UnMasterclass 17

UnMasterclass visited Birmingham this weekend, home of a world class collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. In fact this collection was discussed at length for virtually every Monday morning history art lecture on our foundation of art course by the effervescent and enigmatic Victor Peach. He grew up in the Black Country and used to spend cold and rainy days decoding the paintings like a sleuth and growing from that a love of art and paintings. Victor Peach was a memorable character, always turned out in a brightly coloured suit, complete with handkerchief billowing from the chest pocket. One lecture consisted of Dada performance recitals, but almost all touched somehow upon the Pre-Raphaelites. Despite his enthusiasm for this era of painting, we cannot say we are great fans here at UnMasterclass, give us something contemporary any day. So we strolled straight past the Birmingham Museum and Galleries and their collection of Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces in the scorching bank holiday sunshine and basked instead in 2 excellent shows at the Ikon gallery. Thus completing the old adage; do as we say, not as we do. So go along to a historical collection of paintings and learn from them, instead of the example set by UnMasterclass, where we doggedly stick to our formula of learning from reproductions, and as you can see from this weeks painting, we are, if anything, getting slightly worse at painting, not better. Maybe we should have popped in for gander at a bit of Rossetti, Millias or Holman Hunt. If you are as philistine as us, don't bother visiting the gallery and pop along to the latest UnMasterclass viewable here instead http://www.vimeo.com/22860252