Art Talks with Martin Randall

TUCSON ART TALKS brings Art Talks on a wide variety of art history topics to your public library, school, residential facility, business, auditorium or home. With years of experience speaking at museums, libraries and other venues in the Tucson area, these highly popular and engaging talks are sure to fascinate and delight!

 If you ask most people if they can think of a Scandinavian artist, they may only be able to come up with one name - the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and his iconic painting The Scream. But there were many other talented Scandinavian artists who are less well known, who produced gorgeous paintings that capture the lives, the spirit, the scenic beauty, and the unique light of the North.

Join us on a journey north through the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland as we explore the work of the artists that lived and worked there.

Free admission.

 John Singer Sargent captured the spirit of the Gilded Age with his lavish portraits of wealthy society patrons and their families. 

Growing up in Europe as the son of expatriate Americans who exposed him to European art and culture at every opportunity, and living in many different countries, he soaked up their culture,  becoming fluent in many languages. But he was also an outsider. In Europe he was the American expat. When he later moved to England he was the sophisticated Parisian painter. When he finally traveled to America he was the famous European artist.

Perhaps being an outsider gave him the perspective to paint his subjects objectively, and he became highly sought-after as a portraitist. His paintings were mostly highly admired, sometimes scandalous, and always captivating. But eventually he tired of portraits, and in his later years he returned to his first love, travel, and he painted countless images of his time in Europe, North Africa and America, traveling with his artist friends.

We look at Sargent's fascinating life, mixing with high society and meeting famous people, but also traveling simply and painting whatever caught his eye.

Free admission.

In the 19th century artists from Europe and America started to venture to the East – the Orient as it was then known – for centuries, to the West, a forbidding and mysterious region. They brought back images of people, cultures and traditions unlike anything they or their fascinated audiences had ever seen. 

For a time these paintings became controversial in the west, but nowadays they are highly sought after, particularly by museums and collectors from the region, as they seek to access images of their own heritage and a way of life that has now forever disappeared.

In this talk we look at the world of these artist-travelers – who became known as the Orientalists – and journey with them through North Africa, the Middle East, and even as far as Persia and India, exploring their lives and the extraordinary legacy of art that they left us.

Free admission.