This is Video of the Week from Wales Arts Review. We’ll be showcasing some of the best art in Wales with a new video shared every week. From music to drama and everything in between, videos will not be limited by medium. Today’s video looks at ‘The Rules of Art?’ an exhibition at National Museum Cardiff, with a focus on the still life genre.
This week we take a look at the one of the latest videos produced by National Museum Cardiff to promote its exhibition, ‘The Rules of Art?’, which has been running since October 2021. The museum has produced a series of clips exploring subjects including different artistic styles and the work and influences of contemporary artists.
The exhibition itself explores 500 years of art history and has been curated in a way that poses questions and confronts ideas about culture, identity and representation. Works by famed artists such as Picasso, Rembrandt, Thomas Jones, Gwen John and others are showcased to cultivate an experience that asks: what are the rules of art? And who sets them?
The latest video, which looks at still life, explores the history of a genre that the narrator explains was considered amongst the lowest forms of painting in the eighteenth century by the artistic establishment. The work of the twentieth century Welsh artist Gwen John is cited as a prominent example of the still life form, and her 1907-1909 painting ‘A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris’ – which forms part of this exhibition – is considered as a subversive form of the genre, that rather than capturing a subject, instead captures a moment in time.
You can catch works by Gwen John and other artists in ‘The Rules of Art?’ exhibition, which is showing at National Museum Cardiff until 4th June 2023.
