Tag: photography
Bill Cunningham New York
Saturday, November 12th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,There are many occasions in this film when one begins to wonder: “Is Bill Cunningham actually, clinically, mad?” Never in the course of a human life-time has so much energy and enthusiasm been expended on a subject that many would regard as trivial, superficial or blatantly commercial – the fashion industry. After watching this documentary […]
Bill Henson
Saturday, April 9th, 2011 Art Column, Australian Art,Most artists would be delighted to find a TV news crew at their exhibition, but last week in Melbourne a Channel Ten reporter and her entourage were not allowed to film the first night of Bill Henson’s new show at Tolarno Galleries. Because television reporters apparently have a God-given right to go anywhere, the indignation […]
Photography & Place & An Edwardian Summer
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 Art Column, Australian Art,In 1975 the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, hosted the exhibition: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. It is still talked about as one of the most influential shows of the modern era, with an index of its significance being that second-hand copies of the original catalogue now change hands for […]
Pride and Passion
Saturday, March 19th, 2011 Australian Art,Photographic Portraits of Fairfield by Danny Huynh Multiculturalism isn’t folk dancing, it’s the stoning of adulterers. Anthony Daniels. ‘Multiculturalism’ is one of the most contested terms in our modern liberal democracy. For some commentators it represents a sentimental dream of folk dances, national costumes and ethnic cuisine. Others see it as a mask for religious […]
Jeff Carter
Saturday, February 12th, 2011 Art Column, Australian Art,Ideally we expect a steely detachment from our arts professionals, but Barry Pearce, the retiring Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, recently admitted that he couldn’t be objective about the works of Justin O’Brien. At the State Library last week I had the same feeling about the late Jeff Carter, one […]
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life
Saturday, November 27th, 2010 Art Column, International Art,Annie Leibovitz’s career reads like one long cautionary tale on the fickleness of fame – a condition the poet, Rilke, famously described as “the sum of all misunderstandings”. As the world’s leading photographer of celebrities she has become a celebrity in her own right. This is the main reason her exhibition at the Museum of […]
Annie Leibovitz: a preview
Saturday, November 20th, 2010 Art Column, International Art,Every aspiring amateur should find inspiration in the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, for it suggests that one can be the most famous, most highly paid photographer in the world, and rarely produce anything that might be called a masterpiece. Leibovitz is known for her portraits of celebrities, and by the ineluctable […]
Annie Leibovitz at the MCA
Friday, November 19th, 2010 Art Column,Every aspiring amateur should[JM1] find inspiration in the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, for it suggests that one can be the most famous, most highly paid photographer in the world, and rarely produce anything that might be called a masterpiece. Leibovitz is known for her portraits of celebrities, and by the […]
Alfred Stieglitz
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 Art Column,In his poem, On the Manner of Addressing Clouds, Wallace Stevens describes those billowing masses as “gloomy grammarians in golden gowns”. Passing through the skies, clouds elicit high-minded tributes from poets and artists, yet drift on indifferently. Clouds are ephemeral, yet monumental. The work of art aspires to permanence and monumentality, yet it too is […]
Bill Henson David Aspden
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 Art Column,How fleeting and fickle are the excitements generated by the media. In 2008 it seemed as though Australian civilisation was on the brink of disaster because Bill Henson had exhibited photographs of nude teenagers. It made little difference that he had been doing this for almost thirty years already, with the works being shown in […]