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PRESS RELEASE
Classicism Rules at the Barber’s New Display
Imagine a perfect world, where beauty, harmony and order reign supreme and life is purged of anything that is inappropriate or just everyday.
This is the rarified world explored by the display Classicism: Art above Life, which has just opened (October 27) at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
The history of art is full of ‘isms’ — Romanticism, Impressionism and Cubism to name but a few. But while many of these schools or movements have come and gone, to be replaced by the next artistic fashion, one has endured: Classicism.
Rediscovered by the artists of the Renaissance, Classicism is firmly rooted in ancient Greece and Rome, where sculptors strove to portray an idealised form of beauty that went beyond the mere representation of the external world.
Their successors, recognizing and admiring this perfected version of nature, sought to recreate in their own work the harmony, clarity, and order of the antique.
This display, drawn from the Barber Institute’s own collection, traces Classicism from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, encompassing history painting, portraiture, landscape and still life. Starting with examples of antique statuary, it surveys works by well-known classicists including Giorgione, Poussin (above) and Claude, alongside paintings by others such as Monet, Gauguin and Léger, less often associated with Classicism, but who prove its influence into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The display is accompanied by a series of five free public lectures, which run every Wednesday at 1.10pm in the Barber Lecture Theatre, starting 1 November and continuing until 29 November.
| For further information, please contact Andrew Davies, Barber Press and Marketing Officer, on 0121 414 2946 or andrewdavies@barber.org.uk |