How to hang a picture

In the current context rehanging your art collection is one off those jobs you give yourself after you've cleaned out and reoganised all your kitchen cupboards and wardrobes  and rearranged all your books on the shelves.

Here's a page about "How to hang a picture" which you might find very useful.
This page covers:

• TIPS on how to hang paintings, drawings, fine art prints and photographs
• Basic kit for hanging pictures
• How to hang art in a frame on a wall - including tips for using specific frame hanging fixture kits
• Specific hanging tackle: D rings, picture wire, picture cordand stud finder!
• How to hang a heavy picture on a wall
• How to hang and align pictures.

Hanging gear laid out in a frame at Green & Stone, Chelsea

The page also brings together on one page all my previous writing about how to hang art.

• How to hang a painting - using mirror plates
• How to hang a large or heavy picture - using heavy duty hanging hardware
• How to hang a picture - using D Rings
    

More posts about framing

 

• A list of recommended picture framers - framers who are recommended by artists who have used them - on the artist's website or blog.
• How to mat and frame your artwork - a summary of my tips about how to mat and frame artwork
• Protecting your frames - passing on a tip from my framer about how to avoid damage to your frames
• Spending on frames: 
• The POLL: Exhibition frames: How much do you spend per frame on average?- and the responses and 
• overview of the results How much do you spend on exhibition frames on average? - The reason I've chosen exhibition frames is because when we are framing for ourselves we can either put up with something very cheap or spend a lot of money.

Jackson's Painting Prize 2020 - time to vote

The shortlist for the £5,000 Jackson's Painting Prize was announced yesterday.

The Longlist

The Jackson's Painting Prize received 5,634 entries. 

• Jacksons then created a longlist which comprised 445 artworks.
• It was interesting to see how the number of works split between the different categories

Jacksons's Painting Prize 2020:
Number of artworks longlisted within each category of entries

Competition between entries is particularly intense within paintings of 'scapes and figures - both of which numbers over a 100 longlisted entries.

Timeline for Voting and Prizes

• Category Winners are announced on 14th April
  
• Voting for the People's Award (£1,000) - see below - closes in a week's time at 3pm on 15th April 
• Emerging Artist and People's Choice Award announced on 17th April 
• Jackson's Painting Prize Winner (£5,000) announced on 21st April

The Shortlist

36 of the 42 works shortlisted

The shortlist is chosen by the six Judges and this year I was one.

All 6 of our expert judges are leading figures in the contemporary art world. Each judge will bring a unique perspective and opinion to the judging, this will cultivate a varied selection of work that showcases the very best of the entrants 

We each contributed six artworks to the shortlist - working in isolation from the other Judges.  As you can see from the above tabulation, there are six categories and there was no requirement to choose one from each category.

I was particularly interested when the shortlist was published yesterday to see whether any of the works which made it to my personal longlist of 15 got through in the works shortlisted by others - and they did!

My feedback to Jacksons was as follows

I was a lot happier at 15 paintings. It was horrible turfing the last ones to get down to six. I'd suggest you ask Judges to select 20 and then take the top 50.

The People's Award

You can now vote - as a member of the public - for the entries you like best for the £1,000 People's Choice Award.

Unlike the Judges you have no constraint on how many you can "heart" (see instructions below) but you can only vote once for any one painting.

To vote, all you need to do is click the small heart symbol under your favourite paintings and your vote will be saved.
You can vote for as many art works as you like.
You can only vote once for each painting.
If you change your mind, your vote can be revoked.
By voting, you will go into the draw to win a £50 Jackson's Art Supplies Voucher.

If you want to see what it's like to be a Judge why not try choosing just six and see how that comes out!

TIPS:

• Look through all the entries in each category before you start to vote
• Look at the big image when reviewing entries - it makes a difference. So click on the thumbnail and you can see an image which is the bigger than the thumbnail. If you click it again you can see an even bigger image
• Use the arrows at the top of the category to move to the next image in the category
• Jot down which ones you like
• Heart the six you like the best if you'd like to try and vote like one of the Judges
• Heart as many as you like if you find it too difficult to choose! :)

COVID-19 & ART #9: NEW initiative - The Arts Society Connected

At 11am today there will be a lecture as part of a new initiative for those isolated at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Arts Society Connected

The Arts Society Connected is a brand NEW initiative orgnised by The Arts Society.

We want to enrich lives through the arts: even if we cannot leave our homes.
During the the current situation many people will feel isolated and lonely.
On this site we want to connect people through a shared love for the arts.

There is

• a Forum - A friendly and informative place where Members and our wider community can connect and share.
• a Blog - do read their first post about the new initiative “ENRICHING LIVES THROUGH THE ARTS” - a 4 minute read with news of an arts quiz!
• A fortnightly schedule of lectures - see below. The first one is today at 11am!

This is who the Arts Society is

Lecture about Velaquez Las Meninas

You can actually watch the first lecture now! ( see below)

This is the link to the Arts Society's YouTube Channel. Do follow them because once they get a 1,000 followers they get to do more things with their videos!

For some reason the video is NOT LISTED on the YouTube Channel and I assume this is an oversight. (It seems very odd if it was deliberate!)  The link is https://youtu.be/i_ZaNuKgPIg

(I'm a bit surprised they haven't done this before - I've got more followers on Making A Mark Videos than they have!)

Enjoy the arts at home with a series of films by Arts Society Accredited Lecturers, published every fortnight. We begin with an insight into Las Meninas by Velazquez from lecturer Dr. Jacqueline Cockburn - filmed at home.

According to this morning's 'The Guardian' article  Arts Society to launch online lectures for over-70s

The first lecture being broadcast at 11am on Tuesday is by the art historian Jacqueline Cockburn and was recorded in her home by her son. She had been due to lecture on Picasso at the society’s now-cancelled annual general meeting and suggested Las Meninas, which hangs in the Prado in Madrid, as a shorter alternative for the new project.

I'm not sure what "broadcast" means in this context given the video is already online.....

There will be more lectures as follows - although no clue as yet as to what they will be about

• Sarah Dunant: 21 April - a British novelist, journalist, broadcaster, and critic.
• Mark Hill: 5 May TV presenter and dealer who specialises in producing ground-breaking & innovative books on new areas in 20thC design and decorative arts.
• Nicola Moorby: 19 May - An independent art historian specialising in British art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I'm wondering whether she will do a rerun of 
• either Turner vs Constable: The Great British Paint Off
• or An Introduction to J. M. W. Turner: Theory and Practice
• or ‘As if by Magic: The Secrets of Turner’s Watercolour Techniques 
• Marc Allum: 2 June - a freelance art and antiques journalist, writer and broadcaster based in Wiltshire. He has been a miscellaneous specialist on the BBC Antiques Roadshow since 1998
• Rebecca Hossack: 16 June - a great champion of Non-Western artistic traditions, who has been exhibiting Western and Aboriginal art in her own gallery in London and New York since 1988
• Sandy Burnett: 30 June - a leading broadcaster, conductor, bassist, lecturer and evangelist for music

Each talk will be followed by a Q&A with the Lecturer on our dedicated Talks & Lectures Forum.

Please do join us in visiting our Lecturers in their homes from your home. 

I'm hoping they'll give us all a bit more notice next time.....

COVID-19 & ART #8: Video Binge - Raphael in Rome

A major exhibition about Raphael opened at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome four days before the Italian lockdown began.

Raphael of Urbino (March 28 or April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520)

Raffaello opened on 5th March and was due to run until 2nd June 2020. It marks the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death and includes important loan.

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

Self portrait (crop) by Raphael 1499
Ashmolean Museum

Very many loans from premier art galleries around Europe and North America contributed paintings and drawings by Raphael on loan to the exhibition. These included:

Italy

• the National Galleries of Ancient Art, 
• the National Art Gallery of Bologna, 
• the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, 
• the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 
• the Brescia Museums Foundation

Outside Italy

• the Vatican Museums, 
• the Louvre, 
• the National Gallery of London, 
• the Prado Museum, 
• the National Gallery of Art in Washington, 
• the Albertina in Vienna, 
• the British Museum, 
• the Royal Collection, 
• the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, 
• the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Videos about Raphael and of the exhibition

Major efforts have been made by the museum, via its YouTube channel,to ensure people can see the exhibition online.

Below are some videos about the exhibition. They're in Italian - but the first has English subtitles.

Raffaello Principe delle arti (Raphael Prince of the arts)

Una passeggiata in mostra (A walk in the exhibition)

This video - of a walk through the exhibition -  has been watched by nearly half a million viewers in the last few days! (see Take a virtual tour of once-in-a-lifetime Raphael show in Rome that closed after four days due to coronavirus)



According to Wikipedia and its sources

Raphael painted several of his works on wood support (Madonna of the Pinks) but he also used canvas (Sistine Madonna) and he was known to employ drying oils such as linseed or walnut oils. His palette was rich and he used almost all of the then available pigments such as ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow, carmine, vermilion, madder lake, verdigris and ochres. In several of his paintings (Ansidei Madonna) he even employed the rare brazilwood lake, metallic powdered gold and even less known metallic powdered bismuth.

Digital Resources for Teaching and Learning about Portraiture

The National Portrait Gallery has some useful learning resources for young people who are being home schooled during the present coronavirus pandemic - or at any time.

Young People's Guide to Self Portraiture 

 This is the Young People's Guide to Self Portraiture
 

The website allows online access to various videos explorting themes related to self portraiture.

Digital Resources for Learning

These Digital Learning Resources related to Portraiture include:

• downloadable PDFs, audio and web-based resources 
• which support school-based learning around 
• Portraiture
• the Gallery’s exhibitions
• the Gallery's Collection.

David Hockney: Learning Resources

These are written for school groups visiting the exhibition and include practical drawing tasks and discussions points to explore and have fun with!⁠
⠀

David Hockney Portraits: Life Love Art

• Exhibition Teacher's Notes (PDF)|

Teachers’ Notes: Information and Activities for Secondary Art Teachers
These notes focus on particular aspects of Hockney’s portraiture and on a small number of interconnecting themes developed over Hockney’s career. They are intended to help students look at Hockney’s work and enable group discussion. They can be used to assist teaching in the gallery as well as in the artroom. Each image has questions and talking points that can be adapted to meet students’ needs. The suggestions for activities are designed to lead on to further areas of research into portraiture.

Davi Hockney: Drawing from Life

Very sadly this exhibition was only open for a very short time before it had to close

• David Hockney: Drawing from Life teaching resource

For Teachers and Parents
The National Portrait Gallery's teachers’ resource for David Hockney: Drawing from Life helps students look critically at Hockney’s work. The questions, discussion points and activities are aimed at Key Stage 3-5 Secondary Art, but can be adapted for younger age groups.