoy the artists who devoted their talents to depicting the streets, parks, bridges, skyscrapers, as well as the daily escapades of the people.

Works by Childa Hassam, Robert Henri, George Bellows, Max Weber, Joseph Stella, Reginald Marsh, Ben Shahn, Jacob Lawrence, Francis Criss, Edward Hopper, and many others. 

You will journey through New York between 1800 AND 1950………

New York struggled into modernity…….

The city passed through the epochs of progress, through periods of reflection, culminating in exciting new vistas.

See New York, America's ever vibrant cultural capital.

Andrew Wyeth: A Journal of Reality

Andrew Wyeth is one of America’s distinguished painters – over his long career he was celebrated as a champion of realism – he raised more ire than the radical artists of the avant-garde – his Helga suite was scathingly censored – his achievement is controversial.  

This illustrated lecture is a glimpse of the watercolor paintings and meticulous egg temperas of Wyeth’s world – the rolling, verdant hills of Chadds Ford Pennsylvania and the rugged coast of Cushing Maine – Wyeth’s intimate family – his lifelong African-American friends – his immediate neighbors.

The art of Wyeth is rich, diverse – art seemingly tranquil – art that vibrates eerily with death, secrecy and sensuality – art that combines mad freedom with truth.

Andrew Wyeth considered himself “an eye hovering above his existence”.

Painted Lady: Muse or Mistress

Artists through the centuries have succeeded in adding to our imaginative vocabulary of female beauty – the richly colored paintings of the muse has its own glamour, a direct experience for the senses – but at times – with hints of scandal and eroticism as an obvious aspect of the experience.  

This slideshow with lecture will be a non-stop sequence of lovers and models in art whose musedom was either immortal or tragic.

View works by: Picasso, Modigliani, Rossetti, Von Dongen, Man Ray, Klimt, Warhol, Matisse, Sargent, Katz, Freud and more…

The Mystery of Johannes Vermeer

Atmosphere, distinctive light, perspective, a sense of calm – the extravagant use of lead-tin yellow and ultramarine – all characteristics of the authentic works of the most mysterious of all the Dutch Masters of the 17th century – Johannes Vermeer.  

Johannes Vermeer’s works are timeless – remain as wondrous today as to viewers in 17th century delft – the meanings of his works are forever shrouded in mystery.

This illustrated art lecture will highlight the true artistic genius of Vermeer – the relentless inner pulse of Dutch life and thought viewed from a discreet distance.

Art Infiltrates World War II

Nothing could light up the face of a pilot, a sailor, more readily than a beautiful girl back home. In the dangerous world of the military man, the Pin-Up Girls promised a better life awaiting them state-side.  

Pin-Ups are a significant and rich part of our nation’s art, society and culture of the 20th century – Pin-Up Art was essential to the war effort.

The sweetly sexy images were proving that if you really wanted to give something to the boys – send in the girls.

This illustrated lecture will bring to light the pretty, shapely girls reminiscent of the sweethearts the GIs left behind, the images of the men painted on the sides of their aircraft – images that carried the American popular culture onto foreign shores.

Berthe Morisot: "First Female Impressionist”

Berthe Morisot broke with the boundries of convention: the first woman to exhibit with a group of six men in 1874 whose works both shocked and seduced the public; they would be come to be called “impressionists”.  

Berthe Morisot triumphed. A devoted wife, mother and sister, she carved out a place for her art. She constructed her artistic stature.

In this slideshow/lecture we will meet Berthe Morisot, the French 19th century woman painter – a central figure in the roster of woman artists – held by her contemporaries to be the “quintessential impressionist”.

Egon Schiele: Bad Boy of Art

Egon Schiele laced his drawings and paintings with fierce expressionism of sexuality or death. His art expresses the melancholy and anguish of living that murmured within him – art from the depths of his fevered soul.  

Egon Schiele combines flesh, bones, muscles and tendons in a distinctive symbolism of desire and physical abandonment. Repulsion and attraction sound the keynote of this artist’s oeuvre.

Egon Schiele died tragically at the age of 28 limiting our assessment of his art to ten years. Initially in Vienna, Schiele was viewed as a trinity of Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele. Today he is regarded as a separate figure – a master of Austrian Expressionism.

The Fauves: An Orgy of Colour

Fauvism is a word derived from the French meaning “Wild Beasts”.  

Louis Vauxcelles, a critic, at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1906, off-handedly called a small group of exhilarating painters “les fauves”. Now, after time, it defines one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century.

Fauvism was a brief, spontaneous development generated in France in the new years of the 20thcentury – a coincidental appearance of a group of civilized painters who used brilliantly, clashing primary color; stylized, fragmented images, rich surface texture that shocked the critics and the public. The fauves were seduced by the exotic arts of African motifs, Polynesian wood carvings and the ancient cultures of Central and South America; by 1908 the flames died down, each member branched off in a different direction.

This slideshow with lecture will focus on the works of several noted fauves: Henri Matisse, Mautice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Andre Derain, Albert Marquet

Frida Kahlo: Her Life – Her Work

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderon, born in the Blue House in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City of a Jewish Hungarian father and a Mexican mother – it is 1907. Frida Kahlo fascinates – her art is exotic, intriguing, potent, eerie; they burst their frames.

Frida Kahlo’s fierce candor enabled her to place on canvas the inside and outside of herself. She was “the first artist in history to depart from the male principle.” Humor, pain and turmoil are the leitmotiv of her thematic paintings.

The self-portrait is her instrument. With extreme vividness we experience the solitude of female thought.

This slideshow and lecture is a visual journey tracing Frida Kahlo’s artistic personality from her art as an ambitious beginner to the excruciating, provocative art at the close of her life at47 years of age.

Andre Breton called her art “a ribbon around a bomb.”

Fruits, Flowers and Herbs of the Bible In Art

This slideshow/lecture will present the fruits, flowers and herbs of the Bible in art. See the apricot that brought “The Fall of Man” – the “Rod of Aaron” that yielded almonds overnight – the rose of Ecclesiastics 39 that is thought to be oleander – the Madonna Lily that was probably an anemone.  

Plants are mentioned hundreds of times in the passages of the Bible. Moses said God was leading his people to “A land of wheat, barley, figs and pomegranate”. John the Baptist probably savored the pods of the locust tree that tasted like chocolate.

This show is unique and thought-provoking. All the organisms of the passages will be presented in beautifully detailed paintings, etchings and engravings. A fascinating, detailed commentary will link plethora of art with the Biblical tales.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Flower Power

The New York Times described her as “the undisputed doyenne of American painting” in 1986 when she died at the age of 98.  

Georgia O’Keeffe’s first memories were of light sitting on a patchwork quilt and the feeling of warm, soft ridges of earth made by the wheels of buggies – Georgia O’Keeffe at an early age had a sense of colour and shape.

Generations have been stunned, awed and confused by her work asking the same questions and coming to the same incorrect conclusions.

This slideshow / lecture will focus on the fearless, modest woman and her own highly refined, slightly removed art.

“ I am a Painter. I am not a woman Painter.”

The Grand Dames: Women of the Bible in Art II

The second slide presentation continues the foray into the lives of the biblical females as seen through the eyes of the artists who immortalize them. The lecturer adds anecdotes and thumbnail sketches that bring the characters to life.  

View powerful art works of Sarah, the Mother of Nations, Hagar, the Concubine of Abraham, Dina, the Violated Daughter of Leah, Rebekah, the Courageous Mother of Twins, Ruth, the Loveable Loyal Daughter-in-law of Naomi, the resolute, unshrinking Jael, Susanna, a graceful victim defended by Daniel, Mary of Magdala, the first witness at the tomb…

The women are independent, beautiful and distinguished. The women are wives, daughters, mothers, queens, concubines, deacons, double-agents, warriors, creators and destroyers. The art is lush and richly intense – at times disturbing. The Biblical Grand Dames are dramatic and unforgettable.

Gustav Klimt: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful

Gustav Klimt- a turn of the 20th century Viennese painter trumpeted as a “Painter of Women”. He recorded the female – the linear flow of the pelvis, the gentle line of the hip, the roundness of the shoulder and breast – all with the frozen sensuality.  

Gustav Klimt painted The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful Women from the wealthy section of Viennese society – Most women were Jewish Austrians and Hungarians. The women were his lovers, models, muses and cherished companions and confidantes.

Gustav Klimt portraits were enveloped in glowing, luminous hues, in opulent gold decorations, in richly patterned costumes, in sensual, carnal desire. He is hailed for developing an individual style of Viennese art nouveau that progressed to expressionism.

This lecture will bring you face to face with Gustav Klimt and his “women”

Itzchak Tarkay

Itzchak Tarkay of Israel – an artist of daring colour, flowering lines and the female form – female faces lacking detail – all recognizable thumbprints.  

Itzchak Tarkay depicts the teeming street life of Tel Aviv, the market places of Jaffa, the sidewalk café’s of Paris. Tarkey’s subjects are sorrowful, watchful and apprehensive – they gossip, pass a secret, and share a quiet moment. Tarkay’s art is concerned with joy, sorrow, contentment and the means to make them tangible.

Itzchak Tarkay has been compared to Matisse, Gauguin, Degas, Lautrec and early Picasso.

Itzchak Tarkay has lived through dangerous times from a childhood spent at Mauthausen concentration camp to the bombings of Tel Aviv. This past has imbued his art with a freedom and spirit that is powerful. Itzchak Tarkay exhibits a love of humanity and a lust for life in his work.

This slideshow with lecture will highlight selected, fascinating works of the artist Itzchak Tarkay