Opens 9 December ISSN 1323-4552 9 771323 455006
88 >
Opens 9 December Tickets on sale Members receive a GoldenTicket
Give the gift of NGA membership to your loved ones this season. All new members receive a Golden Ticket, giving them unlimited and express access to Versailles: Treasures from the Palace. +61 (0)2 6240 6528 nga.gov.au/members
VOGUE LIVING
The Art Issue
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
Artists in residence
Dale Frank Martha Sturdy Robert Kelly Jean Cocteau PATRIZIA MOROSO
DINOSAUR DESIGNS
Celebrates 30 years
VERSAILLES Comes to Australia
vogueliving.com.au
Remembering
GEORGE FREEDMAN
VLI1116p001 1
ON SALE NOW
30/09/2016 1:33 pm
Come and join in the fun with a brand new interactive space for the young at heart. Get the kids involved in magical art experiences and check out awesome activities all year round.
10.00am–5.00pm daily | Free Ground floor National Gallery of Australia NGA Play is a NGA Betty Churcher Art Education and Access Program made possible with the support of Tim Fairfax AC.
NGA CANBERRA Versailles: Treasures from the Palace Opens 9 December From the court of the Sun King Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles. Adult $27.00 | Children 16 and under free Concession $25.00 | Member $20.00 Premium tickets also available Book now at ticketek.com or 1300 795 012 Mud men: Ramesh Nithiyendran Ends 26 February 2017 One of Australia’s most provocative and influential artists. Artists of the Great War Ends June 2017 Powerful allegories of postwar America undergoing seismic social change. Frank Stella Ends 16 July 2017 Visually powerful works that take printmaking to new levels. New and coming to the collection galleries this summer Rose Nolan, Australian Geometric Abstraction, contemporary Asian art, Japanese ceramics, Australian Geometric Abstraction, Japanese ceramics
NGA ELSEWHERE Light moves Ends 11 February @ Geraldton Regional Art Gallery Opens 18 February @ Bunbury Regional Art Galleries A selection of video art since its early days in the 1960s to now. Max and Olive 17 December – 5 February @ Hazelhurst Regional Gallery The exceptional partnership between Olive Cotton and Max Dupain. Resolution Opens 24 March @ Perc Tucker Regional Gallery Contemporary Indigenous Australian photomedia. Abstraction Opens 25 February @ Geelong Gallery Celebrating Australian women abstract artists throughout the 20th century to today. Silver and gold Opens 4 February @ Western Australian Museum— Kalgoorlie-Boulder Unique Australian silver and gold objects from 1850 to 1910.
4 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Summer 2016
12
24
30
40
50
56
7
Director’s word
8
News and review
17
Behind the scenes
18
Shared experience
20
In brief Henri Matisse, David Hockney, Frank Stella, Tolai money ring, Robert Dowling, John Webber in the Pacific
24
Australian Abstraction Lara Nicholls tells
40
Artists of the Great War Emma Kindred illuminates the history of Australian artists who supported hospital workers during the war
46
Diary of an object Crispin Howarth reveals the extraordinary history of the NGA’s Fellows collection of Trobriand Islander art
50
Profiles Rose Nolan, Yvonne Audette
56
Sharing our vision
the story of the rise of a bold new style of abstraction in Australia in the 1960s 30
Versailles Lucina Ward introduces some of Versailles’s royal family through their portraits in the NGA’s summer blockbuster Versailles
Opposite: Qianlong-period China (1736–1795), Slodtz brothers (designers) Perfume fountain from the wardrobe of Louis XV at Versailles c 1743, porcelain with crackle glaze, gold-plated bronze base and mount. Palace of Versailles. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 5
Issue no 88 | Summer 2016 NGA Front cover: Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the elder The Duke of Penthièvre and his family c 1768 (detail), oil on canvas. . Palace of Versailles. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin Back cover: The Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. © Jose Ignacio Soto/Shutterstock.com Above: Artists of the Great War at the NGA, Canberra, until June 2016. Editor Eric Meredith Designer Kristin Thomas Proofreader Meredith McKendry Photographers Sam Birch, Alanna Bishop, Eleni Kypridis, Lisa Mattiazzi, John Tassie, Dominic Thomas Pre-press Michael Tonna Printing CanPrint, Canberra NGA contributors
6 Artonview 88 | Curator, Summer 2016Painting Deborah Hart, Senior Australian and Sculpture
Crispin Howarth, Curator, Pacific Arts Emma Kindred, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Pre-1920 Lara Nicholls, Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Lucina Ward, Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture Editorial artonview.editor@nga.gov.au Advertising artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au Reproductions copyright@nga.gov.au Back issues nga.gov.au/artonview National Gallery of Australia PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au Membership nga.gov.au/members | 1800 020 068 Artonview is free with membership, which comes with additional perks such as reciprocal benefits at art institutions nationally.
Donations +61 (0)2 6240 6691 Sponsorship +61 (0)2 6240 6740 The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is a not-for-profit entity Many acquisitions, exhibitions and programs are made possible through private and corporate supporters. © National Galley of Australia Published quarterly. Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders but omissions may occur. Views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the NGA. Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. ISSN 1323‑4552 Printed on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks FSC-C017269 | PEFC/21-31-41
Director’s word Gerard Vaughan
It is now only a matter of days until Versailles: Treasures from the Palace opens—when you will have a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see astonishing paintings and objects from Versailles exclusively in Canberra. Paintings, sculpture and objects of luxury will trace fashions and styles over the reigns of three kings, their queens and their mistresses, and celebrate the variety and splendour of the palace without trying to recreate it. The exhibition’s refined design will hint at the grandeur of the Ancien Regime and Europe’s most opulent palace, its treasures and the culture and lifestyles of its residents. And if you haven’t been to Versailles, you’ll want to go after this beautiful introduction. The catalogue is another matter entirely—it is pure gold—an indulgent and exquisite object in itself and a fitting package for the lavish illustrations of the show’s treasures and the valuable insights found within. A must for any bookshelf or coffee table. If you want the perfect Christmas gift for anyone—art lover or not—this sumptuous book is it! NGA Play, our free, fun-filled new family activity space, is taking shape as I write and will be open by the time you read this. Although the space will be refitted to reflect our major exhibition at any given time, its inaugural theme is Versailles. It will give children the opportunity to let off steam before they explore the exhibition with their family and friends or to release their pent-up creative energies afterward with the many art activities available. Over the next four months, little kings and queens and courtiers can have their pictures taken as Louis XIV or as Marie-Antoinette before jetting down slides into the ‘garden’ below and venturing into a Hall of Mirrors scaled just for them. We have NGA Council member and philanthropist Tim Fairfax AC to thank for this new creative space. His generosity in support of art education—and in recognition of former NGA director Betty Churcher’s particular interest in this area—will help us to make art all the more fun and accessible for new generations of children to come. There has also never been a better time than now to be a member of the NGA. Not only is Versailles, for many Australians, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience some of the marvels of Europe’s most extravagant palace but members will also receive a Golden Ticket, giving them unlimited express access to the exhibition when they purchase just a single entry. New members, too, will receive a free Golden Ticket when they join, so we expect to see many of you returning more than once between now and 17 April. Alongside the other benefits on offer to members, such as access to the very attractive Members Lounge and free issues of Artonview, this is a great opportunity to get behind a treasured national institution that is as much admired abroad, for its collections and museological culture, as it is by hundreds of thousands of Australians each year. This issue of our magazine not only presents the splendour of Versailles and its famous and infamous personalities but also underscores our
many other activities, large and small. I’d like to draw attention to page 12, in particular, which highlights a recent and important gift from Arthur Streeton’s descendants, Oliver Streeton and his daughter Olivia. The Papers of the Streeton family include many fascinating documents, such as the artist’s unpublished memoir and newspaper clippings, as well as paraphernalia such as shirts he wore and the easels and paintbrushes he used. I’m reminded that our ambitious fundraising efforts for this year’s Members Acquisition Fund are to assist the acquisition of Streeton’s Ariadne 1895. As I’ve said before, I regard it as a national picture, and one worthy of our attention and admiration. It’s currently on loan for Australia’s Impressionists at the National Gallery, London, but will soon return home to take pride of place on our walls. It is pleasing that the London National Gallery has chosen Ariadne as the key image for promoting the exhibition. We continue to plan, develop and present new and engaging work by contemporary artists as well as displays that illuminate transformative moments in our rich cultural and artistic history. A new showing of our exceptional collection of Australian Geometric and Hard-Edge Abstraction, for instance, reminds us of a time when contemporary art was being purposefully pursued for Australia’s yet-to-be-realised national gallery in Canberra, while the recently acquired conceptual works of Rose Nolan now on display in our Australian galleries are testament to the NGA’s renewed vigour to present the visions and voices of today’s generations. Artists of the Great War, which opened in October, has proved extremely popular. The exhibition’s curator David Hansen spoke with eloquence and great insight to a packed room on the opening weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed Ross McMullin’s talk on Will Dyson, ‘Australia’s radical genius’, a few days later. Two ANU students, who have helped behind the scenes as part of a learning-by-practice initiative between the NGA and ANU, also presented floortalks to appreciative audiences—one of which celebrated Dyson and the ANZAC legend on Remembrance Day. It was a great example of collaboration with the ANU, giving students in art history and curatorship practical experience working in an art museum. As another year draws to a close, I would like to thank you, our dedicated members, for your continued support of the NGA. Your passion for the visual arts and what we do here strengthens us. We will be working hard to grow our membership in 2017, I encourage you to share your passion with friends and family and to enlist their support for the visual arts as members of the NGA. With your help, and with the support of private and corporate benefactors (such as those thanked on pages 56–9), we will be able to continue bringing you singular exhibitions and events such as Versailles and its associated program of lectures, workshops, music and dance. I wish everyone a happy and joyful festive season. Please enjoy our Versailles exhibition and all the activities around it. We look forward to seeing you here often next year.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 7
News and review
Get your Golden Ticket The NGA recently announced its very special members offer of a Golden Ticket granting unlimited entry to this year’s summer blockbuster Versailles: Treasures from the Palace. Fortunately, you don’t have to search countless chocolate bars to get one because the NGA is giving them out to all new members and to every existing member who buys a single entry to the exhibition. With your Golden Ticket, you can come as many times as you like to fully explore the treasures that have come directly to Canberra from Versailles. It also means you can skip the queues, giving you more time to delve deeper into the finer details of the works and objects on show exclusively at the NGA. What better way to spend the holiday season! Don’t forget, too, to stop into the Members Lounge when you visit to collect your members tote bag in which you can carry the exquisitely produced Versailles catalogue and the other treasures you find in the NGA Shop. On the bag is an elegant image of Madame de Pompadour’s hand holding a sprig of jasmine, a symbol of affection that also means ‘a gift’, making it an ideal offering from the NGA to its members. Spaces are still available for the curator’s dinner for members on 24 February, which will delight with a musical interlude by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. And look out for the many other programs associated with Versailles. The NGA wishes you all a safe and happy festive season, and we look forward to seeing you over summer and throughout 2017. To become a member now call +61 (0)2 6240 6528 or go to nga.gov.au/members.
8 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
disgraced fashion designer John Galliano’s ‘Autumn/Winter 2000–01’ collection—spotted on the cover of Vogue, sparked her interest in a sartorial study of the French queen’s political and personal life. Over the next eleven chapters, Weber then charts the rise and fall of the young Austrian princess as she makes her way to Versailles and gradually becomes the most hated woman in France. Beginning with the young princess’s struggle to survive at the French court, Weber describes the twelve-foot-wide hoop skirts, high heels and whalebone corsets so tight they crushed the fifteen-year-old’s chest. Marie-Antoinette, however, soon rebelled against these strict traditions of royal glamour, drawing the first of many negative remarks. Her next fashion statements cemented her as a fashion leader but
Queen of Fashion Bookshelves are littered with biographies of the infamous and decadent Queen of France MarieAntoinette and many other women connected to the Bourbon kings. Women, it seems, although relatively powerless during the Ancien Régime, are incredibly popular with contemporary readers. Books range from light period novels to biographies of varying seriousness, some very scholarly, others entirely frivolous. Among the more enlightening volumes are Antonia Fraser’s Love and Louis XIV and MarieAntoinette: a journey. Although their covers suggest the contents of a Jackie Collins novel, Fraser is an excellent biographer and both books are riveting reading about the women of Versailles. In 1954, novelist Nancy Mitford also turned her hand to the ladies of the period with a book devoted to Louis XV’s powerful mistress Madame de Pompadour. Unlike these studies, however, Queen of Fashion’s author Caroline Weber approaches her subject from a different and intriguing angle. Her starting point is clothes. In the book’s introduction, Weber outlines how a contemporary dress called the ‘Marie-Antoinette dress’—by the now
also drew increasing criticism from both the courtiers at the palace and the people of France. Her poufs (towering wigs fitted with topical references celebrating events of the period) and conversely simple white muslin dresses and shepherdess gowns (immortalised in portraits by her favoured artist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun) became fodder for in the French press and outraged the public. Her choice of attire not only blurred social hierarchies but also, according to Weber, led to her being ‘blamed for leading women into overspending, promiscuity and prostitution’. The charges of both adultery and lesbianism were constantly levelled at her as she fell further and further from grace. The queen spent the last and most harrowing phase of life in gaol in Paris, where she again made bold sartorial choices, flirting briefly with the revolutionary colour scheme of red, white and blue before abandoning it in favour of black mourning dress after her husband Louis XVI’s execution. During her trial, she presented a figure of such pity in what was dubbed the ‘Widow Capet’ that her prosecutors forbade her from wearing it to the gallows. Instead, in what Weber describes as ‘the most brilliant fashion statement of her career’, she arrived in a pristine white dress. This book mixes elements of fun with a serious scholarly study, and Weber not only evokes the period through her descriptions of clothes and events but also manages to humanise the French queen. Among the blur of Marie-Antoinette biographies, this book stands out from the crowd—much like the queen herself did over two and a half centuries ago. Simeran Maxwell, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
NGA Play Visit our grand interactive Versailles-themed space for kids and families this summer. Step into the shoes of kings and queens like Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette or experience life as a gilder, gardener, weaver or jeweller of the French court. With a program of scheduled activity during the exhibition, NGA Play ignites the senses with tactile gardens, fountains and a life-size ‘Hall of Mirrors’, as well as digital and mechanical recreations of the structures of Versailles. NGA Play is free for all and open every day with no ticket bookings required. Kids under 16 are also free to the exhibition Versailles: Treasures from the Palace when accompanied by an adult. For the diary: ‘Tales from the Palace’, tales of wonder and adventure inspired by Versailles and the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, Wednesdays in January 10.30–11.30am
New books for Christmas Celebrating the NGA’s summer blockbuster exhibition, the lavishly illustrated Versailles: Treasures from the Palace captures the opulence and grandeur of France’s Palace of Versailles. More than 130 paintings, intricate tapestries, gilded furniture, monumental statues and personal items from Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette bring to life the reigns of three kings, their queens and mistresses. For the kids, the bilingual FrenchEnglish Through the palace keyhole is beautifully illustrated with works of art and scenes from Versailles. Children will love the rhyming story as they peer through cutout keyholes onto the next scene or palace treasure to discover. Frank Stella: The Kenneth Tyler Print Collection reveals the great twentieth-century artist’s experiments in print and his work with master printer Ken Tyler. Their ambitious print partnership spanned three decades, and the visually powerful prints featured in this publication represent the pinnacle of their collaborative endeavours. Above: New books from the NGA, available at the NGA Shop or shop.nga.gov.au. Opposite: The NGA Members Golden Ticket to Versailles; Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion.
Versailles: Treasures from the Palace $49.95 Through the palace keyhole $19.95 Frank Stella: The Kenneth Tyler Print Collection $39.95
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 9
News and review
Defying Empire Identity is central to Indigenous Australians. It encompasses more than our skin colour, connections to Country and knowledge of and access to cultural lore. It is our very identity that marked us for categorisation, regulation and restriction under state and territory law since first contact. In the archives, Aboriginal people have been documented as being in ‘defiance of the Empire’ due to cultural misunderstandings and their perceived behaviour and unwillingness to adapt to the new colonies. As a consequence, many policies of integration and assimilation were developed and enforced. Until the 1967 Referendum, there was no standard regulating law for Indigenous people across the country, although citizenship and voting rights had already been granted in most states and territories. The referendum marked a significant change in Australian governance with an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote by the Australian people enabling Indigenous people to be counted on the Australian census. In practice, this meant that Aboriginal people with families across state lines were officially governed by the same laws as all other people in Australia, a watershed moment in Australia’s history. To commemorate this pivotal event, the NGA has invited thirty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to explore their historical and contemporary narrative with pride, determination, resistance and recognition of their identity and what that means in contemporary society. The third National Indigenous Arts Triennial, Defying Empire, will celebrate the resilience of Indigenous peoples since first contact with the British Empire and mark the ongoing activism for recognition since the 1967 Referendum. Tina Baum, Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Defying Empire @ NGA, Canberra, opens 27 May 2017 Triennial artists: Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Sebastian Arrow, Daniel Boyd, Maree Clarke, Megan Cope, Brenda L Croft, Karla Dickens, Blak Douglas, Fiona Foley, Julie Gough, Lola Greeno, Dale Harding, Sandra Hill, Jonathan Jones, Ken Ray, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Nonggirrnga Marawili, Archie Moore, Laurie Nona, Rusty Peters, Reko Rennie, Brian Robinson, Yhonnie Scarce, Ken Thaiday Sr, Judy Watson, Vicki West, Jason Wing, Pedro Wonaeamirri
10 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver Emerging in the early 1980s, when many artists were turning to installation, video and other ephemeral art forms, Australian sculptor Bronwyn Oliver resolutely pursued making complex and substantial works in a variety of materials— eventually, exclusively in metal. The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver at the Tarrawarra Museum of Art is the first comprehensive survey of fifty of her key works, from the mid 1980s to her final solo exhibition in 2006, revealing her lyrical sensibility and inventiveness. Having attained a Masters degree at Chelsea School of Art in 1983, Oliver witnessed the nascent years of the ‘New British Sculpture’ and developed an original, distinctive and enduring vocabulary that expressed her fascination with inner life and the language of form. She employs what appear to be archetypal forms such as shells, spirals, circles and spheres, the delicate shapes of which trace shadows that become spectral drawings on the gallery wall, multiplying the physicality of the works.
As writer Hannah Fink memorably observed in 2006, ‘Bronwyn Oliver had that rarest of all skills: she knew how to create beauty’. This exhibition is a tribute to that power and to an artist who tenaciously followed the beguiling demands of her chosen materials. The sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver @ Tarrawarra Museum of Art, until 5 February 2017
Nude Live, world premiere A unique collaboration between the Sydney Dance Company and Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with the Sydney Festival, Nude Live will take you on a journey into an intimate world of art and dance. Witness dancers, their bodies and souls bared, as they respond to one of art’s greatest subjects, the unclothed human body. ‘We all respond strongly to images of the unclothed body because they address issues at the heart of who we are as humans—issues of love, desire, mortality, truth and power’, says Justin Paton, Head Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. With highly physical and emotionally charged choreography by Rafael Bonachela, this special performance examines the place of the nude in art, exploring beauty and desire, eroticism and tenderness as well as scandal. Dancers will respond to paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud, Henri Matisse and Louise Bourgeois currently on show in the exhibition Nude: art from the Tate collection, featuring more than a hundred powerful works of art spanning two centuries. Bonachela was born in Barcelona, where he began his early dance training before moving to London. He joined the legendary Rambert Dance Company in 1992, where he remained as a dancer
and associate choreographer until 2006, at which time he successfully set up the Bonachela Dance Company. He premiered his first full-length production, 360°, for Sydney Dance Company in 2008 and, less than six months later, was appointed their Artistic Director, making headlines around the dance world.
Above: Karla Dickens (Wiradjuri people) Assimilated Warriors 2014, various mediums. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016 Below: Nude Live. Photo: Peter Greig Opposite: Bronwyn Olive Spiral I 1988, copper, lead. © Estate of Bronwyn Oliver. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Nude Live @ Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney 7–10, 15–17, 22–23 January 2017, 6.00 & 7.30 pm sydneyfestival.org.au/nude Nude: art from the Tate collection @ Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, until 5 February 2017
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 11
News and review
Family archive reveals great Australian Impressionist
Silver and gold A new touring exhibition of rare nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian silver and gold objects from the national collection celebrates the important role that Australia’s early makers played in civic, church and community life and illustrates compelling narratives of Australian social and commercial history. Presentation, ceremonial and testimonial pieces, jewellery and tableware marked significant personal, community and professional milestones or symbolised individual prosperity and artistic accomplishment. Many were also personalised with engraved inscriptions, providing further insight into family, social and business relationships of the time. Goldfields jewellery incorporated mining tools as decorative elements and were fashionable emblems of wealth and success during the Gold Rush period, while objects made toward the latter part of the nineteenth century can be viewed as documents of nationalist fervour, embodying the idea of nation building and celebrating Australia’s unique flora and fauna. Many of the objects in Silver and gold were recently acquired from John Houstone, a significant collector, and most have never been publicly exhibited until now. The Western
12 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Australian Museum—Kalgoorlie-Boulder, home to the rich history of the Eastern Goldfields and the city’s mining heritage, makes for a fitting first venue for the exhibition’s nine-venue national tour over two years. Silver and gold @ Western Australian Museum— Kalgoorlie-Boulder 4 February – 30 April 2017
Above: Locket c 1860, gold, gold-bearing quartz nuggets, paper. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014 Top: Arthur Streeton, Little Sirius Cove, Sydney, c 1893. MS 114 Papers of the Streeton Family (NGA Research Library and Archives)
When the NGA received three chests containing the papers of Oliver Streeton, donated by the Streeton family, there was a palpable sense of anticipation as to what we might find out about the much-loved Australian Impressionist Arthur Streeton. The lifting of the first lid hinted at all the possibilities, the multiple layers of meaning and simple discoveries that lead to a greater understanding of an artist’s world. In a wonderful collaborative effort between Oliver’s daughter Olivia and the NGA’s archivists, curators, conservators and registrars, as well as clever interns from the Australian National University, the archive is being processed, housed, described and digitised to become an integral resource for the Arthur Streeton Project. A key part of the project is the production of an online illustrated catalogue of Streeton’s oeuvre, which will be made available to the public through the NGA’s website. Among the treasure trove of precious materials in the archive are shirts worn by Arthur Streeton, easels and paintbrushes, newspaper articles and an unpublished memoire penned by the artist. The archive also contains thousands of slides, which are now in the process of being digitised. One happy discovery among the group of slides was a photograph taken while Streeton was painting at Little Sirius Cove in Sydney around 1893. This image gives us that wonderful sense of an artist’s life and allows us, more specifically, to experience the time he spent painting on the beach, using a rock as a stool and a branch as an easel. It was his love of Sydney Harbour that saw Streeton reimagine the mythic figure of Ariadne on an Australian shore. Ariadne 1895, the focus of this year’s Members Acquisition Fund, is now on display with ten other works from the NGA at the National Gallery, London as part of their exhibition Australia’s Impressionists, which is on show for new audiences to discover until 26 March 2017. Peta Jane Blessing, Archivist, and Emma Kindred, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Pre-1920 Members Acquisition Fund 2016–17 To donate toward the acquisition of Streeton’s Ariadne for the national collection, contact us on (02) 6240 6408 or via foundation@nga.gov.au.
Members Acquisition Fund Ariadne is arguably Arthur Streeton’s finest allegorical painting capturing the brilliance of Australia’s coastline. I regard it as a national picture. Gerard Vaughan, NGA Director
Help shape our stories by donating to the acquisition of this remarkable painting by seminal Australian Impressionist painter Arthur Streeton. Give now by contacting us on (02) 6240 6408 or via foundation@nga.gov.au Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible
nga.gov.au/giving
Arthur Streeton Ariadne 1895, oil on wood panel
14 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
THE DESIGNER WITH THE MIDAS TOUCH Stuart Devlin AO CMG is widely regarded as Australia’s pre-eminent gold and silversmith of our time — the designer with the Midas touch. His glittering career began as the designer of our nation’s original decimal coins. Now the Royal Australian Mint proudly presents The Designer with the Midas Touch, an exhibition honouring five decades of Devlin’s masterly work. From the distinctive coins that made his name, to his acclaimed international work, including designing and creating precious objects as Goldsmith and Jeweller to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Brimming with unparalleled pieces from Devlin’s private collection and behind-the-scenes rarities, this is a must-see exhibition for anyone who appreciates fine art, design or numismatics.
Exhibition from 16 December 2016 Royal Australian Mint, Canberra Free Admission
www.ramint.gov.au
16 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Behind the scenes
Prepared for London Tom Roberts’s Allegro con brio, Bourke Street west c 1885–86 and 1890 is inspected by conservation staff in preparation for a loan to the National Gallery, London. It is among ten of the NGA’s Australian Impressionist treasures that recently made the trip to England for a major showing of works by Roberts, Charles Conder, John Russell and Arthur Streeton. The exhibition, which opened on 7 December, was brought about by popular demand, and the NGA is proud to support it through a significant loan from our national collection.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 17
Shared experience
ACT High Schools Art Project 2016 Recently, the National Gallery of Australia partnered with the National Portrait Gallery, the YWCA and youth workers from Lanyon Community Centre and Belconnen Community Service to deliver the ACT High Schools Art Project, an eight-week program for high school students. The students, who came from Melba Copland Secondary School and Lanyon High School, engaged in discussion-based tours and art-making sessions responding to works of art. This was the second year the NGA has been part of the project, and there were great outcomes for everyone involved. We asked youth worker Jess Johnson, who accompanied the students from Melba Copland Secondary School, to tell us a little about her experience and the students’ responses: I am part of the Youth Engagement Program at Belconnen Community Service. My team and I work with young people aged twelve to twenty-five who would like some extra support to increase their resilience or to develop new skills to help them more actively engage in their lives and communities. Personally, I am always intrigued by the different ways people think about and relate to art, especially young people, and this program made me realise what a truly great tool art can be for exploring your inner thoughts and feelings in an abstract and non-threatening way. (I was even motivated to look back at some of the different art pieces I’ve created over the years and to reflect on what was happening for me at that time.) One of the best parts of the program was the way young people were encouraged to think about art. The facilitators opened ways for in-depth discussion and encouraged the group to really think about what the artist was trying to convey. Initially, some of the students struggled to understand that there is more to a work of art than meets the eye. Some were very definite about their own interpretations. However, after listening to the ideas of others and having the NGA and NPG staff share some history about the artists, students began to develop more of an open mind about art and its use for self-expression. Over the course of the program, I witnessed a positive change in the students’ attitudes and curiosity. The more we explored the different works of art, the more comfortable they became expressing themselves and challenging their own ideas. It was hard to get them to leave in the end (they all wanted to keep exploring!), but, when they did I felt it was with a sense of accomplishment. Whether this was from having challenged their own ideas, having related to the works of art, or artists who created them, or from having had the opportunity to express themselves by trying out different art mediums, whatever it was, they left with high spirits and a sense of self-worth. Certainly, the students got to see and explore art that they may never have known existed or that they would’ve simply walked right past on any other day. The works chosen by the NGA and NPG were the perfect fit and their knowledge of the artists and the history surrounding the works encouraged the students to explore concepts that they would normally not be exposed to. Jess Johnson, youth worker
Students visit the National Portrait Gallery (this page) and National Gallery of Australia (opposite) for tours and activities as part of the ACT High Schools Art Project 2016.
18 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
In brief
The song of the nightingale Based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, the 1920 Ballets Russes production Le chant du rossignol (The song of the nightingale) was adapted from Igor Stravinsky’s opera Le rossignol, produced by Ballets Russes founder Serge Diaghilev in 1914. The opera’s opulent orientalist stage set and costumes designed by Alexandre Benois, however, did not remain in Diaghilev’s possession after the First World War, prompting him to commission new designs for the ballet. He had worked successfully with Pablo Picasso and André Derain in the past and hoped again to find another major artist. So, in 1919, he visited Henri Matisse and was delighted to learn that the artist was not only an admirer of the work of Ballets Russes choreographer Léonide Massine but also a collector of exotic birds. A perfect fit for Le chant du rossignol. Matisse had no previous theatre experience but took the commission with enthusiasm. He was, however, determined to produce a design that was different from the high-keyed exoticism associated with previous Ballets Russes productions. His refined costumes
Colour at your fingertip Referring to his use of an iPad to create landscapes in a way he could not before, Britishborn artist David Hockney recently commented in the New York Times Style Magazine that ‘You can set up a palette very, very quickly indeed—quicker than any other medium … It’s also an endless sheet of paper, and the color is literally at your fingertip’. Over his long career, Hockney has been ever keen to embrace new mediums, methods and technologies, and the iPad has provided a great freedom for creating compositions. He uses the touchscreen app Brushes to compose his motifs directly in the landscape, en plein air, without the limitations of mediums that are more susceptible to the elements. The app also allows him to draw in layers and to go back and forth in the process to refine his imagery.
20 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
were based on traditional Ming court dress in colour orchestrations derived from Chinese paintings, ceramics and lacquer, and they created the visual impact of a scroll painting when seen en masse. One of a group of Chinese warrior costumes designed for the ballet and inspired by Chinese and Tibetan sculptures of warrior figures was recently purchased by the NGA with the assistance of the Neilson Foundation. It has a thickly padded tunic of white felt and brown velvet with metallic fabric and gilded metal appliqués to give the impression of armour, although it is tailored to allow for the energetic choreography for which the Ballets Russes was known. When the dancers were lined up, the turquoise silk of their costumes fluttered like ribbons across the stage, while their tunics created a graphic image of rippling patterns. The production premiered on 2 February 1920 at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra in Paris, and this costume still bears the marks, tears, fabric degradations and stains of use. It will be conserved and restored by the NGA’s exceptional textile conservators to enable it to take its place among the NGA’s exquisite suite of costumes from this most elegant of the Ballets Russes productions. Dr Robert Bell AM, Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design
Recently acquired by the NGA, Yosemite II, October 5th 2011 is a brilliant example of Hockney’s work on an iPad. The result, one of immediacy, is a vibrant and textured drawing that is then finished on a computer, enlarged through a specialised proprietary process and printed on an eight-colour printer. A sense of the grandeur of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, its height and scale, is captured in a remarkable way, along with atmospheric skies and richly textured flora and foreground—a marriage of great technical innovation, Cubism and Chinese scroll painting. Dr Jane Kinsman, Senior Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books For the diary: Drawsome, iPads drawing workshop, Sunday 19 February, 2.00 pm
Stella’s Circuits series Frank Stella’s Circuits series 1982–84 represents a dramatic shift in his attitude toward printmaking. While working on a series of sculptural ‘relief paintings’ (painted configurations of laser-cut metal shapes), also titled ‘Circuits’, the idea came to him that the remnants from his sculptural work could be rolled with ink and used for relief printing. Up until this point, he had taken to printmaking rather reluctantly and only to refigure his earlier paintings. Stella noticed that the outlines of the different shapes cut from sheet metal had been incised deep into the plywood backing-boards and was struck by the richly layered network of lines and curved shapes traced into the wood—both series are named for the way the shapes in the works reference the curvature of speedways. After this epiphany, it was his print practice that informed his work in other media, with his ambitious and inventive projects pushing printmaking beyond its boundaries.
Assisted by master printer Kenneth Tyler, Stella experimented wildly on the printed series and in tandem with his developing relief paintings. By layering woodblocks and collaging them with etched metal plates, then printing onto specially crafted, hand-dyed sheets of oversize paper, the results were groundbreaking for their complexity, scale and bold colour. As Stella reflected in a 1995 lecture, later published in Frank Stella at Tyler Graphics, the Circuits series revolutionised his art making, triggering ‘a tremendous feeling of freedom … that I didn’t have to make prints after the paintings’. The NGA holds the most comprehensive collection of Stella’s innovations in print, with over 1100 of his prints, experimental proofs and matrices, including more than 120 related to the Circuits series. Some of these treasures are on display now in Frank Stella: the Kenneth Tyler print collection. Alice Desmond, Curatorial Assistant, Kenneth Tyler Collection
Above, clockwise from top left: Frank Stella Pergusa three 1983, from the series Circuits 1982–84, colour relief and woodcut; Proofing Stella’s Imola five II, Tyler Graphics Ltd, Bedford Village, New York, 1983. Photo: Kenneth Tyler; Block VII and Block VIII 1981, laser-cut plywood. Gifts of Kenneth Tyler, 2002 Opposite, from top: Henri Matisse Costume for a warrior from the Ballets Russes production of ‘Le chant du rossignol’ 1920, painted felt, velvet, cotton, gold embroidery. Purchased with the assistance of the Neilson Foundation, 2016; David Hockney Yosemite II, October 5th 2011 2011, ipad drawing printed on four sheets of paper, mounted on four sheets of Dibond. The Poynton Bequest, 2016 All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Frank Stella @ NGA, Canberra, until July 2017
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 21
In brief
Big money The majority of the NGA’s Pacific art collection comes from Papua New Guinea, and the newly reinstalled Melanesian gallery reflects this with arts from several of Papua’s provinces, especially New Britain and New Ireland. The arts produced in this region are characterised by arresting and radically inventive sculptural forms executed with a wide array of materials found in the environment, including feathers, shells and stones. These works were created for traditional use, for community purposes better known today as kastom. While some kastom practices ceased with the growth of globalisation during the twentieth century, others have continued to be part of the country’s social and cultural fabric. The tutuna (money ring), for instance, is the largest and most specular form of currency in use today and exemplifies the continuing importance of kastom shell wealth for the Tolai people. It represents a lifetime of saving, and only the wealthy and most entrepreneurial can ever hope to own one. The tutuna from the national collection, one of eight works now on display in the NGA’s Melanesian gallery for the very first time, was commissioned by Vin Tata Lote of Kokopo in East New Britain for a public display of wealth at a dawn ceremony called ‘Kinavai’. An important part of Kinavai is the cutting of the money ring and distribution of param (arm-
22 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
span lengths of cane threaded with tiny shells) to other important community members, and it is through this ceremony that the giver gains more status and respect from his community. The NGA’s tutuna comprises one thousand of these delicately threaded param lengths, which is approximately two hundred thousand tiny nassa shells collected from sea snails. Crispin Howarth, Curator, Pacific Arts
Above: Crispin Howarth with Tutuna (Money ring) 2010 in the Melanesian gallery, NGA, Canberra, October 2016. Below: Robert Dowling Jane Sceales with daughters, Mary Jane and Hilda c 1856, oil on canvas. Purchased 2016. Acquired through the family of Ella Lewis, granddaughter of Jane Hood (nee Sceales); Mrs Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station 1856, oil on canvas mounted on plywood. Founding Donor Fund, 1984
Below: Raharuhi Rukupo’s Ancestor figure 1820–42 with John Webber’s Portrait of Poedua, daughter of Orio, chief of Ulietea, Society Islands c 1782–85 and A chief of the Sandwich Islands 1787 in the Polynesian gallery at the NGA, Canberra, October 2016. All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Lost companion A previously unknown work by Australian colonial artist Robert Dowling, Jane Sceales with daughters, Mary Jane and Hilda c 1856, was recently acquired by the NGA and is now hung alongside its companion piece, Mrs Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station 1856. In both finely rendered portraits, Jane Sceales is painted in full mourning black against the backdrop of her pastoral property Merrang in Victoria’s Western District. Following the death of her husband Adolphus, the young widow commissioned the portraits from Dowling, who was staying at the neighbouring property of Minjah. In the newly acquired work, we see Jane sitting on a grassy slope, flanked by her two daughters and an improbably large hound—a family in mourning. Depictions of mourning dress are rare in Australian colonial art, but here we have two very fine examples. The portrait of Jane with her daughters, Mary Jane and Hilda, in particular, is a close study of costume and accessory. Across the rich black of Jane’s dress, hints of teal emerge from the tartan pattern of a sheer shawl. Having immigrated to Australia from Scotland in 1848, she also wears traditional mourning tartan as a decorative bow at the neck, fastened with a jet brooch. The brooch and paired bracelet reflect the popularity of jet jewellery from the mid nineteenth century, encouraged by Queen Victoria, who wore Whitby jet following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Mary Jane, who sits to her mother’s right, has discarded her black trimmed sun hat, and her socked foot points to a slipper that has fallen onto the bank. Her white dress is decorated with bows of black-and-white mourning tartan at the shoulders, and her sister Hilda’s dress has similarly been trimmed with a broad length at the hem. Thanks to Jane’s granddaughter Ella Lewis, these two paintings have come together once again. Emma Kindred, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Pre-1920
Inviting dialogue The NGA’s much-admired Maori ancestor figure by famous nineteenth-century master carver Raharuhi Rukupo was recently joined on display by two eighteenth-century portraits by English artist John Webber, the official artist on Captain James Cook’s third and final Pacific expedition. Based on firsthand experience, the portraits represent an early European response to Polynesian people and place, cultural practice and cross-cultural interaction. Their proximity to Rukupo’s work invites further readings and offers a new light in which to see them, and, in turn, they add insight to the Maori figure and other Polynesian works on display. In A chief of the Sandwich Islands 1787, a Hawaiian chief grasps a long wooden spear, gesturing to the massing army in the background. He wears a mahiole (helmet) decorated with hundreds of vibrant feathers, the strong wickerwork of which offered protection for the head, considered to be the seat of a person’s soul and spiritual power, their mana. This Polynesian concept is also reflected in the scale of the ancestor figure’s head in relation to its body. Dowling painted the chief in action, with his feathered cape rising like wings as he prepares to move. Such garments were markers of an individual’s elite status, worn during sacred ceremonies and in battle. In the other painting, Portrait of Poedua, daughter of Orio, chief of Ulietea, Society Islands
c 1782–85, the feathered fly-whisk held in Poedua’s right hand announces her noble standing. She was the daughter of Orio, chief of Ulietea (now Raiatea). Her eyes smile gently as she returns the viewer’s gaze. There is an apparent serenity, set against a background of the island’s verdant tropical vegetation, which belies the circumstances of the work’s creation. Poedua and others were held captive on board HMS Discovery for four days in November 1777, when Cook demanded Orio secure the return of two men who had deserted the ship. It was at this time that preliminary sketches for the portrait were made. Poedua’s classical European pose and subtle tattoo adornment is in stark contrast to Rukupo’s ancestor figure and its boldly incised surface design. The figure’s moko (facial tattoo) signifies a warrior chief of great standing, possibly the artist’s brother Tamati Waka Mangere. The figure comes from the base of the central support post of the Te Hau-ki-Turanga meetinghouse carved by Rukupo. It demonstrates his mastery of figurative sculpture with its strongly arched back and flowing arms set atop short but powerful legs. A sense of movement is shown through the direction of spirals carved over the joints and the arms gripping his chest in a gesture of strength. The figure is imbued with an undeniable presence that was intended to impress visitors to the meetinghouse and to radiate the prestige of the community. Emma Kindred, Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Pre-1920, and Mike Gunn, former senior curator, Pacific Arts
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 23
24 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Australian Abstraction
THE EDGE Lara Nicholls tells the story of the rise of a bold new style of abstraction in Australia in the 1960s and how our then unrealised national gallery in Canberra showed faith in the artists of this unproven movement by building the foundations of what has become one of the nation’s deepest collections of Australian Geometric and Hard Edge abstraction. It is an inspiring account of the power of artistic and curatorial conviction as the conservative 1960s was left behind and the nation’s art culture looked forward.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 25
Pages 24–5: Australian Abstraction at the NGA, Canberra, September 2016. Left: Clement Meadmore Up and over 1967, painted milled steel. Purchased 1969. © Meadmore Sculptures, LLC/VAGA. Represented by Viscopy Opposite, from top: Robert Rooney Kind-hearted kitchen-garden II 1967, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Purchased 1979. Courtesy of Tolarno Galleries; Nigel Lendon Untitled floor structure 1969, synthetic polymer paint on plywood, aluminium. Courtesy of Tolarno Galleries; Purchased 1969 All works in this feature from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
In 1969, the still fledgling capital of Canberra seemed a far cry from the urban studios of the young abstract painters and sculptors working in Melbourne and Sydney throughout the decade. This new breed of artists produced work on arresting scales, with bold forms and unexpected palettes limited to a few colours, often vibrant and at times clashing. They had abandoned the traditional pictorial hierarchies that had been inherent in European painting for centuries, eschewing all illusions of space and narrative. The crisp, hard edge of their work also rejected the painterly exuberance of Abstract Expressionism, the dominant form of abstraction during the 1950s. As commentators searched for a name for this new style, which was similarly taking off in America, it was prosaically dubbed ‘The New Abstraction’. Its roots were in what American critic Clement Greenberg had described as ‘Post-Painterly Abstraction’ in his groundbreaking show of that title, which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. Although both terms have been debated worldwide, in Australia, New Abstraction was used to loosely describe artists working in Hard Edge or Geometric Abstraction, Colour Field painting, Minimalism and Op Art. The term also suited the bold new style of buildings being constructed in the cities at the time, many of which were designed by Australian architects such as Harry Seidler and Roy Grounds. Furniture and jewellery design, too, adopted the aesthetic. Seidler had studied under Joseph Albers and later commissioned the artist to construct a mural for one of his Sydney buildings. The presence of such a great international exponent of the style sealed the case for the movement in Australia.
26 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Enter into the picture the young James Mollison, who, in early 1969, had just been appointed to the rather bureaucratically sounding title of executive officer for the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board and as exhibitions officer in the Prime Minister’s Office and who later became the first director of the NGA. His appointment to the board coincided favourably with the closing of the polarising Melbourne exhibition The Field. It was the show that wrote into Australian art history the artists working in this new, confident style. Mollison was already well versed in their work, having managed Max Hutchinson’s avant-garde Gallery A, regarded (alongside Central Street Gallery) as the fledgling nest of Minimalism and Op Art in Australia. The exhibition was strategically curated to open the National Gallery of Victoria’s new building designed by Grounds, who was known for his radical designs based upon the principals of geometry. The combination of the building’s hard-edge contemporary design and the comprehensive display of Australia’s youngest artists in The Field sent a powerful message of confidence in the day’s contemporary art. It was a message that was in stark contrast to then Victorian premier Sir Henry Bolte’s request for the NGV to open with a survey on Arthur Streeton. Mollison, though, was convinced of the merit of these young artists and of forming a national collection of their works ‘when it is most immediately available and cheapest’, as he wrote in a report he gave to the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in February 1969.
Australian Abstraction
The Field Exhibition of 1968 was a showing of the style which appears to date to be pervasive of the 60’s. Most of the paintings from this exhibition are still for sale, at prices which seem reasonable when it is considered that in every case these are the major recent works of the artists represented. I propose that the Board collect for The Australian National Gallery a representative group of paintings and sculpture from this exhibition.
Mollison recommended that the board acquire works by twenty-one of the artists represented in The Field, many of which are now on display at the NGA in a special installation of Geometric Abstraction. Four of the works—those by Janet Dawson, Col Jordon, Clement Meadmore and Harald Noritis—were included in The Field, while others—those by Robert Rooney, Alun Leach-Jones and Nigel Lendon—are close variations. Noritis, whose work Come away 1968 was selected by The Field curator John Stringer from a group show at Central Street Gallery in Sydney, recalled that curators from most state galleries visited the shows of the young abstract artists in Sydney and Melbourne. The shows attracted considerable press at the time, not all favourable. The Herald art critic Alan McCulloch, in his August 1968 review of The Field, referred to the artists as ‘band-wagon-jumpers’, suggesting that they were merely reviving a fashion borrowed from elsewhere and not part of an art historical movement of substance. The question of ‘surface’ was a serious preoccupation for many of the artists. The influential New York-based English critic Lawrence Alloway defined the tendency in his article ‘On the edge’ for Architectural Design in 1960: ‘Forms are few in hard-edge and the surface immaculate … Immaculate surface is essential because all the painted areas must be equal … There is no illusion of volumes behind the paint and no implication of atmosphere before it’. The crisp, uncluttered flatness of the
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 27
Left, from top: Janet Dawson Heeney’s rose 1968, synthetic polymer paint on composition board. Gift of Peggy Fauser, 1976. © Janet Dawson. Represented by Viscopy; Lesley Dumbrell Ripple 1972, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Purchased 1973. © Lesley Dumbrell Opposite: Col Jordan Daedalus—series 6 1968, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Purchased 1969.
surface is one of the most arresting characteristics of the works currently on show at the NGA. Lendon’s Untitled floor structure 1969 typifies this intent. Made of a series of brightly coloured stacked panels, it dispenses with any form of representation or metaphor and emphasises colour and shape. Its surface is immaculate, as though made by industrial manufacture, and a cool anonymity resides there. Any evidence of the handmade is gone, rebuking the conventions of the traditional mediums associated with sculpture in the round and reflecting Lendon’s interest in constructing the forms of Colour Field painting in three dimensions. Colour and pigment are critical elements and, in some works, the very essence. In Window IV 1966, David Aspden frames his subject of a violet void in narrow lines of bright green, pink and red. It is one of a larger series of ‘Window’ paintings, and he describes the act of painting them in the catalogue for the Gallery A exhibition David Aspden: Paintings ’66, ’67, ’68: For me, my painting is first an event or process rather than a mere object. A process which later involves the viewer. Becoming rather than being … My intention being to envelop the viewer in a structure of colour forces. To allow colour to act, I try to free it from Drawing as much as possible. I view colour as density rather than surface, that is, it acts in more than two dimensions.
Although only three women were included in The Field, women artists also played a pivotal role in the development of Geometric and Hard Edge Abstraction in Australia and were among some of the first abstract artists acquired in depth by the NGA. Janet Dawson, who is represented by two key works in the NGA’s current display, Heeney’s rose 1968 and Wall II 1968–69, returned to Australia from London and Paris in 1961, bringing with her new ideas about abstraction and the reduction of colour and form in composition. When Greenberg visited Australia to give a lecture tour in 1968, four years after his ‘Post-Painterly Abstraction’ show, he visited Dawson’s solo exhibition at Gallery A in Sydney. He commended her and suggested that she focus her technique. But, it was advice she did not take, as she did not wish to be bound by rules and art historical restrictions. Dawson’s courage in rejecting the precepts of the past can also be seen in Mollison’s conviction to build a strong contemporary collection that reflected Australia’s art, architecture and design of the day. It is a conviction that underwrites the NGA’s current focus on contemporary art, as it seeks to collect and show new and exciting work by both Australian and international artists.
28 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Australian Abstraction
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 29
Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the elder The Duke of Penthièvre and his family c 1768 (also known as The cup of chocolate), oil on canvas. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
30 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Versailles
WHO’S WHO AT VERSAILLES Lucina Ward introduces some of Versailles’s royal family through their portraits in the NGA’s summer blockbuster Versailles: Treasures from the Palace, exclusive to Canberra and on show until 17 April 2017. Just as visitors to the Palace of Versailles first did in the 1660s, those who come to Canberra will marvel at the splendour and innovation of the French court and the many people who formed its varied society. Kings, queens, princes and princesses, as well as the king’s mistresses, reveal a radically different time and place from the one we live in today
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 31
32 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Versailles
As the centre of French politics and cultural life for more than one hundred and thirty years, Versailles was shaped by all who lived there. The portraits and objets d’art in the exhibition Versailles: Treasures from the Palace reveal an extraordinary period in time and capture some of the most fascinating figures from French history. Others, sometimes lesser-known, become equally intriguing when revealed by the artists who painted them. And what better place to begin than with Hyacinthe Rigaud’s famous portrait of the Sun King, Louis XIV, who built the Palace of Versailles and established the French court there in the seventeenth century.
Louis XIV Rigaud’s full-length portrait of Louis XIV is one of the best known images of an absolute monarch. Surrounded by rich fabrics and textures, the king stands on a raised plinth, clad in coronation robes of ermine and the fleur-de-lis of France with the sword of Charlemagne, ‘Joyeuse’, at his hip. His elegant, half-turned pose allows a profile view of his graceful legs, magnificent dress and accoutrements while he turns to look down at the viewer. The painting adheres to certain formulas of royal portraiture at the time. The curtain is drawn back to form a protective canopy, and the marble column suggests, at once, the king’s steadfastness and the lavishly decorated interiors at Versailles. Royal portraits were often duplicated many times, sometimes with specific variations sent as gifts, as diplomatic and political tools. The king had earlier commissioned Rigaud to paint his grandson, Philip of Anjou, who became Philip V of Spain—a portrait that remains at Versailles to this day. Philip, in turn, received a portrait of Louis XIV posed in similar fashion but wearing armour in a landscape setting (now in the Prado collection in Madrid).
Unless otherwise stated, all works in this feature are from the Palace of Versailles. Opposite: Studio of Hyacinthe Rigaud Louis XIV 1701–12, oil on canvas. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin Above: After Rosalba Carriera Louis XV 1720, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Droits réservés
Louis XV In contrast to Rigaud’s work, a new informality and domesticity appears in images of the royal family and aristocracy during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Unlike the Sun King, whose entire life was on display, Louis XV and Louis XVI preferred to live more privately at Versailles. Many modifications were made to the structure of the building to enable this, including smaller apartments skilfully concealed behind hangings or doors set into the woodpanelling. The apartments were also regularly remodelled to suit new inhabitants and different tastes. Furniture and other objects within the Versailles exhibition not only convey the changing styles over a century but also the residents’ and makers’ enthusiasm for new technologies and the exotic. The preferred leisure activities of the royal family, courtiers and mistresses can be seen: people promenade, enjoy music, relax at dinners and partake in fashionable indulgences such as drinking chocolate.
Like his great-grandfather before him, Louis XV was very young when he ascended the throne in 1715. When his grandfather (the grand dauphin), father (petit dauphin) and older brothers died in rapid succession, Louis XV, almost five years old, became king with his great-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as regent. The Italian artist Rosalba Carriera painted at least two portraits of the young monarch. Her journal records several sittings in Paris from April 1720 to March 1721, and the king is shown here at the age of about ten. In this half‑length portrait, Carriera makes several references to Rigaud’s famous painting, most obviously in the king’s stance, torso turned with left arm on hip. The king’s cloak, too, is similarly adorned with fleur-de-lis and lined in ermine, although a cane stands for his sceptre. The boy’s hair is also reminiscent of the Sun King’s richly curled wigs and, despite his youth, powdered grey.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 33
The Duke of Penthièvre and his family Jean-Baptiste Charpentier’s painting documents a noble family in a Louis XV interior with panelling, gilt mirrors and red velvet chairs. The Duke of Penthièvre, descended from a legitimised son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, was one of the wealthiest landowners in the kingdom. He added Crécy, bought from Madame de Pompadour in 1756, to a portfolio that included properties around Paris and in the Loire Valley, Normandy and Picardy. He is accompanied in this portrait, from left to right, by his son Louis-Alexandre-Joseph-Stanislas and daughter-in-law Marie-Thérèse of Savoy-Carignan, Prince and Princess of Lamballe, his daughter Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon and mother Marie-Sophie-Victoire de Noailles, Countess of Toulouse. As Frédéric Lacaille points out in the exhibition’s catalogue, this combination of genre and ‘de mode’ painting—the family drink chocolate, a beverage made fashionable by Queen Marie-Thérèse—satisfied the expectations of official portraiture while conveying a sense of the tastes of the period. Charpentier’s skill at rendering likenesses, rich fabrics and elegant settings is demonstrated in a second painting in the exhibition, a double portrait of the Duke and his daughter in a garden at one of his many properties. The flowers in both paintings are often read as referring to the deaths of various family members. The Countess of Toulouse had died in 1766, which may have been the catalyst for commissioning the group portrait, while the second work may also mark the death of Penthièvre’s son, the Prince of Lamballe, in 1768. Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon is shown shortly before her marriage to the Duke of Chartres in 1769, who later became the Duke of Orléans before adopting the name Philippe Egalité during the Revolution.
Above: After Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun Queen Marie‐Antoinette 1779–80, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot Opposite, from top: After Louis‐Joseph‐Siffrède Duplessis Louis XVI 1775, oil on canvas. © RMNGrand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot; French school (18th century) The royal family in 1782 1782, oil on canvas. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
34 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Queen Marie‐Antoinette Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Louis XVI’s wife Marie-Antoinette was a response to a request by the young queen’s mother, Empress Maria Teresa of Austria, to send a beau portrait en grand to join those of her family in Vienna. Marie‑Antoinette had a great deal of difficulty finding a painter to portray her sympathetically but finally settled on an artist very close to her own age. Vigée Le Brun subsequently produced more than thirty portraits of the queen, and the two became firm friends. Although portrayed in the grand manner, wearing a spectacular court dress of white satin with a train embroidered with fleur-de-lis, the
young queen’s youth, grace and radiance are conveyed. As Hélène Delalex observes in the Versailles catalogue, Vigée Le Brun uses soft brushstrokes and bright white to highlight these qualities. A palette of subtle greys also suggests various surfaces, textures and materials: the stone column at left, Marie-Antoinette’s powdered hair and feathered headdress and the silver highlights of the crown to the right of the picture. The blue of the curtain echoes her train and the cushion and flowers. The painting sent to her mother (and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) is very similar but includes a portrait bust of Louis XVI in front of the curtain at right.
Versailles
Louis XVI In 1774, Louis XVI succeeded his grandfather as king. He is portrayed here, in this oval half-length portrait by Louis-Joseph-Siffrède Duplessis, in relatively simply attire before a balustrade and column, the symbol of power. Painter to the king, Duplessis captures Louis XVI’s appearance and personality as the king gazes into the distance with a slight smile. He wears the cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit, the insignia of the Golden Fleece and cordon bleu across a pale pink jacket with ornamental cuff and lace ruffles over a richly embroidered waistcoat. Again, this portrait found favour and was copied many times and sent to palaces and government offices (Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, for example, holds a version). At the time, Duplessis also produced a more formal, full-length portrait of the king in coronation robes, which, like Carriera’s portrait of Louis XV, was modelled on Rigaud’s portrait of the Sun King. Louis XVI was a cultured man, with a keen interest in history and geography, as conveyed through Nicolas-André Monsiau’s painting in the exhibition in which the king examines charts with the naval explorer Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse.
The royal family in 1782 This group portrait, although of more modest origins than Charpentier’s painting of Penthièvre and his family, is likewise a fascinating document of Bourbon genealogy. It is thought to have been produced by an artist with neither official tenure through the Academy nor the imprimatur of royal patronage. The painting centres on the son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the dauphin of France, Louis-Joseph, who died aged seven without ascending the throne. His sister Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Madame Royale, kneels to present an oval portrait of Louis XIV. The extended family—including the Count and Countess of Artois, Mesdames Elisabeth, Adélaïde, Victoire and Sophie—are highlighted in this theatrical scene. Leaning on the sofa is the Count of Provence, who, after years of exile, was made Louis XVIII when the French monarchy was restored in 1814, following Napoleon’s abdication.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 35
Versailles
Madame Adélaïde Two further royal portraits, by Louis-Lié PérinSalbreux and François-Hubert Drouais, show the fourth and eighth daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyñska. In 1711–12, the death of three heirs from smallpox and measles—Louis XIV’s son and grandson and the Duke of Brittany, older brother of Louis XV—meant the House of Bourbon was seriously depleted. The marriage contract between Louis XV and his cousin Mariana Victoria, was broken, and Leszczyñska, daughter of the exiled King of Poland, was deemed more suitable. She was twenty-two when she married the fifteen-year-old king in 1725. Twin princesses were born in 1727, a third daughter in 1728, followed by a son (the dauphin) in 1729 and four more girls in 1732, 1733 and 1737. Marie Adélaïde, born in 1732, was known for her strong personality. She was her father’s favourite and spent most of her life at Versailles, having persuaded him not to send her, with her younger sisters, to Fontevrault Abbey. In this painting, Adélaïde is shown in her apartments, surrounded by books and correspondence, a portrait of her sister Victoire propped at right, with a column just visible adjacent to the shelves. The parquetry, neoclassical desk and richly upholstered chair remind us of the constant remodelling of the apartments at Versailles.
Louise-Marie de France The eighth daughter, Louise-Marie de France, portrayed here at age twenty-six, was likewise regarded as studious. Slightly hunchbacked, she is said to have exaggerated her deformity in order to avoid marriage. Presented against a balustrade, a book in one hand with a fan or handkerchief in the other, her upright pose and level gaze suggest confidence. The splendour of her dress, festooned with flowers and rich with lace, is thrown into sharp relief by the monochrome backdrop. Louise-Marie, like her elder sisters, resented her father’s court, its ceremonies, intrigues and politics. Adélaïde, especially, came in to conflict with her father’s mistresses, particularly Madame Du Barry. Louise-Marie became a Carmelite nun in 1770 and, known afterward as Therese of Saint Augustine, devoted herself to the education of young women.
36 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Above: Louis‐Lié Périn-Salbreux Madame Adélaïde at her writing table in her apartments at Versailles 1776, oil on canvas. © RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot Left: François-Hubert Drouais Louise-Marie de France 1763, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1964 Opposite, from top: Carle Van Loo Madame de Pompadour as the ‘beautiful gardener’ 1754–55, oil on canvas; Armchair for Madame de Pompadour’s residence at Crécy c 1755, carved and gilded walnut, silk. National Furniture Depository. © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
Influential mistresses at Versailles Two royal mistresses are represented in the exhibition alongside a range of objets d’art suggesting both the influence exerted by the maitresses-en-titre and their roles as courtiers, advisors and patrons of the arts. Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, later Madame de Pompadour, met Louis XV in February 1745 at the fancy-dress ball on the occasion of the dauphin’s wedding. The event, known as the ‘Yew-tree ball’ and captured in an extraordinary engraving included in the exhibition, marked the beginning of their liaison. Her influence grew rapidly, and she acquired honours and estates but also enemies. The king’s next mistress, Jeanne Bécu, who became Madame Du Barry, was regarded unsuitable for court, although the title granted through her marriage to Guillaume Du Barry meant she could be presented. She is said to have been the only woman who allowed Louis XV to forget he was sixty. On his death, however, she was rapidly deposed and, having been tried for treason by the Committee of Public Safety, lost her head on the guillotine in 1793.
Madame de Pompadour Madame de Pompadour’s passion for flowers, evidenced by her gardens at Crécy, the various interiors, porcelain and other objects commissioned by her, is reinforced in this portrait by Carle Van Loo through the symbolism of each type—the jasmine in her right hand, for example, is associated with kindness. Against a background of sky and landscape greenery, she wears a large-brimmed hat and dress of creamcoloured muslin and holds a basket as if strolling in the countryside. Van Loo’s work is admired for its simplicity and, as Gwenola Firmin reminds us in the Versailles catalogue, its format and title suggest the influence of Italian Renaissance half‑length Madonnas. A marvellous blue-and-gold armchair, from one of the finest suites produced in mid-eighteenthcentury France, was specially designed for
Madame de Pompadour’s residence at Crécy, a gift of the king in 1746. The major program of works there included new panelling for the large assembly room, which housed the eight armchairs, two sofas and marble fireplaces of green Campan marble. The castle and its contents, however, were sold in September 1756, soon after renovations were complete. Madame de Pompadour was particularly successful at creating diversions for the king, who was easily bored, encouraging him to rediscover the Grand Trianon, the ‘summer palace’ favoured from his youth. In the open air, away from the constraints and ceremony of the court, the pair relaxed and tended the superb gardens. Later, in 1762, Louis XV also commissioned, at her instigation, the Petit Trianon from the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 37
38 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Versailles
Madame Du Barry The floral theme continues in this portrait of Madame Du Barry by her preferred artist, François-Hubert Drouais, the painter of royalty and aristocrats. He painted her numerous times in various guises, and several replicas of these portraits were produced for her family and admirers and duplicated through engravings. Shown as the goddess of spring, fertility and youth, the king’s new ‘favourite’ was muchadmired for her height, blond tresses and almondshaped eyes. Drouais conveys her porcelain complexion, pink cheeks and delicate mouth, echoing these with her pearl bracelets and garland of roses. Madame Du Barry had a unseemly past. A birdcage associated with her features an entirely manufactured family coat of arms—which also appears in her extensive library and on her carriage, sedan chairs and items of interiors décor. It comprises a crown, two cupids with shields, palms and a scroll with the motto ‘Push forward’ (Boutez en avant). As Bertrand Rondot documents in the Versailles catalogue, the shield on the left incorporates the arms of an ancient Irish noble family, Du Barry of Barrimore, from whom the Languedoc Du Barrys were supposedly descended, while the one on the right is pure invention. Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour and Madame Du Barry, and later Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, were important patrons of the Royal Porcelain Factory of Sèvres, and their influence encouraged other members of the court to place orders. Acquired by Louis XV in 1759, the factory produced most of the plates, vessels and other objects for the royal apartments and for diplomatic gifts. The service ordered by Madame Du Barry in 1769–70 combines intricate sculpted and painted flowers with blue and gold ribbons. The many luxurious and fascinating objects that have travelled to Canberra from Versailles attest to the strength of royal patronage of French art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Versailles: Treasures from the Palace may be the only time these works are shown in Australia—at least in our lifetimes. Versailles: Treasures from the Palace @ NGA, Canberra, opens 9 December For the bookshelf: Versailles: Treasures from the Palace and, for the kids, Through the palace keyhole are both available at the NGA Shop and online at shop.nga.gov.au
For the diary: ‘Love, sex and death at the court of Versailles’, Gerard Vaughan, 10 December, 11.00 am ‘Versailles and the French Golden Age’, Christopher Allen from The Australian, 10 December, 2.00 pm ‘Mythology, antiquity and absolute power’, Lucina Ward, 14 January, 2.00 pm ‘Marie-Antoinette high tea’, members and guests only, 5 February, 2.00 pm
Opposite: François-Hubert Drouais Madame Du Barry as Flora 1773–74, oil on canvas Above: Birdcage 18th century, gilded bronze and copper and porcelain Both © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
Plus performances by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Earthly Delights Historic Dance Academy and Salut! Baroque in December, February, March and April and much more.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 39
40 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Artists of the Great War
IN SUPPORT OF NOBLE PROFESSIONS Emma Kindred illuminates the fascinating history of Australian artists who, despite being over military age or too unwell for the front line, aided the war effort by supporting hospital staff at the 3rd London General Hospital in Wandsworth and other hospitals in London, Paris and elsewhere that were dealing with the daily influx of wounded soldiers.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 41
Pages 40–1: Rupert Bunny Waiting to be X-rayed 1915 (detail), oil on canvas. Australian War Memorial, Canberra Left: George Coates First Australian wounded at Gallipoli arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London 1921, oil on canvas. Australian War Memorial, Canberra Opposite: George Lambert Balcony of troopers’ ward, 14th Australian General Hospital, Abbassia 1919, oil and pencil on wood panel. Australian War Memorial, Canberra, acquired under the official war art scheme in 1921
In the years leading up to the First World War, the Chelsea Arts Club was a
injuries and shell shock, and the artists felt the brutal impact of war through
dynamic meeting place and social network for artists in London, including
regular contact with patients.
a proportionately large number of the best known Australian artists of the day. It had a large and active membership but was hard hit by Britain’s call for men. Almost all members served in some capacity. Some enlisted and took arms, while many others, who were over military age or deemed medically unfit, volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps. The call to enlist came one evening in August 1914 from Commanding Officer of the 3rd London General Hospital Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Bruce-Porter. As a guest at the Chelsea Arts Club bar, he made an impassioned plea to its members, calling on them to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps at the hospital in Wandsworth. The Club’s archives hold a register of those who participated in the war effort, including twenty-five who served at Wandsworth. Among them were Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, George Coates and AH Fullwood. According to a piece in The Argus of 22 December 1919, Roberts was at the club on the night of Bruce-Porter’s rousing appeal for volunteers. RH Croll’s 1935 biography of Roberts reasserts this claim and goes further to suggest that Roberts was the first to sign up, followed by Streeton, Coates and Fullwood on 24 April 1915. The artists were billeted together with other Chelsea Arts Club members as well as English Futurist CRW Nevinson and Punch illustrator James Henry Dowd in Wandsworth’s Hut 6. Installed on the grounds of the Royal Victoria Patriotic School, the hospital was the largest of its kind in London. It was a centre for servicemen with severe facial
42 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
As orderlies, they worked ten- to fourteen-hour days performing a variety of repetitive and menial tasks—dressing injuries, washing patients, sweeping floors, making beds and meeting convoys of newly wounded British, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian soldiers. Although many took to the work in good spirits, it seems Fullwood had some trouble adjusting. In the 1937 biography George Coates: his art and his life, Dora Meeson Coates recorded her husband’s recollection of one encounter Fullwood had with a sister. When asked to make up a ward, the artist began, ‘my dear girl, I never made a bed—’, but was quickly stopped short and brought into line. In another account, found in the Chelsea Arts Club archive, a steward recalled that Fullwood’s ‘task was to polish the floors. He stuck it as long as he could and then went to the Colonel and threatened to commit suicide if he did not get a less monotonous job’. The narratives of history seem to have been kinder to the other Australian artists. On 11 November 1947, the Sydney Morning Herald, quoted New South Wales Governor Lieutenant-General John Northcott, who was a patient at Wandsworth and whose speech at the opening of Roberts’s 1947 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales applauded the painter’s service: He was a fine old character, about 60 years of age. He would … tiptoe round to the officers and ask them if he could post their letters or run their errands. I calculated that he spent half his days doing odd little services for us and in other ways trying to make us happy.
Artists of the Great War
The work of an orderly was arduous, but with the passing of time many saw it as rewarding. Streeton described it as ‘the hardest and the finest work [he] ever performed’, in a letter penned on 19 June 1933 to Charles Bean, Australia’s Official Historian of the First World War. On 20 October the following year, he published in The Argus his own extensive account of being an orderly, which details, at quite some length, the ‘handsome’ belt with which he was issued and the various duties he undertook. At the end of the article, Streeton reflects: It is good to wander in the shadow as well as in the light. Happiness and colour are the results of contrast … There is keen pleasure in watching a patient’s return to health, and it helps us to a larger appreciation of the noble work of the medical and nursing professions.
Despite the long, gruelling hours of orderly work, the artists were also able to contribute their skills as art practitioners and through their prewar experience mounting exhibitions. On 7 September 1915, more than a year after the outbreak of the First World War, an exhibition of over one hundred and thirty works opened at the 3rd London General Hospital. The catalogue that accompanied the exhibition is dominated by the group of Australian artists, as well as other members of the Chelsea Arts Club such as Alfred Withers and sculptor Francis Derwent Wood. Hung in the hospital’s large recreation room were landscapes, interior scenes, flower studies, portraits and busts. In the first years of the war, there was a developing recognition of the importance of art as a diversion from the conflict, and, in this sense, the exhibition was a form of ante-bellum escapism. In his biography of Roberts,
Croll quotes a London newspaper of the time, which noted that, with the exception of Nevinson’s Futurist paintings, ‘the exhibition has, properly, nothing to do with war. Wounded soldiers, more than anybody, may be supposed to be “fed up” with war pictures’. While not listed in the catalogue, a number of Derwent Wood’s plaster casts for splint making were also on display. Exhibited alongside his classical statues and busts in bronze, the casts were an early example of how the skills of a sculptor were utilised in the context of the First World War hospital. A review published in The Argus on 16 October marvelled at the plaster casts, ‘remarkable in the accuracy of their detail, of maimed limbs … This work of plaster splint making is the first known union of art to medical science, and is as yet practised in no other British hospital than Wandsworth’. In a period that saw unprecedented innovation and development, the watercolours of Daryl Lindsay, which can be seen in the NGA’s recently installed exhibition Artists of the Great War, provide similar insight into the role artists played in advancing medical technology. Working at the Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, which specialised in plastic surgery cases, Lindsay depicted over two hundred Australian soldiers. His delicate watercolours meticulously document developments in modern facial surgery and provided surgeons at the time with a comprehensive understanding of the traumatic injuries sustained in war. Around the time of the Wandsworth exhibition, Streeton joined Coates in maintaining the recreation rooms, where convalescing soldiers played billiards and dominos and enjoyed other indoor amusements. In her book,
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 43
Meeson Coates notes that concerts, plays and charades were organised three or four times a week ‘to the never-ending delight of the Tommies, some of whom willingly assisted’. Coates and Streeton painted the scenery and designed the costumes, and Streeton also created decorative watercolour posters advertising forthcoming entertainments. While few opportunities could be found for painting in the first year at Wandsworth, by 1916 Streeton and Coates were both actively encouraged to continue their artistic work. Streeton was invalided out in 1917 and was appointed as an official war artist in the following year. Alongside his battlefield paintings are depictions of dressing stations, casualty clearing stations, field hospitals and the interior scene The ward 1918. In this small, energetic painting a nurse undertakes her duties at the 3rd Australian General Hospital, Abbeville, with two convalescent soldiers wearing ‘hospital blues’. The subject of the hospital interior was unusual not only for Streeton but also for fellow official war artist George Lambert. While recovering in a Cairo hospital in 1919, Lambert completed the brilliant Balcony of the troopers’ ward, 14th Australian General Hospital, Abbassia. In the dappled light of late afternoon, a light horse trooper stands with his hat in his hands, addressing the volunteer nurse Mrs GA Aumuller. Presenting variations in the social space and physical experience of the hospital ward, these scenes, both included in Artists of the Great War, provide a telling counterpoint to the wartime General hospitals in London. Coates and Roberts remained in service at Wandsworth for the duration of the war. Coates undertook a number of significant
44 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
portraits working ‘in the small curtained-off alcove alongside the recreation room stage which served him as a studio …’, writes Meeson Coates. Included in the Royal Academy show of 1918 was his portrait of Commanding Officer Bruce-Porter, which once hung in the Officer’s Mess Hall at Wandsworth. On 12 November 1918, the Darling Downs Gazette noted that ‘In his spare time Sergeant Coates is painting a large composition called Bringing in the Wounded, the scene of which is the receiving room of the Wandsworth Hospital’. The article likely refers to a watercolour study for the larger commissioned oil First Australian wounded at Gallipoli arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London, completed in 1921. In October 1915, the first issue of The Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital was printed. Under the editorship of Noel Irving, also from the Chelsea Arts Club, the wartime hospital journal published poetry, articles and light-hearted anecdotes by staff and patients illustrated with vignettes, cartoons and reproductions of paintings. It provided artists at Wandsworth with a creative outlet and chronicled their experiences in the wards. Among the contributions by the Australian artists was Fullwood’s ‘balloon view’ of the Wandsworth hospital surrounded by temporary pavilion wards and Streeton’s decorative borders of frothy-skirted dancing girls. Coates contributed over twenty-five illustrations, including a pen‑and‑ink drawing of a patient quietly reading aloud to two blinded men, rather sentimentally titled, ‘The light that failed’, referencing the novel by Rudyard Kipling.
Artists of the Great War
Opposite: Arthur Streeton The ward 1918, oil on canvas on board. Australian War Memorial, Canberra Right, from top: Tom Roberts ‘No. 20’ in The Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth 1915, vol 2, no 3, and ‘No. 14’ in The Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth 1915, vol 11, no 3, National Library of Australia, Canberra; Daryl Lindsay Pte Waldron (study of wounded soldier from the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup: 96/183) c 1918, watercolour. Reproduced with permission of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. © Estate of Daryl Lindsay
Our visual record of Roberts’s time at Wandsworth is almost entirely drawn from the Gazette, as he found no time to paint. During his three and a half years of service, Roberts rose from private to corporal, and then to a sergeant while working in the dental department where, as he told The Argus in December 1919, ‘they were patching up poor fellows with face wounds’. He published an article in the Gazette about his experiences in the ‘dental room’ in which he describes the various duties undertaken on a busy Sunday morning: a simple extraction, then cases requiring anaesthetic and the building up of fractured jaws—‘work asking for the nicest skill and knowledge of possibilities’. He encountered various war injuries and, witnessing the courage of the wounded, later wrote to a friend in London of learning not to ‘think quite so much of one’s own importance’. With the exception of two sketches published with the article, Roberts’s artistic output was limited during the war. While his only son Caleb served on the Western Front, he was not drawn to depict the wards and patients in the manner of Coates or Rupert Bunny. Bunny, who was living in Paris at the outbreak of the war, began work as an orderly in the highly regarded American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine as the beauty of the Belle Époque gave way to the horrors of war. He witnessed the tragedy and trauma of the wounded brought by ambulance from the front line as he carried patients to the operating theatres. In Waiting to be X-rayed 1915, several wounded patients assemble in an anteroom, while, through the open doorway, a patient is positioned under the X-ray machine. The work shares compositional parallels with Coates’s First Australian wounded at Gallipoli arriving at Wandsworth Hospital, London. In both paintings, light falls in long diagonal shafts from windows at the right, reaching across darkened interiors. The illuminated glow of background activity pulls us into the pictures, emphasising the ceaseless cycles of assessment, treatment and interminable waiting. Following the outbreak of war, all kinds of social groups and institutions mobilised themselves behind the war effort and, in doing so, contributed to a cultural fusion, or at least convergence, in defence of state and nation. For Australian artists such as Roberts, Streeton, Coates and Fullwood, this was partly realised through their service at Wandsworth, where they played an important role capturing and responding to this very particular wartime experience. In hospitals from London and Paris to Cairo and the Somme, the flow of casualties from the front brought into raw focus the physical wounds, illness and emotional trauma suffered by the men and women who served. Artists of the Great War @ NGA, Canberra, until June 2017
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 45
46 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Diary of an object
Crispin Howarth presents the Fellows collection as part of the special NGA program ‘Out of the box’, NGA, Canberra, 12 July 2016.
UNPACKING THE FELLOWS COLLECTION Crispin Howarth reveals the extraordinary history of the NGA’s Fellows collection of Trobriand Islander art, purchased by the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in the early 1970s as it sought to establish a significant collection of art from Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific. The exceptional range of objects in the collection, numbering over six hundred, has vast potential for art researchers, ethnographers, historians and the public alike.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 47
In 1971, Ben Fellows was asked by his aunt Marjorie Walker to check a faulty telephone line under her house in Swanbourne, near Perth, and, while doing so, discovered hundreds of objects collected by his grandfather and grandmother Methodist missionary Reverend Samuel and Sarah Fellows. Based at Kiriwina, in the beautiful Trobriand Islands, between the years of 1891 and 1901, Samuel and Sarah were among the vanguard of pioneering missionaries in New Guinea. Their work in the region was known to their family, although the extent of their substantial personal collection of objects had been stored away and overlooked since their deaths in the early 1930s. Soon after Ben’s discovery, the collection came to the attention of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board, the body responsible for acquiring art for Australia’s yet to be built national gallery. Between 1968 and 1973, the board paid strong attention to what was then dubbed ‘Primitive’ art from Australia’s Pacific neighbours, and their efforts to build a Pacific art collection can be credited to board members Sir Daryl Lindsay and Sir William Dargie. In 1972, they purchased the Fellows collection, which was then thought to include around two hundred and fifty objects— although the actual extent of the collection was not discovered until much later, as the dynamic changes of the 1970s meant that it was, once again, stored and, this time, all but forgotten.
48 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Thirty-five years later, in 2007, art handler Chris Harman and I, as the curator responsible, began the unenviable task of rehousing the Fellows collection as part of a conservation project. We found that many of the objects were still in their original crates. These crates, in some instances, were still nailed closed and packed tightly with shredded newspaper, a material that can, over time, become carcinogenic. So, dressed in Tyvek overalls and wearing masks, we worked on removing the collection items. Through the process, we discovered that the collection actually included in excess of six hundred objects, far more than originally thought. Today, the Fellows collection has been catalogued in its entirety and is stored more appropriately and accessibly. In it are works of great value and interest. There are many carved and decorated bowls, a large group of weapons (spears and clubs that are made from ebony and highly polished), hand drums, fishing equipment, delicately plaited fibre baskets and other objects that tell us something about the people of the Trobriand Islands and their way of life over a century ago. There are more than one hundred and twenty lime spatulas, which are used for passing slaked lime to the mouth when chewing betel nut. Many of them are miniature masterpieces and each is unique, reflecting its owner, with decorated handles taking the form of small spirit figures, tokwalu. Some are carved to become clappers, small
Diary of an object
percussion instruments tapped against the knuckle during discussion while enjoying betel nut. One lime spatula proved an interesting find in that it is not an example of Trobriand art but a simple Victorian letter opener—likely the property of the Fellows. There is a series of ebony canoe models made as gifts of gratitude to Sarah Fellows for her medical work. The name ‘Marama’, as Sarah was dubbed by the local population, is carved on the undersides of the models. A handful of exceptional well-created ebony fish and reptile figures are also notable, as they have no apparent indigenous function. Among the objects are the diaries of Samuel and Sarah Fellows and other archival material from their time in the Trobriand Islands. Sarah’s diary reveals that one piece, a superbly carved sucker fish, was created by a deaf and dumb man who used to sit on the back steps of the mission house making these remarkable figures. Unexpectedly, samples of painted Tongan, Samoan and Fijian barkcloth, several fans of pandanus leaf and a glazed Fijian pottery water vessel (saqa) in the shape of a fruit were also found in the collection. None of these are from Kiriwina and were likely once the personal possessions of Polynesian missionary teachers who worked with the Fellows. One barkcloth is outstanding for its hand-drawn coat of arms of Tonga. During the decade they lived and worked on Kiriwina, Sarah and Samuel came to know all the chiefs and people of the Trobriand Islands. They even engaged in local politics to help bring about peace among neighbouring communities. But not all endeavours go to plan. In 1899, an open rivalry between Paramount Chief Numakala and Chief Moliasi flared up and was brought to a head when Resident Magistrate Matthew Henry Morton intervened. The Fellows collection includes evidence of one particular skirmish, an elaborately painted shield with the inscription, ‘Used in the assault on the Magistrate on Nov. 8/99 at Kapapua, Kiriwina. S.B.Fellows’. Moreton’s government report details the violent encounter, which occurred outside Kapupu village: There was a large number of natives with shields and spears hanging about our rear, and some had approached to within thirty yards. However, twenty-five shots sent them scattering with the police at their heels, but the coral was too much for the police, and no captures were made. The police returned bringing a shield bespattered with blood, and a bullet hole through it, together with a few spears. On continuing our route, we found where a large party had been lying in ambush about sixty to eighty yards ahead of where I turned back from, so it seems that they had laid their plans fairly well, had it not been for the impetuosity of the others, who must have been spoiling for a fight.
Opposite: Ben Fellows, Kim Akerman and the then Sotheby’s director examine the Fellows collection, 1971. Above, from top: Sarah Fellows with schoolgirls; Reverend Samuel Fellows with schoolchildren, Trobriand Islands, before 1901.
I was told afterwards that there had been four parties round us—one as I have just mentioned, in ambush, one in the bush on either side, and the one that attacked us.
Significantly, the Fellows collection is the most concise of its type in the world and gives us an insight into the lives of Trobriand Islanders at the time and of missionary endeavours during the late nineteenth century. It is a collection the depth of which is still to be fully realised, as even earlier this year the NGA learnt of an album, found in Brisbane, of photographs taken by Reverend Fellows, adding faces to the islanders whose objects were among those given to Samuel and Sarah over a decade. More time and research will no doubt cast further light on this exceptional collection.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 49
50 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Profile
Rose Nolan Big Words together forever Deborah Hart
It is raining cats and dogs in Melbourne, where I’m meeting Rose Nolan to discuss her work Big Words (Not Mine) Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically (circle work) 2015, recently purchased by the NGA and now on display for a limited time. We are catching up in a room in St Kilda’s public library, where she works when not making art. It seems an appropriate venue given her interest in words as an integral part of her art practice. As sheets of rain run down the windowpanes and book-reading sessions take place within the inner sanctum of the library, we talk about her early inspirations and ongoing obsessions. As a young art student in the late 1970s, Nolan attended the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne and found great impetus for her own path when she learned of the Russian avant-garde of the early twentieth century, particularly Kasimir Malevich’s abstract paintings. ‘They completely blew me away. The fact that he was doing such reductive paintings in 1915, like his Black Square painting, just opened a whole other world for me in terms of what I was interested in and wanted to research’, says Nolan. ‘I was at art school when a lot of figurative work was going on, and I was just not interested in that at all. The Russian experiment gave me something I could connect with, and I began working with abstraction, particularly Geometric Abstraction.’ She became deeply fascinated by Russian art, including the bold typography in Constructivist graphic design, as well as literature, music and architecture, and she travelled to Russia in 1985 and 1986 (when it was still the Soviet Union). Her Secret Russian Archive 1980–2002, shown at an exhibition of her work at the Ian Potter Gallery in 2002, included souvenirs she collected on these visits as well as Russian books, posters and photographs revealing the cumulative extent of her preoccupation. Among the sources of inspiration was Vladimir Tatlin’s emphasis on the character of materials used to make the art object and the fact that the work was an object in itself, not an illusory window onto another world. The idea of art moving beyond easel painting and into everyday life manifested itself in Nolan’s art and in the clothing that she made and wore, hand-printed with Constructivist designs, taking her cue from Varvara Stepanova. In the Australian context, her early mentor, and the main enthusiast of the historical legacies of the Russian avant-garde in Melbourne, was John Nixon. She recalls that he was a ‘real connector’ in the way he set up various experimental artist-run spaces such as Art Projects and his later involvement with Store 5—‘that’s where I met so many of my peers, who are still my friends now, and we shared so much in terms of our ideas and the works we were interested in’, says Nolan. As Michael Graf pointed out in the publication for Nolan’s survey exhibition at Artspace in Melbourne
in 2008, Nixon’s erstwhile collaborator Tony Clark was equally influential and supportive of younger artists: ‘In their different ways, each equipped a generation … with seemingly contrasted examples of lifestyle and artistic activity: one austere and disciplinarian, the other free-wheeling and capricious’. The elements of discipline and playfulness, modesty and boldness of vision informed Nolan’s evolving works over some three decades. Her use of words and slogans, as well as her consistent application of a restricted palette of red and white, became something of a signature for her. She also developed categories for her ways of working that often overlapped with one another: ‘Banners’, ‘Constructed Work’, ‘Flat Work’, ‘Homework’ and ‘Word Work’. Scale was an important factor, and her words were often writ large, engaging with architectural spaces—painted, at times, directly onto the full height of gallery walls and, in other instances, on banners or, alternatively, as part of three-dimensional constructions such as Big Words (Not Mine) Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically (circle work). ‘With all my large-scale works, there is always an interest in the work in relation to space and architecture’, she notes. ‘I am interested in creating these semi-habitable works that are low tech, very simple in their engineering. Even though they can be quite monumental in scale, like this one, they can then fold right down, like a performance tent, and be packed away.’ As the title suggests, her work is full of dichotomies, bringing together monumentality and intimacy, big philosophical ideas and wry humour. She often talks about the fact that she is ‘drawn to the linguistic properties of language and the formal properties of language in terms of how the letters might be formed and how that might help to form the structure and content for a new work’. She relishes the notion that art can be systematic and irrational, a proclivity that corresponds with the approach of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, who has long been an inspiration. The title is drawn from one of his ‘Sentences on conceptual art’, first published in 1969 in the New York magazine 0 to 9. ‘Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically’ is number 5 of his thirty-five sentences, and Nolan deliberately chose it because it did not include the word ‘art’, keeping the potential meanings as open-ended as possible. Primarily, however, she was drawn to the ‘crazy notion that an irrational thought might be followed absolutely and logically’, corresponding with her own ideas of creating ‘quite a tight program or condition’ for making her own work. Taking an overview of the sinuous suspended structure, the curves act, Nolan tells me, as ‘inhabitable nooks in which the visitor can hide, contemplate or socialise’. From the macrocosm to the microcosm, we find that each circular disc is sized, painted, glued and stitched, the one
Rose Nolan at the International Studio and Cultural Program, New York, 2010. Photo: Julia Blaukopf
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 51
52 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Profile
Opposite: Big Words (Not Mine) Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically (circle work) 2015, synthetic polymer paint, hessian, steel, Velcro and embroidery thread Right: Immodest Gesture #1 (proposition for a billboard) 2015, halftone screenprint. Both National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016. Images courtesy Anna Schwartz Gallery
connecting with the other to form a grid that is robust and porous—the open diamond shapes where the circles meet allowing the interplay of air, light and shadow. Nolan likes circles. She finds them comforting: ‘I have used the circle a lot. There is something quite perfect and calming about a circle’. Similarly, she enjoys the methodical repetition and rhythm in the construction, which includes working out how the letters of words might work within the structure of the circles. ‘There is a lot of initial calculation and I realised at some point I find the repeated gesture of counting quite soothing. So I quite liked having to calculate the numbers of circles and the length the text would need to be. To begin with they are all just scribbles and calculations.’ Embedded within the gently flowing structure of the thousands of hand-glued hessian circles of Nolan’s Big Words, the letters forming the words cannot be seen at once. Instead, they are discovered gradually, as the viewer moves along the one side of the work. ‘I’m interested in the delay in readability’, she says. ‘It does take much more looking and experiencing to recover fully what the text might say. I mean this work, in particular, really does take you on a journey, which will be accentuated at the NGA in the way it can also be seen as a passage (through the contemporary art gallery) to other spaces …’ For her, too, ‘The back of the work is … just as beautiful as the front and is a different experience again. It accentuates the circle and the modernist grid’, relating to her non-objective practice and the influence of the Russian avant-garde. Tatlin’s emphasis on the character of materials is also evident in Nolan’s choice of hessian. ‘There was something about the texture
of material and the way the paint works with it that I was very attracted to … as well as the freedom of it … It is a humble, basic material … and it has a poignancy’. She worked with an assistant to make such a large‑scale work comprising thousands of components, and their shared effort, for Nolan, contributes to ‘a latent energy contained within the structure’. Accompanying Big Words are two screenprints, Immodest Gestures #1 and #2 (propositions for a billboard), each of which brings together black-and-white photographs of Nolan working with Hans Namuth’s famous shots of Jackson Pollock in action (taken over sixty years ago). The halftone screenprints have been produced from photocopied images collaged and spliced together, creating a feeling of oscillation, both visually and conceptually, between past and present, dramatic gesture and precise geometry, ‘placing myself,’ Nolan says, ‘finally in the studio with Jackson Pollock, and, in a diaristic, playful, mischievous way, creating my own history’. Profoundly interested in documentation and the distribution of information, she also had the fantasy of taking her Immodest Gestures further, with the idea of blowing them up to large billboard scale. As an inherently shy and modest person, this would be a delicious contradiction in terms in which the sheer grit of being an artist making art in the studio, or the garage, meld into a deliberately grainy, fractured whole. After our conversation in the dimly lit room at the library, as my cab takes me back to the airport, I’m sure I catch a glimpse in my mind’s eye of a billboard with Nolan and Pollock together forever, as they will remain in the national collection.
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 53
54 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Profile
Yvonne Audette Freeing the mind and painting space Lara Nicholls
It is a long drive from Canberra to Ballarat along roads that, once off the Hume Highway, wend and weave through extraordinary boulder-studded countryside. The sort of trek an art-obsessed curator might make to see something of interest. The magnet in this case was Yvonne Audette in Spain, an exhibition of the abstract artist’s figurative work painted in Spain at an important yet anomalous point in Yvonne Audette’s career. I say ‘anomalous’ because it was a brief return to figuration before she completely abandoned the representational in her practice and embraced a pure form of abstraction—a small window in time between her life in New York City, where she found abstraction, and her arrival in Italy in 1955, where she painted two key abstract masterpieces, Cantata no 8 1957–58 and The flat landscape 1959. These two works occupied my mind on the drive home, as both are in the national collection and both are about to tour Australia in the NGA’s Abstraction: celebrating Australian abstract women artists, which opens at the Geelong Art Gallery in late February. I telephoned Yvonne to ask her more. She spoke in vivid terms about her time in New York and then posted me an illuminating series of notes, which I liberally share throughout this article. Audette left Australia for Los Angeles in 1952, and it was there that she experienced her first exhibition of Abstract Expressionism—‘a wonderful shock’, she says. She then jumped on the first plane bound for New York to reach the very heart of the burgeoning art movement. Her intuition was serendipitous, as she settled into the New York art scene at a time when momentous and transformative art historical shifts were taking place. She recalls that ‘the form free of all associations was now valid in its own right! This all appealed to me very much’. New York was where she met Willem de Kooning and visited Franz Kline. In her notes of the time, she writes, ‘When in Franz Kline’s studio, I saw how dramatic his work was, in this black and white flat form. It was a sort of calligraphy’. ‘Mine is painted space’, he told her. This idea of ‘painted space’ had an indelible effect on her when painting The flat landscape, which she generously gave to the NGA in 2015. It was made over two years, between 1958 and 1959, in her studio at Piazza Donatello in Florence, and is now regarded as a significant pioneering work in Australian abstraction. When she arrived at her new home in Florence in December 1955, after her brief sojourn in Spain, she had a new approach to her work. Taking up a set of square-headed brushes, she began to paint on hardboard in an entirely new way. Her conversations with Kline back in New York had left their mark, and she recalls, ‘this certainly influenced me while working on the Flat Landscape, I was well aware that I was attempting to “paint space”’. Later, she wrote, ‘the gesture
of his [Kline’s] hand was well controlled by his mind, but his mind was totally free to create at the same time. So this has forever remained with me’. After several years in Florence, she established a studio in Milan in 1957, where she met Arnaldo Pomodoro and Lucia Fontana. Cantata no 8 is an important and early example of Audette’s ongoing Cantata series, which she began the year she set up in Milan. The works in the series are characterised by a rich layering of colour and tone in the square touches of paint that seem to rhythmically jostle with each other creating both an energy and a deeply satisfying harmonic effect. As their name suggests, they are inspired by Bach’s famous Cantatas, which he wrote between 1707 and 1745 and of which there are more than two hundred. Writing about the work, Audette recalls, ‘I tried to achieve in paint what I experienced in music, particularly the Bach Cantatas, which breathed for me a kind of mystical joy. I tried in my paintings to relate the vibrations of tone and colour to the sound’. Audette’s desire to express music and painting—or, indeed, paint it—is founded in her own serious musicianship. Before embracing painting, she studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium and learnt the violin in New York. Inspired by Bach’s exquisite sense of counterpoint and harmonisation, Audette continues to find a deep correlation between colour, tone and sound and refers to the Cantata series as ‘vivid tone-pictures of an infinite variety of colours and textures’. She has always listened to music while she paints, mostly Bach and Mozart, and describes how ‘the musical pitch and tones reverberate to me in colour’. When Audette painted both The flat landscape and Cantata no 8, other women Australian abstract artists such as Grace Crowely, Anne Dangar, Mary Webb and Margel Hinder had begun to discard the last vestiges of European Cubism to arrive at a non-objective art form where shape, colour and line were subjects in their own right. Some had made the journey more gradually, as they quietly dispensed with the figurative tradition to arrive at a pure form of abstraction. However, Audette’s conversion in New York was almost immediate and, with no doubt or dilemma, she embraced abstraction as an idea and a force in her painting. Her brief, unexpected detour back to figuration in Spain was the human response of a painter-traveller to the pain and suffering she found among the people she met in Granada, who had just lived through a civil war. Perhaps the Spanish works still came from Audette’s observations of Kline and emanate from the gestures of a hand well controlled by the mind, but a mind totally free to create at the same time. Now in her mid-80s, Audette lives in Melbourne and continues to paint and exhibit her work.
Yvonne Audette, Milan Studio, 1958. Behind her is the painting Jacob’s Ladder 1957–58. Photo: artist’s collection
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 55
50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum Fund An almost 91 per cent ‘Yes’ vote in the 1967 Referendum showed unprecedented support across Australia for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be fully counted as citizens on the census and for the Commonwealth to unify the governance of Indigenous affairs. The National Gallery of Australia will commemorate the 50th anniversary of this key event in 2017 with its third National Indigenous Arts Triennial, Defying Empire. As a survey of Australian contemporary art by thirty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, this major exhibition will enable Indigenous
56 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Australian artists to be showcased on a national and international level, highlighting the continued excellence and diversity of Indigenous art today. Defying Empire will open at the NGA in Canberra in May 2017 and will be followed by a tour of Australia. As a national statement, the NGA will establish a commemorative collection of high-calibre works boldly exploring Australia’s history through contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. By donating toward the acquisition of ten major works from among the fifty included in the triennial, you will help us to recognise the importance of the historic referendum. Gifts of $10 000 or more will be acknowledged against specific works of art in perpetuity, and I take this opportunity to thank former NGA
Council member Warwick Hemsley and the Hon Melissa Parke for launching this campaign by supporting the acquisition of Sandra Hill’s Double standards 2015. With the support of benefactors for the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum Fund, the capsule collection of ten artists represented in this brochure will join the national art collection as a fitting and permanent acknowledgment of this landmark event in Australian history. Dr Gerard Vaughan AM, Director
Above: Brian Robinson (Maluyligal/Wuthathi/ Dayak peoples) Custodian of the Blooms 2014, wood, plastic, steel, synthetic polymer paint, feathers, plant fibre and shell. Photo: Saul Steed
Sharing our vision
Private donors The NGA acknowledges the support of its many private donors received between 9 April to 7 October. You have our thanks.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Lauraine Diggins Warwick Hemsley and the Hon Melissa Parke
Australian Art Bruce Adams David Archer Aleks Danko Moira Eckel Katherine Hattam Bequest of Mervyn Horton Jane Hylton Zeina Itaoui and Radwan Alam Caitlin Littlewood Helena Miksevicius and Carolyn Leigh Derek Nicholson Michael Ogden PSM Jude Rae Arthur Roe Dr Jim Sait Ross Searle David Sequeira Rob Skipper Peter Wright
Cézanne Watercolour and Drawing Fund Prof Miles Little Dr Penelope Olsen Adrienne Tuart
Contemporary Art De Lambert Largesse Foundation
Council Exhibitions Fund John Hindmarsh AM Allan Myers AC, QC Jason Yeap OAM
Decorative Arts and Design Roma Center and family Helen Drutt-English and Peter Stern Meredith Hinchliffe Patricia Mavromatis The late Klaus Moje AO and Brigitte Enders
Exhibition Patrons: Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time John Gandel AO and Pauline Gandel Simon Mordant AM and Catriona Mordant Penelope Seidler AM
Exhibition Patrons: Mike Parr: Foreign Looking
Masterpieces for the Nation 2015
Dr Gene Sherman AM and Brian Sherman AM
Susan Doenau Brian Fitzpatrick
Exhibition Patrons: Versailles: Treasures from the Palace
Masterpieces for the Nation 2016
Wayne Kratzmann Philip Bacon AM Kay Bryan Krystyna Campbell-Pretty The Hon Ashley DawsonDamer AM Ginny Green and Leslie Green Justin Miller Lady Potter AC Lyn Williams AM
Fiona Hall Fern Garden Fund Dimity Davy
Foundation Board Publishing Fund Susan Armitage Philip Bacon AM Julian Beaumont OAM Robyn Burke Dr Andrew Lu OAM
Foundation Gala Dinner Fund 2016 John Gandel AO and Pauline Gandel Bill Hayward and Alison Hayward
General donation John Anderson Maria Athanassenas Donna Bush and Glenn Bush Canberra Art Workshop Maurice Cashmere Angela Isles and Jonathon Isles Macquarie Group Foundation Neilson Foundation Susie Maple-Brown AM
Gifts of artist archives Dr Hilaire Dufour Mandy Martin
Grants Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
Learning and Access programs Made possible through the support of Tim Fairfax AC in honour of Betty Churcher AO
Meredith Adams Lenore Adamson Antoinette Albert Robert Albert AO, RFD, RD, and Libby Albert Ken Alexander and Marg Alexander Beverley Allen Ronald Allpress Cynthia Anderson Dorothy Anderson Ian Anderson Debra Askew and Michael Askew Michelle Atkinson Jim Bain AM John Baker Suzanne J Baker-Dekker Janet Bamford Richard Banks Lesley Barker Chris Barnes and Estelle Barnes Janet Batho and Patrick Batho Kay Beatton Martin Bennett David Biddles and Suzzane Biddles Noel Birchall Robert Blacklow Meg Bollen Valerie Boot and Dr Mac Boot Lynne Booth and Max Booth Ivor Gordon Bowden and Caroline Bowden Stephen Box and Deirdre Box Jeff Boyd and Lara Corry‑Boyd Harry Brackstone and Wendy Brackstone June Braithwaite Sarah Brasch Assoc Prof Phillip Braslins Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan Mary Brennan Cheryl Bridge Colin Bridge and Julie Hotchin Diana Brookes Howard Brown and Jennifer Brown Ian Bruce John Bruce and Barbara Bruce Tony Buckingham Julie Buckland and Iain Buckland Jane Burger Ruth Burgess Patricia Bygrave
Annette Byron John Caldwell and Judith Caldwell Dr Berenice-Eve Calf John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones AO Sarah Carlson Deborah Carroll Jane Carver Marianne Cavanagh Kathryn Clarke Carolyn Cleak John Clements Jan Clemson Christine Clough Margaret Cockburn Stephanie Cole Arthur Conigrave and Kate Conigrave Bruce Cook Graham Cooke Natalie Cooke Kerry-Anne Cousins Kay Cox and Neil Cox Janet Crane Merrilyn Crawford Tony Crawford Georgia Croker Helen Crompton Patrick Crone Charles Curran AC Mary Curtis and Richard Mann Commander Andrew Dale and Barbara Dale Bruce Daly and Molly Daly Rowena Danzinger and Ken Coles Peter D’Arcy and Robyn D’Arcy Rowena Davey Dianne Davis Robyn Dean and Philip Dean Patricia Degens Jane Diamond Shirley Dickson James Dittmar and Percita Dittmar Shaun Duffy and Susan Duffy Robyn Duncan Heather Dyne Anthony Eastaway Gillian Elliott Rosemary Engel Julia Ermert Tania Ezra and Jason Ezra Ian Falconer and Mary Falconer Emer Prof Norman Feather AM Peter Flanagan and Cherie Flanagan Michael Fleming and Belinda Fleming and family Lynn Fletcher and Wayne Fletcher Robert Forbes David Franks Margaret Frisch Justin Fuller Robert Gardiner
Roy Garwood Ingrid Geli and Alan Hazell Joan George Geraldine Gibbs and William Gibbs Enid Gibson Lindsey Gilbert Robert Gnezoiloff and Moya Gnezoiloff Sally Goodspeed June Gordon Ross Gough Gillian Gould Dr Elizabeth Grant AM Lynnere Gray Barbara Green Pauline Griffin AM Peter Grove Sue Guzowski Clarice Haley Rosemary Halford Aileen Hall Hardy Fine Art Brian Harrison John Harrison and Danielle Kluth Eleanor Hart Bruce Hayes Peter Henderson and Heather Henderson Elizabeth Hewson Colin Hill and Linda Hill Gordon Hill and Pamela Hill Dr Marian Hill John Hillman Meredith Hinchliffe Rosemary Hirst Michael Hobbs Dr Holland and Dr Dwan Patricia Howard Terrence Hull and Valerie Hull Barbara Humphreys Elspeth Humphries Judtih Hurlstone and Clive Hurlstone W Nevin Hurst Jill Hutson Claudia Hyles Dr Peter Ingle and Rosemary Ingle Lucie Jacobs Major General Michael Jeffery AC and Marlena Jeffery Dr Harold R Jenner and Sandra Dickin Dr Victoria Jennings Dr Joseph Johnson CSC, AAM, and Madeleine Johnson Elizabeth Johnston and R Corbett Meryl Joyce Marlene Keese Karin Keighley David Kennemore and Rosemary Kennemore Pamela Kenny in memory of Dr Peter Kenny Helen Kenyon Gail Kinsella
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 57
Ronald Kirkland and Christobel Kirkland Krysia Kitch and David Riggs Gerry Kruger and Ted Kruger Ann Lancaster Marjory Langridge Ursula Laverty Alun Leach-Jones and Nola Leach-Jones Thomas Leffers and Corrie Leffers Lady Jodie Leonard Alison Leslie in memory of James B Leslie Diana Letts Frank Lewincamp and Barbara Lewincamp David Lewis OAM Dr Frederick Lilley and Penelope Lilley Karyn Lim Don Limn and Rose Limn Pamela Linstead and Peter Linstead Elizabeth H Loftus Hugh Mackay and Sheila Mackay Roger Mackay Jill Mail Hugh Major Jenny Manton Jim Maple-Brown and Pamela Maple-Brown Graeme Marshall and Dr Walter Ong Dr Roger Mauldon and Willa Mauldon Robyn McAdam Douglas McAlister and Fleur McAlister Dr Ian McCay Christine McCormack and Jacqueline McCormak Justice Robert McDougall Simon McGill Selma McLaren Dr Stephen McNamara Karen McVicker Betty Meehan Dr Robert Miller and Mary Miller Caroline Minogue Mandy Minogue and Paul Minogue Dr Cathryn Mittelheuser AM Lisa Molvig Anthony Moore Andrew Moorhead Dr Ann Moyal AM Janet Moyle Dr Angus Muir and Charlotte Wilenski Patricia Mulcare and Philip Mulcare Neil C Mulveney Barbara Murray Susan Myatt Heather Nash in memory of Bill Nash
Margaret Naylor Barbara Noden and Victor Noden Terry O’Brien and Lucinda Lang Mike Ogden PSM Milton Osborne Robert Oser and Agie Oser Lioubov Parekh Gael Parr Susan Parsons Beth Parsons Linda Pascal Robert Pauling The Hon Tom Pauling AO, QC, and Tessa Pauling Gwen Pearson Jonathon Persse Dr David Pfanner and Dr Ruth Pfanner Christine Pidgeon Margaret Plant Suzannah Plowman Dr Michael Priest Anne Prins G Quintal Wendy Rainbird Prof Shirley Randell AO Colin Rea Tom Reeve and Mary Jo Reeve Ardyne Reid William and Judith Reid Jeanette Richmond and Warwick Richmond Ernesta Richter and Paul Richter Dr Lyn Riddett Mary Riek Paul Robilliard and Hanan Robilliard Suzanne Robinson Wendy Robson, Hannah Purdy and Isabelle Susan Rogers Jane Romeyn Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose James Ross and Heather Ross Peter Rossiter and Linda Rossiter Ray Rummery and Barbara Rummery Dr Roslyn Russell Eileen Sadler Dorothy Rose Sales Murray Sandland Kate Sandles Natalie Savitsky Fiona Sawyers Claire Scott Peter Sharp and Lesley Fisk Prof Ivan Shearer AM Judith Shelley and Michael Shelley Dr Mike Slee and Dr Judy Slee Jennifer Smart Dallas Smith and Robin Smith Jennifer Smith Wendy Smith in memory of Bob Smith
58 Artonview 88 | Summer 2016
Rick Smyth and Jane Smyth Ann Southcott Peter Spaven Paul Spence Andrew Spilva and Vivian Spilva David Stanley and Anne Stanley Maisy Stapleton Helene Stead John Stead Heather Stokoe Charles Stuart and Gay Stuart David Sutherland and Jennie Sutherland Lynette Swift Emer Prof Ken Taylor AM and Maggie Taylor The Taylor-Cannon family Teale and Associates Emma Thomas and Peter Yates Pamela Thomas and Graham Thomas Phillip Thompson Alison Thomson and Lincoln Smith Kevin Toohey and Deborah Lilly Myra Troy Judy Twist Niek Van Vucht and Jenny Van Vucht Derek Volker and Susan Volker Brenton Warren Wendy Webb Peter Webster Alexandra Wedutenko Dr Julie West Angela Westacott Helen White John White and Eileen White Peter White and Anne White Dr Romany White and Dr Russell White Rosalie White George Wilkins Emer Prof David Williams AM and Margaret Williams Dr Jonathon Williams and Cathryn Williams Andrew Williamson Julia Wilson Zandra Wilson Deborah Winkler and Abdelkareem Abdelmaksoud Leonard Wise Colonel Craig Wood and Suzanne Wood Robyn Wright and Mike Wright Alan Wyburn
Members Acquisition Fund 2015–16 Patrick Barrett and Margaret Barrett Elisabeth Bowes Angela Compton and John Compton
Ted Delofski and Irene Delofski Philip Flood AO and Carole Flood Maryan Godson and Richard Godson Ross Gough Rosemary Huff-Johnston and Bill Huff-Johnston Brigadier J Garth Hughes and Margaret Hughes Dr Bernard Hughson and Jennifer Hughson Dr Anthea Hyslop Pamela Kenny in memory of Dr Peter Kenny Angus Kirkwood and Christopher Butler Lady Jodie Leonard Alan Mallory Diana Mildern Geoff Murray-Prior and Gillian Murray-Prior Helene Stead Teale and Associates Paul Whitfeld
Members Acquisition Fund 2016–17 Meredith Adams Dr Colin Adrian and Lorraine Adrian Dr Robert Allen and Marilyn Allen Chris Barnes and Estelle Barnes Graham Barr and Heloise Barr Robert Blacklow Ivor Gordon Bowden and Caroline Bowden Mary Brennan Elizabeth Brooks Alan Brown and Erika Leslie Antony W Buckingham Ron Burns and Gail Burns Rear Admiral David Campbell Deb Carroll Maria Castelo Janet Clark Kerry-Anne Cousins David Craddock Georgia Croker Mary Curtis and Richard Mann Dianne Davies Susan Daw OAM and Haydn Daw Dr Moreen Dee Patricia Degens Peter Dugard and Lindy Dugard Anthony Eastaway Matilda Emberson Emer Prof Norman Feather AM Lynn Fletcher and Wayne Fletcher Peter Gardner Geraldine Gibbs and William Gibbs
Dr Lyn Gorman Cheryl Hannah and Helen McKenna Pat Harvey and Frank Harvey Colin Hill and Linda Hill Dr Joe Hlubucek and Judith Hlubucek Lucie Jacobs Dr Joseph Johnson CSC, AAM WG Keighley Joan Kitchin Gerry Kruger and Ted Kruger Anna Lahy Susan Laverty Dr Frederick Lilley and Penelope Lilley Stuart Lindenmayer John Malone Rosamund Mason Janet McCotter and Paul McCotter Patricia McCullough Ingrid Mitchell Dr John Morris and Judy Morris Dr Angus Muir and Charlotte Wilenski Dr Milton Osborne Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Tony Patis Wendy Rainbird Ronald Raines and Jan Raines Colin Rea Ardyne Reid Margaret Reid Dr Lyn Riddett Paul Robilliard and Hanan Robilliard Suzanne Robinson Susan Rogers Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Ray Rummery and Barbara Rummery Peter Sharp and Lesley Frisk Prof Ivan Shearer AM Steven Stroud and Annaliese Williams Phillip Thompson Jacqueline Thomson OAM Phillip Titterton and Anne Titterton Helen Tuite Judy Twist Janice Tynan Derek Volker and Susan Volker Jill Waterhouse David Watts and Diana Watts Helen White Muriel Wilkinson Shirley Wilmot Diane Wright
Treasure a Textile Prof Brian O’Keeffe AO Maxine Rochester
Sharing our vision
Corporate partnerships
Corporate Members
Cultural Partner
Aesop Atout France Brassey of Canberra Canberra Airport Canberra Symphony Orchestra Clayton Utz Eckersley’s Art and Craft Forrest Hotel & Apartments Hyatt Hotel Canberra Murrays SMS Management & Technology
Hotel Hotel
Beverage Partner Kronenbourg
Signage Partner Flash Photobition
Artonview 88 | Summer 2016 59
WE’LL ALWAYS SHARE YOUR LOVE OF ART.
BRETT WHITELEY Washing the Salt Off III, 1985 EST: $650,000 – 850,000 SOLD $1,220,000 (inc. BP) September 2016
consigning now
important australian, international + aboriginal art auctions in 2017 For appraisals, please contact Sydney: 02 9287 0600 info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com
T
O
U
C
H
E
D
M E E T TH E U LTI MATE D O M P É R I G N O N
Please drink responsibly
W I T H
P
L
E
N
I
T
U
D
E
domperignon.c o m
FRENCH BUBBLES. NOT THE ONES YOU WERE EXPECTING THOUGH.
An Australian National Maritime Museum Tour
9 December 2016 - 4 February 2018 BVRG ZINGEL PLACE BEGA NSW 2550 +61 2 6499 2187 http://gallery.begavalley.nsw.gov.au #BVRG
A new focus on the Asia-Pacific AU ST R A L A S I A
Issue 293 / October 2016
AU ST R A L A S I A
AU$12.95 NZ$14.95
New South Wales focus edition: 2016 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship; Mike Parr; Anne Graham artmonthly.org.au
Subscribe today online from AU$60 per year for Australasia’s best critical art writing each month and a window on the Asia-Pacific:
www.artmonthly.org.au/subscribe/
Opens 9 December Tickets on sale Members receive a GoldenTicket
Opens 9 December ISSN 1323-4552 9 771323 455006
88 >