Lecture Notes: Valerie Fraser on Stubbs/Perez

Amador Perez, Drawing 1

It’s always good to have more than one pair of eyes focusing on a work of art. The other day after lecturing on 18th century landscape painting I arranged for us to look at a couple of drawings from our collection of Latin American art based on a painting by George Stubbs of 1786. The original, now in Tate Britain, shows a very successful team – jockey John Larkin on the racehorse Otho – both very stiff and proud against a stormy sky. 

200 years later, in 1986, Brazilian Amador Perez reworked aspects the picture on a very small scale - we were taking it in turns to get a really close squint - and guess what? Sharp-eyed students spotted things in one of the drawings that I'd never noticed: a white horse with no rider and just a suggestion of wings, and a horse and rider conflated into a sort of blurry centaur who instead of a riding crop holds a bow and arrow. Wonderful! Perez is extending ideas of the speed, power and man-horse teamwork involved in horse racing into the realms of mythology – of Pegasus the winged horse, and Sagittarius, the bow-and-arrow carrying centaur.

So thank you, students, for helping me see Perez more clearly, and thanks too to Perez for helping me to see Stubbs in a new light. Very satisfying.

George Stubbs, Otho with John Larkin up

 

Lecture Notes: Lisa Wade on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through the eyes of Hollywood

In this regular series, art historians from the University of Essex provide thoughts on highlights from their lecture portfolios. First up, Deputy Head of School Dr Lisa Wade pulls out some contemporary takes on a literary classic as part of our interdisciplinary 'Enlightenment' module.

Lecturer: Lisa Wade

Module: CS101-4-FY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT

I’ve just given the final lecture in the first year Enlightenment series for this term, on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein! We looked at a number of themes including creation and birthing and with this in mind also recommended this YouTube link for students new to the text (click on the link above). This is a grand scale moment in Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 film version of Mary Shelley’s novel. Obviously there are some liberties seized, rather than taken. I’m sure it’s not entirely reflective of nineteenth century midwifery (more swashbuckling than blood-soaked) but I do think that it really helps to consider some of the broader themes that we’ve been grappling with. Sir Ken is both mythological creator and birth ‘Mother.’ So we see him stripped to the waist, sweating over the task in hand, variously lifting and pulling, injecting and apparently electrocuting (how totally Hollywood!) as he commands the elements! The final triumphant ‘YES!’ is no doubt intended as a parallel to the elation felt by mothers after the process of labour. No swearing here, though! Certainly the ‘blood and gore-free’ delivery environment (it was all gelatine, I understand) prompted me to think of blood and gore free Christian nativity scenes...

But that’s a whole other (second-year!) lecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOcJwt8XB4M