Art Essays
Emily Kame Kngwarreye in Osaka
Friday, February 1st, 2008 Australian Art,“Why is it,” asks Margo Neale, “that they call Emily the impossible modernist?’” The term assumes that an elderly Aboriginal woman who spent virtually her entire life in the central desert region, had no chance of becoming acquainted with the great icons of modern art. The underlying idea is that modernism was the invention of […]
Hu Ming
Sunday, July 1st, 2007 Chinese Art, International Art,“In order to build a great socialist society,” wrote Mao, in his little red book, “it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity.” If we consider the erotic overtones of the English word “arouse”, Chairman Mao’s vision of women’s role sets the scene for Hu […]
Bernard Ollis
Thursday, August 31st, 2006 Australian Art, General Art Essays,Bernard Ollis is one of those painters who elude easy categorization. This is at best a mixed blessing, because art historians love to be able to define an artist as an expressionist, a realist, a surrealist, or some plausible combination. Ollis is a little of each, but ultimately none of the above. He is a […]
Venice
Friday, July 1st, 2005 International Art,For three days in summer, every other year, an unruly crowd of artists, critics, curators, dealers and collectors descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale – the world’s premier contemporary art event. The networking and partying goes on at a furious pace, as the art luminaries separate the stars from the also-rans, deciding […]
Andy Warhol
Tuesday, March 1st, 2005 International Art,What happens when art history has run its course? What happens when every last innovation has been tried and tried again? One answer is that the business of art becomes the art of business. This distinction was pioneered by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), who was talking about “business art” in the 1970s – a decade in […]
Shen Shaomin: Bones of Contention
Friday, August 6th, 2004 Chinese Art, International Art,Monstrous bones have been turning up throughout the course of civilization, but it was not until 1842 that the British anatomist, Sir Richard Owen, coined the word “dinosaur” – bringing together the Greek words deinos (meaning ‘marvellous’ or ‘terrible’) and sauros (‘lizard’). The “dragon bones” found in Sichuan 2,000 years ago, as described by the […]
Culture in the Age of Howard
Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 General Art Essays,Culture is not an exclusive game played by artists and their admirers, it is an ongoing conversation within and between communities. It is a meeting place for different arguments and perspectives, an arena in which large and small problems are ventilated. When we speak of ‘cultural progress’, we assume that some resolution or compromise has […]
Modern Painting in 15 Easy Pieces: The past 100 years
Friday, August 15th, 2003 General Art Essays, International Art,All definitions of modern art are bound to end in failure, but that has not prevented artists and writers from making the attempt. In fact, one might see the entire twentieth century as an unbroken sequence of definitions and re-definitions, with each movement taking its cue from an earlier one, but striving to surpass and […]
Michael Bell: Yeeros & Civilisation
Tuesday, July 1st, 2003 Australian Art,It hardly seems fair that after twenty years of unceasing creativity, the name “Michael Bell” is largely identified with a single motif – a comic face with staring eyes, clenched teeth and three-day growth, AKA. the Sandman. The face became famous when it was picked up by 2JJJ as a logo for Steve Abbott’s deadpan […]
Cressida Campbell: A Profile
Tuesday, April 29th, 2003 Australian Art,Cressida Campbell would be the first to admit that most artists’ lives are uneventful. Allowing for those famous few who lopped off an ear or succumbed to Bohemian dissipation, there is little more to it than the daily grind of work in the studio, the repeated struggle for inspiration and motivation. This is Campbell’s lot, […]