Opinion

From La Trobe University to the British Museum, and the slashing of Art History and the Humanities in Australia Mark McDonald Over the past months I have closely followed news of the proposed closure of the Art History programme at La Trobe University. It has given me cause to reflect on the history of...
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Thoughts on Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists David R. Marshall Alain de Botton’s new book is of interest because it directly addresses an issue important for atheistic art historians: if religion is bad, why was the art it produced so good? The usual answer is either (a) that religion is irrelevant to what...
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Opinion – David R. Marshall On Facadism The Myer’s Lonsdale Street Store is now a vast open building site, with the Lonsdale Street and Little Bourke Street facades propped up with a scaffolding of huge steel girders that occupy half of each street. Conspicuously absent is the façade of Lonsdale House, an Art Deco...
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Opinion: Thoughts on the NGV’s latest acquisition: Correggio’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist by David R. Marshall The NGV today announced the purchase of a newly discovered painting by Correggio (Antonio Allegri) of the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist at Sotheby’s 7 July sale....
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Opinion - David R. Marshall Thoughts on the NGV’s Latest Acquisition It was announced last week that the National Gallery of Victoria has acquired a new work: a late, and very Raphaelesque work, by Francesco Francia and his sons, Virgin and Child with the young Saint John in a garden of roses (c. 1515). We...
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Opinion Scientists and the Perspective of View-painters New Scientist (26 June 2010, p. 21) has recently reported on a scientific study of the perspective used by eighteenth-century view painters (vedutisti). The team, headed by Thomas Sharpless, a retired software engineer in Philadelphia, picked 14 vedute of the interiors of buildings for which they had...
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