Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 19, 2000Volume 28, Number 32



Unhappy with the sterile realism popular in British art prior to World War I, members of the Bloomsbury Group introduced more adventurous styles in such works as Duncan Grant's "Queen of Sheba."



Show celebrates adventurous 'Art of Bloomsbury'

Art works created by members of the famous Bloomsbury Group -- England's most well-known and sometimes controversial coterie of artists, writers and intellectuals -- will be featured in a major exhibition opening at the Yale Center for British Art on Saturday, May 20.

"The Art of Bloomsbury" is a comprehensive display of works produced by some of the group's most vivid artists and personalities, focusing on Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. The Yale Center for British Art is the final stop for the traveling exhibition, which includes masterpieces from the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Charleston Trust in East Sussex, England, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Curated by Richard Shone, a leading authority on the Bloomsbury Group, the exhibition includes many works that have never been seen in the United States. The Yale Center for British Art is the only East coast venue for the exhibition.

The lives, loves and sometimes scandalous intrigues of the artists, writers and intellectuals associated with the Bloomsbury Group have been the subject of increasing attention in recent decades. Highlighting the period from circa 1910 to 1925, "The Art of Bloomsbury" illustrates how members of the group were chiefly motivated by a strong reaction against an environment of academic and sterile realism prior to World War I, and were embracing what they considered to be the more adventurous art emerging from Paris, according to Shone. The Bloomsbury Group derived its named from a residential district near central London, where most of the members lived.

Members of the group not only introduced new styles in art and literature but also achieved fame for producing penetrating and passionate portrayals of each other, as well as their friends and lovers. Included in the exhibition are well-known images of the novelists Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Aldous Huxley, economist John Maynard Keynes and biographer Lytton Strachey. Works by Bell, Fry and Grant will be seen alongside a few examples by their contemporaries, such as Henry Lamb, Walter Sickert, Dora Carrington and William Roberts.

In addition to over 120 paintings, the exhibit also features works on paper and decorative objects from the Omega Workshop. Books published by the Hogarth Press, including all of Virginia Woolf's novels, will also be on view. The exhibition also includes photographs and archival material, including rarely seen photographs of Virginia Woolf by Julia Margaret Cameron and Man Ray.

Shone will present the opening lecture for the exhibition on Wednesday, May 24, at 5:15 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St. His talk, titled "Bloomsbury: For and Against," is free and open to the public. Shone is an associate editor of The Burlington Magazine and a writer on 19th- and 20th-century art. His books include "Bloomsbury Portraits," "Alfred Sisley" and "Walter Sickert." He has also written extensively on contemporary British artists such as Fiona Rae, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst.


Special events

The Yale Center for British Art will host a number of special events in connection with the exhibition. Some of these are also being held in conjunction with the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which begins on Friday, June 16.

To celebrate the literary aspect of the Bloomsbury Group, the center will hold a three-part book discussion series titled "Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury." The discussions will explore the Bloomsbury Group through the autobiographical writings of Woolf, who brings the relationships, delights and sorrows of the group's members to life in her books. The books featured will be "Moments of Being" on Wednesday, May 24; "To the Lighthouse" on Wednesday, June 7; and "Roger Fry: A Biography" on Wednesday, June 21. Hedda Kopf, adjunct associate professor of English at Quinnipiac College, will serve as the facilitator for the discussions. The discussion series is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more information and to register, call (203) 432-2858.

To kick off the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Yale Center for British art has organized a symposium titled "What is Bloomsbury?" during which leading scholars on Bloomsbury will evaluate the significance of the group. Among the guests at the June 16 event will be Julian Bell, a painter and art critic who is the grandson of Vanessa and Clive Bell.

Other events include two performances of "Vita & Virginia -- A Play by Eileen Atkins" on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 20 and 21; and "Bloomsbury on Screen," a film festival celebrating the life and times of members of the Bloomsbury Group, which will feature such works as "To the Lighthouse," "Mrs. Dalloway," "Carrington" and "A Room with a View." Further information on these events will appear in a future issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.

The American tour of "The Art of Bloomsbury" is sponsored by BP Amoco. The exhibition will remain on view through Sept. 3.

The Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. It is closed Mondays, except on the following dates: May 22 and June 19 and 26. The center will be closed on July 4. For more information, call (203) 432-2800 or visit the center's website at www.yale.edu/ycba.


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