When most people think of the Renaissance they think of Italy, a sun-kissed realm of popes, piazzas and palazzos, a place filled with hugely talented artists like Leonardo and Michelagelo. A generation who in the 15th century left the Middle Ages behind and created a glorious new kind of art, more inventive and more exhuberant than anything seen before. When most people think of the Renaissance they don’t think of Britain ... The Renaissance is supposed to have passed us by. But that isn’t true. The British did have a Renaissance, and it was bold, it was beautiful and it was utterly brilliant. James Fox, A Very British Renaissance I: The Renaissance Arrives, BBC 2014
And perhaps the finest writer of them all. A movement that catapulted us out of the Middle Ages and laid the foundation of a modern British culture that still shapes us today. ibid.
Somewhere in about 1507 [Pietro] Torrigiano fetched up in what was reported to be Europe’s most Phillistine backwater. ibid.
[Pietro] Torrigiano’s tomb marked a turning point in British art. It brought a modern style to a medieval country. ibid.
And it wasn’t long before the finest minds of the Renaissance came knocking. Artists poured into Britain from all over Europe. ibid.
Hans Holbein arrived in England in the Autumn of 1526. He was just 29 years old. He came with no friends and family. He didn’t speak a word of the language, and he virtually had no money. But Holbein had big ambitions. Holbein had made his reputation as a portrait painter in the Swiss city of Basel. ibid.
Holbein’s women are just as fascinating: beautiful, ethereal and so elegantly anxious. ibid.
Holbein’s drawing as the first really lifelike faces in the whole of British history. ibid.
And Holbein captured this radical worldview in his most famous painting, one of the great paintings of the Renaissance, The Ambassadors. ibid.
And that tells us that this sundial was made for Cardinal Woolsey. ibid.
The ultimate Renaissance ambition: human flight. ibid.
A new generation began to discover Renaissance ideas for themselves. ibid.
When we did the Renaissance it was earthy, visceral, and at first a bit rough around the edges. ibid.
What the Queen [Elizabeth] showed the young man [ambassador] was a miniature, a small precious portrait meant for her eyes only. Discreet, private, even intimate. Like so much in the Elizabethan Renaissance this was an art that looked inwards, the art of a people obsessed with secrets. This was an age when poets wrote in codes, when artists filled paintings with mysterious symbols, and even buildings spoke in riddles. James Fox, A Very British Renaissance II: The Elizabethan Code
And in the Elizabethan age we discovered a new sense of who we were, and our place in the world. ibid.
The year 1564, the year the ambassador called on the Queen, was a special year in the history of the Renaissance. It was the year Michelangelo, the last great figure of the Florentine Renassiance, died. And it was also the year that William Shakespeare, the greatest figure of the British Renaissance, was born. ibid.
Hilliard’s miniatures were not meant for public display. They were private gifts, exhanged between lovers, held close to the heart. Iibid.
The Elizabethans loved complexity in all art forms. ibid.
John Dee: The man who would lead the country out of its isolation, Dee was what one might call a Renaissance man, methamatician, astrologer, scientist, secret agent, and he also liked to dabble in the supernatural … He soon became an adviser to the Queen herself. ibid.
What would this brave new world be like? ibid.
By the early 1600s Britain had undergone a cultural revolution. The medieval world had been left behind as new ideas from Renaissance Europe transformed the houses we built, the pictures we painted, and the literature we wrote. But we had more than import a foreign Renaissance; we had also created our own, one that in many ways reflected the British character: inquisitive, down to earth and often eccentric, and usually a bit rough around the edges. A Renaissance rooted not only in art but in ideas and discovery. James Fox, A Very British Renaissance III: Whose Renaissance?
Inigo Jones went on to become the first great British architect. ibid.
In Renaissance Italy the buildings of ancient Rome had inspired a revival of classical architecture, an architecture of columns, domes and pediments, symmetrical and perfectly proportioned. A style with which the British had only ever flirted. Inigo Jones was determined to change that. ibid.
At the Stuart’ court, however, this cultural and intellectual revolution was largely ignored, for they were too busy enjoying themselves. ibid.
Sir Anthony van Dyck had been born in Antwerp in 1599. He had natural talent, and painted this remarkable self-portrait when he was just 15. ibid.
If you asked van Dyck to paint your portrait, the first thing you’d get is a price list. ibid.
Over the next few years van Dyck’s studio knocked out dozens of such portraits. In van Dyck’s hands his wealthy sitters were transformed. Haughty poses, magnificent outfits, the British had never looked quite so stylish. Not for nothing are these known as ‘swagger portraits’. ibid.
A valuable package has just arrived. It contains a work of conceptual art by Martin Creed, one of Britain’s most celebrated artists. I bought this piece at Martin Creed’s Galary online. And it cost me £140. And I’ve been give specific instructions on how to open it … Work No. 88: A Sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball … Welcome to the puzzling, sometimes maddening world of conceptual art. This piece perhaps encapsulates why so many people struggle with conceptual art: it doesn’t seem to require much skill, it’s not particularly beautiful, and ultimately it feels like a bit of a rip-off. James Fox, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? BBC 2016
Objects became more and more like art works, and art works became more and more like objects. ibid.
And its first great innovator was the enigmatic Frenchman, Marcel Duchamps. ibid.
What mattered was the idea, the concept. ibid.
If you thought conceptual art was crap, here’s your proof: Piero Manzoni, Artist’s Shit, 1961. ibid.
Last year Christie’s sold a [30g] tin just like this, No. 54, for £182,500. And that made Manzoni’s turd, gram for gram, almost 200 times more expensive than gold. ibid.
Words can be more meaningful than images. ibid.
When it comes to conceptual art it’s the thought that counts. ibid.
Art isn’t simply about making things, it can also be about doing things. From the 1960s onwards a number of conceptual artists embarked on a spate of acts, performances and stunts, and put their own bodies centre-stage. ibid.
Katie Paterson deals with the biggest ideas imaginable: space, time, the cosmos. ibid.
Art without ideas is just decoration, isn’t it? ibid.
Thousands of years ago Britain was covered in forest. Deep dark primordial woodland that had grown undisturbed for thousands of years. These are the landscapes in which our predecessors made their first homes. But over the centuries we hacked our way out of the forests and built fields and pathways across the land. And we made other marks in the landscape. We made things of beauty, and in doing so turned nature into culture. James Fox, Forest, Field & Sky, BBC 2016
A marvellous kind of modern art that echoes our earliest creative impulses. ibid.
I’m going to discover art that is made from nature itself. ibid.
David Nash: Ash Dome: 22 ash trees mark out a perfect circle 30 feet wide. ibid.
More than anything else, it is the field that has shaped our landscape. ibid.
Andy Golsworth is best known for the ephemeral works he makes in the landscape. ibid.
From 1996, over a period of 7 years, he transformed 46 disused sheep folds across Cumbria into a series of beautiful outdoor sculptures. ibid.