Art Column
Versailles
Friday, February 17th, 2017 Art Column,In Roberto Rossellini’s film of 1966, The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, there is a scene in which the King appears in an outrageous red outfit, all frills and flounces, designed to his own specifications. He explains that with this clownish costume he is setting a dress code to keep his nobles poor, and […]
‘Difficult Pleasures’ in Berlin
Friday, February 10th, 2017 Art Column,Am Kupfergraben 10 is a modern four-storey building in the historic heart of Berlin. An imposing structure in reinforced concrete and glass, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, it looks out across the River Spree to the Museum Island and the Lustgarten. With high ceilings, gleaming white walls and large windows with adjustable light levels, […]
Philippe Parreno
Thursday, February 2nd, 2017 Art Column,There’s something fascinating about Philippe Parreno, but it’s not necessarily the art. It’s his mind. Having sat through two-and-a-half hours of short, oblique films at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, I came away feeling amazed by the kind of mind that could devise such a strange, obscure spectacle. Perhaps “spectacle” is the wrong […]
Tatsuo Miyajima
Friday, January 27th, 2017 Art Column,Tatsuo Miyajima is the kind of artist who stands out, even in the largest of exhibitions. My first glimpse of his work came at the 1988 Venice Biennale where his Sea of Time was the most talked-about piece on display. Amidst all the derivative and nondescript stuff that inhabits the specially curated component of the […]
Sappers and Shrapnel
Friday, January 13th, 2017 Art Column,I’m regretful about Sappers and Shrapnel: Contemporary Art and the Art of the Trenches at the Art Gallery of South Australia – not about the show but about how long it lingered in the queue before I could get down to Adelaide for a viewing. Exhibitions at the AGSA are often of a short duration […]
Bronwyn Oliver
Friday, January 6th, 2017 Art Column,All artists are ultimately judged not by their biographies and personalities, but by what they leave behind. It doesn’t matter what sins they might have committed, or what trails of heartbreak and devastation they left in their wake. We might deplore Gauguin’s narcissism and perversity, but it doesn’t mean we think less of his paintings. […]
David Hockney: Current
Wednesday, December 21st, 2016 Art Column,In 1988 a London critic described David Hockney as “the lost boy of contemporary painting.” A decade later, another newspaper columnist compared him to the Ancient Mariner, as a garrulous old codger. It’s a measure of Hockney’s elusiveness over the course of a very long, very successful career. There’s some truth in both claims. The […]
A History of the World in 100 Objects
Friday, December 16th, 2016 Art Column,Neil MacGregor, former director of both the National Gallery, London, and the British Museum, is rightly viewed as one of the great museum professionals of our times. Combining intelligence, sensitivity and personal modesty with bluff Scottish common sense, MacGregor should be a model for today’s museum directors, as they struggle with declining attendances and governments […]
GOMA Turns 10
Friday, December 9th, 2016 Art Column,After ten fleeting years Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art remains an enormous work-in-progress. GOMA celebrated its birthday last week with the launch of a ‘greatest hits’ exhibition called Sugar Spin; the unveiling of a new public sculpture by Judy Watson; a tribute to leading donor, Tim Fairfax; an indigenous show called Lucent; and a series […]
Nude
Friday, December 2nd, 2016 Art Column,When Justin Paton, head of International Art at the Art Gallery of NSW says that Nude: Art From the Tate Collection is not a package show, surely he means: “Not just any package show”, or “Not merely a package show”. If the term doesn’t apply to an exhibition in which 122 works out of 126 […]