The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution - Gang of Four

I had a feeling I'd missed a programme out of my recent post - The latest Art on the BBC -
and I had.  In fact I'd missed out TWO!

These are:

• The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution.  This is a new series with four episodes.  It's introduced by art writer Waldemar Januszczak - this is a link to his article about making the series Not just about sunny river banks (which also includes his opinions about AA Gill writing about Impressionism - and it's worth reading for that alone!) 

The point is, we who think we know everything about impressionism know very little. Impressionism cannot be boring because nothing concrete enough is known about it yet to be bored with. What does exist — and this is the real enemy — is an utterly misleading set of preconceptions. They exist. And they need to be challenged.

La Grenouillère, painting by Claude Monet
- as featured in the first programme of this series
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Source: Wikipedia

• the first programme - Gang of Four - transmits tonight on BBC2 at 8pm.  I'm assuming it will also be available to download on iPlayer and I shall be setting mine to record the whole series (here are the alternative transmission times).  I like watching these programmes twice! ;)  UPDATE:  Just finished watching it - and it's very definitely worth taking time out to view.  It's both accessible, informative and you get to see quite a few paintings - with an emphasis on what makes Impressionism different

In the first episode, Waldemar delves into the back stories of four of the most influential Impressionists - Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Bazille - who together laid the foundations of the artistic movement. He finds out what social and cultural influences drove them to their style of painting, how they were united and how ultimately they challenged and changed art forever.

Blogger has a new Interface (in draft)

Blogger has a new interface - very minimal and very clean.  It reminds me a bit of Apple.

This is what the layout page of this blog looks like in the new Interface

I'm still working my way through it.

So far as I can see all the rest of the "behind the scenes" stuff is pretty much the same as before - but it sure looks very different!  Very Zen!

In some ways it's quite disconcerting and I recommend that you don't take a look until you've got time to explore slowly.  Otherwise you might just get lost!

The way to access the new interface is via Blogger in Draft - which is the part of Blogger where you can try out the new developments before they are released to the world in general.

You can read all about the new Interface in:

• Blogger Redesigned (April 2011) - which discusses how the new design is going to be rolled out slowly - starting with Blogger in Draft Users
• Blogger’s Updated Interface Now Available for All Draft Users (7 July 2011) which highlights how the new design is now available to all Draft Blogger uses - which includes me.

This page lists known issues and the ones which have been fixed.

UPDATE

Big tip - if confused hit either the name of your blog or the big Blogger icon in the top left hand corner and the menu of options reappears

What I like best - the fact that the window in which you post now extends as you write so you can see the whole post on your screen all the time. About time too! 

Major gripes - it would seem that I am not alone in finding it hard to look at in terms of brightness and lack of contrast for those of whose eyesight is less than wonderful. I think Blogger needs a user panel which includes older people!

Comments about how it's working can be found and where things can be found - can be found in comments! You can also read the comments on the Blogger in Draft posts to see what else people like/find irritating.

POLL: How much do you spend on Art Societies?

How much do you spend on Art Societies in terms of annual membership fees and entrance fees for exhibitions?

Last month we looked at how many art societies you belonged to and this month the July Making A Mark Poll is about artists' spending on art societies - and the extent to which it feels like an affordable sum for you.

The reason I ask is two-fold:

• Fees for membership and entrance to exhibitions seem to be on the increase
• Comments and complaints about the cost of belonging to an art society - or entering open exhibitions - also seem to be on the increase

How many Art Societies are you a member of? (Poll results)

Of those who responded to the June Making A Mark Poll about membership of art societies:

• 36% did not belong to an art society
• 20% belonged to only one art society
• 44% belonged to more than one art society
• a small proportion of people seem to "collect" national art societies belonging to five or more 
  

The chart below shows how people responded in terms of the number of art societies they belonged to.  This is followed by more charts showing membership at the national, regional and local levels.

June Making A Mark Poll: Number of respondents - 50

The latest Art on the BBC

I've returned from Provence and collecting my cats to a surfeit of art programmes on the BBC.  Here's a round-up.

British Masters

This brand new series started on BBC4 last night and comprises three programmes by art historian James Fox.  The programmes were made to support his theory that British Painting between 1910 and 1975 ranks alongside the Golden Ages of Renaissance Italy and Impressionist France.

We Are Making a New World - last night's edition - focused on the following painters and the ways in which they remade painting in the twentieth century to reflect a new world and a break with traditional ways of painting.  The notion proposed is that somehow painting became more British as the British empire slipped away and Britain became less important in the world.

This first programme focused on a generation of artists most of whom studied under Henry Tonks at the Slade.