For the second Zoom Gilbert Lloyd Lecture we were delighted to welcome Frances Spalding. Frances is an art historian, critic and biographer with a specialism in 20th century British Art. Her book, British Art since 1900, for the Thames & Hudson ‘World of Art’ series, has been widely used in schools, colleges and universities and in the mid-1990s, the Tate commissioned her to write a centenary history of this national institution. She has also devoted much time to the writing of biography, producing lives of the artists Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat, as well as John Piper the subject for this lecture. Frances is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and in 2005 was awarded a CBE.
Frances effortlessly led us through Piper’s diverse and long career contextualising the historical background for the work he produced but encouraging us to think carefully about the aesthetic qualities of the individual pieces of work we were looking at. For those boys doing art who were watching it was a brilliant demonstration of how to look at and analyse an artwork, something they all find challenging. Having postponed this lecture in September in the hope that we would be able to host the lecture ‘live’ at school we were extremely grateful to Frances for providing an excellent and memorable on-line alternative.
If you were unable to join us, or would like to watch it again, please follow the link below.
At the end of the talk, there were a number of great comments that were put forward via the chat facility. These can be seen on the right-hand side of the screen. If you want to watch the video without the ‘chat messages’ you will need to click on the ‘Fullscreen’ button next to the image of scissors at the bottom of the screen.