The Northern Response: Embrace And Innovation

Featured Speaker: Linda Blair, M.A.

This concluding class presents the Northern response to existential threat, one of accommodation and even embrace.  This marriage of opposites is exemplified in the paintings of one of Europe’s great artists, Jan van Eyck.  Van Eyck’s profoundly intelligent art merges realism with religious profundity, thus uniting the natural world with the spiritual realm.  His tangible, realistic world glows with holiness due to his injection of religious symbols into convincingly real spaces.  At the same time, his contributions to Western art make this one of the most innovative and inventive periods, including the introduction of oil paints over the traditional tempera.   
 

Presenter Biography

Linda Blair has taught art history for many years, at the La Jolla Athenaeum, the Osher Institute at UC San Diego, and in the East, where she was a docent a25t The Cloisters. She earned her BA at Mills College and her MA at USD. She has been a popular and eloquent lecturer at Osher for more than a decade.  She is a co-founder of the UCSD Town and Gown Society, which raises undergraduate scholarship funds for deserving students. 

Coordinator: Steve Clarey