NEW!! Details of Fiona Crisp's Residency at Stouhead

Home | About Us | Artists | Your Say | Your Art |Paint Vox Box |Events | Gallery | Getting There  

Supported by:

A MAJOR NEW EXHIBITION IN THE LANDSCAPE GARDEN AT STOURHEAD BRINGS CHALLENGING CONTEMPORARY ART INTO STARK CONTRAST WITH ITS CLASSICAL SETTING.

The exhibition, Beauty and the Beast, explores the aesthetic debate between classical and contemporary art. The show includes five unique commissions, major works on loan from artists such as Elizabeth Frink and an exciting new work by Gavin Turk, created as a direct response to the theme. The landscape at Stourhead, with its temples and grotto set around a central lake was designed to make deliberate classical references. Often described as a three-dimensional classical landscape painting, the garden provides a perfect backdrop for the show.

“For some exponents of the classical, contemporary work is the beast, and for some contemporary fans, the classical is the beast. I am always bemused by artists that reject classicism as dead, no longer relevant and elitist.I am similarly stunned by those who reject contemporary art as decadent,skill-less and facile.” Peter Dickinson, Curator Beauty and the Beast, Stourhead 2006

These polarised points of view are likely to be challenged by this exhibition.What is beauty? Why reject the ugly? Is beauty good? Is ugly corrupt?