Tewkesbury

History of Art and Design

Group Leader John Beech
This webpage was last updated on 12 August
This computer has been compromised. I shall be out of touch for a while. Do not respond to any emails supposedly sent from me.
I spoke to the manager at Barton Court today and it is unlikely we will be able to meet until the virus is under control with an effective vaccine and we can then reschedule out presentations. In the meantime, I am continuing to set quizzes.

The winner of Quiz no. 1 is Tony Hurman. And the answer is Peter Blake.
The winners of Quiz no. 2 are Richard and Eileen Hart, or more precisely, their son. The answer is 368 mm.
The winners of Quiz no. 3 are Richard and Eileen Hart. And the answer is Alfred Sisley.
The winner of Quiz no. 4 is Tony Hurman. And the answer is Aubrey Beardsley.
The winner of Quiz no. 5 is Tony Hurman. And the answer is James Ensor.
The winners of Quiz no. 6 are Richard and Eileen Hart. And the answer is Sir William Russell Flint.
The winner of Quiz no. 7 is Eileen Hart. And the answer is Victor Vasarely.
The winner of Quiz no. 8 is Tony Hurman, followed closely by Eileen and Richard Hart. The answer is Marcel Duchamp.
The winner of Quiz no. 10 is Tony Hurman. And the answer is A Country Wedding by Pieter Bruegel The Elder.
The winner of Quiz no. 14 is Tony Hurman. The answer is Norman Bel Geddes whose daughter was Barbara who played in Vertigo. She was the step-daughter of the daughter of Edwin Lutyens.

Quiz no. 9 The house stands on a sloping site from where one enjoys a fine view of the city to the south. The access is from the upper part of the land, and accordingly the entrance is found on the top floor. The house is intimately related to the situation. Rather than being a conventional massive body, it appears as a low one-storey "wall" which extends along the street and blocks out the panorama. At a certain point the wall is interrupted, permitting a framed view of the far-away castle through a passage leading from the entrance court to the terrace on the other side. So far, this view remains distant, a railing is built across the passage to tell us that it should only be understood as a "promise." A curved, translucent wall next to the passage leads to the entrance door, and a semi-circular staircase carries the movement down into the large living area where the promise is fulfilled as a continuous panorama seen through a wall of glass, which, when the weather conditions permit, may disappear into the floor. The plans of the two floors are based on different principles of spatial composition. Upstairs the bedrooms are grouped in two juxtaposed boxes, which together with the garage form a kind of free plan of three interrelated elements. The openings between the three volumes are used as primary spatial zones: one is the passage leading from the street to the roof terrace, the other serves as the main entrance to the house. To emphasize and articulate the latter, the curved glass wall is introduced between the two bedroom volumes. Name the house and the architect. An new clue will be added ever day.

Quiz no. 11 I was born in my capital city, the second daughter of a well-off cultured family. I was allowed to go to school, which was unusual for a girl at the time, but I was not permitted to train for a profession. I was interested in music, the theatre, and art, especially in radical futurism, but I did not take up any of them seriously. In the end I decided to study philosophy and secretly developed a passion for poetry. My volume of poetry did not find favour in my family's eyes and they decided it was time to get me married. Highly educated, not pretty, but sensitive, gentle and obstinate, I was 23 when I was sent to England to help a prosperous lady set up an orphanage on progressive lines. I met a very good looking Count and married him, but we soon went our different ways. I had a daughter and went to America. I came into contact with a group of artists that had formed around Alfred Stieglitz and met Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Who am I? A new clue will be added every day.

Quiz no. 12 On a sunny day the light streams in through the stained-glass windows, washing across the panelled walls and wooden floors. As time passes, the patterns of light and shadow begin to change slowly, imperceptibly at first, but finally transforming the spaces into something quite different from what had been at first sight. The sources of light are quite mysterious: some of the light streams in through large and visible windows; elsewhere, the light seems to sneak in through strips of clerestory windows hidden within some sort of roof overhang or ceiling cove; and in still other areas, the light is reflected off interior and exterior wall surfaces, in ways that seem quite magical. There is no way in which these effects of stagecraft can be "drawn" or "specified" by conventional means. They can only be generated in the architect's imagination and then translated into reality by various sleights of hand that are not taught at any school. What is being performed here is a series of acts of supreme genius, by using the ephemeral tools of light and time and motion to transform our more prosaic materials (wood, stone, brick, glass) into elements of performing art. Who's work am I describing here? Deciding on the type of building may help. The stained-glass windows is a big clue, but wooden floors?

Quiz no. 13 This painting is acknowledged as the artist's greatest achievement. A woman attends her fallen child, another quietly spins on her loggia while a servant empties her basin out of the window. A church is partially obscured by a house. There is a jumble of stone outside a temporary shed. A mason chisels his quota of stone. The church is eclipsed in both scale and focus. It is not the subject, the city square is. A canal separates the square from the distant church. Name the painting and the painter. The painting reconciles stability with change, balances dark and light, formality and informality, near and far. A new clue will be added each day.

Keep safe everyone. John

We meet at Barton Court (opposite Morrisons).
1st & 3rd Monday. Events begin at 10.15 prompt. Please arrive before 10.10 to gain entry.
Admission charge £1.00.

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