Art and Photography in London

In the light of an up and coming exhibition at the National Gallery London - "Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present", I came across this article entitled “The Camera comes of Age” from The Independent by Adrian Hamilton published on Saturday 27 October 2012. Both events mirror what I was lecturing about on 21st October 2012 at the MIPP Convention 2012. This article take us on a virtual tour through a good number of notable exhibitions set in illustrious galleries in London which stress the medium as a fine art and sheds light on various photographers who earned a name in the field.

The Camera comes of Age

Next week the National Gallery mounts its first major photography show. It's a decisive moment that marks the medium's overdue acceptance as fine art

By ADRIAN HAMILTON

Saturday 27 October 2012

Of all the great art galleries in the world, the National Gallery in London has proved one of the last to either embrace photography as a branch of art or as a fit subject for exhibition. Which makes its first proper show of the relationship between photography and the Old Masters, opening next week, something of an occasion. It joins, by coincidence, a veritable host of other photographic exhibitions at the present, Davidson, Eggleston and others from the Sixties and Seventies at the Barbican, William Klein and Daido Moriyama at Tate Modern and Hiroshi Sugimoto at Pace in London, with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams to follow at Somerset House and the Maritime Museum, next month. Rarely can an audience be quite as well provided for as London at the moment.

The National Gallery may be late on the scene but its timing could hardly be bettered. With photography increasingly recognised as an art in its own right, prints from the original negatives by well-known photographers regularly sell for £5,000 or £10,000 each. When limited-number prints from big names such as Richard Avedon are concerned, the sums leap to as much as £500,000 and, in the case of the German photographer Andreas Gursky, between £3m and £4m, as museums compete with modern-art collectors for the privilege of owning iconic images of our time.

Photography has always vied with painting for a position as a fine art in itself. What the National Gallery is now seizing on – quite rightly – is the development in the last decades of an art photography which deliberately looks back to the high art of the past and the Victorian pioneers of photography as its model. Large in scale, often monumental in intent, the works now form a genre all of their own. Placing them side by side with their forebears makes a wonderful exhibition.

Why art photography should have developed in this way is an open question. It has a lot to do with advances in technology which have enabled artist photographers to size up their deep single shots into life-scale and to control the colour and the textures in printing. The best photographers have always taken care of the printing process but we now have a generation that uses technology as painters have traditionally used the brush, to refine, to elaborate and to deepen the effect. It goes deeper than this, however. Over the last 30 years, and even more in the aftermath of 9/11 and the midst of recession, there is a retreat from post-Modernism, with its obsession for irony, jokes and a multi-faceted approach to art, to something much more detached and classical. Just as many artists after the wars of the last century stepped back to a kind of cool abstraction, so many artists today are searching for a kind of melancholic sobriety, a sense of the frozen moment which photography is uniquely able to provide.

Which is where photography entered in the first place. From early on the young discipline saw itself as a form of art and contender with paintings for seriousness. The major figures of the Victorian period – Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Gustave Le Gray and the others represented in the National Gallery show alongside their painting models and their modern imitators – quite consciously sought not just the dignity of art but its moral thrust. Cameron, in particular, during the late 1860s and early 1870s walked hand-in-hand with the Pre-Raphaelites and the art of her time in an effort to combine realistic detail with ethereal sentiment. Place her portraits, as the exhibition does, side by side with the paintings of George Frederic Watts and you see precisely the same purpose.

So with the still lives of Roger Fenton and other photographers of the mid-19th century, which aim to replicate both the glowing realism of 17th-century painters but also their indications of decay and the fragility of beauty. Look at the seascapes of Gustav Le Gray from the 1850s and you see an artist reaching out to portray the sublime in the way that Turner was doing.
With nudes, of course, the realism became a problem. While photographers such as Rejlander bathed their photos in the aura of classical statues and the painting of Ingres and Botticelli, the photograph gave the female form a living reality which shocked some and excited others. Art and pornography merged in a way that even the most erotic works of Velazquez and Goya could never have.

And it was the truth of the real which took photography away from art in the last century to pursue its own courses in the photojournalism made possible by the 35mm camera, in the avenues opened up by magnification and skewed viewpoint and in the colour film introduced in the 1930s. For most of the 20th century, photography didn't vie with painting or refer back to it. It felt it was itself the art of modernity with no need for a backward or even a sideways look.
The radical thing about the contemporary photographers assembled by the National Gallery is not just that they look backwards to the traditions of painting and early photography for their models, but they do it by glorying in the realism which makes photography unique. Their works ranges from the masters of the monumental such as the Canadian Jeff Wall and the German Thomas Struth to the more intimate studies of bathers of Rineke Dijkstra from Holland and the exploding still lives of Ori Gersht from Israel.

Wall famously showed his life-sized narrative picture The Destroyed Room, based on Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus in the form of a negative, back-lit, in a gallery window in 1978. Struth makes his pictures as large but they are of scenes in which the people are dwarfed by the space so that the viewer both looks on and in. Sarah Jones enlarges her pictures of flowers to three or four times life-size so that every detail is shown and the whole given huge presence. Dijkstra sharpens the detail of her life-size pictures of bathers by using fill-in flash photography. Richard Learoyd employs plain, neutral backgrounds and suffused lighting to give his figures sculptural presences.

Magnification on this scale has the effect of bringing the viewer directly into the picture as much a participant as an observer. It encompasses the viewer as she or he stands before it. The heightened realism only adds to the effect. Where painters had to work up their paintings in layers and in meticulous detail, the photographer has realism at his or her instant disposal. The drawback of having to complete in a single shot rather than being able, like a painter, to keep returning to the canvas, is turned to advantage. The subject is caught in a moment that, properly composed, communicates something beyond the face or the landscape that is presented. They become faces in your face, impossible not to be gripped by.

The National Gallery exhibition is only part of the story, of course. Where the contemporary artists in its survey of "photography past and present" are bent on bettering the photographic process by imitating painting, other artists are bent on bettering the painting process by drawing in photography. The history of contemporary art, indeed, could be written in the way in which painters, following the lead of Gerhard Richter and the example of the Pop Artists, have incorporated photography into their creative process and how photographers, learning from modern painters, have pushed their craft away from realism into the realms of abstraction. Photography and painting, which seemed to go their separate ways through most of the last century, are now, thanks to Richard Hamilton, Gerhard Richter, David Hockney and many others, now merging.

Anyone interested in the uses of digital photography in art and the possibilities opened up by inkjet printing need only slip within the National Gallery to the Sunley Room to see the late Richard Hamilton works, in which the artist both pays homage to the past masters and grapples with the challenge posed by the realism of modern reproductive technology. What fascinated Hamilton, as it has intrigued Hockney, is the extent to which digital enables the painter to compose and sketch graphic work and, in the printing, to achieve hyper-realistic effects of colour.

Go to almost any show of a contemporary artist and what you are likely to see is he or she adopting the technology of photography, and often its language, to express their conceptual art. At Dulwich Art Gallery, the contemporary artist Clive Head has installed across one wall of a room of Nicolas Poussins, a large scale painting of a rail terminus. Part of his From Victoria to Arcadia, it is a painting of the most precise detail but also of unnerving space, a narrative of passengers and anonymity based on photographs of Victoria tube station but composed and painted with a traditional eye.

It has been colour as much as anything that has really brought art and photography together. In the era of black-and-white, the photographer reigned supreme in his own field. Ansel Adams, whose photographs of water and the sea go on display at London's Maritime Museum next month, showed that photography could achieve in detail and in depth the sense of the sublime in nature which painters had so long sought, and in its own way do it better. With faster film and lighter cameras, photography became the means of commenting on the human condition and on events in a way which painting seemed too contrived to compete. The photographers on display at the Barbican's current show of pictures of the 1960s and 1970s barely gave traditional art a passing glance as they sought composition in what Cartier Bresson called the "decisive moment".

As the techniques of exposure and printing improved, so photographers became more "arty" themselves. Just a few hundred yards along Piccadilly from the National Gallery's show you can see the seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto – to me the finest art photographer of our day – hung alongside Mark Rothko's late dark abstracts at Pace's new Mayfair Gallery. While at one in horizontal composition, they are quite different in texture. Where Rothko works in paint, building it up layer by layer to achieve his effects, Sugimoto is all about light and exposure. Rothko encloses his pictures firmly within the frame, Sugimoto's studies of the sea's horizon seem to extend way beyond the frame into infinity. Both are alike in their ambition to make their separate forms reach beyond representation into the absolute.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of scale, Daido Moriyama, on show at Tate Modern with William Klein, blows up the close-ups of tights and lips to create works of abstract force but human and erotic resonance. What the painter has to do with imagination, the photographer can do by the magnification of detail. Ansel Adams did it with trees, contemporary photographers do it with the stuff of urban life.

Colour, introduced to film in the Thirties, changed things, as an exhibition due next month at Somerset House hopes to show. For purists such as Cartier Bresson it was a dilution of the realism of black and white photography. But for painters it took photography into the glossy surfaces and hectic pace of the new consumer world. With it, photography joined advertising, colour magazines, flashy billboards and brightly-coloured plastic. It was the world in which the old distinctions between genres had no place. All could be used as one in the portrayal of life.

And yet there remains something distinct about photography, in its realism and in its relationship with the viewer. Go to any exhibition and you will see people, young and old, responding without self-consciousness to the picture before them. There's something about the reality of photographs that needs no explanation. Which is why so many painters are now incorporating it into their works.

Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta - The Sunday Times review by Kenneth Zammit Tabona

With the decision taken by the government to move the national art collection back to Auberge d’italie from what is still popularly known as Admiralty House in South Street comes the publication of Hilary Spiteri’s Academic Artistic Training in Early British Malta.

This is an erudite tome that required a humongous amount of research to complete and which casts a revelatory light on a period that was initially obscured in historical turmoil and later absorbed in the great British ideal as laid down by the visionary Prince Consort.

What comes out loud and clear is what a debt of gratitude we owe to Canon (later Bishop) Francesco Saverio Caruana who was, besides Malta’s premier patriot, hailed as Malta’s Maecenas and who founded and directed the School of Design within the ambit of Malta’s re- established university in 1803 after the disagreeable Napoleonic interlude, which flourished till Caruana’s installation as Bishop of Malta in 1822.

Born in 1759 into a wealthy Żebbuġ family with strong aristocratic connections, Francesco Saverio was a great patron of the arts and was the prime political mastermind during the turbulent period which saw the final days and expulsion of the Order of Malta, the Napoleonic aberration and the insurrection of the Maltese against it. He was also the chief negotiator who facilitated the transition of Malta from a semimonastic sovereign principality to becoming a jewel in the British King’s crown.

Much has been written about Mgr Caruana, who still remains a controversial figure in Maltese history depending which end of the political lens one observes him from.

To have received an accolade from the notoriously difficult and abrasive Governor Thomas Maitland, is enough to show that this statesman brought peace to Malta at a time when Europe was in conflagration.

His elevation to Bishop of Malta in 1822 marked the beginnings of the accords between Church and State which, believe it or not, are extant even today. His biography was written by his great nephew the Count of Beberrua, Vincenzo Caruana Gatto and is a primary source of reference in Spiteri’s treatise.

This tome proves two diametrically unrelated theories: one that art is interderivative and that nothing can exist in isolation. Trying to prove otherwise reminds me of those stories of babies raised by wolves ( not Romulus and Remus, of course) who in their post- pubescence had to learn the rudiments of being and acting like a human being.

Therefore, the history and development of art is like case law; dependent on previous experience whatever anyone says.

The other theory is that art and politics are and will always be inextricably linked. In Malta this is amply proved by the establishment of that august institution which still exists today: the Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, which though it may sound anachronistic today, represented at its foundation in 1852 the latest in modern academia in accordance with the theories devised by Albert of Saxe- Coburg and Gotha, husband of Queen Victoria and universally known as the Prince Consort.

It is indeed intriguing to note that the society was set up a year after the great exhibition in London which was by all accounts epochmaking at many levels and which established the British Empire as the primus inter pares of European states.

The remote outpost of Malta was indeed blessed to have been included in the prince’s intellectually sound plans. It is interesting to note that this was before the opening of the Suez Canal – an event that transformed the economic history of Malta forever, turning a hitherto fossilised and still ecclesiastical ruling class into a dynamic mix with the newly established plutocratic tycoons who established great fortunes in their dealings across the Mediterranean form Gibraltar to Alexandria.

Visually the book’s impact is minimal and has no pretensions to being what can be termed a coffee table type feast of design and colour. What it does have is a wealth of drawings mistily by Raffaele Caruana that are found in the five portfolios consisting of 440 works found in the reserve collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts.

I was also intrigued that the plaster casts we have all gazed and studied at the School of Art, which was set up in 1926, has the same plaster casts that were purchased by Francesco Saverio Caruana for his School of Design; this is providential, as towards the middle of the 19th century it became increasingly difficult to use live models as Roman Catholic bigotry and Victorian prurience joined forces to eventually make this impossible.

Although the casts replicate great works of art like the Apollo of the Belvedere and a number of Parthenon friezes, to mention but a few, there is absolutely no comparison – and believe me I know first- hand – to the real thing.

No matter how artfully lights are placed a plaster cast remains what it is and can never ever remotely replace the real thing. Yet for decades upon decades Maltese artists had to make do.

As Sandro Debono, senior curator of the National Museum of Fine Arts, points out in his foreword, Spiteri is the latest in the growing number of researchers whose interest in the National Collection has enriched our knowledge of the history of art in Malta.

Again, with the reestablishment of the History of Art Department at the University as late as 1988 by Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, the former rector, and Mario Buhagiar who still today is the head of the department, the study of our creative history has been under scrutiny for the past 23 years.

I well remember two great books which only a couple of decades ago set the trend and changed local bibliography forever; one was the same Buhagiar’s The Iconography of the Maltese Islands and the other was Nicholas de Piro’s The International Dictionary of Artists who Painted Malta.

These books laid the foundation stone for the vibrant art scene that thrives in Malta today; one which I hope will continue to flourish and place Malta on the international artistic map as a unique island with a unique history, if and when the powers that be understand the need to have a museum of Modern and Contemporary Art besides the extant Fine Arts one.

Only then will we be able to fully appreciate the artistic activity of this small but spunky island population, which despite all odds tries its best on many counts to disprove Aesop’s fable of the frog and the cow, and more often than not manages to do so.

Hilary Spiteri featured on MEANDER re: Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta

Hilary Spiteri interviewed on his latest publication Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta by Mariella Pisani Bencini on MEANDER.

Hilary Spiteri featured on Il-GENS by Patrick Sammut

Hilary Spiteri llum huwa lecturer tal-Istorja tal-Arti fis-Sitt Klassi tal-Kulleġġ ta’ De La Salle. Huwa parti mill-grupp Footprints li jdoqq mużika tal-ġeneru Christian Rock. Huwa wkoll wieħed mill-artisti żgħażagħ kontemporanji u fotografu dilettant. Dan l-aħħar ħareġ il-ktieb tiegħu bl-isem ta’ Academic Artistic Training in Early British Malta. Għal iktar tagħrif wieħed jista’ jara s-sit: www.hilaryspiteri.com 

L-Intervista:

1. X’inhu l-isfond tiegħek f’rabta mad-dinja tal-Arti?

Fil-prezent nista nghid li l-Arti tinvolvi parti sostanzjali minn hajti. Hija kemm il-professjoni tieghi kif ukoll il-passatemp tieghi. Fuq bazi personali jien involut artisitikament fi produzzjoni ta’ arti pittorika, muzika kif ukoll kitba.

2. Minn fejn bdiet l-idea li tippubblika xogħol bħal dan?

Din ir-ricerka taf il-bidu taghha meta kont ghadni student unversitarju. Infatti l-bicca l-kbira tar-ricerka saret ghall-Masters li jiena ghamilt fid-Dipartiment tal-Istorja tal-Arti fl-Università ta’ Malta. Xi ftit snin wara li wettaqt b’success dan l-istudju, sibt hafna inkoraggiment minn kollegi u hbieb sabiex ngholli din ir-ricerka ghall-livell ta’ publikazzjoni. Minkejja li kienet triq twila u xi mdaqqiet b’hafna ostakoli, nista nghid li l-perseveranza wasslitni sabiex intemm dan il-progett li jaghti gieh lill-istorja ta’ art twelidi.

3. X’tittratta eżattament din il-pubblikazzjoni tiegħek? Kemm ħaditlek żmien biċċa xogħol bħal din?

Il-ktieb bit-titlu 'Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta', joffri studju dettaljat fuq il-pedagogija akkademika artistika li kienet offruta f’Malta fl-ewwel sittin sena tal-hakma kolonjali Ingliza (1800-1860). Dan il-ktieb huwa l-ewwel produzzjoni Maltija li tittratta b’mod dettaljat it-taghlim tal-arti fl-ewwel zminijet bikrija tal-Inglizi f’Malta. 

Ir-ricerka li wettaqt tul dawn l-ahhar disa’ snin ma kinitx wahda facli. Grazzi ghall-appogg u l-ghajnuna li sibt minn ghalliema u kollegi, fosthom il-Professur Mario Buhagiar, Kap tad-Dipartiment tal-Istorja tal-Arti fl-Università ta’ Malta, u l-hidma kontinwa permezz ta’ ricerka f’dokumenti originali, kemm f’Malta kif ukoll f’pajjizi barra minn xtutna (Ruma u Londra), irrnexxieli nifformola stampa cara tal-istabbilimenti ewlenin f’Malta li kienu joffru mezzi didattici artisitci u min kienu l-ghalliema, studenti u artisti fl-ewwel nofs tas-seklu dsatax.

4. Għal min hija mmirata l-aktar? 

Din il-publikazzjoni hija wahda ta’ natura teknika. Ghaldaqstant inhoss li l-element viziv kif ukoll l-adattament tal-kitba jghinu sabiex din il-publikazzjoni sservi bhala passagg li jittratta l-aspetti artistiku, socjali u politiku f’Malta, fl-ewwel snin tal-hakma Ingliza.

5. Inħoss li element importanti ħafna f’din il-pubblikazzjoni huwa l-aspett viżiv. Xi tgħid dwar dan?

L-aspett viziv ta’ din il-publikazzjoni involva ammont sostanzjali ta’ energija u xoghol sabiex il-prodott ikun wiehed tal-oghla livell. It-tfassil u l-issettjar huwa wiehed ta’ natura semplici u diretta sabiex jagevola lill-qarrej. Min-naha l-ohra, huwa ta’ min japprezza r-rikkezza fotografika tax-xoghlijiet artisitici li toffri din il-publikazzjoni. Kull dettal gie evalwat sabiex il-qarrej ikollu pprovuduta gwida viziva parallela mal-kontenut. 

6. X’inhi l-importanza ewlenija ta’ ktieb bħal dan? 

Dan il-ktieb jiftah tieqa fuq aspetti interessanti fuq il-perjodu Ingliz ta’ Malta fejn ftit li xejn gie apprezzat u ricerkat. Dan il-ktieb joffri nisga ta’ avvenimenti artistici li sehhew f’Malta u li mmodifikaw l-identita taghna bhala poplu.

7. Żgur li Malta qed terġa’ titqiegħed fuq quddiem bi proġett bħal dan. Xi tgħid dwar hekk?

Malta kellha x-xorti li ghaddiet minn taht l-idejn ta’ diversi hakkiema li ddominaw b’supremazija fl-ibhra tal-Ewropa. Tajjeb li wiehed josserva li meta Malta saret kolonja Ingliza, hija saret parti minn dominju kbir li bla ebda dubju halla impatt qawwi u pożittiv fuq livell amministrattiv u edukattiv. Din il-publikazzjoni titfa’ dawl fuq dan il-progress u kif Malta zammet pari passu mal-medda taz-zmien.

8. Xi tgħid dwar it-tagħlim tal-Arti fl-iskejjel Maltin illum? Għamilna pass lura jew ’il quddiem? X’jista’ jsir għall-aħjar?

L-arti fl-iskejjel Maltin hadet spinta ’l quddiem. Min-naha l-ohra nahseb li fadal hafna xi jsir sabiex l-istudenti taghna jingħataw formazzjoni artistika kompluta. Personalment inhoss li n-nuqqas ta’ rizorsi presenti fl-iskejjel kif ukoll in-nuqqas ta’ rikonixximent tad-dixxiplina artisitka fuq livell terzjarju qed jillimitaw dan is-suggett. 

9. Inti kif tirrikonċilja x-xogħol tiegħek ta’ għalliem, l-attività kreattiva tiegħek bħala artist u proġetti ambiżżjużi u ta’ natura akkademika bħal dan il-ktieb tiegħek?

L-attività artisitka, il-professjoni tieghi u n-natura akkademika jinvolvu hafna hin u hsieb u ghalqadstant mhux daqshekk facli sabiex wiehed jilhaq kompromess. Min-naha l-ohra nhoss li din hija nisga fejn ghandek elementi differenti li jikkumplimentaw lil xulxin u jaghmlu l-affarijiet aktar interessanti. Dan iservi ta’ stimulu sabiex navvanza aktar ’il quddiem bil-progetti tieghi li ghaldaqstant iservu ta’ kontribut ghas-socjetà li naghmel parti minnha.

Intervista ta' Patrick Sammut

Hilary Spiteri featured on MUZAJK by Natasha Turner

Hilary Spiteri interviewed by Natasha Turner on Il-Mument Newspaper

Il-Hadd, 27 ta’ Novembru, 2011 - INTERVISTA

Artist minn kull dimensjoni 

Natasha Turner tintervista lil Hilary Spiteri

L-arti, il-muzika u l-fotografija huma l-akbar passjonijiet tieghu. Ghalkemm fit-tlieta li huma ha tahrig differenti, hu jhoss li huma tliet dixxiplini li jmorru hafna ma’ xulxin u li joffrulu spunt ta’ ispirazzjoni kontinwa. Ghandu wkoll passjoni kbira lejn it-taghlim u l-istorja tal-arti. Il-professjoni ta’ Hilary Spiteri – dik ta’ ghalliem – izzommu f’kuntatt mad-dinja ta’ madwaru filwaqt li l-istudenti tieghu jimlewh bil-hegga u l-kuragg biex ikollu hidma dejjiema. Is-suggett li hu tant ghal qalbu u li specjalizza fih jittratta l-arti akkademika prodotta fl-ewwel zminijiet tal-perjodu Ingliz f’Malta. Din ir-ricerka wasslitu biex jaghmel xi mawriet barraminn Malta biex jirricerka, specjalment f’Ruma. Fil-bidu ta’ dan ix-xahar ippubblika ktieb dwar ir-ricerki tieghu,bl-isem Academic, Artistic Training in Early British Malta. 

Xi tghidilna dwar il-pubblikazzjoni l-gdida tieghek?

Il-ktieb jismu Academic Artistic Training in Early British Malta, prodott mill-Allied Publications. Dan joffri studju dettaljat fuq il-pedagogija akkademika artistika li kienet offruta f’Malta fl-ewwel sittin sena tal-hakma kolonjali Ingliza(1800-1860). Dan il-ktieb hu l-ewwel produzzjoni Maltija li tittratta b’mod dettaljat it-taghlim tal-arti fl-ewwel zminijiet tal-Inglizi f’Malta. 

Ir-ricerka li wettaqt tul l-ahhar snin ma kinitx facli. Grazzi ghall-appogg u l-ghajnuna li sibt mill-ghalliema u mill-kollegi, fosthom il-Professur Mario Buhagiar, il-Kap tad-Dipartiment tal-Istorja tal-Arti fl-Università ta’ Malta, u l-hidma kontinwa permezz tar-ricerka f’dokumenti originali, kemm f’Malta kif ukoll f’pajjizi ohra barra minn xtutna (Ruma u Londra), irrnexxieli nifforma stampa cara tal-istabbilimenti ewlenin f’Malta li kienu joffru l-mezzi didattici artistici u min kienu l-ghalliema, l-istudenti u l-artisti fl-ewwel nofs tas-seklu dsatax.

Il-ktieb joffri passagg ta’tliet stadji storici li ghadda minnhom pajjizna: it-tmiem tal-hakma tal-Ordni ta’ San Gwann, il-wasla tal-Francizi u l-irvellijiet tal-Maltin li wasslu ghall-hakma Ingliza.Din il-qalba halliet impatt qawwi fuq diversi aspetti, fosthom dawk politici u socjali. Fil-ktieb hemm spjegat b’certa reqqa, il-perijodu tat-transizzjoni li ghadda minnu l-istabbiliment edukattiv Malti. 

It-twaqqif tal-Iskola tad-Disinn fi hdan l-Università ta’Malta – li kienet taht it-tmexxija tal-Kanonku Francesco Saverio Caruana – kienet rivelazzjoni ghall-istudenti Maltin li kellhom ghal qalbhom l-arti u l-industrija. Persunaggi maghrufa fl-istorja tal-arti Maltija, fosthom Michele Busuttil, Giorgio  Pullicino, Pietro Paolo Caruana, Raffaele Caruana, MicheleBellanti, Giuseppe Calleja u Giuseppe Calì taw kontribut qawwi f’din l-iskola fejn iggwidaw lill-istudenti Maltin biex imorru jistudjaw l-arti f’akkademji rinomati barra minn xtutna u jaghtu gieh lil pajjizhom. Il-ktieb jittratta diversi elementi relatati mad-didattika artistika. 

Elementi mportanti hafna msemmi hul-introduzzjoni tal-Iskola tan-Nudo fi hdan l-istess Skola tad-Disinn. Aktar ’il quddiem, f’wiehed mill-kapitli, hemm prezentat studju dwar l-istatwi tal-gibs li jinsabu fl-iskola tal-arti kif ukoll fil-bini tal-Università l-Antika, il-Belt Valletta. Dawn l-istatwi kienu manifatturati u migjubin mill-Ewropa u jafu l-ewwel uzu taghhom propju fl-Iskola tad-Disinn. Ma jonqosx li nsemmi l-istudenti li attendew l-Iskola tad-Disinn. Infatti, rapprezentati wiehed isib mixeghla ta’ disinji maghmula mill-istess studenti Maltin, prizervati fil-Muzew tal-Arti, il-Belt Valletta, fejn jakkumpanjahom hemm studju relatat.

X’messaggi trid twassal bl-arti tieghek?

Personalment ma ghandix hafna pretensjonijiet ghall-arti tieghi. Qatt ma kelli f’mohhi li bl-arti tieghi nohloq xi rivoluzzjoni jew tibdil fid-dinja ta’ madwari. Ghaldaqstant dejjem infittex lix-xoghol tieghi jkun ricerkat kif jisthoqq u li jsir b’certu livell gholi ta’ dedikazzjoni. Jiena nfittex li bl-arti tieghi nohloq tbissima u esperjenza ta’ kulur. Uhud mill-aktar kummenti gratifikanti li qatt ircivejt fuq ix-xoghol tieghi kienu li l-kuluri huma vivaci u l-kompozizzjoni li nohloq inisslu sens ta’ ferh u tbissima f’dak li jkun. Dan ghalija jfisser hafna, ghaliex il-kwadru tieghi jkun wasal biex jolqot il-karattru emottiv ta’dak li jkun espost ghalih. 

Hemm xi nies li influwenzawk, u b’liema modi?

L-involviment tieghi fid-dinja tal-Istorja tal-Arti wassalni biex insir naf hafna aktar fuq artisti varji minn diversi perjodi tal-Istorja tal-Arti. Ghaldaqstant, zewg artisti li tassew jaffaxxinani x-xoghol taghhom huma Rembrandt u J.M.W. Turner. Il-kwalità tat-tessut, kif ukoll il-manipulazzjoni taz-zebgha taz-zejt fil-kwadri ta’ Rembrandt joffru spettaklu ghall-ghajn li mhux ta’ min jitilfu. Min-naha l-ohra, il-freskezza u l-ambjent atmosferiku li Turner jimmortalizza fix-xeni pittorici tieghu jittrasportawni f’dinja kulurita kompletament estranea ghalija.Fuq bazi lokali jattirani hafna d-disinn metikoluz u meqjus tal-artist Emvin Cremona. Barra minn hekk, l-ahhar u mhux l-inqas, artist lokali li tassew halla impatt qawwi fuqi hu Charles Cassar, li kontinwament jarrikkixxi l-karattru artistiku tieghi b’ispirazzjoni immaginattiva u b’forom kuluriti.

Tahseb li l-Maltin japprezzawha bizzejjed l-arti?

Il-poplu Malti hu poplu msawwar, sa minn zmien missirijietna, minn ghagna kulturali qawwija – naturalment, kulhadd fuq il-livell personali tieghu. Personalment inhoss li ghalkemm il-poplu Malti ghamel passi ta’ ggant fejn jidhol l-apprezzament artistiku, nahseb li fadal hafna xi jsir fejn tidhol l-edukazzjoni artistika. Jien inhoss li f’Malta l-edukazzjoni artistika hi sottovalutata, bil-kosegwenza li t-tahrig artistiku ingenerali fl-iskejjel Maltin jitqies fuq livell inferjuri jew vokazzjonali. Jiena nemmen li d-dixxiplina artistika, fuq diversi livelli, issawwar bniedem denju tal-istorja li ssawru u tat-twemmin li hu jhaddan!

Xi jdejqek jew xi jweggghek l-aktar fis-socjetà?

Is-socjetà ta’ madwari toffri bosta opportunitajiet. Ghaldaqstant jien ninsab imwegga’ minn sitwazzjoni ta’ menefregizmu (terminu li nhobb nuza hafna u li jfisser:“kulhadd jigi jaqa’ u jqum minn kollox”) li dan l-ahhar sar fenomenu komuni fiz-zghazagh, mhux biss Maltin imma anki globalment. Dan qed iwassal biex qed tkun generata atmosfera ta’nuqqas ta’ interess u hegga,dominata minn uzu abbuziv tad-dinja elettronika. Min-naha l-ohra, fuq livell lokali, jien ninsab urtat fuq in-nuqqas ta’ trasparenza f’kull livell tas-socjetà Maltija, lithaddan dan il-kuncett b’certa sahha. Mhuwiex facli li f’dan l-ambjent wiehed jirnexxi bil-progetti tieghu.

X’tixtieq l-aktar f’hajtek?

Hemm hafna affarijiet materjali li wiehed ikun jixtieq f’hajtu, fosthom is-success, ir-reputazzjoni u l-istabbiltà socjali. Ghalkemm, sincerament, inkun qed nonqos jekk ngnid li ma nixtieq xejn minn dan. Biss, nahseb li l-aktar li nixtieq huma affarijiet dejjiema, bhall-kuntentizza interna, li nemmen li twassal ghall-ispirazzjoni dejjiema, il-mutur / muza tal-artist. L-aktar haga li nixtieq fuq bazi lokali hi li l-element zaghzugh jinghata aktar cans ghall-espressjoni u iktar opportunitajiet biex wiehed javvanza u jesponi l-potenzjal tieghu. Inhoss li Malta tkun qed titlef meta diversi individwi jistabbilxxu ruhhom b’success barra minn xtutna minhabba li l-kwalitajiet eccellenti taghhom ma jkunux gew apprezzati, anzi spiccaw imwarrbin.

Ghal aktar informazzjoni dwar dan l-artist,wiehed jista’ jzur: 

www.hilaryspiteri.com

www.hilaryspiteri.blogspot.com

Hilary Spiteri featured on PBS re: Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta

The recently published book by Hilary Spiteri, entitled Academic Artistic Training in early British was featured on Malta' national television station PBS. The feature was written by Mr. Sergio Mallia and filmed by Mr. David Gutteridge.

The short clip, which was filmed at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta, summarizes the plot behind this new publication. It also discussed the highlights of this book offering a hands-on exposure of a number of original drawings, preserved in the Maltese national collection, which feature in the said publication. 

The feature stresses the importance of this publication as being the first one of its kind in Malta and also about the relevance of this study in our contemporary art practices.

The feature was produced in Maltese language.

Artistic scenario in early British Malta - www.timesofmalta.com

The makings of an artist.

We often look at the finished product – the installation, the painting, the sculpture, the form – forgetting to trace the trajectory that brought the creative process to fruition.

Artistic training, whether formal or informal, should not be overlooked, nor underestimated. And this is precisely what artist, educator and author Hilary Spiteri is bringing to the fore in his publication Academic Artistic Training in Early British Malta being presented at this year’s Malta Book Fair.

Ahead of the presentation of his publication, Mr Spiteri shared some thoughts concerning his research, his choice of subject and context.

“Way back, as a student I recall attending a conference at the Old University Building in Valletta. It was then I came across part of the collection of classical plaster casts exhibited in the corridors leading to the Aula Magna. It was love at first sight!”

Soon after, he was to submit a proposal for a Master’s degree at the University of Malta. After showing interest in the subject and discussing the matter with History of Art head of department Mario Buhagiar, it was decided that he would focus on a chronological and socio-political artistic understanding of the context in Malta during the early 19th century under the newly-established British rule. “This was much needed, especially to bridge Malta’s glorious past under the Order of St John and the newly-set colonisation brought forward by the British.”

The purpose of this publication is to contribute as a comprehensive study of academic training and academic artistic production in Malta during the first half of the 19th century. “This is the first publication of its kind to broaden and adjust our perspective of the artistic scenario of early British Malta and to show how, in spite of the decline in official patronage, the University, under the enlightened direction of Mgr Caruana, succeeded in providing Malta with a respectable art academy. This was not an anticlimax but a new beginning and a benchmark development in Maltese Art History.”

The book summarises the research conducted by Mr Spiteri for his MA, however, he has re-assessed and amplified some areas of my research, especially the critical analysis provided on the collection of 19th century drawings present at the National Museum of Fine Arts (NMFA) while simultaneously citing reports related to the University of Literature and education in Malta during the first half of the 19th century. He explains how, originally, he had no pretension of featuring any stunning discoveries in his account. However, “Thanks to the help of Theresa Vella and the late Dennis Vella (at the time curators of the NMFA), I came across an invaluable collection of 19th century drawings present at the museum... I believe that this was a major discovery in assessing academic 19th century art in Malta. I strongly affirm that this collection is to be listed as a national treasure.”

This publication also presents a thorough research of 19th primary sources. This resulted in the unearthing of a number of practices adopted at the University of Literature at the time. The documents reveal the establishment of the Malta School of Design, its pedagogical programme and its didactic resources. During the process, Mr Spiteri also encountered some very interesting documents affirming the establishment of a life class under the tuition of artist Michele Busuttil. “This was a 19th century milestone in Malta considering the rigid religious conservative attitude prevailing at the time,” he explained.

“I also ought to mention a very important report written by Canon Emmanuele Rosignaud in 1839, preserved at the Malta National Archives, which I brought to light. This report offers an outstanding scientific account of the education in Malta during the first half of the 19th century.”

Mr Spiteri consequently explains how this publication bridges Malta’s Knights period and the British imprint on the islands: “This scarcely-researched period has drawn the attention of a number of art historians, but most of their writings were limited to a general overview, due to the lacunae present in most of the public archives. The merit of the publication thus lies in a much needed attempt to broaden and adjust our perspective of the artistic scenario of early British Malta.” Mr Spiteri hopes that his publication will mark the beginning of a series of studies featuring Malta’s 19th century academic artistic training and the art being produced at the time. “My intention is to pursue in studying this artistic period in depth thereby contributing to the enrichment of art history in Malta.”

Presently, Mr Spiteri is dedicating his time to promoting his book locally and internationally.

Meanwhile, as an educator, he is driven by the love and passion to acquire knowledge about his country’s artistic identity, availing himself to further research the ample grounds which this field of study offers. His profession on the other hand together with his artistic activity and production compliment his research and embody his fulfilment.

• Academic Artistic Training In Early British Malta is published by Allied Publications and will be for sale at Word for Word, Castille Place, Valletta and all leading bookshops.

Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta by Hilary Spiteri - Available in all leading bookstores

Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta | Forthcoming publication

Academic Artistic Training in early British Malta

Hilary Spiteri has woven together the history of the rise and decline of the School of Design, set up by Mgr Francesco Saverio Caruana, and discusses it in a meaningful art historical context. The book summarises the research for a Master’s thesis that he defended in the Department of History of Art at the University of Malta. Its great merit is the way in which it broadens and adjusts our perspective of the artistic scenario of early British Malta and to show how, in spite of the decline in official patronage, the University, under the enlightened direction of Mgr Caruana, succeeded in providing Malta with a respectable art academy. This was not an anticlimax but a new beginning and a benchmark development in Maltese Art History.

Professor Mario Buhagiar

---

The book will be out on November 4, 2011.  It will be available for sale from leading book stores and online from ALLIED PUBLICATIONS.

Modern Artistic Sensibilities in Maltese Art - The Exhibition

Recently Heritage Malta has invited me to what I consider as a major event when it comes to reassess Modern Art in Malta. I was present to the official book launch of ‘Pioneers of Modern Art in Malta’ written by Prof Joseph Paul Cassar. This event was accompanied by an exhibition entitled ‘Modern Artistic Sensibilities in Maltese Art’, also curated by Prof Cassar.  The exhibition featured Modern works of art from the National Collection and it was held at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Malta.

Heritage Malta in collaboration with Prof Cassar, organised an onsite lecture, in which Prof Cassar revisited a good number of the works exhibited.  His lecture was a very detailed and inspiring one.  


On a personal note, during this lecture, I recalled my past days at the UOM Junior College and University of Malta when I used to attend Prof Cassar’s enriching and well-prepared lectures.

Prof Cassar, who is reputed to be one of the major scholars on Modern art in Malta, in his book, sheds light on the Maltese modern artistic sensibility and states as follows:

“History makes it apparent that modern sensibility in the realm of the visual arts in Malta is a belated experience. This does not take away the efforts brought about through a group effort mainly by the Modern Art Circle, Atelier ’56, The Modern Art Group, The Artists’ Guild, Spectrum ’69 and Vision ’74...”

Biographical note:

Prof Joseph Paul Cassar is a practising artist, art historian, art critic, curator and educator. He was a decisively inspiring academic spearheading the formation of a generation of Maltese scholars, educators and professionals in the field before moving to University of Maryland University College where he is currently Professor of Art. He is also engaged in designing dynamic online art courses for the New York Times Knowledge Network. Professor Cassar is also one of the Malta National Museum of Fine Arts'  internationally acclaimed consultants and advisors. 

Naqraw u Nirrimaw by Therese Pace and Hilary Spiteri

In 2009 poet and author Therese Pace and myself set on the market a set of six story/poem books for children entitled Naqraw u Nirrimaw.  This series is intended for children attending primary schools.  All the six books are fully colour-illustrated picturing a fresh application of the aquarelle medium.

Therese proposes an innovative way of writing and promoting poetry amongst children. In fact the short stories are all intended to compose short poems, which I am pretty sure that are appealent to a young audience. 

The illustrations show a high degree of creativity and immagination and all characters presented were created for the purpose of this series.


To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 1
To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 2
To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 3
To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 4
To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 5
To buy book Naqraw u Nirrimaw 6