Art Essays
Russell Drysdale
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 Australian Art, Book Reviews,Russell Drysdale By Lou Klepac Lou Klepac’s weighty monograph on Russell Drysdale was first issued in 1983, less than two years after the artist’s death in June 1981. I remember reviewing that volume for a student newspaper, regretting that I never had the chance to meet the artist. At that time the book seemed like […]
Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters
Sunday, November 1st, 2009 Book Reviews, International Art,Vincent Van Gogh – The Letters. The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition. Leo Jansen, Hans Luitjen & Nienke Bakker eds. “For the present I feel calmer than last year, and the turmoil in my head has really abated so much.” These words are taken from the last letter Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his mother […]
I Blame Duchamp: My Life’s Adventures in Art
Thursday, October 1st, 2009 Book Reviews,I Blame Duchamp: My Life’s Adventures in Art By Edmund Capon This is not the book many people have been expecting. After more than thirty years as director of the Art Gallery of NSW it might seem that Edmund Capon has earned the right to publish a lively, candid, slightly scandalous memoir. There is a […]
Gunybi Ganambarr
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 Aboriginal Art, Australian Art,In many people’s minds there could be no art-form less open to change than bark painting. It is one of the world’s oldest living forms of artistic expression, probably dating as far back as those rock paintings done 40,000 years ago. Yet bark painting is also one of the abiding paradoxes of contemporary art, for […]
Sculpture By the Sea in Denmark
Saturday, August 1st, 2009 Australian Art, International Art,There was considerable trepidation leading up to the international launch of Sculpture by Sea in the Danish city of Aarhus. This prodigiously popular show, which has occupied the Sydney heads, from Bondi to Tamarama every year since 1997, had never previously been seen outside of Australia. Although the exhibitions at Bondi, and more recently at […]
Peter Godwin
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 Australian Art, International Art,In a 1990 article in the New Yorker, Dan Hofstadter described the School of London artists – notably R.B.Kitaj, Leon Kossoff and Dennis Creffield, as “dungeon masters”.[i] An accomplished exercise in cultural anthropology, this piece helped introduce American audiences to an eccentric tribe of painters that seemed to revel in dinginess and squalor. These artists […]
Fairweather
Sunday, March 1st, 2009 Australian Art, Book Reviews,FAIRWEATHER By Murray Bail At what point does a revised edition become a different book? Novelist Murray Bail published the first version of this monograph on Ian Fairweather in 1981. It became an instant classic, partly due to the extraordinary nature of the artist’s life, partly because of Bail’s engaging prose – so very different […]
Tehran
Sunday, March 1st, 2009 International Art,“The East looks to itself,” wrote Gertrude Bell in her book, Persian Pictures, “it knows nothing of the greater world of which you are a citizen, asks nothing of you and your civilisation.” In the era of globalisation one can only smile at those Orientalist sentiments that impressed Bell’s readers with their profundity in 1894. […]
Ai Weiwei
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 Chinese Art, International Art,Ai Weiwei has spent the past decade swimming against a tide that now looks more like a tsunami. Born in 1957, he spent his youth in the remote province of Xingjian, where his father, the poet Ai Qing, had been sent for re-education. The family was not allowed to return to Beijing until 1975, when […]
William Kentridge
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 International Art,William Kentridge was born and bred in Johannesburg, and has continued to reside in South Africa while the world clamours for his work. One of the reasons for Kentridge’s exceptional popularity is the way he unites aspects of cultural experience that are often seen as irreconcilable. His work is both international and intensely localised. He […]