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This article investigates the ways in which drawing is taught and assessed in post-16 UK schools and colleges, with a particular focus on A Level art and design courses. Through an historical survey of the development of syllabi and assessment methods, it traces how the role of drawing in the curriculum has changed over the past sixty years. From a series of prescribed observational drawing exercises, the A level exam has evolved into a holistic exploration of each student's creative process, and drawing is now seen mainly as an integral part of that process. The article demonstrates how the art history element of the syllabus has also been gradually integrated into practice, and thus into the drawing process itself. Questions are raised about how these changes have influenced the nature of the portfolios which students entering higher education bring to interview. In short, this article seeks to answer the question: do we now teach and assess observational drawing skills 'through a glass darkly', obscured by other considerations within the art educational curriculum?

Contextual studies (CS), "theory", "visual culture" or "art history" (amongst other labels) refer to a regular and often compulsory feature in art and design education. However, this takes many forms and can sit in a variety of relationships with the practical elements of such courses. This article is based on mixed method research on CS in the BTEC Extended Diploma in Art and Design, a course that makes up a substantial proportion of pre-degree provision in the UK. We describe aspects of the wider study then draw on two cases to illustrate and discuss the implications of different approaches to the curriculum and its integration. Our analysis suggests that a seemingly progressive flight from a discrete CS towards a designed form of integration can have unintended negative consequences, and in the light of this we suggest some ways in which course teams might reflect on their practices.

This paper conceptualizes the secondary art curriculum as a well-structured but complex knowledge-domain, with the aim of emphasizing meaningful differences in the way creative grammar operates in the following gatherings of art practices: Pre-historic and non-European cultures; Ancient and European cultures before c. 1800; Romantic and Modern culture from c.1800 to c.1950; and Late-and Post-modern culture from c.1950 onwards. The gatherings are further differentiated into pre-modern practices of "Gemeinschaft" (community) and modern forms of "Gesellschaft" (association). Practices of "Gemeinschaft" use the creative grammar of accretion and the grammar of omission to emphasize meaningful differences. The earlier phase of "Gesellschaft" inherits the grammar of accretion and omission from Gemeinschaft in the attempt to sustain the expression of meaningful differences. The late- and post-modern phase of Gesellschaft adopts a nihilistic creative grammar to level such differences. Approaches to teaching the grammar of each gathering of art, and the related practices, are explored in a well-structured way by students using "know-how" and "know-that" grammar. By conceptualizing and teaching an art curriculum in this way, students develop the insightful knowledge to understand how their life-world, as embedded in a technological understanding of being and its technological nihilism, compares with alternative understandings of being as articulated by different cultural grammars. (Contains 13 notes and 4 figures.)

There is a perception in British universities and art colleges that art students are not very good at writing, that they don't want to write, and furthermore, that writing gets in the way of the real business of making art. These perceptions are reinforced in much of the literature that has been produced about, and in support of, undergraduate art education in the last few decades. This paper will examine the tensions, both historical and contemporary, between academic practices (such as the academic essay, the dissertation) and fine art studio practices. This translative gap both produces, and perpetuates, a set of binaries: visual/textual, art/literature, words/images, Studio/Art History, making/writing. The net result of which is a resistance to writing from many Art students in Higher Education. I will outline subject specific multidisciplinary strategies used with undergraduate and postgraduate students to harness, and develop, this resistance as both transformational and inventive.

The present paper gives an overview of some of the modular day courses offered and, in some cases, developed by tutors at a former hospital school providing education to adults with severe learning disabilities. The aims of the courses were cognitive and personal development, as well as aesthetic and spiritual enrichment. Art history was offered as an activity within the Open University "Learning Disability--Working as Equal People" course, and the students' responses to paintings were deep and remarkable. In a play-writing course, tutors acted as "writing hands" and the resultant plays were given a rehearsed reading. Some poetry was also produced.

This essay examines the Artists' International Association 1951 Lithographs, a series of prints produced to mark the Festival of Britain. It argues that these works, like others from the period, have received limited art-historical attention due to the dominance of a teleological narrative whose values are rooted in subsequent art movements. It proposes an alternative, 'intermodern' framing that emphasises continuity with pre-war ideals of democratising art ownership, and encourages historically informed analysis of the series' images. In line with recent scholarship on the Festival of Britain, the interpretations offered show the series projecting an idea of Britain as harmonious, egalitarian and optimistic, in a way that supported the Labour government's programme of social democratic reform. However, some images are also understood as manifesting ideological division and class conflict, as well as late imperial anxiety, in a way that ran counter to the Festival's conceit of national harmony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, the UN marked the International Year of Glass, celebrating the essential role glass has, and will continue to have, in society. One element of this celebration was the importance of glass within art and its history, which the Craft Scotland 2022 Conference: The Power of Glass looked to explore. The aim of the conference was to allow a range of individuals, be they academics, researchers, or students of glass and art history within Scotland and the UK, to access contemporary thought within an under-represented field in the UK craft sector. In this paper, we look to highlight the links between the aims of the International Year of Glass and the proceedings of The Power of Glass Conference, demonstrating how glass artists, makers, and designers are part of a growing international body of creatives who are using the communicative possibilities of glass as a vehicle in which to raise pertinent questions and platform unheard and overlooked narratives. Moreover, they seek to overturn perceived biases of what glass is and its future potential by placing their craft within an arena of judgement beyond discussions of process and technique and by elevating socio-political glass art on par with other forms of artistic protest and commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"COME all my Sisters now in Consort join" wrote Delarivier Manley, voicing Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, invoking her sister muses in the opening lines of the 1700 publication I The Nine Muses i .[1] This poetic anthology responded to the death of the poet laureate, John Dryden, with nine women writing under the assumed personas of the classical muses of the Arts to mourn his loss. Yet when considered alongside I The Nine Muses i , a much less studied work, we might argue that women collectively made, and had comparatively more input, into works celebrating their creative role far earlier in the century. Moss, therefore, develops scholarly discussion upon Hemans's ekphrastic poetry by interrogating how such prefatory content contributes to the projection of female passion, creativity, and the sister arts within the poem itself. [Extracted from the article]

This article investigates the role of regulation and reputation in the art trade. We look at attribution issues in the auction market, and in France in particular, where both regulatory and reputational mechanisms have been implemented. More specifically, we focus on the Marcus Decree—a pioneering decree that regulates the authentication process of artworks in France since 1981—and the self-regulated authentication systems developed by international top-tier auction houses. Our findings suggest that the implementation of the decree did neither significantly strengthen the market for autograph and non-autograph works, nor radically modify the landscape of attributions in France, whereas similar but stronger trends in prices and volumes are found in reputational markets (UK, US). We also attribute the moderate effects of the Marcus decree to the size and relative depth of the French art market, the concomitant globalization of the art trade and the development of technical art history, compliance mechanisms and legal compliance costs. Our results are supported by empirical evidence from a data set composed of 15th- and 16th-century Flemish paintings auctioned between 1972 and 2015 in a regulated market (FR), but also in reputational markets (UK, US, and other European countries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the debates about the professionalisation of the study of British art between about 1950 and 1970, focusing predominantly on the activities of the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, and its attempts to establish "foundations" for art history as an academic discipline in Britain. Art history in post-war Britain is commonly regarded as uninspiringly positivist. This article aims to situate this "pathos of positivism" (Lorraine Daston) within broader institutional debates: much of what is commonly regarded as a conservative streak in British art writing is better understood as an active attempt at "boundary-work" (Thomas Gieryn), carving out a niche for the discipline by contrasting it on the one hand with continental versions of art history, while aligning it on the other hand with similarly positivist and data-driven tendencies in British historical studies. In doing so, the article attempts to re-evaluate the history of British art history on its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Painting with oil over photographs on canvas was a widespread practice in the nineteenth century, mainly for the production of portraits and copies of oil paintings. It flourished in a context where both photographers and traditional painters were trying to innovate and adjust to new technological advances and demands of their time. However, despite the popularity of oil-painted photographs, they have not been the subject of substantial technical and historical study, which resulted in most of these photo-paintings not having been properly identified. Therefore, this research looks at the photographic processes used for printing on canvas in the UK between 1850 and 1890, knowledge of which is necessary for the identification of photo-paintings. It also looks at how the practice of the Austrian painter and photographer Georg Koberwein (1820–1876) fits within this context, including the examination of four paintings by the artist in the Royal Collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to analyze, on the basis of today's research strategies and the sources that deal with the psychology of Western art during the 20th century, the emerging field of the psychology of art and of its component, the psychology of the creative process, in different national traditions and in various fields of the humanities (aesthetics, the philosophy of art, experimental and general psychology, physiology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, art history). Through comparative analysis, this article reveals how German-speaking countries, France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union changed their attitude toward the artist, his creative potential, creative work, the creative process, and other problems of the psychology of art. The author devotes special attention to highlighting the distinctive ideas, theoretical positions, and main categories of the psychology of art in the West and in the great civilizations of the East (India, China, Japan). All of this has acquired exceptional importance in today's metacivilizational culture, in which, as never before, there is active interaction between the ideas of various Eastern and Western peoples about the psychology of art. Finally, on the basis of a comparative analysis of today's main national traditions relating to the psychology of art, this article highlights its place, functions, and role in the disciplines that study art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Britain, Empire, and Execution in the Long Eighteenth Century. Topics discussed include a low chain-link barrier marks off the space immediately below, where a second, smaller platform protrudes slightly from its surround; and this, the alphabetized legend and accompanying text explain, is a trap door.

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This preliminary study aimed at informing the beginning of the following series of theses. Francis Bacon is a painter representing not only Britain, but also the history of art in the 20th century. Thus, many books explain about his works, however, his ‘abstruse fear’ and his position in the history of art style have not been sufficiently explained. This preliminary study argued that the unconsciousness we experience all the time in clinical practices could explain about the painter’s unidentified parts to a certain degree. Also, through analysis on the painter, this study examined the possibilities to explain the perspectives of the unconsciousness through the history of art styles. This study briefly discussed how his superego could transform and how it was connected to his life by looking over a few of his artworks. Through such a process, this study concluded that the perspective of the unconsciousness takes a very important position in understanding Bacon’s works. This preliminary study informing the beginning of the analysis on many of other painters, and it will identify how the unconsciousness could be expressed in the paintings under the influences of the era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the relationship between modernity, temporality, and modern enchantment in Great Britain focusing on how the nation fell under the Tutankhamen spell following the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb that lead to a wave of popular interest in ancient Egypt. Topics include rising interest in Egyptology, impact of Egyptomania in the British film industry, and effects of Egyptian spiritualism, archaeology, art, and literature.

This paper begins by reviewing the historical construction of ‘SciArt’, and the way in which its supposed interdisciplinarity often shaded into science communication. Early discussions about the complementarity of art and science were conceived in terms of epistemology, notably the qualities of imagination and curiosity. The paper moves on to discuss how, during the current decade, Art and Science (A&S) discourse has altered due to changes in the cultural politics of both its constituent fields, emerging as a ‘transdiscipline’ characterized by ‘creativity’. Eighteen in-depth surveys with leading practitioners in A&S form a substantial part of the research material, yielding an evaluation of what the disciplinary, economic and cultural implications of this changed discourse may be. Though potentially angled towards the solution of ‘wicked’ problems, transdisciplinarity also sacrifices the specific critical expertise of art, fetishizes tech at the expense of science and selectively ignores institutional problems inherent in funding and power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video technology had a relatively brief lifespan, but like digital it was once a new media technology. This article revisits the newness of video in the late 1970s and early 1980s to explore the challenges it posed for supporting and promoting video art in Britain - including developing and funding a video infrastructure, creating an identity for video art and sustaining a video specific identity in the face of technological and social change. Aspects of this history resonate with the more recent history of digital technology and the article concludes that video can be understood as digital's forerunner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Video Show: A Festival of Independent Video and the events that followed this exhibition, which took place at the Serpentine Gallery, London, 1975, will provide an historical context to consider the ongoing and complex relationship between art and activism, which surrounded the use of video since its arrival in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. 'Artist video' on the one hand and 'community video' on the other, will be framed by the actions of London Video Arts (LVA), who formed to support artists working with video and the Association of Video Workers (AVW), who formed to support people working with video on a not-for-profit basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the importance for changing the thinking about art's purpose and the role of art museums in Ireland as of September 2017, highlighting the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Topics include the cultural initiatives of the Irish government, the issues raised by IMMA's founding, and the rhetorical value of art. Also discussed are the political conflict in Northern Ireland, art's ethical purpose and social value, and Ireland in the 20th century.

The article discusses a thirteenth-century English caricature sketched on the 1233 Exchequer Receipt Roll featuring a three-faced view of Jewish financier Isaac of Norwich, other Jewish companions, and demons. It considers the work as part of Medieval material culture and political context. It explores English civil culture and the habits of scribes. Other topics include Jewish–Christian relations, anti-antisemitism in the Middle Ages, and Jewish history.

This paper analyses the controversy that arose when a monumental bronze nude statue of Achilles was unveiled at Hyde Park Corner (London) in 1822 as a monument to the Duke of Wellington and his army. The neoclassical statue (made by Richard Westmacott) perfectly embodied the 'modern male stereotype'. According to historian George Mosse, this masculine image was a powerful and stable symbol of nineteenth- and twentieth-century bourgeois societies. Intended by the commanders and artist as just such a symbol, the statue in practice was unable to express these high ideals. Ever since its unveiling, the statue has elicited laughter and ridicule. The uneasiness created by male public nudity is an aspect that Mosse missed in his history of masculine imaginary, in which he focused on certain moments of 'spectacular' masculinity in modern Western history. Ultimately, the failure of Westmacott's Achilles can best be understood from the well-known feminist framework on the gendered 'economy of the gaze', a framework that is all too often absent in the historiography on masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses eighteenth-century maritime visual culture and its historiography by questioning fundamental fractures within it and the implications of these for the disciplines of history and art history. Using the Abolitionist print of the Brooks slave ship as a starting point alongside Paul Gilroy's formulation of "double consciousness," it questions the bypassing of the Black Atlantic and the wider maritime sphere within the history of eighteenth-century British art and argues for a revision of the periodization, classification, disciplinary boundaries, and ideological parameters by which it has been defined, to take full account of the significance of the maritime sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses medieval ivory carvings from Wales, including in regard to their depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. The article often references archaeology from Wales so as to analyze its antiquities, including diptychs, combs comprised of walrus ivory, belt fittings and beads.

This paper attempts to bring the world of mid-eighteenth-century British design into fruitful conversation with contemporary art theory and practice. Taking the neighbourhood and milieu of the St Martin's Lane area in London as a starting point, I investigate connections between British "rococo" design and William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty in terms of shared formal values and contemporary implications of "modernity". I argue for a mutual indebtedness rather than "art" directing "design". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the opening up of a new, rich seam of interdisciplinary research that brings together historians of education with historians of art and architecture to examine the meaning and incidence of “The Decorated School”. It examines the origins of the idea of art as educator in the nineteenth century and discusses how ideas about the education of taste accompanied the establishment of mass education in industrialised nations during the early part of the twentieth century. Some examples of Decorated Schools in Britain and Europe are discussed with reference to the nature of the international and interdisciplinary interpretation made possible by the research network. Finally, some of the challenges of interdisciplinary research in this area are presented, as well as rich opportunities for further exploration. The article concludes that in order to come closer to a realisation of how pupils might have experienced The Decorated School in the past, we need to incorporate histories of children’s play-worlds in our project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks in detail at the origins, development and research potential of Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (Mapping Sculpture), a major digital humanities project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and launched publicly in February 2011. It begins by providing a brief overview of recent art historical research in an online environment and identifies the open space of Web 2.0 as one of the principal challenges (or opportunities) facing the academic community. The article goes on to describe Mapping Sculpture's methodology, the implementation of the research programme and concludes with an overview of the project's initial findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the anticlassicism of British artist William Blake and how it impacted his interpretation of art history. The author explains the relationship between classical antiquarians and British connoisseurship, explores why Blake’s feelings towards antiquarianism and Hellenism changed throughout his life, and examines how Irish scientist William Hamilton influenced Blake's work.

The introduction to this special issue lays out the main historiographical and methodological interventions that the editor and contributors seek to make. It begins by pointing to the surprising marginalization of sculptural evidence in the history of empire and post-colonial theory, and by laying out the state of the field to this point, paying particular attention to the questions of 'sculptural Orientalism' and 'sculpture in the circum-Atlantic world'. The introduction then provides a brief account of the development of the 'British School' across the period, and makes a polemical case for considering the period between c. 1757 and 1947 as a long nineteenth century, rather than a long eighteenth century, or a period of sustained para- or proto-modernism. The introduction concludes with a call for a more 'ecological' sculptural history in the period, alive both to the depiction of environments and flora and fauna outside the human and also to the currently 'Darwinian' character of the scholarly field, in which a logic of the survival of the fittest seems to underpin the interrelation of adjacent periods and scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the artworks of sculptor Barbara Hepworth and other group of artists in Great Britain. Hepworth was recognized for her interest in Neolithic in the 1930s, and measures the significance of formal parallel and the stones used for sculpture. Her works commonly reflects with the ancient remains and landscape. According to some artists, Hepworth's sculptures identify landscape which give designers great lessons for man-made-objects in the 16th century. Lastly, non-figurative artists have played significant role in achieving modernity in sculpture art.

The article discusses the issue concerning the British art in Great Britain. It says that the crisis of art today is that of the world divided not only into different categories but arranged in a hierarchy by the West. Moreover, the situation in art today has become complex with its culturally diverse manifestations on both national and global levels.

The article offers information on the Georgian design-themed galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) of Great Britain. The British Galleries adopt many design changes to emphasize the museum's renewed interest in Georgian art. The role of the museum as conservator of Georgian legacy is explored by looking at political and social factors that could have influenced the museum's acquisition of Georgian collections. The history of A&V British Galleries is also discussed, from its inception in 2001 to its shift to 18th century theme.

This article presents an analysis of the way art is conceptualised in the British primary school curriculum and provides an historical framework that maps an evolution of ideas that have shaped the way art is presented in the modern day primary curriculum. In order to achieve this a Foucauldian style genealogical analysis is utilised to trace the discourses (systems of meaning) surrounding the nature of children's artistic development and how these discourses are used in the present day British primary curriculum to construe art in different ways. The analysis in this article is threefold. It explores the presentation of art in the curriculum as (1) an expressive subject, (2) a skills based subject, (3) a subject which focuses on art history and art appreciation. Second, the teaching positions associated with each approach are identified as follows (a) the facilitator, (b) the expert and (c) the philosopher; as well as the issues teachers face when adopting these positions. Third, attention is given to how these theoretical principles might be linked to practice. In so doing this article contributes to the debate surrounding the value of art in the primary curriculum and the way in which the curriculum serves to shape teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the inception of photographic education in Great Britain in the 1980s. Cultural Studies and Film Studies are the first two curriculum offered for students. The 1979 Arts Council exhibition at the Hayward Gallery provided details on the inception of photographic studies. Historical account of British photography includes consideration of the significant local and national groupings and institutions.

Nowadays Hugh Blaker is remembered only as adviser to Gwendoline and Margaret Davies of Gregynog; it was his taste that influenced the sisters in the formation of their renowned collections of nineteenth-century French art, which they bequeathed to the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff. The role of consultant has, however, overshadowed his many other activities; he was also a painter, writer, art critic, museum curator, collector, dealer in Old Masters and, against overwhelming public opinion, an indefatigable advocate of avant-garde tendencies in art. Blaker, passionate and opinionated, ridiculed official conservatism and was an ardent supporter and promoter of young artists: 'I am trying to do something for the moderns', he protested, 'but they won't let me!' This article examines his significant, and as yet largely unrecognized, contribution to the course of art history in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the emergence of the Society of Graver-Printers in Colour in Great Britain. Moreover, the social group is designed to promote the creation of colour prints as an original work of art. Theodore Roussel, an English painter and first president of the institution had considered prints of its exhibition that manifests the variety of practical method for colour printmaking. In 1899, the first exposition had been presented at the Goupil Gallery to bring out the detailed colored engraving.

In a recent conversation with Bruno Latour, the French philosopher Michel Serres visualized his concept of modernity through the image of the automobile. The car, Serres argued, could not be defined as uniquely of one period or as belonging exclusively to the modern, being ‘a disparate aggregate of scientific and technical solutions dating from different periods ... The ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage.’ This metaphor offers a highly productive way of looking at the history and forms of visual culture in Britain in the early twentieth century, when the technological and commercial possibilities of nineteenth-century optical developments were filtering into all aspects of cultural production and consumption. The article examines this moment via a case study of the artist Hubert von Herkomer; offering a reassessment through an examination of his paintings, films and fast cars and thereby proposing a reframing of the history of British visual culture through the integration of still and moving images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the portrait collection of author, wit and letter-writer Horace Walpole presented at the British Museum. The collection consists of printed and etched view of his house in Strawberry Hill rounded with paper pasted overlapping it. He published the book "Anecdotes of Painting in England" based on his acquisition of the notebooks of George Vertue concerning the history of British art and artists. Walpole's book has been the standard work art history while his albums which contains 470 items have been sold.

Focuses on mirror writing. How mirror writing may accompany neurological disease, but is also produced by normal individuals; Pathological mirror writing; Mirror writing in normal people; Lewis Carroll's `looking-glass' letters; Mechanisms; Conclusions.