Pop Art on both sides of the Atlantic
Tuesday March 13 , 2018 at the Cultural Centre ( Casa Cultura ) Calle Granada , Nerja . 6pm ( Doors open at 5pm and tickets only available on the night ). Visitors are most welcome . Entrance € 10 . A fully illustrated lecture in English by Ray Warburton OBS . Sponsored by Blevins Franks .
Pop art arose simultaneously in the UK and USA . Perhaps Andy Warhol was right when he said everyone was reading the same comics . While British Pop art was heavily influenced by the consumer boom and the films and music of the USA , it had its own identity , which was often ironic and self-reflective . American Pop art had the superstars including Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein , who simply used the formats of advertising , mass production , Warhol magazines and comics , to play back to the public what the public was already eating , watching or thinking . This lecture will use a collection of Pop art paintings to explain the differences between British and American Pop art , and why some British artists , after trying it , distanced themselves from it . This lecture will be jargon-free with audience engagement , backed by high quality slides .
About Ray Warburton
Ray Warburton studied art history at the Open University and the University of Buckingham . He is a Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern , who leads public tours of all the permanent displays and also undertakes exhibition tours . He is an experienced public speaker who has given presentations and lectures on a range of themes to diverse audiences over many years .
Events
The Arts Society Nerja
George Orwell : Life with my father
Tuesday March 27 , 2018 at The Cultural Centre ( Casa Cultura ) Calle Granada , Nerja . 6pm ( Doors open at 5pm and tickets only available on the night ). Visitors are most welcome . Entrance € 10 . A full illustrated lecture in English by Richard Blair . Sponsored by Ole Optica .
“ I will be working through his life and the salient points from childhood , school , Burma , tramping in London and Paris , his visit to Wigan and his time in the Spanish Civil War , his writings ( novels and travelogues ) illness ,
George Orwell
BBC , his huge output of essays and articles , writing his last two novels , my life with him in London and on the Island of Jura and finally his death . I intersperse this with random readings from some of his more significant essays and poems .”
About Richard Blair
The last years of Orwell ’ s life are generally thought to have been heroically grim : the privations of World War II in London , his wife Eileen ’ s early death on the operating table , the shortages of the post-war years , his self-exile from London to the cold isolation of a primitive farmhouse on the Isle of Jura off the Scottish coast , the dogged composition of his nightmare masterpiece “ 1984 ,” much of it while he was bedridden with T . B ., the final agony of his illness in a series of sanitoria , death in 1950 at forty-six years old . No wonder he acquired the posthumous title of St . George . Most Orwell readers know that he and Eileen adopted a son , Richard . And that ’ s about all they know of Richard Blair ( George Orwell was the pseudonym of Eric Blair ), who has kept his silence throughout his life — until now . So who is Orwell ’ s son ? A retired engineer , who lives in a picturesque village in Warwickshire , and who has entirely happy memories of having spent his first six years in the company of the author of “ Homage to Catalonia ” and “ Animal Farm .”
Orwell , by his son ’ s account , was a wonderful father . He gave Richard his devoted if rather rugged attention , and a degree of freedom that readers of contemporary parenting books would consider actionable . A small boy ’ s life with the great and dying writer was an endless adventure in the wonders and rigors of the natural world around their country house , even if most of the shared experiences Richard still remembers were of neardisasters . One fishing expedition to a shepherd ’ s hut on the remote part of Jura ended in a storm , with Orwell , Richard , and his three cousins nearly drowning in the Gulf of Corryvreckan . Orwell , struggling in the whirlpool that had capsized their boat , noticed a seal watching them and remarked , “ Curious thing about seals , very inquisitive creatures .”
That ’ s the voice that described crawling through a coal mine in northern England and taking a bullet in the throat in Spain : detached , a bit austere , but alert and alive to the world . No one ever accused Orwell of being sentimental . In fact , he has a reputation for personal reserve , even coldness , and one feminist critic based a whole book on the premise that Orwell ’ s pessimistic vision was a product of misogyny and male dominance .
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