Elena Bowes

New York-London design & culture writer of a certain vintage looking for meaning and wholeness in life

London Art Studies- Art Lovers Listen Up

October 13th, 2018
People

When I lived in London full-time I used to love going to London Art Studies’ monthly talks about upcoming exhibitions. The speakers not only were experts in their field, but more importantly, they kept the lectures zippy and insightful. I always sat upfront and took notes versus my usual – by the door for an easy exit.  I hate being bored.  Then I moved across the pond and wondered how I would get my educational art fix.

Luckily for me, LAS founder Kate Gordon

answered my prayers with an  on-line site which is both informative and entertaining. If you want a quick fix- go to LAS Loves and see what Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dancing to at the Louvre in Paris, or what Wes Anderson and his partner author/costume designer Juman Malouf have selected as their top pix at the  Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

If you want to go deeper – like I did recently after seeing “Obsession: Nudes by Schiele, Klimt and Picasso” at the Met Breuer,

LAS has five minute videos on specific artists, artworks, city tours and more. Pay a yearly, monthly or even a daily pass fee and you can watch over a 100 short videos hosted by screen-friendly art historians.

I  Beamed Me Up Scotty to  Vienna where LAS’s art lecturer Richard Stemp told me what to see, how to get there and where to get the tastiest  slice of Sacher torte, not to mention a few artistic tidbits about Hitler.

To complement the Vienna tour,  I watched LAS’s videos on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Egon Schiele’s Nude Self Portrait, Grimacing. Both Klimt- a very modern painter of fin de siècle Vienna and Egon Schiele,  the scandalous and hugely talented painter, died in 1918. Schiele was just 28 and Klimt 55.

Klimt watercolour

Standing Female Nude with Green Garment by Egon Schiele

As it’s  the centennial anniversary of their deaths there are shows galore, (7 this year) including one about bad boys  Schiele/Basquiat at the Foundation Louis Vuitton now in Paris

and   Klimt/Schiele at the Royal Academy next month (November) in London.

If you can’t beam yourself up to Vienna, Paris, London or any major European capital for that matter, LAS’s videos are the next best thing to being there.

 

October, 2018