Category: Opinion

Opinion pieces about art, art history, architecture, garden history or similar. If you would like to write something please contact David Marshall david@melbourneartnetwork.com.au We prefer you send a proposal before writing/submitting the full piece.

Arts Funding and the 2016 Federal Election

by Katrina Grant • July 1, 2020

For the first time that I can remember Arts Funding has been a Federal Election issue (this article from Ben Eltham is a reminder that arts and culture barely rated a mention in 2013). This year there have been stories every week and we even saw a National Arts Debate between representatives of each major party. There wre a number of other forums where politicians, artists and others discussed the many issues surrounding arts funding and making a living in the arts. Although arts funding has no doubt been foremost in many of our minds, the fact that the Coalition has not released an arts policy suggests it is hardly foremost in their minds. It is also unfortunate that the reason it has turned into an issue is not because our potential leaders have broad and expansive visions for the arts…

Opinion | Mark McDonald: From La Trobe University to the British Museum, and the slashing of Art History and the Humanities in Australia

by Katrina Grant • July 20, 2020

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 the department—now a major associated with History, following an earlier downsizing—the scholars who have taught there, past and present, the many students who have passed though its doors and the many contributions they have made. These and similar cuts proposed or already executed to the humanities in other tertiary institutions in Australia will result in a country that is significantly poorer, culturally speaking, and these actions will be difficult to rectify in the future. I return to Australia on a regular basis from my position as…

Review | Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists by David R. Marshall

by admin • February 21, 2021

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 really matters in such art—it embodies the individuals that created it, rather than the institutions that sponsored it— or (b) it is all a matter of history and so the question is beside the point. The first answer makes particular sense to those whose personal experience is that good things come about in spite of institutions, not because of them. De Botton takes the opposite tack: that it is a given that intellectual bases of religions are nonsense—myths left over from times of ignorance—but we should…

Opinion: On Facadism

by admin • December 24, 2020

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 façade demolished in 2010, in spite of having a heritage overlay, in order to provide truck access to the site. According to a widely expressed view, facadism—the preserving of old facades while putting up a wholly new building behind them—is bad, because it is the integrity of the building as a whole that matters. This is nonsense, and the effect has been to strip away a key line of defence for buildings like Lonsdale House. This was an example of reverse facadism, when an Art Deco…

Opinion: Thoughts on the NGV’s latest acquisition: Correggio’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist by David R. Marshall

by Katrina Grant • August 17, 2020

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. By chance I was shown this painting in late May when I was looking at something else, and had an interesting discussion about it with the people from Sotheby’s, including their conservator who was doing the conservator’s report. It was not an attention-grabbing picture at first sight (especially as it was a little yellowed by varnish), but gradually the subtleties of Correggio’s hand and imagery began to emerge. It is an early work, which is always interesting with Correggio because, like Giovanni Bellini, he begins slowly,…

MAN Opinion – David R. Marshall: Thoughts on the NGV’s Latest Acquisition

by admin • February 23, 2021

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 hope to hear more about this on the MAN website in due course, but here it may be worth noting the shabby treatment of the announcement in the Sunday Age. Over a picture of the director with the new painting was the heading ‘Gallery fights ‘moribund’ tag’. This turns out to be the complaint, here voiced by the journalist responsible for the item, Gabriella Coslovich, that the NGV does not have enough contemporary art. The editors of The Age have seen fit to give Coslovich a…

David R. Marshall – Scientists and the Perspective of View Painters

by admin • September 22, 2020

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 ground plans. ‘They identified 20 points in each painting and located them on the corresponding plan. They then used this information to create a mathematical projection function and incorporated it into a piece of software, called “Panini”.’ No prizes for guessing which painting(s) and which building features prominently! The article goes on to state that ‘Panini [the program] can squash the width of a panoramic image while retaining perspective.’ Quite what this means is far from clear. It seems to assume that all 14 paintings employ…