William Shakespeare and Mid-Century Art and Design

Overview

What you will study

Through the buildings, artefacts and public art in a town most famous for its timber-framed buildings and pastoral riverside setting, this day school explores Shakespeare’s material heritage as interpreted by the émigré and refugee artists and designers of the 1930s diaspora.

Using recent scholarship on the artists and designers who brought European design training and innovation to Britain in the years before the start of World War II in 1939, it uses the material heritage of Shakespeare to look at how these men and women transformed art and design in Britain.

During The William Shakespeare and Mid-Century Art and Design course offered by University of Oxford , we will consider new ways of thinking about modern design and the innovations of the mid-twentieth century in this most traditional of heritage towns as well as engaging with the work of artists and designers including Tibor Reich, Fred Kormis and Paul Vincze, all of whom made extraordinary contributions to the material culture of William Shakespeare, taking inspiration from his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.