Ross King: 2017 Heller Lecture on the art and life of Claude Monet

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Ross King, 2017 Heller Lecture, Monet"

WHEN: Tuesday June 27, 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: UBC Robson Square, Theatre C300800 Robson Street

TICKETS: $30 General admission/$20 members/students**Doors open 6:30 p.m. All tickets are general admission and seating is first come, first served. Please note that the theatre has a combination of fixed theatre seats and bleacher style seating.

 The Vancouver Art Gallery is excited to announce this year’s 16th annual Heller Lecture. On Tuesday, June 27, celebrated historian and bestselling author Ross King will delve into the art and life of Claude Monet, an artist whose career changed the course of Western art history, and currently featured in our summer feature exhibition Claude Monet’s Secret Garden (June 24 to October 1, 2017).

During this highly anticipated lecture, Ross King will draw from his new, award-winning book Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (2016) and trace the intimate and revealing story behind Monet’s iconic paintings of the water lilies at the fabled garden in Giverny. This illustrated lecture will examine Monet’s struggles and triumphs in the last dozen years of his life, a period in his life when he was coping with the death of his wife and his deteriorating vision, as well as his artistic self-doubts.

Claude Monet’s majestic canvases of water lilies were also produced during a time of war: Monet began work on them only months before the outbreak of WWI. King’s presentation will explore the personal and historical circumstances—one of momentous upheaval and unrest—behind Monet’s tranquil works, a painter who was known widely as a “painter of happiness.” Delighting in the contemplative aspects of Monet’s work, King discusses why, even a century later, his paintings still offer tremendous solace to people trodden by the fast pace of modern life and why Monet remains, arguably, the most famous artist of the 20th century.

ABOUT THIS YEAR’S HELLER LECTURER

Ross King is the critically acclaimed author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are the Governor General’s Award-winning The Judgment of Paris (2006), as well as Leonardo and The Last Supper (2012), which examined da Vinci’s iconic 15th century religious mural. He is the co-author with Anja Grebe of Florence: The Paintings & Frescoes, 1250-1743(2015), lauded as most comprehensive book ever undertaken on the art of Florence. His latest book, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (2016), was the winner of the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize. Ross King has lectured in many American museums, including the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Frick Collection, and the National Gallery.

ABOUT THE HELLER LECTURE

The Heller Lecture is one of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s most important public events since its inception in 2002. This program has enabled us to provide our audiences with thought-provoking and engaging presentations by an impressive list of guest speakers such as American feminist artist Judy Chicago; renowned scholar of surrealism Dawn Ades; the Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Martin Clayton; and Pulitzer Prize winning comic artist Art Spiegelman, to name just a few.

Generously supported by Paul and Edwina Heller in memory of Kitty Heller.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The 2017 Heller Lecture is presented in conjunction with the Gallery’s summer feature exhibitionClaude Monet’s Secret Garden (June 24 to October 1, 2017), the most comprehensive exhibition of Claude Monet’s work in Canada in two decades. This exhibition will present thirty-eight paintings spanning the course of Monet’s long career from the unparalleled collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. The Vancouver showing will be the only presentation of the exhibition in North America.