We are delighted to announce the return of Dido Powell’s London Art Gallery Tours, starting on Sunday 11 February. This year we are offering a series of four tours, focusing on ‘The Ugly and the Beautiful in Art’. If you have done the tour before you will know what a wonderful way this is to spend a Sunday morning. Dido Powell is an artist and teaches the history of art. Her tours are always well informed and insightful.
Each tour costs £12 or you can book the whole series for £45. You can book by contacting Wendy Earle: wendyearle@talktalk.net. To be sure of your place on the tours — detailed below — please book early.
FULL SERIES
Sunday 11 February:
Ugly Art (Tate Modern)
Sunday 17 March:
From Ugly to Ideal (National Gallery)
Sunday 28 April:
The Ideal Turns Sour (Tate Britain)
Sunday 19 May:
Artists’ Inspiration (British Museum)
Tour 3: The Ideal Turns Sour
Taking examples of paintings from across the collection we will study portraits and landscapes which illustrate academic ideals taking precedence over observation, to see how and why the Ideal becomes formulaic and the aspiration to beauty fails. Looking at examples of Pre -Raphaelite and Victorian works, aspects of the ideal and the ugly collide, through garish colours and stiff bodies and have caused the painting to go in and out of fashion according to taste. Good taste and bad taste also relate to the debate on beauty and ugliness and will be discussed.
