www.flintarts.org

Art à la Carte is a series of informative programs focusing on the arts. It is offered free of charge on Wednesdays at 12:15p. Programs last approximately one hour. Visitors are encouraged to bring lunch. Coffee, tea and cookies are provided. All programs take place in Isabel Hall.

September 23

Lecture: Robert Wilbert

Artist Robert Wilbert talks about how he goes about composing art in oil and watercolor.

September 30-November 4

History of Rock ‘N’ Roll

From the definitive documentary covering the history of rock ‘n’ roll, we’ll travel from rock ‘n’ roll’s humble beginnings in the 1950’s to the age of Woodstock. You’ll experience your favorite rock ‘n’ roll moments all over again through hundreds of exclusive interviews, classic footage, and unforgettable in-concert performances from rock ‘n’ roll’s biggest stars.

September 30

Rock ‘n’ Roll Explodes

60 min.

A kaleidoscope of musical memories documenting a new kind of music: what we today call “rock ‘n’ roll.”

October 7

Good Rockin’ Tonight

60 min.

The glory days of rock’s first golden age.

October 14

Britain Invades, America Fights Back

60 min.

The story of rock’s renaissance between 1964 and 1966.

October 21

The Sounds of Soul

60 min.

The rise of a new form of musical artistry, rooted in gospel and developed under the influence of mainstream pop music with a strong dose of rhythm-and-blues feeling.

October 28

Plugging In

60 min.

How rock reinvented itself in the mid-1960’s.

November 4

My Generation

60 min.

The giddy rise – and harrowing fall – of rock’s late-1960’s counterculture.

November 11

American Horizons: The Photographs of Art Sinsabaugh

30 min.

His Midwestern landscapes were a radical break with the photography of the 1950’s, introducing the documentary-like feel that would later sweep America.

Photography as Art

29 min.

This program examines the history of photography, charting its evolution from a technical craft to a fine art. Works of Tim Macmillan, Catherine Opie, Suky Best, Alison Jackson, and Caroline Molloy are highlighted. Archival clips of Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andreas Feininger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Richard Avedon, and Elsie Hill are included.

November 18

Realism: The Artistic Form of the Truth

50 min.

This program focuses on to Realism—a widespread artistic movement born in the 19th century that rejected pretense, distortion, and sentimentality. Luminous images by Manet, Courbet, Millet, and Daumier—along with the unflinching writings of Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Strindberg, and Ibsen—are analyzed and compared with the work of Eakins, Bellows, Twain, London, Crane, and others.

November 25

Romantics & Realists: Delacroix

50 min.

Eugene Delacroix was a painter deeply aware of the Romantic spirit of the times. His respect for Old Masters like Rubens was strong, and his three decades of Parisian mural work was steeped in the tradition of the Renaissance and the Baroque. One short journey to North Africa also inspired a huge number of memorable canvases that captured the light of the region as no artist had done before.

December 2

Romantics & Realists: Rossetti

50 min.

As the key member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti sought nothing less than a return to the artistic spirit of medieval times, the age before Raphael. Though the Brotherhood failed to last, a romantic medieval flavor continued to infuse Rossetti’s work, including his innovative watercolors and his bold experiments with design.

December 9

Romantics & Realists: Friedrich

50 min.

One of the key ideas that underpinned the Romantic Age was the notion of the sublime, and no Romantic painter captured the sublime more effectively than the German landscapist Caspar David Friedrich.

December 16

Romantics & Realists: Goya

50 min.

This fascinating program reveals how Goya’s own time gave him inspiration for his art. The bloody war between his own homeland and Napoleonic France inspired The Third of May, the greatest canvas of his career. The continuing existence of the Spanish Inquisition also provoked Goya to create timeless works.

January 6

Romantics & Realists: Whistler

50 min.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s nocturnal scenes, along with his highly stylized portraits that secure his reputation today. His radical emphasis on composition at the expense of subject matter was typified when he painted his famous portrait of his mother and called it Arrangement in Grey and Black.

January 13

Romantics & Realists: Courbet

Gustave Courbet’s famous peasant scenes like his enormous Burial at Ornans were like nothing ever seen before. This was the art of Realism and many critics were outraged. How could a painter make common people the subject of High Art? But Courbet defied the critics to secure the fame that he craved and deserved.

January 20

The Drawings of Michelangelo

41 min.

Studying drawings at the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, and other renowned institutions, this program presents detailed analysis of the Pieta, the colossal David, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, The Last Judgment, the Medici tomb, and St. Peter’s Basilica. It also provides insight into Michelangelo’s tools, techniques, stylistic evolution, and sexuality.

January 27

Corot: Nature in the Studio

53 min.

Filmed on location in France and Italy, this classic program is built around an imaginary dialogue with Camille Corot. As the painter describes his upbringing and artistic method, a survey is presented of over 100 of Corot’s works, along with those of his chief influences and contemporaries.

February 3

The Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend

60 min.

For more than 150 years, the women of Gee's Bend, Alabama have made quilts reflecting their history and daily lives.

February 10

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend

28 min.

Set in the Gee's Bend quiltmakers' homes and yards and told through the women's voices, this music-filled documentary takes viewers inside the art and fascinating living history of a uniquely American community and art form.

Faith Ringgold: The Last Story Quilt

28 min.

Share an insider’s look at how one African-American woman, Faith Ringgold, through patience, perseverance and education fulfilled her dream of becoming an artist. 

February 17

The Art of Quilting

60 min.

The Art of Quilting honors the artistry and diverse techniques of America’s contemporary art quilters by visiting art quilt exhibitions across the country and through personal interviews with nationally and internationally noted fabric artists.

February 24

Mixed Media Masters

28 min.

In this exciting documentary Lowery Sims, Curator of the Museum of Art & Design in New York, introduces three remarkable mixed media artists: Alison Saar, Al Loving, and Flo Oy Wong.

The Art of Romare Bearden

30 min.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this film traces Bearden’s entire career, including his paintings, collages, large-scale murals, and late landscapes.

March 3

Empire of the Nude

56 min.

This fascinating insight into the art, mores and psyche of a bygone age includes a wide variety of images from painting, photography and film, including works by such noted artists as William Etty, Lord Leighton and George Frederic Watts.

March 10

The Impressionist Surface: Perceptions in Paint

25 min.

When painting began to concern itself more with the perception of reality than verisimilitude, Impressionism was born. This program highlights Monet’s Bathing at La Grenouilliere, Pissarro’s Festival at l’Hermitage and The Avenue in Sydenham, and Cezanne’s The Grounds of the Chateau Noir.

Rodin

25 min.

Presented by eminent Rodin scholar Dr. Anne Wagner and filmed on location in France, this timeless program examines an artist whose oeuvre stood at the crossroads of conventional and modernist tastes, paving the way for a transition in the consumption of sculpture from traditional “public” spaces to more private collections.

March 17

Historic Pubs of Dublin

60 min.

Author Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes, does the legwork for you on this exciting tour of Dublin’s most notable pubs and their environs. Get to know the city, its culture, and its characters with a tour guide who knows just where to start—and all the best stops!

March 24

Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000

51 min.

Using interviews and myriad examples of their works, leading figures in the field, including Ruth Duckworth, Wayne Higby, John Mason, Ron Nagle, Otto Natzler, Richard Shaw, and Peter Voulkos, discuss such major themes as Abstract Expressionism, Funk, vessels, form and function, and the debate over the decorative arts versus the fine arts.

March 31

Chihuly and the Masters of Venice

58 min.

Within the secretive world of Venetian glassmaking, Dale Chihuly sees an opportunity to create exquisite work—if only he can get the two greatest glass masters to work together!

April 7

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Raphael

43 min.

Raphael, whose precocious talent was recognized long before he was 20, was a peer and rival of Michelangelo by the time he was 26.

April 14

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo

43 min.

The Florentine sculptor, painter, poet and architect was known to his contemporaries as “The Divine Michelangelo,” and his creative power inspired awe in those who cam to know his work.

April 21

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Tintoretto

Little is known about the Venetian painter, Tintoretto, one of the greatest 43 min.

painters of the Venetian school and a precursor of Baroque art.

April 28

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Piero della Francesca

43 min.

The Italian painters’ love and mastery of mathematics is fully expressed in his paintings, constructed within a strict geometric framework.

May 5

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Bernardo Strozzi

43 min.

The Genoese painter, called “Il Cappuccino,” is known for his religious subjects.

May 12

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Fra Angelico

43 min.

The Italian painter and Dominican monk is known for his frescoes in the convent of S. Marco in Florence.

May 19

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Caravaggio

43 min.

Caravaggio declared early in his career that he rejected the Renaissance search for the ideal and that he would study no teacher except nature.

May 26

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Giotto

43 min.

The Italian painter and architect is significant for his original vision of the natural world and his ability to portray it.

June 2

The Great Masters of the Italian Renaissance: Van Dyck

43 min.

Although he was born and trained in Belgium, Van Dyck became the leading court painter in England where he was a dominant influence in portrait painting. He was also an important innovator in watercolor and etching.

June 9

Mona Lisa Revealed

Breakthrough high resolution photography reveals for the first time that Leonardo may actually have painted the Mona Lisa with eyebrows and lashes — just one of 25 fascinating secrets this documentary reveals.

June 16

David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge

73 min.

Hockney visits Florence, Bruges, and Ghent, examining dozens of paintings by such masters as Jan van Eyck, Vermeer, Holbein, Caravaggio, and Velazquez. In a specially designed Hollywood set he demonstrates his findings and replicates the lost techniques of the Old Masters.

June 23

A Model for Matisse

67 min.

A rich portrait of the creation of Matisse’s masterpiece: The Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. The film presents Matisse’s never-before filmed hand-painted gouaches and fabrics.

June 30

Rothko’s Rooms

60 min.

Chronicles Rothko’s life and the development of Mark Rothko’s work. His softly defined, rectangular clouds of color stacked symmetrically on top of one another were intended to evoke the most elemental emotions.