Dear Friends of Verrocchio,
We have been hit hard by the economic down turn and harder still by the drop in the value of sterling. Tony Lyle has been helping us to jazz up our presence on the internet with a view to finding new customers there. Our very survival depends on its success.
To succeed we need interaction with our past customers by way of positive comments on the Centre, the place, the teaching, the friendly atmosphere, the food, anything that made the place special for you. Just a few words would suffice, such as you might write in a visitors’ book. These would boost our presence on the net enormously. INTERACTION is the key.
Another way to interact, for those with an intellectual curiosity, I have been blogging on such subject as Art History, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Brunelleschi, Verrocchio. I have presence on Youtube with 5 minute films on Serota, Verrocchio and Rembrandt scholarship generally.
The good news is that I am gradually gaining ground. I have been invited to speak on Rembrandt to the Dutch by an organization called PINC which has a very high profile with tv coverage etc. I am due to perform May17th, 2011. This could be the breakthrough after 37 years! You could help the cause by interaction.
We need your help.
Take this link to comment
on the Verrocchio Centre
on the blog
on Youtube
with very best wishes from Caro, Maurizio and Nigel
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EXHIBITON at THE HIELD GALLERY
October 3 – 15th
You are cordially invited to participate in an exhibition of works by staff and students of The Verrocchio Arts Centre at –
The Hield Gallery, Ings Farm, nr. Harrogate, Yorkshire HG3 3QT.
The private view will be 3th Oct. 2010, 12 – 2pm. It will be a great opportunity for a reunion and publicity for The Centre.
The Staff included such illustrious names as Ben Brotherton, Oliver Bevan, David Carr, Jai Chaudhuri, Gus Cummings RA, Graham Giles, Julie Giles, David Gluck, Bella Green, Robin Holtom, Wynn Jones, Nigel Konstam, Leonard Macombe RA, Frances Mann, Sargy Mann, Clive Pates, Christopher Pincent, Terry Raybould, Caroline Seaward, Anne Shingleton, Vince Tutton, David Wentworth.
and mainly their students
The usual great turn out for this course in its 24th year! There are few places for newcomers it is so popular. The work seemed more varied and even better than usual. Here are some pictures -
I apologize for not answering my critics sooner, I have only just become aware of them. Allow me to explain my point of view more fully on Serota.
Our way of life is changing more rapidly than ever before. Art has to change as life changes. But the white-hot revolution which Harold Wilson (once Prime Minister) foresaw as a great leap forward in opportunities for leisure has in fact put a great deal more stress into human existence; life has speeded up rather than slowed down. Advances in medicine have certainly prolonged life expectancy with the result that the care of the aged now requires far more expense than the pension funds can stand, so pensionable age has to go up. The world population explosion is upon us much sooner than Malthus foresaw. The human population is overwhelming all other species and the planet’s ecology. Climate change etc. etc.
I mention these very real challenges to point out that it is not that easy to predict the future. Yet in art we have allowed Serota with no particular qualifications to dictate the course of art. His “challenging art” does not remotely correspond to life’s challenges as I see them. On the contrary his “cutting edge” is an absurd diversion from what we should be focusing upon.
I see art as an education in seeing what is out there. The more one observes the more one becomes aware of the mental obstacles to seeing. Our survival as a species depends more on the sense of sight than on any other. Serota and his team live in a world of fantasy that does not amuse, it frightens me.
He is a great propagandist but then so were the Nazis, who proclaimed that if you are going to lie, make it a big one. Serota has learnt that lesson well. (see The Jackdaw). He has initiated the most disgraceful episode in the history of art, anywhere. I want to stop him in his tracks. Unfortunately there are a lot of people making a lot of money temporarily out of this financial bubble, so instead of seeing the disgrace, the art establishment is considered a success!
“New Humanism” is my answer to what has gone wrong with art. I respect the Stickists for what they have done to bring about change but I long for a different direction of change, one in which observation figures big again.
9am 11 Dec 09
The village of Casole is well advanced in it’s preparations for the Christmas festivities. Would you believe it a village of 950 inhabitants has a temporary ice-skating rink in the castle square. Its put to very good use but after only five days the standard is not yet Olympic. Here is me taking advantage of the lull when everyone else is at supper. It goes on till 11pm.
me skating
The live enactment of the miraculous birth is something we do every few years here and this year is one of them. It is usually very well done and bus-loads come from afar to see it. Seventy bods in Biblical dress with plenty of live stock around to make the Christmas story come alive. Cows, donkeys, sheep, hens and on the 6th of January real camels, God knows where they come from.
The via San Michele and the piazzetta in front of the Centro, being the oldest part of the village, are transformed. Not so much as a modern drain-pipe is to be seen; all are masked off with reeds or sacking so we are in a very convincing medieval village if not quite Palestine. Old cantinas are opened up to create workshops for cheese making, dyeing, weaving and spinning (one can see that the old fingers are well practised in those arts) black-smithing and even sculpture are demonstrated. Walking up our street one can truly feel the buzz of a medieval market place. It happens on the 26th 27th of December & 3rd & 6th January, 15.30 – 19.30pm
My “Good Shepherd” was inspired by such a figure with a lamb across his shoulders some years ago. The sculpture is nearly life-size in travertine. He is about to be placed with my other two carvings “The Good Samaritan” and “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on the hill of San Niccolo just outside the village. The church has a delightful Romanesque interior decorated with 17th and 18th century, rustic frescos. I see the hill as a most generous acknowledgement of the second half of my adult life spent here in Casole. I never touched stone after I left art school in Britain till I came here. There is such an abundance of beautiful stone to choose from. I spend more than half my time on it now, I am captivated. The Tuscans certainly know how to use sculpture.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
I named my Art School in Tuscany Italy after the famous ‘School of Verrocchio’ because of my great admiration for the Renaissance Sculptor Andrea Verrocchio who ran the greatest Art school ever known (attended by Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Domenico Ghirlandaio). Adolf Beyersdorfer in 1876 wrote of Andrea Verrocchio: “Next to his pupil Leonardo, his (Verrocchio’s) is the greatest artistic character that has ever existed. The lofty and strict principles of his studio brought back worth and value to Florentine Art at a time when these qualities were on the point of extinction”.
My 5 minute video about the School of Verrocchio is now available on YouTube