Tag: Art Gallery of NSW
Matisse: A First Look
Monday, November 22nd, 2021 Blog,Henri Matisse burst onto the French art scene like a bombshell at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. Faced with paintings in vibrant colour, the public was scandalised. The 36-year-old Matisse and his colleagues were christened “les Fauves” – the wild beasts – and accused of being madmen and confidence tricksters. Although the show was an act […]
The Way We Eat
Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 Art Column,In the western world we greet someone with the words: “How are you?” but in China they say: “Have you eaten?” It testifies to the central importance of food in Chinese culture – and perhaps the difficulties of getting enough of it over the past 5,000 years. The Way We Eat at the Art Gallery […]
The Met: Art Museums in a Changing World
Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 Art Column,While New South Wales lockdowns roll on, Queenslanders can go to Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art and view the blockbuster exhibition, European Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It’s almost certainly the most impressive show to reach our heavily barricaded shores this year but the pandemic has made it hard to imagine […]
Archie 100
Tuesday, June 29th, 2021 Art Column,Over the past few years there have been times when the Art Gallery of NSW was so empty of visitors it gave the impression someone had just shouted “Fire!”. Right now the opposite applies: the joint is packed to the rafters, with people waiting patiently in queues to see the Archibald Prize. For many this […]
Archibald Prize 2021
Tuesday, June 15th, 2021 Art Column,It’s now history that Peter Wegner has won the centenary Archibald Prize with a portrait of centenarian artist, Guy Warren. Wegner wasn’t the ony one to have that idea – by Guy’s reckoning he sat for “four or five” portraits in the lead-up to this year’s prizes, but here’s little doubt the Archibald winner was […]
Archibald of Archibalds
Friday, June 11th, 2021 Blog,If we imagine the history of the Archbald Prize for portraiture as one big competition featuring every winner from 1921 to the present, which painting would emerge on top? It may sound tantalising but as with most of the competitions I’ve seen, it’s quite easy to pick. For sheer painterly bravura, for a unique blend […]
Archibald & Others: The results are in
Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 Blog,It’s tempting to say justice was done this year with Peter Wegner’s portrait of 100-year-old artist, Guy Warren, taking out the 100th Archibald, but it was a virtual inevitability. Had the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW decided to do something daring and different they may have been lynched by an angry mob of […]
Packing Room Prize & more
Monday, May 31st, 2021 Blog,In this ever changin’ world in which we’re livin’, as Paul McCartney sang, it’s reassuring that some things remain the same. One of those fixed points is the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture which comes around with mind-numbing regularity, sometimes looking a little better, sometimes a little worse. Godzilla has a son and so too […]
The National 2021
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021 Art Column,Conceived as “a celebration of contemporary Australian art”, The National has been a strange beast ever since its inception in 2017. One of the problems of this event – a biennial collaboration between the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Carriageworks – is that it has occasionally seemed to be a […]
Cultural death by a 1,000 cuts
Saturday, April 17th, 2021 Blog,Should we be surprised the Berejiklian government is contemplating a sneaky cut to the operating budgets of major cultural institutions? By now we’re accustomed to those familiar patterns of secrecy, lack of transparency, and the reckless disregard for both public and expert opinion. The rule is: “We know best, so suck it up.” For a […]