March 01, 2020

Events happening today

1. 8
   AM

   

   Gardens As Art

   
   

   March 01, 2020 08:00 AM

   This event began 2020-03-01 and repeats every week on Sunday until 2020-03-29

   
   

   Gardens As Art: Aesthetic Journeys around the World runs Sundays in March
   Popular Sunday Lecture Series returns to the AGGV
    
   The Sunday Art Lecture Series at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has the theme, Gardens as Art:
   Aesthetic Journeys around the World and features the approach of professors of art history to four
   famous gardens located in France, Italy, Egypt and Japan.
   The illustrated lecture series, a perennial sellout, will take place over the course of four Sunday
   afternoons: March 1, 8, 22 and 29, from 2:00 to 4:00 at the AGGV.
   In the first lecture entitled Japan in Giverny: Monet’s Impressionist Garden, Melissa Berry will
   explore Claude Monet’s horticultural design. When Claude Monet moved to Giverny in 1883, his
   objective was creation. Thus, Monet’s largest, most immersive masterwork was born, or rather
   cultivated. He approached his land with an artist’s eye to establish a colourful, everchanging
   garden. Monet’s horticultural design was determined by his aesthetic influences, especially Japan.
   Botanical Art: Cairo’s Matarea Garden by Marcus Milwright, is the second lecture in the series.
   During the Medieval period the finest balsam oil was traded for its weight in gold. The source of this
   precious substance was a walled garden owned by the sultan of Egypt, and located in the town of
   Matarea just outside of Cairo. This talk uses visual sources and texts, including European travel
   accounts and Coptic religious writings, to reconstruct the topography of the garden in the centuries
   prior to the demise of the last balsam tree in 1615.
   Betsy Tumasonis will lecture on Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Giardino dei Tarocchi”: A French Artist and
   her Italian Sculpture Garden. Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002) was a French artist and sculptor
   who associated in the early 1960s with the French Nouveaux Realistes group. She experimented
   with assemblages made of bizarre collections of objects, evoking a Dadaist sense of the absurd. In
   1980 she began work on her “Giardino dei Tarocchi” (Tarot Garden) in Tuscany. She filled the
   park-like property with enormous colourful otherworldly figures based on images from the Tarot
   deck (fortune-telling cards). A stroll through the garden is a magical experience.
   The final lecture by David Young. is called Shibusa Aesthetics: Spontaneity in Japanese Gardens.
   The goal of a traditional Japanese garden is to re-create nature on a small scale and in an
   artistic way that improves upon nature. Keeping in mind that the word “art” comes from the
   same word as “artificial,” how can something be natural and artificial at the same time? This
   interesting challenge was met in Japan with the concept of shibusa, which can be translated
   as “restrained spontaneity” or “spontaneity of effect.”
   The Sunday Lecture Series is a fundraiser for the AGGV by the Gallery Associates whose role is to
   volunteer, promote and support the AGGV through fundraising events and programs. Proceeds
   from the series go toward supporting Gallery exhibitions and programs.
   Daniel Mato, professor emeritus of art history, University of Calgary, will moderate the sixth annual
   Sunday Lecture Series.
   Tickets for the entire series cost $100 for AGGV members/any student or $120 for non-members.
   Each individual lecture costs $30 for AGGV members/any student; $35 for non-members. Tickets
   are available online at https://aggv.ca/sunday-art-lecture-2020/ and at the AGGV, 1040 Moss
   Street.
   

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