Tag: Australian art
Fred Williams & Victor Rubin
Saturday, August 29th, 2009 Art Column,There are many answers to the question: “What is a classic?” It may be a work belonging to a certain period with a taste for ideal forms; an emphasis on balance, stillness and harmonious composition. Another definition sees a classic as something of undying excellence – a work of art that always seems as vital […]
Maitland Regional Art Gallery & Danny Huynh
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 Art Column,Having grown up in the coalfields of the Hunter Valley, I never thought I’d see the day when those prosaic towns would manifest a love of art. That was before last weekend when Maitland confounded all expectations by opening a spectacular new gallery. The Maitland Regional Art Gallery is a clever meshing of old and […]
Charles Darwin 200th Birthday Exhibitions
Saturday, August 1st, 2009 Art Column,This year marks Charles Darwin’s two hundredth birthday, and exactly 150 years since he published his world-changing book, The Origin of Species. Predictably, the entire planet has been overwhelmed with Darwin exhibitions and publications. I once read that Jesus Christ was the most biographed individual of all time, with Leonardo da Vinci in second place. […]
American Impressionism and Realism
Saturday, July 25th, 2009 Art Column,“Balzac had described many cities,” wrote Henry James in his late novel, The Ambassadors, “but he had not described Woollett, Massachusetts.” Neither did Balzac get around to describing Brisbane, although to be fair, there was not much to describe in his day. “Woollett”, for James, was a bastion of New World earnestness, industry and ambition. […]
Ken Unsworth & Paul Selwood
Saturday, July 11th, 2009 Art Column,As a by-product of last year’s flawed Biennale, Sydney was introduced to an extraordinary new venue. Cockatoo Island is an old naval shipyard, an industrial fantasia, only fifteen minutes by ferry from Circular Quay. Over the past six months the island has been used as concert venue and as a drawing camp for students from […]
John Brack
Saturday, June 6th, 2009 Art Column,Will Sydney ever see the best of John Brack? The National Gallery of Victoria held its first Brack retrospective in 1987. Following artist’s death in February 1999 there have been further surveys held in Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide. Exhibitions have looked at Brack’s portraits, his paintings of the nude, and his relationship with Fred Williams. […]
Margaret Olley: Life’s Journey
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 Art Column,At this stage of her brilliant career there is nothing that any critical review can add to or subtract from the reputation of Margaret Hannah Olley. There have been two retrospectives, two Orders of Australia, four honorary doctorates. She has been painted by Australia’s best-known artists, and hailed for her constant public benefactions. As long […]
Peter Godwin
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 Australian Art, International Art,In a 1990 article in the New Yorker, Dan Hofstadter described the School of London artists – notably R.B.Kitaj, Leon Kossoff and Dennis Creffield, as “dungeon masters”.[i] An accomplished exercise in cultural anthropology, this piece helped introduce American audiences to an eccentric tribe of painters that seemed to revel in dinginess and squalor. These artists […]
Fairweather
Sunday, March 1st, 2009 Australian Art, Book Reviews,FAIRWEATHER By Murray Bail At what point does a revised edition become a different book? Novelist Murray Bail published the first version of this monograph on Ian Fairweather in 1981. It became an instant classic, partly due to the extraordinary nature of the artist’s life, partly because of Bail’s engaging prose – so very different […]