TEACHERS’ RESOURCE JOURNEYS IN ART AND AMBITION CONTENTS 1: INTRODUCTION: JOURNEYS IN ART AND AMBITION 2: THE YOUNG DÜRER: CURATOR’S QUESTIONS 3: DÜRER’S LINES OF ENQUIRY 4: ARTISTIC EXCHANGE IN RENAISSANCE EUROPE 5: CROSSING CONTINENTS, CONVERGING CULTURES 6: LINES TRAVELLED AND DRAWN: A CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE PERSPECTIVE 7: ‘DÜRER ALS MODERNER EUROPÄER’ GERMAN LANGUAGE ACTIVITY 8: GLOSSARY 9: TEACHING RESOURCE CD Teachers’ Resource JOURNEYS IN ART AND AMBITION Compiled and produced by Niccola Shearman and Sarah Green Design by WJD SUGGESTED CURRICULUM LINKS FOR EACH ESSAY ARE MARKED IN ORANGE TERMS REFERRED TO IN THE GLOSSARY ARE MARKED IN PURPLE To book a visit to the gallery or to discuss any of the education projects at The Courtauld Gallery please contact: e: [email protected] t: 0207 848 1058 WELCOME The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an exceptional programme of activities suitable for young people, school teachers and members of the public, whatever their age or background. We offer resources which contribute to the understanding, knowledge and enjoyment of art history based upon the world-renowned art collection and the expertise of our students and scholars. I hope the material will prove to be both useful and inspiring. Henrietta Hine Head of Public Programmes The Courtauld Institute of Art This resource offers teachers and their students an opportunity to explore the wealth of The Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection by expanding on a key idea drawn from our exhibition programme. Taking inspiration from the exhibition The Young Durer: Drawing the Figure (17 October 2013 – 12 January 2014), the focus of this teachers’ resource is ‘Journeys in Art and Ambition’. Resources are written by early career academics and postgraduate students from The Courtauld Institute of Art with the aim of making the research culture of this world renowned, specialist university accessible to schools and colleges. Essays, articles and activities are marked with suggested links to subject areas and key stage levels. We hope teachers and educators of all subjects will use this pack to plan lessons, organise visits to The Courtauld Gallery and for their own professional development. Sarah Green Gallery Learning Programmer The Courtauld Institute of Art Cover image: Albrecht Dürer A Wise Virgin (recto), 1493 Pen and brown ink, 291 x 200 mm This page (detail): Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, Unless otherwise stated all images Nuremberg, from Hartmann Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Woodcut, 442 × 300 mm, The Courtauld Gallery, London British Museum, London 1: INTRODUCTION: Journeys in Art and Ambition Niccola Shearman Albrecht Dürer was an artist of remarkable home town of Nuremberg. The drawings nature and the human form. Experiments skill and ambition renowned for his position and prints on show, both by the young with the correct rendering of anatomical at the crossroads between medieval and traveller and by masters whose work and expressive detail reveal how Dürer Renaissance art in Germany. As a young he encountered along the way, offer an learned to map his own body in order to apprentice, his deep curiosity for artistic intriguing trace of a physical journey achieve a new naturalism that exceeds the expression led him repeatedly into new throughout the German lands (known at work of his predecessors. territory, both geographical and technical. the time as the Holy Roman Empire) of Dürer’s formative years are the focus of the late 15th century; and down over the Taking Dürer’s own paths to invention this exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, Alps into Italy. At the same time, we are as the starting point, this accompanying where the extent of his precocious talent witness to a fascinating journey of self- booklet for teachers and students aims is revealed in a series of ambitious works discovery, as the artist’s acute observation to explore the variety of ways in which executed while travelling as a journeyman of the techniques and styles of other artists travel broadens the mind and trains the after the years of workshop training in his combines with his own intent exploration of eye of the artist. Four illustrated essays each explore a different angle on the workshop traditions which formed the THE COMBINING OF central theme, both on the trail of artists background to Dürer’s own progressive making journeys that cover vast distances advances, the essay offers insights into NATURE WITH THE or navigating the micro-maps of human the growing production of ‘brand name’ ‘ARTIFICE’ OF ART (...) communication and emotion, and including pictures for an open market; and, in the MARKS ANOTHER MOMENT a history of the international conditions case of the highly accomplished Lucas of patronage and trade. From small Cranach, an exceptionally successful one. OF MODERNITY IN THE works made for private devotion to grand FORMATION OF DÜRER’S altarpieces and ephemeral experiences, The international history of the Courtauld the artworks in focus will be considered Institute and its gallery provides the IDENTITY. in terms of their individual journeys and background to ‘Crossing Continents’, ambitious destinations. which looks at works originally owned by the Austrian Emigré Count Antoine ‘Dürer’s Lines of Enquiry’ follows the Seilern. This essay reflects on the varied path of the young artist’s Wanderjahre, artistic products of journeys which take the ‘performance’ at the heart of his and examines the manner in which he the form of voluntary explorations on the ”encounters. Two recent projects take the set himself on the route to international one hand, and on the other, of forced idea of a map as their starting point: one fame through the medium of drawing journeys endured by exiles from Nazi stretching from the Arctic Circle down as far and the early reprographic arts of Germany. After Dürer’s time, the attraction as Greece, and the other on a considerably printmaking. Following his early career of Italy for the maturing apprentices from more intimate scale that traces lines by from an introduction to the world of the north had resulted in something of a means of touch. By preserving the element learning during his apprentice years to the pilgrimage. Both setting out from Antwerp of chance, the artist’s process echoes the influential encounters with the art of his some fifty years apart, the painters Pieter openness of the physical journey, leading Italian Renaissance contemporaries, this Bruegel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens to unforeseen discoveries and a lasting essay considers the creative consequences approached their ‘Wanderjahre’ with very trace of mystery in the works in question. of his multiple journeys and the constant different ambitions, and with outcomes spirit of enquiry with which he negotiated which reveal how each used the experience It might well have become something of a the traditions and innovations of the to progress their art in the way that best cliché to say that travel broadens the mind, world around him. A discussion of Dürer’s suited their intentions. While one spent his but in the case of these and countless other historical position between the medieval time observing nature and in the process artists the evidence is that the experience and the early-modern era pays attention exploring the very beginnings of landscape expands immeasurably the creative to his advanced economic awareness and art, the other set his sights firmly on the interaction of eye, body and mind that on his status as an independent artist. In artistic achievements of the Renaissance inform the production of any work of art. this context, his practice of studying his masters, and in due course was to become In relating the early achievements of the own form, and the manifestation of this something of an international celebrity young Albrecht Dürer to the wider themes in the famous self-portraits, are seen as with serious diplomatic influence. The third of travel in its most open-ended sense, our progressive factors in his epoch-making example leaps ahead by four centuries to aim in this collection of essays is to provide career. the exuberant masterpiece of a twentieth- some useful departure points for artistic century admirer of Rubens which was the and historical enquiry. Introducing us to the international culmination of years of deprivation for the conditions of trade and patronage behind exiled Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. some of the key art works in the Courtauld Travelling back to the life-affirming style Gallery, the essay ‘Artistic Exchange of the Baroque age first encountered as in Renaissance Europe’ addresses the a child in his native Vienna, Kokoschka’s widespread network which fuelled monumental ceiling painting celebrates developments during the era preceding the depiction of the human form in scenes and during Dürer’s career. Again here from classical mythology which offer a the main circulation of images and personal statement on the cultural journey ideas – speeded up by technological of humankind. developments in book printing - ran in both directions along the major trade In exploring the creative potential of ‘Lines routes of the Netherlands, Germany and travelled and drawn’, a contemporary artist the Italian south. However the cultural introduces us to his varied practices which melting pot of Venice also opened the focus on the ephemeral nature of art as a sights of artists to the exotic products process rather than as a fixed end-product. Image: Albrecht Dürer arriving there from the East. Described Concerned with human relationships, Self-portrait (verso), c. 1491-92 here as an international ‘hub’ for the and the threads of communication that Pen and ink, 204 x 208 mm exchange of ideas and of technical connect people both near and far, the GraphischeSammlung der Universität, Erlangen innovations, the Venetian market in luxury journeys undertaken by Kimbal Quist materials and pigments brought the city Bumstead employ a variety of media that its particular reputation for an excellence include painting and drawing as well as CURRICULUM LINKS: KS3+ in all things to do with colour.