At the time of writing, we are fast approaching the summer examination modules. Last year’s cohort celebrated strong results, with 6 out of 8 gaining A Grades and the remaining two B Grades. Naturally we wish this year’s candidates genuine success also.
Earlier in the academic year, we made use of the annual Cheltenham Festival of Literature, with excellent talks on a range of topics, from Leonardo to Degas; in particular allowing students to forge useful links with their own syllabus material. This built upon an earlier lecture at College on the late Lucian Freud, hailed until his death in August 2011, as the greatest living painter.
Another local resource, NADFAS, through the Cheltenham Society of Decorative Arts, provided an opportunity for a recent talk on the alleged first great Art Historian Giorgio Vasari, and a compelling presentation entitled ‘Vasari’s Lives of the Artists: Fact or Fiction?’ This coincided neatly with our focus on the Italian Quattrocento. The students also attended a lecture on Botticelli’s great work La Primavera, providing extra stimulus for Poppy Stirland’s EPQ on Esoteric Symbolism and Iconography in the piece. Meanwhile, Alexandra Wood had embarked upon her quest to evaluate the links between the original Venetic Gothic and the High Victorian Gothic wave of Italianate architecture in the 1850s in Britain.
Andrew Swait has enjoyed real success as an Art Historian in the more public forum, as runner-up in the annual Art History Abroad essay prize competition. He followed this with a very well-informed presentation at the Roche Court Articulation Prize competition on the Wilton Diptych, centered upon the enigmatic origins of the piece and the cryptic iconographic symbols within the piece itself.
The Freud and Hockney blockbuster exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy respectively, gave the students a great insight into two British contemporary artistic legends, who the students also focus on during their A2 studies.
In addition to cross-curricular evenings and, separately, the new Extended Project Qualifications, we look forward to a potential visit to Paris in 2013.
Nick Nelson
Head of Art History