Tag: art history
Light
Saturday, October 1st, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,After He created heaven and earth, the next item on God’s list was light. “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” Just like flicking a switch. All artists love to play God, and light is their most fundamental concern. Not only is it hard to make art in the dark, light […]
Queer
Saturday, June 11th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Art is a queer business. That seems to be the overriding message in a monumental show at the National Gallery of Victoria dedicated to shedding light on many aspects of art and social history that have been shunned, misrepresented, or left shrouded in darkness. Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection is an extraordinary exhibition that […]
The Dance of Death
Tuesday, October 12th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Every era responds to a crisis in its own way. Our answer to COVID-19 has been to bunker down, trust in science, and wait out the worst of it. In the late Middle Ages, when Europe was devastated by the Black Death, it was widely believed the illness was sent by God as punishment for […]
Paintings and Music
Tuesday, October 5th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,There’s only one way to begin a piece on paintings inspired by music – with a famous line by the Victorian aesthete, Walter Pater. In an essay of 1873, Pater wrote: “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” It’s an idea that took on added significance with the development of abstract painting, particularly […]
The Ugly Truth
Tuesday, September 21st, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Ten years ago in Munich, in an exhibition of German Renaissance portraiture, I came across a startling image from 1550 of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria on his death bed. The Duke wasn’t expiring in a peaceful, dignified manner, he was already gone. One eye was almost closed, the other staring sightlessly at an angle. […]
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Art is long but lockdowns are short – even if they seem interminable. With museums and galleries closed, or open by appointment only, this presents a rare opportunity to trawl back over the history of art looking for subjects that illuminate the present. We often hear that a great work of art is “timeless”, meaning […]
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 […]
She-Oak and Sunlight
Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Do we really need another survey of Australian Impressionism? It’s been 14 years since the National Gallery of Victoria’s previous overview of the field and one wonders what new breakthroughs have occurred since then. In 2007 it still seemed a novel idea that we might call this group of artists “Impressionists” in place of more […]
Monet: Larger & Lighter
Friday, April 2nd, 2021 Blog,There are worse ways to spend an hour than being surrounded by gigantic projections of Impressionist paintings while listening to the greatest hits of the Belle Époque, but don’t imagine that Monet & Friends – Life, Light and Colour is an art exhibition. This audio-visual extravaganza is a spectacle with one foot in the past, […]
Papunya Tula: 50 Years 1971-2021
Tuesday, March 30th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,After 50 years the Papunya Tula Art Movement has carved out a deep niche in Australian art history, but the settlement itself was a desolate place born from a long history of misunderstandings and misguided policies. The one and only time I visited Papunya, roughly 240 kms north-west of Alice Springs, it was almost deserted. […]