2014.Q2 | Artonview 78 Winter 2014

N AT IO N A L G A L L ERY O F A U S T R A L IA , CA N B ER R A

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Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia At five in the afternoon: Robert Motherwell Bali: island of the gods

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WINTER 2014 | 78

Published quarterly by the National Gallery of Australia, PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia artonview.editor@nga.gov.au | nga.gov.au © National Gallery of Australia 2014 Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Apart from uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of Artonview may be reproduced, transmitted or copied without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Australia.

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Director’s word

EXHIBITIONS 6 10 16 22 26 28

Polynesian gods Painterly prints: Robert Motherwell Distinctive fusion Passionate visionary: Arthur Boyd Treasured mementoes: Stars of the Tokyo stage Moving images

FEATURES 30 34

Entwined stories: Surrealism and the Pacific Two weekends, two big community events

ACQUISITIONS 36 Tassilo Adam 1920s albums 38 Godfrey Rivers New South Head Road 39 Hilda Rix Nicholas The fleece 40 Joan Miró Tête et oiseau 42 Wamud Namok Mimih spirits dancing 43 Anish Kapoor Shadow V 44 Hertha Kluge-Pott printed works 46 Javanese people The inseparable pair 47 Rama V period, Thailand Buddha descending from Tavatimsa heaven 48 Jörg Schmeisser printed works

REGULARS (cover) I Ketut Sukanto Banjar Pande Mas, Kamasan, Klungkung, Bali, Indonesia Battle scene from the Bharatayudha; shrine hanging [tabing] (detail) mid 20th century pigments on cloth gift of Ron Radford AM 2013 (opposite) Maori Aotearoa New Zealand, southern Polynesia Portrait head 17th – early 19th century wood 23 cm on loan to the Menil Collection, Houston, from Adelaide de Menil, A 7642

50 Facesinview 52 Members news 53 News from the Foundation 54 Thank you …

56 Creative partnerships

Ketut Nongos (worked Tegallang, Gianyar regency) Charm against witches, ghosts, thieves and other evil [tumbal]  c 1970 wood 63.5 x 27 x 12.5 cm gift of Robyn, John and Simeran Maxwell in memory of Jamie Mackie 2014

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Children enjoy a book reading in the Gold and the Incas family activity room.

D ir e ct o r ’ s w o rd

Allan Myers AO QC, Kusuma Habir, the Hon Julie Bishop MP and Ron Radford at the official opening of Garden of the East.

The National Gallery of Australia made the unprecedented decision to stage three paying blockbuster exhibitions almost consecutively to help celebrate Canberra’s Centenary by bringing more people to the national capital in 2013 and early 2014.

It was a financial risk as Canberra has a population of less than 400,000. However, it has paid off as nearly 500,000 people over a 15-month period visited the three remarkable shows: Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris and the Moulin Rouge, Turner from the Tate: the making of a master and Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru. Nearly 370,000 people came from around Australia and injected over $103 million into the ACT economy. Gold and the Incas closed just after Easter and was attended by over 160,000 visitors, making it the fifth highest attended Canberra exhibition in the last 13 years.

The exhibition also included our biggest and most popular family activity room.

At the end of May we opened the remarkable Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia.

With works borrowed from 30 museums around the world, this is the first exhibition

1850s–1940s continues to be popular and its beautiful catalogue is flying off the shelves.

With this show finishing on 22 June, you have just two weeks to see both Indonesian exhibitions on the one visit to the Gallery.

In September we open a large and brilliant exhibition of Arthur Boyd’s work covering more than 40 years of his distinguished career. He is one of the best known Australian artists of the twentieth century and the only visual artist to become Australian of the Year, in 1995.

The exhibition, titled Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy, shows some of his most poignant and dramatic, but also some of his most disturbing, works. It covers a range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and tapestry. Many of the works have not been seen by the public before. In a sense, the exhibition could be described as ‘the unseen Arthur Boyd’ and will no doubt surprise or even shock some of our visitors.

Many of you will have seen or read media reports regarding the Gallery’s acquisition of the twelfth-century Indian sculpture,

to explore the concept of atua, or the sacred god images, that united the far-flung Polynesian islands. Many of the striking carved images have never been lent by their institutions before. This groundbreaking show is curated by our Senior Curator of Pacific Art, Michael Gunn, and will travel to America after Canberra.

In mid June we will open our second Indonesian exhibition for the year, Bali: island of the gods—a year in which Indonesia has been designated the Focus Country by the Australian Government’s peak cultural diplomacy body, the Australian International Cultural Council. Australians have travelled in great numbers to beloved Bali in the last 40 years or so, yet it is surprising that this is the first major exhibition in Australia to show the unique and rich culture of that Hindu island. Exquisite polychrome sculptures, bright textiles, narrative paintings and illustrated manuscripts have been assembled for this extraordinary exhibition. Our first Indonesian exhibition for the year, Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia

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Shiva as Lord of the Dance [Nataraja] from New York based art dealer, Mr Subhash Kapoor. This work is a supreme example of Indian Chola-period bronze casting and its acquisition in 2008 was in the spirit of the Gallery’s founding collection policy of 1966, the Lindsay Report, that recognised the need to represent the high cultural achievement of Australia’s neighbours in southern and southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Currently facing criminal proceedings in India, Mr Kapoor strongly maintains his innocence. If the allegations against him are proven to be true, then our Gallery, and maybe other leading museums around the world, will have been the victim of a most audacious act of fraud by a long-established, high-profile art dealer who had been trading in New York with leading international museums for almost 35 years. I would like to assure members that the National Gallery of Australia is committed to due diligence in acquiring works of art and that the Gallery followed international best practice standards in provenance research

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prior to purchasing the Shiva. This included relying on supporting documentation offered by the dealer and a certificate from the International Art Loss Register, as well as retaining an independent legal specialist to review the acquisition information and processes. The Gallery will continue to work cooperatively with relevant authorities regarding the allegations of stolen antiquities until the matter is resolved.

In July we delve back into the Gallery’s extensive collection of twentieth-century American prints for our Robert Motherwell exhibition. The artist belonged to a group of painters, poets, dancers and musicians— the New York School—influenced by their colleagues across the Atlantic and looking to experiment with Surrealist concepts such as abstraction and automatism.

Also in July, our popular travelling exhibition Stars of the Tokyo stage: Natori Shunsen’s kabuki actor prints returns home to the Gallery before making its way to Lake Macquarie in October. I urge you to come and see this outstanding display of our collection of Natori Shunsen’s actor prints, as well as fine robes that really bring

the world of Japanese kabuki theatre to life.

The Gallery’s travelling program continues around the country this winter with two very different exhibitions on tour: Carol Jerrems: photographic artist 1968–1978 at Brisbane’s QUT Art Museum between 5 July and 7 September, while Bodywork: Australian jewellery 1970–2012 will open at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in late August. See our website for more details of our travelling exhibitions, including our Ballets Russes exhibition which is about to open in Tokyo.

The Gallery has a small but significant collection of multimedia and in April we opened a new exhibition looking at some of our recent video art acquisitions. Light Moves explores videos by four contemporary Australian artists working in this medium and runs until 20 July.

This March saw us stage two very different but equally successful public programs, both attracting record crowds compared with previous years. Nearly 12,000 people visited us over the Canberra Day long weekend to participate in the Fiesta program, held to coincide with the

Enlighten Festival this year. Large-scale projections of works from our summer blockbuster, Gold and the Incas, lit up the building’s external façade. Visitors enjoyed live music as they meandered through the Peruvian street café along the Gallery’s main promenade. We held late-night tours of the Gold and the Incas exhibition as well as our extensive permanent collections of International and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. On 3 March we held our annual Sculpture Garden Sunday. Now in its 10th year, the event drew a record crowd of 3500 people, and one alpaca! See page 34 for details.

In sad news, we recently bid farewell to one of our Foundation Board Directors, Lee MacCormick Edwards, who died at home in Sydney on 19 April after a long illness. Lee was an incredibly warm and generous person who was very actively engaged for a long period with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia as well as the Gallery’s Foundation. On behalf of the Gallery, I extend my deepest sympathies to her family; we will miss this remarkable woman, her

charm, her generosity and her enthusiasm for art and for life.

We have acquired a number of important works for the national collection in the last year. We added to our strengthened holdings of the Canberra district’s first professional artist, Hilda Rix Nicholas, with one of her finest portraits. The Fleece 1945 depicts her husband, Edgar Wright, as he classes wool at their property Knockalong, outside of Delegate, New South Wales.

Also in Australian art, with the assistance of Ashley Dawson-Damer we purchased Godfrey Rivers’s New South Head Road 1889.

Rivers depicted very few scenes of Sydney and this rare work enables us a glimpse of this influential Queensland artist, teacher and curator from his first year in Australia.

The Gallery added to its international collection with the acquisition of a curious and quirky bronze sculpture by Spanish Surrealist, Joan Miró. The artist had a particular passion for sculpture as he felt it allowed more room to explore the depths of the surreal than painting. In later works such as Tete et oiseau [Head and bird] 1981, he drew heavily on found objects—

organic and inorganic—to inspire his creations.

In contemporary international art we have added to our holdings of the Indian-born British artist, Anish Kapoor, with a striking set of etchings, Shadow V 2013. Much like Kapoor’s sculptures, of which the Gallery holds Hollow 2012 (acquired last year), these recent prints play with perspective and depth of field. The works are currently on display in our International galleries.

I am excited to announce that the Gallery has recently released a new book on the permanent collection. It is a sumptous publication of the collection’s highlights and of course includes our most loved works across all collecting areas.

Ron Radford Large-scale projections of works from Gold and the Incas lit up the Gallery’s façade during the Enlighten Festival.

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Mangareva French Polynesia Tu [Mainaragi] before 1834 wood 112 cm Museo Etnologico Vaticano, CittĂ del Vaticano, 100189 photograph: Vatican Museums

P o lyn e sian gods Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia until 3 August 2014 | nga.gov.au/Atua

There are, or have been, thousands and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Polynesian gods. From the evidence of archaeology, history and the art objects themselves, it is very clear that people carried, nurtured and developed the gods.

Some gods started off as human beings: a battle-scarred warrior, a charismatic leader, a navigator who found new lands.

Over 3000 years and with 120 generations of people worshipping him, this leader eventually became a god.

Others began as a movement of an image in a rock, an unexplained presence in part of the land, or a fearless centipede. If enough people became aware of this presence, it became accepted as an atua and they gave it a name. Eventually someone in a position of power built a sacred enclosure to honour this atua and its name provided a focus for people and their religious beliefs.

Generally, atua were the old gods that accompanied the original discoverers and navigators who travelled across the Pacific. Their origins are ancient and their antecedents can be found in ancestor worship and spirit belief that exists today 6 ARTONVIEW | EXHIBITION

throughout Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and as far north as Taiwan.

Many atua were the spirits of strong gifted individuals who fought their way to the top of their society to become leaders. They conquered their enemies and improved life for their people. These ancestors became the aristocracy, known as ariki (or variants) throughout Polynesia, remembered generation after generation for hundreds of years. Eventually they were more than a memory; they were deified and developed into an almost tangible presence.

Their priests kept this presence in an object that could be clearly distinguished from any other object. Often it was a beautiful work of art sculpted from wood or stone.

As the descendants of these strong and dominant aristocrats travelled from island to island in their canoes (vaka), the presence of their ancestors travelled with them, encapsulated in objects carried on board. A direct ancestor of the individual who was leader, captain and navigator of the ship was an atua, and they carried that link and presence with them for help and guidance.

Eventually the people found all the islands of the Pacific Ocean and established colonies on most of them. Sometimes the settlers lost the fight to survive, leaving only a few sacred enclosure sites and occasional art objects that were the repositories for their gods. Much of the time the colonies thrived, especially those on the bigger islands. The people brought with them coconuts, stone adzes, pigs, dogs, and at least one priest to look after the atua in their containers and the portable marae, the sacred site that was used to communicate with the atua.

As well as inheriting the knowledge of how to survive on an island, some people inherited the knowledge of how to animate a wooden object such as a canoe, the statue of an atua or a war club. When animated, the object could interact with the viewer just as a human would interact, eliciting similar emotions and reactions. This form of communication from the object was known as mana.

Art objects were the most influential of all the mana-imbued objects used by priests and the ariki, and were usually referred to

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as atua because they contained the vairua or spirit of a person who had been sacrificed in order to animate the object. When war or disease threatened, the presence of the atua could be boosted by adding vairua through human sacrifice. Unfortunately, some leaders and priests felt it necessary to add more vairua than was necessary and eventually gained a reputation as bloodthirsty priests or wanton killer chiefs. This attracted the attention of the missionaries, who imagined that the priests were servants of a bloodthirsty god who was using the heathen idols as a means of controlling the people.

Gods were political weapons, used by those in power to help control the people.

A big leader, the ariki-nui of an entire island, generally brought his ancient family god with him on his rise to power. If he was waging war, his family god became a war god, and eventually a national war god.

If it was a time of peace, the war god

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became an agricultural deity. This was common practice, for war and agriculture are very close in the lives of atua.

Some atua are known throughout much of Polynesia, and others are restricted to one island group or archipelago. Lesser-known gods were more localised and have been forgotten. The names of the old gods were more likely to be appropriated by those in power because they had the greatest ancestry and the strongest mana. Now, these old gods exist primarily in stories as heroes and gods from the past—Tangaroa the god of the sea, Tu the war god, Rongo the war god, Tane the god of the forest.

The Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia exhibition features the only image of Tu as a four-legged human atua (see page 7). Made from a single block of wood, this sculpture was probably created as a vehicle or house for Tu, the chief deity of the island of Mangareva and guarantor of the main source of the islanders’ livelihood—the breadfruit tree.

Tu was sent by missionaries to the Vatican in 1836 as a gift to Pope Gregory XVI. The notion of atua as evil spirits was first planted in the Polynesian world by Christian missionaries in the late eighteenth century, and has persisted for more than 200 years. The missionaries perceived the art objects as idols, an image of a god that was not their god, and they were determined to replace the traditional belief system with their own.

They used many techniques to undermine the people’s belief in themselves and their traditions. Polynesian society was rigidly hierarchical, so the missionaries focussed on the ariki. Once an ariki spurned the old ways, his people had little option but to follow.

Usually the chief ariki was first to convert, taking with him his art objects and atua and burning them along with the atua houses and all other buildings on his sacred enclosure. In this manner it is possible that

all the art objects associated with the more ancient atua such as Tangaroa, Tu, Rongo and Tane were burnt because they belonged to the first-line ariki, who the missionaries concentrated on first. Those belonging to lesser ariki living in outlying areas survived longer, sometimes long enough to have their names recorded. Other surviving artworks might have been owned by ariki who destroyed some in order to establish credibility with the missionaries and hid others as a backup in case the new religion failed.

Once the people realised their old gods were not going to kill them, they turned on the marae in fury, leaving only smouldering wreckage. In about 1770 there were thousands of art objects in sacred enclosures on almost every island in the Pacific. By 1830 most had vanished under the combined onslaught of missionaries, Christian Polynesians and Western looters.

Of the few pieces that survived, many are wooden sculptures and others are made

from feathers and fibre, or stone. They are often works of remarkable artistic quality and vary considerably between island groups.

Now, when the people wonder what was real about the past, where they came from, why their ancestors lived with atua, they listen to the stories and sometimes visit museums. They find that all the images of Rongo and Tane were destroyed, maybe three of four images of Tangaroa survived as shapeless pieces of whalebone or wood, perhaps two or three images of Tu. All the rest of the Polynesian wood, bone, stone and feather images have unfamiliar names.

Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia is our exhibition of the few surviving gods from a lost civilisation. It has been put together with the help of the people living today in Polynesia and of our colleagues working in many museums throughout the world.

(opposite) Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Eastern Polynesia Lizard man [moai moko] early 19th century or before wood, bone, obsidian 37.5 cm Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Bruxelles, ET 45.51 Marquesas Islands French Polynesia Ceremonial canoe figure early 19th century or before wood 45 cm Musée d’ethnographie, Genève, 8937

Michael Gunn Senior Curator, Pacific Art

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Robert Motherwell St Michael III 1979 lithograph 105.4 x 83 cm purchased 1979

Paint erly prints Robert Motherwell 12 July – 6 October 2014 | nga.gov.au/Motherwell

Observing the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg, the prominent American critic and great supporter of this new style, remarked on the significant role played by Robert Motherwell in the movement’s development in the United States.

Motherwell’s first solo exhibition in 1944 at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York led Greenberg to comment that, even allowing for Motherwell’s great debt to Picasso, ‘He has already done enough to make it no exaggeration to say that the future of American painting depends on what he, Baziotes, Pollock, and only a comparatively few others do from now on’. Later Greenberg came to view Motherwell as ‘one of the very best of the Abstract Expressionist painters’.

One thing that stood Motherwell apart from many of the artists from the New York School was that he became an accomplished printmaker. This was in contrast to many of the older generation of Abstract Expressionist artists, including Jackson

Pollock, who considered the production of ‘painterly prints‘ to be more or less impossible. Achieving the spontaneous gesture and freshness of expression, which were hallmarks of the style, was at odds with the production of prints, which was often codified and stratified and tied to a schedule of process. Yet somehow Motherwell was able to harness etching and later lithography and translate them into a means of his own creativity.

For Motherwell making prints became a way of liberating his activity in the studio, achieving gestural flourishes and layering disparate elements to form refined compositions. While acknowledging the central importance painting played for him as an artist, Motherwell expressed his love of making prints in 1977 correspondence: Print-making is my hobby, my mistress …

When the edition is finally o.k., and goes to press and you see the first fresh print, it is with ecstasy. All struggle has vanished. There is a virgin birth, fresh and perfect, like Venus arising from the sea. Good prints, properly taken care of, never lose this virgin beauty, no more than medieval stained glass.

In his explorations in print, Motherwell was able to constantly revisit, recycle and re-edit his compositions with certain independence. This was in contrast with the immense battle the artist faced in painting, where he struggled with ‘new points of attack’, which left their traces evident as pentimenti like ‘corpses on a battle-field’.

Motherwell’s abstractions were not simply aesthetically pleasing forms and colours, but related to the world in some way or other, though he chose never to illustrate, or depict, preferring rather to evoke or suggest. He adopted various methods in his art practice. Inspired by the Surrealists and their notion of automatism, he would spontaneously draw his imagery on a sheet or a canvas.

Motherwell also adopted the technique of collage, the most radical form of drawing developed in the twentieth century, which generated the Modernist styles of Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, and later the Neo-Dada and Pop styles from the 1950s onwards. Both automatism and collage were methods that allowed Motherwell to

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(opposite) Robert Motherwell El General, state I 1980 lithograph image 89.6 x 61.5 cm sheet 137.2 x 69.9 cm purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002 Lindsay Green Robert Motherwell drawing with tusche on lithographic stone for ‘El General, State 1’, Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York, 1979 1979 photograph purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002

remain creative and unleash his repertoire of imagery.

Motherwell acquired his love of modern art early in life. He fabricated and synthesised his own style, drawing at first from Paul Cézanne, then Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. One factor that united these artists is that so many worked in Provence. Motherwell drew an analogy with his own childhood experience living in California with its harsh light, keen edges and strong shadows. The artist was a fervent admirer of Matisse throughout his life, and, like Matisse, Motherwell himself became a phenomenal colourist who sought out earthy ochres, brilliant yellows and oranges, startling reds and sky lit blues and violets.

The literary arts also influenced Motherwell, particularly Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and other Symbolist poets, and of course, James Joyce. Then there were the Spanish poets Garcia Lorca and Roberto Alberti.

In his student days at Columbia University in New York, his professor Meyer Schapiro arranged for Motherwell to learn intaglio printing methods with

the Swiss born Surrealist artist and émigré Kurt Seligmann. As Schapiro recalled, ‘I thought he needed an older man who was a good technician as well as an imaginative painter, someone who did prints—etching and engravings’. There were many Surrealist émigrés in New York at this time, who had fled the Nazi presence in Europe, and Motherwell got to know them by frequenting cafés, bookshops and galleries in the city. Later in 1943, Motherwell attended another popular location for émigrés in New York, Stanley William Hayter’s intaglio print studio Atelier 17.

However, because of the emphasis placed on technique over subject matter at this workshop, it was ill-suited to Motherwell and he left.

Motherwell’s contact with these artists and Surrealist poet and theorist André Breton continued and informed his view that there was a need for a new art in the United States as ‘the art scene was parochial’. ‘No one thought that we could ever produce truly great modern painting: only Europeans could,’ he said, ‘so we had

nothing to lose by risking all’. Motherwell’s view was that one of the creative principles for the new American art should be the Surrealists’ psychic automatism or free association, and that became the driving principle of his own art. He believed that the new American art should be on a massive scale, with a boundless energy and almost thoughtless daring and frankness, comparing the ‘fantasy, dreaminess, satire and black humour of the Surrealists’. This he set out to do.

Motherwell came to work at Tatyana Grosman’s Universal Limited Art Editions workshop at West Islip, New York from 1962. Working in lithography, which was a technique undergoing a renaissance at the time in the United States, Motherwell applied tusche guided by his ‘automatic’ arm, creating compositions with wonderful calligraphic flourishes and free brushwork.

This style of working continued throughout Motherwell’s printmaking career when he worked at Ken Tyler’s workshops.

Another Surrealist-inspired method of art practice was collage, which for Motherwell

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Robert Motherwell Variation I from the series America–La France variations 1984 lithograph, collage image 105.6 x 71.2 cm sheet 117.4 x 81.8 cm purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002 (opposite) Robert Motherwell Burning elegy 1991 lithograph, hand-coloured with acrylic, hand-dyed paper image 107.1 x 135.4 cm sheet 133.4 x 160.4 cm purchased with the assistance of the Orde Poynton Fund 2002

‘came to be my joy’, although the process was for him ‘a painful precarious way of making order. The separate elements tend to carry on guerrilla warfare with each other’. Motherwell’s collage prints, the America–la France variations series of nine prints, and multiple working proofs he made at the Tyler workshop reveal the painstaking process he undertook, like a pictorial diary in his battle to create order from chaos and finally produce the editioned ‘effortless’ imagery.

Over his career Motherwell explored and refined in what he considered an ‘endless challenge’ of a serial image which came to be known as the Spanish Elegy 14 ARTONVIEW | EXHIBITION

series. From 1948, Motherwell pursued this iconic image in drawing, painting and later in printmaking. His constant search for the perfect rendition of the elegy form was infinite, explaining: My Elegies … are silent, monumental, more architectonic, a massing of black against white, those two sublime colors, when used as a color … The reason I’ve made so many works … that could be called series … They remain an endless challenge.

The origin of this form emerged in the late 1940s during dark days when Motherwell was a young man. Deserted by his wife in 1948, Motherwell at first contemplated suicide and then turned to drink and to paint. He came across a

forgotten drawing that he had developed to accompany a poem by Harold Rosenberg for the magazine Possibilities, which folded.

Motherwell recalled that Rosenberg has written: a very powerful, brutal, I would think Rimbaud-inspired poem. We agreed that I would handwrite the poem in my calligraphy and make a drawing or drawings to go with it and it was to be in black and white. So I began to think … about getting the brutality and aggression of his poem in some kind of abstract terms.

The iconic image then became an obsession, which ‘reverberated’ in his mind by its associations and according to the artist had ‘a life of its own’. Motherwell considered himself part of the 1930

generation touched by the Spanish Civil War and for him, if the much loved motif referred to poetry, ‘it should be to Lorca’.

In deference to the famed Spanish poet, the first Elegy was originally called At five in the afternoon—drawn from the repeated refrain in Lorca’s poem, Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, which told of the tragic circumstances and loss of life of a brave and noble matador. The profound and dramatic nature of this theme, however, seems to have been lost on those who viewed the work in New York, who misconstrued its title as referring to the cocktail hour.

The abstract image, which in Motherwell’s mind was imbued with the tragedy of death

and Spanish history, was interpreted by gallery-going New Yorkers as a reference to late afternoon martinis, revealing a telling cultural chasm.

This confusion continued. Motherwell returned to the elegy on many occasions including for his 1966 mural New England Elegy for the John F Kennedy Federal Building in Boston. An earnest assistant curator responding to questions of the meaning of the work proposed: one black blotch may represent the profile of the President’s head, a very direct and specific depiction of the most brutal moment of the tragedy, when Kennedy was struck by the bullet. The lines near the profile … represent either the trajectory of the bullets or spatters of blood.

Motherwell was intent on his abstractions embracing a reality of some kind and having an underlying content; they are not simply essays in form, line and colour. However, here the artist was faced yet again with a very literal and mundane interpretation of his requiem of grief, tragedy and loss, which was his lifelong obsession.

Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

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Kamasan, Bali The Churning of the Ocean of Milk; shrine hanging [tabing] (detail) late 19th century pigments and ink on handspun cotton 145 x 178 cm purchased 2009

D istinctiv e f u si o n Bali: island of the gods 13 June – 3 August 2014 | nga.gov.au/Bali

Drawn exclusively from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection, Bali: island of the gods brings together works of art from one of Indonesia’s most loved islands. From sculpture and ritual implements in wood and precious metal to elaborate paintings and textiles, the objects exhibited reveal the richness of Balinese culture. Made for the veneration and appeasement of gods, demons and spirits, the ornate ceremonial regalia and images of real and mythical beings demonstrate Bali’s distinctive fusion of narratives and styles from across South and Southeast Asia.

Hindu epics originating from India along with historical accounts of the kingdoms, rulers and heroes of Indonesia have provided a rich source of inspiration for the narrative arts of Bali. The Gallery’s fine collection of Balinese manuscripts and paintings illustrate scenes from these sagas and folktales in brilliant detail. Works depicting episodes from the legendary Mahabharata—a complex genesis tale recounting the gaining of immortality by the gods as well as the origins of the ruling Hindu Brahman and Ksatria castes—include images of the Hindu pantheon, battles between the warring Pandawa and Korawa families, and the subplots and intrigues of a seemingly endless cast of characters.

A large shrine hanging from the renowned painting centre of Kamasan in south-east Bali presents one of the principal episodes from the Mahabharata, the creation of the elixir of life. In The Churning of the Ocean of Milk Hindu deities, surrounded by blazing auras, are arrayed opposite their demonic foes, the detia. Between them rises Mount Mandara, the world mountain forming the axis of the heavens and earth.

Mount Mandara rests upon the back of the turtle Bedawang nala and is encircled by the great serpent king Basuki. The gods and demons use Basuki’s body as a rope with which to churn the ocean. Their efforts produce three goddesses, the last of whom bears the elixir of life or amerta.

In this image a fourth woman holding the winged jar of amerta may represent the god Wisnu who, disguised as a beautiful nymph, retrieves the elixir from the detia enabling the gods to drink it and achieve immortality.

Also composed in ancient India and significant throughout Indonesia, the story of the Ramayana continues to play an important role in Balinese religion and culture. Introduced to Indonesia during the eighth and ninth centuries, the tale centres on the hero Rama, an incarnation of the god Wisnu, and his quest to rescue his beloved consort Sinta from the demon

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king Rawana. In Bali the Ramayana finds expression in the visual arts as well as dramatic performances and dances created and re-enacted for important ceremonial occasions and festivals. As with the Mahabharata and later epics the influence of the Ramayana extends beyond narrative depictions, providing guiding principles of ideal moral and spiritual behavior.

Representations of the Ramayana in Balinese art range from texts and illustrations inscribed on palm leaf manuscripts (lontar) to vibrant paintings, sculpture and textiles. An important early nineteenth-century Ramayana Kakawin manuscript on English paper, watermarked

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J Whatman 1811, is a remarkable example of the tale in the hands of an accomplished artist. Comprised of 102 surviving double-sided pages, the manuscript’s fine ink drawings depict key episodes from the tale. The evocative images of Rama and Sinta, along with their tormentor Rawana and allies including the monkey king Sugriwa and his general Hanoman, are accompanied with Old Javanese (kawi) language inscriptions written in Balinese script.

Bali’s gods, heroes, villains and a vast array of fabulous creatures occupying the cosmos are depicted in striking sculptures made for ritual use and to embellish temples and palaces. These creatures include

elaborate composite guardian beasts with fangs, talons and wings installed at entrances and in the rafters of pavilions, as well as smaller carvings used as offerings to the gods. A particularly fine example is a recently acquired container for ceremonial offerings (sajen). Finished with paint and gold pigments, this receptacle in the form of a winged beast straddled by a divine being demonstrates the distinctive and ornate carving found throughout Bali.

Cast in bronze, an intricate pair of male and female figures with elaborate costume and jewellery dating from around the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries is among the earliest works in the exhibition.

While similar figures discovered throughout Bali are known to exist in international collections, much mystery surrounds these figures. Such images possibly represent royal or ancestral couples and are important evidence of the ancient dualistic belief system of Bali in which a balance of complementary yet opposing forces— male and female, good and evil, dark and light —is critical to the existence of the universe. Displayed alongside a polychrome couple in wood and pairs of Balinese gods and rulers on gold and silk textiles, the bronze figures also offer insight into the historical and traditional dress of the island’s ruling classes.

The opulent textiles, jewellery and weapons worn by the aristocracy legitimised their divine right to rule and demonstrated the grandeur and power of their courts.

Cloth of silk and cotton, embellished with gold and silver supplementary weaving (songket) and gold leaf (prada), or made using complicated weft ikat (endek) in which designs are dyed into threads prior to weaving, were once the exclusive prerogative of the nobility. Combining motifs drawn from nature with striking geometric borders that reflect a fusion of local and imported styles, sumptuous Balinese textiles were worn wrapped around the chest and waist.

Many examples in the Gallery’s collection

Buleleng, north Bali Valance for a temple or royal pavilion [ider-ider] (detail) late 19th century cotton, silk, dyes, sequins, tinsel; embroidery, appliqué 42.4 x 278 cm gift of Mary and Michael Abbott 1987

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Bali Nobleman’s ceremonial over wrap [kampuh songket or saput songket] (detail) 19th century silk, gold and silver thread, natural dyes; supplementary weft weaving [songket] 108.5 x 125 cm gift of Michael and Mary Abbott 1988 (right) Lake Bratan district, north Bali Pair of ancestral figures 14th–16th century bronze male 44 x 13 cm x 9.8 cm, female 37.2 x 14.2 x 8.2 cm purchased 1971

also depict figures in royal dress alongside legendary creatures including Garuda, the vehicle of the god Wisnu, and demonic yet protective beings with bulging eyes and prominent fangs.

A small number of Balinese textiles in the Gallery’s collection were created for display in temples and royal palaces. Among the most striking of these are long narrow hangings, which were hung from the eaves of pavilions. While most of these valances (ider-ider) feature painted narrative scenes or ornamental designs of gold and silver against plain backgrounds, the Gallery was fortunate to acquire a small number of rare embroidered ider-ider probably

made in north Bali. Created using richly coloured silk threads and embellished with glittering metallic sequins, these ider-ider depict the gods of the Hindu pantheon as well as scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Inspired by the latter tale, one hanging depicts Sinta’s ordeal by fire to prove that she remained faithful to Rama during her captivity by Rawana. Flanked on either side by her husband and his allies, Sinta is shown kneeling in the centre surrounded by flames.

Bali: island of the gods offers the first comprehensive view of the national collection of Balinese art, some works of which were first acquired by the

Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in the 1960s for the future National Gallery of Australia. These long-held objects will be shown alongside more recent additions including a number of important gifts from the private collection of well-known anthropologist and Balinese traditional painting scholar, the late Professor Anthony Forge of the Australian National University, Canberra. The exhibition is curated by the Senior Curator of Asian Art, Robyn Maxwell, and is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated and informative catalogue.

Niki van den Heuvel Assistant Curator, Asian Art

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Arthur Boyd Nebuchadnezzar making a cloud 1968 oil on canvas 174.8 x 183.2 cm The Arthur Boyd Gift 1975

Passi onat e visi onary Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstacy 5 September – 9 November 2014 | nga.gov.au/Boyd

Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy is a major exhibition of Boyd’s art including more than 100 works across diverse media: paintings, prints, drawings, ceramic tiles and sculptures, and tapestries. The focus is on Boyd as an intense passionate visionary capable of plumbing the depths and vicissitudes of human emotions. The show is not a retrospective but rather provides the opportunity to take a close look at a number of works that have never or rarely been previously exhibited, as well as groups and series undertaken over 40 years. While the Australian landscape directly informs some works, the emphasis is on the way that Boyd engages with human experience—from an intense early self-portrait painted when he was only 17 through to works of the 1970s including rarely seen St Francis tapestries shown with related prints and pastels.

Among key groups of works in the exhibition are Boyd’s paintings undertaken during the Second World War. As a pacifist who grew up in a highly creative, eccentric home environment where art was considered the lifeblood of existence, this was a challenging time. In 1941 he was conscripted into the army, and social experiences encountered on postings in Bendigo and South Melbourne left a lasting impression. Many drawings and paintings focus on the dispossessed: people on the

streets of South Melbourne and at St Kilda Beach, destabilised by the exigencies of human experience, especially at a time of conflict. Boyd’s empathy for outsiders was informed by personal experience— as a shy, creative boy who was sometimes bullied at school and as the son of a father who had epilepsy, which gave him firsthand experience of human suffering. His father, Merric Boyd, was also an inspiration— a remarkable man who was one of the first and most inventive studio potters in Australia as well as a sculptor who drew prolifically and whose metamorphic imagery had a direct bearing on his son’s work.

The young Boyd’s expressive images of the 1940s also drew upon European and Australian art, from reproductions of Bosch and Breugel to the works and philosophical approaches of immigrants to Australia like Josl Bergner and Danila Vassilieff, who had experienced conflict firsthand. At the same time Boyd was evolving a distinctive, identifiable visual vocabulary that established his reputation as a force to be reckoned with in the Australian art scene.

Boyd’s capacity to convey a depth of emotion is apparent in Gargoyles 1944, in which fear is symbolised by a small man crouching in the middle ground as well as a figure with a crutch, desperately thrusting into the scene with outstretched arms.

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Above the building the gargoyles appear so fully engaged in their task of warding off evil that one feels they may soon become unhinged.

Fear, love, sex and death became frequent subjects in Boyd’s paintings referencing the preciousness and precariousness of life in wartime. Among his close friends during these important early years who shared a common ethos were John Perceval, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Yvonne Lennie (a practicing artist at the time) who he married in 1945 and who remained his lifelong partner.

In Boyd’s developing visual lexicon, images from the past often merged with the present, taking on new life, like a snowballing effect. Along with the evils of

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the Nazi regime, Boyd was deeply disturbed by the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. In 1960, the year after he moved to London with his family, he participated in a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at Alderston with thousands of others.

While he didn’t generally put his name to political causes, the increase in nuclear weapons testing by the late 1950s heightened his concern for the fate of humanity. His painting Nebuchadnezzar making a cloud 1968 shows the Babylonian king on his back with a mushroom cloud (like the cloud of a bomb explosion) growing from him as if from an umbilical cord. Yet Boyd’s imagery is open-ended, with the face looking down from the cloud also suggesting a Narcissus-like image.

This work is among an impressive series in the exhibition on the theme of the Old Testament story of Nebuchadnezzar, which features a great Babylonian ruler who became overcome by pride, refusing to acknowledge the help of God. As punishment he is cast into the wilderness to live like a beast undergoing many trials and tribulations. The story provided rich fodder for Boyd’s poetic imagination and predilection for metamorphic imagery. In work after work he re-imagined the fallen king’s plight: eating grass, blind on a starry night, catching on fire. Painted in the volatile political environment of 1968, the image of Nebuchadnezzar on fire was informed by reports of the self-immolation of

(opposite) Arthur Boyd The gargoyles 1944 oil on cotton gauze on cardboard 51.2 x 63.2 cm The Arthur Boyd Gift 1975 Arthur Boyd Tapeçarias de Portalegre (manufacturer) The lady and the unicorn: invocation 1974 tapestry: dyed wool on cotton 363 x 254 cm The Arthur Boyd Gift 1975

protesters during the Vietnam War. The Biblical inspiration of the series also recalled intense imagery in stories read to him as a boy by his grandmother, the artist Emma Minnie Boyd.

Philosophical concerns from the past merging with contemporary realities inform the collaborations Boyd undertook with acclaimed poet, Peter Porter, including The lady and the unicorn 1973–74. This was a highly successful collaboration based on friendship, mutual respect and an understanding that their independent visions in words and printmaking would be allowed to flourish side by side. Boyd’s etchings accompanying the poems reveal a mastery of arabesque line and fine detail in drawing combined with velvety black aquatint that shifts in tone. The portfolio as a whole combines intense passions with a corresponding delicacy of touch. Boyd’s works capture a feeling for the sacred and profane of the story: of the mythical unicorn; the outsider, the only animal left off Noah’s ark, and much sought after by the emperor. The unicorn falls in love with a lady who betrays him to the hunters.

Hunted down, the unicorn dies Christ-like for love. Yet he remains etched brightly in the mind as a symbol of undying purity and compassion.

While apparently not directly inspired by the fifteenth-century The lady and the unicorn tapestries at the Musée Cluny in Paris, the fineness of Boyd’s prints suggest his familiarity with medieval tapestries.

It is perhaps no coincidence that in 1974 he had a tapestry woven at the Portalegre

Tapestry Workshop in Portugal: The lady and the unicorn: invocation. This rarely seen, remarkable work is based on the etching and aquatint, woven predominantly in black and white with subtle tonal gradations.

It is staggering in scale without losing a sense of tenderness and intimacy. Here the hunter appears as supplicant, reaching up to heaven with one arm while his spear moves diagonally in the opposite direction, almost touching the sacred horn that bows down.

The unicorn is nestled in a forest while two opposing forces, the flight of birds and the implied entrapment of the wire mesh, reside above and below.

The lady and the unicorn series relates directly to The caged painter paintings, also 1973–74, revealing the tremendous

outpouring of work in these years.

In the paintings Boyd conveys the immense struggle that it takes to be an artist, embracing notions of entrapment and dreamed-of liberation, heaven and hell, agony and ecstasy.

Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy will showcase many works from Boyd’s great Gift to the National Gallery in 1975 among others, and will provide a rare opportunity to consider in depth works from diverse series. In its totality across an array of media it is a chance to contemplate images of considerable daring and passion and to rediscover Boyd as you have never seen him before.

Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Art post 1920

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T r e as u r e d m e m e nt o e s Stars of the Tokyo stage: Natori Shunsen’s kabuki actor prints 19 July – 12 October 2014 | nga.gov.au/tokyostage Stars of the Tokyo stage offers National Gallery of Australia visitors a window into the glamorous world of Japan’s kabuki theatre as it was during the 1920s and 30s.

The exhibition focuses on the striking actor prints created by Tokyo artist Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), who was at the centre of a modern revival in Japanese theatre and printmaking. Shunsen’s woodblock portraits are exhibited alongside a selection of spectacular stage costumes, early kabuki film footage and vibrant prints by master printmakers such as Toyohara Kunichika (1835–1900) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865).

Shunsen was active in the early twentieth century, a time of great change in Japanese society. Tokyo, in particular, saw an influx of modern and imported ideas and fashions. Social movements and political parties proliferated, and many city-dwellers embraced Western clothing, cafés, jazz clubs, dance halls, magazines, department stores, cinemas and newly introduced sports.

Shunsen was among those who saw the changing environment as a potential threat to Japan’s traditional arts. In 1915 he contributed actor prints to the magazine Shin nigao (New portraits). Intended to help revitalise kabuki, the publication acted as a catalyst for the continued production of Japanese woodblock prints. Stars of the Tokyo stage includes several small images from the magazine, part of a generous proposed gift from the Henshaw-Kerr collection. The simplicity and fluidity of the portraits give the impression of being spontaneously drawn, but each also displays meticulous attention to detail and technical mastery.

From 1916, Shunsen began an association with influential publisher

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Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962).

Watanabe sought artists to design prints that retained Japanese subject matter and techniques, fostering the Shin-hanga (New prints) art movement. In 1925 Watanabe commissioned the series Collection of creative portraits by Shunsen. The 36 actor prints, Shunsen’s greatest artistic achievement, were made using luxury materials: fine paper, inks and dyes embellished with embossing and sparkling mica. Stars of the Tokyo stage presents the complete set, together with images from a supplementary series and a selection of Shunsen’s preparatory watercolours.

Shunsen’s prints reveal a deep engagement with kabuki and its adored actors. Made for theatre aficionados and released on subscription, the treasured mementoes provide a fascinating insight into the vitality of kabuki in the 1920s. Each depicts one or two leading actors as a character from kabuki’s repertoire of historical dramas, domestic plays, comedies, tragedies, crime thrillers and supernatural epics. The images capture kabuki’s exaggerated facial expressions, flamboyant costumes, crossdressing, bold makeup and dramatic poses.

The impressive Matsumoto Koshiro VII as Umeomaru depicts an iconic moment from the play Sugawara’s secrets of calligraphy. The heroic character, with red stripes of makeup and distinctive costume, is typically played in a brash masculine style. In contrast, the portrait of Nakamura Utaemon V as Yodogimi represents the actor in a female role as she melodramatically descends into madness. Another print depicts the early Japanese movie star Okochi Denjiro as the one-eyed, one-armed swashbuckling ronin Tange Sazen.

Stars of the Tokyo stage is further animated by lavish costumes, film footage and prints depicting complete kabuki scenes.

With support from the Pauline and John Gandel Fund, in 2011 the Gallery acquired a set of kabuki robes from Tokyo’s renowned Shochiku Theatre Company, becoming one of few collections worldwide to include this material. The costumes represent the styles and showy fabrics popularised in early twentieth-century Tokyo theatres. On stage, the brilliant akahime (red princess) robe was reserved for roles such as Shizuka in Yoshitsune and the thousand cherry trees. Patterned with ornate flower designs, the long-sleeved kimono was ideal for the stylish dances of grief-stricken lovers. Designed to enhance the actor’s physical presence, the magnificent oversized ensemble for Benkei in The subscription list is echoed in a 1935 Shunsen print of megastar Matsumoto Koshiro VII as Benkei and 1943 film footage of the actor in the same role.

Stars of the Tokyo stage is the first exhibition in Australia to explore the art of Natori Shunsen, and his pivotal role in the brief twentieth-century resurgence in traditional Japanese printmaking.

The show brings together superb prints and sumptuous costumes to celebrate the magic of Japan’s kabuki theatre, its extraordinary stories, colourful actors and visual spectacle.

Lucie Folan Curator, Asian Art Natori Shunsen Matsumoto Koshiro VII as Umeomaru in ‘Sugawara’s secrets of calligraphy’ 1926 print, ink and colour on paper sheet 40.6 x 27.4 cm image 38.2 x 25.9 cm gift of Jennifer Gordon 1998

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M o ving imag e s Light moves: contemporary Australian video art until 20 July 2014 | nga.gov.au/LightMoves The body moving in space. This is a theme that has played a prominent role in the history of video art since the 1960s.

The select group of artists displayed in Light moves: contemporary Australian video art continue to explore the possibilities of the medium in poetic works that speak to their own personal interests and histories.

Daniel Crooks is interested in the manipulation of time and space. He uses a number of techniques including stop-motion animation and time lapse to create his distinctive and intriguing works.

In his ‘time-slice’ video works, Crooks takes small slithers of video sequences and stretches them across the frame—creating fluid, abstract fields of colour. Traces of moments past remain as the next moments unfold; in this way Crooks allows the viewer to experience time unfolding in a meditative and almost physical way.

His work looks back to studies into human and animal movement by the late nineteenth-century photographic pioneers of the study of human and animal 28 ARTONVIEW | EXHIBITION

movement, Etienne-Jules Marey in France and Eadweard Muybridge in America.

Spread across a concertina of screens Pan no. 9 [Dopplegänger] 2012 shows an athletic young man shadow-boxing in a gym, moving both towards and away from the viewer. He appears to box himself; disappearing into himself and out again, perhaps endlessly condemned to repeat the same actions—or not. In German legend, meeting a dopplegänger, or double, is a sign of one’s imminent death.

David Rosetzky’s works explore identity, subjectivity and relationships and bring together elements of theatre, film, performance art and dance. For Half-brother 2013 Rosetzky collaborated with renowned choreographer Jo Lloyd and well-known dancers, Gideon Obarzanek, founder of the contemporary dance group Chunky Move, and current members, Alisdair Macindoe and Josh Mu. The men dance on and with a palette of paper, lying on it, tearing it and making a soundscape with it.

The work grew out of Rosetzky’s experience of sorting through the possessions of his father, a graphic designer and artist, after his death. The performance refers to his father’s habit of sorting, dividing, tearing and layering as part of the creative process. Rosetzky explains: I am seeking to create a variety of rhythms and speeds of movement as well as exploring the boundaries between self and other, anxiety and comfort, intimacy and desire, in order to present different ways of thinking about the self and the body.

The six monitors of Centred pataphysical suite 2009 show Shaun Gladwell, who originally trained as a painter, and five other performers—each an expert in skateboarding, breakdancing, classical dancing and BMX riding—revolving dervish-like on the same axis around various still points and structures in urban settings. Virtuosic performances of street sports, which have become such a major socio-political phenomenon of recent times, have been a consistent feature of Gladwell’s work.

Centred pataphysical suite makes reference to his earlier 2005 work, Pataphysical man, in which a figure hypnotically turned on his head, which in turn appropriated the title of a 1984 painting by Imants Tillers— a seminal influence. Pataphysics was a system of thought written about in 1893 by the French Symbolist writer Alfred Jarry, whose absurdist ideas foreshadowed those put forward by the Dadaists and Surrealists.

In contrast to Leonardo da Vinci’s ideas of the Vitruvian, or perfect, man or Le Corbusier’s notions of a twentieth-century modular man, pataphysics is the science of the particular, and examines the laws governing exceptions.

Throughout her career, Julie Rrap has challenged societal norms about the body and gender. She has often sought to disrupt social perceptions and historical narratives by revisiting representations of women in well-known paintings from the past or pop culture and restaging them in some way. Not surprisingly, the body is a central feature of her work, with the artist often

using her own body to create an interesting interplay between subject, object and author.

Photography has played a key role in such exploration, allowing her to play with the paradox inherent to the medium: the real versus the constructed.

In Escape artist: castaway 2009 we see the artist face a physically challenging situation, entangled within a disorienting space full of overlapping planks of wood. As she negotiates these planks, her body morphs into unnatural positions—stretching and folding—but despite these efforts, the artist remains seemingly trapped.

The piece explores the way in which women have been trapped by societal expectations, and perhaps how women find themselves inescapably perpetuating such realities.

The installation as a whole was inspired by Gericault’s iconic painting The raft of Medusa 1818–19 and by the plight of Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder’s 1955 film, The seven year itch.

Light moves: contemporary Australian video art aims to highlight some of the newer

additions to the national collection as well as the extensive video holdings collected over the past 40 years, with monthly screenings of video art from the collection for the duration of the exhibition. For program details go to: nga.gov.au/LightMoves.

Michelle Fracaro Program Coordinator, Learning and Access and Annie O’Hehir Curator, Photography (opposite) Daniel Crooks stills from Pan no. 9 [Dopplegänger] 2012 3-channel HD video, silent 7 minutes 43 seconds purchased 2012 (top row) Shaun Gladwell stills from Centred pataphysical suite 2009 from the installation MADDESTMAXIMVS 6-channel HD video, silent purchased 2012 (bottom row) David Rosetzky stills from Half-brother 2013 single-channel HD video, sound 10 minutes 43 seconds purchased 2013

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(opposite) Geelvinck Bay (Teluk Cenderawasih) region West Papua, Indonesia Korwar (Korvar) [ancestor figure] 19th century sculpture, wood, beads 38 x 17.5 x 13 cm purchased 2010 Variétés—Le Surréalisme en 1929 [Varieties—Surrealism in 1929] 1929 print, illustrated book, photomechanical reproduction, letterpress 25.2 x 17.8 cm purchased 1992

Ent w in e d st o ri e s Surrealism and the Pacific

What kind of art does a Surrealist collect?

The Pacific Art collection of the National Gallery of Australia holds several works that once belonged to famous artists, but three of these works share an entwined story.

Not only were they all collected from western New Guinea by the artist Jacques Viot, they spent years in the collections of three of the twentieth century’s most significant European artists—Max Ernst, Jacob Epstein and poet André Breton.

By the mid 1920s artists active in Paris held a fascination with non-Western objects from tribal communities of the Pacific.

Pacific art was particularly brought into vogue by Breton who believed he had found an inspirational source of likemindedness: ‘The deepest affinities exist between so called primitive thinking and surrealist thinking’.

In their search for art beyond the real, Surrealists revelled in the spiritual and magical aspects of Pacific art, sculptures that came from the dreams and imaginations of Pacific Islanders who, themselves, were considered exotic faraway peoples not fully

understood by many Parisians. Melanesian objects provided an escape route for the Surrealists in another direction from European conventionalism. The sculptural challenges and solutions in volumes and form, built through generations of indigenous style canons as seen in African and Pacific art, were fresh departures of plasticity and abstraction and would be embraced by those wishing to push further than the standing ideas of ‘good taste’.

This early recognition of the arts of the Pacific and non-Western cultures across the world is evident in the Surrealist map of the world 1929. Easter Island (Ile de Paques) is shown as twice the size of Australia, when in actuality it is only 160 square kilometres.

Europe and Africa are markedly shrunk while the United States of America is completely absent and both Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu have grown in size.

The map shows the importance placed by the Surrealists on the arts of those exaggerated countries and indicates what was popular in 1929, a key year for these three works in the Pacific Art collection.

Each is connected through their travels over the better part of the twentieth century, which began with the adventurer, poet and Surrealist filmmaker Jacques Viot in 1929.

The Parisian Viot successfully represented little-known contemporary artists of the time—the Surrealists Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Jean Arp among others—through Galerie Pierre at 2 Rue des Beaux-Arts.

It seems, however, that Viot was not as good at managing his personal affairs and, due to outstanding debts, he offered to undertake a one-man expedition to Australia and New Guinea to collect Pacific art on behalf of Pierre Loeb, the owner of Galerie Pierre.

Viot never did reach Australia, but he did manage to visit western New Guinea, now known as Indonesia’s Papua Province, where he encountered the huge and remote Lake Sentani. It was here that the Gallery’s Double figure was found, best described in Viot’s own words: Thanks to a secret society of sorcerers whose members I discovered there, I had become friendly with a few old men who still, in all innocence, left their sex uncovered. They gave me a present. Somewhat unsteady on their legs,

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Sentani people Khabitorou (Ifar Besar) village, Papua Province, western New Guinea Double figure [Lake Sentani figures; Le Lys (The lily)] 19th century sculpture, wood, carved 177.2 x 49.5 x 19.1 cm purchased 1974 (opposite) Sentani people Papua Province, western New Guinea Woman’s skirt cloth [maro] late 19th – early 20th century beaten barkcloth (tapa), pigments, feltin, painting 127 x 57 cm purchased 1985

aiding each other along the way, they went and dug in the silt at the water’s edge with their hands … [uncovering] a representation of their souls. It was the most moving object I had ever seen. Carved into the same trunk … two figures emerging from the same stalk, a couple at the moment of creation in all its virginity. I understood that they preferred to see it in my hands rather than in the waters of the polluted lake. I have called this statue Le Lys.

Le Lys, ‘the lily’ as the Double figure is affectionately called, is one of a group of about 60 wood sculptures Viot acquired from the lake. It is unique in form and, while we do not know its indigenous name, the term To-reri uno (people made of wood) has been recorded at Lake Sentani. Houses of the Sentani people were traditionally built over the lake, supported by tall wooden poles. These figures would have sat at the top of one such pole in the house of a chief.

Viot returned to Paris with a great number of objects from western New Guinea including ‘the lily’. Once all the crates arrived, an exhibition was held at Galerie Pierre in January 1933. The exhibition was not a particular success

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perhaps, in part, because the arts presented were sublime in comparison to the popularised brutality of nail-fetishes and masks from Africa, and so did not match the expectations of the collectors’ taste. But the Double figure did impress all who viewed it.

Only recently have Man Ray’s photographs of the Double figure taken at the time come to light.

Max Ernst, the German Surrealist painter and sculptor, certainly visited the exhibition, as there have been comparisons between his equally scaled and visually similar sculpture Les asperges de la lune [Lunar asparagus] and the Double figure. We also know Ernst acquired one of the 40 or so maro barkcloths Viot collected at Tobati village on the coast of Humboldt Bay, about 12 kilometres east of Lake Sentani. This type of barkcloth, of which the Gallery’s example is among the very finest extant, was made and painted by older women to be worn by girls after their initiation. The maro acts as a wrap-around skirt held in place with a waistband and the very free-flowing imagery shows marine animals, perhaps of a magical nature.

It is worth noting that the Gallery’s maro has always been appreciated—it was lent by Ernst to the first exhibition of Pacific arts in the United States, Arts of the South Seas, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946.

Viot’s collecting expedition included time in Geelvink Bay, now called Teluk Cenderawasih, an area with a long history of Indonesian influences. Here Viot amassed a group of the intriguing and visually striking wood figures called korwar. The Gallery’s korwar was created to serve as the nexus between the living and their ancestors.

With an oversized head, the korwar stands with one arm raised (once there would have been a carved spear held aloft) while the other hand grasps the neck of one of a pair of stylised snakes. In Geelvink Bay mythology snakes are associated with night, death and concepts of rejuvenation and regeneration. The openwork form in front of the figure suggests an ancestral canoe which bears a ‘tree of life’ motif.

It is highly probable that this work was also collected by Viot in 1929, due to

the remains of his collecting label on the base of the work. This korwar became one of several that André Breton kept in his apartment, which bristled with art and objects from around the world, some of which can now be seen in the Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris.

And what of the Gallery’s Double figure?

Unlike the other two works, it disappeared from view shortly after its exhibition in Paris in 1933 after being acquired by sculptor Jacob Epstein. He secreted it away for decades in his Hyde Park home, rarely letting visitors view the figure.

As circumstances happily have it, these three unique works, all collected by a single person and then passed through the hands of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, have been gathered together again as part of the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Art

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Two wee k e nds , t w o big c o mm u nit y e v e nts On Sunday 3 March the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia came alive with the annual Sculpture Garden Sunday. After a rainy lead-up, the day itself dawned to clear blue skies that helped draw a record 3500 people to the event. Featuring multiple creative activities, performances and experiences to engage families, this year the program was inspired both by the garden environment and the Gallery’s exhibition Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru.

Hundreds of children adorned with Incan face paint designs created a colourful display of paper flowers. A wall of gold grew nearby as people added their own embossed

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golden tiles, emulating the golden decorative architecture of ancient Peru.

Visiting alpaca Forrest Gump wandered the garden with his handler delighting visitors of all ages as he snuggled his way around the event, while local band Dr Stovepipe got the crowd up and dancing with their unique mix of catchy tunes.

Under the shade of the trees, local Indigenous weaver Vikki Parsley taught visitors to weave using materials harvested from the garden. Families also created reflecting patterns in sand using shapes from the monumental Cones sculpture

by Bert Flugleman. In keeping with the community spirit of the day, the Mulga

Scouts provided a sausage sizzle and long-term supporters National Australia Bank were on hand running the popular guessing competition.

This year’s Sculpture Garden Sunday was special for many reasons, not least of which was the unveiling of the Gallery’s new digital trail for families. Eye See ART is a self-lead adventure game around the garden where, using the map and clues, children and families search and discover five missing sculptures, unlocking interesting content about each of the works once found.

Using cutting-edge beacon location-based technology it is currently available for users with iOS devices 4S and above or 5th

generation iPod Touches. You can download Eye See ART for free from the Apple App Store, but you need to be at the Gallery and in the Sculpture Garden to play.

Fiesta, a community event held across two nights on 7 and 8 March during Canberra’s Enlighten festival, was one of the Gallery’s major public programs for Gold and the Incas and succeeded in showcasing the exhibition and the wider Gallery as a place where families learn, enjoy and engage with the arts.

The richness and diversity of Latin American culture inspired a colourful celebration for visitors on the lawns of the Australian Garden on Friday night and in

Gandel Hall to escape a few showers on Saturday night. There was live music from Tigramuna, dance displays from Te Amo Peru and the welcome attendance of local Peruvian community members, all adding to the lively and busy atmosphere.

An estimated 3000 people attended on Friday night and 1500 on Saturday night, as the rain dampened the numbers but not the spirits of those who braved the elements. Art-making activities helped visitors to create their own body adornments in the style of ancient Peruvian royalty, as well as vibrant paper flowers like those seen at festivals throughout South America.

Special late-night openings of Gold and the Incas, guided tour ‘Illuminations’ in the International and Asian art galleries and free film screenings also proved popular with the crowds, and for those passing by in the Parliamentary Triangle, the western façade of the Gallery was illuminated with spectacular projections of works of art from the exhibition.

Rose Marin and Gwen Horsfield Learning and Access

Families enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday (left) and Fiesta (right) at the Gallery

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Tassilo Adam 1920s albums

In 1899 21-year-old Tassilo Adam left Vienna, where he had completed his education, to work on a Dutch tobacco plantation in Deli, near Medan, on the island of Sumatra. Born in Munich, Adam came from a well-known German family of painters but was named Tassilo by his Italian mother. Whether Adam planned to become an artist is not clear. Family legend has it that his departure for the tropics came after he read a book on the Batak people in 1898. Perhaps he saw the magnificent photographs published by Danish photographer Kristen Feilberg from the 1870 expedition to the Batak lands of East Sumatra by Dutch explorer C de Haan.

Or, like so many young people in Europe, he was simply inspired by expedition tales and the new illustrated geographic and travel magazines published in the late nineteenth century, for whom true adventure lay beyond their own hemisphere.

Adam’s work in Sumatra, then a booming region of foreign agricultural and mining company developments, was no doubt hard but he rose through management ranks, becoming the administrator for the Laut Tador rubber plantation in 1911. In 1912 Adam travelled to Vienna to recuperate from various tropical illnesses. On his return to Sumatra with new wife Johanna, Adam began taking photographs to document the Karo Batak people and those on Nias Island.

He learned the Batak language and became an ethnographer through his field work. By 1914 Adam was exhibiting his photographs, some apparently in colour, and by the 1920s

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he was working with the French Lumière brothers’ Autochrome colour process. He mounted an exhibition of Batak objects and photographs in Medan in 1919, which were later sold to the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.

Tropical fevers brought an end to his plantation career and with three children the Adam family moved to Java in 1921.

Based in Jogjakarta, Adam acted as an ethnographer for the Dutch government and as a professional photographer.

He was supported and assisted in his new studies of Javanese culture by both Dutch residents and the new sultan of Jogjakarta, Hamengkubuwono VIII. In particular Adam had special access to record the elaborate Wayang Wong performances presented by the Sultan for the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina’s Jubilee in 1923 and in 1926. These huge and costly performances were photographed and filmed, as were events at the other three principalities.

Adam seems to have had a role as a favoured photographer at all four courts in Jogjakarta, and Surakarta in central Java.

He also sold postcards and wrote articles for various international enthnographic and popular magazines.

Adam’s movements in these years are not exact; he lists his last photographs of Java as 1927 but the family spent time in Europe after 1926, where Adam lectured on his work, and were settled in New York by 1929 when Adam became curator of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Depression seems to have been the cause of his leaving

that role in 1933. The last decades of Adam’s life were busy with ethnographic and other projects. In the early 1950s he compiled elaborate albums of his photographs of the Javanese culture and landscape, some for his children, with precise typed captions in readiness, it would seem, for a major publication that did not eventuate.

Four of the albums preserved by Adam’s family were recently acquired by the Gallery.

Two are included in the Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s exhibition, along with a small group of prints of his Java work already held by the Gallery. The large Wayang Wong performances were rare in the 1920s and have not been staged on such scale since.

Adam’s albums include intense images of the dance performances, along with a number of panoramas of Javanese landscape and monuments, which show that the German artist’s son had brought the family’s artistic talents, as well as ethnographic passion and precise documentation, to his career as a photographer.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography Tassilo Adam ‘Bibi Radyah, the favourite dancer of the Sultan of Djokjakarta’ in one of four albums covering the ‘Sultan’s lands in Central Java 1922–27’ compiled by Tassilo Adam in America c 1950 gelatin silver photographs on album sheet 25 x 33 cm purchased 2014

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Godfrey Rivers New South Head Road 1889 oil on canvas on board, 60 x 49.5 cm, purchased through the National Gallery of Australia Foundation with the generous assistance of Ashley Dawson-Damer, 2013

This is a historic Sydney cityscape, viewed from a low perspective (an image of New South Head Road where it meets Glemore Road). It shows a horse and cart travelling up the street and a horsedrawn carriage passing down it. All is otherwise quiet.

The street is lined with shops, but there are no people crossing the road, or entering into the shops, and none of the traffic congestion that one would experience today.

Godfrey Rivers painted this work in 1889, the year he arrived in Australia.

He was born in 1859 in Plymouth, England and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art London before coming to Australia. First settling in New South Wales, in 1891 he moved to Queensland and soon became the leader of Brisbane’s emerging art community. In addition to being a prominent artist and regular exhibitor, Rivers was president of the Queensland Art Society for many years, one of the key figures responsible for the establishment of the Queensland Art Gallery and also an influential art teacher.

The acquisition of this work has been made possible through a generous donation from Ashley Dawson-Damer through the National Gallery of Australia Foundation.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

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Hilda Rix Nicholas The fleece 1945 oil on canvas, 100.4 x 95.5 cm, purchased 2013

A man looks down intently as he slowly teases a staple of wool. He wears a typical grazier’s hat, khaki shirt and tie. His face is weatherworn and his hands and arms are sinewy, suggesting years of toil on the land. Behind the stocky figure are bins of wool and wool presses and the rough-hewn textures of a shearing shed. At the back there is an open door, through which we glimpse a landscape with grazing sheep.

The fleece of the title is placed carefully in the forefront of the image.

This one of Hilda Rix Nicholas’s finest portraits, and her homage to rural life.

The subject is the artist’s much-loved second husband, Edgar. In it she expressed her admiration for Edgar and his way of life, portraying him as a member of the rural aristocracy and conveying his long years of experience working the land. In a letter to her son she wrote: I think so much of one’s character and personality is made up of the place one lives in … I always think [Edgar’s] grand big

character, his free, large and generous outlook is just like the big Tombong range and distant hills and mountains—that his grand character—unselfish and large and brave has been influenced by the lovely large landscape he belongs to. It was this spaciousness and big simplicity in him and in the place which drew me to him and his life, and in which I felt repose and complete rest after my full life and big sadness.

Edgar was a quiet, unselfish man, influenced by the large brown land in which he lived and worked. In depicting her husband as the archetypal grazier, Rix Nicholas expressed her commitment to the pastoral ideal. And in this, she showed how much her artistic practice had become tied to her life with her husband, and living on the land.

Rix Nicholas was born in Ballarat in 1884.

She studied at the National Gallery School from 1902 to 1905. After her father died in 1906, she left Australia for Europe with her mother and sister. She studied painting in London and later in Paris. Each summer from 1910 to 1914 she visited the artists’

colony at Etaples in northern France, and in 1912 and 1914 travelled to Morocco where the colour and light refreshed her artistic vision. The First World War was a time of great tragedy and loss for the artist. During evacuation at the start of the war, her mother and sister contracted enteric fever; her sister died soon after and her mother died in 1916. Later that year, Rix Nicholas’s husband of a few months was killed in action on the Western Front.

Renewed by her return to Australia in 1918, she reformulated her approach to art, exchanging European imagery for those of the Australian landscape and country life. She died in 1961, aged 76, at Delegate Hospital, New South Wales.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

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Joan Miró Tête et oiseau [Head and bird] 1981 bronze with grey, green and brown patina, wood, no 3, edition of 6, 137 x 35 x 50 cm, funded by the Bequest of Tony Gilbert AM 2013

It is in sculpture that I will create a truly phantasmagorical world of living monsters; what I do in painting is more conventional.

Joan Miró 1941–2

Tête et oiseau [Head and bird] 1981 is an amusing, intriguing and haunting work by the famous Surrealist artist Joan Miró.

A gourd-like shape—with an extended and exaggerated nose, and hollows for eyes and mouth—is mounted halfway up a post, like a scarecrow. The upright is adorned: a pair of wings or horns sits at the top, followed by a cast shell attached at the rear and then a plug or stop. Mounded rocks and wooden beams serve for a stand. The whole object suggests a crucifix where the body of Christ has disintegrated, leaving only the skull.

Use things found by divine chance: bits of metal, stone, etc., the way I use schematic signs drawn at random on the paper or an accident … that is the only thing—this magic spark— that counts in art.

Miró sculpted throughout his life, producing his first serious work in ceramic in the mid 1940s, and bronzes from 1944.

His assemblages, made in the spirit of Picasso, were constructed using all kinds of collected objects, elements of wood and iron, then subsequently cast in bronze.

From 1967 Miró’s choice of items became more selective, as he began to concentrate

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on everyday objects. Other sculptures from the period show a similar mix of organic and inorganic materials: incised or moulded clay, scraps of metal, branches and small found objects, positioned deliberately and combined to suggest anthropomorphic forms. For some works, Miró cast individual objects in bronze and assembled the elements. With others, he brought together the raw materials and then had the entire sculpture cast as a single piece. Sometimes he left the surface of the bronze raw from the mould, for others it is carefully polished. Towards the end of his life Miró would paint his monumental sculptures with synthetic resin, using large areas of flat colour or graphic symbols, seemingly enjoying the contradiction between material and surface.

One is led to sculpture through a very direct contact with the earth, with the pebbles, with a tree. When I’m living in the country, I never think of painting anymore. It’s sculpture that interests me. For example, it rains, the ground gets wet, I pick some mud—it becomes a little statuette. A pebble might determine a form for me. Painting is more intellectual. It’s for the city … A sculpture must stand in the

open air, in the middle of nature. It should blend in with the mountains, the trees, the stones; when put together, all these elements must form a whole.

Miró’s three-dimensional work is closely related to broader Surrealist collage techniques. Like his great Landscape 1927, the painting in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection, the bronze blends automatic image and alchemical fantasy, incorporating a sense of rustic Catalan humour that reappears through the artist’s oeuvre. Head and bird was purchased with funds from Tony Gilbert AM, a generous donor whose bequest also funded the recently acquired Degas dancer, and who gave the Gallery a Rodin figure from his own collection.

Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

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Wamud Namok Kuninjku people Mimih spirits dancing 1981 natural earth pigments on Eucalyptus bark, 86 x 53 cm, purchased 2014

Kuninjku artist Wamud Namok (Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO) was a ceremonial leader and renowned artist whose skills as a painter transferred easily from the local rock art walls in his Kabulwarnamyo country to carefully prepared Eucalyptus bark to commercial paper. Primarily using natural ochres, clay and charcoal in his work, Namok continued to depict the same figurative animals and spirit beings that he had painted since he was a young man.

He always worked closely with his children and grandchildren to ensure his extensive traditional knowledge and Kuninjku teachings were passed down.

Mimih spirits dancing is a masterful work that resembles similar figurative compositions in rock art in the western Arnhem escarpment. It shows nine slender figures, three women and six men, three per row, all facing skywards while dancing vigorously. The outer dancers surround two central male musicians, each with feathered hair adornments, who with clap-stick striking and yidaki blowing provide the energy for the scene. The dynamic motion of the outer dancer’s arms and legs are caught mid step and mid jump with each participant’s mouth open in song.

Like the rock art galleries in western Arnhem Land the background is painted deep ochre red, which accentuates the figures. Each performer, from torsos to elbows and knees, is decorated with extremely fine linear clan designs with only the lower legs, lower arms and head for the men, and a small section of breastbone for the women, painted in striking white.

These body designs add further motion and energy to this important Mardayin ceremony, which brings together the regional communities belonging to both the Dhuwa and Yirritja moieties of western Arnhem Land.

Namok’s notoriety as a Kuninjku elder, traditional rock art practitioner and contemporary Australian artist will remain through his magnificent works in the national collection. They enable us to continue showcasing his masterful skills as an artist, his traditional stories and culture, and to give his community and family a legacy they can be proud of.

Tina Baum Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

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Anish Kapoor Shadow V 2013 a set of four etchings, each sheet 72.4 x 96.4 cm, Poynton Bequest 2014

Anish Kapoor is a major figure in contemporary British art. Born in Mumbai in 1954, he moved to Britain in 1973 and studied at the Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design. Kapoor now lives and works in London. As a mature artist he focuses on the exploration of form, light and colour in both sculpture and printmaking, and does so in seemingly endless variations.

Kapoor examines ideas about colour, reflection, light and space in the 2013 series Shadow V, which is a recent acquisition. The set consists of four variant colour etchings

in rich blues and purples, which radiate light and colour as they metamorphose from brightness to darkness, seeming to pulse and glow. They appear to have almost infinite depth.

It was by accident that Kapoor and London printer, Peter Kosowicz, developed a technique that could create the visual vibrancy and seamless gradations of colour which Kapoor so desired. The printer prepared two half-tone plates which were somewhat similar in colour. Combined as one composition, the eye fuses the dots of colour, creating a shimmering effect.

Paper when wet and pushed through a press can sometimes be distorted by stretching or contracting, and the moirĂŠ look is usually considered a technical fault. Kapoor, however, delighted in this accidental silken quality with its sparkling appearance and added it to the process.

Currently the artist continues to investigate this specially developed printing process as it enables him to achieve an almost magical sense of colour and tone.

Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

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Hertha Kluge-Pott printed works

The prints of German-Australian artist Hertha Kluge-Pott have the intensity of Bea Maddock, the technical skill of George Baldessin and Fred Williams’s focus on the landscape. Like these artists Kluge-Pott was a key figure in the Melbourne printmaking scene from the early 1960s onwards. Unlike her contemporaries, Kluge-Pott’s career has largely avoided mainstream recognition.

A recent major gift from the artist’s collection will help to rectify this oversight.

Dating from 1955 to 2012, this gift bears witness to one of the most important movements in Australian art history: the printmaking revival of the 1960s and 70s. Kluge-Pott’s work adds depth to our knowledge about this vibrant time.

The gift begins with rare prints from the artist’s early life in post Second World War Berlin, and goes on to represent her 55 years in Australia. As a student in Berlin in the early 1950s Kluge-Pott focussed on searching self-portraits and images of loved-ones, typically etched in thick, tough lines. Influenced by Käthe Kollwitz, the early self-portraits show the artist aged and furrowed—although in reality she was in

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her early 20s. Looking toward Australia, her future home, she completed lithographic studies of kangaroos housed in Berlin’s famous Zoologischer Garten.

On 31 March 1958, while on route to Melbourne, Kluge-Pott’s ship, the MS Skaubryn, caught fire just outside of the Gulf of Aden. While all on board were evacuated to lifeboats, the ship was damaged and later sunk. The works now in the Gallery’s collection are some of the few prints to survive this disastrous incident, sent over by family and friends in Germany once Kluge-Pott had finally arrived in Australia, late in 1958.

Although already a trained printmaker when she arrived, without a printing press Kluge-Pott was obliged to enrol in RMIT in order to avail herself of their equipment.

In Melbourne she took to the figurative style fashionable in local contemporary printmaking, particularly citing her instructor Tate Adams as a key influence.

An assignment completed in 1963 for Adams’s RMIT course features characters strongly reminiscent of the dark, lumbering people in Maddock’s early Melbourne work.

From the mid 1960s onward, her work featured subterranean and tropospheric environments. In these prints Kluge-Pott captures the density of the ground below, or the airlessness of the high atmospheres.

It is an approach to landscape that is unsentimental and unrepresentative.

Made up of layers representing rock, dirt, ozone and hydrogen these works have names like The scourge, No man’s land and Planet militant. These are worlds in which humans have no place.

A shift occurred in the artist’s work in the late 1970s, after she began visiting Cape Bridgewater, in western Victoria. Kluge-Pott developed an ‘intimate affinity’ with this windy outcrop into the Indian Ocean. As it turns out, this landscape would change her art forever. She increasingly relied on the printmaking technique of drypoint, as the severe wind meant that she did not wish to ‘mess around with acid’ used in etching.

Gradually in the early 1980s, features of the actual landscape would reappear in her work. Hills and tides returned, as did trees, the garden and then, finally, insect creatures.

In work from the 2000s, Kluge-Pott

Hertha Kluge-Pott Woman 2012 drypoint, printed in black ink with plate-tone, from one zinc plate 100 x 49.5 cm gift of the artist 2014

responds to the delicacy of crawling lives, while appreciating the roots and tips of hardy plants like melaleuka, kelp, euphobia and lavender.

Kluge-Pott’s connection to the environment is of an intense, personal nature. If a figure does appear in her recent work, small and camouflaged, it is the gardener. Sometimes tending, but sometimes being blown around the landscape, this winsome figure is, of course, none other than Kluge-Pott herself. While she is at the mercy of the wind, she appears to us as an environmental superhero.

The National Gallery of Australia is thrilled to be able to represent the life’s work of this significant printmaker.

Although she is an elusive figure in the history books, you can find her here, among this major gift.

Victoria Perin Gordon Darling Intern, Australian Prints and Drawings

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Javanese people Jogjakarta, Java, Indonesia The inseparable pair [loro blonyo] 19th century wood, pigments, gold leaf, female 56 x 23 x 25 cm, male 67.5 x 33 x 22 cm, purchased 2013

Elegant pairs of sculptural figures are commissioned for display at wedding ceremonies in the royal courts of central Java. Placed on the floor at the end of the heirloom textile-draped ritual marriage bed of a noble couple, the ‘inseparable’ pair—loro blonyo in Javanese—represents the rice goddess Dewi Sri and her consort Raden Sadono. Like the rice goddess herself, the loro blonyo pair embodies fertility and prosperity and, in the context of the palace, the magnificent couple also encapsulate the continuity and wellbeing of the realm.

Many loro blonyo are depicted wearing batik, the preferred textile type for the elite in central Java from the second half

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of the nineteenth century. Here, however, the couple are dressed in patola (cinde in Javanese), an expensive imported Indian silk textile worn only by royalty. Dewi Sri also wears an auspicious bangun tulak breast cloth that offers symbolic protection, while Raden Sadono displays a pair of the mystical black talismanic belts of human hair, worn by Javanese sultans. The Gallery’s renowned Indonesian textiles collection includes excellent examples of each type of cloth depicted on this pair.

Both figures are adorned in ceremonial gold jewellery: armlets in the form of mythical serpents, three-tiered pendants, wide bangles, ear studs and the pointed

ear ornaments associated with Jogjakarta royalty. Their hairstyles are also distinctive, with Raden Sadono displaying hair pulled back in a long queue under his aristocratic fez-shaped cap, while Dewi Sri’s hair is scalloped around the forehead in the style of a royal bride, and held at the back with a gold mesh.

Despite the accuracy displayed in the formal wedding costumes, the sleek torsos and limbs are starkly stylised, and the superbly crafted figures have an exceptional serene presence.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

Rama V period (1868–1910) Thailand Buddha descending from Tavatimsa heaven late 19th century pigments and gold on paper, 53 x 39 cm, purchased 2014

The earthly life of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, is rich in narrative and miraculous occurrences. This finely detailed painting from Thailand illustrates one of the ‘eight great events’ of the Buddha’s life, his descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods, Tavatimsa (also Trayastrimsha). Ruled

by Indra, king of the gods, Tavatimsa is one of several Buddhist heavens.

Following a gestation of 10 months, the Buddha-to-be was born into a life of regal luxury but his mother, Queen Maya, died when the infant was seven days old.

The child was taken into the care of his aunt and Maya was reborn as a god residing in Tavatimsa heaven. After achieving enlightenment, Shakyamuni travelled to Tavatimsa in three strides. There he shared his teachings and insights with his mother who had missed the opportunity to hear him preach on earth.

The upper register of the painting shows Shakyamuni seated in a heavenly pavilion surrounded by attentive deities, many floating in clouds in the vibrant blue sky. Seated, hands together, at the base of the pavilion are green-skinned Indra and Brahma, major Hindu gods also embraced in Buddhist cosmology.

In the centre Buddha is depicted descending to earth on a triple ladder of jewels, gold and silver. Indra appears again on one side of the ladder, while on the other Brahma holds a parasol, a symbol of royalty and protection, above Shakyamuni. At the base of the ladder monks and followers await his return. Illustrated in the lower left is a pit populated with emaciated figures enduring the torture of a Buddhist hell.

The painting brings together three essential components of the Buddhist cosmos—the heavens, the middle world of humans and the hells—and makes an important and appealing addition to the Gallery’s collection of Thai art.

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Jörg Schmeisser printed works

Jörg Schmeisser first came to Australia in 1976. It was a short trip for this artist of boundless curiosity and wanderlust, but it was significant. In 1978 he returned to Australia, with his wife Keiko, to head up the newly formed Printmaking Department at the Canberra School of Art (now part of the Australian National University)— a position he held until 1997.

European trained and European by temperament, Schmeisser was master of his craft and its history. Although he practised lithography and woodcut processes, it was the technique of etching, often printed in colour, for which he is remembered.

He instilled in his many students a respect for technique and materials through his own exacting example. He was the teacher of a generation of young etchers and printers who have since enriched printmaking practice throughout Australia.

A mentor to many, he encouraged his students to study abroad and supported the formation of print workshops like Studio One, where former students could continue their work.

Although anchored in Canberra, Schmeisser was a constant traveller throughout Australia, Asia and Europe.

His work is a traveller’s diary of wonders: geological and architectural studies in Central Australia, Tasmania, China, India, Japan and Cambodia, and fantastic studies of shells, feathers, crabs and foliage found along the coastline of Australia.

His drawings of excavations of historic sites in Greece and Israel are delineated with archaeological accuracy. His travel to Antarctica in 1998 led to an extraordinary group of watercolours and prints where transparent, icy blue replaced his usual warm palette.

In one of his last trips he was part of a group of artists, botanists and an anthropologist who travelled to Yilpara,

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Blue Mud Bay, in north-east Arnhem Land, to work with five Yolngu artists. It was a trip that combined his many interests.

All is recorded in a sensuous line, but always at a slight distance. One is aware of Schmeisser’s steadfast scrutiny of object or view and his measured consideration when committing it to plate or paper.

This process of recording and seeking to understand is enhanced by text printed as part of the image; sometimes part of a diary observation, sometimes scientific or anecdotal, at other times poetic fragments of verse or letters. Icebergs, stones, shells, Buddhist temples—each is considered in quiet contemplation.

A prolific artist, Schmeisser exhibited his prints widely, and there are private collections of his work in many countries, particularly in Germany where he was born and studied and in Japan where he taught for many years. In Australia new exhibitions of his work were keenly awaited. His work is included in many of the great print cabinets worldwide, including the National Gallery of Australia.

Schmeisser was a gentle and generous man, who gifted many works to the Gallery over the years. After the artist’s death in 2012, Kiko gifted to the Gallery a large group of works thus ensuring that the national collection reflects Schmeisser’s 50 extraordinary years as printmaker, teacher and mentor.

Roger Butler Senior Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings Jörg Schmeisser Diary and shells 1978 etching, aquatint and soft‑ground etching, printed in colour inks with plate‑tone, from two plates plate-mark 49.5 x 61.5 cm sheet 53.5 x 72.5 cm gift of Keiko Schmeisser 2014 donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

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Garden of the East official opening 1

Jeanne Pratt AC and Simon Crean at the launch, 26 February

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The Hon Julie Bishop MP and Ashley Dawson-Damer

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Rebecca Hinton, Mark Pont, Steve Baker and Liz Maxwell

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Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014 morning tea 4

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Fiesta

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Geoff Stafford, Jocelyn Pech, Peter Metcalfe and Cathi Metcalfe at the Sculpture Bar, 16 January

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Claire Ripley, Elise Perry and Sarah Wandell

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Sue Herron, Merrilyn Crawford and Joy Wheatley at the morning tea, 27 February

The crowd soak up the atmosphere at Fiesta, 7 March

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Getting up close with a performer at Fiesta

Dr Anna Gray, Helen Kelleher, Peter Barclay OAM and Annabel Wallace

Sculpture Garden Sunday 8

Children adorned with Incan face paint designs, 2 March

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Visitors weave using materials harvested from the Sculpture Garden

Tales for the very young 12–13 Children celebrate Dragon Day with stories of dragons, mystery and adventure, 16 January

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Members news

Go lden mom e n t s

A n i g h t wi th th e s p i ri ts

Members shared many golden moments over the summer and autumn months, enjoying some wonderfully diverse events in conjunction with Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru. Members were treated to Pisco Sour and chicha tastings, insights into the ancient and elusive metalwork skills acquired by Peruvians, and our ever-popular curator’s dinner, with exhibition curator Christine Dixon. We are delighted we had the opportunity to engage with so many members throughout this fabulous display of pre-Hispanic culture.

On Friday 27 June members are invited to join us for a ‘spooky’ after hours tour of Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia. Exploring the spiritual context of the works on display, exhibition curator Michael Gunn will take members on a journey of mystery delving deep into the relationship between the objects and their association with the gods.

O range Regi onal Gal l er y t our

C o n n e ct wi th u s 2 4 / 7

On Tuesday 20 May members enjoyed a trip to Orange Regional Gallery. Their collection includes over 500 pieces by some of Australia’s finest artists. We were treated to a tour from the gallery’s assistant director, Brenda Gray, who showcased some of the key pieces on display. After the gallery visit, members enjoyed a delightful lunch at the Union Bank Wine Bar, which has a culinary focus on local wines and produce. The trip was a great opportunity for local members to participate in an exclusive members event.

Members enjoying the Gold and the Incas curator’s dinner, 21 February

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Following the tour we will enjoy Polynesian inspired canapés and drinks. Book your tickets at nga.gov.au/members or phone (02) 6240 6528.

Stay connected with the National Gallery of Australia through our interactive and engaging social media channels—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and YouTube. Jump online to friend us, follow us and like us. You will find photos, videos and updates on all things NGA including membership events, news and special offers.

As a member, you can play your part in the life of the National Gallery and enjoy the many benefits this brings to you and the community.

To join, go to nga.gov.au/Members or free call 1800 020 068.

Dr Ximena Briceno taking members through the exhibition during the Jewels of Peru event, 18 March

News from the Foundation

Fo undation F u n dr ai si ng Gal a D i n n e r and Weeke n d 2 0 1 4 This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Foundation, and on the weekend of 15 and 16 March guests gathered for the seventh annual Fundraising Gala Dinner and Weekend. The weekend was a great success with guests travelling from across Australia and overseas to celebrate. A luncheon in the Sculpture Garden Restaurant launched the weekend, followed by curator tours of exhibitions and a look into the works in progress in the conservation department.

The highlight of the weekend was, of course, the Gala Dinner on Saturday night. The evening commenced in the Australian Garden with French champagne and canapés before the unveiling of Charles Blackman’s engaging and poetic work The room (later known as The blue dress) 1954, purchased with funds raised by guests and other generous donors.

Guests were taken on a private tour of Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru by the Director and international art curators before sitting down to a specially designed meal by Sydney chef, Alejandro Saravia, inspired by the strong flavours and ingredients of Peruvian cuisine.

Susie Maple-Brown AM, Leonard Groat, Jennifer Hershon and Mandy Shaul at the National Gallery of Australia Foundation Gala Dinner and Weekend, 15 March

The weekend came to a close as guests enjoyed the generous hospitality of the Peruvian Ambassador His Excellency Mr Luis Quesada at his residence for Sunday brunch.

M a s te rp i e ce s f o r th e N a ti o n F u n d 2 0 1 4 This year’s Masterpieces for the Nation Fund is in full swing.

Many generous donors have already given toward the acquisition of Benjamin Duterrau’s memorable An infant of Van Diemen’s Land 1840, a significant and charming painting on display in the Colonial galleries. The painting comes from the artist’s family in Britain and has undergone recent cleaning to remove the grime that has accumulated over the past 175 years. The portrait now looks as she would have in 1840 and has appropriately been placed in a Tasmanian colonial frame made from rare Huon pine.

Donate to this fund by calling the Foundation on (02) 6240 6408.

Every donation at every level makes a difference.

The support of donors to the fundraising initiatives of the Foundation is greatly appreciated. To get involved, please contact us on (02) 6240 6691 or foundation@nga.gov.au.

Guests at the Foundation Gala Dinner toasting with guest chef Alejandro Saravia

ARTONVIEW 53

Thank you …

Exhibitions, programs and acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia are realised through the generous support of our partners and donors. The National Gallery of Australia would like to thank the following organisations and people:

Grants American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Inc made possible with the assistance of Kenneth Tyler AO and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler Wolfensohn Family Foundation

Corporate Par t n e r s ABC Radio ActewAGL ACT Government, through Australian Capital Tourism Aerial Capital Group Aesop The Age AGIEI Audi Canberra Barlens The Brassey of Canberra Canberra Airport Canberra Hire Cars The Canberra Times CanPrint Chimu Adventures Clayton Utz Coopers Brewery Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Eckersley’s Art & Craft Flash Photobition Forrest Hotel and Apartments Hotel Realm King O’Malleys JCDecaux Maddocks Lawyers Möet Hennessy Australia Molonglo Group National Australia Bank National Gallery of Australia Council Education Fund

54 ARTONVIEW

Nine Network Australia Novotel Canberra Palace Cinemas PricewaterhouseCoopers PromPeru Qantas Airways Qantas Freight Scenic Tours The Sydney Morning Herald Wesfarmers WIN Television The Yuligbar Foundation

D o n a ti o n s

Meredith Hinchliffe Laima Jomantas Hertha Kluge-Pott Jan Mackay Chris O’Doherty Shirley Robinson Keiko Schmeisser Rob Skipper Douglas Stewart Margaret Tuckson AM Murray Walker

Foundation Board Publishing Fund John Hindmarsh AM

Foundation Fundraising Gala Dinner 2014 Includes donations received from 21 January 2014 to 4 April 2014 Donna Bush

100 Works for 100 Years Ken Baxter and Annabel Baxter Wayne Kratzmann De Lambert Largesse Foundation Penelope Seidler AM American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Inc, made possible with the generous support of Kenneth Tyler AO and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler Geoffrey White OAM and Sally White OAM

Honorary Exhibition Circle Patrons Robyn Martin-Weber

Gifts of works of art Tony Ameneiro Louise Boscacci Janenne Eaton Dale Frank Jane Brummitt Debra Good Bill Hamilton

Susan Armitage and The Honourable Dr Michael Armitage Philip Bacon AM Sandy Benjamin OAM and Phillip Benjamin Roslynne Bracher AM Sir Ronald Brierley Robyn Burke and Graham Burke Julian Burt and Alexandra Burt Nick Burton Taylor AM and Julia Burton Taylor Robert Cadona Terrence Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Maurice Cashmere Maurice Crotti and Tessa Crotti Henry Dalrymple James Darling AM Professor Geoffrey Driscoll and Jan Driscoll the late Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards and Michael Crane Hester Gascoigne Richard Griffin AM and Jay Griffin Andrew Gwinnett and Hiroko Gwinnett Peter Hack Geoffrey Hancy and Yvonne Ellies Catherine Harris AO PSM and David Harris William Hayward and Alison Hayward

Jennifer Hershon Sam Hill-Smith and Margo Hill-Smith Meredith Hinchliffe Michael J Hobbs Neil Hobbs and Karina Harris Robert Kirby and Mem Kirby Tony Lewis and Helen Lewis Richard Longes and Elizabeth Longes Dr Andrew Lu OAM Susie Maple-Brown AM Robyn Martin-Weber Dr Cathryn Mittelheuser AM Allan Myers AO QC and Maria Myers AO Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Dug Pomeroy and Lisa Pomeroy Kenneth Reed AM and Leonard Groat David Smithers AM and Isabel Smithers Ezekiel Solomon AM Lady Southey AC Dr Caroline Turner AM and Dr Glen Barclay Lou Westende OAM and Mandy Thomas-Westende Lyn Williams AM Ray Wilson OAM

David Lewis OAM Bevan Mitchell Brian Partridge and Jill Partridge The Honourable Mrs Margaret Reid AO Penelope Richardson The Sharp Family

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014 Sue Dyer

National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund Jeanne Pratt AC

South Australian Contemporary Art Fund Macquarie Group Foundation The Foundation also thanks those donors who wish to remain anonymous.

Members Acquisition Fund 2013–14 The Beddoe Family Andrew Bennett Gillian L Borger Jane Ann Burger Maureen Chan Daniel Croaker and Helen Croaker Dr Robert Crompton and Helen Crompton Dianne Davies Ted Delofski and Irene Delofski Susan Doenau Claire Haley Aileen Hall Leah Haynes Claudia Hyles Jeanette Knox

ARTONVIEW 55

Creative partnerships

A new part n e r shi p wi t h PwC

C a n Pri n t p a rtn e rs wi th th e G a l l e r y

The Gallery has forged an exciting new partnership with PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), one of the world’s leading professional services firms. PwC is the major sponsor of the Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s exhibition, which is currently on show until 22 June. Garden of the East is a fascinating look at Indonesia’s people and lives as photography made its way from Europe into the history of the Asia–Pacific region.

The Gallery is delighted to welcome CanPrint as a partner. CanPrint, along with subsidiaries Union Offset and Canberra Mailing, has been helping Canberrans manage their printing needs for 55 years.

CanPrint is the Print Partner for the Atua: sacred gods of Polynesia exhibition, which is currently on show until 3 August.

PwC’s belief in the importance of embracing differences and sharing and exchanging cultural history to build mutual understanding is fundamental to their commitment to the arts.

As a firm with experience in the Asia–Pacific region dating back more than a century, they are particularly pleased to support the National Gallery of Australia’s dedication to and interest in our region.

KT Satake Woman on a road in Bali c 1928

56 ARTONVIEW

Atua: sacred gods of Polynesia is also supported by the Australian Government through the International Exhibitions Insurance Program as Presenting Partner, together with Major Partners Qantas Airways, Qantas Freight, Gordon Darling Foundation and The National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund, and Beverage Partners Moët Hennessy and Coopers.

If you are interested in creating ties with the Australian community through the arts, contact: Nicole Short, +61 2 6240 6781 or nicole.short@nga.gov.au or Claire Carmichael, +61 2 6240 6740 or claire.carmichael@nga.gov.au

EmanuEl PhilliPs Fox NasturtiuMs, c1912 • SOLD August 2011 to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, $600,000 (including buyer’s premium)

call for entries important australian + international fine art auction • sydney • august 2014

for appraisals please contact: Sydney • 02 9287 0600 Damian Hackett or Henry Mulholland Melbourne • 03 9865 6333 Chris Deutscher or Crispin Gutteridge info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com

Over the past 30 years, Savill Galleries has enthusiastically purchased and sold some of Arthur Boyd’s greatest works. We are now preparing a major exhibition of this important artist’s work.

To register for more information contact us now.

We are also looking to for museum quality works.

Telphone: 02 9327 8311 / art@savill.com.au

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Above: ‘Waterhole with Sheep’ c.1950 Below: ‘Shoalhaven’ c.1978

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Partnering for productivity

Frank Hurley Ruins of the Temple at Boro-Budur, Java 1913 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

In today’s challenging environment there is increasing pressure on government and industry to improve productivity. At PwC we look beyond traditional ‘do more with less’ to focus on how innovation can drive productivity and improved service standards.

PwC is proud to work with the NGA on its productivity journey and to support the Garden of the East exhibition.

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WINTER 2014 | 78

AUTUMN 2014 | 78

Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia At five in the afternoon: Robert Motherwell Bali: island of the gods