Art Column
Jeffrey Smart
Saturday, June 26th, 2010 Art Column,There is a science fiction aspect to the Australian art market at the moment, with commercial galleries inhabiting parallel universes. Most dealers have struggled to sell anything substantial for much of this year, but every so often a show comes along that sparks a feeding frenzy. Rex Irwin’s current selection of paintings and drawings by […]
Hans Heysen and Marion Borgelt
Sunday, June 20th, 2010 Art Column,Travelling to the Flinders Ranges last year with a group of artists, I read my way through Colin Thiele’s Heysen of Hahndorf (1968) the standard biography of Australia’s most celebrated gum tree Meister. Sir Hans Heysen (1877-1968) was the first artist to make Australians aware of the rugged beauty of the Flinders region, with a […]
Victorian Visions
Sunday, June 13th, 2010 Art Column,In the early 1960s Lord Leighton’s masterpiece, Flaming June (1895) was put up for auction but failed to sell for its reserve price of US$140 – roughly US$840 in today’s money. In 1963, the London dealer, Jeremy Maas, managed to dispose of the picture for the equivalent of US$10,000, to a politician from Puerto Rico […]
Art Hong Kong 2010
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 Art Column,Hong Kong has always understood money but not art. Unlike other business capitals this hyperactive island’s passion for profit has never been translated into a desire for cultural distinction. That held true until art and money became so closely intertwined that the prices paid for contemporary works became more important than the content. When this […]
17th Biennale of Sydney
Saturday, May 29th, 2010 Art Column, Uncategorized,But that joke isn’t funny any more, It’s too close to home And it’s too near the bone. (The Smiths) “When he makes a joke,” said Sigmund Freud, “a problem lies concealed.” He was quoting Goethe, who was referring to the aphorist, Lichtenberg, but the sentence has universal relevance. Laughter is a release from tension, […]
17th Biennale of Sydney
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 Art Column,We are the Folk Song Army, Every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice, Unlike the rest of you squares. (Tom Lehrer) This may or may not be Sydney’s biggest ever Biennale, but it breaks all records for the length of the title. The Beauty of Distance: Songs of […]
Bill Henson David Aspden
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 Art Column,How fleeting and fickle are the excitements generated by the media. In 2008 it seemed as though Australian civilisation was on the brink of disaster because Bill Henson had exhibited photographs of nude teenagers. It made little difference that he had been doing this for almost thirty years already, with the works being shown in […]
White Rabbit: The Tao of Now
Saturday, May 8th, 2010 Art Column,There is nothing like the thought of China to make one appreciate life in Australia. Our so-called ‘great population debate’ seems laughable when we put our 22.3 million inhabitants alongside China’s 1.33 billion. We may be duly concerned about the strain that overpopulation puts on the environment, on water resources and infrastructure, but China’s problems […]
Fiona Tan, Jon Lewis & Kate Geraghty
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 Art Column,Fiona Tan is almost the perfect multicultural artist. Born in Indonesia of Australian and Chinese parents, brought up in Melbourne, she now resides in the Netherlands. Last year she was the Dutch representative at the Venice Biennale, where her video, Disorient, was one of the best received exhibits in a largely disappointing show. Would it […]
Hats and James Fardoulys
Saturday, April 24th, 2010 Art Column,Lewis Carroll cannot take complete credit for the expression: “as mad as a hatter”. Even before he created the most famous tea party in world literature, hatters had quite a reputation. The mercury compounds used in 19th century hat making induced a range of symptoms including trembling fits and mood swings. It is unlikely that […]