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This blog is run by the Art History Department at the Open University. It is part of the Open Arts Archive, an online platform that provides free access to a wealth of artistic, cultural and educational resources, including free films on art objects, seminars, study days, artists’ podcasts, artist interviews, curators’ talks and exhibitions. http://www.openartsarchive.org/

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This week's Material Monday comes from Dr Emma Bar

This week's Material Monday comes from Dr Emma Barker, Senior Lecturer in Art History, FASS at The Open University.

Poland's most famous artist, Jan Matejko, was born on 24 June 1838. Matejko's 'The Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God' (1873) is currently on display in a dedicated exhibition at the National Gallery. This is the first time that any work by a Polish artist has been exhibited there. https://nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/conversations-with-god-jan-matejkos-copernicus

#MaterialMondays
#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

This week's Material Monday comes from Dr Amy Char

This week's Material Monday comes from Dr Amy Charlesworth, Lecturer in Art History (FASS at The Open University), and marks Windrush Day (22 June).

'Handsworth Songs' from 1986 by Black Audio Film Collective is perhaps best understood through one of the collective members’ own words. Reece Auguiste wrote: ‘Diasporic cinema should be a cinema of appearances, evoking and marking new inscriptions’. The formal experimentation shown in this film has its roots in radical cinema which heightens the disjointed experiences of families arriving to the UK on the Empire Windrush in 1948 and the growing racism and police violence in the area of Handsworth, Birmingham, which came to a head in the 1980s.

'Where Did We Land', an essay film by Rabz Lansiquot (2019), examines the contemporary Black British experience for which an interviewee in Handsworth Songs perhaps best articulates to a BBC news crew: ‘there is no story in the riots, only ghosts of other stories’. A thread perhaps most obvious across both films is the continued violent treatment of the Windrush generation; racism fully articulated in the UK government scandal when in 2017 reports came to light about the deeply flawed and discriminatory British immigration system.

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

Today's (belated) #MaterialMonday comes from Dr Su

Today's (belated) #MaterialMonday comes from Dr Susie West, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Heritage, @ou_fass.

Scottish architect Colen Campbell was born on this day in 1676. His lasting contribution is the publication known as Vitruvius Britannicus.

Vitruvius Britannicus comprises three volumes of luxury, large format prints of houses and garden design (published 1715, 1717 and 1725). The image shows a detail of the formal gardens around Narford Hall, Norfolk, with a statue drawn bigger than the trees!

You can see more images from the Vitruvius Britannicus on the Royal Academy's website: https://royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/dedication-1.

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

Today's #MaterialMonday comes from Dr Margit Thofn

Today's #MaterialMonday comes from Dr Margit Thofner, Senior Lecturer in Art History at The Open University.

On 7 June 1495, Portugal and Spain agreed the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the Americas between them. See the vertical line on the left of the Cantino Planisphere (1502). The Treaty marked the beginning of European colonisation on the Americas.

At the OU, we study this map on one of our art history modules, Art and its Global Histories (http://open.ac.uk/courses/modules/a344).

The map is held by the Biblioteca Estense (https://edl.beniculturali.it/beu/850013655), in Modena, Italy.

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

Today’s #MaterialMonday (one day late due to the

Today’s #MaterialMonday (one day late due to the Bank Holiday) marks the Catholic feast of #CorpusChristi (3rd June) and comes from Carla Benzan, Lecturer in Art History at The Open University: Tanzio da Varallo's 'Saint Carlo Giving Communion to Plague Victims', c.1616.
The painting has even more impact in the midst of the ongoing Covid Pandemic. The painting represents Saint Carlo Borromeo, a famous church official in Milan during the Catholic Reformation, giving the host to people suffering from the plague. Borromeo was made a saint very quickly after his death in 1584, partly due to his efforts during the devastating plague of 1575-6.
The plague-stricken body in the lower left is barely legible, and its strangeness contrasts the pristine ledge of the altar-like marble ledge that Borromeo stands on. He is depicted with a pale, almost bloodless, face that echoes the white wafer of the host held above the paton. The juxtaposition draws links between the miraculous substance of Christ’s body in the host and the body of the contemporary saint who was said to embody Christ’s self-sacrifice.
The painting can be seen at the Church of Saints Gervasio e Protasio in Domodossola, Italy.

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

On this day in 1994, Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) wa

On this day in 1994, Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. This bronze bust was made by Ian Homer Walters in 2008, and is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. For more on this sculpture, see https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw133388/Nelson-Mandela?LinkID=mp86160&search=sas&sText=nelson+mandela&role=sit&rNo=0 #MaterialMondays
#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

A day later than usual (thanks to the Bank Holiday

A day later than usual (thanks to the Bank Holiday), this week's choice for #MaterialMondays is a Chinese propaganda poster featuring the famous writer Lu Xun (1881-1936). Lu is strongly associated with the May Fourth Movement.

In this 1976 poster, a young girl, wearing the scarf of the Little Red Guards, is shown preparing to write. Lu Xun appears behind her and Chairman Mao's 'Quotations' (the 'Little Red Book') is on the desk beside her.

The May Fourth Movement grew out of a student-led, anti-imperialist protest on 4th May 1919. The movement attracted radical writers and thinkers who wanted to forge a new China. Lu Xun was particularly admired by Mao Zedong, who would become the PRC's first leader in 1949.

Image: University of Westminster Archive, https://westminster-atom.arkivum.net/index.php/cpc-1-m-43

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

The #ChernobylNuclearDisaster happened 35 years ag

The #ChernobylNuclearDisaster happened 35 years ago today. In response, the German artist A.R. Penck (Ralf Winkler) produced this print, 'Munich After the Rain' (1986-7). The work references the radioactive rain that fell on Munich after the accident. #MaterialMondays

You can read more about this work on the Tate website: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/penck-munich-after-the-rain-p77199

Image: Estate of A. R. Penck, Tate Collection.

#ArtHistory
#OUArtHistory

Today's #MaterialMonday comes from Emma Barker, Se

Today's #MaterialMonday comes from Emma Barker, Senior Lecturer in Art History. As well as being St. George's Day, the 23rd April was JMW Turner’s (1775-1851) birthday. This work, 'Windsor Castle from the River' was painted by Turner c. 1807 and is now in the Tate Collection.

Of course, Windsor Castle was also the venue for HRH The Duke of Edinburgh's funeral on Saturday. Image via @artukdotorg.

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/windsor-castle-from-the-river-202532

#OUArtHistory #ArtHistory

On 12th April 1961, Yuri #Gagarin became the first

On 12th April 1961, Yuri #Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. In this #Soviet #Poster from 1974, an image of Gagarin in military dress is accompanied by the slogan 'Forward, the Komsomol Generation'*.

*The Komsomol was a Soviet youth organisation.

You can see the poster and read a little more about it on the Science Museum website: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co415060/poster-trans-as-forward-the-komsomol-generation-poster

Image: courtesy of the @sciencemuseum. #MaterialMondays
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Just a note to say that Leah R. Clark will be step

Just a note to say that Leah R. Clark will be stepping down as the Project Lead on Open Arts Objects, as she takes some leave and then leaves the OU for a new job at another institution. This means that things might look a little different on here as the Open Arts Objects team changes. You can still find lots of open access content over on our site ( link in bio).

Today's #materialmondays is a guest post by Lectur

Today's #materialmondays is a guest post by Lecturer in Art History at the OU, Amy Charlesworth. With the recent death of Sarah Everard here in the UK, violence against women is particularly on our minds, but it is not a new problem:

"These two artworks, set some twenty years apart, use performance and film to target the secondary violence perpetrated via mainstream press against women who have been subjected to gender-based violence. Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus staged a performance in 1977, In Mourning and In Rage on the steps of the City Hall in response to a serial killer who attacked women in the Los Angeles region. In 1999 Ursula Biemann travelled to the US-Mexico border to spend time with the many women who work in the maquiladora factories in Ciudad Juárez. This stretch of the border is known internationally as a site determined by the term ‘femicide’. Thousands of women have been violently assaulted and murdered over the decades, their assailants never found and prosecuted. Biemann sought to find alternative ways to discuss the representation of these women and girls in Performing the Border: a video-essay which examines the nexus of race, gender-based violence and capitalism."

For more info, Amy has a publication on Performing the Border: https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/50218/

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

Nowruz Mubarak! Did you celebrate the Persian New

Nowruz Mubarak! Did you celebrate the Persian New Year on the weekend? Today's #materialmondays is a #Mughal miniature by Mansur of a #zebra presented to Mughal emperor Jahangir during the #Nowruz festivities in March 1621. The painting is now housed in the V&A, read more here: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O16756/painting-mansur/

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters #onthisday #onthisdayinhistory

In honour of #stpatricksday this week, today's #Ma

In honour of #stpatricksday this week, today's #MaterialMondays comes from a 15th-century manuscript in the @britishlibrary. According to the BL "This image comes at the beginning of an account of a vision of St Patrick in Purgatory, as seen by William Staunton of county Durham on Friday, 20 September 1409 (ff 133r-148v). It is one of a number of medieval accounts of St Patrick’s visit to Purgatory, the entrance to which was located, according to legend, on Station Island in Lough Derg. Unusually in this image, the depiction of Patrick in Purgatory is combined with an image of Patrick trampling on a snake, a reference to the traditional belief that Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland."
image: St Patrick standing on a snake in Purgatory: England, 1451 (London, British Library, MS Royal 17 B XLIII, f 132v)

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

In 2019 for #IWD, we collaborated with #ArtUK and

In 2019 for #IWD, we collaborated with #ArtUK and invited the public to vote on a painting by a woman artist to be featured in an OAO film. You voted for #BridgetRiley's Kashan (today's #IWD2021 #materialmondays) and it resulted in a film (link in bio).
Read all about the OAO/ @artukdotorg collaboration here: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/bridget-rileys-kashan-a-new-open-arts-objects-film-from-the-open-university

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

Today's #materialmondays is a guest post from Susi

Today's #materialmondays is a guest post from Susie West, Senior Lecturer in Art History at the OU. A #sunflower for St David’s Day, greeting passers by on the stairs at #TredegarHouse, Casnewydd/Newport. An exceptional late 1600s home to the Morgan family.
#NationalTrust
#PlacesMatter
#stdavidsday

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

#tbt to 5 years ago when we did our very first #fi

#tbt to 5 years ago when we did our very first #filming ever for #openartsobjects.

#arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

#Repost @openarthistories with @get_repost
・・・
Join us THIS FRIDAY, February 26th at 1:00pm EST for Three Views on Open Educational Resources. One of our speakers will be @tinzarella sharing her work on @openartsobjects Link in Bio #openarthistories #opened #oer #oep #artxhistory #art #pedagogy #openartsobjects #open

Today's #materialmondays celebrates #snowdropseaso

Today's #materialmondays celebrates #snowdropseason! ‘Variation on a Snowdrop IV’ by Denis McBride, housed in the @ulstermuseum, Belfast. Have you been on any local walks to see the snowdrops?

Photo credit: National Museums Northern Ireland from @artukdotorg.

#spring #artandnature #arthistory #ouarthistory #artists #historyofart #OUrArtHistory #artstagram #artoftheday #arteducation #art #whyarthistorymatters #artmatters #arteducationmatters

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