Art Column
Angus Nivison: A Survey
Saturday, January 12th, 2013 Art Column,For those of us who spend their lives going in and out of art galleries there’s nothing better than being surprised. Before entering Angus Nivison’s survey at the S.H. Ervin Gallery I felt entirely familiar with this artist’s work. I’d even written a preface for the catalogue when the exhibition debuted at the Tamworth Regional […]
Toulouse-Lautrec & the Moulin Rouge
Saturday, January 5th, 2013 Art Column,“The more you see Toulouse-Lautrec the bigger he gets.” Jules Renard Many will have formed a lasting impression of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), from John Huston’s Hollywood pot-boiler, Moulin Rouge (1952), in which José Ferrer spends the entire film waddling around on his knees, speaking in strings of bons mots. Watching this film again […]
7th Asia Pacific Triennial
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012 Art Column,Bad acronym of the year is undoubtedly QAGOMA. To spell it out that means: Queensland Art Gallery Of Modern Art, which is irredeemable. One hopes that vast sums of money have not been spent on the rebranding process, because this new title should be binned before too many people notice. It might be a first […]
Shen Jiawei: Brothers and Sisters
Saturday, December 15th, 2012 Art Column,In the mythology of Maoist China no event is more important than The Long March. It is the foundation story of the People’s Republic even if there is no separating fact from fiction. The March began in October 1934 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was driven out of the small republic it had established […]
Jun Chen, John Walker & Shona Wilson
Saturday, December 8th, 2012 Art Column,Artwork of the week, on a trip around the commercial venues, was Michael Callaghan’s AK47 – Weapon of Choice, at the Damien Minton Gallery. A three metre-high machine gun, made from 17 layers of candy-coloured plywood, this monument to murder leant nonchalantly against a wall in an exhibition called Merchants of Death. It was a […]
J.W.Power Abstraction-Création Paris 1934
Saturday, December 1st, 2012 Art Column,Almost sixty years after his death, John Joseph Wardell Power is overdue for another look. Power is best known as the generous benefactor who provided funds for a department of art history at Sydney University and a collection that has since evolved into the Museum of Contemporary Art. It is not widely known that the […]
Francis Bacon
Saturday, November 24th, 2012 Art Column,I love the dregs. Francis Bacon. If Francis Bacon had a theme song, it might be the Kinks’ I’m Not Like Everybody Else. Yet by his own reckoning, Bacon’s perverse, hedonistic lifestyle – with its heavy drinking, gambling and sadomasochistic sex – should not be considered the key to his painting. In a 1975 book […]
Jim Dine & Sam Francis
Saturday, November 17th, 2012 Art Column,Several friends have sent me the same article from The Guardian about American art critic, Dave Hickey, who says he is quitting the art business because it has become “calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors.” This diagnosis is nothing but the unvarnished truth. If we’re shielded from the worst of it in Australia […]
Francis Bacon: A preview
Friday, November 16th, 2012 Art Column,Sydney turned on a rainy day for the opening of the exhibition, Francis Bacon: Five Decades, at the Art Gallery of NSW. This was appropriate for an artist who spent his life in London, a city famed for its fog and drizzle. Inside the gallery, thoughts of England were quickly dispelled by the bright light […]
Jeffrey Smart: Master of Stillness
Saturday, November 10th, 2012 Art Column,Over the years I’ve met two distinct types of person born and raised in Adelaide. The first believe Adelaide is the finest city on earth and could not imagine living anywhere else. The second claim to have never been there in their lives. Although he is not an out-and-out Adelaide denier, for as long as […]