As I collected the fragments of the plates, I harvested unexpected things: human hair, fallen leaves brought in on the soles of shoes, and studio floor dust. I picked up the moon and the sixpence in the fragments.
The subjective imagination is usually simple, but real life is full of objective factors which make the result complex or even counterproductive – just as Banksy shredded his work to eliminate the commercial value but actually made his work more expensive. This may be the source of contradiction.

As a critical analysis of social gender values, performance art plays an important role in feminist art practice. 1964 yoko ono performed “slice” for the first time in New York. She was kneeling in the center of the stage, dressed in her best clothes, with a pair of scissors in front of her. One by one, the audience was invited onstage to cut off her clothes until ono decided to end the show and stood up to leave. As more and more clothes were cut off, she remained motionless. When the audience decides to cut off her bra, her body is objectified as a sexual object under the male gaze, revealing the relationship between women’s social status and gender rights. In the late ’50s, ono had actually just moved to New York and had not yet begun to make avant-garde art. However, it was not uncommon for female artists to be active in the New York art circle at that time, but they were not as well-known as male artists of the same period. It is not that they are not good enough, but that they are not able to get the chance to exhibit in the high art galleries and galleries as women, so that their real artistic strength cannot be valued and recognized.

Today is the last day before the Christmas holiday. We pasted the inspirations and tests collected in this project onto a piece of sheet and asked other students to give their opinions. Comments are written on sticky notes and posted on our sheets.

William Blake was a painter, printmaker and poet who created some of the most iconic images in British art.

Radical and rebellious, he is an inspiration to visual artists, musicians, poets and performers worldwide. His personal struggles in a period of political terror and oppression, his technical innovation, his vision and political commitment, have perhaps never been more pertinent.

Inside the exhibition is an immersive recreation of the small domestic room in which Blake showed his art in 1809. You can experience for yourself the impact these works had when they were shown for the first time. In another room, Blake’s dream of showing his works at enormous scale is made reality using digital technology.

With over 300 original works, including his watercolours, paintings and prints, this is the largest show of Blake’s work for almost 20 years. It rediscovers him as a visual artist for the 21st century.

A frame can have multiple functions. It can not only protect the work but also give audiences the license to view and comment.
I want to visualize the way people comment through a frame. I bought a frame, took out all but the glass and asked other students to draw on my face with a red marker. They were allowed to draw anything they want until fill all the space.

The exhibition explored Gormley’s wide-ranging use of organic, industrial and elemental materials over the years, including iron, steel, hand-beaten lead, seawater and clay. It also brought to light rarely-seen early works from the 1970s and 1980s, some of which led to Gormley using his own body as a tool to create work, as well as a selection of his pocket sketchbooks and drawings.

Throughout a series of experiential installations, some brand-new, some remade for the RA’s galleries, it invited visitors to slow down and become aware of their own bodies. Highlights include Clearing VII, an immersive ‘drawing in space’ made from kilometres of coiled, flexible metal, and Lost Horizon I, 24 life-size cast iron figures set at different orientations on the walls, floor and ceiling – challenging our perception of which way is up.

Perhaps best-known for his 200-tonne Angel of the North installation near Gateshead, and his project involving 2,400 members of the public for Trafalgar Square’s the Fourth Plinth, Antony Gormley is one of the UK’s most celebrated sculptors.

One of the most celebrated portraitists of our time, Lucian Freud is also one of very few 20th century artists who portrayed themselves with such consistency.

Spanning nearly seven decades, his self-portraits give a fascinating insight into both his psyche and his development as a painter – from his earliest portrait, painted in 1939, to his final one executed 64 years later. They trace the fascinating evolution from the linear graphic works of his early career to the fleshier, painterly style he became synonymous with.

When seen together, his portraits represent an engrossing study into the process of ageing. Confronting his self-image anew with each work, he depicted himself in youth as the Greek hero Acteon, in sombre reflection later in life and fittingly, for the great painter of 20th century nudes, naked aged 71 but for a pair of unlaced boots.

When asked if he was a good model for himself Freud replied, “No, I don’t accept the information that I get when I look at myself, that’s where the trouble starts”. It is precisely this “trouble” that makes Freud’s self-portraits so intensely compelling – and makes this an unmissable chance to see a life’s work in one show.

Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits is in our smaller, Sackler Wing of galleries and we expect demand to be high. To ensure the best possible experience, Friends must book a free, timed ticket to see this show during the normal run of the exhibition, as well as extended hours.

Lucian Freud’s paintings, which included many nude paintings of himself and his children, were very personal. He doesn’t mind showing these things to the audience and connecting with them.

I took this hair band with me for half a month and didn’t clean it. It left my smell on it.

I was addicted to the smell of cotton until primary school. I would suck freshly cleaned clothes and leave saliva marks on them.

According to Freud’s theory of personality development, this is because the oral stage of infancy is not satisfied.

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the term oral stage or hemitaxia denotes the first psychosexual development stage wherein the mouth of the infant is his or her primary erogenous zone. Spanning the life period from birth to the age of 18 months, the oral stage is the first of the five Freudian psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital. Moreover, because it is the infant’s first human relationship—biological (nutritive) and psychological (emotional)—its duration depends upon the child-rearing mores of the mother’s society. Sociologically speaking, the duration of infantile nursing is determined normatively; in some societies it is common for a child to be nursed by its mother for several years but in others this period is much shorter.

So I feel like this hair band is part of my personality and part of my history. It connects me to others by way of smell.