Mike Belshaw, Gill Perry and Chris Riding, Discussion 2  Matisse Picasso at Tate Modern brings together major masterpieces by the two giants of modern art. Between them Matisse and Picasso originated many of the most significant developments of twentieth-century painting and sculpture. Now you can discover more about their fascinating and intricate relationship in this long-awaited exhibition which opens at Tate Modern and subsequently travels to Paris and New York.

Chris Riding, Matisse's Music Chris Riding considers focus Matisse’s paintings 'The Music Lesson' (1917) and 'The Piano Lesson' (1916) in relation to the formalist theories of Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg.Further ReadingG.Perry 'The expanding field: Ana Mendieta's Silueta Series' in J. Gaiger, ed, Frameworks for Modern Art, Yale UP/OU, 2004.J.Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta, Duke University Press, 1999.

Sophie Howarth, Phyllida Barlow, Paul Wood, Mark Godfrey, Jonathan Jones, Jason Gaiger and Jane Burton, Discussion 2  From Russian Suprematism through Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and beyond, abstraction has been variously interpreted as nihilistic, political, sublime, decorative and ironic. While much writing about abstract art has been opaque, the talks here aim to clearly open up a variety of theoretical models for discussion.

Jonathan Jones, Abstraction and the Media  Speaker: Jonathan Jones, Guardian writer.Abstract art is the opposite of what you might call a good news story, argues journalist Jonathan Jones. Good stories are precise, they have characters, they can be told quickly. None of which abstraction delivers.

Sophie Howarth, Phyllida Barlow, Paul Wood and Mark Godfrey, Discussion 1  From Russian Suprematism through Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and beyond, abstraction has been variously interpreted as nihilistic, political, sublime, decorative and ironic. While much writing about abstract art has been opaque, the talks here aim to clearly open up a variety of theoretical models for discussion.

Mark Godfrey, Barnett Newman’s Abstraction  Speaker: Mark Godfrey, Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Slade School of Art. Mark Godfrey considers some ways in which Barnett Newman's art has been interpreted. First, there are those who read it as if it were a code to be deciphered (Thomas Hess). Then there are those who 'see' it, and locate the meaning of the work in the seeing experience (Fried, Judd, Bois, Serra, Sylvester).