Art Essays
21st Century
Saturday, January 8th, 2011 Art Column, Australian Art, International Art,In 1942 Peggy Guggenheim opened her Art of this Century gallery in New York, designed by the Austrian architect, Frederick Kiesler. The gallery’s Abstract Room featured paintings suspended in mid-air. A Surrealist Room had concave walls, from which pictures were cantilevered on wooden joints made from sawn-off baseball bats. In a Kinetic Room the viewer […]
Peggy Guggenheim
Saturday, January 1st, 2011 Art Column, Australian Art, International Art,Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated art collectors but she belonged to a relatively “poor” branch of an illustrious family. Her grandfather, Simon, had arrived in the United States in 1847 as a penniless Jewish migrant from Switzerland. So astutely did those early Guggenheims manage their affairs that by World […]
James Guppy
Saturday, December 18th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art,This has been a forgettable year for the commercial galleries. Not only are sales down, even attendances have been disappointing. It is as though people don’t trust themselves to visit galleries in case they are tempted to spend money. Art dealing, after all, is a glorified form of retail, and the economists are telling us […]
The First Emperor
Saturday, December 11th, 2010 Art Column, Chinese Art,For two thousand years the safest place for China’s cultural heritage has been underground. The Chinese may be proud of having the world’s oldest civilisation but they have also been the greatest destroyers and iconoclasts. In China the present has frequently been at war with the past, as the ruler of the day attempted to […]
White Rabbit: The Big Bang
Saturday, December 4th, 2010 Art Column, Chinese Art,As a squad of entombed warriors takes up temporary residence at the Art Gallery of NSW this may be an opportune time to look at the state of Chinese art two thousand years down the track. White Rabbit, the Neilson family’s privately funded museum of contemporary Chinese art, is currently holding its third exhibition. Like […]
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life
Saturday, November 27th, 2010 Art Column, International Art,Annie Leibovitz’s career reads like one long cautionary tale on the fickleness of fame – a condition the poet, Rilke, famously described as “the sum of all misunderstandings”. As the world’s leading photographer of celebrities she has become a celebrity in her own right. This is the main reason her exhibition at the Museum of […]
Euan Macleod & Garry Shead
Saturday, November 20th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art,You may not have noticed any banners in the streets or sixteen-page colour supplements, but November is Euan Macleod Month. This popular New Zealand-born artist is the subject of a survey exhibition called Surface Tension, at the S.H.Ervin Gallery, and a new Piper Press monograph by fellow kiwi, Gregory O’Brien. Accordingly, the month is filling […]
Annie Leibovitz: a preview
Saturday, November 20th, 2010 Art Column, International Art,Every aspiring amateur should find inspiration in the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, for it suggests that one can be the most famous, most highly paid photographer in the world, and rarely produce anything that might be called a masterpiece. Leibovitz is known for her portraits of celebrities, and by the ineluctable […]
Shen Jiawei: From Mao to Now
Saturday, November 13th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art, Chinese Art,It’s a sign of our ignorance about China that the term “Cultural Revolution” is used so promiscuously in the mass media. Art exhibitions, fashion shows, almost anything may be described by this catchphrase, which obviously seems ‘cool’ to a lot of people. But as Mao Zedong famously said: “a revolution is not a tea party.” […]
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2010
Saturday, November 6th, 2010 Art Column, Australian Art, International Art, Uncategorized,In one of her detective stories Dorothy Sayers wisely observes: “For some reason, the word ‘artistic’ produces the most alarming reactions in those who know anything about art.” As such, it would be inadequate and belittling to describe Sculpture by the Sea as one of Sydney’s most eagerly awaited ‘artistic’ events. This annual sculpture-fest is an […]