Tag: French 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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Napoleon Colloquium at NGV International

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Napoleon Colloquium Saturday 22nd September An afternoon forum exploring the art, artists and their world in the time of Napoleon with three lectures on portraiture, Jacques-Louis David – painter of the French Revolution and decorative arts at the Napoleonic court. Speakers:  Dr Frank Heckes, Honorary Research Associate, La Trobe University | Jacques-Louis David: Painter of the French Revolution and of Napoleon Dr Vivien Gaston, Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne | Portraits of perfection: Ideal and reality in the Napoleonic era Dr Matthew Martin, Assistant Curator Decorative Arts and Antiquities, NGV | The bare necessities: Luxury travel accessories as courtly portraits in the Napoleonic Age Dr Elizabeth Cross, Senior Researcher, NGV and Jean-Pierre Chabrol, Head of Multimedia | Napoleon’s Letter’s to Josephine: Portrait of a marriage   Date: 1-5pm, Saturday 22nd September Cost $45 Adult / $40 NGV Member / $42 Concession (includes afternoon…

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Philosophy Short Course | Perspectives on Napoleon

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Philosophy Course: Perspectives on Napoleon NGV International September 9, 16, 23 & 30 When asked in the 1970s if he thought the French Revolution had succeeded or failed, Mao Tse Tung famously answered ‘It’s too soon to tell’. The complexities of the compact knot of history from 1793 to 1812 are involved enough to allow of a multiplicity of interpretations and the decisions we make in making these interpretations remain in turn decisive for our self-understanding today. As a focal figure concentrating the contradictions of his times, Napoleon Bonaparte can himself be viewed from several different perspectives. In the first three lectures, we shall consider the different perspectives of Hegel, of Goethe, and of Nietzsche upon Napoleon, exploring the contrasting significance Napoleon had for each of these three thinkers. Then in the final lecture, we shall consider Napoleon’s perspective upon himself through a…

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Bastille Day at the NGV

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Bastille Day at the NGV To celebrate Bastille Day this Saturday, July 14th, the NGV International will be open until midnight with all tickets to the current winter masterpiece exhibition Napoleon: Revolution to Empire only $10 each from 5pm till midnight (until sold out more details here). As well as the Napoleon exhibition there are a range of programs. Some highlights include: Tours of the NGV Heroes and Legends Volunteer Guided Tours at 5.30pm, 6pm, 6.30pm, 7pm, 7.30pm & 8.30pm – Free, Meet Foyer, Ground Level NGV Collection Highlights Volunteer Guided Tour 5.30pm, 6pm, 6.30pm, 7pm & 7.30pm – Free, Meet Foyer, Ground Level Director’s Final Tour: Some recent acquisitions & re-attributions 9–10pm – Join Dr Gerard Vaughan, NGV Director on a Roaming Tour of the NGV Level 2 galleries – Free, Meet Foyer, Ground Level Talks Introductory Talk – Napoleon 5–5.45pm, 6–6.45pm…

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Symposium | Circumnavigating Napoleon, National Gallery of Victoria

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Circumnavigating Napoleon Symposium at NGV International, 21st July Leading international and local speakers will address key themes of the exhibition Napoleon: Revolution to Empire. Josephine and Malmaison – Dr Bernard Chevallier, leading Napoleon scholar Napoleon’s Propaganda, Artists and Horses – Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, author of Marengo, the Myth of Napoleon’s Horse Making Sense of Napoléon – Prof Peter McPhee, The University of Melbourne Napoleon’s Bad Behaviour – Assoc Prof Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle Francois Péron and Terre Napoleon – Edward Duyker, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University Napoleon’s Artists in Egypt and the Art of the Description – Dr Antoni Jach, author and painter Earthbound and airborne: the strange case of David and Napoleon – Prof Mark Ledbury, University of Sydney Cost: $85 A / $79 M / $82 C (includes morning & afternoon tea, exhibition entry not included). Date: Saturday 21st July, 10.30am–4.30pm. Venue: Clemenger BBDO…

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What are you looking at? | David R. Marshall, The Napoleon Exhibition at the NGV International

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The Napoleon Exhibition by David R. Marshall The Napoleon: Revolution to Empire exhibition is now on at the National Gallery of Victoria. Here I want to muse a little on a few works that caught my eye at the opening. That this exhibition is about Napoleon is hard to miss, with his name in giant illuminated letters near the entrance and a huge banner of David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps on the side of the NGV. In this respect the exhibition represents a departure for the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series which lately has taken its cue from the series of exhibition on period styles at the Victoria and Albert Museum, such as Art Deco (which originated at the V&A) and Vienna: Art and Design. According to what I have been told the idea for this exhibition began as Marie Antoinette.…

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Exhibition | Napoleon: Revolution to Empire, NGV International

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Napoleon: Revolution to Empire NGV International, June 2nd to 7th October 2012 This year’s Melbourne Winter Masterpiece, Napoleon: Revolution to Empire, has opened at the National Gallery of Victoria International. The exhibition traces the career of Napoleon Bonaparte from the latter part of the French Revolution through his rise to Emperor and to his exile to St Helena in 1815. The exhibition includes a number of exceptional paintings, with a particular emphasis on portraits of Napoleon, his family and various important people from the Napoleonic era. There is also a rich selection of decorative arts including jewellery, furniture and dinner services. The exhibition is organised around several themes that take the visitor from the fall of the ancien régime and the rise of Napoleon as a military leader during the French Revolution. Other themes include the relationship between Napoleon and…

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Symposium | Napoleon: Revolution to Empire

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Napoleon: Revolution to Empire Leading international and local speakers will address key themes of the exhibition, including the surprising connections between France and Australia. Topics addressed will include the history of the Fondation Napoléon (the NGV’s partner and principal lender to this extraordinary exhibition) and its rich collections; Napoleon’s Coronation in 1804 and its music; France’s fascination with Australia in the period 1770–1820; and Napoleon’s 1812 Russian Campaign. Speakers Welcome Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV Victor-André Masséna, Prince d’Essling, Fondation Napoléon Duc de Rivoli, President, Fondation Napoléon Peter Hicks, Chargé d’affaires internationales, Fondation Napoléon Karine Huguenaud, exhibition co-curator, Fondation Napoléon François Houdecek, Responsable de projet, Fondation Napoléon Dr Ted Gott, Senior Curator, International Art, NGV Date: 10am- 1:30pm, Saturday June 2nd Venue: NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Clemenger BBDO Auditorium (enter north entrance, via Arts centre forecourt) Cost and Bookings: $85 Adult / $79…

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What are you looking at? | Mark Shepheard – Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea

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Nicolas Poussin, The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1633-34 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Poussin’s Crossing of the Red Sea was once something of a problem painting. Indeed, its exact relationship to the pendant Adoration of the Golden Calf (National Gallery, London) has made great fodder for undergraduate essay questions. The two works, clearly related in content and—as we shall see—origin have often been seen as quite dissimilar in composition and style, and these differences were once taken to indicate that the two paintings date from slightly different periods in the 1630s. We know from Bellori’s Life of Poussin (1674) that both the Crossing and the Golden Calf were painted for Amedeo dal Pozzo, Marchese del Voghera (1579-1644), and that they hung in his palazzo in Turin. Luigi Scaramuccia in his treatise on Italian painters—Le finezze de’ pennelli italiani, 1672—adds…

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Shane Carmody ‘To be a Pilgrim’ Margaret Manion Lecture 2011

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Margaret Manion Lecture 2011 To be a Pilgrim Shane Carmody In this lecture Shane Carmody will explore the provenance and relevance of a medieval manuscript held in the collection of the State Library of Victoria: The pilgrimage of the lyfe of the manhode and The pilgrimage of the sowle. This manuscript dates from 1430 and is an English prose translation of the famous work written by the French Cistercian Guillaume de Deguileville a century earlier. The translation had a major impact on the English imagination through the upheaval of the Reformation and later religious conflicts, and its metaphors still resonate today. This crudely made and graphically illustrated book was conserved and restored for the State Library of Victoria’s exhibition The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand. An exhibition curated by Margaret Manion and seen by over 1000 000 people in 2008.…

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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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CFP: Between Scylla and Charybdis: European Courts and Court Residences Outside Habsburg and Valois/Bourbon Territories, 1500-1700

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Between Scylla and Charybdis: European Courts and Court Residences Outside Habsburg and Valois/Bourbon Territories, 1500-1700 Deadline:  31 October 2011 Copenhagen and Hillerød, Denmark 30 April-2 May 2012 As is well known, the rivalry between Spain‐Austria and France, or, more precisely, between the Habsburg and the Valois/Bourbon monarchies, was a factor of major importance in international court life during the 16th and 17th centuries. The age‐old quarrels between the nations involved about their seniority and precedence forced each to create distinctive characteristics, including courtly etiquette, ceremonies, and the architectural setting of court life. The ‘satellite’ courts, related to these ‘superpowers’, might visually expose their loyalty to a specific faction by following the system of codes of its ‘leader’. But what were the strategies of the independent, though less dominant European courts beyond the Habsburg and Valois/Bourbon spheres? How did they respond to…

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John Weretka – Review: Pastel Portraits: Images of Eighteenth Century Europe. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 17 May 2020 – 14 August 2020

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Exhibition Review Pastel Portraits: Images of Eighteenth Century Europe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 17 May 2020 – 14 August 2020 Reviewed by John Weretka The eighteenth-century pastel portrait is the subject of a compact show of about forty images from 1711–1801 being hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (17 May 17–18 August 2011).  Too often derided as a minor art, placing it on a level with other domestic entertainments such as the silhouette, pastel is revealed in this show as a highly nuanced, delicate and beautiful art form that in a sense has suffered by being too closely allied to the tastes of its own time.  In fact, as the inclusion of pastels by artists working elsewhere in oils shows, pastel was a worthy subject of attention for artists who would otherwise make themselves known…

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Exhibition Review: Manet, the Man who Invented Modernity, Paris Musee D’Orsay – Victoria Hobday

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Exhibition Review Manet, the Man who Invented Modernity Paris, Musée D’Orsay, 5 April – 17 July 2020 Reviewed by Victoria Hobday Spring weather has at last come to Paris and the Musée d’Orsay, on the banks of the Seine, is exhibiting one of France’s best-loved artists to welcome the season. Manet: The Man Who Invented Modernity, promises a fresh look at the work of this central artist of the late nineteenth century. The choice of a spring exhibition sits well with the vibrant palette and breezy brushwork of Manet. With the staging of the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay or ‘Impressionism central’ many would indeed say that it is a return to the fold for the great Impressionist artist … mais non, non, non! As any student of  ‘Art History 101- From the Pyramids to Picasso’ thought they knew, Manet…

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Review – Watteau: The Drawings. Royal Academy, London. 12 March – 5 June 2011. David R. Marshall

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Watteau: The Drawings Royal Academy, London. 12 March – 5 June 2020 Reviewed by David R. Marshall This exhibition is organized for the Royal Academy and curated by Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, and based on their 1996 catalogue of Watteau drawings. In his essay Prat points out that the number of drawings (90) is less than at the big Watteau exhibition of 1984-85, but that the selection is more focused and unproblematic. The bulk of the drawings are from the Louvre and British Museum, but there are a number from other collections not often seen. The drawings are displayed in the Sackler wing of the Royal Academy, already showing its age, with it’s weird open lift shaft between the exterior facades of two buildings, and gallery spaces that work well enough in a routine way. On a Monday lunchtime late…

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