Tag: painting
Archibald Prize 2014
Saturday, July 19th, 2014 Art Column,Imagine if the Archibald Prize banned all portraits that relied on photographs. The number of entries would drop from 884 to something less than 100, while the exhibition would be dominated by amateurs and unknown artists. Even the subjects would be strangers to most viewers because it’s unlikely that anyone mildly famous could spare the […]
Italian Masterpieces
Saturday, June 21st, 2014 Art Column,Among the great art museums of the world, the Prado in Madrid may not have the biggest or most comprehensive collection, but it has an exceptional array of masterpieces. To view the greatest paintings by Velázquez, Goya and other Spanish old masters, a visit to the Prado is obligatory. It is also the place to […]
Head On, Michael Johnson & Eva Breuer
Saturday, May 31st, 2014 Art Column,Moshe Rosensveig is the Dr. Frankenstein of Australian photography – Head On, the photo festival he started five years ago, has become a certified monster. There are no fewer than 37 ‘featured’ exhibitions and almost 70 ‘associated’ exhibitions spread across the city, involving an estimated 900 artists. The program also boasts 150 events, including workshops, […]
The Prado and the World
Saturday, May 24th, 2014 Blog,In 1982 I paid my first visit to the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Spain was still in the process of awakening from the Franco era, which ended with the dictator’s death in 1975, and its museums were poor and neglected. The Prado was a cold, austere place with a stupendous collection. In a single […]
Sam Fullbrook
Saturday, May 17th, 2014 Art Column,When Matisse suggested that if you want to be an artist you must first cut out your tongue, he was acknowledging a fundamental truth: artists spout a lot of rubbish when they talk about their work. Rare indeed is the painter who can discuss his or her pictures in a calm, pragmatic manner, but Sam […]
Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy
Saturday, April 5th, 2014 Art Column,If there is one issue that divides the art of the past from the art of today it is how we assess quality. A primary motivation for the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 was to establish standards of excellence by which artworks may be judged. The members of the R.A. formed […]
Georges Braque
Saturday, October 12th, 2013 Art Column, International Art,“Painting is not an art where anything goes.” Georges Braque. In 1977 the Fraser government struck a lethal blow to Australia’s reputation as an art-collecting nation when it torpedoed the purchase of Georges Braque’s painting, Nu debout (1908) (AKA. Grand Nu). The National Gallery of Australia had a price – $1.5 million – and an […]
Windows to the Sacred
Saturday, September 14th, 2013 Art Column,“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” was the personal motto of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) once known to the headline writers as “the Great Beast” and “The Wickedest Man Alive.” It was a philosophy that would endear him to the counter-culture of the sixties and make him a hero for rock […]
Sydney Moderns
Saturday, July 20th, 2013 Art Column,When an artist calls a work A Painted Picture of the Universe it means he’s thinking big. It’s rather a grand title for a small abstraction, even if it did take Roy De Maistre 14 years to complete this cosmological fantasy. De Maistre (1894-1968) is one of the central figures in Sydney Moderns: Art for […]
Monet's Garden
Saturday, May 18th, 2013 Art Column,Approaching the National Gallery of Victoria for Monet’s Garden, I expected to find the moat festooned in water lilies, and enter through an archway covered in climbing roses. The reality was slightly different: the same old bluestone façade, with red and blue Mazdas parked by the doors. After so many years of sponsorship, I’m conditioned […]