Tag: National Gallery of Victoria
2022 and Beyond
Monday, January 2nd, 2023 Sydney Morning Herald Column,There’s been plenty to think about in 2022, including war in the Ukraine, a looming global recession and floods along the north coast, but if one had to nominate Australia’s most momentous event of the year it would have to be the change of government. Whether this was equally momentous for the visual arts remains […]
Alexander McQueen: Mind Mythos Muse
Monday, December 26th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I don’t see fashion as curing cancer or AIDS – or anything else for that matter,” said Alexander McQueen. “At the end of the day they are just clothes.” This statement, like so many others uttered by this prodigiously talented designer, testifies to the contradictions that defined his career and character. For McQueen (1969-2010), fashion […]
The Picasso Century
Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“Nothing is excluded,” said Picasso, when asked about his methods. The Picasso Century at the National Gallery of Victoria provides the evidence for that sweeping claim. The show uses the iconic artist as the key to unlock an overview of the Modernist epoch. We see how Picasso’s innovations helped shape very different movements and tendencies; […]
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 […]
Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto
Thursday, February 10th, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald Column,“I am not a heroine,” Gabrielle Chanel told one of her biographers. “But I have chosen the person I wanted to be and am. Too bad if I am disliked and unpleasant.” Like most things this famous couturiere said, this statement requires unpacking. Madame Chanel could be extremely unpleasant, but also wildly generous. She was […]
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 […]
NGV Triennial 2020
Tuesday, February 16th, 2021 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It’s an old adage that success breeds success but it’s just as true that success breeds complaints. In recent years no Australian art institution has come within coo-ee of the National Gallery of Victoria when it comes to organising spectacular, ambitious exhibitions. These shows have been intended to draw the biggest possible audiences and in […]
Keith Haring Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines
Thursday, December 19th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,Some artists are shooting stars, others get their names carved into the annals of art history. The trick is to distinguish one from the other. Disgusted by the rampant commercialism of the New York art scene of the 1980s, Robert Hughes wrote a mock-epic poem, The SoHoiad, in which included throwaway references to “Keith Boring” […]
Terracotta Warriors & Cai Guo-Qiang
Thursday, June 27th, 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Column,It’s an unspoken convention that museums display modern art in brightly-lit white boxes while ancient artefacts are picked out by spotlights in darkened rooms. It may be symbolic that the art of our time is to be viewed with maximum clarity, nothing concealed, while the shadows and gloom of historical displays reflect the partial state […]
Overshadowing the Empire
Thursday, June 27th, 2019 Blog,Cai Guo-Qiang gives the impression of being a truly happy man. Tall and lean, he has the crew cut favoured by the marines, but unlike those artists who need to appear terribly earnest, he is quick with a smile and a laugh. Why wouldn’t he be happy? Cai was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, a […]