Art Lectures

I've attended two really terrific lectures on art in the last few days.

The CSU Friends of Art held a reception and lecture by Bo Bartlett on Friday. He was quite engaging and showed slides of a number of his pieces and the paintings that influenced them. Sometimes the influence was obvious and sometimes it seemed a stretch but it was helpful to understand where he's coming from with some of the more obscure references. One painting was of a group of folks cutting a man out of a whale. In fact it was a reference to Jonah and Bartlett told the whole story of Jonah in excruciating detail to get to a point explaining his version.

I've opined here before that he was influenced by Rockwell and Wyeth and he verified that. He, in fact, spent five years with Andrew Wyeth doing a film about him and so became very close to him and his mistress. When he talked about Wyeth's passing, he broke up.

CSU's new art display space will have a number of his pieces on loan and that alone should vault them into the top of museums in the state.

On Tuesday night, I heard a lecture by Olga Stone on Orthodox icon art delivered in Columbus' Greek Orthodox Church. The church interior is covered, walls and ceilings, with icons. Ms Stone, a native of Russia who now lives in the UK, covered Christian and Orthodox history as well as some art that has sprung from icons. The church icons were done by a Romanian artist who lived there for a year. I was very much impressed by his artistry, but Ms Stone pointed out that all Orthodox icons are pretty much the same depiction. St. Nicholas, for instance, is always shown with two crosses and a bible on his breast. Christ and Mary always have the same colors. So the Romanian artist pretty much copied the work in the church but you shouldn't let that put you off. It's really something to see and you can see it on Sundays when they worship at 10 am.