Midlands Art Papers 1 (2017/18)
Midlands Art Papers is a collaborative online journal, working between the University of Birmingham and 13 partner institutions to research and explore the world class works of art and design in public collections across the Midlands.
In depth: Sophie Anderson, a cosmopolitan Victorian artist in the Midlands
Victorian painter Sophie Anderson was one of the first living female artists to have her work purchased by a British public art gallery. Kate Nichols explores her work and its Midlands connections.
Kate Nichols article
On exhibit: Face to Face (Herbert Art Gallery and Museum)
Curator Martin Roberts explores the key ideas behind the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum's 2017 portraiture exhibition
Martin Roberts article
In depth: Johannes Matthaeus Koelz, Thou Shalt Not Kill! (1930-37)
To what extent can one commemorate the dead of war without commemorating the legacy of militarism? Eleanor Hill argues that Thou Shalt Not Kill! evokes a struggle between direct condemnation and sentimental memorialization.
Eleanor Hill article
On exhibit: Thomas Bock and Edmund Clark (Ikon Gallery)
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll contextualises two forthcoming exhibitions at Ikon which juxtapose portraits of and by violent criminals, in the nineteenth-century penal colony of Tasmania, and Edmund Clark’s contemporary photography at Grendon Prison.
K. von Zinnenburg Carroll article
Object in focus: Terry Frost, Madrigal (1994)
Matthew Rampley discusses the place of Terry Frost’s painting Madrigal (Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum) in his career, and its relation to abstract painting elsewhere in post-war Britain and beyond.
Object in focus: Pietro Magni, Reading Girl (c.1861)
Claire Jones examines the representation of children and adolescents in sculpture, focusing on Italian nineteenth-century realism in sculpture, reproduction and exhibition histories.
Object in focus: Károly Kotász, Stormy Landscape (c.1928)
This article tells the story of a disabled Hungarian artist, who was once a star of galleries in Berlin, London and Paris. His painting Stormy Landscape with Blue and Red Figures was donated to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1940. Nóra Veszprémi questions how artistic success is made and maintained.
Nóra Veszprémi
Object in focus: Eugene Palmer, Wanting to Say I (1997)
New Art Gallery Walsall
Greg Salter explores Eugene Palmer’s painting of a black woman who looks out at us from what appears to be the hull of a ship. Inspired by a photograph from 1930s America, this is a painting about movement (of slavery and migration) and finding a sense of selfhood and history across time.
Greg Salter article