‘Icons of Art’ is the Carnival Theme for 2018

According to the Oxford dictionary an icon is a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration. For 2018 we have chosen the theme ‘icons of art’ to celebrate those artists who stand out for their exceptional contribution to art and culture and their iconic creations.

In the Procession

We are keen to raise the creative bar, to see moving floats either electric powered format, built around trolleys or buggies or even back pack structures, with height and moving parts. We are happy to meet and discuss ideas and offer our creative guidance and training where we can.

• All Carnival participants can choose how to interpret the theme in their own unique style.
• We are looking for colour. Height, movement and WOW!

We are happy to meet and discuss ideas and offer our creative guidance and training where we can.

Here are some suggestions, we are sure you can think of plenty more

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, ceramiscist, stage designer, poet and playwirght is is generally regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He is know for co-founding the Cubish movement, the invention of constructed sculputre, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works, are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Auvignon and Guernica, a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces.

In Oxford

Antony Gormley

The figure of Antony Gormley on the rooftop of Exeter College overlooks Broad Street.

Sir Antony Gormley, OBE is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, in Gateshead Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site installation which premiered in London in 2007, around Madison Square in New York  in 2010, in São Paulo, in 2012, and in Hong Kong in 2015-16

The Headington Shark

(Proper name Untitled 1986) is an iconic sculpture designed by John Buckley and constructed by Anton Castiau, a local carpenter is located at 2 New High Street, Headington, which was owned by local radio DJ Bill Heine,  The shark first appeared on 9 August 1986, the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The sculpture is  reported to weigh 4 long hundredweight (200 kg) and is 25 feet (7.6 m) long and is made of painted fibreglass.

William Morris

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production.

Paul Nash

Paul Nash (1889-1946) worked as a war artist in WWI and his depiction of the WWI trenches was powerfully realist. By WW2 he was living in Oxford he painted Totes Meer at the Cowley dump, where damaged RAF and German planes were salvaged and reconditioned for reuse – this emotionally charged image was intended to serve as an anti-German propaganda tool, and he wanted to get the image onto postcards that could be distributed over German cities.

250-year Anniversary

Canaletto

Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), better known as Canaletto, was a very influential Italian artist famed for evocative views of Venice.

Canaletto visited England repeatedly between 1746-56, painting works like The Thames from Somerset House. Canaletto often made meticulous preparatory drawings and may have used a camera obscura for accuracy, but was always remained concerned with satisfying composition not simply slavishly recording views.

100-year Anniversary

Gustav Klimt

February 2018 marks 100 years since the death of Gustav Klimt (Austrian painter; 14 July 1862 – 6th February 1918).
Gustav Klimt was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession. He is perhaps best known for his opulently gilded Art Nouveau portraits that epitomise fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Egon Schiele

October 2018 marks 100 years since the death of Egon Schiele (Austrian painter; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918). When Austrian artist Egon Schiele died of Spanish flu in 1918, he left behind an incredible body of work. At times explicit, grotesque and twisted, his art is defined by its brutality and its honesty

Niko Pirosmani

April 2018 marks 100 years since the death of Niko Pirosmani (Georgian artist; 1862 – 9th April 1918).
Niko Pirosmani was a self-taught painter with no formal art training. Alongside Henri Rousseau, he is today considered one of the greatest representatives of Naïve art.