2018.Q1 | Artonview 93 by National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia members are invited to experience the iconic world of Cartier with two special events. MOTHER’S DAY HIGH TEA Sunday 13 May 2.00 pm Celebrate a special day with loved ones, an exquisite high tea, curator’s introduction and entry into the exhibition. Members $75 / Guests $90

CHAMPAGNE BREAKFAST VIEWING Thursday 12 April 8.00 am Enjoy a champagne breakfast, an exclusive morning viewing and guided tour of the exhibition. Members $65 / Guests $75

Cartier: The Exhibition showcases more than 300 spectacular items in exquisite settings, including royal tiaras, necklaces, brooches and earrings.

Find out more at nga.gov.au/members

Cartier Paris Panther clip brooch 1949, platinum, white gold, diamonds, saphires. Cartier Collection. Photo: Marian Gérard, Cartier Collection. © Cartier

ISSUE 93 AUTUMN 2018 Editor Eric Meredith Guest contributors Nicholas Croggon, art historian, editor, critic and recipient of the 2017 AusArt Fellowship Margaret Young-Sánchez, curator of Cartier: The Exhibition Contributors Bronwyn Campbell, Provenance Manager Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art Crispin Howarth, Curator, Pacific Art Simeran Maxwell, Curator, International Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gerard Vaughan, Director Advertising enquiries ArtonviewAdvertising@nga.gov.au Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia 2017 PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au

CONTENTS 4

DIRECTOR’S WORD Gerard Vaughan

NEW BOOKS FROM THE NGA DIRECTOR’S CHOICE

WHAT AUDIENCES ARE SAYING ABOUT NAMATJIRA: PAINTING COUNTRY

IN BRIEF

EXHIBITION LISTING

COMING DISPLAY BALNAVES CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTION SERIES Introducing the first two projects in an exciting new series of major contemporary art experiences at the NGA from 4 May

20 ART AND ARTISTS QUASI-CINEMAS AND VIDEO UTOPIAS Nicholas Croggon looks back to the early days of expanded cinema and video art in 1960s and 1970s America

26 COLLECTION DISPLAYS INFINITE CONVERSATIONS 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 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) Designed by Kirsty Morrison Printed by CanPrint, Canberra, on FSC and PEFC certified paper using vegetable-based inks FSC-C017269 | PEFC/21-31-41

A new display of work by Asian and Australian artists from the national collection reveals rich dialogues and patterns of artistic exchange

32 THE STORY OF INAO Bronwyn Campbell examines an exquisite mid-nineteenth-century Thai screen now on display in the NGA’s Asian galleries

36 CURRENT MAJOR EXHIBITION CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION Margaret Young-Sánchez delves into the life of Australia’s Dame Nellie Melba and her relationship with the House of Cartier, Simeran Maxwell looks at the longstanding relationship between Cartier and the Royal House of Windsor and we highlight some of Cartier’s globally inspired jewellery

54 COLLECTION DISPLAY ANIMIST JEWELLERY OF INDONESIA Beatrice Thompson highlights some of the works in a new display at the NGA

56 DIARY OF AN OBJECT A HELMET’S VOYAGE Crispin Howarth researches the history of a rare eighteenth-century Hawaiian helmet in the national collection

60 NEW ACQUISITIONS AND COLLECTION DISPLAYS JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER Gerard Vaughan reveals American James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s influence on Australian Impressionists

64 JEAN BROOME-NORTON Cover: Grace Kelly and her Cartier diamond engagement ring, c 1956. © Kobal Opposite: David Hockney Prints, at the NGA in Canberra until 27 May 2018.

Deborah Hart recognises a great Australian sculptor and an inspiring and unexpected act of generosity

66 NEW ACQUISITIONS Cassandre, Ren Hang, Club Ate, Mortimer Menpes, Leo Bensemann ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

DIRECTOR’S WORD Gerard Vaughan

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful and safe summer break and found

famous Australian in the world at the time of Federation—a real diva

an opportunity to drop into the gallery over that time. I’m pleased to

not just on stage but also when it came to fashion and jewellery.

say that our 2018 program booklet arrived earlier than expected, in

were inspired by art from around the world, as travel to distant places

our information desk or Members Lounge, or you can find it online

became easier and the new Art Deco style determined fashion, art, design

by following the link on our home page. It reveals the rich program of

and architecture in Europe, America and Australia. Indeed, our recently

exhibitions and seasonal events we have planned throughout the year

opened Art Deco exhibition, drawn from our collection, shows the

for all ages and tastes.

exquisite invention of this almost panoptic style synonymous with the

It’s hard to believe we’ve already arrived in March, with the Enlighten festival taking place in the Parliamentary Triangle over

Roaring 1920s and the 1930s. Infinite Conversations: Asian–Australian Artistic Exchange, another

the next few weeks, launching us into a fantastic autumn program of

exhibition drawn entirely from our collection, has also just opened,

exhibitions and activities at the NGA, not least of which is our major

and no doubt you’ll discover new favourites among the lively and

and much-anticipated Cartier: The Exhibition, which opens at the end

thought-provoking works by the contemporary Asian and Australian

of March. Never before have so many incredible diamonds, pearls,

artists included. Later, on 4 May, we launch an exciting new multi-year

sapphires, emeralds and other precious stones been seen in Australia.

contemporary art intervention series in partnership with The Balnaves

It’s an opportunity highly unlikely to recur in anyone’s lifetime.

Foundation (see pages 18–19 for more). And, at the same time, all four

We received representatives from Cartier for our media launch late last year. Pierre Rainero, who was in Canberra and whom we interviewed in our last issue of Artonview, will be returning for an

episodes of our newly acquired moving-image series Ex Nilalang by Club Ate will go on display (see page 67). On 12 May, we present The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania’s

‘in-conversation’ public program on 31 March. Given his role as Image,

Black War, an exhibition exploring colonial representations of Tasmania’s

Style and Heritage Director at Cartier, it will be a conversation of rare

Aboriginal people as well as art from the 1920s to the present day

insight into the world of Cartier, who dominated twentieth-century

that responds to the many confronting issues of the colonial period,

jewellery design with its innovative approach to style and engineering.

which continue to be relevant and much-debated today. Curated by

A few weeks later, on 20 April, Xavier Gargat, Cartier’s Director of the

Prof Tim Bonyhady, working in partnership with Dr Greg Lehman,

Ateliers of High Jewellery, will then take us through Cartier’s high

the exhibition embodies the NGA’s ongoing commitment to using its

fashion pieces.

impressive resources to contribute insightfully to Australia’s evolving

In this issue of Artonview, we’re exploring two themes from the exhibition that make the NGA’s Cartier show unlike any previous one:

We also highlight some of the Cartier pieces in the exhibition that

January. If you haven’t done so already, you can pick up a copy from

national narrative. We also farewell a number of internal collection exhibitions over

the jewellery of the Royal family, including remarkable pieces from

the next few months, all of which have received overwhelmingly positive

Her Majesty The Queen’s private collection, and the exuberant taste

reviews from visitors. If you haven’t already seen them, you should try to

of Dame Nellie Melba, our first global singing sensation and the most

do so before they end. Australian Impressionism comes down very soon.

DIRECTOR'S WORD

It includes an exquisite cigar-box-lid painting by American James Abbott

many are also gifts to nation or have been acquired through the

McNeill Whistler, recently acquired by the NGA (see pages 60–3 for

generosity of private individuals—among whom you, of course, may

more on this acquisition and display). Namatjira: Painting Country and

well number.

Angelica Mesiti both continue until 2 April. Although very different

Your support for the acquisition of Arthur Streeton’s Ariadne

single-artist shows, they are both very rewarding in their own way.

1895, through our Members Acquisition Fund 2017–18, has been

You then have a little more time to see Arthur Streeton: The Art of

overwhelming. I know many of you also contribute annually to our

War, a quietly powerful record of a brutal struggle in which Australia

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund, which we would typically announce

played an important role, and David Hockney Prints, a stunning display

in this issue of Artonview. Indeed, we have something very special

of Hockney’s printed oeuvre. They continue until 29 April and

planned for this year’s campaign, although we can’t yet say what it is.

27 May respectively.

Our Head of Australian Art Deborah Hart, however, reveals part of the

Our Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of

surprise on page 11, and we will soon identify the work, which will

Australia, which presents over one hundred of our most important

take its place among the other Masterpieces for the Nation acquired

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander works, will also run its course

over the lifetime of this long-running annual acquisition fund.

at the me Collectors Room in Berlin, Germany, where it has been

Also in the spirit of giving, or at least of sharing in a broader sense

enthralling huge crowds since it opened in November last year. I was

(which includes lending), we are appealing to private collectors who

delighted to speak at the launch to a room full of very enthusiastic

have works by Martin Sharp, or other associated ephemera, including

locals, among which were international guests and committed

photographs or documents, to let us know, as we prepare for a major

supporters of the NGA who had made the long trip to Germany for

retrospective in 2019 that will highlight the astonishing, often chaotic,

the opening and other events we had planned for their short time

achievements of this much-loved Australian artist, cartoonist, songwriter

there. We also thank the Australian Government’s Department of

and filmmaker. The exhibition’s curator Elspeth Pitt provides more

Communications and the Arts for their grant toward this exhibition,

information on page 15.

as part of Australia Now Germany 2017, which presents audiences with

We have planned an amazing range of exhibitions and installations,

the opportunity to experience the range and complexity of Australian

large and small, for 2018 (my last year as Director before I retire), and

culture in Germany.

we invite you all to get involved in the fun we intend to have.

Throughout the year, each season offers new possibilities for discovery, as we expand the variety of our exhibitions and collection displays to take you to places and times both familiar and new. I encourage you, again, to pick up your copy of our exciting 2018 program booklet on your next visit to the NGA. And, while you’re here, take the time to discover new works on display. We have many new acquisitions being installed all the time. I’m pleased to say that

Above: NGA Director Gerard Vaughan speaking at the media launch of Cartier: The Exhibition, on display from 30 March to 22 July 2018.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

NEW BOOKS FROM THE NGA

DIRECTOR’S CHOICE Three new ‘must have’, superbly illustrated NGA publications, selected by Gerard Vaughan for their special quality and interest. Perfect gifts! ‘This lavishly illustrated catalogue for our current, free Hockney exhibition is a major contribution to the study of Hockney as a printmaker. Written by Jane Kinsman, our Head of International Art (who is a world authority on the subject), the book is a beautiful, scholarly record of Hockney’s print practice.’ Over a lifetime of printmaking David Hockney has produced a significant body of work. Through his prints he combines his extraordinary gift for drawing with a singular imagination and great technical facility and inventiveness. This publication covers the full range of Hockney’s printmaking practice, from etchings, lithographs and screenprints to paper pulp works, photocopies, faxes and iPad drawings, many drawn from the National Gallery of Australia’s renowned Kenneth Tyler Print Collection. 216 pages | 240 x 240 mm | full colour | hardback RRP A$39.95

Pick your own favourites For a full list of NGA titles, go to shop.nga.gov.au

DIRECTOR’S FAVOURITES

‘The first major publication on Namatjira to be published since the return of the copyright to the Namatjira family. Produced for our current free Namatjira exhibition, the sale of this stunning book will also benefit the Namatjira Legacy Trust. Albert Namatjira’s quiet evocations of his Country will move you to tears.’

‘Our Indigenous collection goes global! This is the catalogue for our latest exhibition, reproducing over one hundred of our finest Indigenous works of art, currently wowing crowds in Berlin.’

Pioneering Aboriginal watercolourist Albert Namatjira’s landscape

art practice from the early nineteenth century to today.

paintings are synonymous with our perception of the Australian

Produce by the NGA for the exhibition Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia at the me Collectors Room in Berlin, this book offers a fascinating insight into Indigenous Australian It is beautifully illustrated with some of Australia’s most significant

outback. But these luminous landscapes also expressed Namatjira’s

works of art, including rare, historical drawings, paintings on canvas

deep connection with the Western Arrarnta Country for which he was a

and bark, weaving and sculpture, prints, photography and video art.

traditional custodian.

All works are drawn exclusively from the NGA’s collection of Aboriginal

This is the first publication of Namatjira’s work since the copyright

and Torres Strait Islander art, the largest in the world, which includes

was returned to his descendants, and it celebrates the legacy of this

comprehensive collections of works by many of Australia’s most

important artist through a selection of his evocative watercolours from

significant Indigenous artists.

RRP A$39.95

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

‘It was wonderful to work in the Albert Namatjira section on the iPads. The students loved it. Thank you.’

WHAT AUDIENCES ARE SAYING ABOUT ALBERT NAMATJIRA

‘Since I was about 8, Albert Namatjira has been one of my favourite artists. As a child I remember feeling this beautiful land through his paintings, rather than just seeing a likeness he’d created. It’s like he was able to preserve in paint ... that special essence of the living, breathing natural world around me. When I look at his work now, the feelings only seem to have grown stronger. I smell the hint of eucalyptus in the air, feel the dry grass underneath me and hear the rustle of the tall gums leaves swaying above me.’ ‘I love his work!’ ‘The light; he captured it like no other.’

WHAT AUDIENCES ARE SAYING ABOUT …

‘Namatjira’s technique is masterful and I enjoy it.’ ‘Absolutely. He lived in it.’ ‘Was blown away by this work ... Awesome.’ ‘It’s a great show.’ ‘Nice!’ ‘Whoa so beautiful.’ ‘Finally ... a very good book to celebrate the work of an amazingly talented indigenous artist!’ ‘He loved to paint and painted what he loved. Looks like a very fine publication.’

Namatjira: Painting Country 15 July 2017 to 3 April 2018

ARTONVIEW 93 SUMMER 2017

IN BRIEF CARTIER COMES TO CANBERRA Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s Image, Style and Heritage Director, joined us last November for a sneak preview of Cartier: The Exhibition, showcasing several of the hundreds of works that will captivate audiences at the NGA when they go on display in Australia for the first time from 30 March to 22 July. ‘Cartier represents the poetic amalgamation of art, passion and style’, said Rainero. ‘Jewellery is a language of love, and this exhibition, organised by the NGA, represents a gift of love to the Australian people.’ Unique to the exhibition at the NGA are stunning pieces from Australia’s first global superstar, turn-of-the-century opera singer Dame Nellie Melba as well as a group of exquisite items from the Royal collection, including some of Her Majesty The Queen’s personal favourites. Pierre Rainero will soon return for the opening and to share his unique insights into Cartier’s glittering history, jewellery and

CANBERRA INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL 27 April to 6 May

Ten days of expertly curated music performed by internationally celebrated artists, with thought-provoking conversations and culinary surprises on the side—that’s the Canberra International Music Festival. From Beowulf to Bach and Bernstein, the 2018 festival unfurls a broad canvas around Canberra. So, this autumn, see the city in all its seasonal beauty and experience masterpieces on period instruments, delve into the great epics of the past and discover the music of our time in new ways. Once again, the NGA will host festival events that bring art and music together to create unique experiences. Susanna Borsch and Ned McGowan, for instance, perform in James Turrell’s Within without at the NGA from 30 April to 4 May, taking full advantage of the skyspace’s unique sunset lighting sequence to create a defining moment for your autumn visit to the NGA. For more festival offerings, see cimf.org.au.

IN BRIEF

Above: Perre Rainero at November’s media launch of Cartier: The Exhibition, opening on 30 March. Below: James Turrell Within without 2010, skyspace: lighting installation, concrete and basalt stupa, water, earth, landscaping. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © James Turrell. Photo: John Gollings

clientele in a free ‘in-conversation’ event at 2.00 pm on 31 March. The book produced for Cartier: The Exhibition is absolutely stunning and will be available from the NGA Shop. See pages 36–53 to discover more about Cartier: The Exhibition.

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2018 The work selected for this year's Masterpieces for the Nation Fund will be announced soon. We can give away, however, that it will be a major painting by the much-loved Australian John Olsen, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday in January.

In the 1960s, John Olsen made a significant

While the NGA has a great collection

acquiring a work through our Masterpiece for

impact in Australia after several years

of Olsen’s works from the 1960s, there are

the Nation Fund. With your support, we will

spent in Europe. He brought new life to

gaps in our representation of his later works,

extend and enhance our representation of his

the idea of a local ethos with works such

particularly his landscape paintings, including

significant oeuvre by adding one of his major

as Spring in the You Beaut Country 1963

works inspired by Lake Eyre and his visits to

later landscape paintings to the collection.

and Sydney sun 1965, both of which are in

the north of Western Australia and beyond.

Although currently under wraps, the work

the national collection. They were about a

Remarkably, too, he continues to work in his

chosen for the fund will be revealed soon!

direct experiential connection with a sense

studio at the age of ninety, which is testimony

Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art

of place, which he found exhilarating after

to his drive and tenacity as an artist and his

time away from home. Indeed, his art over

unabated enthusiasm for the possibilities that

many decades is characterised by a great

art has to offer.

vitality that simultaneously expresses the interconnectedness of all living beings.

The NGA would like to pay tribute to Olsen’s long career of achievement this year by

Above: John Olsen with his Sydney sun 1965 at the NGA for the Big Draw event, September 2009.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

THE NATIONAL PICTURE

Above: Opening of Indigenous Australia at me Collectors Room, Berlin, 17 November 2017.

12 May to 29 July 2018

Below: Benjamin Duterrau Mr Robinson’s first interview with Timmy 1840, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1979

This new exhibition at the NGA, opening on 12 May, examines colonial representations of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, one of the most remarkable and contentious expressions of Australian colonial art. In particular, it sheds new light on the under-examined figures in this difficult narrative: colonial artist Benjamin Duterrau, the controversial George Augustus Robinson and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people upon whose land the British settled. The National Picture spans the long and bloody ‘Black War’, the beginnings of Robinson’s ill-fated ‘Friendly Mission’ and Duterrau’s death in 1851. Also included in the show are works from the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries that reference and respond to the confronting issues that continue to arise from Tasmania’s colonial past. Guest curators Prof Tim Bonyhady and Dr Greg Lehman have delved deeply into the art and history of the period for both the exhibition and the accompanying book. Read more about The National Picture in the next issue of Artonview.

IN BRIEF

Opposite, from top: Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly 1946, enamel paint on composition board. Gift of Sunday Reed, 1977; The NGA’s 2018 program featuring an illustration by the Indieguerillas.

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA IN BERLIN 17 November 2017 to 2 April 2018

On a cold, windy November night in Berlin last year, over five hundred people gathered to experience and enjoy the first major Indigenous exhibition to travel to Germany from the NGA, Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia, which opened to a rapturous response from locals at the me Collectors Room/Olbricht Foundation in central Berlin. With support from the Department of Communications and the Arts, Indigenous Australia is a highlight of the threemonth-long Australia Now cultural program. One hundred of the NGA’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander masterworks made the long journey via Singapore, Hong Kong and New Delhi, before arriving in Berlin to be installed over the two weeks prior to opening night. NGA Director Gerard Vaughan launched the exhibition with Australia’s Ambassador to Germany Her Excellency Lynette Wood and founder of the me Collectors Room Thomas Olbricht. Exhibition curator Franchesca Cubillo led a floor talk after the opening, and participating artists Christopher Pease and Yhonnie Scarce were in attendance to discuss their work with enthusiastic visitors. Another major Indigenous exhibition from the NGA, Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial will begin its tour of Australia at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory on 24 March before heading to the UQ Art Museum in Brisbane in

NED GOES WEST Later this year, one of the NGA’s most iconic Australian series, Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly paintings, will head west to the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth to begin its first national tour in almost two decades. NGA Director Gerard Vaughan says, ‘They have been destination works at the NGA for the past forty years, but we are very pleased that more Australians around the country will have the opportunity to see and experience one of the greatest series of Australian paintings of the twentieth century’. Nolan’s invention of an original and starkly simplified image for Ned Kelly, as a slotted black square atop a horse, has become part of Australia’s shared identity and is perhaps the most well known in our popular imagination. After Western Australia, the series will travel to the Murray Art Museum Albury in New South Wales, Geelong Art Gallery in Victoria and, finally, Riddoch Art Gallery in South Australia. It will be supported by a range of public and education programs that

July. If you didn’t catch it in Canberra last year,

will capture the imagination of audiences of all ages.

here’s your chance.

For full details, keep an eye on the NGA’s website, or on those of participating venues.

THE NGA'S 2018 Cartier: The Exhibition is just around the corner but is only the beginning of a huge year of exceptional art experiences at the NGA. We are pulling out all the stops with major exhibitions, special installations of the national collection, live events, contemporary projects and new art, and our new annual program booklet will help you maximise your next visit. After Cartier: The Exhibition, this year’s major drawcards are American Masters 1940–1980 from the end of August and Love and Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate from mid December. But we also have myriad galleries full of vastly different and fascinating art experiences that will provoke new experiences and ideas in you. Amazing Art Deco, Albert Namatjira’s enchanting watercolours, captivating video art by Angelica Mesiti, Arthur Streeton’s war art, David Hockney’s exemplary vision in print, Asian–Australian artistic exchange, Tasmanian colonial art, Pablo Picasso’s The Vollard suite and much, much more. And that’s just until June! Pick up your copy of the NGA’s 2018 program from the NGA’s information desk or view it online. Also check our website regularly for updates, and join us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

YOUNG ARTISTS PROGRAM Enrol now!

The NGA invites creatives to be part of its inaugural Young Artists program for ages thirteen to seventeen. The program is the prefect next step for those ready to graduate to more indepth, regular and focused creative endeavours. Surrounded and inspired by the national art collection, and with behindthe-scenes opportunities at the NGA, you will build your skills with materials, techniques and concepts alongside like‑minded young creatives. Small classes of up to twelve students will ensure individual attention and allow for potential collaboration within groups. The program is offered over eight Saturday mornings in school-term two or three. A sibling discount is available, and the NGA offers a scholarship placement each term to assist a young artist who may not otherwise be able to enrol. Go to nga.gov.au/visiting/families/youngartists for details.

Left: Summer Art Scholar participating in a drawing workshop. Opposite, from top: Martin Sharp and Tim Lewis Still life 1973, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1973; Performance still with Michael Dick from Under Arena, Drawing International Brisbane (DIB) 2015. Photo: Emma Wright

NATIONAL SUMMER ART SCHOLARSHIP

AUSART 2018

Every January for over a decade now, the NGA has offered sixteen Year 11 students entering

Applications open April

Year 12 (two from each state and territory) the opportunity to come to Canberra to participate in

The American Friends of the National Gallery

a weeklong scholarship program. The scholarship provides students who have a strong interest in visual art the chance to learn from arts professionals at the NGA and in Canberra as well as artists and their peers from around the nation. The successful applicants to this year’s program all responded creatively to The calling 2013–14, one of five video works by Angelica Mesiti currently on display at the NGA. Once here, students then worked with performace artist Justene Williams, who brought them out of their shells to develop their own collaborative performace work to top off their week of learning and discovery. Narrowing the field of amazing applicants from around the nation is always difficult, and the NGA thanks all students who applied and the parents, teachers and schools who support them. Applications for the 2019 National Summer Art Scholarship will open later in the year. Follow us on social media and keep an eye on our website so you don’t miss your chance. Find out more at nga.gov.au/summerartscholarship.

of Australia have enjoyed another successful year with their activities and efforts bringing new opportunities and connections for the NGA. The 2017 annual US$30,000 AusArt Fellowship was given to Melbourne-raised, New York-based art historian Nicholas Croggon, who is currently completing his PhD at Columbia University. Made possible by the Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation and co-funded by the American Australian Association, the AusArt Fellowship is an integral part of the AFNGA’s mission to

NEW APPOINTMENTS Daryl West-Moore has been appointed as the Head of Exhibition Design. His gallery experience, design skills and management ability will be valuable assets for the NGA’s ambitious forward program. Prior to running his own consultancy as a specialist museum exhibition designer, he spent twenty-six years at the NGV. Carol Cains, our new Senior Curator of Asian Art, re-joins the NGA after almost fifteen years, bringing with her a wealth of knowledge and experience gained over that time We warmly welcome both Daryl and Carol to the team.

IN BRIEF

foster exchange between America and Australia through the visual arts. The directors of the AFNGA are looking forward to another busy year with a focus on increasing support for the NGA’s American collections, education and programming (particularly August’s exhibition American Masters 1940–1980) and expanding the Friend’s reach to the West Coast. Find out more at afnga.org.

MARTIN SHARP The NGA is seeking works from private collections for a Martin Sharp survey in early 2019

Martin Sharp never lost the ability to look at the world with awe, not apathy. Turning junkshop items into treasure troves and treating ratty scraps of paper as precious rubies, his luminous brand of Pop Art deeply inspired audiences in Australia and abroad. His art was sporadically and unevenly collected by many major Australian galleries, but much of it is also held privately, given to friends and associates as gifts. This survey exhibition, the first since the artist’s death in 2013, will consider Sharp’s loved and seminal work in Pop Art while also looking broadly at his unusually faceted oeuvre. It will gather together early drawings for OZ magazine, collages and ‘Artoons’, Yellow House ephemera, installation, vivid prints and paintings. It will also draw attention to his lesser-known work in film, including the experimental feature-length picture Street of dreams, which entwined the life of American singer Tiny Tim with Sharp’s beloved Luna Park. If you have works of art in your collection by Martin Sharp, or photographs or documents that you believe may be of art historical interest, please contact the NGA’s Australian Art department at Australian.Art@nga.gov.au or on (02) 6240 6683. Note that the NGA is especially interested in locating unique collages and paintings at this time, particularly from the earlier years of Sharp’s career, from 1965 to 1975. Elspeth Pitt, Curator, Australian Art (20th and 21st Century)

NGA PLAY: KELLIE O’DEMPSEY 26 May to 28 October

From 26 May, Australian drawing, collage and performance artist Kellie O’Dempsey will turn NGA Play into a living sketchbook filled with moving marks and dancing lines. You and your family will be able to contribute sketches to the daily journey, as digital projections collide with traditional drawing, exploding into a crescendo of colourful chaos. This lively collaboration with the NGA will change how you think about contemporary drawing, revealing the process of making and expanding the creative potential of young and old minds alike. O’Dempsey launches her installation with a free performance drawing event accompanied by live music and dance at 2.00 pm on 26 May. Until mid May, the fun-filled and visually dynamic NGA Play designed and created by the Indonesian contemporary artist-duo the Indieguerillas will continue. Filled with addictively interactive works of art, it has proved extremely popular over summer. Don’t miss it while you still have a chance.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

NGA LIVE On 4 May, the NGA celebrates contemporary art with a spectacular night of live performance and immersive experiences, launching the first two Balnaves Contemporary Art Interventions as well as a new display of all four episodes of Club Ate’s moving-image project Ex Nilalang, recently acquired for the national collection (see page 67). A collective founded by Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, Club Ate will present a live work complementing Ex Nilalang and further exploring the term ‘Nilalang’, which means both ‘to create’ and ‘creature’. Together with musician Corin Ileto and other collaborators, they will combine sound, costume and movement to create new connections between queer, migrant, spiritual and intercultural experiences. Go to nga.gov.au for updates closer to the event.

ARTMED IN WA

CANBERRA

A recent professional development visit hosted

If you’re visiting the NGA this year, don’t forget to take some time to discover for yourself why

by the NGA allowed me to learn how the

Australia’s capital was named Lonely Planet’s third best city in the world to visit in 2018, with

NGA, partnering with ACT Health and the

Seville in Spain taking first and Detroit in the United States of America as runner up.

ANU Medical School, is providing leadership

contemporary style and interesting cafes, bars and restaurants to suit every taste, plus a host of

medicine’ (Artmed) program.

destination arts and cultural attractions—at the top of Lonely Planet’s list sits the NGA!

Seeking a similar commitment to an

The capital’s calendar of events for 2018 is also jam-packed, offering something for every kind

Artmed program at the University of Western

of visitor all year round. Enlighten continues in the Parliamentary Triangle for the next few weeks,

Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, I was

as does the Balloon Spectacular, ending on 18 March with the popular Skyfire lighting up Lake

eager to learn about the strategies adopted

Burley Griffin with fireworks set to a soundtrack. The National Folk Festival runs from 29 March

by the NGA and its collaborators at ACT

to 2 April with over two hundred Australian and international acts.

Health and the ANU as well as from medical

For foodies, the capital offers the Canberra District Wine Harvest Festival in April and the

students, who enthusiastically explained the

Truffle Festival from 1 June, a fabulous celebration of winter. Canberra is also home to Floriade,

benefits of their experiences with Artmed.

Australia’s premier spring festival, which opens on 15 September.

This information has led me to reviewing my

Check out VisitCanberra.com.au to plan your next trip.

own experiences in developing object-based learning workshops for mentors and mentees with the Co-Director of Emergency Medicine Training at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. The value of shared knowledge was an important aspect of my visit to the NGA. What was clear, and something I’ll be mindful off in developing a program at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, is the significance of an institution’s own collections as being a paramount resource and point of differentiation across many such engagement programs. Dr Janice Lally, Curator of Public Programs, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery

Above: Club Ate From Creature ~ From Creation 2017, from the series Ex Nilalang, single-channel HD digital video, 16:9, colour, sound. Purchased 2017. Image courtesy of the artists Right: Canberra’s annual Balloon Spectacular.

Just scratch the surface and Canberra will surprise you with its rich history, architecture,

in developing and conducting an ‘Art and

IN BRIEF

EXHIBITION LISTING AT THE NGA

TOURING EXHIBITIONS

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

RESOLUTION: NEW INDIGENOUS PHOTOMEDIA

Showcasing more than 300 spectacular items in exquisite settings, including royal tiaras, necklaces, brooches and earrings. 30 March to 22 July 2018 Adult $27.00 | Children 16 and under free Concession $25.00 | Member $20.00 Audio-guide hire $7.00 Book now at ticketek.com or 1300 795 012

Recent photomedia by some of Australia’s leading and emerging Indigenous artists. 10 February to 25 March 2018 @ Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery Free

NAMATJIRA: PAINTING COUNTRY Celebrating Gordon and Marilyn Darling’s donation of watercolours by Albert Namatjira. 15 July 2017 to 3 April 2018 Free

ANGELICA MESITI Five works by Angelica Mesiti explore the silent and the unspoken through video. 9 September 2017 to 2 April 2018 Free

ARTHUR STREETON: THE ART OF WAR An important survey exhibition of Arthur Streeton’s war art. 15 December 2017 to 29 April 2018 Free

DAVID HOCKNEY PRINTS Hockney’s printmaking practice through key works from the collection. 11 November 2017 to 27 May 2018 Free

ART DECO Stylish items from an age of jazz and flappers, glamorous fashion and design. From 16 February 2018 Free

INFINITE CONVERSATIONS: ASIAN–AUSTRALIAN ARTISTIC EXCHANGE

SILVER AND GOLD: UNIQUE AUSTRALIAN OBJECTS 1850–1910 Works from the NGA’s significant collection of colonial Australian decorative arts and design. 15 December 2017 to 1 April 2018 @ Royal Australian Mint 20 April to 10 June 2018 @ Tamworth Art Gallery Free

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA: MASTERWORKS FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA Organised by the NGA and drawn exclusively from Australia’s national collection. 17 November 2017 to 2 April 2018 @ me Collectors Room, Berlin

PICASSO: THE VOLLARD SUITE A rare opportunity to see one of the twentieth century’s greatest suites of prints. 2 December 2017 to 15 April 2018 @ Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art Free

ABSTRACTION: CELEBRATING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN ABSTRACT ARTISTS Revealing the contribution Australian women have made to abstract art. 2 March to 27 May 2018 @ Tweed Regional Gallery 1 June to 26 August 2018 @ QUT Art Museum Free

DIANE ARBUS: AMERICAN PORTRAITS Powerful allegories of postwar America by photographer Diane Arbus. 17 March to 17 June 2018 @ Heide Museum of Modern Art Free

Revealing a rich dialogue, as concepts of race and culture are provoked and explored. 10 March to 8 July 2018 Free

THE NATIONAL PICTURE Curated by Prof Tim Bonyhady, working with Dr Greg Lehman. 12 May to 29 July 2018 Free

BALNAVES CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTIONS Sarah Contos 4 May to 24 September 2018 Jess Johnson and Simon Ward 4 May to 26 August 2018 Free

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

C O M I N G D I S P L AY

BALNAVES CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTION SERIES Introducing the first two projects in an exciting new series of major contemporary art experiences at the NGA from 4Â May.

BALNAVES CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTION SERIES

Each Balnaves Contemporary Intervention

Embrace the unexpected as exciting new art

Ward reimagines Johnson’s densely layered

transforms spaces throughout the NGA from

drawings as hypnotic animated video and

in the series is connected by this desire to

4 May. In partnership with The Balnaves

unique virtual-reality experiences. Positioned

inspire and invigorate. The series will see

Foundation, the NGA has commissioned a

within an elaborate floor map, five virtual-

leading artists present daring and innovative

series of contemporary interventions that

reality stations will act as portals into five

experiences, reinterpret familiar locations and

challenge, engage and inspire. The first two

different realms. Take a journey through a

reimagine the concept of what a gallery can be.

projects are by Sarah Contos and duo Jess

wormhole into worlds where the connections

So, when you visit the NGA from May onward,

Johnson and Simon Ward.

between language, science fiction, culture and

be sure to look above you, underfoot and

technology are explored.

beyond what is actually there. You might be

Contos will transform the NGA foyer into a cinematic universe in which film

The Balnaves Foundation, established

references are pulled apart and reinterpreted

in 2006 by former media entrepreneur

using a wild array of materials and mediums.

Neil Balnaves AO, supports a variety of

Be bombarded by unexpected structures

education, medicine and arts initiatives

and flamboyant mobiles dripping from the

with the view to create a better Australia.

ceiling. Discover characters and props collaged

Its generous decision to finance the NGA’s

with sparkling, suspended textiles and fleshy

multi-year contemporary intervention series

sculptural forms. Throw caution to the wind

acknowledges the significance that fresh, new

and lose yourself within Contos’s dramatic

visual-art projects have to broader community

and provocative ‘motion picture’ installation,

empowerment. As Neil Balnaves once stated:

which Contos says, ‘has a 1980s nostalgic

‘Ensuring that Australia has a flourishing arts

flavour and a 1920s fervour. The vibe is … an

sector is important to our national identity,

overfilled raspberry coke slushy … a pillow

our individual and collective health and our

fight in heels … an exquisite corpse.’

economy. The arts is the inception point

Johnson and Ward’s Terminus will

for new ideas by helping us to stretch our

be an immersive ‘world within a world’,

imagination, stimulate our creativity, nourish

where dimensional realities exist in both

our soul and help us process, change and

physical and virtual space. For Terminus,

make sense of the world around us’.

surprised what you find. Balnaves Contemporary Intervention Series Sarah Contos: 4 May to 24 September Jess Johnson and Simon Ward: 4 May to 26 August Join the conversation #BalnavesNGA

Above: Sarah Contos’s studio showing work in progress for her Balnaves Contemporary Intervention Series project, November 2017. Image courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, and STATION, Melbourne Opposite: A working drawing by Jess Johnson for the Balnaves Contemporary Intervention Series project Terminus 2018. Image courtesy of the artists, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, and Jack Hanley Gallery, New York

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

ART AND ARTISTS

QUASI-CINEMAS AND VIDEO UTOPIAS Nicholas Croggon looks back to the early days of expanded cinema and video art in 1960s and 1970s America so that we might better understand and appreciate the increasingly sophisticated film, video, virtual-reality and multimedia works we are discovering more of in major art galleries worldwide.

QUASI-CINEMAS AND VIDEO UTOPIAS

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

Over the past few decades, visitors to museums around the world may

in our pockets, in public spaces and in our homes. Yet, for most of the

becoming home to not only the traditional mediums of painting and

early twentieth century, the moving image had one home: the theatrical

sculpture but also the moving image. The NGA’s 2018 program provides

cinema. This had not always been the case. In the late 1800s, the moving

no exception, as visitors will see works by video and performance

image was found, much like today, in a variety of devices and places,

artist Angelica Mesiti, films by Club Ate and even a new virtual-reality

as part of vaudeville and magic shows, screened in public auditoriums

installation by Jess Johnson and Simon Ward.

as well as in smaller, single-user contraptions. In the 1910s and 1920s,

But how are we to understand these new mediums of film, video or

however, this diversity was eclipsed by a new format—the feature-length

virtual reality? And what can their presence in the museum tell us about

narrative film and the darkened enclosure of the theatrical cinema.

our contemporary world, in which moving images increasingly mediate

Highly popular and highly profitable, this model of the cinema reigned

every aspect of our lives through the mass media of the internet?

for many years as the defining format of the moving image. Yet, between

One way to begin to answer such questions is to turn to an earlier moment in art history: the United States of America in the 1960s and 1970s. This year, NGA visitors will have the chance to do exactly this,

Today, moving images can be found everywhere—on our screens,

have noticed a change taking place. Art museums are increasingly

the 1940s and 1970s, its dominance began to wane, as the public turned their eyes towards a new way of viewing moving images: television. It was at this moment that certain artists of the 1960s began to see

as the museum hosts a sequence of exhibitions showcasing many of

the cinema in a new way. One of the earliest and best examples is a 1965

the key artists and movements of the period, from the Pop Art of Andy

work by the Korean-American Fluxus artist Nam June Paik, Zen for film.

Warhol and the Minimalism of Donald Judd to the Post-Minimalism

In this work, the artist screened a ‘film’ that comprised not the usual

of Bruce Nauman and the conceptual art of Joseph Kosuth and John

cinematic synthesis of moving image, narrative and sound but twenty

Baldessari. Yet cutting across this whirlwind tour of movements and

minutes of blank film leader. The performance, as always with the playful

‘isms’ is a common thread. In the 1960s and 1970s, artists shifted from

Paik, was absurd and provocative, yet it also had a more serious point.

work that explored the possibilities of a single medium (such as Abstract

Sitting before a blank screen, Paik’s viewers could no longer slip into the

Expressionism’s relationship to painting) to work that incorporated

silent reverie usually produced by theatrical cinema. Instead, they were

multiple mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, dance,

forced to become aware of the various devices that invisibly worked to

performance, installation, film and video. In doing so, some artists

create this experience: the seats that locked them in place, the enveloping

were able to reflect on an important moment in the history of the

darkness, the whirring of the projector and the dust-speckled surface

moving image.

of the film stock itself. It was as though, for Paik, as for other artists

QUASI-CINEMAS AND VIDEO UTOPIAS

Pages 20–1: Tony Oursler Incubator 2003 single-channel video, sound, fibreglass National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2003 Opposite: Shaun Gladwell Orbital vanitas 2017, virtual reality: computer-generated animation, sound. Produced by BADFAITH. Installation view of Hyper Real, at the NGA, Canberra, November 2017. Right: Jess Johnson and Simon Ward Transkin 2017 (video still), single-channel digital 4K video, audio. Image courtesy of the artists, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, and Jack Hanley Gallery, New York

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

associated with the ‘expanded cinema’ movement that was to follow, the decline of the cinema made it visible for the first time. The theatre was

to experiment with a new moving-image technology, portable video.

no longer the timeless and unquestioned home of the moving image,

In today’s world of digital video and smartphones, it is hard to imagine

but a historically contingent arrangement of architecture, devices and

how revolutionary portable video must have seemed when it first went

bodies, as art historians Andrew Uroskie and Noam Elcott have argued.

on the market in the late 1960s. At the time, film was widely available,

But, if this was the end of cinema, what might emerge in its place?

but many artists found it a time-consuming, expensive and increasingly

One artist who sought to answer this question was the Brazilian

elitist pursuit. Portable video, by contrast, was cheap, portable and

Hélio Oiticica. In the early 1970s, Oiticica, who had recently moved to

thoroughly amateur. Its most revelatory feature was its ability to provide

New York, developed a series of projects with the filmmaker Neville

‘feedback’. For the first time, one could record a moving image and play it

D’Almeida that he labelled ‘quasi-cinemas’. In these works, which

back to an audience in real time or with a built-in delay.

were never publicly realised in Oiticica’s lifetime, the artist would

In the wake of the social protests that roiled the United States in

project slides onto the walls and ceiling of his New York loft to the

the 1960s and 1970s, video was enthusiastically embraced by artists

accompaniment of music. The slides varied from project to project.

and activists alike. ‘Guerrilla video’ practitioners as well as members of

Neyrótika, for instance, incorporated Oiticica’s photographs of seductively

the women’s, Black Power and gay and lesbian movements found in

posed young neighbourhood men, while the Cosmococas projects

video a way to bypass mainstream television broadcasters and tell their

included cocaine-line drawings traced onto faces found on magazine,

own stories, sometimes distributing them on newly established cable

book and album covers.

networks. Many artists similarly used video as a cheap way to document

Oiticica’s aim was to break with the fixed mode of cinema

and circulate their work, and to ‘feed back’ to broadcast television. In her

spectatorship that Paik had exposed, a form of passivity and alienation

1975 video Semiotics of the kitchen, for example, Martha Rosler performed

that he saw as inherent to industrial capitalism. Instead, Oiticica

a parody of a Julia Childs-esque cooking program, gesturing with

encouraged his viewers to move around the space, lounge in hammocks

increasingly violent movements to the way the domesticated mass media

or file their nails—forms of leisurely participation that he associated

of broadcast television bound women to that same domestic space.

with the new medium of television. Not quite cinema and not quite

While some artists investigated the end of cinema, others began

Other artists involved in conceptual, body or performance art—such

television, Oiticica’s ‘quasi-cinemas’ used elements of each to create an

as Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Lynda Benglis and Joan

entirely new environment, one that could allow for the flourishing of

Jonas—used video’s feedback capability to explore the way in which the

marginal or transgressive identities such as those he had encountered in

modern self was increasingly caught up in a vortex of images. If Oiticica

New York’s artistic, queer and immigrant communities.

sought to escape the passive spectatorship of the cinema era, these artists

QUASI-CINEMAS AND VIDEO UTOPIAS

showed that, in the new era of television and video feedback (which

postwar period, artists increasingly abandoned this idea and began

was quickly instrumentalised to become CCTV), we are always both

to explore the ways in which things such as freedom and identity are

spectator and performer, watcher and watched.

shaped by larger forces. As the moving image in the 1960s and 1970s

As with the ‘expanded cinema’, while some video artists used the new

shifted from the theatre to the television screen, media artists saw that

technology to expose the structures of existing reality, others used it to

such forces were not timeless but hinged to specific arrangements

formulate new utopian realities. This utopianism was fuelled in part by

of architecture, technology and bodies. As the examples given above

the rise of the counterculture, a 1960s youth movement whose politics

demonstrate, this in turn opened the way for artists to shed light on new

were grounded not in the traditional forms of protest and organising

possibilities and alternative ways of living that ran against the grain of

but on expanding one’s consciousness, on new forms of communalism

normative society.

and on embracing new technologies such as computers and video. At the

In looking at contemporary film, video and new media practices,

same time, the rise of environmentalism warned that a new way of living

then, we should avoid becoming too distracted by the apparent ‘newness’

was required if humanity was to survive. One artist who responded to

of the mediums. Instead, we should pay attention to the ways in which

this call for a new sustainable, interconnected reality was the Chilean

artists are simply using whatever materials are available to them to

Juan Downey. In 1973, Downey embarked on a project called ‘Video

interrogate the forces that shape our existence and to point to the

Trans Americas’ in which he travelled with his family from his home in

different modes of life that subsist within these forces.

New York all the way through Latin America, videotaping the different communities he met along the way and using feedback to share his footage. In this moment of transition between two mass media, cinema and television, video might, Downey hoped, form the basis for a new

If you enjoyed this article, you may be interestied in Early American Video On display from 7 July

non-state-based global community. There are no straight lines that connect the media practices described here to the contemporary video, film and other new media works on show at the NGA in 2018. However, we can understand both as part of a broader transformation in the history of art. Art history has long been dominated by the idea of the artist as a great (usually male) genius who expresses the freedom of the human spirit through the mastery of his medium (think Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock). In the

Opposite: AES+F Inverso mundus 2015, seven-channel HD video installation: animation of photographs and computer-generated graphics, sound. Installation view of Hyper Real, at the NGA, Canberra, November 2017 Above: Angelica Mesiti The colour of saying 2015, three-channel HD video installation, sound, colour. Installation view of Angelica Mesiti at the NGA, Canberra, September 2017

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY

INFINITE CONVERSATIONS A new display of work by Asian and Australian artists from theÂ national collection reveals rich dialogues and patterns of artistic exchange.

INFINITE CONVERSATIONS

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

Pages 26–7: Abdul Abdullah, Casey Ayres and Nathan Beard The ambassadors (detail) from The Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 2012, pigment print. Gift of the artist, 2013 Above: Guan Wei Dow: Island 2002, synthetic polymer paint on 48 canvases. Purchased 2003 All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

INFINITE CONVERSATIONS

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

land symbolising Australia is also pictured,

Conversations considers Asian–Australian

giving rise to an oblique and expectant tension.

the relationship between individual and

artistic exchange. The first gallery reflects

A second gallery broadens the temporal

culture in her repetitive printing of Lao

in part the creative practice of artists from

and geographical reach of the first. Examining

mainland China and Hong Kong who

historical and contemporary patterns of

settled in Australia after the 1989 Tiananmen

cultural exchange (pictorial, material,

Square protests. Employing diverse modes of

linguistic), this gallery reveals the relationships

production, their work confronts and recounts

between Asian and Australian artists to be

the challenges of making a new home with

rich, complex and sometimes disquieting, as

shifting degrees of grief, poetry and optimism.

constructs of race and culture are provoked

Moving back and forth between Australia and China during the production of his

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn also examines

Displayed across two gallery spaces, Infinite

and explored. In The ambassadors, Abdul Abdullah,

exquisite bas-reliefs, Wang Zhiyuan’s floating

Casey Ayres and Nathan Beard, who share

figures, winged bodies and cloud wisps imply

Asian–Australian heritage, reference Thailand’s

passage through celestial realms, emphasising

reformist kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn,

the otherworldly nature of moving between

renowned for adopting western dress and

his new and native homes. Guan Wei’s panel

photographic conventions in the nineteenth

painting Dow: Island similarly refers to the

and twentieth centuries. The image observes

physical and emotional consequence of

the ways in which photography was historically

emigration. His painting depicts a vast sea

used by Asian subjects to confuse colonial

marked with tracts of land, including ‘Calamity

power relationships while making a laconic

Island’, ‘Trepidation Island’ and ‘Aspiration

remark on the fetishisation of Asian cultural

Island’. ‘The Enchanted Coast’ of a southern

practices in a contemporary global context.

INFINITE CONVERSATIONS

calligraphy, religious symbolism and cultural designs that compel viewers to read across and into the surface of her works. Densely composed, her strata of language and symbol are landscapes to be travelled through, explored and deciphered. Drawn entirely from the NGA’s collection, this display brings together works by artists including Abdul Abdullah, Ah Xian, Kate Beynon, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, Farrell and Parkin, Simryn Gill, Janina Green, Guan Wei, Guo Jian, Narelle Jubelin, Lindy Lee, Li Gang, Patsy Payne, Rosslynd Piggott, Hossein Valamanesh and Savanhdary Vongpoothorn. Infinite Conversations: Asian–Australian Artistic Exchange 10 March to 8 July 2018 Join the conversation #InfiniteConversationsNGA

Opposite: Guo Jian Trigger happy IX 1999, oil on canvas. Purchased 2000 Above: Hossein Valamanesh Practice 2006, saffron painting with pigment of saffron ground with salt in water. Purchased 2007. © The artist

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

THE STORY OF INAO

C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY

T H E S TO RY O F I N AO

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

Bronwyn Campbell examines an exquisite mid-nineteenth-century Thai screen that reveals the legend of Inao and his beloved Busaba. Carefully conserved over recent years, this double-sided screen is now on display in the NGA’s Asian galleries.

The story of the handsome prince Inao and his beloved Busaba is a Thai

is first known from the late 1890s, when it featured in photographs of

adaptation of the ancient Javanese epic poem The tale of Panji. The tale

Rama V’s brother the prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse and his family.

has been popular in many parts of Southeast Asia for centuries, but the

Inao is a complex tale, and the painter has picked out episodic highlights

definitive Thai version was written by King Rama II (reigned 1809–24),

for a small audience of well-educated viewers very familiar with the story,

and immediately adapted into a popular lakhon nai classical dance

rather than creating a linear narrative.

drama. Unlike the masked khon dance dramatisations of the Ramakien

cloth made for the Thai courts on India’s Coromandel Coast during

musical in which all roles were played by the women of the royal

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These cloths often feature

family. Accompanied by a musical ensemble and chorus, the story was

a central rectangular section filled with trellises and deities or with

performed exclusively for the king, members of his court and his guests.

sandalwood flowers (prajumyam) and enclosed in a border featuring

Although banned by Rama II’s devoutly Buddhist successor,

more of the flowers. A pair of such cloths can be seen forming curtains

lakhon nai was reintroduced under Rama IV (reigned 1851–68), who

in the cave on the back of the screen. A popular decorative device in Thai

commissioned his wife Queen Somanat Watthanawadi to revive the royal

art and architecture for centuries, the prajumyam border would have

theatre. By the time of Somanat’s death at the age of seventeen, just two

seemed a natural frame to the painter—here the four-pointed prajumyam

months after the death of her newborn son, Inao had become the most

is a composite of smaller flowers.

popular play in the Thai court. The NGA has a small collection of photographs by Francis Chit

In her 2013 unpublished history of the screen, Nattapatra Chandavij of the Thai Department of Fine Arts describes the plot of Inao in detail.

(born Khun Sunthonsathitlak), court photographer to both Rama IV and

The front of the screen shows Inao and his army setting out at his

Rama V (reigned 1868–1910). One such photograph shows a twenty-year-

father’s order to defeat rival suitors for the hand of his cousin Busaba, the

old King Rama V at his second coronation in 1873, marking his majority

King of Daha’s daughter. It features elaborate processions, action-packed

and his assumption of full reign of the country after a five-year regency.

battles and Inao’s triumphant return to Daha, where he meets Busaba for

He is portrayed as the rightful ruler of an ancient kingdom, surrounded

the first time. Betrothed since childhood, Inao had previously refused to

by the royal regalia and richly dressed in the tall, pointed Crown of

meet or marry her because he was in love with his cousin the princess

Victory, cloth woven with golden thread, gem-encrusted gold jewellery

Jintara. This love is promptly forgotten when Inao is smitten by Busaba’s

and slippers, with the Sword of Victory across his knees.

beauty, although Busaba, in an angry response to Inao’s earlier rejection,

Similar garb can be seen worn by deities and royalty in Thai paintings since at least the seventeenth century, including by the hero

The action is set within a floral border that echoes the designs on

(the Thai version of the Ramayana), lakhon nai was a choreographed

has promised her hand to the monstrously ugly Joraka. The other side of the screen depicts some of Inao’s attempts to

Inao depicted in the double-sided painted screen acquired by the

woo Busaba. It reads roughly right to left and features scenes from the

NGA in 2013 and carefully conserved in recent years in preparation

pilgrimage of the Daha royal family to a famous Buddha image in a

for display. The screen, or luplae, is painted with scenes from Inao and

cave in Wilismara Mountain. The king and his retinue march out from

THE STORY OF INAO

the city, which is the scene of a theatre fire set by Inao’s soldiers to

Buddha image at the shrine, pretending to be the Buddha and warning

disrupt the planned wedding of Busaba and Joraka. Actors pulling off

Busaba not to marry Joraka. Above, the procession disappears into the

khon masks can be seen fleeing the flames as collapsing structures cause

distance, and it is possible to imagine the tale continues on another

mayhem. Inao, disguised as Joraka, uses the commotion to spirit Busaba

screen, perhaps lost or never painted, as it is hard to reconcile the idea

off to a secluded mountain cave.

that the artist was finished with the story before Inao wins Busaba’s love.

The city of Daha is recognisably the Grand Palace complex of the

What is certain, however, is that the artist was highly skilled. At first

Chakri dynasty transposed to a mountainous landscape rather than the

glance, the screen might seem wholly Thai in appearance, reminiscent

flat bank of the Chao Phraya River. It fills half the screen, viewed from

of temple mural painting in its simultaneous action and packed,

the east across to the river, where the bare masts of moored ships can

towering picture plane, together with the subject matter, costumes and

be seen over the spires and towers of the palace buildings. Buildings are

recognisable cityscape. The western influence that began to infiltrate

identifiable and include the green-tiled and spired Phra Thinang Dusit

Thai painting during the reign of Rama IV, however, makes itself very

Maha Prasat throne hall and the Phra Thinang Suthaisawan Prasat public

evident in the use of perspective, modelling, picturesque landscape and

audience hall on the eastern wall of the complex. These are interspersed

resolved backgrounds.

with many other buildings no longer in existence, as Rama V was

The landscape setting lends a liveliness to what would otherwise be

particularly active in remodelling the palace precinct, demolishing

a series of static vignettes, and the profusion of tiny details—such as the

existing buildings to make way for new ones. The combination of

bats bursting from behind the Buddha image, a leopard and her cub

western and Thai inspiration in the architecture is notable.

about to pounce on some inattentive deer, monkeys swinging from trees

The rest of the back is devoted to Inao’s attempts to persuade Busaba

and lush forests and ponds teeming with birdlife—imbues the painting

to marrying him. The narrative is created by multiple views of Busaba

with a warmth and naturalism that speaks eloquently of the talent of the

riding in a towering golden carriage among the pilgrims. These views

unknown painter. In nineteenth-century Thailand, large folding screens

are interspersed with scenes of the developing love story, such as when

were only made for the royal family and are, therefore, extremely rare.

Busaba and her companions are depicted bathing in a stream, unaware

This painted example is apparently unique and is now a treasure of the

they are being watched by Inao and his friends. Inao launches a floating

NGA’s Asian collections.

shrine that contains a boy moulded out of mud, who reads a book carrying a message of love from Inao to Busaba: ‘He eats sorrow for breakfast and dinner because he cannot be with his sweetheart. Only when he marries her will he be relieved of his agony’. Busaba is unmoved. Further on, Inao tries to attract Busaba’s attention by reflecting the sun off his kris dagger, but the light is so bright it flashes at her like lightning and she faints in fear. On the final panel, Inao hides behind the

Pages 32–3 and above: Rattanakosin period (1782 to present), Thailand The story of Inao c 1890 – c 1895, double-sided six-panel screen, opaque watercolour on paper. Purchased 2013 Opposite: Francis Chit His Majesty King Chulalongkorn, Rama V, on his second coronation, October 1873 1873, albumen silver photograph. Purchased 2006 All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

COMING MA JOR EXHIBITION

Cartier

and the diva

Dame Nellie Melba Margaret Young-Sánchez delves into the life of Australia’s first global superstar and her relationship with Europe’s most illustrious jewellery house, Cartier.

Opposite: Harold Cazneaux Dame Nellie Melba 1927, gelatin silver photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1982 Right: Portrait of Nellie Melba, 1904. Cartier Collection. Photo: Marian Gérard, Collection Cartier. © Cartier

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

Cartier Paris Devant de corsage 1902, platinum, diamonds, pearls. Private collection

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

As Prince of Wales, Edward had been an

occupy until the end of her life, an imposing

enthusiastic attendee at Australian lyric

public persona was essential: glamorous,

soprano Nellie Melba’s London seasons

privileged and just a touch imperious. Melba’s

throughout the 1890s. When he succeeded to

lifestyle, avidly chronicled by the press, attested

the throne in 1901, Melba was at the height of

to her success: elegant homes, luxurious travel,

her powers. The nearly forty-year-old singer’s

clothing from the most fashionable couturiers

voice retained the exceptional range and

and friendships with the globe’s social and

magical purity that had enchanted listeners

artistic elite. Glittering jewellery and stylish

since her youth in Melbourne. That voice, and

accessories from Cartier, Europe’s most

the exquisite technique she learned in Australia

prestigious maker, were the crowning touch.

and especially in Paris, under the tutelage of

Melba made her first purchases from the House

Mathilde Marchesi, led to Melba’s spectacularly

of Cartier in 1901, and continued to patronise

successful operatic debut in Brussels in 1887.

the firm’s branches in Paris and London for

The young Australian’s singing grew ever richer

twenty-five years. She also owned several items

and more expressive in the years that followed,

from the New York boutique. For Melba, the

while her repertoire expanded and her

Cartier purchases fulfilled a variety of needs:

dramatic skills improved. As Melba travelled

reinforcing her professional stature, pampering

the world, she conquered Europe and America

and consoling herself, and rewarding the

and commanded ever higher fees. In this era,

devotion of family and supporters.

before the advent of high-quality recording

Melba began to purchase items from Cartier

or radio, live musical performances defined a

from 1901 onwards, including a cabochon

singer’s celebrity. It is worth noting, however,

amethyst and diamond garniture on 15 May,

that Melba was the first celebrated opera

possibly a treat for her own fortieth birthday

singer to record her voice, as early as 1895,

four days later. On Christmas Eve, she

on a cylinder apparatus. From around 1904

purchased an umbrella with enamelled fittings.

she began to record her voice on gramophone

Melba’s patronage of Cartier accelerated in the

discs, thus ensuring a global reach.

new year. On 14 January 1902, she purchased

Yet with Melba’s success came

a diamond, ruby and platinum pendant de

vulnerability—jealous rivals and fame‑hungry

col necklace. On 1 April, as the coronation

young singers continually sought to topple

loomed, she selected an exquisitely delicate

her from the pinnacle of the operatic world.

diamond and platinum necklace featuring

For the role of diva, which Melba would

eleven hanging diamond bows with framed

Above: Cartier Paris Floral basket pendant watch 1909 (detail), platinum, diamonds, gold‑plated. Cartier Collection. Photo: Nick Welsh, Cartier Collection. © Cartier Left: Cartier Paris Pair of opera glasses 1909, gold, platinum, tortoiseshell, guilloche ground, enamel, diamonds. Cartier Collection. Nils Herrmann, Cartier Collection. © Cartier

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

diamond drops. The impressively large central

Newspaper reviews described her gorgeous

pear‑shaped diamond drop weighs about ten

gowns and jewels in considerable detail: at

carats, while the others are around five carats

her first Sydney concert she wore the Cartier

each. In a letter to her sister, Melba wrote that

diamond and pearl corsage ornament/necklace

assembling the diamonds for the necklace had

purchased for the coronation, and also wore

taken six years: ‘He [Cartier] says no Queen

ropes of pearls and a diamond comb in her

or Empress has anything finer …’ Melba

hair. The Australian press estimated the value

likely wore her new necklace to some of the

of the diva’s jewels at the enormous sum of

pre‑coronation concerts and parties at which

£200,000. In a photograph of Melba with

she sang in London in May and June, and for

her father in Melbourne, she wears a heavily

the lavish dinners she held at her own home.

embroidered concert gown, with the Cartier

She must have had a tiara frame made so that

corsage ornament at her bosom and the

she could also wear the necklace as a head

Cartier diamond necklace/tiara in her hair.

ornament—she was photographed wearing it

It was probably during this visit to Australia

in that fashion later the same year.

that Melba sat for Hungarian portraitist Baron

While the diamond necklace was an

long, embroidered dress with a sheer wrap,

Melba ordered two custom‑made items

in a seated pose with flowers and red drapery

during the same visit. One is described as a

behind her. Her jewellery includes a pearl

turquoise and diamond corsage ornament.

necklace and ring, as well as her Cartier

The second, a corsage ornament/necklace,

diamond tiara. By 1904, Paszthory’s large and

was made of platinum, with diamonds

imposing portrait was hanging in the vestibule

and pearls supplied by Melba herself.

of Melbourne’s Princess Theatre.

The large‑scale Louis XVI‑style jewel hangs

given a heart‑shaped opal gemstone by the

interrupted by two ovals composed of bows

‘musicians of New South Wales’. At Cartier

and wreaths. The exceptionally sculptural

Paris in 1903 she had it set to her own design

central component incorporates interlaced

as a pendant/brooch with diamond wings.

scrolls, pearl and diamond pendants, and

She also purchased Australian tourmalines,

flexible swags of flowers and leaves. Melba

and in subsequent years endeavoured to

took delivery of this item on 3 June, in time

popularise the stones in London. In 1903,

for the Grand Coronation Concert held at the

at Cartier London, Melba purchased a large,

Albert Hall on 11 June, at which she sang the

Louis XVI‑style turquoise, diamond and

national anthem.

platinum necklace, and a trendsetting diamond

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

and platinum résille necklace. Cartier clearly

on 24 June, two days before Edward VII’s

appreciated Melba’s patronage—and her

scheduled coronation, when he suffered a

publicity value. The firm regularly loaned

dangerous attack of appendicitis. Emergency

jewellery for Melba to wear in performances

surgery saved his life, but the coronation was

at Covent Garden, taking care to warm each

postponed until August. To her undoubted

item before it touched her skin. A small

chagrin, Melba was unable to attend, as she was

token of Melba’s appreciation is a publicity

already scheduled to depart for a concert tour

photograph dated 1904, given to Pierre

of Australia—her first return to the country of

Cartier. The same year, Melba was persuaded

her birth since her departure in 1886.

to make her first voice recordings, which were

For seven months Melba was the toast

Opposite: Baron Arpad Paszthory Madame Melba c 1902–04, oil on canvas. Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne

During her Australian sojourn, Melba was

from a long chain of collet‑set diamonds

London’s festive mood was shattered

Above: Portrait of Nellie Melba with her father David Mitchell, c 1902.

Arpad Paszthory, who painted her wearing a

immediately available Cartier stock piece,

enthusiastically received, greatly expanding

of Australia, visiting family, attending

her global audience and augmenting

receptions and dinners, and singing at

her wealth.

concerts throughout the country and New

Melba’s talents were in high demand in

Zealand. At her public appearances Melba

New York, and she sang frequently at the

took care to display the material attributes

Metropolitan Opera House, whose subscribers

of success, including luxurious jewellery.

included the city’s social and financial elite.

In 1906 Oscar Hammerstein opened a rival establishment, the Manhattan Opera House. To fill the seats Hammerstein needed stars, and he offered Melba extravagant sums to perform; when she agreed, he begged her to wear her most valuable jewellery on stage. According to the press, her jewels were worth US$2,500,000 and included an historic pearl necklace once owned by Marie‑Antoinette and a large yellow diamond. For three months in 1907 she sang at the Manhattan to great acclaim, saving Hammerstein from financial disaster. When in Paris between 1905 and 1908, Melba acquired one blue enamelled writing item after another from Cartier, including a pen, pencil, pen rest and other items to assemble an elegant set. Since these were not expensive items, they may have constituted small treats for herself—perhaps a form of retail therapy. By 1908 she also began to purchase small items, especially tie and scarf pins, from both the London and Paris branches of Cartier as gifts for friends and supporters. Made with blue enamel and one or more diamonds, they spelled out ‘Melba’, or simply her initial, ‘M’. For her birthday in the same year, Melba commissioned a platinum tiara, which could also be worn as a necklace, set with Australian pink tourmalines and pavé diamonds. Melba supplied the tourmalines and some of the diamonds herself. Other major purchases in 1908 were a turquoise and diamond diadem, and a Greek‑style bandeau, likely ornamented with a geometric meander pattern. This surge in important jewellery purchases was probably in preparation for her next tour of Australia. This article is an extract from by NGA’s exquisite new book Cartier: The Exhibition, available at the NGA Shop. Cartier: The Exhibition 30 March to 22 July Join the conversation #CartierNGA

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

Jeweller of kings, king of jewellers Simeran Maxwell looks at the long-standing relationship between the jewellery house of Cartier and the royal House of Windsor. On one of his frequent trips to their boutique in Paris, His Royal Highness Prince Albert (later King Edward VII) described Cartier as ‘joaillier des rois, roi des joailliers’ (jeweller of kings, king of jewellers). Beginning with the prince’s first purchase in 1901, and continuing to this day, Cartier has enjoyed a close association with and the patronage of the current British royal family. The company’s beautiful and distinctive designs have been displayed regularly at state ceremonies, court functions and social events and have been exchanged by family members as talismans of love.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

In the lead-up to King Edward VII’s coronation in London in 1902, following his mother Queen Victoria’s death the year

in a combination of silver and gold. Edward VII’s son and successor King

before, Cartier was commissioned to create

George V was a more conservative and

many pieces of jewellery, including tiaras,

traditional monarch than his cosmopolitan

necklaces and corsage brooches, for his guests.

father, but he nevertheless continued the

So significant were the number of English

strong relationship with the French jewellery

orders that the French firm, initially working

firm. His commissions mirror his restrained

out of a London hotel, set up a premise in New

temperament. On his accession to the throne

Burlington Street in 1902. The king’s patronage

in 1910, his mother, Queen Alexandra, with

of Cartier continued unabated until his death

whom he was incredibly close, gave him a

in 1910, and he even bestowed the firm’s

formal, rectangular Cartier desk clock made

first Royal Warrant in 1904. Jacques Cartier

from iridescent blue hardstone, decorated

took over the London operations from 1906,

with amethysts and violet, green and white

opening the store in its current location on

enamel. It was engraved with a dedication

New Bond Street.

from his ‘Mother dearest’ to her ‘darling

The coronation, which was postponed until August due to the king’s ill health, was

shaped, round old- and rose-cut diamonds set

Georgie on his Coronation’. George V rejected the fashionable

held at Westminster Abbey, and the lavish

entertainments enjoyed by his parents

ceremony was witnessed by a throng of

and instead focused conscientiously on

bejewelled members of the British aristocracy.

official duties. He and his wife, Queen Mary,

One of the many newly commissioned Cartier

adhered rigidly to protocols of rank and

tiaras graced the head of the American-born

correct behaviour. Every year, they received

Countess of Essex and was designed in the

debutantes and new entrants to society at court

popular ‘garland style’, with scrolls of cushion-

ceremonies. At one such ceremony in 1931,

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

Page 42: William Dargie Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Wattle queen) 1954, oil on canvas. Parliament House Art Collection, Department of Parliamentary Services, Canberra Page 43: Cartier Paris Bracelet 1952, platinum, white gold, diamonds, emeralds, onyx. Private collection Above: Cartier London Halo tiara 1936, platinum, diamonds. Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: Royal Collection Trust/ All Rights Reserved Opposite: Catherine Middleton wearing Queen Elizabeth II’s Halo tiara at her wedding to Prince William in 2011. Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

Above: Cartier Desk clock 1911, silver, marble, enamel. Royal Collection Trust, London. Royal Collection Trust, London/All Rights Reserved Opposite: Cartier Paris Scroll tiara 1902, special order, silver, gold, diamonds. Cartier Collection. Photo: Nils Herrmann, Cartier Collection. ÂŠ Cartier

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

the future Duchess of Windsor, American

before he acceded to the throne, Edward’s

the countess returned it to Cartier. The princess

divorcée Wallis Simpson, wearing borrowed

younger brother the Duke of York, soon to

ordered a costly transformation of the elaborate

jewellery, was presented.

be King George VI, commissioned Cartier

diamond, aquamarine, sapphire and pearl

London to make a halo-style tiara for his wife

tiara, substituting additional diamonds for the

George V was briefly succeeded by Edward

Elizabeth. This ‘simple’ affair consists of three

aquamarines and some of the sapphires.

VIII, who abdicated only eleven months after

slim bands of brilliant-cut diamonds, which

taking the throne due to the considerable

form the base for a series of leaf-like scrolls

accessories are common among royalty,

scandal caused by his public love affair with

punctuated by larger round diamonds on top

especially to mark milestones. Her Majesty

Simpson. Like his grandfather before him,

of baguette‑cut diamond rectangles. The halo

Queen Elizabeth II, for example, received her

Edward VIII, later the Duke of Winsor, lived a

style is usually designed to go across the top of

mother’s Cartier halo tiara on her eighteenth

lavish lifestyle. Both he and his wife remained

the head, but Cartier designed this one to be

birthday in 1944 and a pair of Cartier ivy

dedicated Cartier customers throughout their

worn around the crown in the conventional

leaf clips for her twenty-first. The clips were

lives. Not only did the duke select much of

manner of a tiara. Once popular across Europe,

originally given to her mother by brewing

his wife’s jewellery as gifts but he was also

this style perfectly suited the short haircuts of

heiress Dame Margaret Greville in 1942. While

closely involved in the design process and often

the 1930s.

the Queen has rarely worn the halo tiara over

Following his death in January 1936,

provided the gemstones. The couple went on

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were

Gifts of jewellery and other precious

the decades, she has lent it to both her sister

to become two of Cartier’s most influential

crowned on 12 May 1937, and Cartier once

Princess Margaret and her daughter Princess

customers, commissioning daring, trendsetting

again produced numerous tiaras for guests to

Anne. Most recently, of course, the tiara starred

jewellery. The duchess was the first person to

wear to the ceremony and attendant social

on the head of Catherine Middleton during

embrace the now iconic Cartier panther motif

events. Princess Marie Louise, granddaughter of

her 2011 wedding to Prince William.

in 1949 with the purchase of an emerald and

Queen Victoria, wore a newly acquired Indian-

diamond brooch.

inspired tiara. It was originally made for the

the then princess Elizabeth received gifts of

American heiress Countess Granard in 1923,

Cartier jewellery such as a necklace and a

and Marie Louise purchased it in 1937, after

tiara from India’s Nizam of Hyderabad Asaf

In November 1936, in the middle of the abdication crisis and just three weeks

When she married Philip Mountbatten,

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

'The jonquil-shaped brooch became a favourite of the Queen, and she wore it at the weddings of her sons Prince Charles in 1981 and Prince Edward in 1999.'

Jah VII. The Nizam reserved several pieces at

(its second coronation appearance since it was

association with the British royal family

Cartier’s London boutique and asked that the

originally worn by Adele Capell in 1902), and

since King Edward VII purchased his first

princess select the gift that suited her personal

the elderly Princess Marie Louise again wore

piece from the famous jewellery house

taste. The platinum and diamond necklace

her Indian tiara, which she later bequeathed to

in 1901. He and every subsequent British

consists of a central pear-shaped pendant with

her godson the Duke of Gloucester.

monarch have acquired and treasured items

emerald-cut diamonds and was later shortened

from the House of Cartier, as have members

from forty-six diamond collets to thirty-eight to

undertook an eight-week tour of Australia

of the extended royal family in Britain

better suit the Queen’s style.

in 1954. At her first evening engagement in

and across Europe. Cartier jewellery and

Another significant wedding gift came

Sydney, she wore a bright yellow Norman

precious possessions are intrinsic to royal

from Canadian Dr John Williamson, the owner

Hartnell gown embroidered with wattle,

life, as demonstrated by their prominent

of a Tanzanian diamond mine. He gave the

Australia’s official floral emblem. The visit

place at coronations, weddings and state

princess a 54.5 carat uncut pink diamond, still

to Australia was commemorated with a

events. If history is anything to go by, then

considered to be the largest pink diamond ever

portrait by William Dargie, commissioned

royal weddings in particular bring out the

discovered. In 1953, she asked Cartier London

by Melbourne industrialist James Beveridge.

very best Cartier designs. Only time will tell

to design a brooch around the stone, with 203

The painting was executed at Buckingham

whether this tradition will continue with

other brilliant-, baguette- and marquise-cut

Palace and shipped back to Australia,

the impending wedding of Prince Harry and

diamonds, also part of her wedding present

although Dargie’s concern over the portrait’s

American actress Megan Markle.

from Williamson. The jonquil-shaped brooch

safety prompted him to paint another two

became a favourite of the Queen, and she wore

identical versions. The original is in Australia’s

it at the weddings of her sons Prince Charles in

Parliament House Art Collection and the

1981 and Prince Edward in 1999.

other two are in the collections of National

For her internationally televised coronation

Museum of Australia and Government House

in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II lent her Cartier

respectively. The now iconic image of the

halo tiara to her sister Princess Margaret,

young Queen shows her wearing her wattle-

who wore it with another Cartier creation

dress and diamond jewellery, including the

hung around her neck: a highly sculptural

Nizam of Hyderabad necklace.

rose-shaped brooch made of round old- and

Following her coronation, the Queen

The patronage of royalty contributed

baguette-cut diamonds mounted in platinum.

significantly to Cartier’s international

Lady Clementine, wife of then prime minister

prominence during the twentieth century.

Winston Churchill, wore the Essex scroll tiara

In particular, the firm has enjoyed a long

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

Cartier: The Exhibition 30 March to 22 July Join the conversation #CartierNGA

Above: Cartier London Williamson brooch 1953, special order, platinum, diamonds. Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: Royal Collection Trust/All Rights Reserved Opposite: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II wearing the Williamson brooch with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, 1954. © Marcus Adam, London/Camera Press

Exotic fantasies Some of the highlights of Cartier’s globally inspired jewellery and ornaments as the French jewellers pursued beauty in a new age of travel and discovery, glamorous fashions and design excellence. Cartier is justly famed as a pioneer of Art Deco jewellery before the First World War and as one of its greatest practitioners during the 1920s and early 1930s. Along with the stylised, geometric forms typically associated with Art Deco are distinctive designs inspired by ancient Egypt, China, Japan, India and the Islamic world. Jewels, timepieces and accessories designed in exotic styles are among the house’s most dazzling creations—everything from necklaces and tiaras to vanity cases, cigarette cases and clocks were produced in seemingly limitless variety.

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

EGYPT ‘Several brooch-belt buckle hybrids designed by Cartier used a specific form of the scarab—the three-part funerary beetle with outstretched wings. One Cartier brooch has an ancient scarab body and elaborate curved wings composed of platinum, gold, diamond, ruby, citrine, emerald and onyx.’ ‘Possibly inspired by ancient Egyptian art, but not based directly on an ancient prototype, is a necklace in the form of an openwork diamond and platinum snake that loops around the wearer’s neck. When the clasp (located where the tail entwines) is fastened, the necklace becomes rigid. Manufacturing the snake’s curved body surface of open-backed scales required exceptionally skilled craftsmanship.’

INDIA AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD ‘A choker features large, pale yellow diamonds alternately framed by rows of white diamonds and pavé-set white diamond rings. Even more impressive is a huge, multi-strand platinum necklace set with hundreds of white and coloured diamonds, including the light yellow 234.65-carat De Beers diamond from South Africa …’ ‘Mother-of-pearl was used on a number of vanity cases, including one adorned with a motif reminiscent of carpets or Islamic bookbindings and inlaid with diamonds, pearls, emeralds and turquoise. Originally, a Persian miniature from Cartier’s stock of apprêts was featured on the centre of the case, which was later replaced with a carved emerald.’

Opposite: Cartier Paris Striking mystery clock with deity 1931, platinum, gold, white jade (19th-century Chinese), rock crystal, onyx, nephrite, diamonds, pearls, turquoise cabochons, coral, enamel. Photo: Marian Gérard Above: Cartier London Scarab brooch 1925, gold, platinum, diamonds, ruby, emerald, citrine and onyx cabochons, Egyptian faience. Photo: Nils Herrmann Right: Cartier Paris Vanity case 1924, gold, platinum, mother-of-pearl and turquoise inlay, emeralds, pearls, diamonds, enamel. Photo: Nils Herrmann All works and photography in this feature are from the Cartier Collection. © Cartier

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

EAST AND SOUTHEAST ASIA ‘Among Cartier’s grandest Chinese-style items is a large clock in the form of an Asian table screen. A rectangular white Chinese jade panel, carved with a high-relief genre scene on the front and a landscape on the back, is framed in enamel, coral and gold. On one face, the dragon and spear-shaped hands indicate the hours and minutes. On the other, a clambering enamelled dragon disguises the shadow of the embedded drive shaft connecting the hands to the hidden clock mechanism in the base.’

Cartier: The Exhibition 30 March to 22 July Join the conversation #CartierNGA If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interestied in Art Deco On display now

‘A spectacular mystery clock (12th in the figurine series) has a carved nephrite base and a turquoise enamelled frame with diamond and platinum numerals around the crystal clock face. Behind the clock stands a Chinese jade statue of a goddess, flanked by a jade lion and a coral ‘plant’ with pearl flower buds.’ Introduction and quotes are from the ‘Exotic fantasies’ chapter, by Margaret Young‑Sánchez with contributions by Yvonne Markowitz and Stefano Papi, in the NGA’s book Cartier: The Exhibition, available at the NGA Shop.

CARTIER: THE EXHIBITION

Above: Cartier Paris Apple tree 1925, gilded and oxidized metal, brass, enamel, moonstone, milk glass, jade, agate, wood, glass. Photo: Marian Gérard Opposite: Cartier (manufactured in Paris) Large screen clock 1926, platinum, gold, white jade, onyx, coral, mother-of-pearl, diamonds, enamel. Photo: Nils Herrmann

ARTONVIEW 93â&#x20AC;&#x201A;AUTUMN 2018

C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY

Animist jewellery of Indonesia Beatrice Thompson highlights some of the works in a new display at the NGA of Indonesian animist and ancestral jewellery from the national collection.

The innate desire to adorn the human body is universal, and for thousands of years people have decorated their bodies with jewellery fashioned from a variety of materials and techniques. The Indonesian archipelago is home to hundreds of ethnic groups that have given rise to a range of body adornment that varies greatly between regions and communities. Long before the arrival of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, animist belief systems existed throughout the archipelago, and customs involving the veneration of nature spirits and the worship of founding family or clan forebears are still practised. Animist and ancestral jewellery in the region has not only served to decorate the body but also performed many other functions over the centuries. It has been worn as part of ceremonial dress for traditional rituals performed to communicate with the ancestors and is prominent in lifecycle ceremonies such as birth, coming of age, marriage and death as well as gift-exchange rituals between clans or tribes. Some pieces are even considered to possess talismanic powers, believed to protect the wearer against evil, malevolent forces, sickness and adversity, assist with fertility or transmit strength to individuals during warfare. And, as it is around the world, the wearing of jewellery is also a proclamation of social status, wealth, rank and identity. The island of Sumba’s spectacular carved turtle-shell combs, hai kara jangga, are among the most intricate in Indonesia. Worn on the front of the head, these crown-like ornaments are primarily presented to unmarried adolescent girls by their father and indicate that the wearer has entered puberty. They are also worn by adult women of the noble class. One impressive example from the NGA’s collection includes stylised lobster, deer and rooster motifs, which are associated with fertility, power and protection.

ANIMIST JEWELLERY OF INDONESIA

Above, from top: East Sumbanese people Mamuli (ceremonial ear pendant and sacred heirloom) 19th century or earlier, gold alloy, hollow work, filigree. Purchased 1984; Hai kara jangga (woman’s comb) late 19th – early 20th century, turtle shell. Purchased 2005 All works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Also worn on the head, although by men of high status from Toraja in central Sulawesi, serpentine-shaped head ornaments known as sanggori are considered to be sacred heirlooms. These powerful ornaments are believed to bestow warriors with talismanic protection during battle and to be imbued with the power to blind enemies. They are displayed in household shrines when not being worn. Mamuli are relics used to communicate with the spirits of ancestors. They are usually kept in the clan leader’s treasury and only brought out during special occasions. As precious heirlooms, they are also part of important ceremonial gift exchanges made by the Sumbanese people. Prior to a wedding, for example, the groom presents a mamuli to his bride’s family in exchange for textiles. Mamuli are usually made of gold, which is believed to be of celestial origin in Sumbanese mythology. Its diamond concave shape represents the female reproductive organ and is a powerful symbol associated with fertility. An example in the NGA’s collection is decorated with warrior figures holding swords and shields. Gold is believed to possess magical powers and became essential for ritual occasions. Across eastern Indonesia, gold pectoral ornaments called marangga are created in the distinctive double-axe-head design. While they vary greatly in size, the largest and most impressive are from Sumba. For the Sumbanese, the elegant shape is imbued with power and, like mamuli, these ornaments are essential to rituals, to communicating with

Above: North or central Sulawesi Sanggori (headcloth ornament) 19th century, copper alloy. Purchased 1989 Below: West Sumbanese people Marangga (breast ornament) 19th century or earlier, gold, cinnabar. Purchased 2005

ancestors and as bride-wealth payment. They are proudly worn during great ceremonies and feasts, and large gold marangga attest to great wealth and influence.

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A HELMETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S VOYAGE

D I A RY O F A N O B J E C T

A helmet’s voyage Crispin Howarth researches the history of a rare eighteenth-century Hawaiian helmet in the national collection and discovers a possible connection to Captain James Cook’s third and fateful voyage. In ancient Hawai‘i, feathered helmets, mahiole, and cloaks, ‘ahu‘ula (of which the NGA has a small but beautiful example), were the reserve of ali‘i, the top rank of the ruling chiefly elite. Both were signs of nobility and, more importantly, of the wearer’s closeness to divinity. In 1971, the future NGA purchased, at auction in London, a mahiole for its Pacific arts collection. But nothing was known regarding its provenance until last year, when a small, typed note on Warwick Castle letter-headed paper tucked away in an archival file of correspondence came to light. Purchased without its covering of yellow, red and black feathers, the old battered helmet was a shadow of its former self. However, the finely made basketry at its core remained, and layered over it was exceptionally intricate netting that, on close inspection, showed the tiny remnants of feathers that would have once broadcast its wearer’s considerable prestige and status. At its prime, it would have resembled the helmet John Webber recorded in A chief of the Sandwich Islands 1787. The most important aspect of both the mahiole and ‘ahu‘ula was the feathers, which were collected by specialists, who plucked then released the birds from which they came. The black and sacred yellow feathers were from the ‘ō‘ō, a species of bird that became extinct in the 1930s, while the red feathers were from the ‘i‘iwi, the tiny Hawaiian honeycreeper. Red feathers held great mana and protected the wearer of such objects. The netting and binding of the feathers to a mahiole was done by priestly artists, who worked accompanied by the singing of ritual prayers to ensure the feather’s spiritual power, or mana, was absorbed into the helmet to protect the wearer’s head, the seat of a noble person’s mana. To wear red was to be next to godliness, as red was an important colour associated with divinity. In 1778, Captain James Cook was the first outsider to visit Hawai‘i and was received with gifts of the finest craftsmanship, as Lieutenant James King recorded during one of the landfalls: ‘We conducted them into the tent, where they had scarcely been seated, when the king rose up, and in a very graceful manner threw over the captain’s shoulders the cloak he himself wore, put a feathered helmet upon his head, and a curious fan into his hand’. Within a few decades, by the 1820s, the era of the ali‘i and the use of feather helmets and cloaks had dissipated.

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

The note from Warwick Castle about the helmet acquired by the NGA read: ‘Dear Mr Kelson, Mr Howard Ricketts has forwarded a letter to me regarding a Hawaiian Helmet. I regret that we have no knowledge of when it came into the collection here. Yours Sincerely, Lord Brooke’. Not much is disclosed by Lord Brooke’s words, but what the note reveals is that the helmet came from Warwick Castle. This is an important piece of information and led me to an enquiry into the helmet’s most likely path from Hawai‘i to the seat of the Greville family, the Earls of Warwick and one of the wealthy great houses of England. One member of the family, Charles Francis Greville, who spent the latter part of his life at Warwick Castle, until 1806, stands out as a notable collector and seems most likely to have received the helmet into the castle’s collection. But from whom? Sir Joseph Banks is the most likely candidate. The two had been close friends since they were young men in the 1760s, and Banks even honoured Greville by naming the Australasian Grevillea after him. The very famous Banks built significant collections of flora, fauna and material culture—then known as ‘Artificial Curiosities’—during his wide-ranging travels. He was, of course, the leader of the Royal Society scientific expedition team on Cook’s first Pacific voyage of 1768–71, and it is documented that Pacific objects collected by Banks during this voyage made their way into the Warwick Castle collection. So, it is very plausible that the mahiole was a gift from Banks to Greville. Banks gave away many artefacts and natural history specimens to important dignitaries, patrons, colleagues, friends and the British Museum. But not everything Banks gave away was collected on his voyages. Many were items given to him by a variety of people, and were from a variety of places. He is noted, for example, for giving a Hawaiian feathered cloak to his secretary despite never having visited Hawai‘i himself. Similarly, with regard to the helmet, if it were (as it seems likely) a gift between friends, we can be sure it was not collected directly by Banks. Could the helmet have made its way to Greville through another channel, though? After Cook’s death on the shore in Hawai‘i in 1779, it was seven years before another western ship visited in 1786, and perhaps less than ten official British ships visited Hawai‘i by the time of Greville’s death in 1809. There were some sixty to seventy visiting ships to Hawai‘i between 1786 and 1806, but these were mostly American whalers, British sandalwood traders and other entrepreneurs in the South Seas, even Chinese traders. But all these are improbable sources for the helmet to find its way to Warwick Castle. There is a slim possibility the mahiole was collected on the voyage of Captain George Vancouver, who visited Hawai‘i three times between 1791 and 1794. Banks had some association with Vancouver. But, with Pages 56–7: Hawaiian Islands Mahiole (helmet) 18th century, cane, fibre, feathers. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1971 Above: John Webber A chief of the Sandwich Islands 1787, oil on canvas. Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Gallery of Australia and National Library of Australia, Canberra

A HELMET’S VOYAGE

scant information available, their link might have been slight indeed. Cook and Banks, however, did have a strong connection, and Banks and Greville had a very strong one. While it would not have come from Cook to Banks directly, Banks had a relationship with another high-ranking figure on Cook’s third voyage, so the helmet may still have been among the twenty-five collected on the expedition. The location of sixteen of

these helmets is known today. Could the NGA’s mahiole be one of nine

colleagues and friends, and it included the following: ‘To my honoured

now missing? It is possible, but difficult to prove definitively.

friend Joseph Banks esquire of New Burlington Street, all my Curiosities

Once Cook famously met his fate at the hands of the Hawaiians, Captain Charles Clerke of HMS Discovery took up command of the expedition and continued to explore the northern Pacific coast in search

Natural and Artificial which I have collected in the course of this voyage, in token of my gratitude and respect for his friendship’. While much of the evidence is circumstantial, this rare survivor from

for a navigable northwest passage before making the long journey back

Hawai‘i’s ruling elite of the eighteenth century may yet prove to be one

to England. Clerke was undoubtedly of high enough status to receive

of those known to have been collected during Cook’s third and final

gifts from Hawaiian ali‘i chiefs, and it is recorded that he was presented

voyage. We know that gifts were presented to Cook, Clerke and others

with a feathered cloak. Also being given at least a single mahiole is then

who were seen as equals in the eyes of the ali‘i elite—the gifts intended

highly likely. He was on all three Cook voyages and had built a good

to create strong, friendly and rewarding relationships. And we know that

relationship with Banks on the first expedition. And Hawaiian objects

Clerke bequeathed objects from Cook’s third voyage to Banks, and that

that Banks gave to the British Museum are now known to have been

Banks often gifted these objects on. One of these gifts may well of been

from Clerke originally.

a mahiole to his close friend Greville, who was a collector. More research

Clerke had been unwell for the entire third voyage. He had tuberculosis, which had reduced him to skeletal thinness during the

is required to find concrete links in this tantalising historical puzzle, but the possibility is intriguing.

last months of the expedition. He understood he was dying and wrote a will five days before his death on 22 August 1779, his thirty-eighth birthday. His will is a list of his worldly goods to bequeath to family,

Above: Hawai‘i ‘Ahu‘ula (feather cape) early 19th century, fibre, feathers. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2011

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

N E W AC Q U I S I T I O N A N D C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY

James Abbott McNeill Whistler Gerard Vaughan reveals American James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s influence on Australian Impressionists such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin by examining the NGA’s recent acquisition of Whistler’s ‘radical’ cigar-box-lid painting Harmony in blue and pearl: the Sands, Dieppe of around 1885.

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER

Opposite: James Abbott McNeill Whistler Harmony in blue and pearl: The Sands, Dieppe c 1885, oil on panel. Purchased with the assistance of Allan and Maria Myers, Andrew and Tracey Sisson, the American Friends of the NGA with the support of the Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, and the Neilson Foundation, 2017 Right: Charles Conder Bronte Beach 1888, oil on paper on cardboard. Purchased from Gallery admission charges, 1982 All works in this feature are from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Much has been written on the famous 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition

building for artists’ studios and largely funded by the entrepreneur,

(of works painted on cigar-box lids measuring 9 x 5 inches) held at

patron of the arts and art decorator Charles Stewart Paterson). Naming

Buxton’s Rooms in Swanson Street in Melbourne in August 1889.

the new building after London’s trendiest gallery, the Grosvenor Gallery

It was organised by Tom Roberts and his friends Arthur Streeton,

(the temple of Aestheticism and the Anglo-Japanese style), which was

Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin, with invitations to participate

closely linked to Whistler, was hardly a coincidence, and it was there

extended to several others. There has been considerable speculation

that Roberts arranged his Whistler-inspired decors, using aesthetic

about the degree to which, in Melbourne in 1889, the local avant-garde

fabrics and Japanese objects. The following year, he and his friends

group, led by Roberts, might or might not have been directly influenced

repeated this style and taste in Buxton’s Rooms for the ‘Whistlerian’

by an understanding of, or exposure to, the masters of the French

9 by 5 Impression Exhibition.

Impressionist group. More relevant, and more compelling, is the undoubted influence

Back in London in 1886, Whistler held another similar exhibition at Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell Gallery, and the small panel recently

of America’s James Abbot McNeill Whistler upon Roberts’s aesthetic.

acquired by the NGA, Harmony in blue and pearl: The Sands, Dieppe of

The American had begun, since the 1860s and 1870s, to attract significant

around 1885, was listed as number one in the catalogue. Its vertical

attention in both Paris and London, and his works became highly sought

format and radical rejection of vanishing point perspective, with three

after. While he was by no means the first avant-garde artist to paint rapid

bands of essentially flat colour (sky, sea and beach), identify it as a

oil sketches on cigar-box lids, he began to make a speciality of this type

painting that carries all the hallmarks of the new aesthetic. For example,

by applying quick dabs of paint to capture fleeting impressions.

the crisp, sharp representation of small breaking waves and small

In 1884, he held a major exhibition at the Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell Gallery in London, which attracted great excitement and interest. We know that Roberts was among the enthusiastic art students

impressionistic figures, indicated through subtle dabs of paint with a tiny brush, lend it an aura of modernity. In considering Whistler’s delicate yet confident technique in

who visited the show, to marvel not only at the paintings but also at the

relation to the NGA picture, it is worth reminding ourselves of

beautifully nuanced aesthetic interiors of the gallery, as Whistler paid

Whistler’s ‘impressionistic’ use of dabs and dots of colour, such as in the

great attention to the colours of the walls, draped with chic modern

extraordinary Nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket 1877 (held by

fabrics designed by Liberty. Roberts returned to Melbourne in 1885, and

the Detroit Institute of Arts), exhibited that year at London’s Grosvenor

it is worth noting that the inaugural exhibition of the Anglo-Australian

Gallery, for which the asking price was 200 guineas. This led, in 1878, to

Society of Artists in Melbourne in the same year included a small

one of the most famous court cases ever conducted addressing art and

panel by Whistler, Note in blue and green, a seascape no longer traceable.

aesthetics and the art market. The great critic and writer John Ruskin

Was it sold to a local collector? And might it still remain unrecognised

condemned the painting’s abstracting elements with the derogatory

here in Australia?

statement that, in seeking to sell it for so much money, Whistler was

Roberts moved in 1888 to his fashionable new studio in the newly constructed Grosvenor Chambers at 9 Collins Street (conceived as a

‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s eye’. Whistler’s response in evidence was: ‘I ask [the price] for the experience I have gained in the

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER

‘It is becoming increasingly clear that Whistler exerted a strong and continuing influence on Australian art, not only on Roberts and his circle in the 1880s …’

work of a lifetime’. Whistler technically lost the case but the jury, in

impressionistic figures on a beach, depicting the sandy shore as a flat

vindication, awarded a mere farthing in damages.

ground without textural modulation or any attempt at representing

One of the key elements of the modernist aesthetic in both France and England was japonisme, reflected in Harmony in blue and pearl:

perspectival depth. It is becoming increasingly clear that Whistler exerted a strong and

The Sands, Dieppe by the figures on the beach (particularly exemplified

continuing influence on Australian art, not only on Roberts and his

by the figure carrying an umbrella on the right), by Whistler’s Japanese-

circle in the 1880s but also on the new generation of early twentieth-

inspired signature stamp of a stylised butterfly and, above all, by the

century tonal realists, who reflected the aestheticism of the English

oblique ridges that descend down the panel’s surface to suggest misty

school in their work. It is interesting to note that Whistler also strongly

rain, reflecting the Japanese technique of indicating rain adopted by

influenced the Australian revival of etching, which occurred in the early

printmakers such as Hokusai, whose works were collected and admired

twentieth century, no doubt directly inspired by the NGV’s acquisition

by so many artists and connoisseurs at the time. Technical analysis

in 1903 of Whistler’s The Thames set 1871.

here at the NGA proves that these oblique lines did not just reflect the

The provenance of Harmony in blue and pearl: The Sands, Dieppe is

natural grain of the wood but also consist of subtle ridges of paint,

also interesting. It was acquired at the second Dowdeswell exhibition

which the artist applied to the ground layer on the original panel and

in 1886 for thirty guineas by the great actor and theatre impresario

then painted over.

Sir Henry Irving, whose circle of artistic friends included many involved

While this tiny masterpiece by Whistler adds to the NGA’s already

with the Aesthetic movement, ranging from Oscar Wilde to Whistler.

distinguished American collection, it is envisaged that it will be displayed

Sir Henry then gave it to his leading lady, Ellen Terry, who not only

regularly in the Australian galleries to throw light upon the small group

dominated the London stage but also enjoyed equally significant success

of 9 by 5 ‘impressions’ panels by Roberts, Streeton, Conder and others

in the United States of America.

hanging in the NGA’s current installation of Australian Impressionist

Having passed through various hands in the United States in the

works. It is displayed beside Charles Conder’s Bronte Beach 1888, which,

twentieth century, this small masterpiece was then acquired in 1990 by

in some extraordinarily prescient way, also represents rapidly painted

the great Alabama-based collector Jack Warner, who specialised above all in nineteenth-century American Hudson River landscapes (and after whom the Met in New York named its gallery of nineteenth-century Hudson River art). Whistler’s panel has had a long and interesting

Opposite, clockwise from bottom left: Charles Conder The path from the woods 1890, oil on canvas mounted on cardboard. Purchased 1976; Tom Roberts Going home c 1889, oil on cigar-box lid. Purchased 1976; Tom Roberts Grey day in spring, Venice 1884, oil on wood panel. Purchased 1973; Arthur Streeton Pastoral in yellow and grey: a colour impression of Templestowe 1889, oil on cardboard. Purchased 1972; Arthur Streeton Hoddle St, 10 pm 1889, oil on cardboard. Purchased 1974; Charles Conder Herrick’s Blossoms c 1888, oil on cardboard. Purchased 1969

journey to Australia but, in the NGA’s Australian Impressionism exhibition, it serves as a reminder of a key influence on Roberts and his circle. We are grateful to the generous donors who have made this fascinating acquisition possible. Australian Impressionism On display now Join the conversation #AustralianImpressionismNGA

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

N E W AC Q U I S I T I O N A N D C O L L E C T I O N D I S P L AY

Jean Broome-Norton Deborah Hart recognises a great Australian sculptor and an inspiring and unexpected act of generosity.

JEAN BROOME-NORTON

Acts of generosity sometimes come out of the blue. One such unexpected occasion was when a letter came to the NGA from Mike Ogden PSM, who had been a close family friend of the sculptor Jean Broome-Norton. He was critically ill and wanted to discuss, with some urgency, how he could support more works by Broome-Norton coming into the national collection. By this point, due to his ill health, he was having difficulty talking and wanted to meet with me and Liz Wilson, former head of Membership and Bequests at the NGA. It was a most memorable visit. Despite his considerable challenges, with much of the conversation whispered softly, he radiated warmth and good humour as well as a great passion for Broome-Norton’s works, which he had seen from the time he was a young boy. During Ogden’s childhood, he had been a close friend of BroomeNorton’s son Paul, who died tragically in a car accident. He recalled how exceptional her works had appeared to him as a young person and how she opened up a creative way of living—which extended to unusual adaptions when recycling her clothes into fantastic new outfits. He now wanted to put funds toward Broome-Norton’s Abundance coming into the collection, using her original 1934 plaster relief to cast a bronze with the permission of the her estate. One of the artist’s nieces, Antonia Norton was a big supporter of the idea and greatly assisted in the process. She was also keen for the NGA to acquire another work by Broome-Norton still in the possession of the family, Hippolyta and the Amazons defeating Theseus 1933, which would join a very different work in the national collection, the strikingly beautiful Woman with horses (Keeper of Hippolyta’s horses) 1934, a gift by Philip Bacon AM in 2003. Jean, who was born in her family home on New Year’s Eve in 1911, studied art at the East Sydney Technical College from 1929 to 1934 under Rayner Hoff, the leading Australian Art Deco sculptor of the interwar period. She was one of his star pupils, espousing the stylistic approaches that were typical of Hoff’s underlying philosophy and characteristic of Art Deco. This included a keen interest in classicism and mythology, brought into the modern world. There was also an emphasis on what was known as Vitalism, focusing on the human body, athleticism and the fertility of humans and the land, combined with an underlying energy. As her sculptural practice evolved in the 1930s, she created impressive vitalist works that often feature powerful women as the equals of men. In Abundance, an energised presence is interwoven with tender affection. The maternal figure stands tall in the group, her hair flowing as if swept in the air by the wind, while the male figure kneels by her side, gazing across at the cherubic young boy who completes the circle with his arm gently holding on to his mother’s leg. The trio are further interconnected by the sheath of wheat that the man is carrying and the wreath draped over the woman’s shoulder extending down to the child. The symbolism

of nature amplifies the idea of vitality, abundance and wellbeing. Such ideas also tie into pastoral ideals in Australia that go back to the Federation era. Compared with Abundance, the work acquired from the family, Hippolyta and the Amazons defeating Theseus, is much more assertive and provocative. Considered one of her best, this sculpture depicts the Amazonian queen Hippolyta naked except for her helmet. She is a triumphant warrior woman in control of her destiny. Unfortunately, she came to a difficult end in the mythology. So too in real life, many women were often not afforded their proper place in art history in the same way as men until late in the twentieth century. However, it would have to be said that Hoff, as a teacher and mentor, was a great supporter of artists such as Broome-Norton, Marjorie Fletcher and Barbara Tribe, who were friends. Their sculptural work is being shown together with Hoff’s in an exciting new display of Art Deco at the NGA, alongside works by Rupert Bunny and Napier and Christian Waller, among many others. To see Broome-Norton’s three sculptures shown in this context represents a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge her great contribution to Australian art and to recognise the inspiring act of generosity by Mike Ogden. Although he is no longer alive, he was thrilled to learn, just prior to his passing, that Abundance had been approved by the NGA’s Council for inclusion into the national art collection. When I visited him in hospital to let him know the good news, he took a piece of paper and wrote, ‘How wonderful! Jean would be so thrilled, and so am I’.

Opposite: Abundance 1934, bronze, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Michael Ogden PSM, 2016

Art Deco On display now

Above: Woman with horses (Keeper of Hippolyta’s horses) 1934, bronze. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Philip Bacon AM, 2003

Join the conversation #ArtDecoNGA

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

NEW ACQUISITIONS CASSANDRE Taking its name from the celebrated exhibition Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriel modernes in Paris in 1925, Art Deco encapsulated modernity, the exotic and often the luxurious after the grim years of the First World War. Cassandre was a leading exponent in the graphic arts capturing the spirit of the new style. Born in the Ukraine of French parents, Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, or Cassandre (as he came to be known), studied in Paris. He gained prominence when he won a prize at the Exposition internationale in his early twenties. Two years later, in 1927, Cassandre was commissioned to design a poster advertising the new express train of the Chemin de Fer du Nord (Northern Railway Company). Inspired by the avant-garde contemporary styles of Cubism and Futurism, he created a supreme vision of modern travel, of speed, glamour and excitement. The poster rejoices in luxury travel through Europe and Great Britain, with the most modern of rail accommodation found in the sleeping cars and the finest of restaurants. The sans serif font is utterly modern and complements the theme. The engine of Nord Express along with the power lines running alongside emphasise speed, as the train races into the background of the composition in a powerful one point perspective, toward the new era of travel. Jane Kinsman, Head of International Art

REN HANG Ren Hang was the most significant member of a generation of young photographers whose work developed in the context of China’s recent, apparent social and cultural liberalisation. Alongside contemporaries such as Lin Zhipeng, Ren engaged a photographic style that reflects its place. His pictures involve tightly choreographed, often very formal arrangements of bodies in landscapes and domestic environments. His subjects—naked young men and women who were usually his friends and relatives—assume enigmatic, often erotic poses that appear to suggest social freedom and sexual empowerment. However, the illusion of freedom and self-expression is always undershot with indications of anxiety or constraint: contorted bodies seem unable to engage in sex despite being naked, friends and intimates appear unable to relate to each other despite their physical proximity and people are apparently unable to commune with nature despite being free in it. The photographs engage a disarming tension between control and freedom that exists in modern China. Their frank depiction of sexuality, gender and intimacy reflects an uneasy place, one where queerness and the open depiction of sexuality remain subject to tremendous social and political regulation. After two years of negotiation, the NGA has finally acquired a selection of Ren Hang’s photographs, which will join our growing collection of contemporary art from the Asia–Pacific region. Two of these are among the last to have been printed under the artist’s direct supervision, not long before his tragic and untimely death early last year. Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator, Photography

NEW ACQUISITIONS

CLUB ATE Working predominantly in live performance, installation and video,

used to demonise queer identities and, at the same time, reimagines the

Justin Shoulder is well known for his ostentatious costumes and the

possibilities for a future folklore.

extroverted personalities they induce. While maintaining a persistent

The imagery is highly sensory and sensual and reflects the artists’

fascination with masquerade and the ancient mythology of chimeras,

critical queer intersection of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Balud,

his work also engages with the history of queer costumed performance

the first chapter, recasts the story of the Manananggal, a demon-like

in Sydney. Indeed, his practice is firmly rooted in the communities of

woman capable of detaching her upper torso and growing batlike wings.

nightclubs and underground live venues, and although taking new

This malevolent creature is transformed by the performer Jai Jai into a

directions in recent years, he has never abandoned the collective energy

model for transgression, a shimmering ‘glammananangaal’ singing a song

of these spaces—where each of his ‘fantastic creatures’, which make up a

of sadness (mourning the other half of her body) and resistance.

flipbook of performance identities, were born. Shoulder works regularly with dancer and choreographer Bhenji Ra,

From Creature ~ From Creation, the most recent episode, delves into the myth of Malakas and Maganda, which tells how the Philippines came

and together, as Club Ate, they develop video and performance projects

into being. In Club Ate’s vision of the world, the symbolism of the past

with an evolving cast of other performers and practitioners. The ongoing,

is radically deconstructed, and identity, gender, time and space are all

cumulative moving-image project Ex Nilalang is one such outcome

as fluid as the atmosphere in which these beings exist. Bree Richards,

of this collaborative approach. Across four episodes, Shoulder and Ra

Curator, Contemporary Art Practice—Global

draw on their shared Australian-Filipino lineage to reimagine existing mythologies as celebratory legends, using a combination of intricately crafted costumes, prostheses, masks, gestural physicality and sound. In Ex Nilalang, fantastical otherworldly creatures inhabit a range of spaces and temporalities: the postcolonial Philippines, the AustralianFilipino diaspora, the intercultural space of the queer nightclub, an ancestral jeepney yard in Manila and a futuristic virtual realm. Each chapter is a filmic portrait and fable of transformation, riffing on the hybrid term ‘Nilalang’, meaning both ‘to create’ and ‘creature’. This emphasises the dual nature of the project, which alters mythologies once

Opposite, from top: Cassandre Nord Express 1927, colour lithograph. Poynton Bequest, 2017; Ren Hang Untitled 52 and Untitled 53 2012, pigment inkjet prints. Purchased 2018. Images courtesy of Estate of Ren Hang and Blindspot Gallery Above: Club Ate Balud 2015, from the series Ex Nilalang, single-channel HD digital video, colour, sound. Purchased 2017. Photo: Gregory Lorenzutti. Image courtesy of the artists

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

Mortimer Menpes One of our new allies, Japan c 1901–02, gouache and pencil on paper on board. Purchased with the assistance of the Rossi Family Foundation, 2017

MORTIMER MENPES

Near and Far East and make watercolour sketches and paintings of the

Born in Adelaide in 1855, Mortimer Menpes became a highly successful

paint in watercolour or gouache, and this became an important part

artist and leading member of the Aesthetic movement in London, where

of his practice. Back in London, these works, adorned by exquisite and

he settled at the age of twenty. His career was already on the ascendant

lavish frames he designed himself, were snapped up by wealthy upper-

when he reportedly met James Abbott McNeill Whistler in the printing

middle-class patrons at his hugely popular exhibitions.

room at the Fine Art Society. Whistler’s work so impressed him that,

While the NGA has over forty prints and two paintings by Menpes,

in his 1904 book Whistler as I knew him, Menpes declared: ‘From that

One of our new allies, Japan is the first watercolour in gouache to enter the

hour I was almost a slave in his service … I took off my coat there and

national collection. Its title is intriguing and shows Menpes’s knowledge

then, and began to grind up ink for the Master’.

and interest in international relations—the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance

Whistler became Menpes’s informal mentor and teacher in the early

was signed in London in 1902, ending Britain’s so-called ‘Splendid

1880s, introducing him to London’s avant-garde circles, otherwise known

Isolation’ policy. The work was created for a travel-book project he had

as ‘Upper Bohemia’. But it was Menpes’s adoption of Japanese-style motifs

embarked upon with his daughter, the writer Dorothy Menpes, and the

in his work and his eventual painting expedition to Japan in 1887 that

publisher A&C Black in London at the turn of the century. One of the

led to a cataclysmic rift between the friends. The final straw was the

first of these travel books was Japan: a record in colour in 1901, but it was

sell-out success and critical acclaim of the exhibition of his Japanese

a later book in the series, World’s children, in which One of our new allies,

subjects at the London gallery Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell, where both

Japan was reproduced. The work was acquired late last year at the auction

artists exhibited.

of the estate of James O Fairfax AC, who has been a significant supporter

Menpes’s success was built on his popularity as a travel painter. The business model was very simple: he would travel extensively to the

evocative and exotic scenes he encountered. On location, he would often

NEW ACQUISITIONS

of the NGA since its founding. Lara Nicholls, Curator, 19th-Century Australian Art

LEO BENSEMANN ‘Leo’s near-black hair, prominent eyebrows and chiselled features accentuated my first impression of him as dour, withdrawn, with a touch of homme fatal. Behind the saturnine mask I soon found a highly intelligent, ironically witty and warm companion.’ So wrote Ian Milner about how he saw his friend New Zealand artist Leo Bensemann. This description, relayed in Peter Simpson’s excellent book Fantastica: the world of Leo Bensemann, strikes a chord with Bensemann’s Self-portrait, recently acquired by the NGA. While not a well-known name in Australia, he was a central, if diffident, figure in the artistic life of Christchurch, a painter and graphic artist and a key protagonist of The Group—which included Rita Angus, Colin McCahon and Doris Lusk—and the Caxton Press. When this striking self-portrait became available for purchase, it provided the chance for the NGA to strengthen its collection of New Zealand art. It was also immediately apparent that it would make a striking companion to Rita Angus’s Self-portrait (Wanaka) 1939, painted on the brink of the Second World War. Angus and Bensemann were close friends. In 1938, they were living in adjoining flats in a house at 97 Cambridge Terrace in Christchurch. The house, also shared by artist Lawrence Baigent, was a lively meeting place. As Simpson notes, many artists, writers, performers, scholars and pacifists met there, ‘making it an epicentre of cultural and intellectual forces in the city during a particularly vibrant period’. Both Bensemann and Angus painted numerous portraits at this time, including selfportraits and portraits of one another, sometimes sitting at either end of the dining room table drawing each other simultaneously. Bensemann’s Self-portrait is based on a fine pencil drawing, as is another larger, more theatrical version. The power of the smaller work acquired by the NGA is the simplified focus on the portrait set against a blue ground. Wearing a light-grey coat with a stylishly upturned collar, his imposing facial features are matched by his intense expression. Like Angus, he was troubled by the rise of Fascism and Nazism, and the intensity of their portraits may in part have been informed by the tenor of the times. Both of their impressive self-portraits in the collection will be shown side by side in the NGA’s Artists’ faces and places from 30 June, reminding us of the vitality of Trans-Tasman art in the modern era. Deborah Hart, Head of Australian Art

From top: Leo Bensemann Self-portrait c 1938, oil on canvas board. Purchased 2017; Rita Angus Selfportrait (Wanaka) 1939, oil on canvas. Purchased with the assistance of funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest, 2010

ARTONVIEW 93 AUTUMN 2018

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Cartier London Halo tiara 1934 on display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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