Art Column
Picasso- Five Highlights
Thursday, December 8th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, International Art,It is difficult to choose only five works from an exhibition which covers all the major periods in Picasso’s career, from the earliest days, through his Blue and Rose periods, his experiments with Cubism, the neo-classical pictures of the post-war years, his flirtation with Surrealism, and the variations of his later life. Neither should we […]
Tokujin Yoshioka, Shen Shaomin & Chun Kwang-Young
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Chinese Art, General Art Essays,There is an emerging trend in town: slipper art, and it has nothing to do with the new Speaker in Federal Parliament. At two venues this week the viewer is asked to slip a protective covering over his or her shoes, so as not to soil the art. This is slightly at odds with the […]
Tim Storrier
Saturday, November 26th, 2011 Aboriginal Art, Art Column, Art Essays, General Art Essays,Pablo Picasso is not the only highly successful artist to imagine himself as an outsider. In Australian art, Timothy Austin Storrier presents a perfect case study. A 2000 monograph by Catherine Lumby was even called: Tim Storrier: The Art of the Outsider. If you’re wondering how someone as prominent as Storrier can imagine himself anywhere […]
Picasso
Thursday, November 24th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, International Art,Despite his long residence in France, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) always considered himself Spanish. To ignore this is to misunderstand the driving impulses behind so much of his work, as revealed in the landmark exhibition, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National de Picasso, Paris. We see the how powerful that Spanish aspect was, both for a […]
Sculpture by the Sea 2011
Saturday, November 12th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Australian Art, International Art,To see what Sculpture by the Sea is really all about, one needs to go on a weekend, when the walk between Bondi and Tamarama is teeming with people. For most exhibitions this is the worst scenario for viewing works, but with SXS the open-air setting means that no piece is ever rendered inaccessible. The […]
German idols
Saturday, November 5th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Chinese Art, International Art,In Germany, Ai Weiwei is the new Joseph Beuys. I arrived at this conclusion in Berlin, after seeing an exhibition of film footage of Joseph Beuys in Japan, at the Hamburger Bahnhof; and a show of 220 photos by Ai Weiwei, at the Martin-Gropius Bau. I’ve been in Deutschland for a conference on the Chinese […]
The Portia Geach Memorial Award
Saturday, October 29th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Australian Art, General Art Essays,One of the small paradoxes of colonial Australian art is the question as to why there were so few notable female artists at a time when women art students continually outnumbered their male counterparts. Looking at photos of the graduating classes of the National Gallery of Victoria School in the late 1800s, there is always […]
Robert Malherbe, Rhys Lee, Peter Godwin & Guan Wei
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Australian Art, General Art Essays,There is a romantic expectation that an artist will keep producing works that are wholly original. This can create a debilitating pressure, as some feel obliged to produce a new twist with every exhibition. But art is not created in a vacuum, and all artists take something from their predecessors. As Picasso is famously alleged […]
Guanxi
Saturday, October 15th, 2011 Art Column, Art Essays, Chinese Art,Guanxi is a curious word. It is usually translated as “contacts”, but there is no single English-language term that captures all the connotations it has for a Chinese speaker. Guanxi refers to a special kind of relationship between people whereby one may always be counted on to help the other. Such relationships are long-term and […]
White Rabbit: Beyond the Frame
Saturday, October 8th, 2011 Art Column, Chinese Art, International Art,Back again is Ai Weiwei’s Oil spill (2007) – a series of shiny black porcelain discs that sit flat on the floor, mimicking drops of black gold. In typical fashion, Ai Weiwei takes a substance associated with toxic pollution and transforms it into an aesthetic delicacy. Such ironic turnarounds and dislocations are characteristic of his […]