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Arthur Boyd Nude with beast II 1961–62 (detail) oil on composition board National Gallery of Australia, Canberra The Arthur Boyd gift 1975 Reproduced with permission of Bundanon Trust
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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. ENQUIRIES copyright@nga.gov.au Produced by the National Gallery of Australia Publishing Department EDITOR Meredith McKendry DESIGNER Kirsty Morrison PHOTOGRAPHY by the National Gallery of Australia Photography Department unless otherwise stated RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Nick Nicholson PRINTER Blue Star Print, Melbourne PREVIOUS ISSUES nga.gov.au/Artonview ISSN 1323‑4552 PRINT POST APPROVED pp255003/00078 RRP A$9.95 | FREE TO MEMBERS MEMBERSHIP membership@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/Members TEL (02) 6240 6528 FAX (02) 6270 6480 WARNING Artonview may contain the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased.
(cover) Arthur Boyd Nebuchadnezzar being struck by lightning 1969
oil on canvas The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
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Director’s word Director’s highlights
EXHIBITIONS 10 16 20
Boyd like you’ve never seen him before Light and perception The new art
FEATURES 24 28 30
A book of tapa Anthony Caro 1924–2013 Ballets Russes costumes in Japan
ACQUISITIONS 32 Grayson Perry Map of days 34 Sawos people Ancestor hook 35 JJ Hilder Central Station, Brisbane 36 Ethel Spowers The skaters, The gust of wind 38 Badung regency Sugriwa, King of the monkeys 39 Kano school Red-crested cranes 40 The Houstone Collection of early Australian silver
REGULARS 42 Facesinview 44 Members news 45 News from the Foundation 46 Thank you … 48 Creative partnerships
D ir e c t or’s w or d
Our momentous blockbuster program continues this December with a truly mind-blowing exhibition. The National Gallery of Australia is the only gallery in the Southern Hemisphere for our summer show, James Turrell: a retrospective, the first survey of this world-renowned artist ever to be held in Australia. His monumental Skyspace in our new front Australian garden has become, since it was finished in 2010, one of our most cherished works of art. This retrospective of Turrell’s work is an ambitious undertaking for the Gallery and the first of our blockbusters to focus on a living international artist. It is also uniquely experiential in nature—highly immersive, emotive and sensory all at once. Radiant coloured light is the medium for his illusions. Visitors will be immersed in room after room of thrilling light installations. Recent Turrell exhibitions at the iconic Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have been extraordinarily successful.
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With spectacular light installations purpose-built for Canberra, it promises to be a breathtaking exhibition and a once in a lifetime experience. Also opening over summer is Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, which examines the major contributions made by these three key figures to the development of nineteenth-century printmaking in France. The exhibition includes over 150 prints, posters and monotypes drawn from the Gallery’s collection, some never displayed before. We open this month our powerful and arresting Arthur Boyd exhibition featuring more than 120 works across diverse media— paintings, prints, drawings, ceramic tiles, sculptures and tapestries. Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy is not a retrospective but rather provides the opportunity to take a close look at a number of key works and series of works that have never or rarely been exhibited before, covering over 40 years of his career. This is very much about the
unseen and unexpected Arthur Boyd. The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated publication with new research by the curator of the exhibition Dr Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920. Robert Motherwell: at five in the afternoon is currently on show until 6 October. Motherwell was an accomplished American printmaker, creating ‘painterly prints’ with an innovative spontaneity of gesture and freshness of expression. The exhibition reveals how Motherwell created inventive collages and an imagery of gestural flourishes. Our popular travelling exhibition Stars of the Tokyo stage: Natori Shunsen’s kabuki actor prints finally comes home to Canberra. It reveals the dynamic world of kabuki theatre through Shunsen’s actor portraits and prints and includes spectacular original kabuki robes. It closes on 12 October so don’t miss your chance to see this dramatic exhibition in Canberra.
In June we opened our groundbreaking Bali: island of the gods exhibition. Despite Australians’ great familiarity with Bali as a holiday destination, this was the first exhibition in Australia to reveal the creative achievement of this predominantly Hindu island. In opening the show, the Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the exhibition as ‘a window into the soul of our friend and neighbour’ and congratulated Senior Curator Robyn Maxwell on curating such a vibrant exhibition. The Indonesian Ambassador was also able to attend and speak, his first public appearance since returning to Australia. The Gallery and the arts generally play an important role in Australia’s cultural diplomacy, as remarked upon by the Hon Julie Bishop MP when she opened our first Indonesian exhibition for the year, Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s. With Bali we continued to reveal to Australian audiences the depth and breadth of Indonesian art and culture. Internationally the Gallery has been active as well. Our Ballets Russes exhibition opened to great acclaim at the National Art Center, Tokyo. While the Ballets Russes never travelled to Japan, it has had a huge influence on its theatre, design and fashion arts since the 1920s. We continue our international touring program with the opening next month of our pioneering Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia show at the St Louis Art Museum in America. Over the last few months we have released a number of key publications— catalogues for Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, Garden of the East and Bali: island of the gods, the long-awaited new wellillustrated book on the collection, Collection Highlights, and now Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy. Our exhibitions come and go but the publications live on and add new scholarship to these areas. I would like to share with you some of the market research on our last summer blockbuster exhibition Gold and the Incas: lost worlds of Peru, which was the first exhibition of the remarkable ancient Peruvian cultures in Australia. Thirty-seven per cent of visitors to the remarkable
Gold and the Incas exhibition were first-time visitors to the National Gallery of Australia. Of that, 10 per cent were visiting an exhibition for the very first-time—from anywhere. This means that about 17,000 people chose our exhibition to begin their (hopefully lifelong) engagement with art museums. What is also pleasing is the large family audience for the exhibition. The family activity room proved extremely popular with more than 28,000 visitors, creating a new record and reflecting the substantial proportion of family tickets sold for Gold and the Incas—more than double the number sold for any other exhibition. Turning to acquisitions, we recently added two magnificent Ethel Spowers paintings, The skaters and The gust of wind (both 1931), to our collection. These are the only two surviving oils by the artist, making this a particularly significant acquisition. In a rare opportunity, the Gallery has acquired a book published in 1787 featuring original samples of tapa cloth collected during Captain Cook’s third Pacific voyage. We also acquired an outstanding private collection of early Australian silver, assembled in a scholarly way over a 45-year period by John Houstone. In other news, Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Australian and International Photography, retires this month after almost 30 years at the Gallery. Gael was the foundation curator of photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and came to Canberra in the mid 1980s to work on the Bicentennial Australian photography exhibition and publication Shades of light. She was instrumental in her early career in pioneering research and of writing monographs of major photographers including Max Dupain and Harold Cazneaux. Recently Gael has overseen the acquisition of works from the Asia–Pacific region, resulting in the 2008 survey exhibition Picture paradise: Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s and Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s in 2014. I thank Gael for her pioneering contribution to the field of Australian, Asian and Pacific photography over the last three decades and wish her all the best in her retirement.
In this, my last Director’s word for Artonview, I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all Gallery staff and volunteers, past and present—I have enjoyed working with you all and I thank you for your warm collaboration over the last decade. Equally, to our over 20,000 members, I am thankful for your continued support of the Gallery. We work hard to bring you an exciting program of events, exhibitions and other opportunities to enhance your engagement with the national collection. It has been a pleasure sharing the Gallery’s news and progress with you over the last 10 years through Artonview and our many member events. I also acknowledge the donors and sponsors who have so generously supported the Gallery over the past 10 years. Without their support many of our acquisitions, programs and exhibitions would not have happened.
Ron Radford
Robyn Maxwell, the Hon Tony Abbott MP, Prime Minister of Australia, and Ron Radford AM at the opening of Bali: island of the gods Ron Radford AM, former Governor General of Australia, the Hon Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, Betty Churcher AO, Louise Adler AM, Roy Churcher, and the Churcher’s grandchildren at the launch of Notebooks, 2011
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D ir e c t or’s Highlight s
As I approach retirement in October, after nearly 10 years at the helm and 43 years in the art museum profession, I have been asked to record what I consider to be the highlights of my time as Director here. It has been a great privilege to lead the Gallery over the last decade, which has been a period of incredible growth and change particularly with the opening of our Stage 1 redevelopment, groundbreaking exhibitions, increased attendances and levels of visitor engagement, and record levels of donations, benefaction and sponsorships. This has been exceptionally gratifying, however the collections always come first in museums. The curators and I have worked hard to strategically strengthen weaker areas of the collection and to add individual significant works which reflect the Gallery’s founding collecting document, the Lindsay Report, implemented from the end of the 1960s to complement existing state galleries, making the national collection the major Australian collection for our time and our place in the world. Over the last 10 years our Australian collection has been greatly strengthened, particularly in the formerly weak area of early Colonial art before 1850. This early Australian collection has trebled in size in oil paintings, watercolours, prints, drawings, photography, silver and furniture in the last decade. We also strengthened the representation from the less populous states in all periods and all media. Consequently, we now at last have very substantial and
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With Paul Gaugin’s Tahitian woman in Masterpieces from Paris, 2010 At Turner to Monet with former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, 2008 Unveiling Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Eldorado: Aristide Bruant at the National Gallery of Australia Foundation 21st anniversary gala dinner, 2010 (opposite) With Robert Dowling’s Miss Robertson of Colac (Dolly) at the Masterpieces of the Nation Fund thank you, 2010 Discussing Clifford Possum’s Warlugulong with Brenda L Croft at NAIDOC Week, 2008 At the George W Lambert retrospective with George Brandis QC, 2007
representative collections from Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, as well as Victoria and New South Wales. We also developed a representative collection of art from the Canberra region. We have greatly expanded the Australian twentieth-century collection and the twenty-first-century collection, but further work is to be done here in collecting more recent works. More than a third of our Indigenous collection has been acquired since 2005. This includes, for the first time, collections of nineteenth and early twentieth-century works. Highlights of this collection building are now shown in our 13 new Indigenous galleries. The Asian collection has been especially strengthened, particularly the areas long deemed to be our main focus, South and South East Asian art. The Gallery is now richer and broader in major sculptures and paintings from these Asian regions, and our already strong Asian textile collection has also been strengthened. The Pacific arts collection has been revived with the acquisition of important traditional Polynesian and Melanesian works. We have also built an entire collection of early Asian and Pacific photography, one of the very few in the world. In International art, which has become the most expensive area and therefore more prohibitive for acquisitions, we have still managed to acquire significant twentieth-century modernist works while also keeping up with contemporary works.
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The Gallery has managed, for example, to form collections of such major international artists as William Kentridge, Anish Kapoor and James Turrell. I am particularly proud of re-introducing a program of summer blockbuster exhibitions, which resulted in some of the Gallery’s most successful exhibitions, above all Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gaugin, Cézanne and beyond in 2009. This show attracted almost half a million visitors and set an Australian record for attendance at an art museum exhibition. There were other memorable and well-attended blockbusters such as Renaissance: 15th and 16th century Italian paintings, Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape and Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris and the Moulin Rouge. But we should also be very proud of many groundbreaking exhibitions including Life, death and magic: 2000 years of South East Asian ancestral art, Kastom: art of Vanuatu, Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia and Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s. There were also important Australian shows including George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons, The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005, McCubbin: last impressions 1907–17, Fred Williams: infinite horizons and now Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy. In 2007 we opened our first National Indigenous Art Triennial exhibition, Culture warriors, which later toured around Australia and to Washington DC. A more recent addition to our blockbuster shows has been a family activity room located within each exhibition. These wonderful rooms are themed for each show and provide explorative and creative educational activities and programs for children aged three to 12 and their families. Over the past six years 160,000 visitors have enjoyed family activity rooms in seven exhibitions, which have helped draw a younger audience to the Gallery. We have made significant efforts to engage not only visitors to the Gallery and our travelling exhibitions but also the community more broadly through our extensive publishing and online program. Online visitation has steadily grown over the past 10 years, making the national collection so much more accessible to viewers from all around the world. We have also focused on digitising works
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At Gods, ghosts and men with Michael Gunn and Crispin Howarth, 2008; with the Hon Ashley Dawson-Damer AM and Frederick McCubbin’s Violet and gold, 2008; at the opening of Picture Paradise, 2008
Gold and the Incas family activity room, 2014; reopening of the NAB Sculpture Gallery, 2007; the Indian galleries
in the collection and I am very pleased that we now have information on 175,000 works of art online, 75,000 of these with images, which is unprecedented in an Australian art museum. We have produced exhibition catalogues for all major exhibitions and many other remarkable and scholarly publications. A book on the gallery, Collection Highlights, released last month, showcases 300 of our major and popular works, while the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Collection Highlights celebrates our extraordinary Indigenous collection. Many changes have been made to our display galleries over the past decade to improve the visitor experience. In 2006 and 2007 we radically rearranged our first floor displays and rehung the permanent collection with new chronological mixed-media displays of European and American art from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries, while also restoring and completely relighting these galleries. Our purpose-built sculpture gallery, which had been used for other purposes from 1990 onwards, was fully restored for sculpture and reopened, revealing our grandest gallery space. Our program of refurbishment continued with the opening of new Indian, Southeast Asian and Pacific galleries. New showcases were installed in our old foyer to feature changing displays from our Mesoamerican, African and Polynesian collections. In 2009 we opened a new oval gallery for our most iconic and well-loved series, Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. Adjacent to this we added our first permanent display galleries for photography, jewellery, fashion and costume and relocated our Children’s gallery to a larger space next to our Small Theatre on the upper floor. The most significant project undertaken over the past 10 years of course was the Stage 1 building project, which saw the extension of the Gallery to create 13 new Indigenous galleries, a new front entrance and shop on the ground floor, a dedicated function space, the beautiful Gandel Hall, and our Australian gardens with the James Turrell Skyspace Within without, one of our greatest works. Stage 1 also involved considerable back-of-house upgrades including new art loading dock, security
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entrance, exhibition preparation and a crucial quarantine suite. All of this was achieved while remaining open to the public throughout the entire building and refurbishment period. Stage 1 has transformed our visitors’ experiences. Concept plans have been completed for Stage 2, The Centre for Australian Art. The Gallery has by far the largest Australian collection, three times the size of the next largest collection, yet we can only show two per cent at the Gallery. Stage 2 will add an Australian wing on the main floor, presenting Australian art more expansively and beautifully, and showcasing our visual arts as a truly major achievement of our nation. Consistent with our vision to be ‘an inspiration for the people of Australia’, we remain committed to providing learning and access programs to our visitors of all ages and abilities. New programs over the past decade have included the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program, now in its fifth year, which allows early to mid-career Indigenous arts workers from across Australia to participate in an intensive program of activity to gain an understanding of the workings of a major cultural institution and the Indigenous arts sector more broadly. This program is vital in developing the next generation of Indigenous arts leaders. Our Art and Alzheimer’s program has drawn national and international acclaim, offering people living with dementia and their carers the opportunity to tour the Gallery and discuss works of art. Our Outreach Program educates arts and medical professionals from around Australia to deliver the program at state and regional centres. The Gallery is now considered to be an innovator in this area of arts and health. As Director I have been fortunate to meet many wonderful people, from artists and their representatives, to our generous benefactors and sponsors, to our valued members and visitors, and have been supported by a devoted and loyal staff. I leave the role with many treasured memories. Ron Radford At Big Draw with John Olsen, 2009; with Margaret Olley presenting her gift of Edgar Degas’ Dancer in fourth position, 2008; at the International Museum Day lecture with Bert Flugelman and his sculpture Cones, 2009
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(clockwise from top left) With Frank Watters and Richard Larter at Larter’s retrospective, 2008; Gali Yalkayirriwuy Gurruwirri performing during the launch of Stage 1, 2010; at the opening of the Indian galleries, 2006; enjoying the Hands Across Australia charity ball, 2011; walk-through of the new extension, 2010; with Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art galleries, 2011
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Arthur Boyd The prodigal son 1948–49 central scene from western wall of the Harkaway mural 230 x 227 cm Gift of Arthur Boyd 1969
Bo yd l i k e y o u ’ v e n e v e r s e en hi m b ef or e Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy 5 September – 9 November 2014 | nga.gov.au/Boyd
Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy brings together works that emphasise Boyd’s profound and inventive engagement with realms of the human condition. Among the many works that have not been exhibited before is The prodigal son, a large fragment of a mural that was painted by Arthur for his uncle, the well-known novelist, Martin Boyd. Undertaken in 1948 when Arthur was 28 years old, its original location was the dining room of a house known as The Grange, built by his great grandparents William Arthur Callendar (known as W.A.C.) and Emma (née a Beckett) Boyd in 1866 at Harkaway near Berwick in Victoria. The story of this mural could well be described as one of ecstasy and agony. It was Boyd’s largest commission and an extraordinary feat. Franz Philipp, who wrote the first major monograph on Boyd, considered the mural as the culmination of his religious works and a masterpiece of landscape painting, and the artist came to consider it as one of his best works. The prodigal son is set in a lush landscape reflecting the views outside, while the figures are painted in deep, rich colours 10 ARTONVIEW | EXHIBITION
suggesting the inspiration of artists he admired like Titian and Tintoretto. Boyd’s mural took shape from late 1948 as he worked assiduously while playing Beethoven’s 7th Symphony ‘very loudly’. Painted in a ‘fresco secco’ method over a plaster ground it originally unfolded across an expanse of over 20 metres. The theme of the return of the prodigal son was a familiar one to Arthur and seemed apt in relation to Martin Boyd, who had returned to Australia after many years in England. The patriarchal figure also relates to repeated images that Arthur painted and drew of his own father, Merric, in a chair—although in this instance it has become a very sturdy throne. While Martin Boyd had good intentions when he returned to Australia in 1948 to reclaim and restore the home, he did not ultimately find the answer to his dreams there and left Australia in 1951. Sadly The Grange was eventually sold and demolished to make way for a quarry. The process of attempted salvage of the mural caused Boyd much heartache. After years of thwarted attempts to save the mural, Boyd’s friend, the dealer Joseph Brown, assisted in the retrieval
of four relatively large components and a few small pieces that eventually came under the auspices of the National Gallery of Australia. In order to save these components the decision was made by an engineer to encase the larger ‘fragments’ in concrete, which made them immensely heavy and a significant risk and challenge to display safely. It has taken considerable effort from a team within the Gallery and with the advice of external conservators and engineers to find a way of safely moving The prodigal son fragment into the Gallery without damaging the mural fragment or the floors of the exhibition space. In recent times David Wise, Senior Paintings Conservator, has been conserving some of the damage to the work that occurred when The Grange was left vacant before its destruction. It is a momentous occasion to finally be able to exhibit this masterful component that is still part the wall of the house Boyd’s great grandparents built in 1866, in Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy. While the subject of The prodigal son is one of regaining love and acceptance, other works in the exhibition are about
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Arthur Boyd Figure painting a shadow 1973 oil on canvas 114.3 x 109 cm The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
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(opposite) Arthur Boyd Paintings in the studio: ‘Figure supporting back legs’ and ‘Interior with black rabbit’ 1973 oil on canvas 313.5 x 433.2 cm The Arthur Boyd gift 1975
the ongoing struggle involved in being an artist. Boyd’s Caged painter series, also sometimes referred to as the artist-inextremis group of works, undertaken in the early 1970s, are brought together and recognised in this exhibition as some of the most brilliant works of his career. During a residency at the Australian National University from September 1971 until late February 1972, Boyd spent time in the local landscape, often painting in the company of his wife Yvonne. After more than a decade living in London (apart from a visit to Australia in 1968) Boyd was captivated by the bright light of a Canberra summer that seemed to be imbued into the landscape. As Yvonne recalled in a letter written to Alan McCulloch in 1972 (courtesy of the Bundanon Trust Archive): [We] sat in Canberra, sometimes in the nearby (beautiful, beautiful) bush, Arthur painting the light again and trying quite frenziedly at times to get that Reckitt’s blue sky, me gathering
sticks to light our fire and boil our billy. These days of Canberra summer when not quite washed out by rainstorms are for Arthur the purpose, justification and to a degree the consummation of the wish to be in Australia again.
After the residency, back in London and in Suffolk where Arthur and Yvonne rented a cottage and studio, he painted with intense energy, recalling his experience of the landscape from a distance. In work after work he revealed the ongoing pressures of self-exposure and vulnerability involved in being an artist. In these works Boyd takes us into the very act of the painting process within the works. For instance, in Figure painting a shadow 1973 the face of the painter comes off the blades of the tall windmill. Here the artist reaches down to paint his own shadow and that of the windmill, which in turn appears to be turning into a beast. The shadowy, curly line of this creature’s horn spirals towards a disproportionately large leg
of a half-painted figure careening out of the painting. At times the sense of these works coming into being unveils not only the agony of the artist’s struggle but Boyd’s irreverent daring and seemingly limitless powers of invention. In these paintings Boyd realised much of what he had been aiming for over 30 years. Like the lotus flower emerging from a muddy pond, he had now reached a point in his artistic development where he was able to reveal the often agonising process of dredging felt images from the depths of his conscious and subconscious mind up into the crystalline light of day— and paradoxically creating some of his best works including his masterpiece, Paintings in the studio: ‘Figure supporting back legs’ and ‘Interior with black rabbit’ 1973–74. Themes of entrapment and release that are so prominent in Boyd’s Caged painter series ran through works he undertook before, during and after his residency in
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Arthur Boyd The unicorn and the ark 1975 etching and aquatint sheet 79.2 x 57.2 cm purchased 1978 Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust The hunters set out to trap the unicorn 1975 etching and aquatint sheet 79.2 x 57 cm purchased 1978 Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust The unicorn sees the lady 1975 etching and aquatint sheet 78.8 x 57.6 cm purchased 1978 Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust (opposite) Arthur Boyd designer Tapeçarias de Portalegre manufacturer St Francis when young turning aside 1972 (detail) dyed wool on cotton high-warp tapestry 261 x 341 cm purchased 1975 Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust
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Australia, in particular his collaboration with the poet Peter Porter on The lady and the unicorn. In Porter’s retelling of the tale, the hunters envision the capture of this creature—a symbol of purity beyond human understanding. In one instance the hunter is seen capturing the unicorn in a cage very like the ones in the Caged painter series. Another version of this idea is one of Boyd’s most astonishing images The hunters set out to trap the unicorn, which engages directly with William Blake’s The Stygian Lake, with ireful sinners fighting, from a series inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy (1824–27). In Boyd’s print, he reverses the images of the hunters and the hunted— the men with swords lie on the ground as the miraculous unicorn arches above them, over the sun. An excerpt from Porter’s poem reveals the shared potency of the visionary capacities of both poet and artist. There are references in letters between Porter and Boyd to the Cluny Museum in Paris and the wonderful medieval tapestries on the theme of the lady and the unicorn. Boyd was familiar with the tapestries created in the style of ‘mille-fleurs’ (a thousand flowers) and his prints The unicorn sees the lady and The lady betrays
the unicorn are among the most exquisite works in his oeuvre. In the former the unicorn lies swooning on its back; the tiny precise white leaf patterns against velvet black aquatint rising up to encompass the lady of his dreams. In addition to paintings and prints there is a room in the exhibition featuring Boyd’s St Francis tapestries woven at the Tapestry Workshop in Portalegre in the early 1970s, which have rarely been seen together. These weavings capture the vitality of Boyd’s original pastel drawings. Seen as a group they reveal the agony and ecstasy of St Francis in ways that were quite distinctive to Boyd’s vision. As the examples discussed in this brief article indicate, the exhibition Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy brings together diverse works across a range of themes. Spanning a timeframe of just over three decades, the exhibition reveals Boyd as one of the truly great inventive artists of the twentieth century.
Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculpture post-1920
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James Turrell After green 1993 Wedgework: fluorescent, LED and fibre-optic lights purchased 2014 © James Turrell
Li ght and p e rce pt io n James Turrell: a retrospective 13 December 2014 – 7 June 2015 | nga.gov.au/JamesTurrell
From his first built spaces at the Mendota Hotel, California, through to the elaborate construction phases at Roden Crater, Arizona, James Turrell’s art is now found all around the globe. Within without 2010, the Skyspace at the National Gallery of Australia, has rapidly become one of its most treasured works, with visitors marvelling at the monumentally of the space and the daytime light effects, or scheduling an experience of the dawn and dusk cycles. The Gallery’s summer show for 2014–15, James Turrell: a retrospective, places Within without in context, offering a survey of the American artist’s oeuvre over almost five decades. Working with light and perception, Turrell makes site-specific, architectural projects, interior installations, projection works, holograms, drawings, prints, photographs and ceramic ware. The artist tells, as a child, of being captivated by the glow of a nightlight, of beginning to question whether darkness should be feared, of piercing holes in a blackout curtain to form a ‘map’ of the
constellations above. In the catalogue published for the retrospective, Turrell describes his desire to work with different types and qualities of light: We eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically. I like the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially. Seeing yourself seeing is a very sensuous act—there’s a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.
After his first light sculptures using fire, Turrell began to construct light projections to form geometric shapes in existing spaces. Afrum (white) 1966 is related to his work at the Mendota Hotel, where he sealed off rooms and constructed walls and apertures to control the light from outside. Using a specialist projector, Turrell achieves a sense of solidity with a three-dimensional cube floating in a room. Raemar pink white 1969, a Shallow space construction, likewise plays with our perceptions. Lit from behind, a wall hovers at the back of the space, and creates a fissure between the existing wall and the new one. While we
James Turrell Afrum (white) 1966 Cross corner projection: projected light Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, partial gift of Marc and Andrea Glimcher in honour of the appointment of Michael Govan as Chief Executive Officer and Wallis Annenberg as Director and purchased with funds provided by David Bohnett and Tom Gregory through the 2008 Collectors Committee © James Turrell photo © Florian Holzherr
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James Turrell Bindu shards 2010 (exterior and interior view) Perceptual cell: fibreglass and metal, light program 420.8 x 653.1 x 607.1 cm purchased 2014 © James Turrell photo © Florian Holzherr
(opposite) James Turrell Raemar pink white 1969 Shallow space construction: fluorescent light Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles © James Turrell photo © Florian Holzherr
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may understand, rationally, how some of the effects are created, the view of a cube of light or a large, luminescent pink canvas levitating within a gallery is compelling. These are works that must be experienced in person: photographs capture little of the effect. After green 1993 is a Wedgework, one of Turrell’s most complex and intriguing group of works, which brings together fibre optic, LED and fluorescent lights to develop an immersive environment where the viewer becomes uncertain about the solidity of the surrounding walls. The intensity of the red, the combination of colours, and the soft and hard edges in the darkened space makes for a disorientating and exquisitely beautiful installation: we are tempted to enter but know it might be dangerous. Indeed confusion about the ‘scrim’ of light in a Wedgework resulted in one of Turrell’s most infamous incidents, when a viewer sued the artist after falling and hurting herself when she leaned against a ‘wall’. The Wedgework series is as bewildering and perplexing as Plato’s cave, where people see only shadows of reality reflected on the wall in front of them, a metaphor for the illusion of reality. During the 1980s and 90s Turrell also developed works that expose visitors to total
darkness or isolate an individual within a contained environment. His complex Perceptual cell and large installations suffuse the viewer’s space with light and colour— often with startling results—as Bindu shards 2010 demonstrates. From the outside a large fibreglass sphere, a carpeted ramp with railings, control panel and whited-coated attendants give the work a medical feel. Attendants prepare the participant: he or she must sign a waiver, relinquish belongings, be instructed in the use of a panic button, and choose the ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ cycle. Then he or she lies on the bed and is slid into the sphere. The intense, 15-minute cycle is likened to a three-dimensional, bodily kaleidoscope: high-speed flashing, ever-changing patterns of crystals, shards of light, stars, galaxies and nebulae. Turrell causes us to question the nature of light and its origins. All of his work is exquisitely simple, and yet so complex, as the artist explained in Richard Andrews’ The Wolfsburg Project, because light is very difficult to form, and ‘you end up forming everything but it’. Most viewers are not surprised to discover that he studied mathematical and perceptual psychology; his background as a Quaker and training
as a pilot also inform his practice. Turrell is best known for Roden Crater, his ongoing project on the edge of the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, Arizona, and the works he executes elsewhere are, in effect, the preparation for and culmination of his magnum opus. The National Gallery of Australia is the only gallery in the Southern Hemisphere for James Turrell’s retrospective. Following on from three highly successful shows throughout 2013—at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Guggenheim in New York—the National Gallery exhibition brings together works from LACMA’s tour, with spectacular installations purpose-built for Canberra, new acquisitions, drawings, prints and photographs, as well as models and plans for the Roden Crater. This is contemporary art like you’ve never seen before and promises an experience not to be missed. Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
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Edgar Degas Mlle Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs [Mlle Bécat au Café des Ambassadeurs] 1877–78 lithograph 33.4 x 26.6 cm The Poynton Bequest 2005
The new art Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier 8 November 2014 – 15 March 2015 | nga.gov.au/Impressions
Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier examines the major contribution to French art made by three key figures: HonoréVictorin Daumier (1808–1870), Edgar Degas (1834–1917) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). A generation apart, each was a consummate draughtsman whose innovative compositions and embrace of modern subject matter played a significant role in artistic developments in France over the nineteenth century. By the 1850s, there was a growing dissatisfaction within the artistic community with the governmentsponsored Salon exhibitions. The selection process was rigid and the art chosen often unimaginative and lacking relevance to the age. Yet the Salon exhibitions were key sources of patronage for artists, as well as important social occasions to establish a name for themselves professionally. Frustrated by the limitations of the art of the Salon and the parlous state of French art, poet and critic Charles Baudelaire urged artists of his day to adopt an art of modern life in an essay published in 1863.
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During the 1800s Paris had witnessed the remarkable growth of the popular press. The technique of lithography, invented at the turn of the eighteenth century, was adopted by practicing artists as it was a printmaking technique conducive to drawing freely and directly. For publishers of newspapers, lithography allowed for larger print runs compared to earlier printing methods. Newspapers and journals begin to include serialisation of novels by writers like Emile Zola as well as caricatures by artists such as Daumier, which were often satiric and of a contemporary social or political nature. All of these factors helped to sell newspapers and journals to a growing and appreciative audience. Baudelaire recognised the value of caricatures, and considered Daumier in particular as ‘important’ as any in ‘the whole of modern art’ in France. As early as 1846 Baudelaire had realised the significance of the art of Daumier: ‘there are artists who are gifted with a profound memory for characters and forms—Delacroix or Daumier for example’. To consider Daumier
a caricaturist comparable to Eugène Delacroix, the key figure of the Romantic art movement, was radical. In this way Baudelaire helped raise the genre from a subterranean, lowbrow status to become a rich current source of ideas and style for the artist. Daumier was both extraordinarily gifted and prolific, and made a name for himself by lampooning the affectations, stupidities and greed of members of French bourgeois society in caricatures. His first lithographs were published in 1822. From the 1830s his lithographic caricatures were published in both La Caricature and the daily newspaper Le Charivari. With the draconian censorship laws introduced in 1835 at the behest of Louis-Philippe and his government, La Caricature folded, while Le Charivari moved to publish social caricatures that were not overtly critical of the government of the day. The generation of French artists who followed Daumier in the nineteenth century were inspired by his critical observations, which became an extraordinary reservoir of ideas. Both Degas and then Lautrec were
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Honoré Daumier The orchestra during the performance of a tragedy [L’orchestre pendant qu’on joue une tragédie] from the series Musical sketches [Croquis musicaux] published in Le Charivari, 5 April 1852 lithograph 36.4 x 25.5 cm purchased 1980 Honoré Daumier The past. The present. The future. [Le passé. Le présent. L’avenir.] published in La Caricature, 9 January 1834 lithograph 36.4 x 26.7 cm purchased 1985
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enthusiastic admirers of French caricature, delighting in its animated qualities, stylistic freedoms and contemporary themes. They were particularly enamoured of Daumier’s caricature. Degas held Daumier in high regard, noting: ‘But I am of the opinion … that there have been three great draftsmen in the nineteenth century: Ingres, Delacroix and Daumier’. He was inspired by Daumier’s drawing, his interest in physiognomy, his expressive qualities and modern themes, which the younger artist then adapted. This is evident from Degas’ notebooks of the late 1860s and 70s, which include the artist’s copies of Daumier’s caricature and signature. Daumier’s art came to inform Degas as he looked to more contemporary ideas and left behind those grounded in classical or historical themes during this time. From the middle of the nineteenth century Paris had been transformed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s designs. The new cityscapes of the capital and the landscapes of its environs inspired artists and writers alike, and became a significant subject for the Impressionists.
This new style of Impressionism, a term derived from a pejorative comment by the critic Louis Leroy, lent itself to busy street scenes or languid days in gardens or by the water. Artists captured the excitement of contemporary life. At the second Impressionist exhibition held in 1876, novelist, critic and friend of Degas, Edmond Duranty, coined the phrase the ‘New Painting’: A young branch has developed on the old tree trunk of art … Now indeed, for the first time, painters have understood and reproduced, or tried to reproduce, these phenomena. In some of their canvases we can feel the light and heat vibrate and palpitate.
Duranty argued that for an artist to portray contemporary themes, it was essential to leave the studio: ‘The idea, the first idea, was to take away the partition separating the studio from the world outside’. Degas embraced motifs of modern French life—the ballet, the racecourse, the café-concert and the demi-monde— and played an important role in the
rejection of mythological and historical subjects favoured by the more adventurist artists of the time. Many of Degas’ ideas on composition and subjects were drawn from Daumier. The caricaturist’s lithographs were a particular favourite and Degas acquired about 1800 out of almost 4000 prints for his own private collection. Degas was much taken with Daumier’s skill as a draughtsman, and both shared a mutual interest in physiognomy—and the theory that appearance reveals character. In turn Lautrec adopted Daumier’s penetrating eye and wicked sense of humour. The youngest of the three artists featured in Impressions of Paris, Lautrec also assimilated lessons from Degas, borrowing themes and compositions from his idol. Lautrec admired and emulated Degas, which is evident in his compositions of drinkers at bars, dancers on stage, cabaret scenes and courtesans. All reveal the powerful role that Degas, and by extension Daumier, played in Lautrec’s artistic development. However, in his prolific yet short life, dying before his 37th birthday,
Lautrec mapped out an extraordinarily inventive and original style. These three master draughtsmen captured the spirit of Paris in their prints and posters. Through the examination of this work, we find clues as to why dramatic changes took place in French art over the nineteenth century. They formed part of other generations of artists who admired Daumier and who adapted the caricaturist’s critical lithographic observations. In this way Daumier’s legacy was a brilliant journalistic record of the modern capital and contributed to an era in France ripe for a new art. Featuring over 150 prints, posters, drawings and monotypes drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier examines the role of each artist in the development of nineteenth-century art in France—their influence and their originality.
Edgar Degas Prostitute seated in an armchair [Pensionnaire assise dans un fauteuil] 1876–77 monotype 23.8 x 17.5 cm purchased 1980 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Woman combing her hair [Femme qui se peigne] 1896 brush, crayon and spatter lithograph 52.9 x 40.6 cm purchased 1977
Jane Kinsman Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
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Alexander Shaw (publisher) A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook 1787–1805 letterpress text, with sheets of tapa cloth bound or affixed to sheets of blank paper book (closed) 22.5 x 16.1 cm purchased 2014 Image courtesy of Sotheby’s, London
A b o o k o f tapa The possibility of the National Gallery of Australia ever acquiring works collected during Captain James Cook’s voyages to Australia and the Pacific is almost unthinkable. But a copy of the book A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook is just such a rare opportunity. This book contains 56 original examples of tapa cloth collected on the Cook expedition, of which nine are full-page specimens. On his third voyage to the southern hemisphere in 1776–79 Cook travelled extensively in the Pacific Ocean, where lengths of highly decorated tapa cloth were collected from Tongatabu, Tahiti and the Hawaiian islands. After the death of Cook and the expedition’s return to London, this cloth became the property of retired army officer and entrepreneur, Alexander Shaw. Shaw cut the tapa cloth into small pieces, which he then had mounted and bound with descriptive text on the production and use of tapa, information gained from those who had accompanied Cook on the voyage. In his preface dated 1787 he
states that these books ‘are only select specimens for a few friends’. This may be so, but recent scholarship relating to this publication records about 60 copies, most of which are now in public collections. Furthermore, watermarks on the paper in these books ocassionally have dates of 1802 or 1805. One presumes that demand must have outstripped the number originally published and that Shaw issued more books over the years. At some stage his initial supply of tapa cloth began to run out and it seems that Shaw had access to cloth that was bought to England from other Pacific voyages. The complexity of the publishing history of the book is acknowledged in The Hawaiian National Bibliography, which describes the publication as: One of the great curiosities resulting from Cook’s Third Voyage. This very rare book, of which no two copies are alike, not only contains dateable Hawaiian and other Pacific kapa, or bark cloth, specimens but has in its text information on their manufacture, anecdotal comments on how and where the sample pieces were obtained, and occasional notes on the size of the sheet from which each was cut.
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The Gallery’s copy was formerly in the collection of the library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching, who in the twentieth century formed one of the greatest private collections relating to global exploration and discovery. His library was distinguished by the superlative quality of its contents. The Shaw publication was one such exceptional example surviving in its original marbled boards binding. In his text Shaw describes the 33 examples of tapa which made up the original publication. This copy has 56 pieces of cloth, making it one of the most substantial volumes produced. It is also distinguished by having nine full-page examples of tapa and relatively few small strips. Unfortunately the text descriptions do not equate with the samples in the Gallery’s copy, and it will take further research to identify the place of production for each of the pieces. The acquisition of this book coincided with the planning of the exhibition Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, where it was displayed along with engravings from another recent acquisition, the extraillustrated copy of Cook’s first, second and third voyages assembled by Charles Hoare in the late 1700s. Michael Gunn, the Gallery’s Senior Curator of Pacific Arts and the curator of Atua, notes: Eighteenth century tapa from Hawai’i, Tahiti and Tonga is now almost impossible to find, for the few surviving works are closely guarded. Hawaiian tapa (kapa) from this period is very distinctive, often featuring geometrical forms painted in red on thin tissue. Tahitian tapa (ahu) was very soft, with a texture like the very finest muslin. The most beautiful were painted with fern and moss motifs achieved by dipping the plant in dye and pressing it on the soft felted tapa. Tongan tapa (ngatu) is still produced today, and the eighteenth century antecedents cast a very illustrative light on more recent work. Alexander Shaw (publisher) A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook 1787–1805 title page and tapa cloth Images courtesy of Sotheby’s, London
On completion of the Atua: sacred gods of Polynesia tour the Gallery’s copy of A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook will be on display in the Polynesian Gallery and the pages will be regularly turned to reveal the next wonderful piece of tapa cloth. Roger Butler Senior Curator, Australian Prints, Posters and Illustrated Books
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A nth o ny Ca r o 1924–2013 Anthony Caro, one of the great modernist sculptors, died in London on 23 October 2013 at the age of 89. Caro’s exploration of the relationship between space, form and materials continued throughout his distinguished career. He was one of the first artists in the mid-twentieth century to reject the plinth, bringing sculpture into a more direct dialogue with the viewer: ‘I think my big break in 1960 was challenging the pedestal, killing statuary, bringing sculptures into our own lived-in space’. Caro trained in the classical tradition at the Royal Academy, but it was his experiences after study that shaped his future direction. Between 1951 and 1953 he worked as assistant to Henry Moore and in 1959 travelled to America where he was introduced to artists David Smith and Kenneth Noland, and critic Clement Greenberg. Under their influence Caro abandoned figuration and began to create large abstract sculptures. One of these, Duccio variations no 7, is currently on display in the NAB Sculpture Gallery. A monumental work in sandstone and steel, the sculpture was made in association with the exhibition Encounters: new art from old, staged by the National Gallery London in 2000. For this show,
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contemporary artists were asked to respond to pieces from the National Gallery’s collection; Caro’s sculpture is one of seven he created after Duccio di Buoninsegna’s The Annunciation 1311. The painting shows the angel messenger appearing to the Virgin under a portico and Caro’s work echoes these architectural features, investigating illusionary space as did di Buoninsegna in the early Renaissance. As well as sculpture in industrial materials, Caro employed the more subtle medium of paper pulp with Ken Tyler at Tyler Graphics Ltd. In 1982 Caro worked with Tyler to create a series of 124 unique paper works, and in 1993 the pair collaborated on a further series of 35. The artist enjoyed experimenting with paper pulp, remarking: In the paper sculptures I get closer to the graphic idea, to painting ideas and away from being so sculptural. At Ken Tyler’s I was doing all these things, using intaglio lines, using shading, and trying all sorts of possibilities— and with some in three dimensions. We would take a piece of wet paper and I would draw on it, Ken would drape it over chairs and things and then the next day, when it was dry, would pin it to the wall.
By manipulating sheets of Tyler’s handmade paper while still damp, Caro created soft, undulating curves, which he
embellished with intaglio printing processes, drawing and painting. In #4 Big white, from the series produced in 1982, Caro created a three-dimensional object of richly textured handmade paper that harnesses a range of techniques: a concertinaed centre is flanked by velvety rolls marked with simple pencil lines to create a sense of flowing movement; these are juxtaposed with angular pieces of folded paper flecked with grass green paint, and edged in bright red or dark chalk. The paper pieces are delicate explorations of the unexpected sculptural possibilities of paper that blur the boundaries between printmaking, painting, drawing and sculpture. #4 Big white represents a unique moment in Caro’s oeuvre and complements other sculptural pieces from the paper pulp series held in the Gallery’s Kenneth Tyler Printmaking Collection. The generous donation of this work by Penelope Seidler AM was formalised just weeks before Caro’s death and this bittersweet coincidence gives pause to reflect on the life and work of this visionary artist. Emilie Owens Acting Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
Anthony Caro painting his Paper Sculpture #114 from his Paper Sculpture series, Tyler Graphics Ltd artist’s studio, Bedford Village, New York, 1981 photograph: Lindsay Green
Anthony Caro Duccio variations no 7 2000 sandstone and steel 189.5 x 198.5 x 103.2 cm A gift from Ken and Marabeth Tyler through the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia 2014 © Barford Sculptures Ltd
(opposite) Anthony Caro #4 Big white 1982 paper pulp 81.3 x 96.9 x 19.1 cm Donated by Penelope Seidler AM through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2013
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B all e t s Ru s s es cos tum e s i n J apan The Gallery recently joined in partnership with the National Art Center, Tokyo to bring the best of its spectacular Ballets Russes costume collection to audiences in Japan. This was the largest and most complex exhibition of the Gallery’s famed Ballets Russes collection—one of the three biggest in the world—to ever leave Australia, and the first time these precious costumes had been seen in Japan. A key part of the Gallery’s 2014 international program, Ballets Russes: the art of costume drew large audiences in Tokyo, where it was one of the major events of the summer season. First presented at the Gallery in 2010, the exhibition was reassembled and tailored for a Japanese audience at the National Art Center, Tokyo, which displayed the costumes with the drama and panache for which it is well known. Designed by
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famed architect Kisho Kurokawa, the largest art exhibition facility in Japan is housed in a striking glass-fronted building in Tokyo’s exciting new ‘Art Triangle Roppongi’ district. Included in the exhibition were 144 costumes and accessories—entirely from the Gallery’s collection—from 33 productions of the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev and its successor, Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. They revealed the extent of Diaghilev’s creative engagement with some of the most influential artists of the early twentieth century, including Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Natalia Goncharova, Michel Larionov, Giorgio de Chirico, Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, André Derain and Sonia Delaunay. The display of costumes and original costume and set design drawings was supplemented
with a number of related works selected from Japanese collections by the National Art Center, Tokyo. For the brief period of its existence (40 years in several incarnations), the cultural phenomenon of the Ballets Russes was linked to the most accomplished choreographers, dancers, composers, designers and artists of the time, creating not only exotic, extravagant and charming theatrical spectacle but also excitement, critical discussion, technical innovation, glamour and scandal wherever it appeared. Although the Ballets Russes never toured in Japan, its influence had reached the country by 1910, introducing the culture of modern dance through the work of Japanese artists, choreographers and designers, many of whom had been enthralled by seeing the Ballets Russes
while living and working in Paris at the time of the company’s first vivid and controversial performances. While Japanese art and design was a major influence on late nineteenth century European design movements such as Art Nouveau, the ‘far-eastern’ exoticism of many of the Ballets Russes productions was eagerly received in Japan, which had no tradition of ballet in the Western sense. As the most important group of works in the Gallery’s International Decorative Arts and Design collection, the Ballets Russes collection spans a revolutionary period of European design, creating potent links between decorative arts, craft, fashion, painting, graphic design and photography. The Gallery’s prescient purchase in 1973, early in its collecting history, of the foundation of its Ballets Russes collection has allowed us to develop major exhibitions and continue research and extensive conservation, resulting in a collection rich in depth, condition and provenance. The pride and skill that the Gallery staff demonstrate in handling, protecting,
documenting, interpreting and publicising this unique and precious part of the national collection is evident in the quality and condition of the costumes. We are pleased that the extensive catalogue produced for the original exhibition in 2010 has been published in a new Japanese-language edition by the National Art Center, Tokyo, which contributed a new essay about the influence of the Ballets Russes in Japan.
Henri Matisse, designer Marie Muelle, costumier Costume for a mourner in the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev production of Le Chant du rossignol [The song of the nightingale] c 1920 purchased 1973 Léon Bakst, designer Tunic from the costume for The Blue God in the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev production of Le Dieu bleu [The blue god] c 1912 purchased 1987 (opposite) The Ballets Russes exhibition on show at the National Art Center, Tokyo
Robert Bell AM Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design
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Grayson Perry Map of days 2013 etching, 111.5 x 151.5 cm, The Poynton Bequest 2014
What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields. Days, Philip Larkin 1953
In Days Philip Larkin celebrates those ever-advancing, predictable units of time that demarcate a life: days. The title of Grayson Perry’s large etching, Map of days 2013, was inspired by Larkin’s poem. Like the poem, it interrogates contemporary experience, reflecting at once on the mundane and the extraordinary. Perry’s childhood was not a happy one and imaginary worlds—of which he would create detailed maps—became a refuge. Maps thus hold a particular fascination for the artist; in Map of days we are presented with what appears to be a medieval map of an English town. On closer inspection, however, we see that the composition is in fact a map of Perry’s mind, laying bare his strengths, weaknesses, fears and foibles, as well as his often acerbic observations of his native British society. Street names like ‘paralysed by indecision’, ‘bullshit detector’ and ‘reputation’ turn up in areas named ‘habitus’, ‘class’ and ‘culture’. Buildings are signposted ‘sexism’, ‘conflict’, ‘road rage’ and ‘acquired taste’. A key provides useful additional information about the artist, ‘tinnitus’, ‘bad back’ and ‘kidney stones’. Simultaneously derisive and humbling, in Map of days Perry marries the minutiae of daily life with broader concerns, offering a deeply personal self-portrait, and a sharp indictment of British society. Emilie Owens Acting Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
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Sawos people Torembi Village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea Ancestor hook [Samban] mid to late 19th century wood, shell, patina, 106 cm, purchased 2013 Image courtesy of Bonhams
Samban is the name given to wonderfully sculptural suspension hooks along the Sepik River. Often carved in the form of a human or spirit figure, their purpose ranges from domestic to religious. The most commonly encountered are anchor-like in form, and string bags filled with food, precious items and sleeping babies are hung upon them out of harm’s way. This work is one of a small handful of more significant ancestral hook figures of the Sawos people, and was likely made during the mid to late nineteenth century as the artist used only non-metal tools (stone adze blades, rat and cuscus incisors) to create it. Sculpturally, it is the work of a master carver who understood the visual power of giving the head a slight tilt to one side. The simple yet graphic realisation of the wrist carpals, navel and ankles are characteristic of pre-contact Sawos art. The female figure is a powerful type of spirit often known as Waken, who is encapsulated within a framework of seemingly abstract forms. The curvilinear designs couple with an openwork section before becoming two hornbill birds; all of which contribute to the cosmological conception of mythical identity for the Sawos people. Directly below the ancestral figure are two hooks, believed to be for the suspension of human heads taken in tribal warfare. These and other offerings would be ritually given, or rather, ‘fed’ to the Waken spirit, to ensure good relationships with the ancestor spirit and garner its aid, especially in times of hardship or political turmoil. The Waken figure perhaps depicts a primordial ancestor, shown with her hands clasping drawn up knees in the act of giving birth. Considering the positioning of the hooks for the placement of skulls, we are left to contemplate whether the myth associated with this impressive sculpture is about the creation of life or the creation of death. Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Art
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JJ Hilder Central Station, Brisbane 1908 watercolour on paper, 26.5 x 20.5 cm, purchased 2014
During his short life, praise for the work of Jessie Jewhurst Hilder was effusive. When taken by a black mood, Sydney Ure Smith would go to ‘see the Hilders’ until gradually ‘filled with peace’. Arthur Streeton called him a genius. Harry Julius recalled the deftness with which Hilder separated the lyrical from the commonplace, selecting the compositional elements of his paintings as carefully as a poet picks words. After the grand gestures of the Heidelberg School, Hilder’s diminutive but visionary work in watercolour was regarded as something altogether new. Painted from the bell tower of Saint
Andrews Church in 1908, Central Station, Brisbane sees Hilder shift from the high-key pastoral paintings of his youth to a complex arrangement of carefully modulated colour. Daubed in glittering swathes of blue, the painting threatens to dissolve. But the resolute form of the station, and the asymmetrical sweep of the street, asserts the scene as one observed not invented. Hilder’s great talent lay in his ability to express the ephemeral nature of the most concrete subjects. This aptitude was heightened by his ill-health, a condition under which normalities seemed significant and the shortness of life keenly realised.
Born in Toowoomba in 1881, Hilder’s gift as a painter was evident as a child but he forged a career in banking through financial necessity. Fearing the disdain of his employers he signed some of his work under the pseudonym ‘Anthony Hood’. With the encouragement of his wife Phyllis Meadmore and artist Julian Ashton, he finally devoted himself to painting in 1909. Central Station, Brisbane is the most significant work by Hilder to enter the national collection to date. Elspeth Pitt Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings
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Ethel Spowers The skaters 1931 oil on linen, 45.5 x 36 cm, purchased 2013 The gust of wind 1931 oil on linen, 41 x 36 cm, purchased 2013
‘Miss Ethel Spowers looked most picturesque in a frock of porcelain white silk crepe etched with an artistic convolvulus flower pattern in delicate black,’ wrote the columnist in The Argus on 23 November 1935 of the Spowers family’s garden party at Toorak House, St Georges Road, Toorak. Ethel Spowers’ father, newspaper baron WGL Spowers, once owned both The Argus and The Australasian before handing over his interest to his son to concentrate on his other great loves, literature and art. With his ample encouragement, Ethel became a great modernist artist. Her exhibitions were as widely reviewed in the papers as her exquisite outfits worn at fashionable Melbourne gatherings. Born in 1890, Spowers was predominantly a printmaker and illustrator of children’s books. While she dabbled in watercolour she rarely painted in oils, only exhibiting around nine paintings in her lifetime. Anecdotal family reports suggest that she was so disenchanted with her efforts in oils (and the reviews of them) that she ceremoniously burnt them. Thus the rarity of these two surviving paintings, produced in 1931 at an important turning point in her artistic development, makes this acquisition all the more significant. The skaters and The gust of wind were painted in London when she returned for her third stint studying at the Grosvenor School under the great modernist master, Claude Flight, whose influence on Spowers was seismic. Whereas she had previously worked in the Japanese style of woodblock printmaking, she now adopted his practices and ideas and embraced the colour linocut technique. Evelyn Syme summed up Flight’s influence when she said, ‘I had seen nothing more vital and essentially “modern” in the best sense of the word’. Remarkably preserved, The skaters and The gust of wind were probably prepared by Spowers following the success of her
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prints, in particular The gust of wind, which had first been exhibited in Canberra in 1930. By comparing the painting with the print we observe a plasticity to the painting and a greater sense of flattening and abstraction in the print marked by the typical dynamism and vorticist elements that prevail in Grosvenor School prints. Spowers did not adapt The skaters from a print but the subject had currency in the period with Evelyn Syme, Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power all depicting the subject in their prints. Spowers returned home to Melbourne and in April 1932 showed her new prints at Everyman’s Library to the great acclaim of George Bell, who wrote in The Sun on 5 April 1932, ‘Miss Spowers, lately returned from study abroad, shows capital work’. In 1933 she showed both paintings and prints at the Everyman’s Library, which Arthur Streeton praised in The Argus: ‘There are also seven works in oil … and probably from some of these has been condensed the knowledge that has gone into the making of [a] beautiful print’. The Age critic was less glowing but we know from this review that Spowers exhibited The skaters in the show. While the reviews of her paintings may have disappointed, she was triumphant in the social pages when hosting a party for artist Mary Cecil Allen at the Lyceum Club in 1935. She stood next to her co-host Evelyn Syme, two daughters of great newspaper men, greeting her guests resplendent in ‘silver fox furs with her suit in a lovely tint of Etruscan red’. In art, as in life, Ethel Spowers remained ever the high priestess of style, effortlessly crossing that often slippery bridge from mere decoration to high art. Lara Nicholls Assistant Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculpture
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Badung regency Bali, Indonesia Sugriwa, King of the monkeys; holder for a ceremonial sword [kris] 19th–early 20th century, wood, paint, gold leaf, 78 x 27 x 27.5 cm, purchased 2014
This sculpture depicts one of the most popular characters in the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic introduced to the Indonesian archipelago around the eighth or ninth century. Sugriwa is the king of the monkeys and foremost among the allies assisting Rama, the hero of the tale, in his quest to rescue his beloved wife Sinta from the clutches of her abductor Rawana, evil king of Lanka. Often overshadowed in the retelling by Hanuman, the popular white monkey general, in Bali it is Sugriwa who is the central figure. Sugriwa is shown here in full royal style, resplendent in regal jewellery and elaborate costume with one hand on the hilt of his ritual kris dagger. His long tail, itself decorated with multiple bands of gold and gems, extends up his back, ending in a lively swirl above his head. He wears an elaborate crown, from the back of which protrudes the head of the mythical Garuda bird. Although the surfaces of many of the gilded polychrome guardian figures of Bali have been ravaged by exposure to the elements, this figure is in brilliant condition, the luscious details superbly intact. This is likely due to the sculpture’s function within a palace interior where it served as a holder for a nobleman’s ceremonial sword. A highlight of the recent Bali: island of the gods exhibition, Sugriwa is an exceptional addition to the Gallery’s rich collection of Hindu art from Bali. It admirably conveys the power and the excitement of the Ramayana epic to Gallery visitors. The sculpture also has an interesting historical connection with colonial Indonesia, having been in the collections of two prominent Dutch architects who worked on major projects in Bali in the first decades of the twentieth century. Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art
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Kano school Japan Red crested cranes; pair of six-fold screens [rokkyoku byobu] Edo period, possibly 18th or early 19th century colour and gold on paper, each screen 173 x 351 cm, gift of Lesley Kehoe and Noriaki Kaneko, as part of 100 Works for 100 Years: a gift to the nation for the centenary of Canberra 2013
The Kano school was the dominant style of Japanese painting from the late fifteenth century until the mid nineteenth century. The school’s earliest proponents and namesake, the Kano family, produced a string of major artists over several generations. Some artists married into the family and changed their names, others were adopted. Reflecting a renewed influence in Chinese painting, the Kano school’s brightly coloured screens, and wall and sliding door panels, often depicting landscapes as a background for detailed nature studies, decorated the castles of the emperor and powerful feudal lords. Their bold, often naturalistic, imagery and extensive gold leaf appealed particularly to members of the new elite, better versed in military tactics than long-standing Japanese art traditions. Here stylised decorative background elements drawing upon East Asian scroll painting traditions—the rocks, mountains and reeds—provide a sumptuous generic ground to the bold group of strikingly
realistic red-crested cranes [tancho tsuru or tozuro in Japanese, species Grus japonensis]. The birds are carefully differentiated by gender—the black cheeks, throat and neck of the males, and the grey of the females. Their feathering is clearly detailed. On the left-hand screen the birds gather in autumn around a rocky waterfall, one dramatically poised mid-flight. The right-hand screen shows the flock foraging for food among green summer fronds with a single majestic bird dominating the centre of the two screens. This diversity of imagery of the crane, an important symbol of longevity and wisdom in Japanese art, ensures the viewers’ appreciation both of the graceful creatures, and of the artist’s technical skills. A gift of Japanese art dealer Lesley Kehoe of Melbourne, and her Yokohama-based mentor, Noriaki Kaneko, the large screens are currently on display in the lower East Asian Gallery. Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art
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The Houstone Collection of early Australian silver
The National Gallery of Australia has acquired an exceptional collection of Australian silver, goldsmithing and jewellery containing works by most of the leading Victorian, New South Wales, Tasmanian, Queensland, South Australian and Western Australian silversmiths and jewellers of the nineteenth century. Assembled over a 45-year period by John Houstone, a knowledgeable collector of Australian colonial silver, it includes presentation and testimonial objects, sporting and achievement trophies, inkwells, boxes, jewel cases, wine jugs, cutlery, jewellery and personal accessories in styles ranging from neoclassical, rococo and Renaissance revival to naturalistic narrative. Mr Houstone generously donated 31 of the works. This extensive group of early objects adds significant depth to the Gallery’s Australian metalwork collection. With its strong representation of pre-1850 silver, it allows us to show Australian innovation and craftsmanship in a 200-year span from the earliest period of known production through to the present. The neoclassicism of the early nineteenth century is evident in a number of works
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David Barclay Snuff box c 1840 silver 3 x 8 x 5.5 cm Gift of John Houstone 2014 (opposite) Evan Jones Claret jug c 1878 silver, emu egg 35 cm (h) Gift of John Houstone 2014
by one of Australia’s earliest professional silversmiths, Alexander Dick. The collection offers the most extensive selection of objects produced by this most important Australian silversmith, allowing a full understanding of his practice and the aspirations of his clients such as the architect Francis Greenaway, for whom he made a splendid ladle. Works by other silversmiths working pre-1850 include Robert Broad, Samuel Clayton, JJ Cohen, Jeremy Garfield, Richard Lamb and Felix Lynn. Australian themes pervade this collection, further contributing to its importance as evidence of nationalist fervour, achievement and aspiration during the colonial period. While many of the works are ornate and extravagant in material, form and decoration, other, smaller objects show how the craft of the silversmith was applied to functional, everyday objects for the home and for personal use. Many of the objects are personalised with family crests, engraved initials and inscriptions, providing insights into individual and professional achievements and family, social and business relationships. Several objects show the pride and pleasure of leisure activity, with
depictions of racehorses, dogs and, in one particularly rare example from 1847 by Joel John Cohen, a boxing trophy belt with an engraved image of a subsequent winner, the boxer Larry Foley. Of particular interest are works depicting Aboriginal people in the form of small, sculpted figures as part of the overall design compositions of elaborate decorative objects. Such extravagant objects heightened the economic and social division between Indigenous Australians and the new arrivals who displaced them. The depiction of Aboriginal people, set along with native animals and plants in miniaturised dioramas upon these tabletop objects, was in keeping with the prevailing Romantic view of indigenous peoples at one with nature, existing in a parallel world to the dominant culture. Such objects were produced in quantity by leading jewellers and retailers such as Julius Schomburgk, JM Wendt and Henry Steiner in Adelaide, and William Edwards in Melbourne, and were most often assembled from cast parts used as mounts for emu eggs, a convenient and exotic alternative to expensive, and time-consuming to
produce, raised silver vessels. These eclectic and composite works reveal a great deal about the nature of the craft as practised in Australia during the nineteenth century. The use of emu egg emulated a European fashion for the mounted display of ostrich eggs that had been popular in Germanic countries since the sixteenth century, a tradition that was maintained with the use of an indigenous material by German-born and trained immigrant silversmiths active in South Australia. The collection also includes an extensive group of Australian colonial jewellery, with a strong representation of goldfields pieces. A massive gold brooch, made for presentation to the entertainer Lola Montez in 1855, is an unusual and rare part of the collection. This major acquisition illustrates not only the aesthetic and technical achievements of Australia’s earliest professional craft practitioners but also a compelling narrative of Australian social and commercial history. Robert Bell AM Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design
ACQUISITION | ARTONVIEW 41
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FA CES IN  V IEW
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Opening of Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia 1
Professor Margaret Jolly, Mahariki Tangoroa, Katherine Aigner, Micheal Gunn and Father Mapelli, 23 May
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Judy Robinson and Lorna Robinson
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George Nuku, Mahariki Tangoroa, Cara Kirkwood and Eruera Nia
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Bali: island of the gods official opening 4
Dr Peter McCawley, Robyn Maxwell and Professor Anthony Reid, 18 June
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Maggie Taylor and Jayne Davies
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Dr Ron Radford AM, the Hon Tony Abbott MP, Prime Minister of Australia, and Indonesian Ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema
Betty Churcher and Ron Radford in conversation 7
Bruce Stark and Anne Stark, 15 May
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Betty Churcher AO signing her book Australian Notebooks
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Start with art 9–11 Children enjoying Start with art at the Gallery, 11 April
Art + soul launch 12
Hetti Perkins and Ron Radford, 25 June
ARTONVIEW 43
Members news
B etty Churcher an d Ron Radford i n c onversat i on
majority of respondents became members to support your National Gallery of Australia.
On Thursday 15 May we were delighted to welcome former National Gallery of Australia director Betty Churcher AO for a very special once-only event. In celebration of her new book Australian notebooks a lunch was held in Gandel Hall, with a conversation between Betty and current Director Ron Radford AM. We were treated to insights and inspiration from these two extremely distinguished arts professionals who shared with us their knowledge of key works of art, as well as their own experiences within the Australian cultural landscape.
Visit our website nga.gov.au/Members to view insights into the results and find out more about the membership program.
Members s ur vey 2 0 1 4 In May this year we asked our members what they thought about the Gallery’s membership program. This was the first time the survey was conducted online and we thank all members who took the time to participate. We received a 12 per cent response rate, which is above the industry standard for surveys of this kind. Overall, the feedback we received was positive, with some areas highlighted for us to focus on. It was a delight to learn that the
Betty Churcher AO and Ron Radford AM in conversation
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M e l b o u rn e C u p 2 0 1 4 After a hiatus in 2013 the Members Melbourne Cup lunch is back this year better than ever. On Tuesday 4 November frock up in your finest and join us in Gandel Hall for another spectacular lunch celebrating the race that stops a nation. The day will include champagne on arrival, a two-course lunch, sweepstakes, prizes and of course the race on the big screen. To book your tickets visit nga.gov.au/members or phone (02) 6240 6528.
As a member, you can play your part in the life of the National Gallery of Australia and enjoy the many benefits this brings to you and the community. To join, go to nga.gov.au/Members or free call 1800 028 068.
Members viewing Arthur Boyd's The prodigal son 1948–49 during a behind-thescenes conservation tour
News from the Foundation
1 0 0 Wo rks for 100 Ye ar s
Be q u e s t Ci rcl e
Celebrating the centenary of our national capital, this major campaign to acquire 100 significant works of art for the national art collection has recently concluded. The total raised through cash donations, fund donations, bequests and gifts of works of art came to over $21 million. With such extraordinary generosity and support for this campaign, limiting it to only 100 works proved difficult, resulting in 115 works of art of outstanding quality being acquired. These remarkable works will be a lasting tribute to the nation’s capital.
The National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle is delighted to welcome new members the Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer AM and another who wishes to remain anonymous. The Bequest Circle is a way to actively recognise and celebrate supporters who have made a bequest in support of the National Gallery of Australia. For more information on the Bequest Circle, contact Liz Wilson on (02) 6240 6691 or liz.wilson@nga.gov.au.
Major supporters such as Tim Fairfax AC and Gina Fairfax, Roslyn Packer AO, Dale Frank, Ray Wilson OAM, Margaret Tuckson AM, James and Jacqui Erskine, Rupert Myer AM and Annabel Myer, Sally White OAM and Geoffrey White OAM, the Thomas Foundation, Dr David Pfanner and Dr Ruth Pfanner, Prudence MacLeod, Ray and Dianna Kidd, and Henry Dalrymple among others have generously given in support of this ambitious campaign.
S a ve th e d a te This year, the Foundation Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 26 November. All members of the Foundation will be notified in writing and provided with the 2013–14 Foundation Annual Report, which will outline recent achievements and celebrate the generosity of all donors.
The support of donors to the fundraising initiatives of the Foundation is greatly appreciated. To get involved, contact Liz Wilson on (02) 6240 6691 or foundation@nga.gov.au.
Michael Baldwin, John Hindmarsh AM, Emma Dunch and Ron Radford AM at the opening of Bali: island of the gods
Marilyn Darling AC, Gordon Darling AC CMG and Roger Butler AM at the opening of Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia
ARTONVIEW 45
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:
G rants ANZ Trustees Foundation—Aldridge Family Endowment Gordon Darling Foundation National Gallery of Australia Foundation Board Publishing Fund The Yulgilbar Foundation
Co rpo rate Par t ner s ABC Radio ACT Government through Australian Capital Tourism Aerial Capital Group Aesop AGIEI Audi Avant Card Barlens Canberra Hire Cars CanPrint Chimu Adventures Clayton Utz Coopers Brewery The Canberra Times Eckersley’s Art & Craft Flash Photobition Forrest Hotel & Apartments Hotel Realm JCDecaux King O’Malleys Maddocks Moet-Hennessy Australia Molonglo Group NAB National Gallery of Australia Council Education Fund Nine Network Australia Novotel Canberra Palace Cinemas PricewaterhouseCoopers Qantas Airways Qantas Freight The Age The Brassey of Canberra The Sydney Morning Herald Wesfarmers Win Television The Yuligbar Foundation
D o natio ns Includes donations received from 5 April to 3 July 2014 FL Adamson Donna Bush Maurice Cashmere Kiera Grant Grant Family Charitable Fund Pty Ltd Sue Hewitt Frank Lewincamp and Barbara Lewincamp Susie Maple-Brown AM Suzannah Plowman Neta Saint and Julien Goldenberg
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100 Works for 100 Years Philip Bacon AM Robert Blacklow John Kirby AM and Carolyn Kirby The Lansdowne Foundation Prudence MacLeod Spectrum Consultancy The Sun Foundation Pty Ltd Kaely Woods and Mike Woods
Honorary Exhibition Circle Patrons Terrence Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Charles Curran AC and Eva Curran Ray Wilson OAM
Gifts of works of art Wal Ambrose Philip Bacon Sandy Benjamin OAM and Phillip Benjamin Janet Burchill Christopher Burgess and Christine Burgess Darryl Collins Denise Green Catherine Harris AO PSM John Houstone Johannes Kuhen Ursula Laverty Gillian Lueckenhausen Stephen Mould Queen Jetsu Pema of Bhutan Cameron Robbins Jim Sait Edward Simpson Gavin Turnbull and Elizabeth Turnbull
Members Acquisition Fund 2013–14 Rosanna Burston Adam Graycar and Elizabeth Percival Dr Rob Irwin and Valerie Irwin John Jackson and Rosslyn Jackson Dr Peter Kenny and Pamela Kenny Jodie Leonard JA Lindesay Peter Lowry OAM and Carolyn Lowry OAM Geoff Murray-Prior and Gillian Murray-Prior Jennifer J Rowland Helene Stead Murrelia Wheatley
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014 Joan Adler R Albert AO RFD RD and L Albert K Alexander and M Alexander Robert Allmark and Alison Allmark Ronald J Allpress Professor Jan Anderson Patrick Armitage and Nicole Armitage Phoebe Armitage and Julian Hinvest Isabelle Arnaud Christine Ashley and Norman Ashley Simonetta Astolfi Margaret Aston Michelle Atkinson Judith Avery Dr Lynne Badger
Ruth Baird Bernadette Baker Shane Baker and Linda Pearson Suzanne Baker-Dekker Janet I Bamford Patrick Barrett and Margaret Barrett Barbara Bedwell Maria Bendall Professor Martin Bennett Virginia Berger John Besemeres and Anna Besemeres David Biddles and Suzanne Biddles Sheila Bignell David Biles and Julie Biles Noel Birchall Kathleen Bonnett Ivor Bowden Sarah Brasch Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan Mary E Brennan Toni Brewster HM Brown and JE Brown Jennifer Bryson Ruth Burgess Billie Burke OAM Peter Burns Ron Burns and Gail Burns M Burt Robert Cadona Alex Cairns and Robyn Cairns John Caldwell and Judith Caldwell John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones AO Colin Campbell and Shirley Campbell Carol Carrigan and Brian Carrigan Christine Clark Dr Ian Clark and Dr Margaret Clark ET Colhoun AM Arthur D Conigrave Philip Constable Kerry-Anne Cousins Neil Cox and Kay Cox Merrilyn Crawford Georgia M Croker Suzanne Curtis and Tony Gay Commander Andrew Dale and Barbara Dale Dean Daniel Dr Moreen Dee Patricia Degens Peter Deighan Barrie Dexter CBE Cecily Dignan Judith Dixon David Donaldson Marshall Neil Donoghoe Joan P Dooley Shaun Duffy and Susan Duffy Barbara Duhig The Honourable Robert Ellicot QC Dr Murray Elliott and Gillian Elliott Katherine Alice Engel Julia Ermert and Rupert Ermert Emeritus Professor Norman Feather Jan Finley and Philip Finley Brian Fitzpatrick P Flanagan and C Flanagan
Lynne Fletcher and Wayne Fletcher Anne Foote Barbara Franks David Franks Margaret Frisch Helen Fyfe Joseph Gani Neilma Gantner Roy Garwood Andrew Geering Ingrid Geli and Alan Hazell Geraldine Gibbs and William Gibbs Ross Gilby and Marjorie Gilby Maryan Godson and Richard Godson Shirley Gollings and Ian Gollings June Gordon Lyn Gorrie and Geoff Gorrie Patrick Gourley Elizabeth Grant AM and Sue Hart John Griffiths and Judith Griffiths Peter Grove Sue Guzowski Dr William H Hamilton Isobel Hamilton Eleanor Hart Bruce Hayes Janet Hayes Shirley Elaine Hemmings RM Hennessey Colin Hill and Linda Hill Gordon Hill and Pamela Hill Marian Hill Revina V House Chris Howard and Mary Howard Patricia Howard Bill Huff-Johnston Garth Hughes and Margaret Hughes Clare Humphreys Elspeth Humphries W Nevin Hurst Danielle Hyndes OAM Peter Ingle and Rosemary Ingle Ann Marcia Irving Harold Russ Jenner and Sandra Dickin Victoria Jennings Dr Joseph Johnson and Madeline Johnson Elaine Johnston Brian Jones Annette Jones Penelope Jurkiewicz and Wal Jurkiewicz KM Keighley and WG Keighley David Kennemore and Rosemary Kennemore Dr P Kenny and PV Kenny Arthur Kenyon and Helen Kenyon Desmond King Joan Kitchin Lou Klepac OAM and Brenda Klepac Betty Konta Eric Koundouris and Georgina Koundouris Ted Kruger and Gerry Kruger Robyn Lance Susan Laverty Dr Ralph Lawton and Margaret Lawton Thomas Leffers and Corrie Leffers Lady Jodie Leonard In memory of JB Leslie David Lewis OAM Dr Frederick Lilley and Penelope Lilley Pamela Linstead and Peter Linstead Elizabeth H Loftus
Diana M MacQuillan Richard Mann and Mary Curtis Jennifer Manton Margaret J Mashford Dr Robyn Mason Mieke Masselos Bruce Matear AM and Judy Matear Joan McAuslan Christine McCormack and Jacqueline McCormack Patricia McCullough Ian McDougall Robyn McPherson Betty Meehan Ralph Melano Tina Merriman Jillian Mihalyka Dr Robert F Miller and Mary Ellen Miller John and Lomond Miller Justin Miller Theila Millner Senator Christine Milne Bevan Mitchell John Molvig and Beverly Molvig Lisa Molvig Margaret A Mooney Noelle Morrow and Ken Morrow Julie Moses Janet Moyle Dr Angus M Muir and Charlotte L Wilenski Claude Neumann Maurice L Newman Barbara Noden and Victor Noden Kathleen Nowik and Henry Nowik Kerry Nunan and Boaz Hardes Marie Oaks Mike Ogden PSM Brain O’Keeffe AO Milton Osbourne Rober Oser and Agie Oser Dr Lioubov Parekh Gael Parr Helen Parry Beth Parsons Jill Parsons Susan Parsons in memory of Dr Robert W Boden OAM Margaret Pask Robert G Pauling Gwen Pearson George Pratt and Joan Pratt Mare Praznovszky Richard L Price Anne Prins Muriel Rafferty Shirley Randell AO Ardyne Reid Eric Graham Reid The Honourable Margaret Reid AO Mary E Reik Helen Rey Jeanette Richmond Paul Richter and Ernesta Richter Holley Rieger Paul Robilliard and Hanan Robilliard Susan S Rogers Alan Rose and Helen Rose James Ross and Heather Ross Diana Ryan Bridget Sack Eileen Sadler
Sammin Investments Pty Ltd Mark Sampson and Ruth Sampson Murray Sandland Annette Searle Yvonne Shaw Professor Ivan Shearer AM Rosamond CH Shepherd Dallas Smith and Robin Smith Elizabeth J Smith The Dick and Pip Smith Foundation Ann Somers Spectrum Consultancy Pty Ltd David Stanley and Anne Stanley John Stead Patricia Stephenson Keith F Steward Joy Stewart Nea Storey June Sutherland Susan Sutton Elinor Swan Robert Swift and Lynette Swift Neil Taylor and Annabelle Taylor Richard Telford and Sue Telford Graham Thomas and Pamela Thomas Jacqueline L Thomson OAM Phillip Thompson Helen Todd Helen Topor Helen Tuite Alison Tyler and Tony Tyler Janice C Tynan Norma D Uhlmann Niek Van Vucht and Jenny Van Vucht Sue Volker and Derek Volker Kenneth von Bibra and Berta von Bibra John O Ward Brenton Warren Gabrielle Watt Wendy Webb Alexandra Wedutenko Dr Julie West Rear Admiral Barrie West and Joceyln West J Wheatley and N Wheatley Barbara White and Brian White Dr Rosalie White Helen White Paul Whitfield Pauline Wicksteed George M Wilkins Muriel Wilkinson D Williams and M Williams Jean Williams and Alex Williams Jonathon Williams and Catherine Williams Joy Williams and Peter Eddington Andrew Williamson Shirley Wilmot Julia Wilson Robine Wilson and the late Donald Wilson Deborah Winkler Beverley Wood Bill Wood Donna Woodhill Simon Woolrych and Jenny Woolrych DL Wright Alan Wyburn
ARTONVIEW 47
Creative partnerships
T he art of law The National Gallery of Australia is excited to continue its collaboration with national law firm Maddocks, as the Gallery’s Legal Partner and as the Exhibition Partner of Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy. Art and Maddocks go hand in hand. According to Mark Henry, a partner at Maddocks, it’s important for them as a firm to engage in a partnership that develops and enriches the lives of those in its communities. Maddocks’ core values are associated with integrity, innovation, creativity and commitment to the community, and art correlates with each of these values. The Gallery provides Maddocks with a platform to connect with its people, clients and the community. Mark has always been a supporter of the arts and feels blessed to be involved in a firm where many share the same interest.
For Maddocks, art is integral to the way of life. It is a way of engaging with the contemporary world and challenging values and perceptions. Mark believes Arthur Boyd is one of Australia’s most significant artists, whose remarkable talent revealed great passion and psychological depths, and whose work covered a range of important topics from social and political concerns to the natural environment and mythology. The Gallery and Maddocks are proud of their continued association. Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy will be on show at the Gallery until 9 November.
If you are interested in creating ties with the Australian community through the arts, contact Claire Moore on +61 2 6240 6740 or claire.moore@nga.gov.au.
Arthur Boyd designer Tapeçarias de Portalegre manufacturer St Francis blowing Brother Masseo into the air 1973, dyed wool on cotton high-warp tapestry, 251 x 340 cm, purchased 1975 Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust
48 ARTONVIEW
Recent NGA titles
BALI: ISLAND OF THE GODS Robyn Maxwell 176 pages | 225 x 225 mm full colour | flexibound paperback ISBN 978 0642 33449 7
GARDEN OF THE EAST: PHOTOGRAPHY IN INDONESIA 1850s–1940s Gael Newton 176 pages | 225 x 225 mm full colour | hardback ISBN 978 0 642 33445 9
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JOURNEYS WEST 3 OCTOBER - 14 NOVEMBER 2014 35 artists come together to celebrate the experience of travelling west to Orange. Each artist takes as their subject their connections and responses to the landscape, objects and people they discover along the way. Tues-Sat, 10am-5pm, Sun 12noon-4pm, Free Orange Regional Gallery Enquiries 02 6393 8136 visit www.journeyswest.com.au
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EYE OF THE BEHOLDER The Art of Lucy Culliton survey exhibition
20 September - 30 November 2014 Lucy Culliton, Self with cock (detail), 2005 Oil on canvas, 75 x 60cm Private collection
Collection Highlights features over 300 of the National Gallery of Australia’s famous and much-loved works. Available at the NGA Shop and selected bookstores nationally.
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Partnering for productivity
Holder for ceremonial sword [kris] 19th century wood, paint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2013
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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Singaraja, Buleleng regency, Bali, Indonesia Winged lion [singa] 19th century National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1969
Movement down to a fine art Qantas Freight is Australia’s leading air cargo carrier with a proven track record since 1922. So priceless items from artwork to jewellery to currency are in safe hands with us. Through a tailored mix of scheduled and charter services, our specialised solutions include expert handling and high levels of monitoring for valuable, fragile or security sensitive pieces. Qantas Freight has partnered with The National Gallery of Australia for more than 20 years. As the Gallery’s official Freight Partner we have moved countless pieces of art that form part of the cultural heritage of Australia and the world. For enquiries about moving valuable cargo or about any of the products in the Q-GO range please email artmoves@qantas.com.au or visit qantasfreight.com
Like art, law can be open to interpretation. It can be complex, detailed, provocative. Law can be simple. Our lawyers are well versed in the art of law, offering advice across government, infrastructure and services that reflect your needs. Maddocks is proud to be the official legal partner of Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia.
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call for entries important fine art + aboriginal and oceanic art auctions t melbourne t november 2014 for appraisals, please contact: Sydney t 02 9287 0600 Damian Hackett Henry Mulholland Melbourne t 03 9865 6333 Chris Deutscher Crispin Gutteridge info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com
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Stay in the heart of the city with Novotel Canberra and be inspired by Floriade, Australia’s celebration of spring, with this year’s theme, Passion, from 13 September to 12 October 2014. Novotel Canberra - proud supporter of Floriade 2014 65 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra. Tel. 02 6245 5000 | novotelcanberra.com.au
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Showing Now: Major works by Arthur Boyd for sale at Savill Galleries, 156 Hargarve St, Paddington NSW 2021
Telephone 02 9327 8311
www.savill.com.au
This astonishing collection of works for sale will include early oils from 1938 together with classic paintings from his Shoalhaven and Wimmera series along with strong figurative works. View Now!
William Robinson ‘Goomoolahra with Sunlit Rain’(1999)
‘Jonah Outside the City’ (1950-1952)
‘Jonah Outside the City’ is one of Boyd’s rare early ceramic paintings. Boyd’s Ceramics exude a brilliance of colour similar to stained glass and are jewel like. Also included is this serene ‘Bride in Landscape’ showing the artists progression from his early Bride series. ‘Bride in Landscape’ (circa 1967)
‘Shoalhaven with Flying Bird’ (circa 1980)
‘Waterhole with Sheep’ painted circa 1950, is one of Arthur Boyd’s early Wimmera paintings. This major painting featured on the cover of the Encyclopedia of Australian Art also has an impeccable provenance. Illustrated below right, ‘Shoalhaven’ (circa 1978), was originally exhibited at the Blue Boy Gallery in Melbourne and has great clarity.
‘Shoalhaven’ (circa 1978)
‘Waterhole with Sheep’ (circa 1950)
Open: Tuesday to Friday 10 - 6 Saturday 11 - 5 Tel: 02 9327 8311 www.savill.com.au 156 Hargarve Street, Paddington NSW 2021
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Arthur Boyd Nude with beast II 1961–62 (detail) oil on composition board National Gallery of Australia, Canberra The Arthur Boyd gift 1975 Reproduced with permission of Bundanon Trust