Christine Hopwood MA ARTIST

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MA in History and Philosophy of Art

Yes, this one has been a biggy! I am just coming to the final month of an intense year of learning and essay writing. It has been a fantastic journey full of excellent tutors and amazing classmates. It has only been marred by a university in disarray as it closes its doors to the humanities…a sad loss to all. The first term was based in Canterbury and I studied Drawing and Key Texts. Here are a few of the drawing exercises based on medieval and more modern drawing practices that I completed:

South Paris from 9th floor, Rue du Depart, Montparnasse The Iconic Louvre Pyramid Paris School of Arts & Culture

A Lion from medieval stone mason Villard de Honnecourt’s catalogue/resume.

Studies for students to copy from Renaissance Workshop Catalogues

My copies of old master drawings from the originals at The British Museum Print Rooms

A more modern technique of ‘boxing’ the figure to get proportions correct.

The Spring Term I spent in Paris….3 months living and working in Montparnasse with the Paris School of Arts & Culture only 10 minutes walk away. A few steps from Tour Montparnasse and Montparnasse Bienvenue Metro I had everything I needed within walking distance or a short tube trip away. This term it was all about Modernism in Paris and Gothic Studies with visits to all the major museums as well as the St. Denis and St. Chapelle, I also visited Westminster Abbey in the mid-term break. Nearly all the museums were within 40 minutes walk and the awesome Biblioteque Nationale was about an hours walk. Nearby I had Cimetière de Montparnasse, the famous cemetery where the philosophers and poets are buried, here I walked frequently to admire the incredible artistry and pathos of the monuments and mausoleums. Here’s a little pot-pourri of photographs from my sojourn in this stunning city…

It is now September and my MA is finished, just the anxious wait for results left. For my Dissertation I wrote about aesthetics and the impact that neuroaesthetics, the science of creative brain activity, has had upon the philosophy and current intepretations of the term. I hope I successfully proved that aethetics is not purely the perception of pleasure due to beauty, but has a much broader meaning which incorporates, ugliness as its necessary counterpart, as well as the emotional, conceptual and spiritual. I also proposed that far from being an objective viewpoint, it is intensely and intrinsically personal and influenced by our inherent human traits, experiences and knowledge. As a very lay and non-rigorous experiment I analysed responses to a questionnaire about creativity and aesthetics with two groups: general public and art/art history students. The following link provides access to my results and analysis, which were included in my dissertation as an appendix. VISUAL ART AND NEUROAESTHETICS RESULTS

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MA in History and Philosophy of Art

Christine Hopwood ARTIST

My second term consisted of three months in Paris studying Modern Art and Gothic Art. I was in Montparnasse and within 40 minutes or so walking distance of most of the major museums etc. I studied at The Paris School of Art and Culture only 10 minutes from my ninth floor apartment, they view from which was amazing!

PASC