A review of the Tolkien exhibition currently on at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris is the occasion for pupils to learn more about the author of The Lord of the Rings and the extraordinary universes he created with languages, maps and illustrations. This B2-level article and its B1 satellite columns can be used for two different … Continue reading “Discovering Tolkien’s World”
The Dream of Being an Artist is an exhibition in Lille’s Palais des Beaux Arts until January 6 2020. With over a hundred works from different areas and spanning several centuries, the exhibition questions the way artists have been considered in society and perceive themselves. It includes several works by contemporary English speaking artists. The … Continue reading “The Dream of Being an Artist”
The cinema industry has long had a love affair with vampires, most often Dracula, based on Eastern European legends and Bram Stoker’s eponymous book. An exhibition at the Cinémathèque in Paris is a great opportunity to revisit the fascination with the undead across the arts: literature, painting, TV and film. It’s also an opportunity to … Continue reading “Vampires from “Dracula” to “Twilight””
Tate Liverpool is running an exhibition of Keith Haring’s iconic street art, which will then transfer to Bozart in Brussels. We’ve concocted activities to work with Haring’s art at different levels from A2 to B2. It would be interesting to compare Haring with another street artist from a different generation and continent: Banksy, the subject … Continue reading “Keith Haring Street Art”
Anyone who has read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings knows that JRR Tolkien was a past master at creating astonishing worlds and civilisations. A new exhibition in Paris shows that his published work was merely the tip of the iceberg. Detailed maps, chronologies, and dozens of illustrations give a glimpse of the … Continue reading “Tolkien’s World”
Keith Haring grew up in small town Pennsylvania reading, watching and drawing cartoons. When the 20-year-old arrived in New York City to study art in 1978, his fast, cartoonish style was soon recognisable all over the city. A retrospective at Tate Liverpool, then going onto Brussels, shows the astonishing output of his short life. Haring … Continue reading “Keith Haring: Fast Art”
Photographer André Kertész, considered one of the major 2oth-century proponents of the photographic art, is currently the subject of a retrospective at the Château de Tours. Kertész was born in Hungary in 1894 and died in New York 101 years later, having spent a decade in Paris along the way. Much of his work explores … Continue reading “Outsider’s Eye”
This B1-level article will introduce your pupils to the Rockwell and Roosevelt Four Freedoms Exhibition (Caen Mémorial, June-October 2019). It focuses and expands on a very specific passage from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union speech delivered in January 1941 in which he put an emphasis on freedom, or rather freedoms: freedom from fear, … Continue reading “Rockwell, Roosevelt and Freedom”
Game of Thrones may be set in the imaginary Seven Kingdoms, but it was filmed in real locations around the world. Many locations, and all the studio work, were done in Northern Ireland and the country is attracting crowds of tourists anxious to walk in the footsteps of their heroes. As well as studio tours … Continue reading “Screen Tourism: “Game of Thrones” Fans Flock to Northern Ireland”
A new exhibition at the Musée Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac explores the vast continent of Oceania, where water is omnipresent in real and metaphorical senses. The exhibition was originated at the Royal Academy in London to commemorate the journeys of James Cook in search of a mythical southern continent in the late Eighteenth Century. Cook never … Continue reading “Discovering Oceania”
