Tag: 20th Century Art

Exhibition | Delinquent Angel: John Perceval’s Ceramic Angels | Shepparton Art Museum

The exhibition Delinquent Angel: John Perceval’s ceramic angels is on at Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) until 24 November 2014. John Perceval AO is one of Australia’s most celebrated and loved artists renowned for his radicalism, expressiveness and prolific output, along with his complex personal life. As a member of the Angry Penguins avante-garde movement that began in the 1940s, Perceval joined with other Australian art luminaries Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff and Joy Hester to rail against the insular conservatism of Australian society and push for new voices and modes of expression. Perceval is largely known for his painting practice, however from 1957–1962, during what is considered to be one of his most creative periods, Perceval produced a series of ceramic angel sculptures as a result of his involvement with Arthur Merric-Boyd’s pottery studio at Murumbeena. Perceval’s ceramic…

Exhibition | Gunter Christman: Now and Then | Heide Museum of Modern Art

Gunter Christman: Now and Then is on now at Heide Museum of Modern Art until 16th November 2014. EVENT | This Saturday (2nd August 2:00pm) Artist Simon Barney, a friend and colleague of Gunter Christmann for thirty years, talks about Christmann’s inspirations, techniques and perspectives on art. Free with entry. About the Exhibition At the time of his death in 2013, Gunter Christmann was gathering anew the type of critical and public attention that surrounded his striking debut as an artist in the 1960s. Painting for himself rather than the market throughout his long career, he moved easily between personal subjects and themes with universal qualities, finding a congenial truce between his European sensibility and an affection for the intimacies of his Sydney locale. Christmann left his native Germany and arrived in Australia via Canada in 1959. He started painting three years…

Symposium | Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18 | Sydney

Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18 22 July 2014, Art Gallery of NSW Proudly presented by The Power Institute, The University of Sydney with the generous support of the Consulate General of Switzerland, Sydney and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This forum, convened by Professor Roger Benjamin, will bring together an international panel to celebrate the centenary of Paul Klee’s famous voyage to Tunisia. Claimed by the artist himself as his ‘breakthrough to colour’, the Tunisian trip of April 1914 elicited brilliant work from Klee and his colleagues August Macke and Louis Moilliet. The artists transformed the genre of Orientalism by adapting the aesthetics of Cubism and the high-colour art of the Blue Rider and Orphist avant-gardes to the North African scene. The ancient Islamic capital of Kairouan became the focus…

Exhibition Review | Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918 | David R. Marshall

Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918 David R. Marshall   At the Bendigo Art Gallery 2 March–9 June 2014. (Closes 9 June; an exhibition of antique sculpture from the British Museum follows on 2 August.) The regional galleries have some interesting exhibitions on at the moment. At the Ballarat Art Gallery is Auld Lang Syne while at Bendigo, with only a few days to run, is Genius and Ambition, which consists largely of works from the Royal Academy, London and is an exhibition generated by Bendigo and the only Australian venue. Following the success of its fashion shows, especially Grace Kelly, the Bendigo Gallery has stimulated an arts-led tourism industry serving day-trippers from Melbourne who come by car, train or chartered bus. Bendigo has a lot of offer in this respect. Its architectural charms are considerable,…

Exhibition | Mid-Century Modern: Australian Furniture Design | NGV Australia

Mid-Century Modern: Australian Furniture Design is the first major exhibition dedicated to Australian furniture of the 1940s to the 1970s. This was a period of dynamic social change as Australians embraced a new, cosmopolitan mode of living. The design of the period are characterised by innovative and flexible approach to furniture design. Mid-century furniture design turned its back on the overstuffed and ornate examples of previous decades and, in doing so, revolutionised the contemporary Australian interior.  New methods of furniture design took hold in Australia after World War Two prompted in part by both the availability of new materials and  the shortages of others. New production techniques were developed and the influx of European immigrants who were skilled in the traditions of fine furniture making also changed the industry. Taking their cue from international trends in furniture, local designers adopted…

Lecture | The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War – Eric Segal | Sydney University

The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War Eric Segal The Power Institute with Sydney Ideas is proud to present a talk by Eric Segal, of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. Segal’s presentation will focus on the artist Joseph Pennell (U.S.A. 1857-1926). Pennell worked throughout Europe and England illustrating Old World cities and landscapes, whist at the same time rendering great American works of architecture and engineering. His dedication to a shabby Europe of the past and a gleaming New-World modernity, reflected contradictions and disappointments in his chauvinistic concerns about the faltering course of American cultural progress. The talk will explore how Pennell tied together thinking about the preservation of art, encroaching immigration and “wonders” of engineering, in an untidy package that led to complex and sometimes explosive…

Exhibition | Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin | Heide Museum of Modern Art

Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin Heide Museum of Modern Art until Sunday 19 October 2020 About the Exhibition | In a short but intensive career as a painter, sculptor and printmaker, George Baldessin attracted critical acclaim from peers and audiences alike, admired for his expertise in intaglio printing (etching) and his radical figurative style during the 1960s and 70s when abstraction was dominant. Being Human: The Graphic Work of George Baldessin, focuses on Baldessin’s powerful prints and drawings, created between the artist’s exhibition debut in 1964 and his untimely death in 1978, aged thirty-nine. The exhibition includes seventeen works recently gifted to the museum by the Estate of George Baldessin, which will be exhibited together at Heide for the first time, along with prints from the Heide Collection by Baldessin’s contemporaries including Roger Kemp, Les Kossatz, Jan Senbergs and…

Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar Series | Ted Gott on Augustus John

Next week, the Melbourne Portrait Group launches a series of seminars on various aspects of portraiture. The series opens with a paper from Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, and further seminars are scheduled over the coming months. Monday 24 March, 6:30pm Ted Gott, Portraits of Augustus John in the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1939 the Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, J. S. MacDonald, wrote forcefully about Augustus John’s life-size 1909 portrait of the Lord Mayor of Liverpool: ‘the painting is a bad one, and its purchase should not be entertained’. Nonetheless, the painting was subsequently purchased for the NGV by the Felton Bequests’ Committee. Why was opinion divided about the merit of John’s painting, and how did a work that would seem to be a natural fit for a…

Solitaire: Artists in Conversation | TarraWarra Museum of Art

TarraWarra Museum of Art is hosting a lively conversation with exhibition artist Heather B. Swann, poet Kevin Brophy and curator Anthony Fitzpatrick, as they tease out the themes of the Solitaire exhibition and broader aspects of the depiction of figuration in Australian art. Venue: TarraWarra Museum of Art Date: 4:00pm – 6:00pm, 16 March 2021 (4pm – 5pm: Artists in conversation, 5pm – 6pm: Refreshments) Tickets $20 adults, $15 students, includes refreshments and museum entry. Bookings essential www.twma.com.au About the Exhibition The exhibition features works from the TarraWarra Museum of Art collection and selected loans. The exhibition explores the solitary human figure in modern and contemporary Australian paintings and sculptures. Throughout the exhibition, which includes painting and sculptures by artists Rick Amor, Charles Blackman, Peter Booth, Louise Hearman, Sidney Nolan, Mike Parr, Sally Smart, Albert Tucker, Jenny Watson and many…

Talk | Art and Music in London’s Jazz Age with Professor Tim Barringer

Art and Music in London’s Jazz Age Professor Tim Barringer, Yale University The Chelsea flat of the aristocratic Sitwell brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, was the unlikely birthplace of a masterpiece of English modernism, Façade (first performed 1922). Abstract, rhythmic poems by the Sitwells’ sister Edith were matched by witty paraphrases and parodies of jazz, popular songs and avant-garde music of the day by William Walton. This lecture reveals a forgotten dimension of this jazz age jeu d’esprit: the visual. It was performed originally behind a curtain painted in primitivist style. Later reworkings of the score, however, brought forth new ‘front cloths’ from Italian Futurist Gino Severini and English Neo-Romantic painter John Piper. The lecture explores the ways in which the dialogue between the verbal and the visual enhances our understanding of the evolving character of the piece, and of the…

Exhibition Review | ‘America: Painting a Nation’. Reviewed by Diane Kirkby.

America: Painting a Nation Diane Kirkby  America: Painting a Nation is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 8th November 2013 – 9th February 2014. At a time when historians are increasingly displacing nation-building as the purpose for knowing the past, it could seem a retrograde step to make this the foundation principle through which to showcase important works of art. Nevertheless, an exhibition organised around the concept of Painting a Nation immediately provokes questions about meaning and definitions that may not have simple answers. Approaching the exhibition as a historian of the United States and its art, I was mindful of the question former Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes asked: ‘What can you learn about America by looking at its art?’ The answer found here is, unfortunately, nothing of depth. It is valuable to have these questions prompted:…

Lecture | A Multitude of Images – David Joselit

A Multitude of Images Professor David Joselit Individual tickets are available for David Joselit’s keynote lecture for the 2013 AAANZ conference. A multitude denotes a plurality of people or things. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it signifies ‘the character, quality, or condition of being many.’ The subject of this lecture will be the condition of being many with regard to images, for indeed it is possible to define modernism as a response to ‘a multitude of images.’ The lecture will range from early twentieth-century montage to recent practices of aggregating readymades among contemporary artists. Professor David Joselit is a leading scholar and critic who has written about pivotal moments in modern art ranging from the Dada movement of the early twentieth century to the emergence of globalization and new media over the past decade. Professor Joselit is currently Carnegie Professor…

Lecture | Rethinking Russell Drysdale: TarraWarra Museum of Art Lecture by Dr Christopher Heathcote

Rethinking Russell Drysdale: TarraWarra Museum of Art Lecture Dr Christopher Heathcote TWMA presents a special lecture by exhibition curator Dr Christopher Heathcote in which he explores TWMA’s ground-breaking new exhibition Russell Drysdale: Defining the Modern Australian Landscape. Heathcote will reveal that Drysdale, one of the most highly regarded artists of his generation both in Australia and internationally, was a man ahead of his time who not only shaped perceptions of the national landscape but used visual art to pose questions about the environment – disturbing questions that society is only now confronting. He will show how the artist highlighted over 50 years ago what he saw as urgent issues facing this country, in many works which soon became an iconic part of the national psyche in their depiction of the Australian landscape, but which also directly confronted problems in this…

Lecture | Between Surrealism and Pop: The early career of Eduardo Paolozzi – Ryan Johnston

Between Surrealism and Pop: The early career of Eduardo Paolozzi Ryan Johnston, Head of Art, Australian War Memorial This lecture will explore the early career and intellectual biography of Eduardo Paolozzi. Beginning with his experience of the Second World War, the lecture will trace his formative years in post-war Paris, where he sought out the legacy of the historical avant-garde and then 1950s London where, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, he was a member of the Independent Group, an informal, cross-disciplinary think-tank dedicated to the investigation of popular culture. Venue: NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, Ground Level Date: 2-3pm, Saturday 26th October NGV website

Masterclasses for Postgraduate Students with Paul Wood and David Joselit at 2013 AAANZ Conference

Postgraduate students are invited to participate in exclusive Masterclasses led by the AAANZ 2013 conference Keynote Speakers, Professor David Joselit (Yale University), and Professor Paul Wood (Open University, London). David Joselit’s Masterclass focuses on Art in the Age of Big Data, C. 2013, and Irit Rogoff’s Masterclass will examine Conceptual Art and Conceptualism. Both Masterclasses will be held on Saturday 7 December at the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Supervisors who consider their students’ research/study is relevant to the Masterclass, are encouraged to invite their students to apply. Visit the link below for further information and application procedure. Applications close Friday 8 November. http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2013-conference/inter-discipline-2013-master-classes/ PAUL WOOD MASTERCLASS |  Conceptual Art and Conceptualism The legacy of Conceptual art is both pervasive and yet contested. It has been called the hinge between the past and the present. For some it effectively initiates…