Tag: 20th Century Art

Exhibition Review | Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists. Reviewed by David R. Marshall

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Radiance. The Neo-Impressionists Reviewed by David R. Marshall Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists. National Gallery of Victoria, 16 November 2020 – 17 March 2021 Impressionism was killed by theory, the theory that gave the Neo-impressionists their identity. Neo-Impressionist theory picked up on Impressionism’s naturalism and acute observation of outdoor light effects (coloured shadows and so forth) and married them to contemporary colour theory. The result was a pseudo-scientific artistic practice that proved to have interesting artistic possibilities wholly at odds with the theory that underpinned it. The science was the idea of optical mixing of colours and the theory of complementary contrasts. These were set out by in a book published forty years earlier by Michele-Eugène Chevreul, who had been director of the Gobelins tapestry works. Optical mixing derived from the practice of tapestry workers of twisting differently coloured threads together to…

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EVCS | Angela Hesson ‘Dangerous Ornament: The Feminine Form in Art Nouveau’

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Angela Hesson Dangerous Ornament: The Feminine Form in Art Nouveau The decorative arts of the fin-de-siècle were populated by a feminized pantheon of transient, metamorphic figures and forms delicately suspended in moments of transformation. From pin trays to paper knives to poster advertisements, Art Nouveau refashioned the most controversial subjects of Decadence and Aestheticism within the most accessible and domesticated media. While the changing role of women in the literature and so-called fine art of the period has been subject to continued scholarly investigation, the decorative arts have been excluded from the majority of critical accounts, alluded to perfunctorily as reference points for nineteenth-century misogyny or female objectification. This paper will argue, by contrast, that Art Nouveau’s celebration of the limitlessly transforming feminine form may be productively read within the context of early feminism, the renewal of interest in such…

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Seminar | Frank Heckes - Picasso’s Blue and Rose Period Reconsidered

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Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods Reconsidered This seminar will consider Picasso’s life and artistic development from 1899 to 1905. Detailed analysis will be given to major works of the Blue Period, such as Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas) (1901), Self-Portrait (1901), The Blue Room (1901), La Vie (1903) and the haunting La Celestina (1904); and such Rose Period works as The Harlequin’s Family and The Family of Saltimbanques (1905). Dr Frank Heckes, BA in Art and Spanish (University of California, Davis), MA in Spanish (Indiana University), MA in Art History and PhD in Art History (University of Michigan), is an Honorary Research Associate in Art History at La Trobe University, where he previously lectured for twenty-seven years. Frank is a specialist in Spanish art (1550-2000) and Dutch and Flemish painting (1550-1700). He has been Visiting Assistant Professor at the University…

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Exhibition Review | Neon: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue at La Maison Rouge Paris -Victoria Hobday

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Neon: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue La Maison Rouge Paris, 17 February–20 May 2012 Review by Victoria Hobday Neon has a long association with the streets, with commercial culture and with Paris. In 1902 Georges Claude, one of the founders of the company Air Liquide, discovered that the process of extracting gases such as helium and oxygen from air left behind a number of rare gases. Amongst these gases was neon and argon that when they are contained in a vacuum and an electric current is passed through them produces a glowing red and electric blue light respectively. The first neon sign was erected on the rooftop of a building on the boulevard Champs-Elysées in 1912 and spelt out the word ‘Cinzano’ the first of many signs to illuminate the streets of Paris. The lights attracted photographers in the…

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Exhibition Review | ‘Portrait of a Lady: Sir John Longstaff’, Shepparton Art Museum by Caroline Jordan

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 Longstaff’s Ladies ‘Portrait of a Lady: Sir John Longstaff’, Shepparton Art Museum, 18 February—22 April 2012. Curated by Susan Gillberg. Reviewed by Caroline Jordan John Longstaff (1861–1941) was a tall poppy in the Australian art world of the early twentieth century. The boy from Clunes, an historic little mining town near Ballarat, won the inaugural National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship for his affecting narrative painting of a young wife reeling in shock on hearing of the death of her miner husband in Breaking the News (1887, Art Gallery of Western Australia) (Fig. 1). This early success set the tone for a stellar international career.  Longstaff was a successful exhibitor where it really mattered—in the Salons of London and Paris—and was five times Archibald Prize winner at home. Longstaff was knighted in 1928 and in 1936 he co-founded the Art Gallery…

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Funding: The Henry Moore Foundation Research Fellow

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The Henry Moore Foundation Research Fellow Tate Research Department, Millbank, London Salary: £27,150 - £29,500 per annum, depending on the candidate’s skills and experience Hours: Full time Contract Type: Fixed term for two years. The Research Department at Tate aims to develop the museum’s research potential, and in-depth research into the collection plays a key role in this. Tate has world class holdings of the works of the British sculptor Henry Moore, and together with The Henry Moore Foundation we are looking for a scholar to lead a programme of research into our Moore holdings and to stimulate new thinking about this pioneer of modern sculpture through online publications, research events, and displays. With research experience in the field of modern British or international art and knowledge of the work of Moore or his contemporaries, you will lead an in-depth research…

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Dr Petra Kayser ‘Tingel Tangel: A Portrait of Turbulent Times in Germany, 1910 – 37’

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Tingel Tangel: A Portrait of Turbulent Times in Germany, 1910 – 37 Dr Petra Kayser, Curator, Prints & Drawings, NGV and Coordinating Curator for The Mad Square Modernity in German Art 1910 - 37 Lecture presented by the Friends of the Gallery Library This lecture explores German culture during the period of the ‘Weimar Republic’, which saw an unprecedented number of groundbreaking innovations in modern art. In this age of dramatic social change and modernisation, artists experimented in painting, printmaking, photography, design, architecture, film and theatre, exploring a new kind of realism and inventing new visual languages to communicate their ideas. Date: Sunday, 4 December 2011, 2.15pm for 2.30pm Cost: Friends of the Gallery Library: Free, please give your name and specify that you are a FOTGL at the time of booking. Guest: $25 payment for any attendees that are not FOTGL members. Includes refreshments on conclusion. Venue: Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International, 180 St Kilda…

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Floortalk: Introduction to the NGV exhibition ‘The Mad Square’

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Floortalk: Introduction to the NGV exhibition ‘The Mad Square’ Join Dr Jacqueline Strecker, curator of special exhibitions, Art Gallery of New South Wales the curator of The Mad Square for her introduction to the exhibition as it opens at the NGV. About the Exhibition In an era of chaos came an explosion of creativity – experimental, provocative and utterly compelling. Germany in the early twentieth century was a country in turmoil. After the First World War, the monarchy was abolished and replaced with the Weimar Republic. This was a period of political unrest, but it was also an era of optimism characterised by industrial development, innovation, and unprecedented freedom of expression. In Berlin and cities throughout Germany, avant-garde art movements flourished: Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism, Bauhaus and New Objectivity. Artists shared interest in radical experimentation extended across all art forms, including painting, photography,…

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Book Launch - Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch by Anthony White

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Book Launch LUCIO FONTANA: Between Utopia and Kitsch by Anthony White MIT Press The book will be launched by Dr Ted Gott, Senior Curator International Art, National Gallery of Victoria Date: 3pm, Wednesday, 30th November, 2011 Venue: Level 1, NGV International, 180 St Kilda Rd About the book In 1961, a solo exhibition by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana met with a scathing critical response from New York art critics. Fontana (1899–1968), well known in Europe for his series of slashed monochrome paintings, offered New York ten canvases slashed and punctured, thickly painted in luridly brilliant hues and embellished with chunks of colored glass. One critic described the work as ‘halfway between constructivism and costume jewelry,’ unwittingly putting his finger on the contradiction at the heart of these paintings and much of Fontana’s work: the cut canvases suggest avant-garde iconoclasm, but…

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Sugden Fellow Lecture: Associate Professor Jill Carrick - The Past in the Present: Art in 1960s France

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Sugden Fellow Lecture The Past in the Present: Art in 1960s France Associate Professor Jill Carrick From the realistic laden tables of 17th Century Dutch still-lives to contemporary works of art that feature found objects and trash, artists have sought to depict vividly the material objects we use in everyday life. This lecture examines the found-object sculptures of two 1960s artists working in France—Daniel Spoerri and Arman—and explores the intriguing dialogue between past and present enacted in their works. Themes addressed in this lecture include memory and amnesia, postwar modernization, and consumerism. Jill Carrick is Associate Professor in Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She writes on French post-war art, and her publications include the first book in English on the 1960s group Nouveau Réalisme or ‘New Realism’. She is visiting Melbourne as the Sugden Fellow at Queen’s College…

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Symposium: Vienna 1900 – Dress rehearsal for modernity

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Symposium: Vienna 1900 – Dress rehearsal for modernity Vienna: Art & Design Speakers William M. Johnston, academic; Prof Jennifer Shaw, Pro Vice-Cancellor & Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of New England; Assoc Prof Alison Inglis, Art History, The University of Melbourne; Dr John Carmody, School of Medical Sciences, Physiology, Convenor: ‘ Medicine and Music’, University of Sydney; Dr Edwin Harari, Assoc Prof Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne; Dr Vivien Gaston, Guest Curator, NGV & Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne; Amanda Dunsmore, Curator Arts & Antiquities, NGV; Sophie Matthiesson, Curator, International Art, NGV; Dr Matthew Martin, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts, NGV; Elizabeth Cross, Senior Researcher, International Art, NGV This Symposium will explore the themes, developments and influences of an extraordinary period that saw the birth of the modern world, including, art, culture, design, architecture, literature, science, social…

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Lecture: Predicaments of Painting Indigenous Presence in Central Australia: Early Papunya Boards in Circulation, Fred Myers

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Predicaments of Painting Indigenous Presence in Central Australia: Early Papunya Boards in Circulation Professor Fred Myers, Silver Professor of Anthropology, New York University This paper considers a predicament in the constitution of Aboriginal acrylic painting in Central Australia. Begun in 1971 as a translation of ritually-based designs into a new medium, the international success of the painting movement attests to their recontextualization from ‘ritual’ to ‘art.’ While much of the iconography in the early acrylic paintings was later considered inappropriate to have circulated - even in the art world - the paintings themselves have continued to be exhibited, and they are considered to be the most authentic forms of presenting authentic indigeneity. At the same time as Western Desert painters have always insisted on the paintings as revealing the indigenous claims to identification with the land, changing styles of painting and…

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Lecture: Alison Carroll, ‘The Revolutionary Century: Art in Asia 1900-2000’

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Alison Carroll, curator and author, presents a lecture on Asian art in the twentieth century. There is a gap in our of knowledge of what connects the pre-twentieth century dominance of ‘traditional’ Asian arts and the rise of the internationally celebrated contemporary art of the region today. This lecture gives an overview of the main trends in the art of the region over the course of the twentieth century, from the iconoclastic young Japanese of the 1900s, to the passionate nation-building of artists in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines mid century, and to the blossoming of artistic practice across all countries in the 1980s. Find out about a period too little known by us all, see images of near neighbours that parallel many artists in Australia and add to your understanding of this amazing region. Date: Wednesday May 18th, 6:30pm.…

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Call for Papers: Contemporary Art and the French Riviera: An experimental territory, 1951-2011

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Call for Papers Contemporary Art and the French Riviera: An experimental territory, 1951-2011 International Conference, Valrose Campus of the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis and at the national centre of contemporary art at the Villa Arson, France September 29 - October 1, 2020 The full call for papers can be downloaded from here (pdf). Summary The international conference ‘Contemporary Art and the French Riviera: An experimental territory, 1951-2011’ sets out to launch and a reflection on contemporary art in a given territory, i.e. the French Riviera, from the end of the Second World War to nowadays. The goal is to understand for what reasons the French Riviera has been for the last 60 years an extraordinary laboratory which has been ceaselessly  producing and welcoming new artists. What is expected from the papers and plenary sessions is a discussion going beyond the usual…

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Call for Papers: Der Blaue Reiter (Tate Modern, UK)

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Call for Papers Conference - Der Blaue Reiter Tate Modern, UK, 25 - 26 November 2020 This conference celebrates the centenary of the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter. This occasion presents a perfect opportunity to review and extend existing scholarship in the field of German Expressionist studies. The formation of what is commonly, though erroneously, referred to as the German Expressionist ‘artists’ group’ Der Blaue Reiter, was signalled on 18 December 2020 at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich via an exhibition enigmatically entitled ‘The First Exhibition of the Editors of the Blaue Reiter’. This was the first of what turned out to be only two exhibitions held by an emergent group of avant-garde artists organised by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The title of the first exhibition pointed towards what was to be one of the artists’ most significant…

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