The Gallery Associates of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria present the eighth annual Sunday Art Lecture Series, entitled Cosmopolitan Impressionisms: Modern Art in the Making.
A perennial favourite, the Sunday Art Lecture Series takes place over the course of four Sunday afternoons in March, running from 2 to 4 pm via Zoom.
Impressionism (ca. 1860-1886) and Post-Impressionism (ca. 1886-1920) are once again making headlines in the art world. The Sunday Art Lecture Series contributes to new ways of thinking about how this art movement began to reflect and frame modernity. The first lecture is Impressionists and Japonisme: Early International Influences, by Dr. Melissa Berry, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Art History and Visual Studies, University of Victoria. This lecture explores how by the 1870s, the independent group of artists who came to be known as the Impressionists found many ways to proclaim their devotion to Japanese aesthetics and material culture in their artworks.
Breaking Boundaries: Canadian Women Impressionists Abroad and at Home, by Katerina Atanassova, senior curator, Canadian Collections, National Gallery of Canada is the second lecture in the series. In the last decade of the19th century, Canada witnessed a new wave of artists going abroad, among those—the first Canadian Women Impressionists. This lecture will follow in the footsteps of some incredible women artists, who, settling in the French capital and absorbing the air of the juste milieu, trained and matured as leading Impressionist painters upon their return home.
The third lecture is American Impressionism: What is It?, by Dr. Rachel Boate, visiting assistant professor, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, University of British Columbia. This lecture traces the inception and development of American Impressionism in the late 1800s, from the first exhibition of Impressionist art organized in 1883 by Paul Durand-Ruel in Boston to the founding of intimate artists’ colonies along the Eastern seaboard by the turn of the century.
The final lecture is titled African and Oceanic Traditional Arts: Contributions to Post-Impressionism, by Dr. Daniel Mato, professor emeritus of Art History, University of Calgary. This lecture examines how the traditional arts of Africa and Oceania (the South Pacific islands) served as catalysts of change for artists that led to the Post-Impressionist movements of Cubism, German Expressionism, Surrealism and eventually the modern works of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
The Sunday Art Lecture Series is a fundraiser for the AGGV by the Gallery Associates. Tickets cost $75 for the series for gallery members/students or $90 for non-members; each individual lecture is $25 for gallery members/students or $30 for non-members, and are available online through eventbrite.