To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Currently on at The Scottish National Gallery, is an exhibition travelling from Amsterdam called Dreams of Nature: Symbolism from Van Gogh To Kandinsky which was at the Van Gogh Museum. It isn’t coming to England at all, so if you are not already in Scotland and want to see it you will have to travel […]
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OCA tutor (and figurative painter) Jim Cowan takes on the contemporary art scene below. What do you think of what he says? Does the Tate Modern need to change its name? Is there a need in London for a new Tate Gallery? Deep down in the bowels of Tate Modern, three large oil storage tanks […]
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The Fleming Collection Gallery is the venue to see Scottish painting in London. The collection originally formed by Flemings, the merchant bank can be found in Barclay Street in Mayfair and shows Scottish art from 1770 to the present day. The most popular artists to be found there are the four Scottish colourists Peploe, Fergusson, […]
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If you had a spare £10,000 …..which art work (or artworks?) in the Royal Academy Summer exhibition would you spend it on? I always enjoy this event, the good, the bad and the ugly, and entertain myself with a fantasy budget and come out with a few imaginary purchases that I have to justify to […]
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Jim Cowan, OCA tutor and blogger sees red. ‘This is Damien Hirst’s third exhibition in London this year, this time at the White Cube Gallery. The first was of his Spot Paintings, some of which were exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery and the rest simultaneously at other venues throughout the world. As an ambassador for […]
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Picasso’s Vollard Suite, a collection of 100 etchings commissioned and named after the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard, is on show in the department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. This complete set was recently donated to the Museum and its timely exhibition alongside the Picasso and Modern British Artists at the Tate […]
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Students and tutors assembled at Tate Britain to see ‘Picasso and Modern British Art’, the latest must see exhibition in London which is generating interest among discerning visitors. This exhibition looks at a selection of British artists who had been influenced or inspired by the work of Picasso and in so doing provides us with […]
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“You seem to have started with the final act, my dear” Lucian Freud is said to have remarked on seeing Damian Hirst’s ‘A Thousand Years’ (1990) which he made a year after leaving Goldsmiths College of Art. This artwork consists of two joined glass vitrines in which a life and death cycle is being played […]
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James Cowan tells us the best exhibition so far this year at the Royal Academy is by one of is founder members, Johan Zoffany (1733 – 1810). Do you agree? In a century of great artists such as Gainsborourgh, Reynolds and Hogarth, Zoffany is the least well known to the general public. Born in Germany, […]
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After the publicity machine of Hockney begins to die down, along comes a quieter exhibition: Mondrian and Nicholson at the Courtauld Gallery. Here Jim Cowan previews the exhibition in preparation for our study visit. In 1938 the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, whose work had appeared in the Nazi degenerate art exhibition ‘Entartete Kunst’, left his […]
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