Art History
Edward Colless is the ‘don’ of the art world – in fact, he is Juan, Quixote, and Giovanni all woven together. The Error of My Ways is his ‘mille e tre’ of theoretical affairs – essays and articles that have infected an otherwise sterile art scene with a flame of desire.
... (read more)Bernard Smith reviews 'Heritage: The national women’s art book' edited by Joan Kerr
This is nothing less than a magisterial achievement. Joan Kerr and her collaborators (some 128 women and forty-eight men) have documented ‘500 works by 500 Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955’ to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of International Women’s Year. Simultaneously with its publication exhibitions of Australian women’s art are being held at 127 venues throughout Australia. Both the book and the exhibitions are a monument to the energy, enthusiasm, and efficiency of Joan Kerr and her team of honorary fellow workers.
... (read more)Jonathan Holmes reviews 'Imagining the Pacific: In the wake of the Cook voyages' by Bernard Smith
At the conclusion of the fascinating essay ‘Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and Cook’s Second Voyage’ in his recently published book Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages, Bernard Smith writes:
... (read more)The most carefully planned and the most scientifically and efficiently conducted expedition ever made up to its time in the realm of reality provided the poet with a world of wonder and a nucleus of recollections from whence emerged in its own good time the most romantic voyage ever undertaken in the realm of the imagination.
Traudi Allen reviews 'Robert Juniper' by Philippa O'Brien and 'Salvatore Zofrea: Images from the Psalms' by Ted Snell
Craftsman House has contributed substantially to bringing our art map up-to-date with the simultaneous publication of a West Australian and a New South Wales art history. One on the work of Robert Juniper and the other on that of Salvatore Zofrea make interesting comparison. The first presents the style· of art one might expect to ensue from that great Western expanse of desert while the other challenges such expectations as stereotyped and clichéd. Juniper set out to depict the landscape and to heroicise it, as has been our tradition; Zofrea, according to Snell, incorporates Australia in the international tradition of art history.
... (read more)Leigh Astbury reviews 'European Vision and the South Pacific' by Bernard Smith
In the late nineteenth century, the Sydney barrister and critic, William Bede Dalley is reported to have said: ‘I enjoy literature in all its manifestations. But if there is one class of books I prefer to another, I think it must be’ – with a flash of his teeth – ‘why, New Books!’
... (read more)Noel Counihan reviews 'Sam Byrne: Folk painter of the Silver City' by Ross Moore
Before I came across this attractive and instructive book, I knew very little of the art of Sam Byrne, thinking of him merely as one of a group of outback ‘primitives’ based on Broken Hill, the Silver City, of whom the best known is Pro Hart.
... (read more)Memory Holloway reviews 'The Shock of the New' by Robert Hughes
Mary Eagle reviews 'Australian Women Artists, 1840–1940' by Janine Burke
Janine Burke’s Australian Women Artists, 1840–1940 is a memento of the exhibition of women’s art initiated by the Ewing Gallery for 1975, International Women’s Year. An extraordinarily rich exhibition, it convinced me and many others who saw it on its tour of the eastern states, that Australian women painters, for at least the first 30 years of this century, must share the laurels equally with men.
... (read more)Gary Catalano reviews 'Ian Fairweather: Profile of a painter' by Nourma Abbott-Smith and 'Conversations with Australian Artists' by Geoffrey de Groen
‘To paint’, Ian Fairweather once observed, ‘one must be alone.’ True enough, you think, though hardly deserving of quotation. Down the years all kinds of artists have made the same observation, yet not many of them have been as consistently forthright when essaying the value and aesthetic nature of their lonely activity. Fairweather was an exception. ‘I paint for myself,’ he went on to add, ‘nor do I feel any compulsion to communicate, though naturally I am pleased when it seems I have done so.’
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