Art is taking on new life on Sunday afternoons this month.
The Gallery Associates of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria present the seventh annual Sunday Lecture Series, The Visionary Eye: Surrealism from Europe to North America, running Sunday afternoons throughout March. Each illustrated lecture runs from 2 to 4 p.m. via Zoom.
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The first lecture is Understanding the Surrealist Imagination with Dr. Celia Rabinovitch on March 7. In this introduction to surrealism, Dr. Rabinovitch discusses the surrealist revolution in Europe in the 1920s and shows how its incendiary call to arms for the power of imagination is captured by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte and Joan Miro.
Wolfgang Paalen’s Northwest Passage with Colin Browne is the second lecture on March 14. During the summer of 1939, artist Wolfgang Paalen, his wife, the poet Alice Rahon, and their companion, Eva Sulzer, a photographer, travelled the length of the Pacific Northwest Coast to study the monumental and ceremonial art of the First Nations. Browne will consider the intersection between surrealism and Northwest Coast cultures such as those of the Haida, Ts’msyan, Pentlatch, and the Lekwungen speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.
The third lecture is Salvador Dalí’s Paranoiac Vision with Dr. Elliott H. King on March 21. In this presentation, Dr. King will discuss the trajectory of Dalí’s career from surrealism to mysticism, including the longevity of the ‘paranoiac-critical method’ – Dalí’s means of ‘voluntary hallucination,’ conceived in the early 1930s.
The final lecture is titled Women Surrealists Through Their Own Eyes with Dr. Celia Rabinovitch on March 28. This lecture introduces the work of several women artists associated with surrealism between the 1930s and 1960s in Europe and North America, looking at their roles in the movement and the originality of their ideas.
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The Sunday Lecture Series is a fundraiser for the AGGV.
Tickets cost $60 for the series for gallery members/students or $75 for non-members, each individual lecture, $20 for gallery members/students; $25 for non-members and are available online at https://aggv.ca/gallery-associates-sunday-art-lecture-series-2021/.
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