WHY WE'RE CREATING THIS RESOURCE
Ours has become a successful company because we manufacture picture frames for lots of great art. And, in the process, we have naturally developed not only a love for the framing process but for the fascinating and well-executed work that customers continually bring to us to frame.
This commercial success means that, as a mature business, we can afford to give a little back to the art-lovers who are the mainstay of our client-base, art-appreciators who share our enthusiasm. No we're not quite as affluent as the Medici family, so we cannot sponsor the 21st century equivalent of Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. But we can manage a bit of patronage and philanthropy when it comes to youngsters. So on this site you will find an already-substantial resource, one that grows all the time, which you are welcome to utilise entirely free of charge.
KEEPING HISTORY OF ART ON THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM
We are well aware that, in recent years, British schools came very close to losing History of Art at A Level from the curriculum. Yet the course and qualification have been salvaged by Pearson Edexcel, the UK's only privately-owned exam board though it is the biggest too. And, anyway, there are lots of universities out there - in the UK and overseas - where undergraduates and even post-graduates are studying the subject or something related to it.
EasyFrame is far from alone in feeling that it would be a sad day indeed if an understanding of what constitutes great art, and how it came into being, was not valued. So, although we were too slow off the mark to join the public campaign to keep the History of Art A Level on the curriculum, we're delighted now to feel that we can do our bit to ensure that it's never threatened again. So our resources are there for students and pupils. Though their teachers and lecturers may well find them invaluable too!
IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT EXAMS
Having said that, it's not just about exams is it? There are many of us with an artistic bent, or just an honest-to-goodness enthusiasm, who simply wish to know more about art because we love it. We want to know the provenance of each piece, what inspired the artist, about the genre, the materials used, the circumstances and the school. We'd like to know about the artist's background, what made them different, in part because we understand that very often the work itself is only a projection of the more complex and quirky creative individual behind it. We can know them, perhaps, through the prism of their work.
That sort of information, and an intelligent interpretation of it, is useful to gallery-owners, curators, critics and art-lovers in the broader sense. Indeed it's useful for anyone who wants to bring themselves up-to-speed on an individual or a movement. Either for a purpose or just for the sheer hell of knowing more!
OUR MUSHROOMING BANK OF ARTICLES / BLOGS
This website has already begun to accumulate a sizeable cache of 1,000-word articles on fine artists. We've used an experienced academic - Paul Dunwell - who has sourced fascinating detail from a swathe of reliable locations, and then put his own interpretation on that agglomeration of information, so the articles stand up well to scrutiny.
How good are these articles? Well we think that, for 1,000-word pieces which give a broad and informed introduction to an artist or school, movement or genre, they may be the very best out there. So we think they're a great go-to resource. The hyperlinks below will take you to just some of our pieces. But there are many more on this site for you to explore. Importantly in time the cache will gradually expand to cover everything on the A Level syllabus and more.
ETHICS AND OBLIGATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT COPY OUR MATERIALS WORD-FOR-WORD
We should also emphasise that, mindful of ethics, EasyFrame is happy for visitors to strip out information, paraphrase and otherwise assimilate our materials when writing pieces. We are similarly happy to waive our copyright protection and intellectual property rights for that purpose. But nobody should copy ad verbum i.e. plagiarise the pieces because we defend academic integrity. It's also worth students and pupils realising that their own teachers and lecturers may well come here too when preparing lessons and notes. So anything that is simply cribbed will probably be spotted!