Virtual Lectures via Zoom Webinar

October 16: Early Renaissance Period (15^th-Century Italy and the North)

This lecture series will begin with a discussion of the revival of the Classical period in much of the Italian Renaissance’s cultural production. It will then examine the groundbreaking invention of mathematical perspective in painting and the new celebrity status of the artist. Some of the artists to be included are Masaccio, Botticelli, Donatello and van Eyck.

October 23 and 30: The High and Late Renaissance (15^th– and 16^th-Century Italy and the North)

These two lectures will explore the further revival of the Classical period and the preference for anatomical accuracy and emotional content within religious painting and sculpture. Featured artists will include Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Grünewald.

November 6: The Baroque Period (17^th-Century Italy, Spain and the North)

In this lecture we will examine the Baroque period’s aesthetic penchant for dramatic imagery in the form of theatrical content and stylistic devices, as well as its rise of secular subjects. Artists Caravaggio, Gentileschi, Bernini, Velázquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Hals and Leyster will be discussed.

November 13: The Rococo and Neoclassical Periods (18^th-Century France and Britain); Romanticism and Realism (Early to Mid-19^th-Century France, Spain and Britain)

Looking at the distinction between the fanciful French Rococo style and the Neoclassical style that sought greater “seriousness” based on Reynold’s hierarchy of the arts. Artists will include Watteau, Fragonard, Hogarth, Reynolds, West and Kauffmann. This lecture will also examine Romanticism’s political and social critiques and the Realists’ focus on ennobling the rural working class. Some artists in focus will be Gericault, Goya and Turner, as well as Bonheur, Courbet, Millet and Daumier.

November 20: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (Late 19^th-Century France)

Presented in this lecture will be the anti-establishment styles of the late 19^th century in which artists rejected the academic tradition of painting. Although many of these styles are now often described as “pretty,” their revolutionary approaches shouldn’t be underestimated. Featured artists will be Monet, Manet, Degas, Cassatt, van Gogh, Munch and Cézanne.

November 27 and December 4: The Experimental “Isms” (20^th-Century Europe and America)

These lectures will highlight the multitude of styles that emerged in the 20^th century when artists experimented with entirely new approaches. In Europe, Marcel Duchamp’s found objects (Dadaism) and Kandinsky’s abstracts (German Expressionism) and, in America, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings (Abstract Expressionism) and Judy Chicago’s installations (sometimes labelled Conceptualism) were utterly groundbreaking. Included artists will be Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp, O’Keeffe, Pollock, Rothko, Warhol and Chicago.

Sonia Halpern is an art historian who has taught at Western University in London, Ontario for more than thirty years. She has won many teaching awards and for five consecutive years was named by Maclean’s Magazine as one of Western’s “most popular profs.” She is also a seasoned public speaker and has delivered hundreds of lectures to organizations on a variety of art historical subjects. In addition to authoring several academic articles, Sonia has published two collections of humorous poetry, The Life and Times of Transition Girl and its revised and expanded volume, and a book of original music compositions, Klezmer Kitty. Sonia has also performed in many regional theatrical productions.