Lockdown art class
At a time when our contact with the wider world has been necessarily curtailed, it’s no coincidence that we’ve seen a plethora of series in which experts offer guides to galleries and museums. That’s especially welcome when the expert in question is art historian Simon Schama, whose new series finds him virtually prising open the doors of four galleries to which he often returns: London’s Courtauld, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Madrid’s Prado Museum and the Whitney in New York.
Operating perhaps on the oft-repeated principle that the pictures are always better on the radio, Schama hones in on works that hold a special significance for him. At the Courtauld, for instance, he offers a close study of Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the FoliesBergère (1882) – a painting showing a bartender in front of a mirror that plays with our ideas of perspective. In the Rijksmuseum, Schama’s focus is on Rembrandt, whose works at the gallery range from grand canvasses to intimate scenes. At the Prado, listeners are invited to contemplate the works of Velázquez and Goya. In New York, Schama contemplates Edward Hopper’s haunting
A Woman in the Sun, in which a naked woman stands in a sparsely furnished room illuminated by a shaft of light from a window.
Schama also hears the reflections of the galleries’ directors and curators.