Arcadia Education believes the best format for lectures is to hear an informative and inspirational illustrated talk of approximately 45 minutes to an hour and to then enjoy an informal open forum afterwards over drinks / food. In this convivial atmosphere, confidence can grow for attendees to pose questions to the speaker and share their personal views and experiences also. Talks or lectures can be tailored to suit a given audience; from enthusiastic amateurs to a more specialist field. All talks are illustrated by digital slides and short film and audio clips. Lecture notes and recommended reading lists can be provided on request.
Arcadia Education’s chief ethos is to provide a rounded encapsulation of a genre, style or topic in question; hence although the talks are predominantly art-based, literature, fashion, music, theatre and other broad aspects will be considered provided they are pertinent to the topic in question.
Our Lectures
Art History
- ‘J-L David and the Napoleonic Adventure: Politics, Propaganda and Patronage’
- Modern Love – “Goddesses & Doormats” – Picasso’s Women
- ‘Destruction or Revelation? The Restoration of The Sistine Chapel Ceiling’
- Spirit of Place – The Sublime the Numinous & the Sacrosanct: The Rothko Room in Tate Modern
- Reappraising the Human Form: Four British Figurative Heavyweights
- The Great Outdoors: Documenting a Century of Change
- The Weird and Wonderful World of Hieronymus Bosch: A True Visionary
- “The Ocean is an Object of No Small Terror” Turner’s Seascapes, “Soapsuds & Spinach”
- ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ The Mystery of the Arnolfini Marriage
- ‘Less is More!’ Managing Modernism
- From Bedpan to Bed: Duchamp’s Ready-Made & its Legacy from Modernism to Postmodernism
- ‘An Artistic Epiphany’: Giotto’s Arena Frescoes in Padua; An Artistic Revolution
- ‘From Fallen Heroine to Femme Fatale’: Portrayals of Women in Pre-Raphaelitism
- The Passion in Art
- ‘Pomp and Circumstance: A Regal Rout.’ Uccello’s Battle of San Romano: Propaganda, Patronage and Pageantry
- ‘The Shock of the New: Impressionism to Iconoclasm
- ‘Ambassadorship and Anamorphosis’ Holbein’s Ambassadors
- ‘Freud in Focus’: Lucian Freud Laid Bare
- ‘Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time’ Bronzino’s Titillating Allegory
- ‘Dots, Day trips and Dogma’ Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres
- ‘Four Weddings & A Funeral’ The Iconography of Four Commemorative works
- ‘3 is the Magic Number: The Power of 3 in Art History
- ‘Conquest and Cuckoldry’ Botticelli’s Venus and Mars
- ‘Mythology and Mayhem’ Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian
- ‘The Power of the Portrait’ from Constantine to Kardashian
- ‘The Raft of the Medusa: The Political Shipwreck of France?’
- ‘Great Moments in Art History’
- ‘Tenebrism and Tension’ Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus
- ‘Anonymity and Iconography’ The Enigma of the Wilton Diptych
- ‘From Darkness to Light’: The Late Cut-outs of Henri Matisse
- ‘Iconoclasm & Anarchism in Art’: The Dada Revolution and Beyond
- ‘The Blitz Reborn:’ John Virtue’s London Series Paintings
- ‘The Femme Fatale’ late 19th and early 20th century vamps & anti-heroines
- Pea-Soupers. The Thames through the eyes of Turner, Whistler & Monet
- ‘Dutch Courage’. Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Golden Age
- ‘The Elgin Marbles Museology, Conservationism & National Politics’
- Eugene Delacroix: ‘The Last of the Romantics & the First of the Moderns’
- ‘Isolation & Alienation’: Romanticism, the Sublime and the Search for National Identity in Caspar David Friedrich
- ‘Bastion of Britishness’. The Oeuvre of David Hockney
- ‘Matisse – Master of Modernism’
- Charles Saatchi – A Modern Medici? The YBAs
- Art & Controversy
- Pop Goes Andy Warhol
- The Horse in Art – A Canter through the Ages
- ‘Marat, Murder and Martyrdom’ – Propagandist Image-making during the French Revolution
- Spirit of the Belle Epoque: The Parisian avant-garde at the turn of the Twentieth Century
- Performance Art Throughout the Ages
- The Agony & The Ecstasy: Schiele & Klimt
- Objects of Desire, Still Life & its Legacy in Modernism
- Leonardo – The Legend
- A Trinity of Genius – The High Renaissance in Venice: Bellini, Titian and Tintoretto
- La Vie Moderne – Manet and The Impressionist Revolution
- Like a Virgin – Three Madonna and Childs
- The Passion in Art – Piety and Pathos
Architecture & Design
- ‘Seven Architectural Wonders of the World’
- ‘The Parthenon versus the Pantheon: Two Heavyweights of the Ancient World’
- ‘What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?’
- ‘A Short History of Tall Buildings’. The Rise of the Skyscraper in America & its Legacy
- ‘The Spirit of the Belle Epoque’: Art Nouveau at the Fin de Siecle
- ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Chair Design from the Shakers to Conran
- “The House is a Machine for Living in”. Le Corbusier’s White World
- ‘Pinnacles of Progress’. The Gothic Revival in Britain
- ‘Hands to Work, Hearts to God’. The Legacy of the Shakers
- ‘The Body as a Temple’. The Nude in Ancient Greece
- ‘Less is More’. The Modernist Doctrine in the early Twentieth Century
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