2007.Q4 | artonview 52 Summer 2007

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N AT I O N A L G A L L E RY O F A U S T R A L I A

s u m m e r

ISSUE No.52 Summer 2007−08

Dennis Nona Kala Lagaw Ya (Western Torres Strait Island) people Apu Kaz (Mother and baby Dugong) 2007 (detail) bronze National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the artist and the Australian Print Network

Until 10 Febuary 2008 Principal Sponsor

CULTURE WARRIORS • AUSTRALIAN SURREALISM • TURNER TO MONET

Vincent Van Gogh Tree trunks in the grass 1890 oil on canvas 72.5 x 91.5 cm Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

OC E A N to OUTBACK

Australian landscape painting 1850 –1950

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition The Triumph of Landscape Painting 14 March – 9 June 2008 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund

Russell Drysdale Emus in landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Estate of Russell Drysdale

artonview Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au Editor Eric Meredith Jeanie Watson Designer MA@D Communication Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer John Tassie Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra artonview issn 1323-4552 Published quarterly: Issue no. 52, Summer 2007–08 © National Gallery of Australia Print Post Approved pp255003/00078 All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 artonview.editor@nga.gov.au

content s 2

Director’s foreword

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Development office

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The art of Melanesia and Polynesia: the new Pacific Arts Gallery

12 Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 18 Australian Surrealism: the Agapitos/Wilson collection 26 Andy and Oz: parallel visions 34 Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape painting 36 Collection focus: Leo Haks Indonesian photographs collection 42 Picture Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s 44 New acquisitions 50 Tribute: John Stringer 51 Travelling exhibitions 52 Conservation: From the Yarra to the High Country 56 Faces in view

Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 membership@nga.gov.au

front cover: Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Warlugulong 1977 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 202.0 x 337.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the generous assistance of Roslynne Bracher and the Paspaley Family, David Coe and Michelle Coe, Charles Curran and Eva Curran 2007 © the estate of the artist licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency 2007

direc tor’s foreword

of where they live, their experiences, their connections to country, and cultural practices. Their heritage is the framework and foundation of their creativity. The artists also spent the day giving talks on their art. This brilliant survey is certainly not a clichéd predictable exhibition of Aboriginal art.

The weekend also featured a successful open day of

talks, behind-the-scenes tours and family activities to mark the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Almost 7000 visitors from around Australia participated over the weekend. It was acclaimed the art party of the year.

In time for the twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations

the Gallery has virtually completed the reconfiguration, refurbishment, relighting and complete redisplay of the entire permanent collection. Most recently we have redisplayed the Australian galleries with many new works.

The large marble urns in the Gallery’s foyer have recently

been replaced by the three large showcases which display some of our small but high quality art collections from Polynesia, Africa and Mesoamerica (formerly known as The National Gallery of Australia celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary by lighting up the building with projected images of major works in the national collection

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In mid October the National Gallery of Australia celebrated

Pre-Columbia). Along with the new dedicated Pacific Arts

its twenty-fifth anniversary in true style by transforming

Gallery, the Polynesian showcase houses a complex array of

the building itself into a spectacular animated work of

arts produced by the island cultures of the Pacific, including

art. With the expertise of the Australian company, Electric

a number of the most exquisite and important ancient Maori

Canvas, works from the collection, both old and new,

works outside of New Zealand. Similarly, the African display

were massively projected onto the façade of the building,

demonstrates the rich variety of the artistic traditions of

creating a traffic-stopping sight along the shores of Lake

Africa – from the stone monuments of eastern and southern

Burley Griffin. The results were spectacular. Works such

regions, to the masks and figurative wooden sculpture of

as Jackson Pollack’s Blue poles, Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly

the west and central part of the continent. The third of the

series, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s Warlugulong, Eugene

new display cases contains a selection from the Gallery’s

von Guérard’s Ferntree Gully, Arthur Streeton’s Golden

fine collection of works from the extraordinary civilisations

Summer, the Japanese screen Pine trees by the shore,

that flourished in Central and South America from ancient

Andy Warhol’s Elvis, Fernand Leger’s Trapese artists and

times. Almost all this material has come from burial sites and

some twenty-five other major works illuminated the

is associated with religious and funerary rituals. This display

night sky, providing a nocturnal reminder of the festivities

includes coil pots of the Maya and gold objects from Peru.

happening in and around the Gallery during

the anniversary celebrations.

Possum Tjapaltjarri painting Warlugulong 1977, which

Over the anniversary weekend of 13 and 14 October,

appears on the cover of this issue of artonview. This highly

the Gallery was pleased to welcome twenty-seven of the

significant work of art was acquired as part of the Twenty-

thirty Indigenous artists selected for Culture Warriors, the

fifth Anniversary Gifts Program and is one of several major

inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, which opened

acquisitions celebrating our anniversary. Clifford Possum

on 13 October. Culture Warriors includes senior artists,

Tjapaltjarri was a founding member of the Papunya Tula

younger artists, artists who work in our remote Indigenous

art movement and this work is an important addition to

communities and artists who work in the big cities. It

the Gallery’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait

includes all media: bark painting and canvas painting,

Islander art, the largest in Australia. Warlugulong, one of

sculpture, weaving, drawing, printmaking, photography

his seminal works, is considered one of the key Australian

and film. All the artists in this and future National

paintings of the twentieth century and certainly one of

Indigenous Art Triennials are contemporary, irrespective

the greatest Western Desert paintings. It will be a central

national gallery of australia

I am delighted to present the recently acquired Clifford

work for the main Western Desert room in the Gallery’s

Gleeson, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, Robert

new wing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art on

Klippel, Joy Hester, James Cant, Peter Purves Smith, Jeffrey

which construction has commenced. The purchase of

Smart, Russell Drysdale, Danila Vassilieff, Dusan Marek and

Warlugulong, which is now on permanent display, was

Ivor Francis. It encompasses a wide range of media, from

made possible by the generous assistance of Roslynne

paintings, prints and collages to drawings, photographs and

Bracher, Marilynne Paspaley and Nick Paspaley, David Coe

sculptures. A selection of works from the collection will be

and Michelle Coe, and Charles and Eva Curran. I thank

displayed in a major exhibition at the Gallery next year.

them for their generous support for the painting and for

the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gifts Program.

generous gifts of works of art from both Indonesia and

the Philippines. At a gala event held in May, the Indonesian

I am particularly thrilled to announce the Gallery’s recent

Recently, the Gallery has been delighted to receive

acquisition of the largest and most important Australian

Ambassador presented the Gallery with a costume

Surrealist collection ever assembled, comprising some 285

combining traditional Javanese court style with high

works of all media from the late James Agapitos, OAM, and

fashion by the renowned designer Adjie Notonegoro.

Ray Wilson, OAM. The duo began the collection in 1990

In June, the Gallery held a press launch and formal lunch

with the purchase of James Gleeson’s seminal painting

to celebrate the gift of two santos figures, four traditional

The attitude of lightning towards a lady-mountain 1939, a

textiles and a rice basket, presented by the Philippines

painting which has been on loan to the Gallery for a year

Ambassador on behalf of Her Excellency Gloria Arroyo,

and on display in the International Galleries. Spanning

president of the Philippines.

three decades, from 1925 to 1955, their collection, valued

at $6.6 million, comprises works from the foremost artists

and Black robe white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist

associated with Surrealism in Australia, including James

nun Rengetsu have been well received by visitors. Visitors

Our new exhibitions Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978

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have been unaware before of our fine sizeable collection of Robert Rauschenberg works now seen together for the first time. He remains one of America’s finest twentieth century artists. The exquisite pots, paintings and calligraphy poems of Rengetsu have been enchanting audiences.

The catalogue for Black robe white mist presents a series of essays by Australian and international contributors who all share an exceptional knowledge of, and passion for, Rengestu’s art. Rengetsu’s poems have been translated into English and also appear in Japanese. The catalogue is the only publication in English dedicated to the artist and it is a valuable resource for researchers and enthusiasts alike.

This incredible achievement was made possible with the financial assistance of the Australia–Japan Foundation and the Japan Foundation.

With the major travelling exhibition Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 well into its national tour, the international collaboration Andy and Oz: parallel visions currently on show at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, and preparations underway for the next blockbuster exhibition, Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape painting, which opens at the Gallery in March 2008, the Gallery is continuing to fulfil its goal to reach audiences far and wide.

Ron Radford

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national gallery of australia

credit lines

The following donations have been received as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program.

Donations Roslynne Bracher and the Paspaley Pearling Company Howard and Jenny Brown Pat Corrigan, AM Henry D Gillespie Narelle Fay Hillsdon Michael J Hobbs Ann Lewis, AM M F Mackenzie Alistair McLean and Rosemary Donkin Roslyn Packer, AO Jason Prowd Penelope Seidler Paul and Linda Selzer Ezekiel Solomon Village Roadshow Lady Joyce Wilson The National Gallery of Australia Foundation would like to thank the family, friends and colleagues of Philippa Winn (NGA Educator 1996–2005) who have contributed to the Philippa Winn Memorial Acquisition.

Gifts and Bequests Gift of an anonymous donor Gift of the late James Agapitos, OAM, and Ray Wilson, OAM Gift of the artist Rick Amor Bequest of Jenny Brennan in memory of her late father Gift of Michael and Margaret Cockburn and family Gift of Christopher and Philip Constable in memory of their mother Esther Constable Estate of Millie Hay Joynor Gift of the President of the Republic of the Philippines Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Gift of Adjie Notonegoro

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 Deborah L Allen Anne and Bill Coupland Rowena Danziger and Ken Coles Irene Montgomery Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, AC, DBE Patricia R Nossal We would also like to thank the numerous anonymous donors who have donated to the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007.

Grants Australian International Cultural Foundation Australia Council for the Arts through the Showcasing the Best International Strategy, and through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Arts Board and Community Partnerships & Market Development (International) Board.

Sponsorship American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Inc. BHP Billiton Casella Wines Coopers Brewery Embassy of the United States of America Forrest Inn and Apartments Hindmarsh Gordon Darling Foundation National Australia Bank O’Leary Walker Wines Qantas R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter Saville Park Suites Southern Cross Ten Yalumba Wines

Visions of Australia through The Contemporary Touring Initiative, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia, and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government, and state and territory governments.

Australia–Japan Foundation Japan Foundation (Tokyo) Arts NT through the Northern Territory Government’s Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts Queensland Government (Australia) through the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA) Victorian Government (Australia), through the Arts Victoria

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development of fice

Lady Helen Deane, Rupert Myer, AM, L Gordon Darling, AC, KMG, and The Hon. Sir William Deane, AC, KBE, at the Chairman’s cocktail party for Culture Warriors Ann Lewis, AM, at the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition Andy and Oz: parallel visions on display at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA

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Congratulations to all who celebrated and contributed to the National Gallery of Australia’s 25th anniversary acquisitions, exhibitions, public and education programs. The Gallery’s Council and staff acknowledge and thank the corporate sponsors, benefactors and the federal, state and territory governments who made the occasion so memorable. It will truly go down in the history books as one of the Gallery’s most vibrant and important events in its 25 years as Australia’s national organisation for the visual arts.

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial

Australia Council for the Arts

The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial opened attended by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, performers, academics, art centre representatives and communities. The exhibition pays tribute to contemporary Indigenous Australian art practice and to a key group of dedicated and important artists – in particular those whose respective careers span the four decades since the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals). The Gallery congratulates all who were involved in this historic event and appreciates the continued support of the principal sponsor BHP Billiton, as well as the Australian Council for the Arts; the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program; the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments; Arts NT; and the Queensland Indigenous Art Marketing Export Agency.

On the eve of the National Indigenous Art Triennial opening, the Australia Council for the Arts through the Showcasing the Best International Strategy formally supported the international tour of the Triennial. This program joins the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Arts Board and Community Partnerships & Market Development (International) Board in generously providing funding support for this critically acclaimed exhibition.

national gallery of australia

Arts Victoria The Victorian Government (Australia) through Arts Victoria also provided support to artists and writers with cultural links to Victoria to travel to Canberra for the opening of the exhibition and to participate in associated education and public programs.

Southern Cross Ten We thank Southern Cross Ten for the extensive media coverage for the Triennial it has generously provided through its television network. This support is invaluable in reaching regional audiences throughout New South Wales.

Andy and Oz: parallel visions We thank the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund and Pat Corrigan, AM, who join Ann Lewis, AM, Penelope Seidler, Henry Gillespie and Qantas in the generous support of this exhibition, which opened at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, in October.

To please the living and the dead: the ancestral art of Southeast Asia Australian International Cultural Foundation The groundbreaking exhibition To please the living and the dead: the ancestral art of Southeast Asia, which explores the intriguing world of animist art, has been awarded a grant through the Australian International Cultural Foundation for its development, display and publication.

The Gallery is grateful to the foundation for its willingness to help promote unusual art forms to a broader audience.

Corporate Members Program We are grateful to and thank the following for their continued corporate support: The Brassey of Canberra, Casella Wines Pty Limited, The Forrest Inn and Apartments and Saville Park Suites. We formally thank Coopers Brewery for their generous support of the Gallery’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Program and events.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program

Henry Gillespie, Philip Jessup, President of the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Diana Hill, Deborah Hart, and Director Ron Radford, AM, at the opening of Andy and Oz Marcus Randolph, Group Executive and Chief Executive Ferrous and Coal, BHP Billiton, and Lee Caldwell at the opening of Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial

Our thanks go to all the donors who have generously donated to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program.

For anyone who would like further information or wish to make a donation please do not hesitate to contact the NGA Foundation Office on (02) 6240 6454 or Development Office on (02) 6240 6556.

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pacific ar t s galler y

The art of Melanesia and Polynesia: the new Pacific Arts Gallery

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national gallery of australia

The Pacific Arts Gallery is the beginning of several stages to display more of the Gallery’s fascinating and diverse Pacific Arts collection. In this initial stage a few of the finest sculptures were chosen to represent the approximately two thousand works in the collection – the majority of which have never been exhibited. The space has a high ceiling and filtered natural light, lending itself well to intimate contemplation of each work.

Gazing down the stairs leading up to the Pacific Arts Gallery stands an impressive architectural feature from a Kanganaman village haus tambaran. Haus tambaran literally translates from pidgin English (the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea) as ‘house of ghosts’. Central to village life along the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea, each village once had a number of these monumental peaked spirit houses where ritual objects essential to the community’s well being were kept and where men discussed their politics. Historically, before the posts of a spirit house could be erected, a head taken in tribal fighting was placed at the bottom of the post hole to magically ensure it stood firm against floods and earthquakes.

A wealth of imagery typical of Sepik art adorns the whole surface of this post. Snakes with almost human faces writhe upwards, a crocodile crouches at the base, stylised scales of a crocodile issue downwards from the face of the tree’s spirit resident within the post. The natural curvature of the tree enhances the Iatmul people’s animist concept of all things inherently having a spiritual life force.

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In the foreground (above) is the Gallery’s most well-

necklace from Hawaii made of marine ivory and braided

known work in the Pacific arts collection, the Double figure

human hair. To the far right is a sculpture of two men being

from a housepost [To-reri uno] from Lake Sentani. Part of

devoured by the jaws of a great fish. From the Solomon

Jacob Epstein’s private collection of indigenous arts for many

Islands, this post once supported the roof of a ceremonial

years, the Sentani double figure – it has been suggested

house specially constructed to store ocean-going canoes.

– was the inspiration for Surrealist Max Ernst’s sculpture

Lunar asparagus 1935. The male and female figures exude

Pacific Arts Gallery: a series of works which seem to float

a relaxed serenity that contrasts markedly against the

away, almost free of the long wall. The three figures

foreboding menace of other works in the space such as the

(right-hand side) of Mr Harold Woodman, Maunwail and

Malu board (far right of picture). Traditionally decorated with

Waungial would have hung suspended by ropes from the

human skulls, the Malu board was the physical dwelling for the spirit of the cannibal ancestor of the Sawos people.

To the left of the centre of the image (opposite top) is a

fine early-19th-century doorway from a Maori storehouse, which makes a feature of the unusual angularity of the gallery space. To the right of this is one of the two showcases. This case holds some of the smallest and most desirable works in the collection, such as an exquisite 10 national gallery of australia

The image (opposite bottom) shows a feature of the

internal rafters of houses, and part of their visual appeal was the subtle movement created by breezes. The far wall of the gallery space is dominated by the archaic spirit figure of Mogulapan whose painted designs were only recently discovered by the Gallery’s conservation team during cleaning of its mud caked surface.

Crispin Howarth Assistant Curator, Pacific Arts

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exhibition galleries

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial No beginning, no middle, no end 13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008

Ricky Maynard Ben Lomond/Big River peoples Mission 2007 silver gelatin photograph 45.6 x 45.4 cm Courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery Curator of Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial, Brenda L Croft, with artists in the exhibition Philip Gudthaykudthay with his work in the Triennial

One of the most professionally important and rewarding

aspects of curating a major exhibition such as the

institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales,

inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, Culture

Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western

Warriors, is the opportunity that these events provide in

Australia and now the National Gallery of Australia

developing deep and lasting relationships with many of

(since 2002), thereby gaining an insight into the varying

the artists and their communities.

machinations of state and federal art museums.

I have been extremely privileged during my time as

I have also been fortunate enough to work with

Indigenous curators of major exhibitions with

an Indigenous curator in state and federal public galleries

Indigenous content – as opposed to curators of Aboriginal

over the past decade to have had a number of such

and Torres Strait Islander art – are only too well aware of

formative experiences, the most recent being the three

the multiple expectations associated with their curatorial

years development spent on the retrospective of one of

decisions, deriving as they do from a range of avenues:

this country’s foremost contemporary Indigenous artists,

the artists; artists’ communities; art centre and commercial

Michael Riley: sights unseen, which opened at the National

dealer representatives; Indigenous and non-Indigenous

Gallery of Australia in July 2006 and will complete its

peers; and critics in the visual arts and cultural industry.

national tour with a final staging at the Art Gallery of New

South Wales in February 2008.

curate for multiple audiences, with different intentions at

12 national gallery of australia

We do not curate exhibitions for one audience; we

Christian Bumburra Thompson performing with cellist Benjamin Skepper at the Talkin’ up big artists’ day

varying levels of comprehension of the diversity of our art

of the deepest and most profound kind – I treasure the

and culture. I consider it comparable to the coded layers of

steep learning curve I embarked upon and the support

meaning revealed or hidden in the art of our most learned

I was given by the Art Gallery of South Australia, the

cultural practitioners – the viewer can read a particular

communities and my peers throughout the industry.

artist’s vision at a surface level, on the skin, or they can see

beyond that, through the epidermis and into the heart and

to provide a similar experience for other Indigenous

soul of the artist’s intent.

colleagues and long held the desire to create a similar but

ongoing opportunity for Indigenous artists and curators. In

Unlike some areas of the mainstream arts industry,

Following that experience, I wanted to be able

where individuals – driven by self-importance, insecurity,

this I have been very fortunate to have the support of key

or a disastrous combination of both – often overwhelm

people at the National Gallery of Australia – among them,

all before them like an artistic tsunami, I have mainly

Ron Radford, the Director, who was previously the director

found the opposite with the artists I have been honoured

of the Art Gallery of South Australia during my tenure as

to work with over the past two decades, as invariably

curator of Beyond the pale.

most have been exceptionally generous with their time.

It has been a mutually beneficial experience as we have

Myer, along with the Council and Foundation, have been

discussed ideas, concepts, and the like, while developing

vociferous in their enthusiasm and backing for this major

an exhibition together.

new initiative on the national cultural calendar. I must

pay special thanks the the staff of Aboriginal and Torres

This was certainly the situation I experienced as guest

Ron Radford and the Gallery’s Chairman, Rupert

curator of the 2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art,

Strait Islander Art, Tina Baum, Simona Barkus, Chantelle

Beyond the pale: contemporary Indigenous art, although

Woods and Kelli Cole, all strong Indigenous women, for

after being selected I wondered what I was getting

their contribution; along with the support and behind-the-

into, shallow or deep water? It turned out to be water

scenes promotion of other National Gallery of Australia

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staff, all of whom were instrumental in the successful

amaze those of us lucky enough to work in this industry.

staging of Culture Warriors, and whose efforts will no

Amazement because the artists’ creativity continues

doubt ensure the success of future National Indigenous

to bloom like wildflowers despite the insidiousness of

Art Triennials.

unscrupulous operators working at the periphery of the

industry; despite the poverty-laden living conditions

However, no matter what the level of support, the

artists themselves are the foundation of such an event.

with the added burden of poor health; and despite the

increasingly restricted ‘control’ they are allowed over their

The hardest task has been to select only 30 of the

country’s many, many Indigenous artists – I could easily

own lives. These artists truly are culture warriors.

have tripled the list of cultural practitioners working in the

contemporary Indigenous visual arts industry today, who I

and proposed international tour of Culture Warriors, a

would have dearly loved to include in Culture Warriors, but

different Indigenous curator will select an entirely new

this exhibition is not intended to be the full or only story.

group of contemporary Indigenous artists drawn from

regions far and wide: the sparsely populated desert regions

One of the most gratifying accompanying events to

of central Australia; the tropical and marine climes of far

total artists, from all states and territories of Australia,

north Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands; the

who enthralled visitors with a full day of artists talks on

windswept isles of Tasmania; the rural areas of the

Saturday 13 October, and participated in the open day.

south-eastern and south-western states; the ever-ingenious

The feedback to Talkin’ up big has been ongoing with

artistic communities of Arnhem Land; and urban areas

many visitors seeking further information on artists and

in the all states and territories, where cultures converge,

their communities.

contrast, collaborate, and sometimes collide.

Culture Warriors is simply part of the continuum

of Indigenous visual innovation that never ceases to

Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jr and his great-grandson, Mitchell Banditoocha performing at the Culture Warriors launch.

In three years time, following the confirmed national

the Triennial itself, was the attendance of 28 of the 31

Gulumbu Yunupingu with her work in Culture Warriors.

All these artists, in this and future National Indigenous

Art Triennials, are contemporary, irrespective of their artonview

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Gordon Hookey Waanyi/Waanjiminjin peoples Grog Gott’im 2005 oil on canvas 213.0 x 200.0 cm Courtesy of Nellie Castan Gallery © Gordon Hookey Christopher Pease with his work Target 2005 Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser with their installation Colour blinded 2005

domicile, their experiences, their connections to country, and cultural practices – they are creating work in and of the here and now. Demarcations defined by others come and go, resurfacing and fading away: primitive, ethnographic, traditional, urban, naïve, folk, authentic – all these artists consider themselves Indigenous, first and foremost, their heritage being the framework and foundation, which underpins their creativity. In the case of one artist, longterm collaboration with a non-Indigenous colleague brings a convergence of ideas, drawing on shared experiences.

In this, the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals), the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery

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of Australia, one of the country’s youngest cultural institutions, and the beginning of the twenty-first century, when globalisation and capitalism overshadows ancient traditions and beliefs, it is entirely apt that the world’s oldest surviving culture is represented in a major survey show of contemporary visual art, heralding that Indigenous people’s culture is part of the past, the present and, most definitely, the future. No beginning, no middle, no end.

Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

orde poynton galler y and projec t galler y

Australian Surrealism: the Agapitos/Wilson collection 15 February – 11 May 2008

James Gleeson The attitude of lightning towards a lady-mountain 1939 oil on canvas 79.0 x 63.3 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

The story of Surrealism in Australia has until recently

conventions, bring to light previously repressed feelings and

remained largely unknown. It was only in 1993 with

result in the greater happiness of mankind. The Surrealists’

the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition Surrealism:

aim was to revolutionise society at all levels, and Breton

revolution by night that the extent of Surrealist practice in

argued that the way forward was ‘the future resolution of

this country was revealed. That seminal exhibition led the

these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so

Sydney collectors James Agapitos, OAM, and Ray Wilson,

contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality’.2

OAM, to focus their energies towards collecting Australian

Surrealist art. Assembled with intellect and passion,

unconscious led the way to a new kind of imagery: the

their collection became the largest and most important

precise portrayal of dream-like scenes and disassociated

repository of Australian Surrealist art in private hands.

narratives of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. Just as

influential was Breton’s definition of Surrealism as ‘pure

1

The National Gallery of Australia has recently acquired

Surrealism’s fascination with dreams and the

the Agapitos/Wilson collection through a combination of

psychic automatism’, which opened the door to new

gift and purchase. Covering the period 1925 to 1955, the

creative processes such as exquisite corpse, decalcomania

Agapitos/Wilson collection includes 285 paintings, prints,

and frottage, all means of liberating the subconscious mind

collages, drawings, photographs and sculptures by the

through the relaxation of conscious control.

foremost artists associated with Surrealist art practice

in Australia.

at the heart of the Surrealist aesthetic was the illogical,

unexpected juxtapositions of disparate elements, conveyed

While there was no organised Surrealist movement

While it is not possible to speak of a Surrealist style,

in Australia, its importance lies in the fact that some of

by the nineteenth-century writer Lautréamont’s phrase

Australia’s leading artists were influenced by Surrealism at

‘beautiful as the chance encounter on a dissecting-table

a formative period of their careers. James Gleeson, Sidney

of a sewing-machine and an umbrella’ from his 1869

Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, Robert Klippel and Max

novel Les chants du Maldoror. This idea of the junction

Dupain all experimented with Surrealist ideas and methods,

of disjunctive elements also informed collage – the

and the impact it had on their art at that time and on their

quintessential Surrealist medium.

future development was decisive. Other artists, such as Ivor

Francis, produced their best works under its influence. The

Surrealism in France, the 1930s saw a resurgence of

story of Surrealism in Australia is of artists responding in

interest in Surrealism in England and America. The highly

individualistic ways to the possibilities it offered. With the

successful International Surrealist exhibition held at the

exception of Gleeson, Australian artists did not become

New Burlington Galleries in London in 1936 included

committed Surrealists; rather, they dipped in and out of

almost 400 works. The same year in New York, the

Surrealism, selectively taking what they wanted for the

Museum of Modern Art staged Fantastic art, Dada and

enrichment of their art.

Surrealism and Julien Levy held an exhibition of Surrealism

at his gallery. ‘These three major exhibitions in 1936 …

While Surrealism was not conceived as an artistic

While the 1920s are considered the high point of

movement, its influence was to be felt most strongly in the

together with their various publications, related lectures

visual arts, including painting, sculpture, photography and

and newspaper and radio reports firmly cemented the

film. Surrealism was officially born in Paris in 1924 with the

place of Surrealism within the English-speaking world.’3

publication of French poet and intellectual André Breton’s

Manifesto of Surrealism. For the Surrealists, the exploration

in London, is known to have visited the International

of the unconscious mind, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, was

Surrealist exhibition and his subsequent works show the

a way to liberate the imagination from the dominance of

stylistic influence of Surrealism in their strange figurative

reason. This would lead to the breaking of restrictive social

distortion and mood of disquiet. Fellow Australian

18 national gallery of australia

Australian artist Peter Purves Smith, then living

Max Dupain Doll’s head and goat’s skull c. 1935 silver gelatin photograph 23.0 x 26.0 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

expatriates James Cant, Clifford Bayliss, Geoffrey Graham

for The Home, and he experimented with the techniques

and Roy de Maistre all experimented with Surrealism. Of

of solarisation, double exposure and photomontage, also

these, Cant was the most strongly influenced and painted

producing his own ‘Rayographs’.6 His Doll’s head and goat’s

in a Surrealist style influenced by Giorgio de Chirico and

skull c. 1935 uses the Surrealist strategy of juxtaposition:

Magritte. Cant had arrived in London in 1935 and through

‘In a bed of straw coiffed into pubic tufts, two unlikely

de Maistre was introduced to the Mayor Gallery, which had

lovers prepare to conjugate … the mannequin’s lips promise

held solo exhibitions of the Surrealists Max Ernst and Joan

pleasure, and the animal’s maw presages death’.7 In the

Miró. Almost immediately Cant was invited to become

implicit erotic content of this, and other of his Surrealist

a member of the British Surrealist Group and his work

photographs, Dupain was one of the few Australian

was regularly exhibited in Surrealist exhibitions to critical

artists who responded (albeit in a restrained manner) to

acclaim. In 1940 at the outbreak of the Second World War,

Surrealism’s espousal of the liberation of sexual desire.

Cant returned to Sydney. Joining the Communist party,

Cant repudiated Surrealism in favour of social realism.

been seen in the works of Melbourne artists Sam Atyeo

and Eric Thake in the early 1930s. However, these remained

In the 1930s in Australia, Surrealism was often more

In the realm of painting, the influence of Surrealism had

visible in the realm of popular culture than in the fine arts.4

relatively isolated incidents, and as late as 1938 Basil

In 1938 the fashionable The Home magazine commissioned

Burdett begun his review of modern art in Melbourne with

Max Dupain to take a series of Surrealist inspired portraits

the observation that ‘surrealism is practically non existent’.8

of socialites. Dupain was the only Australian photographer

of his generation who felt the lure of Surrealism. In 1935 he

Australian art when the tide finally turned in favour of

had enthusiastically reviewed JT Scoby’s book on Man Ray

Modernism. That year saw the first exhibition of the

5

20 national gallery of australia

The year 1939 can be seen as the watershed in

Contemporary Art Society, a group whose aim was to

the period.10 The year 1939 was also the first time that

promote new ideas in art. This exhibition, held at the

works of European Surrealism were seen in Australia. The

National Gallery of Victoria in June 1939, was an important

hugely successful Herald exhibition of French and British

showcase for modern art and attracted widespread

contemporary art of over 200 modernist paintings and

attention. The exhibition included the Surrealist paintings

sculpture toured Australia in 1939, and included paintings by

Happy landing (The happy father) c.1939, The philosopher

Ernst, de Chirico and Dalí. Dalí’s L’homme fleur 1932 (now

1939 and The attitude of lightning towards a lady-mountain

titled Memory of the child-woman) was ‘the prime target

1939 by Thake, Tucker and Gleeson respectively. With

for abuse and admiration’.11 In response to the interest

the publicity received by these works – The attitude of

generated by these works, Art in Australia asked Gleeson

lightning towards a lady-mountain was reproduced both

to write an article on Surrealism. ‘What is Surrealism?’

in the popular press and Art in Australia – Surrealism

was published in 1940 and includes the first discussion of

announced its arrival on the Australian scene.

Australian Surrealist artists.12 The following year Breton, the

‘pope of Surrealism’, also contributed an article to Art in

9

The ensuing uptake of Surrealism by artists from 1939

must be considered in the light of several factors. The

Australia.13 Surrealism was now firmly established as one of

revitalisation of Surrealism in England in the 1930s and

the most visible of the modern movements.

1940s and the increasing availability of publications in

English had a decisive impact. Of these, Herbert Read’s

younger artists from 1939 onwards was also related to the

Art now, which included a discussion on Surrealism,

widespread anxiety and increasing politicisation of society

was the most widely read book on contemporary art of

as Australia entered the Second World War. Richard Haese

Ivor Francis Investigation, scientific or otherwise, of matter without form c. 1943 oil on canvas 69.5 x 94.0 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

The adoption of Surrealism by (almost exclusively)

artonview

summer 2007–08

21

Robert Klippel Drawing P19 c. 1949 brush and ink 41.9 x 30.7 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007 Sidney Nolan Christ crucified c. 1940 collage of prints from steel engravings on paper 13.5 x 19.5 cm Gift of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

considers that, ‘To advocate Surrealism (good or bad

like qualities of the scene and the precise realism with

Surrealism, nobody knew the difference) was to lay claim

which it is painted. A towering feminine biomorphic rock

to being on the side of a radical and anarchic future’.

formation, its eroded surface recalling the drapery of

Surrealism, born in Europe in the aftermath of the First

classical statuary, stands in front of a smaller form. Both

World War, found a receptive home in Australia at the

anthropomorphic shapes are repeated in a silhouette

outbreak of the second. For many artists the war and

cut-out on the horizon. The fluid forms of the lightning

Surrealism were inextricably linked and Gleeson recalled:

are juxtaposed with the rigid architectural forms in the

14

For a while, especially during the war years, I did think of

foreground. Renée Free has argued that the theory of

Surrealism as a revolutionary weapon. I accepted Breton’s

opposites and metamorphosis are at the core of Gleeson’s

contention that by utilising the subconscious one could

art and philosophy. In this work, lightning is the agent of

arrive at a condition that held the rational mind in balance

change and of metamorphosis.17 The attitude of lightning

and perhaps prevent such disasters as war, indifference

towards a lady-mountain was the first Surrealist work

or fanaticism.15

acquired by James Agapitos and Ray Wilson and a key

Gleeson, born in 1915, is the Australian artist who has

factor in their decision to devote themselves to collecting

been most closely connected with Surrealism, its longest

Australian Surrealism.

practitioner and most prominent spokesman. Indeed, he

In 1947 Gleeson left Australia for England. After a short

considers that, ‘I was born a Surrealist’. Gleeson studied

stay in London he took up residence at ‘The Abbey’, art

at the East Sydney Technical College and the Sydney

dealer William Ohly’s property in Hertfordshire, which

Teachers College where he had access to a large library of

had been set up as artist studios. There, Gleeson met

art books and journals. As early as 1938 Gleeson was

fellow expatriate Robert Klippel who was to become a

painting Surrealist inspired images and producing poem –

lifelong friend.

drawings which sought to integrate text and image.

16

Gleeson’s first exhibited Surrealist painting was The

Klippel had arrived in England earlier in the year on

a three-year stipend from his father. His friendship with

attitude of lightning towards a lady-mountain. Dalí’s

Gleeson was to have a significant influence on his work

influence is strongly evident in the deep space and dream-

and their collaboration on Madame Sophie Sesostoris (a

22 national gallery of australia

pre-raphaelite satire) 1947–48 (in the collection of the

he encountered the works of the poets Arthur Rimbaud,

Art Gallery of New South Wales) marks the beginning

Charles Baudelaire and William Blake, and writers James

of a period of Surrealist explorations. In December 1948

Joyce and DH Lawrence, among others. According

Klippel moved to Paris. Together with Gleeson he visited

to Haese, as late as 1939, Nolan was undecided as to

Breton (although Gleeson recalled that the meeting was

whether to be a painter or a poet, and while he chose the

not fruitful as Breton spoke no English and Gleeson’s

former Nolan maintained a lifelong interest in literature,

French was poor) and soon became part of the Surrealist

collaborating with writers and poets, and publishing his

group centred around Breton at La Dragonne Gallery. In

own poetry.19 Arthur Rimbaud, the nineteenth-century

Paris, Klippel turned his energies to drawing, creating an

poet beloved by the Surrealists, was Nolan’s anti-hero – his

extraordinary series of drawings of sinister biomorphic

poetry and unconventional life a guide in charting his own

forms, including Drawing P19 c. 1949. Full of menace,

artistic journey.

three spiky plant-machines face towards a floating form.

We sense that any change to the equilibrium will result

collages in homage to Rimbaud. As Bruce James points out,

in the immediate demise of this unfortunate creature.

these works are in no way illustrations of Rimbaud’s poems;

Gleeson considered that ‘it is with this sequence of

rather, their blend of ethnographic and geographic source

drawings that he [Klippel] makes his closest approach

material, ‘white imperialist themes’ and exoticism resonates

to Surrealism, and through them we are drawn into the

with the poet’s biography and ‘succeed in emulating the

darkest chambers of his imagination’.18

poet’s signature fracturing of mood and sense’.20 Surrealistic

in intent, mood and method, these collages are amongst

Sidney Nolan, born in 1917, was Australia’s most

Sidney Nolan Orphée c. 1948 enamel paint and silver paper on masonite 77.5 x 107.5 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

During 1939–40 Nolan undertook an ambitious series of

original artist of the late 1930s, exploring Abstraction

the earliest forays into the quintessential Surrealist medium

and Surrealism and experimenting with a wide range

of collage by an Australian artist.

of unconventional techniques. Enrolled as a student at

the National Gallery School in Melbourne from 1936–37

nineteenth-century black-and-white engravings, which are

Nolan attended classes sporadically, preferring to spend

glued onto another engraving, the result is an unstable,

his time in the reading room of the state library. There,

constantly shifting image, a jumbled ‘nonsense’ image,

Constructed of cut-up and re-arranged squares of

artonview

summer 2007–08

23

Dusan Marek Gravitiation – The return of Christ 1949 oil on board with insert mirror 35.0 x 81.0 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

defying visual or narrative interpretation. While Ernst had

was Adelaide’s most prominent Surrealist painter. Around

earlier used steel engraving for his collages, their aims

1940, he met Max Harris and began his own investigations

were dissimilar. Ernst used the collage process to create

into Surrealism. Francis was also greatly inspired by Harris’s

new fantastical imagery whereas Nolan’s collages destroy

writing, particularly his Surrealist novel The vegetative eye

the conventions of representation and linear narrative. In

of 1943. Investigation, scientific or otherwise, of matter

several of Nolan’s collages, this idea is carried further with

without form 1943 employs a nightmarish dream-imagery

the inclusion of completely abstract elements – coloured

to suggest the fate of man at the mercy of psychic forces.

squares – arranged in a checkerboard pattern over

the engravings.

1940s after his appointment to the Education Board of

the then Australian Broadcast Commission, Adelaide soon

In 1948 Nolan was asked to design the stage set

While Francis’s painting activities declined in the late

for Jean Cocteau’s Orphée 1926 to be performed by

received another adherent of Surrealism. Dusan Marek

the Sydney University Dramatic Society. Orphée was

arrived in Adelaide in 1948 after fleeing the communist

a modernisation of the Orpheus myth, and Cocteau

regime in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). Marek

introduced the device of the mirror as the passageway

had studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Prague where his

from the world of the living to the world of the dead.

teachers included Frantisek Tichy, a supporter of Surrealism.

Nolan recalled: ‘I followed all of Cocteau’s instructions

Gravitation – the return of Christ 1949 is one of Marek’s

quite literally. I had mirrors all over the place made of silver

masterworks. In this meticulously painted work, Marek

paper … the mirrors blinded the audience at rehearsals’.

creates a mood of menace with a canon dominating the left

21

Nolan’s painting Orphée, as self-consciously stylish as

side of the composition. Adding to the sense of unease, a

Cocteau himself, is based on Nolan’s collaged design for

convex mirror on a boat floating on the rolling ocean gives a

the play’s drop curtain. In the painting Nolan uses the silver

distorted view back onto the viewer, and acts as an opening

foil wrapping of a Cadbury chocolate bar to indicate the

onto another reality. The boat and the ocean are suggestive

mirror – appropriately, the embossed ‘Cadbury’ is reversed,

of journeys and transformations, as is the evolutionary

as in mirror writing.

appearance of the man–ape who holds aloft another figure.

22

In Adelaide, Surrealism crystallised around the

A Surrealist undercurrent runs through Arthur Boyd’s

precocious poet and intellectual Max Harris. In 1940,

darkly expressionistic paintings of wartime Melbourne.

while still a student at the University of Adelaide, Harris

Franz Philipp considers that ‘[m]etamorphosis – or rather

had established the literary journal Angry Penguins. Harris

its literal visualization – is a fundamental feature of Boyd’s

declared himself an anarchist and a Surrealist, and the

iconography, and is more closely related to surrealist than

second issue of Angry Penguins featured a reproduction of

to expressionist notions’.23 Boyd’s remarkable ceramic

Gleeson’s Surrealist painting Images of spring. Ivor Francis

sculpture The bride 1953/54 is explicitly concerned with

24 national gallery of australia

this concept. The bride is composed of multiple fleshy protuberances of breasts and buttocks juxtaposed against a beak-like nose. An image of a butterfly, a recurring motif in Boyd’s art symbolic of metamorphosis, is emblazoned across her breasts. Philipp notes that in Graeco-Roman art the butterfly is a symbol of the soul, while in Christian iconography it stands as a symbol of the resurrection of Christ.24 This symbolism is in stark contrast with the earthy fecundity of the bride, and a reminder of the presence of death in the midst of life.

In February 2008, the National Gallery of Australia will

mount a special exhibition devoted to the Agapitos/Wilson collection of Australian Surrealist art, which will include The bride and other key works from the collection. Sadly, James Agapitos passed away early this year. The acquisition of the collection by the National Gallery of Australia is the fulfilment of his and Ray Wilson’s long-held dream to make their collection available to the nation for the enjoyment of visitors for generations to come. It constitutes a remarkable act of generosity and will forever remain testimony to the insight, vision and commitment of James Agapitos and Ray Wilson to Australian art.

Elena Taylor Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture notes 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14 15

As they wrote in the foreword to the publication documenting their collection: ‘The exhibition catalogue became a bible to us, a valued guide that led us to a number of our later acquisitions. Our original enthusiasm for Australian art returned with a vengeance. We searched through books and catalogues and enjoyed the chase and each new discovery. We contacted many artists, their families and friends of deceased artists’. Bruce James, Australian Surrealism: the Agapitos/ Wilson collection, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2003, p. 14.

André Breton, ‘The Surrealist manifesto’ (1924), in Lucy Lippard (ed.), Surrealists on art, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1970, p.15.

Ken Wach, ‘James Gleeson and Surrealism: the inexhaustible murmur’, in Lou Klepac, James Gleeson: beyond the screen of sight, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2004, p.41.

Man Ray’s photograph Glass tears c. 1930 was reproduced in The Home magazine in February 1934 accompanying salad recipes.

For a discussion of Surrealism and popular culture in Australia, see Christopher Chapman, ‘Surrealism in Australia’, in Surrealism: revolution by night, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1993, pp.

268–75.

‘A gallery of Surrealist portraits’, The Home, vol. 19 no. 6, June 1938, pp. 39–46.

Gael Newton, Max Dupain, David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, p. 25.

James, p.56.

Basil Burdett, ‘Modern art in Melbourne’, Art in Australia, no. 73, 15 November 1938, pp. 12–23.

With the National Gallery of Australia’s acquisition of Happy landing (The happy father) and The attitude of lightning towards a ladymountain from the Agapitos/Wilson collection, all three works are now reunited in the Gallery’s collection.

For a comprehensive listing of books and reproductions of Surrealism available in Australia see Christopher Chapman, ‘A bibliographic chronology of Surrealism in Australia 1923–49’, in Surrealism: revolution by night, pp. 310–15.

Mary Eagle, Australian modern painting between the wars 1914–1939, Bay Books, Sydney, 1989, p. 201. Mary Eagle also notes that the Empire Loans collection of twentieth-century British art, held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1939, also included a Surrealist section. p. 198.

James Gleeson, ‘What is Surrealism?’, Art in Australia, no. 81, 25 November 1940, pp. 27–30.

André Breton, ‘Originality and liberty’, Art in Australia, no. 4, 1 December 1941, pp. 11–17.

Richard Haese, Rebels and precursors: the revolutionary years of Australian art, 2nd edn, Penguin, Melbourne, p.105.

James Gleeson, interview with Lou Klepac, in James Gleeson:

landscape out of nature, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1987, p. 14.

16 Lou Klepac, James Gleeson: landscape out of nature, p. 12.

17 Renee Free, ‘James Gleeson: ideas from the shadows’, in James Gleeson: beyond the screen of sight, p. 56.

18 James Gleeson, Robert Klippel, Bay Books, Sydney, 1983, p. 119.

19 Haese, p. 90.

20 James, p. 119.

21 Sidney Nolan, ‘Painting and the stage’, lecture presented to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, quoted in TG Rosenthal, Sidney Nolan, Thames and Hudson, London, 2002, p. 255.

22 Nolan’s Orphée is one of the earliest Australian paintings to incorporate collaged elements. The Agapitos/Wilson collection contains an earlier painting by Herbert McClintock (aka Max Ebert), Approximate portrait in a drawing room 1938, incorporating collage.

Nolan himself used collage in the Kelly subject K & Sergeant Kennedy 1945. See James, p. 50.

23 Franz Philipp, Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, p. 32.

24 Philipp, p. 173

artonview

Arthur Boyd The bride 1953/54 glazed terracotta 79.0 x 50.0 x 45.0 cm Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM 2007

summer 2007–08

25

international exhibition

Andy and Oz: parallel visions 20 October – 30 December 2007 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA For the 1960s Warhol’s colour was silver … astronauts marched in their shiny space suits everywhere in the media. The Velvet Underground performed ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ while Warhol’s antique mirror ball splintered spotlights into millions of diamond shards.

His gently floating silver ‘Clouds’ series of 1966 represented the apogee of the silver theme.1

Martin Sharp and Tim Lewis Still life: Marilyn 1973 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 117.0 x 91.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The exhibition Andy and Oz: parallel visions is the

of the much-reproduced Sunflowers by Van Gogh. Sharp

international event to coincide with the Gallery’s silver

found parallels between Monroe’s life and Van Gogh’s,

anniversary. Launched in October at The Andy Warhol

observing that ‘they were both great artists, they died at a

Museum in Pittsburgh, the show features works reflecting

similar age ... I called the painting Still life, because though

correspondences between Warhol and Australian artists.

they had left this world they were still alive in their art

While some artists in the national collection clearly have

and influence’.2

stronger links with Warhol than others, some of the less

expected parallels are as intriguing. During the selection

than the collage, the idea had come about while Sharp was

process with Thomas Sokolowski, Director of the Andy

in London where he lived from 1967 to 1969. During this

Warhol Museum, the idea of establishing links with

time, he befriended Eric Clapton, the rock guitarist with the

Warhol’s art evolved laterally in terms of shared ideas

band Cream. Sharp met Clapton in the Speakeasy Club in

and ways of working, diverse viewpoints, snapshots of

London, having just written a poem that he thought would

connections and parallel visions.

make a good song. The scribbled lyrics which he handed to

Clapton on a serviette became the hit song ‘Tales of brave

In the process three distinct groupings emerged. The

Although the painting Still life: Marilyn was done later

first, Martin Sharp, Richard Larter and Robert Rooney,

Ulysses’ on Cream’s album Disraeli gears. Like Warhol,

reflects a shared interest in popular culture and imagery

Sharp designed album covers including the cover for

from everyday contexts; the second, Fiona Hall and Tim

Disraeli gears as well as the later Wheels of fire which was

Horn, parallels a fascination with culture and nature,

awarded the New York Art Directors’ Prize for Best Album

sensuality and sexuality; while the third, Tracey Moffatt,

Design in 1969. Music was important to many artists at this

Juan Davila, Christian Bumbarra Thompson and Liu

time including Warhol who noted the impact of the Rolling

Xiao Xian, focuses on photo-based media and shares a

Stones by the mid-1960s:

theatrical, dramatic approach to constructing images. All

This was the summer of ‘Satisfaction’ – the Stones

these artists are quite distinctive. Their diversity parallels

were coming out of every doorway, window, closet,

Warhol’s wide-ranging interests across many media. What

and car. It was exciting to hear pop music sounding so

they all have in common is a radical inventiveness and

mechanical … I mean, you knew it was ‘Satisfaction’

intense curiosity about contemporary life.

A painting that Martin Sharp did with Tim Lewis,

before the first fraction of the first note finished.3

You can almost hear Mick Jagger belting out lyrics to

Still life: Marilyn 1973, pays homage to both Warhol and

‘Satisfaction’ in Richard Larter’s portraits of him painted in

Marilyn Monroe. In the months that followed Monroe’s

Cream filling; phew, finger ring. There are multiple frames

death in 1962, Warhol made many silkscreen paintings

in the painting; some like film stills, some like cut-outs from

of Monroe, bringing together two of his consistent

underground comics and magazines, brought together in

preoccupations: death and the cult of celebrity. Sharp

a painted collage that reflects the energy of an era. Elvis,

initially made a collage of the still life by pasting Warhol’s

Nietzsche, a Russian Samidzat heroine, an ape, a screaming

image of Monroe from a Tate Gallery poster onto a print

man and a beautiful model all occupy the same space.

26 national gallery of australia

Richard Larter Cream filling; phew, finger ring 1971 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 178.0 x 366.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Larter started adopting images from popular culture in his

boredom of suburbia, young artists such as Andy Warhol

art before migrating to Australia in 1962, inspired by artists

and Robert Rooney discovered worlds within worlds. Both

working in Britain at the time such as Eduardo Paolozzi

understood that ‘the secret life of the suburbs’ was fertile

and John Bratby and also by the youth culture that has

ground for re-thinking what art could be. Rooney became

continued to fascinate him.

aware of Warhol when he was a student at the Swinburne

Technical College between 1954 and 1957. He recalls that

By the start of the 1970s Larter was inspired by

Warhol’s work in relation to photography and film and

Ben Shahn and ‘pre-Pop Andy Warhol’ were familiar to

painted his portrait into Frame 1971, above a posed

him from international magazines in the late 1950s. In

female model. Both models (well known and unknown)

particular he was inspired by one of Warhol’s drawings of

are painted in monochromes of black and blue, the

a Coke bottle with a rose in it. He notes: ‘Around 1958

latter perhaps alluding to Warhol’s Blue movie. Larter is

I made a screenprint of two teenage boys, one holding a

conscious of a complexity in Warhol’s art including his

Coca-Cola bottle … Something I inherited from

more political work that, in his view, is undiminished by a

illustration – in common with Ben Shahn and Andy

lack of commentary on the artist’s part. ‘I mean the electric

Warhol was the use of existing images. Life magazine

chairs and other images like the guy getting his trousers

and newspaper photographs (the wrecked cars) were

ripped [Birmingham race riot 1964] were very serious but

common sources … I continued to work in this way, even

he didn’t get much flak because of his fey attitude …

in my hard-edge serial/cereal abstractions on the back of

When he did repeated images of well-known figures like

Kellogg’s boxes.’5

Mao and Marilyn the reach of his work was huge.’4

materials in Rooney’s works of the 1960s and 1970s, such

In some of Warhol’s best known Pop works of the

Packaged, mass-produced goods were often source

1960s – of Mao and Marilyn, Campbell’s soup cans, Brillo

as bird masks printed on the backs of Kellogg’s cereal

boxes and Kellogg’s cereal packets – repeated images

boxes that provided stencils for seemingly abstract works.

seem to subliminally echo the enormity of the landscape

While his Kind-hearted kitchen-garden paintings have an

and the reach of mass media, especially television. In both

undeniable abstract rigour, the modernist grid is given an

America and Australia through the 1950s, when all manner

absurdist twist in his use of the tops of scalloped cake-

of domestic products were transforming lives, there was

box lids applied as stencils to create curvilinear rhythmic

also a natural allegiance between mass communication

lines and patterns. Unexpected sources such as books of

and the intimate spaces of domestic living rooms, laundries

knitting patterns also fed into works such as Superknit 5

and kitchens. Within the domestic interior and supposed

1970. While Warhol was an early source, Rooney notes that

28 national gallery of australia

in the 1960s Erik Satie, Gertrude Stein and John Cage set

and explicit drawings from the 1950s of male nudes,

him on the course he was following in these works.

produced in ink on shiny gold leaf. Both artists have also

been intrigued by the way that we frequently use plants as

Packaging for food, along with ideas of containment

and explicit revelation, is at the heart of Fiona Hall’s

erotic metaphors.

Paradisus terrestris series. Conceived at her kitchen table

and inspired by visits to the Adelaide Botanic Garden and

is apparent in Hall’s Paradise series. In Temptation of Eve

its Museum of Economic Botany in Adelaide in South

the smiling lips of women find themselves in a garden

Australia, Hall used sardine cans as the containers of her

inhabited by plants and also by corkscrews and penknives.

extraordinary provocative work. Hall was fascinated by

The multiple consumer products look surreal, even

the parallels between humans and nature – pointing out

playful, but also signal danger. The images are sourced

that we are nature, sharing things like haemoglobin and

from popular magazines, medieval engravings, mail-order

a sex life. One of the striking aspects of these exquisite,

catalogues, small toy figurines and diminutive metal tools;

challenging works is Hall’s background in drawing.

the miniaturist scale in the collages and sculptures serving

Similarly, Warhol’s work was informed by his drawing

paradoxically to intensify and magnify their effect.

abilities and there are parallels in his quite beautiful erotic

The reverse is true of Timothy Horn who transforms natural

Robert Rooney Kind-hearted kitchen-garden II 1967 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 167.9 x 168.1 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The combination of religious and sexual references

artonview

summer 2007–08

29

Tim Horn Glass slipper (ugly blister) 2001 lead crystal, nickel-plated bronze, Easter egg foil, silicon 51.0 x 72.0 x 33.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Fiona Hall Paradisus terrestris 1989–90 aluminium, tin citrus paradisus/grapefruit approx. 24.5 x 11.0 x 1.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Fiona Hall

forms and constructed objects by enlarging them to

documentary photography and an attraction to the

dazzling effect. Horn responds to the iconic, emblematic

bizarre in the everyday. In one of her most famous works,

and brazen scale of Pop art in the archetypal portraits

Something more, Moffatt creates the impression of film

of Marilyn, Elvis and Elizabeth Taylor. Like Hall, Horn

stills cut from an Australian road movie of her own making.

emphasises fluid correspondences between nature and

Each frame is in turn like a stage set – a constructed world

culture. He shares an obsessive approach to fabricating,

of painted, fabricated backdrops in and around which the

relishing the inherent properties of the materials – their

central protagonists act out the implied drama. Across the

sensuality, resilience and mutability. His giant jellyfish

set of images, there is beauty and danger: taunting youths,

chandeliers, Medusa and Stheno, made primarily from

gentle seduction, the shimmer of a new outfit, a violent

silicone rubber, are based upon imagery of the nineteenth-

encounter. While the idea of a narrative is present, there

century zoologist Ernst Haeckel, notorious for his

is also a fabricated, layered world that is closer to poetry;

preference for artifice over scientific fact.

ambiguous, suggestive, open-ended.

Horn’s over-size shoe Glass slipper (ugly blister)

Moffatt’s work can be interpreted on many levels. It

also conveys a tension between luxuriant beauty and

has been written that her photographs reference and

repellent excess – a novel take on the Cinderella shoe.

re-imagine her own past as an Aboriginal born in 1960 and

Throughout his life, Warhol was fascinated by shoes.

brought up in a foster home in Brisbane.6 Moffatt herself

His numerous drawings of shoes for the I Miller Shoe

says, ‘I think all my imagery comes from my subconscious,

Company in the 1950s were legendary and his interest

from dreams. I am not talking about when I dream at night

in the subject continued for the next thirty years.

… We can dream with our eyes open … Things I have

Warhol even constructed a few lavish sculptural shoes.

seen and experienced and things I think I have seen and

Horn’s glass slipper and jellyfish chandeliers also bring to

experienced. Maybe it’s just an exaggerated version of my

mind Stephen Frears’ film adaptation Dangerous liaisons

own reality. Sources of inspiration come from everywhere.’7

(set in pre-Revolutionary France) in which the sumptuous

sets, costumes and jewels complement themes of sexual

layered, complex and open to imaginative reinterpretation.

attraction and duplicity that the viewer can hardly bear to

For him, partial readings of identity relating to Australia

watch but is simultaneously entranced by.

and his country of birth, Chile, have been ongoing sources

of frustration. For him, Pop art represents ‘a fake popular

Warhol has also been a significant influence on Tracey

Juan Davila also sees issues of cultural identity as

Moffatt. In both artists’ work there is a continual interplay

culture in the sense that it was a Western only view’,

between glamour and a camp attitude, artifice and reality,

while Warhol represents, ‘product, marketing, money,

30 national gallery of australia

social climbing, perversion, an apolitical stance and a

issues of personal and cultural identities, refusing, as a

repression of emotion’. Davila recalls that in the 1980s

young Aboriginal artist, to succumb to narrow stereotypes.

he and other artists tried to rewrite the history of Pop art

In one image he wears a ruff and holds a boomerang over

from the antipodes, mixing American and English Pop with

his head in a spirit of defiance and reclamation. Part of the

local references, thus altering the Australian passivity in

liberation for Thompson in his encounters with Warhol’s

repeating imported culture. He says, ‘We also highlighted

work has been his diverse identities. As Thompson states,

cultural materials rejected by the High Pop, for example,

‘Andy is the child of European migrants. I identify with him

Indigenous culture.’8

as an outsider or fringe dweller’.9 Like Warhol, Thompson

The first impression of On sexuality and politics is its

has long enjoyed the idea of dressing up as a means of

dramatic scale, visceral qualities and edgy erotic power.

altering identity. Warhol was deeply interested in ways

By taking photography into account, Davila contrasts

of imaging the self, changing his name from Warhola

the new painting of the 1980s by artists such as Jorg

to Warhol and donning a hairpiece to disguise his hair

Immendorf. The central image, which recalls the pietà,

loss. The personal wigs that Warhol wore from the mid-

was photographed in front of the Shrine of Remembrance

1960s were shades of blond veering to white and made

and also refers to Diggers at war. Here the artist replaces

him instantly recognisable. It is this ‘look’ that Thompson

reproductions of the pietà or images of remembrance,

adopts in Gates of Tambo – Andy Warhol. The long, pale

with a sweating self-portrait holding a young, half-

hair falling across his face leaves us in little doubt of the

naked man on his lap. Like Warhol, Davila includes many

subject of his impersonation, despite the concealment of

homosexual references in his art. It may be tempting to

his face. Thompson points out that he feels at ease within

read the male portraits as representing a shift from sacred

local and international contexts, seeing artists like Warhol

to sacrilegious. Yet the image could also be a re-reading of

and Bruce Nauman as ‘creative forefathers’. He says, ‘I have

love and suffering. Davila is passionate about questions of

never thought of my work or my position in Australia as

sexual repression, and this work can also be seen as part

being “not” international but in fact the opposite, I feel

of a wider investigation of masculinity, machismo and the

international as much in regional Queensland as I do in

outsider in the context of the 1980s when AIDS was

Amsterdam or New York. What is pure is the energy that

having a devastating impact around the world.

perpetuates the simple gestures which are most central to

our existence.’10

Like Warhol, Davila and Moffatt, Christian Bumbarra

Thompson incorporates his self-portrait into his photo-

Among Andy Warhol’s most audacious cross-cultural

based work. In his Emotional striptease series he questions

migrations are his portraits of Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. artonview

Juan Davila On sexuality and politics (#3) 1984 synthetic polymer paint on direct positive colour photograph on composition board 274.0 x 207.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Tracey Moffatt Something more 1989 (detail) series of direct positive colour and gelatin silver photographs each sheet 100.6 x 127.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

summer 2007–08

31

Liu Xiao Xian, an artist born in China who migrated to

stillness. This idea is echoed by two Australians, Loti

Australia as a young adult, recalls first seeing a major

Smorgon and Henry Gillespie, who had their portraits done

exhibition of American Pop art at China’s National Art Gallery

by Warhol. Both Portrait of Loti (private collection) and

in Beijing in the 1980s. He states, ‘It was as though a bomb

Henry Gillespie (National Gallery’s collection) are included

had exploded among the Chinese art world, especially young

in the exhibition. They appear with other works by Warhol

people like myself. I was starting to use photography in my

that convey parallels with the works by Australian artists in

art practice and I was largely influenced by Pop artists, such

the show.

as Warhol, Hockney, Rauschenberg ...’11

silver – the colour of the silver screen and the space

Liu has been fascinated by Warhol’s use of multiples in

Andy Warhol was prescient when he said that

his work, recognising the potent effect of images of the

age – was the colour of the 1960s and also of the future.

same scale placed alongside one another. Like Warhol, Hall

Some four decades later, on the occasion of the Gallery’s

and Horn he also understands the effects of the macrocosm

silver anniversary, this exhibition provides the opportunity

and the microcosm. In Reincarnation – Mao, Buddha and I,

for contemporary Australian artists to shine with Warhol at

he uses new technology to striking effect with each giant

The Andy Warhol Museum. It is an opportunity to celebrate

portrait – of Mao, the Buddha and himself – inhabited

and to contemplate commonalities, differences and parallel

by thousands of tiny portraits (not clearly visible in

visions across time and place.

reproduction). Each image is constructed out of the other, so that the portrait of Mao is made up of the portraits of the artist and so on. This idea of the interchangeable nature of the portraits suggests our human interdependence, as well as our connections with the past and with future reincarnations. Here the artist draws upon philosophical principles; on the immensity of the cosmos that has no boundaries and the infinitude of the microcosm within.

Warhol recognised parallels with America and what he

had heard about the vastness of Australia and thought his work would have an audience here. He met a number of Australians in his life, including Martin Sharp. Sharp recalls that for all the frenetic activity around Warhol (when he was saw him working and in public) what was most notable was his extraordinary containment and

Christian Bumbarra Thompson Gates of Tambo – Andy Warhol 2004 c-type print Courtesy the artist and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, Australia Liu Xiao Xian Reincarnation – Mao, Buddha and I 1998 a set of three prints, each image comprising 100 sheets digital image, printed in black ink, from inkjet printer overall image 275.0 x 625.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture after 1920 Notes Andy Warhol: 365 takes, The Andy Warhol Museum Collection by the staff of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA, 2004, p. 133.

2 Martin Sharp, The everlasting world of Martin Sharp: paintings from 1948 to today, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, The University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts, Sydney, p. 14.

3 Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism: the Warhol sixties, Harcourt Books, p. 146.

4 Richard Larter, interview with Deborah Hart, 14 August 2007.

5 Robert Rooney: notes on Warhol, correspondence with Deborah Hart, 28 August 2007.

6 Paula Savage, Tracey Moffatt, exhibition catalogue, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, p. 7.

7 Paula Savage, p. 33.

8 Juan Davila, correspondence with Deborah Hart, 10 September 2007.

9 Christian Bumbarra Thompson, correspondence with Deborah Hart, 3 September 2007.

10 Thompson, 3 September 2007.

11 Liu Xiao Xian, correspondence with Deborah Hart, 16 September 2007.

1

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for thcoming exhibition

Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape painting 14 March – 9 June 2008

JMW Turner Crossing the brook exhibited 1815 oil on canvas 193.0 x 165.1 cm Bequeathed by the artist 1856, Tate Collection

From March to June 2008 the National Gallery of Australia

and Charles Daubigny investigate a new idea of nature as

will present a landmark exhibition of nineteenth-century

an escape from urban life as the century proceeds.

landscape painting around the world. Featuring one

hundred works by many of the greatest artists of the time,

portraits of estates, painters began to portray newly

Turner to Monet looks at the triumph of landscape as it

explored terrain. Glover combined the two in his exquisite

rises to new importance in the art of Europe and the New

A view of the artist’s house and garden, in Mills Plains,

World. With the best works in oil and watercolour, the

Van Diemen’s Land 1834–35 in which the embroidered

exhibition considers the genre from its early predominance

beauty of his English flowers has a backdrop of scrubby

in Britain to extraordinary manifestations in France,

Tasmanian bush under a brilliant southern sky. Artists

Germany and the rest of Europe. Turner to Monet shows

then ventured further, into the wilderness. First in Europe,

the spread of landscape painting to new territories, as

then America and Australia, they sought the extremes

European artists in Australia and America extended the

of nature, elemental and untameable: stormy coasts and

Western tradition.

mysterious mountains, volcanic eruptions and raging

fires. In the New World, the land itself became a heroic

Paintings by JMW Turner, John Constable, Samuel

From the orderly beauty of the artist’s garden and

Palmer, Caspar David Friedrich, Camille Corot, John Glover,

character in the pictorial narrative. Vast skies of crystalline

Thomas Cole, Gustave Courbet, Eugene von Guérard,

air, dramatic sunsets, expansive plains and valleys all

Winslow Homer, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Paul

emphasise the size of the continents.

Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Claude

Monet are drawn from public and private collections.

surroundings, the all-enveloping city in which nature

These include the Tate Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria & Albert Museum, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kröller-Müller Museum, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art in Washington, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum of Art and private collectors, as well as major public institutions in Australia.

Emerging in Europe two hundred years earlier,

landscape painting became a leading force in Western art by the beginning of the nineteenth century. English and German Romantic painters chose the genre to explore new techniques and subjects. The art of landscape was transformed from depictions of known places to painterly explorations of mood and time passing. Turner’s masterly Crossing the brook, exhibited in 1815, sums up the classical Claudian tradition. Constable’s lively ‘six-footer’ canvas of The leaping horse 1825 shows his inimitable combination of concentrated observation and bravura, seemingly spontaneous exposition. Plein-air studies of clouds, rural scenes, marine and picturesque views by Constable, JC Dahl, Corot and Palmer are complemented by the intense naturalism of the Barbizon school. Oils by Courbet

34 national gallery of australia

Increasingly, humans were shown in modern

seems controlled. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, artists used the genre of landscape to experiment with colour and form, and so to question the nature of painting itself. In his extraordinary close-up rendition of an urban park, Tree trunks in the grass 1890, Van Gogh reinvigorated the landscape format by looking down, not outwards, thus eliminating both horizon and sky. As modern art developed into a fresh way of thinking about the world, artists such as Cézanne and Monet returned to the same motif with endless variations. In Morning haze 1894 Monet’s subject was the disappearance of form and colour under nature’s wintry grey and white coverings of snow and fog on a river. Like Turner, Monet painted the ineffable effects of light and water, and infinite arrays of land and sky.

Turner to Monet, accompanied by a major catalogue,

will be held at one venue only: the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. The exhibition runs from 14 March to 9 June 2008.

Christine Dixon and Lucina Ward International Painting and Sculpture

collec tion focus

Leo Haks Indonesian photographs collection 1860s–1940s This collection allowed me to combine a lifelong passion for photography with a professional interest in Indonesia. A sprinkling of guilt feeling for what my Dutch ancestors had done in that country, good and less so, made for an exciting challenge.

In the collection I assembled over a 30-year period, I tried to show Indonesia as it was between about 1860 and 1940. Staying away from the colonists and their direct influence on the country, I placed most emphasis on the Indonesian people, their culture and the landscape, without concentrating on portraiture per se.

Seeing the collection move to Australia will most hopefully see it being used by scholars of different disciplines so as to gain a better understanding of Indonesia, its closest neighbour, to their mutual and lasting benefit. The prospect of this happening made the parting of the collection a happy rather than dramatic event.

I wish the National Gallery of Australia will long cherish the guardianship of this collection.

Leo Haks, August 2007

Philip Klier Andamanese fishing in Burma album c.1887 albumen silver photograph 21.1 x 27.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Andre Roosevelt Legong dancer, Bali 1928 gelatin silver photograph 23.6 x 17.9 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

36 national gallery of australia

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Woodbury and Page Eoli 1877 in Souvenir van Atjeh 1884–89 albumen silver photograph 31.0 x 36.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Unknown photographer Family portrait c.1900 gelatin silver photograph 19.3 x 14.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Museum and gallery curators obviously collect for their institutions and apply scholarship to their cataloguing and in presenting works to the public, but they are rarely out there in the junk shops or collectibles auctions or eBay and most often buy through reputable dealers, major auctions and private collectors. Collectors, in turn, vary from the highly intuitive, who rarely write or talk about their collections, to people who are great experts involved in scholarly publications and exhibitions.

Curators end up with a trove of stories they can relate (and some they can’t) about their encounters and meetings with collectors. Sometimes the story is about not meeting them, as in the case of Jane Kinsman, Senior Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books, who for years wrote regular letters to benefactor Orde Poynton but never met the elusive man who left the Gallery millions in his will. Other curators have weekly phone calls with collector–benefactors. I once rowed out to a yacht in quest of a missing collection. Meetings with dedicated, passionate and pioneering collectors usually leave curators with a greater respect for the originality and astuteness of the collector, who patiently builds and builds over a lifetime in areas overlooked or even dismissed by the current market and museum.

In August this year, the Gallery acquired a collection from such a collector, Leo Haks of Amsterdam, who started collecting from a chance purchase in the Hague in 1977.

38 national gallery of australia

Prior to returning to Singapore, where he lived since 1968 and where his new job as manager of the Insight guides to Asia travel books awaited him, he bought an album of photographs of Burma in the 1870s–1890s. The album, by the Rangoon (now Yangon) studio of German-born photographer Philip Klier (1845–1911), was subsequently taken apart to provide illustrations for one of the Insight guides. Later, it was carefully rebound.

From that start in 1977, Haks became fascinated with early photography in Indonesia between the 1860s and 1940s. In the 1984, he returned to Amsterdam and became a dealer in rare books and Indonesian paintings.

He co-authored a number of books on Indonesian art and continued building what became the only museum standard holding of Indonesian photography in private hands. The Klier album remained special to Haks throughout the decades.

Leo Haks built a collection of 5000 prints, as well as thousands more in albums both grand and humble. These albums, prints and his library of over 140 mostly rare books on the subject – all lugged up the narrow staircases of his four storey Amsterdam home – were expertly catalogued and rehoused in archival sleeves, new bindings or specially made cases.

The collection came to the attention of the National Gallery of Australia while I was doing electronic research to develop the Gallery’s new focus collection of Asian and

Sem Cephas Portrait of a Javanese woman c.1890 gelatin silver photograph, colour pigment 28.5 x 24.0 cm National Gallery of Australia Canberra

Pacific photography – initiated by Director Ron Radford in

2005 and in preparation for the 2008 exhibition Picture

acquisition and encouraged further negotiations, including

Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s. In 2005,

my visit to Amsterdam in November 2006, and a follow up

the only Indonesian photographs I knew were nearly a

visit by Haks to Canberra in June 2007. Going through the

century apart: the rich tone prints of the studio of English-

collection was an intense experience sitting side-by-side

Woodbury and Page Statue of a raksasa or giant at Singasari in Vues de Java 1860 albumen silver photograph 24.3 x 19.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

born photographers Walter Woodbury and James Page,

through long days of opening boxes. Visits to museum

who had previously worked in Australia in the 1850s; and

collections in the Netherlands and to other collectors also

the famed French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson’s

took up much of my time; so much so that I still have

Bali pictures from the 1950s. However, what was also

little idea of what the Netherlands even looks like! The

apparent was that the history of photography in the

collection, however, was comprehensive and all works

former Dutch East Indies was poorly known beyond the

were of exceptional quality, which indicated a ruthless

archives and museums in the Netherlands. Indonesian

patience and constant culling and trading-up. Although

photography became of great interest to the Gallery as it

originally catalogued with a social perspective by subject,

was undervalued in the market and pertinent to the new

the collection was reorganised for my visit; Haks had

collecting focus on the Asia and Pacific region. It also

recognised the art museum perspective and grouped

complements the existing collection strengths in Southeast

the photographs by photographer. As Haks is also a

Asian textiles in particular.

photographer we found we shared a fairly convergent idea

of which were the finest prints and photographers.

Over the years Leo Haks lent works to many

Director Ron Radford saw the potential for a major

international exhibitions and provided illustrations to

numerous publications on Indonesian culture and history.

Indonesia from the 1860s to 1940s, the last century of

He has a small website on his various collections and

Dutch colonial rule. The period covers the development

inventory, and with the wonder of the internet we were

of the modern photographic system of multiple prints –

soon in correspondence. On discovering Haks was due

from glass negatives in the 1860s to the versatile roll film

to be in Australia for a short trip in 2006, I organised a

cameras of the 1920s to 1950s. Some 2000 prints are

meeting in Sydney. There, an invitation to visit Canberra

nineteenth- to early twentieth-century albumen prints

was extended and accepted. Several works were acquired

and early gelatin silver photographs, many of which are in

that year from Haks.

studio albums. In addition, there are 87 family albums, 146

40 national gallery of australia

The Haks collection shows life and landscape in

collotypes, 556 gravures and photogravures, and 22 offset

Japanese photographers were among the earliest non-

plate rare books. In the collection, formats vary from tiny

European photographers at work in Indonesia – a pattern

cartes-de-visite to large plate landscapes, several mammoth

repeated across Asia and the Pacific. The island of Bali

plate portraits and panoramas. Content ranges from

features prominently and there are fine studies of batik

vernacular and family portraits to grandiose presentation

costume and Indonesian dancers. There are gorgeous

albums – forerunners of present day glossy annual reports.

sharply detailed albumen prints in which a host of long

dead members of the royal courts seem to be alive

The Klier album is of Burma, and some material

is from Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai – many

and present.

photographers in the region worked in various countries or

sold prints from several in their shops. The Haks collection

the most significant ever undertaken by the Gallery.

of Indonesian material, however, includes all major and minor professional names including Woodbury and Page, Tassilo Adam, HM Neeb, CJ Kleingrothe, Kassian Cephas, Isidore Van Kinsbergen, Onnes Kurkdjian, H Salzwedel and Thilly Weissenborn. The majority are foreign born but Kassian Cephas was the first Indonesian photographer of note and Thilly Weissenborn, the first significant woman photographer, was born in Indonesia. Most were residents and Indonesia was their adopted country where they spent the remainder of their lives – as opposed to short term visiting foreign photographers. A number of Chinese and

George Lewis Gieterij met smeltovens, richting lost west 1902 in De Nederlandsch-Indische Industrie te Soerabaya gelatin silver photograph 16.8 x 22.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The acquisition of the Leo Haks collection is one of

It will sustain many years of investigation by scholars and curators across various disciplines both within Australia and, it is hoped, from Indonesia. Haks, who will be living in New Zealand from 2008, will no doubt also come to visit, and I expect the odd parcel of additions may also find its way to the national collection. Haks’s collection of postcards continues to grow. I doubt his collecting days are over.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography artonview

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for thcoming exhibition

Picture Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s

KT Satake Ardja dancers in Sumatra Java, Bali, London, 1935 photogravure, letterpress Purchased 2007

In mid 2006 Director Ron Radford announced that

century by the wet-plate and then dry-plate glass negative

over the next decade the National Gallery of Australia’s

process and finally, the modern era of small 35 mm film

collecting and exhibition programs would more strongly

cameras introduced in 1925 with the release of the Leica.

demonstrate Australia’s geographic, political and

A special feature of the exhibition will be a presentation of

cultural position within the Asia and Pacific region and

the first colour photographs taken in the Asia and Pacific

play an active role in the appreciation, nationally and

region from the 1920s to the 1940s.

internationally, of the art of our region. This goal led to

a commitment by the Gallery’s Council to build the first

local photographers as well as European photographers

museum collection dedicated to representing the history

working in the region such as Scot John Thomson, who

of photography across Asia and the Pacific.

published the first travel photography books on Asia.

Work by first generation indigenous photographers –

1

An extraordinary effort has been made to expand the

The exhibition will include pioneer nineteenth-century

Gallery’s existing Australasian, Asian and Pacific collections.

Lala Deen Dayal from India, Francis Chit from Thailand,

In 2005, the Gallery held over 8000 Australasian works

Cassian Cephas from Indonesia, Afong from Hong Kong

and some 1000 nineteenth- and twentieth-century works

and Carleton Watkins in California and Alfred Bock

from western Canada, California and Mexico, but only

in Australia will complement views and ethnographic

a tiny holding of under 200 works from elsewhere in

photographs by immigrants such as Armenian Onnes

the Asia and Pacific region. Two years on, nearly 10 000 photographs have been acquired – the majority from the purchase of a large collection of colonial-era photography of Indonesia (1860s–1940s) from Leo Haks in Amsterdam, and almost 1000 nineteenth-century South and Southeast Asian and Australasian works from Howard and Jane Ricketts in London. The focus of the expanding collection of photographic art from Asia and the Pacific is not limited to nineteenth-century documentary works; a good representation of twentieth-century art photographers is also being sought, and a number of prints by Pictorialist and Modernist photographers have been acquired.

The Gallery’s new Asia and Pacific collection will be

showcased for the first time from 11 July to 9 November 2008 with Picture Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s. This exhibition will be the first survey of the history of photography from India and Sri Lanka through Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific to the west coast of North America, from the formative decades of the 1840s to 1860s to the early 1940s and advent of the Second World War.

The exhibition will cover the adoption of successive

photographic processes across Asia and the Pacific – from the unique daguerreotype portraits on metal plates in the 1840s–1860s to the mass production of views on paper made possible from the 1860s on to the turn of the

42 national gallery of australia

Kurkdjian in Indonesia, JW Lindt, who migrated from Germany to work in Australia and Alfred Burton, an Englishman who worked in New Zealand. Surrealist work

by Australian Modernist Max Dupain will be placed in context with the work of Lionel Wendt from Sri Lanka and Osamu Shiihara from Japan. An important feature of the exhibition will be the first account of women photographers in the region including Hedda Morrison in China, Imogen Cunningham in California and Olive Cotton in Australia.

Picture Paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s

is the National Gallery of Australia’s contribution to Vivid, the National Photography Festival on view in venues around Canberra from 11 July to 12 October 2008.

With over 36 exhibitions hosted across 28 participating institutions in Canberra, ranging from national collecting institutions to many smaller community organisations and galleries, Vivid will highlight the city’s rich photographic collections through exhibitions and a wide range of events.2 Gael Newton Senior Curator of Photography notes 1 Ron Radford, A Vision for the National Gallery of Australia, presented to the National Gallery Council in June and August 2005, viewed September 2007, nga.gov.au/AboutUs/DOWNLOAD/ NGAvision2005.pdf.

2 For more information, visit www.nla.gov.au/pict/photofestival.html.

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new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ar t

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Warlugulong

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Anmatyerre/Arrernte peoples, Tjapaltjarri subsection Warlugulong 1977 synthetic polymer paint, oil and red ochre on canvas 202.0 x 337.5 cm Purchased with the generous assistance of Roslynne Bracher and the Paspaley Family, David Coe and Michelle Coe, Charles Curran and Eva Curran 2007

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, a founding member of Papunya

contains the essence of five major Tjukurrpa. The main

Tula Artists, was one of the most important artists of the

one, Warlugulong or Bushfire Dreaming, depicts how the

movement and among its earliest and most innovative

ancestral fire began.

practitioners. However, until recently, his representation in

the national collection was not substantial. The Gallery’s

site of Warlugulong, nearly 300 kilometres north-west of

major new acquisition Warlugulong 1977 enhances not

Alice Springs. His two sons speared a sacred kangaroo,

only the Western Desert representation in the collection,

cooked it, and then greedily ate it all. The father,

but is also the artist’s most significant work and arguably

wondering why his sons were away so long, suddenly

one of the most important Indigenous works in the

sensed what had happened. Determined to punish them,

Gallery’s collection.

he blew on his firestick until it glowed, then touched it

to a bush. The bush exploded into flame, and then burnt

From 1977 to 1979, Tjapaltjarri made the first attempt

Lungkata, the Blue-Tongue Lizard Man, rested at the

by a Western Desert artist to move from smaller boards

everything in its path. Tongues of flame flicked out (as

to a monumental plane, creating five majestic canvases

do all lizards’ tongues to the present day) and soon the

of which Warlugulong 1977 is the most significant. This

two brothers were fighting the flames. They broke tree

achievement was highly conceptual and led other artists onto grander scales in their work.

Tjapaltjarri’s first templates for the five large paintings

were made on small boards in 1972. Entitled Bushfire I and Bushfire II, these are both held in the Gallery’s collection.

The other four major canvases are Warlugulong 1976, completed with his brother Tim Leura Tjapaljtarri, which is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Kerrinyarra late 1977, held in the Westpac Collection Australia, and Mt Denison Country 1978 and Yuutjutiyungu 1979, both in the Kelton Foundation Collection in the United States of America.

Warlugulong is an epic painting, encyclopaedic in both

content and ambition and can be read from a number of perspectives, depending on the aspect of the particular Dreaming, or Tjukurrpa, being considered. The canvas

44 national gallery of australia

branches and beat at the fire, but always the front leapt beyond them, forcing them back. Far to the south, they perished.

Other Tjukurrpa represented include a large group of

Emus returning to Napperby; joyously dancing women; Mala (Rock Wallaby) men travelling north from Port Augusta in South Australia; the Chase of the Goanna Men; the tracks of Tjangala and Nungurrayi Dingoes travelling to Warrabri; the footprints left by the Tjungurrayi Man who tried to steal secret/sacred cultural objects; a family travelling to a site known as Ngama; the tracks of Upambura, the Possum Man – the artist’s totem – all traversing the canvas in a multitude of directions.

Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

new acquisition Australian Print s and Drawings

Franck Gohier archive

Shirley Purdie Franck Gohier, printer Giwiwan – Bow River Country 1996 lithograph 76.6 x 112 cm (sheet) Gordon Darling Australasian Fund, celebrating the National Gallery of Australia’s 25th anniversary 2007

The Gallery has recently acquired an archive of 157 prints,

McKenzie, two of the first women to start painting at

which represents twelve years of collaborative printmaking

Warmun more than twenty-five years ago. She and her

from two major Northern Territory print workshops: the

husband, artist Gordon Barney, are now senior members of

Northern Territory University and Red Hand Prints. Franck

the Turkey Creek art movement. Purdie has won many

Gohier worked as senior printmaker at both institutions,

awards, including most recently the 2007 Blake Prize for

helping in the realisation of the plates and printing editions

Religious Art for her work Stations of the Cross.

between the years 1992–2004.

Country was printed in 1995 at the Northern Territory

The archive comprises the work of more than forty

Shirley Purdie’s lithograph Giwiwan – Bow River

Indigenous artists from communities across Western

University Print Workshop. Purdie often depicts the country

Australia and the Northern Territory, including artists

from Mabel Downs Station through to the south of Bow

such as Bede Tungutalum, a Tiwi man and Rover Thomas

River, which is her traditional country. Through these

Joolama, Queenie McKenzie and Mabel Juli from the

depictions of country she passes on cultural knowledge

Warmun community. Some of the earliest prints produced

to the next generation. The lithograph employs a classic

in the Top End are included in the archive.

planar perspective, an influence from the map-like

compositions of pioneering Warmun artists Rover Thomas

Shirley Purdie, who began painting in her youth and

later discovered printmaking, is represented by Giwiwan – Bow River Country 1996. She was born in 1948 on Mabel Downs Station near Turkey Creek in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, and she later settled at nearby Warmun with her large family. Purdie was taught artistic skills by her mother Madigan Thomas and by Queenie 46 national gallery of australia

Joolama and Paddy Tjamatji. It also features the use of traditional and non-traditional colours in Purdie’s art, including her favoured pale blue.

Alexandra Walton Intern with Australian Prints and Drawings

new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Howard Taylor At Shannon Dam

Esther Constable became a regular visitor to the Gallery after she moved to Canberra in 2003. She had a passion for art and built up a strong collection over many years.

As a Western Australian, she was particularly fond of Howard Taylor’s work and she and her husband Roy became good friends with Howard and his wife Sheila.

Sometimes the Taylors would come to dinner bearing gifts like the delightful, witty Small metal sculpture with cork. Later, Esther would preview Taylor’s Perth exhibitions before they were officially opened in order to secure ‘one of the best’. She admired Taylor’s fascination with bush landscape and forest forms in the Darling Ranges on the outskirts of Perth and at Northcliffe in the heart of the tall-timber karri and jarrah forests of the south-west of Western Australia. There, he produced some of his most powerful evocations of nature.

The Gallery is therefore delighted that Esther Constable’s sons Philip and Christopher have given a group of works by Howard Taylor to the Gallery in memory of their mother. The gift includes several important sculptures.

Sculpture played an important part in Taylor’s artistic production, with the artist noting that he didn’t separate his paintings from his sculpture but combined the two, using whatever materials were available to him to express his relationship with nature.

Also among the gift is At Shannon Dam 1998, a stunning late painting by Taylor. It shows his fascination with the effects of light in nature – in this instance, the reflection of light on water. He created a soft, shimmering effect which challenges the viewer’s ability to perceive the actual surface of the painting. As with many of his works, this painting oscillates between a representational image and an abstracted, symbolic form exploring the structure and the subtle effects of light.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art Howard Taylor At Shannon Dam 1998 oil on hardboard 183.0 x 91.0 cm Gift of Christopher and Philip Constable in memory of their mother Esther Constable 2007

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new acquisition Pacific Ar t s

Kulap chalk figure

In the mountainous Punam region of southern New Ireland, the river beds were once scoured for chunks of chalk limestone – a raw material traded to other communities who used it to carve small figures known as Kulap.

The Kulap shown here is a bold, squat sculpture of a young woman with a beaming smile. She is poised excitedly on flexed legs with both hands clasped to her abdomen. Her hair is represented by crosshatching to resemble a tightly coiled hairstyle fashionable during the nineteenth century in New Ireland. Designs to both wrists and across her forehead depict shell or beaded ornaments – possibly items of attire for women during marriage ceremonies. According to travellers in the nineteenth century, limestone figures were carved to commemorate the dead, only certain people where permitted to handle Kulap and they were exhibited in miniature ritual huts for a period of mourning. Kulap were believed to be the dwelling place on earth for the spirit of the deceased, a temporary container for the soul which prevented the dead person’s spirit from roaming the village creating mischief or causing harm to the living. Once the Kulap figures were no longer needed they would be removed from the hut, taken away and ritually smashed, releasing the soul of the deceased onwards in its journey to the afterworld.

The spread of Christian beliefs eroded the need for Kulap figures during the late nineteenth century and their use ceased several years before the Australian administration of New Ireland in 1914.

A particularly pleasing aspect of this Kulap’s visual attraction is that it has remained intact, spared from the destruction seen in so many other fragmentary examples. The perfect condition may have been due to the entrepreneurialism of the owner trading a potently charged Kulap to visiting German administrators or traders after the funerary rites rather than disposing of it in a traditional manner. Many works deemed too powerful or steeped with negative magic to remain in a village were willingly traded to Westerners during this era.

Crispin Howarth Assistant Curator, Pacific Arts

48 national gallery of australia

Patpatar people Papua New Guinea, New Ireland, Rossel Mountains Female figure [Kulap] 19th century limestone, ochre Purchased 2007

Portrait bust of a young man

The Solomon Islands lie to the north-east of Australia and host an array of cultures and artistic traditions. This exceptional bust has a level of naturalism rarely seen in figurative work from this region. Solomon Island sculpture from the nineteenth century comprises, in the main, abstractions of the human form, however, this bust of a young man comes from a lesser-known tradition of sculptural realism. A common characteristic of art from this area is the predominant use of black pigment which is produced from the burning of certain oily nuts. Segments of finely cut nautilus shell create a silvery contrast to the black facial surface and represent body decorations of white paint worn on special occasions. Almost life-size in its proportion, the bust features elongated ears with large circular ear ornaments. The hair, made blonde using applications of caustic lime, is highly likely to have been taken from the person this bust represents. A number of portrait sculptures exist but the role of these in the lives of Solomon Islanders remains a subject of debate among researchers. One possibility is that artists may have worked on both traditional life-like sculpture while also producing export curios to satisfy the acquisitive demand of Western visitors for decorative curios, thereby serving markedly different economic, social and ritual roles.

The bust may have originally been a focal point as a gift or as the centerpiece in a display celebrating an individual’s passage to adulthood, marriage or remembering the departed. The realistic manner of the bust could indicate the artist had been commissioned to record a particular person’s likeness for posterity as he would have been considered physically beautiful through having large ear plugs, a celestial nose and a classic hairstyle.

Crispin Howarth Assistant Curator, Pacific Arts

Solomon Islands, New Georgia group, possibly Roviana lagoon Portrait bust of a young man 1870–1900 wood, nautilus shell, human hair, patinas, pigment Purchased 2007

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tribute

John Stringer

John Stringer (2nd from left) with Kate Buckingham, Anna Gray, Ashley DawsonDamer and Major Matthew Jones at the opening of the 2005 National Sculpture Prize at the National Gallery of Australia

John Stringer, who died on 13 November, was one of

Betty Churcher. In 1992 he went to work for Kerry Stokes

the smartest, wittiest, most generous curators in Australia.

at Australian Capital Equity in Perth, where he developed a

He worked for more than forty years in the visual arts and

major collection of Australian and international art. Indeed,

left an unforgettable legacy. He was one of a distinguished

as his own work experience conveys, Stringer always saw

group of art museum professionals who studied at the

Australia and Australian art as a dynamic part of the wider

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and a number of

international context. While not one for the strictures of

his works on paper and greeting cards are in the national

committees, Stringer participated for years in various ways

collection. While he subsequently chose to focus his

in the arts community as an arts advocate and judge of

energies on curating, Stringer’s feeling for the practical side

numerous prizes including the National Sculpture Prize at

of making art was evident over the years in his genuine

the National Gallery of Australia in 2005.

enjoyment in working with artists. Early on in Stringer’s

career he worked as an exhibitions officer and as a curator

in recent times. He was excited about the works in the

at the National Gallery of Victoria. Among the landmark exhibitions that he co-curated at this institution was The field in 1968, a show of hard-edge abstraction that remains a touchstone in Australia’s art history.

Stringer left Melbourne for New York in 1970 where

he spent the next eighteen years, working first as Assistant Director of the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art (a great coup for an Australian at the time) and then as an independent curator and consultant to federal government bodies, including the Australia Council and Art Exhibitions Australia. Between 1979 and 1988 he was Director of Visual Arts for the Americas Society in New York. He returned to Australia in 1988 to work as Senior Curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, under 50 national gallery of australia

His enthusiasm for his chosen field remained strong

exhibitions he curated in 2007: Cross-currents: focus on contemporary Australian art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and Peep: glimpses of the last four decades from the Kerry Stokes Collection at TarraWarra Museum of Art in Victoria. Along with his important contribution to the visual arts in this country and overseas, John Stringer will be remembered as a warm, compassionate and engaging human being. He will be greatly missed by all the staff at the National Gallery of Australia who knew him and worked with him over the years.

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture after 1920

travelling exhibitions summer 20 07– 08

Michael Riley: sights unseen

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia

Michael riley untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 (detail) printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and Viscopy, Australia

Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. His contribution to the contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian visual arts industry was substantial and his film and video work challenged non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly among the most disenfranchised communities in the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia Russell Drysdale Emus in a landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1970

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 22 February – 27 April 2008

Mathias Kauage Independence Celebration I 1975 (detail) stencil National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Imagining Papua New Guinea: screenprints from the national collection Imagining Papua New Guinea is an exhibition of screenprints from the national collection that celebrates Papua New Guinea’s independence and surveys its rich history of printmaking. Artists whose works are in the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining

Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, Vic., 2 February – 30 March 2008

Tweed River Art Gallery, Murwillumbah, NSW, 13 December 2007 – 3 February 2008

Grace Crowley Abstract painting 1947 (detail) oil on cardboard National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Otto Dix Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor [Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack] 1859 (detail) plate 12 from Der Krieg 19.6 x 29.1 cm; 35.3 x 47.5 cm etching, aquatint, drypoint The Poynton Bequest 2003

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: technology. These suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects that may be borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres.

For further details and bookings telephone 02 6240 6432 or email travex@nga.gov.au. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, space and design Borenore Primary School, Borenore, NSW, 29 January – 29 February 2008

Hawkesbury Regional Art Gallery, Windsor, NSW, 21 December 2007 – 3 February 2008 War: the prints of Otto Dix Otto Dix was one of the greatest artists of the first half of the twentieth century. His Der Krieg cycle, a portfolio of 51 etchings, is regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. Consciously modelled on Goya’s equally famous and equally devastating Los Desastres de la Guerra [The disasters of war], the portfolio captures Dix’s horror of and fascination with the experience of war. nga.gov.au/Dix

To mark the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia, an exhibition of treasured works from the national collection has been curated by Director Ron Radford, AM, for a national tour.

Every Australian state and territory is represented through the works of iconic artists such as Clarice Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell Drysdale, Hans Heysen, Max Meldrum, Sidney Nolan, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Guérard. nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback Riddoch Art Gallery, Mt Gambier, SA, 8 December 2007 – 20 January 2008

Noosa Regional Gallery, Noosa, Qld, 9 November – 5 December 2007

Grace Crowley: being modern One of the leading figures in the development of modernism in Australia, Grace Crowley’s life and art intersected with some of the major movements of 20th century art. This will be the first exhibition of Grace Crowley’s work since 1975 and will include important works from public and private collections.

Spanning the 1920s through to the 1960s, the exhibition will trace her remarkable artistic journey from painter of atmospheric Australian landscapes to her extraordinary late abstracts. nga.gov.au/Crowley

Proudly sponsored by R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter and the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund

The 1888 Melbourne Cup Latrobe Regional Gallery, Latrobe, Vic., 25 October 2007 – 10 January 2008 The 1888 Melbourne Cup (detail) The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change.

Please contact the Gallery or venue before your visit. For more information please contact +61 2 6240 6556 or email travex@nga.gov.au

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, 30 November 2007 – 28 January 2008

The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress.

conser vation

From the Yarra to the High Country

Nicholas Chevalier Studley Park at sunrise 1861 oil on canvas 89.1 x 120.0 cm Gift of Mrs Dorothy Gurner 1959; examination under ultra-violet revealed dark over-painted areas Chevalier (detail); removal of over-paint around the ferry revealed pronounced cracking Chevalier; after treatment

The Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary travelling exhibition,

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–

of the painting and to uncover as much of Chevalier’s

1950, is currently at the third venue of its extensive nation-

original paint as possible. Cleaning tests showed that the

wide tour. The exhibition of fifty-eight paintings selected

over-paint and varnish could be slowly removed using

by Director Ron Radford represents geographical locations

solvents, revealing brighter, original paint layers beneath.

in each state and territory and is receiving much interest

across Australia.

extensive over-painting had been necessary. During the

course of the previous restoration something had gone

Conservators at the Gallery spent many months

The decision was made to try to improve the appearance

As cleaning progressed it became obvious why such

preparing the paintings for travel, carrying out a number

awry. The lining process had ingrained the original

of significant treatments which included two landscapes

discoloured varnish layer into the paint layer, making

of Victoria. One involved the redressing of a previous

cleaning much more difficult and forcing the earlier restorer

restoration; the other required treating a gratuitous

to use excessively harsh solvents, which removed not only

alteration to the artist’s original work.

the varnish but also the paint underneath. Areas of the sky

The large landscape Studley Park at sunrise 1861 by

were abraded down to the ground and raised cracks in the

Nicholas Chevalier has been in the national collection since

water were emphasised by the removal of paint around

1959. Before it was acquired by the Gallery, the painting

them. Such aggressive cleaning had dissolved some of the

had been extensively restored, possibly in England. The

foliage in the gum trees on the left-hand side and probably

original canvas was cut down and lined to a new canvas

removed glazes from the foliage along the horizon.

support. Large areas of the sky and the river had been over-

painted and this over-paint had deeply discoloured, leaving

paint and discoloured varnish were removed, Chevalier’s

the image patchy and unconvincing. The discolouration

painting was revealed in a more original, if partially

was made worse by the thick, glossy and heavily yellowed

distressed, state. Damage was carefully retouched, matching

varnish which covered the entire surface.

the retouching colour to what remained of the original in

52 national gallery of australia

During the Gallery’s treatment, once all the old over-

Henry Rielly Woodland, vale and hill 1874 (detail) oil on canvas 54.0 x 84.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; before treatment – campfire group and single white horse Rielly (detail); foreground, ultraviolet light reveals nonoriginal paint on top of the thick varnish Rielly (detail); a second horse emerges from over-paint Rielly (detail); second horse appears, the sitting figure disappears Rielly (detail); removal of figures with traces of the campfire

54 national gallery of australia

the surrounding areas. Where possible, detail was

re-integrated in an attempt to refresh the artist’s intent while

campfire had disappeared, the wild horse was reunited

not disguising the fact that the painting had undergone a

with its companion after many years apart and the artist’s

considerable alteration in the intervening period.

original composition behind the concealed horse was found

to be intact and required no further garnishing.

Some startling revelations occurred during the

At the end of the treatment, the two figures and their

treatment of Henry Reilly’s Woodland, vale and hill 1874

while removing discoloured varnish. The foreground in this

made? Generally over-paint conceals damage in a canvas

painting of Victoria’s High Country contained a campsite

or paint film but the small sites of damage in this painting

with a fire, two Aboriginal figures and a white horse

were quite distant from the heavy-handed alterations to

grazing behind a tree. Examination of the surface in this area revealed heavy over-paint, showing figures that were not original as well as other alterations to the artist’s work.

After consulting the Gallery’s curators of Australian

art about Rielly’s style and technique, it was decided to remove the varnish and over-paint. As the first site of overpaint was tackled, we made a surprising and entertaining discovery. A horse’s hoof appeared, followed closely by another. Excitement mounted in the Conservation laboratory as legs, rump and finally a whole horse became visible. Cleaning continued, providing the next surprise as the sitting figure disappeared.

Henry Rielly; after treatmeant

A puzzle remains. Why were these eccentric alterations

the content. We can only assume that at some period in the life of the painting, landscapes had greater appeal to prospective buyers if they included a nostalgic glance at an imagined, idyllic Indigenous life.

Every picture tells a story and there are many stories on

show in Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950. The paintings speak of geography and the spirit of place, but there are also quieter narratives of materials, techniques, style and history. Look closely when this travelling exhibition comes your way.

David Wise, Allan Byrne and Sheridan Roberts Paintings Conservation artonview

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faces in view 1 Christian Bumbarra Thompson and Tom Sokolowski at the opening of Andy and Oz: parallel visions. © Renee Rosensteel, USA

2 Children participating in the Big draw event

3 Robert Bell, Ron Ramsey and Simon Wright with Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Maria Wladimirovna, Head of the Russian Imperial House 4 Visitors participating in the Big draw event 5 Brenda L Croft with Owen Yalandja at the Culture Warriors media launch 6 Roslyn Packer and Ron Radford with the 25th birthday acquisition of the sandstone Seated Buddha from the Kushan period in India

7 Tiwi Design mob with Jean Baptiste Apuatimi’s work in Culture Warriors

8 Jane Scott, and Nanette and Ira Gordon at the opening of Andy and Oz: parallel visions. © Renee Rosensteel, USA on display

9 Rural visitors to the National Gallery of Australia enjoy the collections

10 Gordon Hookey, Vernon Ah Kee and Shane Pickett at the Talkin’ up big events

11 Ray Wilson at the launch of the recently acquired Agapitos/Wilson collection of Australian Surrealist art 12 Badu Island dancers at the 25th anniversary celebrations 13 Lynette and Paul Thirkell, Rowanne Couch, Nat Williams, Erica Seccombe and Gillian Seccombe at the opening of Culture Warriors

14 Children participating in the Big draw event

15 Lembit Suur and Joanne

Constantinides at the members’ event for Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 16 His Excellency Hideaki Ueda, Ambassador of Japan to Australia, at the opening of Black robe white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu 17 His Excellency Henri Fissore, Ambassador of Monaco to Australia, Karine Lemon, Honorary Consul of Monaco, Alison Wright and Ron Ramsey

artonview 17

summer 2007–08

57

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ISBN 0642541168

9

780642 541161

Ocean to Outback

Black robe white mist

Ron Radford exhibition catalogue

Melanie Eastburn exhibition catalogue

118 pp., fully illustrated in colour, softcover, 270 mm x 225 mm RRP $29.95

120 pp., fully illustrated in colour, softcover, 225 mm x 225 mm $39.95 until exhibition closes

Australian landscape painting 1850â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1950

art of the Japanese nun Rengetsu

Australian artists books Alex Selenitsch art history 128 pp., fully illustrated in colour, softcover, 225 mm x 225 mm RRP $39.95

Great Christmas gifts for the art lover

ngashop Indigenous arts and craft â&#x20AC;˘ books and catalogues â&#x20AC;˘ calendars and diaries â&#x20AC;˘ prints and posters â&#x20AC;˘ gifts â&#x20AC;˘ jewellery â&#x20AC;˘ fine art cards Gallery Shop open 7 days 10 am â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5 pm â&#x20AC;˘ phone (02) 6240 6420 â&#x20AC;˘ ngashop.com.au â&#x20AC;˘ Parkes Place, Canberra ACT 2601

Richard BELL (1953) Kamilaroi/Kooma/Jiman/Gurang Gurang peoples Australian Art Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an Aboriginal thing, 2006 (detail) synthetic polymer paint on canvas Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria Courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery

INDIGENOUS HERITAGE MANY STORIES, MANY FORMS The deep wealth of Indigenous art, music and dance enriches all Australians. BHP Billiton values our Indigenous heritage, traditional and contemporary.

Through our offices and operations across Australia, many of which are located within rural and remote areas, we have long-standing relationships with Indigenous communities.

We have a long history of supporting Indigenous cross-cultural programs in Australia and we continue to look for ways that we can help contribute to the communities in which we operate or have a presence, so that we can leave a lasting, positive legacy within our communities. BHP Billiton are immensely proud to be associated with the National Gallery of Australia and their landmark event, the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, CULTURE WARRIORS. May the Indigenous stories in all their forms be seen and heard forever.

68 national gallery bhpbilliton.com of australia

Vincent Van Gogh Tree trunks in the grass 1890 oil on canvas 72.5 x 91.5 cm Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

OC E A N to OUTBACK

Australian landscape painting 1850 –1950

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition The Triumph of Landscape Painting 14 March – 9 June 2008 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund

Russell Drysdale Emus in landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Estate of Russell Drysdale

artonview artonview

I SS U E N o . 5 2 2 0 0 7 − ­0 8

N AT I O N A L G A L L E RY O F A U S T R A L I A

s u m m e r

ISSUE No.52 Summer 2007−08

Dennis Nona Kala Lagaw Ya (Western Torres Strait Island) people Apu Kaz (Mother and baby Dugong) 2007 (detail) bronze National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the artist and the Australian Print Network

Until 10 Febuary 2008 Principal Sponsor

CULTURE WARRIORS • AUSTRALIAN SURREALISM • TURNER TO MONET