ART Tours with a Theme - ART wiT

Roby

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Welcome! My weekly podcast is a 5mins commentary on art or architecture in the news. My name is Roby, founder of an art and architecture tour organization in London, called Art Tours with a Theme - ART wiT. My contact details are: Instagram: artwit_london, FB: artwitlondon, Web: artwitlondon.co.uk.

11/11/2020

Lockdown..Again!

Hello this is Roby from ART Tours with a Theme and this is my weekly commentary on art and architecture in the news. In this blog I discuss about the closure again of museums and galleries in this lockdown 2 or red area, depending where you are based, even if some shops can remain open. Museums had to close regardless the extraordinary safety measures in place over the Summer, when they could reopen. I strongly disagree with this situation and I think they should have been allowed to remain open. I also want to suggest a couple of fantastic museum’s and gallery’s websites that still facilitate our art experience even if online, making it a full experience, almost if we were at their premises. In saying I disagree with the decision of closing museums in this phase, I want to report my experience. During the Summer, after the first lockdown, I visited the re-opened National Gallery, the British Museum, Tate Modern and I have never felt safer: masks were compulsory, visitors were limited per hour-slot, slots had to be booked in advance online, and there was a visitor’s route to allow for social distancing. I have also visited few private commercial galleries in Mayfair, where similar rules applied and where it happened I was the only visitor! Usually commercial galleries have very few visitors in general, so where’s the problem? I do not see the point in closing museums and galleries, especially because art experience can help with our mental health. I want here to point out what those museums and galleries have been doing online to facilitate our art encounter at the moment. The idea is not just just gazing at a painting, rather engaging with it, thinking around the themes and topics it represents. For example, I suggest go to tate.org.uk – there is a section called “art by theme”, which by the way inspired the name of my tour organisation! In this art by theme section, you can find very relevant themes today, for example Black Identities and Art. This section investigates how black history has been represented by white artists in the past and how instead contemporaneous black artists are suggesting to represent it. Another topic is Women and Art, which gives voice to women artists and their point of view. But you can also find a topic like Wellbeing and Art, Disability and Art, etc. All very interesting and engaging! Another suggestion from me is to enjoy the free online virtual reality tours many museums and galleries are offering. For example, go to Nationalgallery.org.uk, and enjoy their permanent collection from your sofa! Private commercial galleries can also offer great free exhibitions in VR. Go to GalleriesNow.net, an online magazine around global exhibitions, and sign up to the free weekly newsletter. You will receive the links to a number of global exhibitions, in London, Paris, in NY, with the VR link. All very handy! I hope online art experience can help navigate this new lockdown, keep safe! That’s all for this weekly blog! All my audio podcasts are available on 8 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: including Apple Podcast, Google Podcast and Spotify. All my video-podcasts are in Instagram @artwit_london, Facebook: @artwitlondon. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! Bye!
11/03/2020

Sean Connery & Girls - Film Posters!

Hello and welcome to my weekly video-podcast on art & architecture in the news. One of the recent news is about Sean Connery and this blog is a tribute to his amazing career via the posters of his films. Are film posters art? Well, to me they are. Not only they are widely collected, but those images represent the context and the prevailing culture in society in those years. Think of the Bond girls, perhaps they can tell us something on the role of women in society and how it has evolved over time. All my video-blogs are in Instagram @artwit_london, Facebook: @artwitlondon. From 1962 to 1983 Sean Connery acted in 7 films as James Bond. Check out the film posters! In all of them Bond is represented as a masculine heterosexual character surrounded by a number of girls, all gazing at him, with him only looking at us. They are all extremely attractive and attracted by him. They are little dressed, at his feet and dimensionally smaller than Bond. They look like in ecstasy, enraptured by him and somehow controlled. Characters are drawn, rather than photographed and on a yellow, white or black background. This lack of context gives a cartoon-like dimension, as if outside reality, fruit of imagination. Was really the case? Were women in those years treated differently in society? Over time the same pattern repeats itself and for over 20 years the role of those girls remains the same: either vampire cat women to fight or good girls to protect. They seem loosers, manoeuvred by men, who remain the ultimate decision makers. If we look at the non-Bond movies of the same years, we finally see fully dressed female characters, drawn with the same height/ dimension as the character represented by Connery. Still something not right comes out: in Robin and Marian of 1976, the wonderful Audrey Hepburn, is a good girl who needs protection. In the same year, the poster for The Next Man, shows finally a woman with independent life, but the 2 big faces of that woman with the male character in profile ensure the usual pattern of man-controlling women. We need to wait until the 1990’s to see some change. In Medicine Man, actress Lorraine Bracco almost towers over Sean Connery and in The Avengers and Entrapment both Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta Jones vindicate the past Bond girls with an attitude of self-determination. All well, until the poster of the final film before Sean Connery’s retirement in 2003, The League of the Extraordinary Gentleman. The only girl is prominent more for her cleavage than her actions. Ops! But all those films are fun for, aren’t they? Reality is different, isn’t it?.. Goodbye Sean Connery, the Extraordinary Gentleman!
10/26/2020

Art Appropriation?

Hello and welcome to my weekly video-podcast on art & architecture in the news. The news of this week is about a Banksy painting called "Show me the Monet", created in 2005, which has been recently sold at auction for more than double its estimated valuation. It is ironic, as the title Show me the Monet! plays with the wording ‘show me the money’, and money has indeed been shown. It represents an interpretation of the Water Lilies series by Monet, where the pond here becomes a polluted canal, with abandoned shopping trolleys and orange traffic cones. This exercise by an artist who reproduces somebody else’s art is called “art appropriation”, and this is our topic of the day. “Art appropriation”, is when art comes after other art already produced, which is used as inspiration and starting idea, and then adapted for other purposes and different messages. This is not plagiarism, as although the original artwork is clearly mentioned, it is not identically reproduced. This is something European artists have been doing for centuries. Could the Banksy painting exist without the original idea by Monet? Can this interpretation by Banksy be considered a tribute to Monet? Or has instead Banksy used the Water Lilies in an opportunistic way, just because he needed a famous painting to capture our attention? After all he needed just a pond, but he chose the most famous pond of the world. Was that to channel through a famous artwork his anti- capitalistic message against consumerism? My view is that not only he needed to denounce we are polluting and destroying nature, but perhaps he wanted to denounce we are destroying art itself, including the masters of the past, with an art market that only looks at money and not at Monet, the beauty and the values it represents! There are countless examples of art appropriation, for example the Rembrandt’s self portrait, with a striking pose borrowed from Titian’s unknown man. This use of art appropriation was an emulation, a tribute, a key technique in Europe from the Renaissance in 1300 to the second part of 1800’s. It was a way of learning a previous method, and creating an artist’s own style as a reply, as interpretation, of previous works. In other cases art appropriation had a fun connotation on top of a way to learn the past better. For example Picasso interpreted Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe", which is itself a playful, mocking restaging of Titian's (or maybe Giorgione's) Concert Champêtre. More recently, we are witnessing playful photo recreations of iconic paintings as lockdown pastime. But this has also been done as remake by famous photographers who interrogate the power of images in our era, where we are bombarded by internet images without their original context, appearing as all the same, wi What is your favourite image? What does it communicate to you? Which famous and iconic painting would you buy as a replica for your home? Let me know your thoughts! This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. I hope you enjoyed this podcast! This video is on FB and IGTV. The audio podcast is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: including Google Podcast and Spotify. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! Bye!
10/19/2020

5 Museums of the Year!

Hello and welcome to my weekly video-podcast on art & architecture in the news. Big changes are happening this year in the way museums and artists are awarded in the UK. Usually there is one winner, taking the biggest cash pot, with shortlisted museums or artists getting a much smaller prize. This year, in response to the huge challenges and financial pressures currently facing by artists and museums, awards are made bigger with public and private funds and are equally split. This helps each brilliant shortlisted artist or museum to keep on pursuing exceptional projects and inspiration for communities. Few months ago, the Turner Prize by Tate, usually recognizing the best British artist each year, was converted into 10 smaller bursaries and to international artists. The recent news is that the prestigious Museum of the Year by the ArtFund, the biggest museum prize in the world, has also followed this approach. The award pot has doubled to £200,000 and has been equally split among 5 British museums. The winners are the South London Gallery and the Science Museum in London, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, the Aberdeen Art Gallery and the Gairloch Museum in Scotland. Congratulations! Remember that most British museums and galleries are free, therefore desperately needing public funds. The selected Museums have demonstrated ability to offer their audience and communities " inspiration, reflection and joy ". Apart from the very established Science Gallery in South Kensington, the other 4 awarded museums are less known. For example, the South London Gallery is in Peckham, a very mixed area, off the beaten track of mass tourism. It is located in a Victorian building, part of the London College of the Arts, and education and connection are embedded its heritage. The ArtFund jury said it has delivered “ an exciting programme of exhibitions and educational events (as usual all free), expanding its size by converting a former Fire Station nearby. It’s mainly about contemporary art, but made accessible and with extremely interesting events or all audiences, not to mention the nice bookstore and café. I really like this museum, but it would hard choice for me to say which one is my favourite! Could museums be inspired by those models? I remember very boring museums in my Italian childwood and I hope the Museum of the Year Award can provide a model in other countries on how to engage all audiences. What is your favourite museum? How can it make you feel more part of public memories? Let me know your thoughts! This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. I hope you enjoyed this podcast! This video is on FB and IGTV. The audio podcast is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: including Google Podcast and Spotify. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! Bye!
10/12/2020

Can Looted Art Be Repatriated?

**Weekly Commentary - A weekly blog and podcast on art & architecture in the news**. Hello and welcome! The news we comment on today is about looted art and repatriation. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is in talks over returning looted Ethiopian treasures to their home country, where they were taken from more than 150 years ago. This is one of the most recent news on the very controversial topic of looted art in periods of war, colonisation and archeological expedition: should looted art be returned to its country of origin and to its public and private owners? Looting has always been a consequence of war since ancient times, thousands of years ago. For example, looting took place during the Napoleonic Wars in 1803-1815, the Nazi expansion in 1930’s and WWII, the Iraq War in 2003-2011, to name a few. A lot of European and US museums are filled with looted artefacts and treasures more and more they are the centre of harsh legal fights. One of the toughest of those legal battles is around the Parthenon Marbles, removed in 1801 from Athens and now in the British Museum. What is new today is that countries and collectors who are reclaiming those artefacts back, are being listened and agreements restitution are taking place. However, a lot of legal issues seem unresolved: keeping something for a long period can give ownership, it is called “usucaption”. Does that apply? where does art property begin, what is private and public property in this field? Another open question is when looted treasures have become listed and protected by the UNESCO: once those artworks are transferred back to their home countries, who ensures and pays for best preservation, restoration and storage? Each case is different. The British Museums has already returned more than 2,000 objects looted during the Iraq War and helped with the reconstruction of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. The Victoria and Albert Museum is giving back the Ethiopian artefacts and this is part of a bigger research project by the museum on the provenance of its permanent collection, aiming to “decolonise” it, to share with the public a more honest conversation about history and colonisation. This is all very interesting and I look forward to learning more. This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. I hope you enjoyed this podcast! This video is on FB and IGTV. The audio podcast is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: including Google Podcast and Spotify. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! Bye!
10/05/2020

And the Winner is..?

Hello and welcome to my weekly podcast on art & architecture in the news. The video can be seen in my Instagram and FB pages. Today we talk about architecture and the winner of the prestigious annual RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the Ghanaian-British Sir David Adjave. Congratulations! David Adjave was knighted Sir in 2017, and listed in the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine that year. His firm Adjave Architects has completed more than 70 projects worldwide, from private houses to major public buildings. What is the award about? Why is it important? RIBA is the Royal Institute of British Architects and the award has a long tradition that goes back to 1848! The Royal Gold Medal is awarded in recognition of a substantial contribution to international architecture and for a distinguished body of work rather than for one building. Some winners of the past include the masters of Modernism such as Frank Lloyd Wright (1941), Le Corbusier (1953), Walter Gropius (1956) and Mies van der Rohe (1959) and the star-architects of post-Modernism such as Renzo Piano (1989) and Zaha Hadid (2016), among others. It also included writers and historians of architecture, engineers and archeologists! Winning this prize is a major achievement, especially at 51 years old, considered a young age in the architectural industry! At the core of Adjave’s vision is the experience the human body has inside the buildings, the creative and transformative relationship between the human body, society and the world. He calls this approach to design “inside-out”, where a sequence of spaces “unfold cinematically” to facilitate this relashionship. Other key components of the architect’s vision are natural light, collaboration between art & architecture, sustainability and community engagement. The largest project so far is the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington DC. In offering a black African-American experience, it introduces a “different language” than traditional US museums, typically in white stone and marble. Outside, the volumes are clad in thousands of bronze coloured cast-aluminium panels, with patterns inspired by African-American craftsmanship. Inside, visitors are guided on and historical and emotional journey with vast spaces and natural light. Another large innovative project is the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO (2010). Moscow’s weather can be very harsh and a big and dispersed university campus can be a very disruptive and isolating experience for students. Adjave wants to “prioritise student interaction and reflection” and designed the school’s facilities as a single building, but made by different geometrical volumes. It is located on an idyllic wooden valley like any campus in the world, but it is perceived and lived very differently. Outside, the appearance changes dramatically depending on the direction which it is seen, giving a sense of dynamism and forward-looking teaching approach. Inside, spaces are well connected giving students a sense of belonging. In London you can see public and private projects, mainly in Shoreditch and Hackney, such as Rivington Place , Idea Store, Mole House , Sunken House, among others. Let’s go and explore! This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. I hope you enjoyed this podcast! This video is on FB and IGTV. The podcast (audio recording) is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: including Google Podcast and Spotify. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! Bye!
09/28/2020

Botticelli at Auction!

Hello and welcome to my weekly video-podcast on art & architecture in the news. Today we talk about a Botticelli painting, Young Man Holding a Roundel, which will appear on auction in New York in January 2021. It is considered one of the greatest Renaissance portraits in private hands and it is one of the few surviving artworks by Botticelli (Florence, 1445-1510) and one of his finest portraits. The auction is estimated to fetch more than 80mil dollars or 63mil pounds, one of the highest values at auction for an Old Master. I would like to provoke a discussion and I have a couple of proposals to the auction house. The first one is related to the value of the masterpiece. Why just 80mil? Perhaps it is a conservative figure, to me it should be valued more and for a number of reasons: This is a timeless masterpiece - It represents all the humanist values embedded in Renaissance, which could be still our values today. Its lack of background and context allows the painting to be a timeless artwork, highlighting the centrality of the humans in creating their own future. Moreover, It does not deserve to be valued significantly less than Leonardo - I understand 80mil dollars is a similar value reached at auction by other portraits by Van Gogh and Klimt, but it is still significantly lower than the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo, which reached 450 mil dollars! So perhaps 80 mil is a conservative figure, it should be higher The third reason why it should be valued more is a bounty -, 80 mil is unfortunately the same gruesome figure which, back in January this year 2020 was put as a bounty by a country of the Middle East offered for the head of the current President of the United States. Could the Florentine ‘s head have more value than a president’s head? My first proposal is to the auction house is therefore to raise the valuation. My second proposal is to include a clause to the auction. The buyer must allow live streaming all year round and allow free public viewing for at least 6 months a year in a bespoke and ad hoc structure. Would that make sense to you? I hope any decision will allow for the artwork to be visible, as it has been so far in public galleries, loaned by the current seller. What would you suggest to the auction house? A higher valuation and public viewing are just two of the possible suggestion. Let me know your thoughts! This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! This video is on FB and IGTV. The podcast (audio recording) is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”:, including Google Podcast and Spotify. Enjoy Botticelli, good bye!
09/21/2020

Can Michelangelo save the Royal Academy of Arts?

Hello and welcome to my weekly short commentary on art & architecture in the news. Today we talk about the current difficult times galleries and museums are facing due to Covid, with lack of visitors and consequent restructuring plans. The news is that the Royal Academy of Arts in London may be forced to sell part of its permanent art collection to survive, including a Michelangelo! It is very uncommon for an European institution to sell its collection, which is part of its heritage and identity. The permanent collection has two functions: to preserve the artwork to the highest standard and to make it available to the audience. After the sale there is no guarantee on the quality of preservation and the artwork can be lost forever. If you were the director of the RA, would you sell the Michelangelo to help your institution? We are talking of the so-called “Taddei Tondo”, the Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, the only artwork by Michelangelo in Great Britain. It was made in Florence in the first part of 1500, commissioned by the wealthy merchant Taddeo Taddei for his home. It is an example of sacred art for private consumption and not for a church. How did it arrive in the Great Britain? It was acquired by the British collector Sir Beaumont in Rome in 1822 and then donated to RA after his death in 1830. It is a marble relief circular composition, which was a common shape in Italian Renaissance’s art. However, a number of elements make this artwork special: the geometrical composition itself, made by diagonals of the bodies and of the eyes direction, the twisted body of the baby Jesus, the incredibly detailed dress and hair, and the softness quality of the fabric in Mary’s dress. This is one of the unfinished works by M. who soon left Florence for Rome. It is possible he left part of his sacred art works unfinished intentionally, to convey the sense of mystery around the subject. It is sad the RA may be forced to sell it and we wish its board all the best for the difficult decision. Could perhaps the Royals who already support the RA, and that’s why it is called Royal, help the institution at all for this challenging decision? And you? What would you suggest to the Royal Academy? Let me know your thoughts! This is Roby, from ART Tours with a Theme – ART wiT. This video is on FB and IGTV. The podcast (audio recording) is available on 7 platforms under “Art Tours with a Theme”: Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcast, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Spotify Podcast. Thank you for listening and share this blog with your friends! CREDITS - Music: Sergio Camassa, Photos: Royal Academy of Arts.

Welcome! My weekly podcast is a 5mins commentary on art or architecture in the news. My name is Roby, founder of an art and architecture tour organization in London, called Art Tours with a Theme - ART wiT. My contact details are: Instagram: artwit_london, FB: artwitlondon, Web: artwitlondon.co.uk.

Creator

Roby
Years Active

2020
Episodes

15
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Roby
Show Website

ART Tours with a Theme - ART wiT