Summer 2020
My life as a Van Gogh “We had Sunflowers above the sofa”
The Shock of The New turns 40 • Lucy Turnbull remembers Robert Hughes Jo Lloyd on the art of dance • Inside Naomi Milgrom’s personal collection
Someday we’ll all be together once more Proudly reuniting family and friends across Australia 2
nga.gov.au
Contents
02 04 05 06
38 44
08
The Carpenters
Director’s Word
Editor’s Letter | Contributors
Meet the Member
Studio Spotlight Mikala Dwyer
NAIDOC week Always Was, Always Will Be
12
Cover story My life as a Van Gogh
17 18
How to Grow Sunflowers
Influencing a national collection
Modernity’s Limit Mary Cassatt
48
Living with Grace The home of Grace Cossington Smith
52 54
My collection Naomi Milgrom AC
60 68
Gift Guide
Director’s Choice Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in space
The Seven Sunflowers Van Gogh’s famous series
20
As the Mind Sees It Joan Mitchell
26
A Delicate Dance Jo Lloyd
30
Constant Tim Ross on art’s influence On the cover Willem van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Photographed by Erik Smits. Right William Dargie, Portrait of Albert Namatjira, 1956, oil on canvas. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA.
32
Robert Hughes Lucy Turnbull’s tribute to her uncle
34
The Shock of The New turns 40 American Friends of the NGA Summer 2020
1
Director’s Word
2
nga.gov.au
Gooroo Burri One of the exciting things about bringing the Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London exhibition to Australia is that it includes so many works that define Western art history. Of particular interest is Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, one of the most iconic works of the nineteenth century. It is a work that is full of so much energy and is instantly recognisable by the artist’s hand. As a young art student, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers captivated me, so to be able to present one of this series of works in Australia for the first time is really significant. It’s touchstone works like these that open up people’s imaginations and offer the opportunity to learn more about the history of art. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is a work that is larger than life, it’s impact and wider recognition is so profound that it opens up the conversation; people learn more about the artist, his contemporaries and those before him who inspired Van Gogh. Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum, each generation of artists builds on what has come beforehand. What I appreciate about the story that unfolds in Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is that you witness the accumulation of history, of time, of innovation. The exhibition offers a 500-year slice of how art continues to evolve, how alive the creative spirit of artists are, and how art history builds on itself in a very sustained and progressive manner. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is one of the high points of five centuries of art making, so I would like to thank our partners and supporters for making this unprecedented exhibition possible, and we look forward to welcoming everybody to the Gallery when the exhibition opens in March. My first lesson in art history was through Robert Hughes’ book The Shock of the New, which startlingly defines the creative progress of the twentieth century and has always inspired me to embrace the different, the unconventional and the edge. It is not just an art book, it’s a story of how technology, history and creativity continuously come together and chart a new path. The Shock of the New turned 40 this year. My mother bought me my first copy when I was 14 at Kurri Kurri High school (in the NSW Hunter Valley region) after our librarian politely asked me to stop borrowing the school’s only copy to allow others to have a turn.
such as Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair, or works by Dali and Miro. The Shock of the New helped me to understand the evolution of art, but standing in front of works of art in the Gallery helped me understand something more, so it’s the combination of both that really grounded my knowledge. I devoured the TV series and often return to it because Robert Hughes was such a great orator. The Shock of the New has stayed with me. But it should be noted that The Shock of the New defines the thinking and attitudes of the time. To celebrate the 40th anniversary, the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia in New York held a fascinating webinar with three of Robert’s friends and colleagues – Australian author Peter Carey, The New York Times journalist Michael Kimmelman and Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker magazine. I encourage you to read their conversation on page 14. I would also like to thank Lucy Turnbull AO for writing a special tribute to her “Uncle Bob” for us on page 32. The Shock of the New taught me that new and progressive ideas are based on an accumulation of history and experience, that knowledge is the key to being innovative. It continuously reminds me that to actively contribute to the future we need to re-evaluate all we know about the past. As this most difficult year draws to a close I am proud of how innovative we have been in the face of everything that 2020 has brought us. Despite hail storms, bushfires and the pandemic, we have transformed the way we share art – evolving our digital offerings including hosting our first-ever virtual conference and new website for Know My Name; we transformed several Gallery spaces; opened our new Art Store and centre for visitors; and we have a suite of diverse exhibitions and projects lined up for 2021. I am excited for what the future will bring and look forward to taking you on that journey with us. I wish you and your families happy and healthy holidays.
Nick Mitzevich I acknowledge and pay my respect to the Traditional Custodians of the Canberra region, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples and their Elders past and present.
I’ve had my copy for 37 years now, it’s all dog-eared and full of scribbly notes.
Director Nick Mitzevich with Seven Sisters, 2018, by Tjungkara Ken, Sandra Ken, Yaritji Young, Freda Brady and Maringka Tunkin, synthetic polymer paint on linen, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2020.
When I came to the National Gallery for the first time at 19 I saw the paintings that I had worshipped and studied in the book on the walls, which was such an amazing experience. While I had learnt all about Jackson Pollock, it wasn’t until I stood in front of Blue poles and saw the power of the painting, the magnetism of the surface and the scale of the work that I truly understood it. And there were others,
Summer 2020
3
Editor’s Letter
Contributors
Lucy Turnbull, AO Lucy Turnbull is a woman of many hats: lawyer, urbanist, philanthropist, author, company board director and the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney (from 2003-4). She is also the niece of the late Australian art critic Robert Hughes. Read her moving tribute to her beloved uncle on page 32.
What a year! 2020 has been full of many ups and downs, but through it all there has been incredible stories of perseverance, of creativity, of inspiration. One thing I have found inspiring has been seeing how artists responded to the challenges of this year and featuring their voices in these pages, especially those in lockdown. In March Angelica Mesiti wrote of hearing applause for the frontline workers through the empty streets of Paris, in July Yvette Coppersmith reflected on the art of portraiture while isolating in her Melbourne home, and in this issue choreographer and dancer Jo Lloyd discusses how she has navigated forming a relationship with someone from the past who she has never met. Jo wrote the essay (on page 26) while in her seventh month working from home in Melbourne while preparing her new performance work responding to the archive material of Philippa Cullen for Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now.
Jo Lloyd Choreographer and dancer Jo Lloyd works with choreography as a social encounter, revealing behaviour over particular durations and circumstances. She has presented work all over the world and currently features in the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. Read her essay A delicate dance on page 26.
You will hear more of the artist’s voice in the coming issues as we continue to evolve this magazine. And you will see more stories – stories about art and artists. Their work, their lives, what is in their studio, what inspires them, their histories and their families. In this issue we talk to several family members of late artists and the legacy they left – including Ann Mills, the niece of Australian Modernist Grace Cossington Smith, who lives in the house where Grace painted many of her most famous works (page 48); and our cover interview (page 12) with the great-grand nephew of Vincent van Gogh and his extraordinary story about growing up as the relative of one of the world’s most famous artists. Families that shape our formative years can also help shape our relationship with art. In his essay on page 30, Tim Ross reflects on how art impacts our lives unconsciously: “Our love affair with art might start with a school excursion, a gallery poster or a calendar on a grandparent’s fridge. Recurring images have formative powers, they turn receptors on and plant ideas in our subconscious”. My beloved late grandmother Patricia Tedmanson introduced me to the power of art. She took me to the theatre, to the movies, to the South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia where we would discuss history and art and the stories behind the paintings on the walls. Gran instilled in me a lifelong passion for culture and the stories that inform and shape us. One of the most difficult things about this the year has been the separation of loved ones for extended periods because of border closures. So, as the world continues to slowly reopen and we begin to wind down for the Summer holidays, I hope you get to spend time with your loved ones, whether it be near or far, in person or virtually, or even visiting the Gallery together. And we look forward to sharing more stories with you in 2021.
Erik Smits Amsterdam-based photographer Erik Smits, who captured our cover story at the Van Gogh Museum, once photographed former US president Barack Obama in the Rijksmuseum. He usually specialises in portraiture of people in their own environment and is currently working on a series of Ghanese Kings living in the Netherlands with their families.
Tim Ross Design and architecture enthusiast Tim Ross has toured internationally sharing his insights with his shows Design Nation and Man About the House. To coincide with the launch his new National Gallery podcast series Constant, Ross writes about his passion for art and its role as a silent influencer in our lives on page 30.
Summer 104 The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Gallery stands, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country. Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Email: Artonview.Editor@nga.gov.au @sophieted
Enquiries artonview.editor@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/artonview © National Galley of Australia 2019 PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 | nga.gov.au Follow Us
Editor Sophie Tedmanson Rights and Permissions Ellie Misios
Sophie Tedmanson
Advertising enquiries ArtonviewAdvertising@nga.gov.au
Contributors Jessica Ausserlechner, Jessica Barnes, Sam Cooper, Sally Foster, David Greenhalgh, David Hempenstall, Karlee Holland, Bruce Johnson-McLean, Nick Mitzevich, Sandra O’Malley, Lucina Ward
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 National Gallery of Australia. ISSN 1323-4552 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) Printed by Adams Print, on FSC certified paper using vegetable-based inks, FSC-C110099
4
nga.gov.au
Meet the Member Each issue we profile a member of the National Gallery. This month: STACEY CHAN, whose connection dates back to her childhood.
I was nearly three when I first visited the Gallery. It was for the Old Masters – New Visions: El Greco to Rothko from the Philips Collection, Washington DC exhibition in 1987. My family had just moved to Canberra from NSW. I don’t remember there being a children’s program at that time but my parents were very focused on me learning about art, so they brought me to that exhibition and I just remember trying to find the animals in all the pictures. I think I found some horses in one painting, and dogs in some others.
Photos by Karlee Holland, David Hempenstall and Peter Rosetzky
I’ve been a member on and off since then. In primary school we once had an art assignment and I chose to study Monet’s Waterlillies [Nymphéas] because I was obsessed with the painting after seeing it in the Gallery. I spent time putting random blocks of colour on paper and trying to see how close or far away they had to be to look like a practice in colour. It didn’t look anything like water lillies, but at least I tried. That was as close as I got to studying art, but I’ve always loved it. Because art is a passion, it means I can just come here and enjoy it. I don’t really have a favourite work in the collection but most consistently Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles is a painting that I revisit regularly because I had a print of it in my house for a decade. Most recently I’ve been enjoying Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory essays. I really appreciate that it’s such a thought-provoking piece. When you read it closely, it makes you wonder: which bits are supposed to be inflammatory? It was probably a lot more shocking when it was first created. It seems more like matter-of-fact statements now, rather than something particularly contentious. It’s got such bold and beautiful colours too, it looks like awesome wallpaper. I think it’s fun. For me being a member of the Gallery is about appreciating the art, the space and also the convenience – being able to come after office hours to events, seeing the major exhibitions without having to deal with all the crowds. I love how the Gallery complements the art in an event format, like special dinners with custom-made art-themed drinks. I really enjoyed the American Masters Lunch in 2018 that was out on the terrace. I also love the exclusive opportunities – the behind-the-scenes tours have been some of my favourite experiences at the Gallery. I visit at least once a month and have never missed a blockbuster, not since I was three! Share your favourite memories of the National Gallery of Australia, by emailing: membership@nga.gov.au
Above Stacey Chan pictured at the Gallery with Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory essays, 1978-83, offset lithographs. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1986. ©Jenny Holzer/Copyright Agency; Jeff Koons’s Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Yellow), mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent colour coating, 2013-2017, on loan from a private collection; and Gilbert & George’s Crusade, 2014, 20 panel digital print, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Poynton Bequest 2015.
Summer 2020
5
Studio Spotlight We visit an artist in their studio and discover how space influences their inspiration and creative process. This month: MIKALA DWYER
6
nga.gov.au
I operate with a roving studio format. I have always had a practice that moves between my personal studio and the site, or gallery, that my work is being displayed in. Often my studio is used to fabricate certain elements of the work but then the gallery also becomes a studio space because a lot of the work gets made in situ. My personal studio is at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne and it’s fantastic – there are lots of great artists who also work there, so it feels like a community. It’s nice to be on your own and have time to yourself, but I really like the sound of other artists working nearby. Even if I don’t talk to them all day I like to hear the sound of them working, and having that occasional conversation while making a cup of tea; those incidental conversations are really precious: ‘what’s that material you are using?’, ‘what are you working on today?’. I’m lucky to have had great studios over the years in Berlin, Ireland, London and Sydney (at Artspace and Carriageworks). Earlier this year I was working for a show at the Ichiahara Art + Mix Triennial in Japan and I inhabited and worked in an old abandoned school for a month, so that became my studio as well.
There is a lot that goes from the studio to the gallery that dies, so I need to keep it animated by not letting it cool so much. I first made Square Cloud Compound (which is featured in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now) – in Berlin in 2010 and it was a space I was allowed to run loose, so I made this enormous, ridiculously ambitious installation with many materials. I thought it was a one-off experiment, completely unsellable. But it was to be restaged in Ireland, so I had to go back to Berlin and dig out the fabric again and it mutated: we rebuilt all the lamps and in that iteration they were much bigger, so the work became enormous. It’s an incredibly difficult piece to put up and there’s no logic to it, the fabric canopy is really complicated – it’s strung up with beer and champagne bottles, there’s a lot of stockings and a lot of fabric – so it’s a new sculpture every time you put it up.
Opposite (above and middle) works in progress in one of Mikala Dwyer’s studios; (below) Installation image from the MCA in Sydney of Mikala Dwyer’s Square cloud compound 2010, fabric stockings, glass, beer, champagne, plastic, ceramics, found things, wood, rocks, lights, paint, acrylic, cat and bird elements. Trueran dyed poplin blended. Polyester 65% Cotton 35% Organza Cotton. Artifical leather - either PVC or polyurethane razzamatazz stockings - nude and black 15 denier. Museum of Contemporary Art. Purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015. Below Mikala Dwyer’s practice means her studio transforms from a personal space into the gallery. Studio photos courtesy of the artist.
I love the curved walls in the space we are installing it at the National Gallery, so I think it’ll become a different work again, which is exciting. � Mikala Dwyer’s Square Cloud Compound is on display as part of the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition, on now.
I try to factor in as much time as possible to work in situ because it embeds you in a space or a site, and I can learn so much from a space. An install usually takes about two weeks but the more time you have the more you can fine tune, sculpt and place the work – it’s the devil in the details that brings it to life, so the more time I can give it the better. The nuances of a site and the people, the culture, the history, the climate – political or environmental; there are many things that factor into the making and the fabric of my work. It’s never quite contained to just the straight studio practice, I always need the element of working in situ to make sense of the space and complete the work. The nature of installation is mobile, a lot of fragments coalesce in whatever space you are in. I’ll often get somewhere and put up a work – it takes a while to feel right – and then suddenly I’ll realise it’s back to front or upside down, then I have to start all over again.
Summer 2020
7
Always Was, Always Will Be 8
nga.gov.au
In celebration of NAIDOC Week, BRUCE JOHNSON MCLEAN reflects on the highs and lows that 2020 has brought First Nations artists and communities.
The theme for this year’s NAIDOC Week is a timely reminder that this place, all of it, Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal land. In the spirit of this, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which the National Gallery stands, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and pay our respect to all who have come before us, and will come after us, on their special place. To a Murri* like me, NAIDOC Week – run by the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee – is everything. It’s a statement of all that we are, in the place and the times that we live. It’s a time for demonstration and celebration; protest and pride; sorrow and joy. As a jarjum (youth) growing up in Brisbane every NAIDOC Day (the main day of celebration for the annual NAIDOC week) began with a gathering, a political protest, at the Roma Street Forum, followed by a march through the city and over the bridges of Maiwar (the Brisbane River) to Musgrave Park in South Brisbane where we would dance, sing, embrace kin and eat sop-sop (a Torres Strait Islander coconut strew with yam, taro, pumpkin and sweet potato) until we could take no more. The sequencing of the day was deliberately coordinated by our community leaders to ensure we understood our place in the continuum of Aboriginal existence. We first protested to reflect on our historical and contemporary realities as First Nations peoples within a colonial society. Somehow this observation of pain, hurt and loss – coupled with the cathartic actions of protest – made our celebration of culture (and the sop-sop) so much sweeter.
Vincent Namatjira (Western Aranda/ Pitjantatjara people), Albert and Vincent, 2014, synthetic polymer paint on linen, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Gift of Dirk and Karen Zadra through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2014. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. © Vincent Namatjira 2014. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2015.
This year has been unlike – yet so familiar to – many that have preceded it for First Nations people in Australia. COVID-19 has forced many vulnerable First Nations communities to lockdown hard, splintering the ties that bind us together. The social havoc wreaked by the pandemic has even delayed the celebration of NAIDOC Week itself, necessitating a move from July to November. The effects of the global Black Lives Matter movement have also been a trigger point for First Nations communities set amidst the continuing and unresolved issue of Black deaths in custody within our own country. And the unrelenting destruction of Country through both catastrophic climate change and colonial extractive vandalism highlighted by the obliteration of the 46,000 years of heritage held within the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Peoples’ sites in Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. These are but a small window into the cultural and social trauma felt by First Nations people over a few months in Australia and it’s against the understanding of these realities that we search for something sweet to celebrate, to return some
semblance of equilibrium to our cultural selves. And this year, like so many times before and to come, we found an answer in culture and in art. This year, for the first time in its 99-year history, an Aboriginal artist won the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW, the most coveted and famous art prize in the country. In fact, four of the five available prizes across the Archibald and Wynne Prizes have been taken out by Aboriginal artists: Wongutha-Yamatji actor Meyne Wyatt became the first Aboriginal person to be awarded the Packing Room Prize, Western Arrernte painter Hubert Pareroultja claimed the Wynne Prize and Anangu (Pitjantjatjara) artist Nyunmiti Burton secured the Roberts Family Prize. The crowning achievement though was Vincent Namatjira’s Archibald Prize win for his painting Stand strong for who you are. Vincent’s win is a great Archibald story, his journey as an artist has travelled in parallel with the Prize. Some may even say the Archibald is in his blood. Inspired by the 1956 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of his great-grandfather Albert Namatjira by Sir William Dargie, Vincent began investigating his family history through portraiture. In 2014 he painted a portrait of himself with the painting of the famous forebear he never had the chance to know as an entry to the Prize (pictured left). It was not accepted as a finalist then, but today hangs in the Queensland Art Gallery alongside the original. Undeterred, Vincent has continued to target the Prize and exhibited as a finalist for four consecutive years from 2017-2020. Much of the driving force of Vincent's art career to date has been an investigation of his famous great-grandfather. As a child, due to family tragedy, Vincent was moved from his Country in Central Australia to Perth and placed in the foster care system. Carrying the Namatjira name held an enormous weight and upon reaching adulthood Vincent returned to his Country on a journey of reconnection. One of his key processes for connecting was through art as he watched his late Aunty Elaine Namatjira, a leading early member of the Hermannsburg Potters, create and paint her exquisite vessels. He also studied the works of Albert, many of which are still displayed on site in the Hermannsburg Historical Precinct in Ntaria. He moved to Kanpi, further south in the APY Lands, to settle and start a family. There he started painting and in 2013 began his career as a portraitist. Through portraiture Vincent has been able to investigate more about his famous forbearer who died decades before his birth, stroke by stroke. In recent years Vincent has grown in stature, becoming increasingly insightful, subversive and political in his portraits, painting himself with the Queen and at a joint birthday party with
Summer 2020
9
Donald Trump at McDonald’s. For the 2020 Archibald Prize, he painted himself with Aboriginal idol and Australian anti-hero Adam Goodes, who became the target of years of racist bullying after calling out racist spectators at AFL games. His post-goal warrior celebration saw him hurl imaginary spears into booing crowds, yet in Vincent’s portrait Goodes is pictured smiling, shaking hands as the artist stands in the background, spear in hand. The inspiration that Goodes provided by standing up to his racist detractors is palpable, with Vincent acknowledging that Goodes is the reason he now stands with his metaphoric art spear. Coincidentally, on almost the same day Vincent won the Archibald Prize, a sublime work by Albert Namatjira entered the National Gallery building. The work, Quarritana, supported generously by Gordon and Marilyn Darling, has been added to the substantial holdings of Albert Namatjira’s work in the national collection. The painting depicts the site of Quarritana, a cliff face also known locally as the Organ Pipes due to the spectacular vertically stratified nature of the weathered rock formation. Here, the River meets the edge of Tjoritja (The West MacDonnell Range) and snakes its way toward and through the face of the mountains, carving out the Glen Helen Gorge. Drama is held in the foreground of the composition where this jagged rocky outcrop meets the fading light of day, resulting in intense interplays of light and shadow. The work is also a typically understated celebration of Country, showing Western Arrarnda Country in full bloom, with the vibrant yellows of central Australian wildflowers permeating the palette. The rolling humps of the mountain are bathed in a yellow-green, a phenomenon only seen following good rain when the landscape transforms from brown and red to green, with swathes of yellow and purple wildflowers creating a patchwork quilt on the desert floor. It is a rarity amongst Albert's works as almost invariably Mount Hermannsburg is depicted in brown or distant hues of purple and blue. Although other Hermannsburg School artists were more well known for wildflower landscapes – most notably Walter Ebatrainja and Henoch Raberaba – Albert’s works rarely depicted such abundance. In another nod to the legacy of Albert Namatjira, fellow Western Arrernte artist Hubert Pareroultja claimed the coveted Wynne Prize for landscape painting, the sister award to the Archibald. Hubert’s winning painting, Tjoritja, is a glorious oversized work looking down a reach of the MacDonnell Ranges, painted in a fiery desert palette, his personal trademark yet still reminiscent of the work of his father Reuben and uncle
10
nga.gov.au
Edwin Pareroultja. His use of colour, line and tone creates a great sense of movement, evocative of the Caterpillar Ancestors who marched in line along the Ranges, their bodies hardening to become the towering cliffs seen atop the hills today. Perhaps its fitting that in the year that a Namatjira takes out the Archibald Prize an artist working in the Hermannsburg School tradition that Albert Namatjira started 86 years ago also wins the country’s most prestigious award for painting country. The success of the Aboriginal artists at this years Archibald Prize was extraordinary, but for Aboriginal people, taken in context, they are especially sweet and, for me, in the spirit of NAIDOC, deserve to be especially celebrated. — Bruce Johnson McLean, a Wierdi | Birri-Gubba man, is the Barbara Jean Humphreys Assistant Director, Indigenous Engagement * Murri is a self-identifying word used by Aboriginal people from central and southern Queensland.
Albert Namatjira (Western Arrarnta people), Quarritana, 1942, watercolour on card, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Gordon and Marilyn Darling Hermannsburg Fund, 2020.
Summer 2020
11
My life as a Van Gogh As Van Gogh’s world-famous Sunflowers makes its way to Australia for the first time, ASHLEIGH WILSON speaks to the artist’s descendent about having one of the most famous names in art. Photographs by ERIK SMITS.
Willem van Gogh in front of Sunflowers (Fifteen), one of the series of seven paintings of sunflowers by his famous relative, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
12
nga.gov.au
Summer 2020
13
14
nga.gov.au
It’s late spring in southeast Australia, and Vincent Willem van Gogh is on the line from Amsterdam. His face is familiar, a faint, half-forgotten memory from another time. The name, of course, is the key. His great-grandfather was Theo van Gogh, brother to the long-suffering Dutch master who died in 1890. Van Gogh leans forward to adjust his computer monitor, and explains, not for the first time, the origins of his name. He was born Vincent, the product of Dutch family tradition. But to avoid confusion, he has always gone by his second name, Willem. For that he can thank a quick-thinking aunt, who visited a week after his birth and suggested that the boy might be better served as Willem Van Gogh. “I’m very happy she said that,” he says now. “Imagine I introduce myself as Vincent Van Gogh and everybody thinks, well, maybe something is wrong with that guy.” As a young man, Willem kept his distance from the family legend. He loved contemporary art but it was the law, not painting, to which he dedicated his time. It wasn’t until 1999 that he found himself working at the Van Gogh Museum, one of the major landmarks in Amsterdam’s museum quarter. He became an advisor to the board a decade later and now works as an ambassador for Vincent’s art, an enthusiastic custodian of work that continues to seduce generations of art lovers around the world. Which explains why he’s connecting with Australia at this time. One of Vincent’s best-known masterpieces, Sunflowers, is about to be unveiled in Canberra, one of the most anticipated works in the upcoming exhibition, Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London. “It’s a symbol friendship, of energy, of life,” Willem says of Sunflowers. “It also represents the circle of life because it has new flowers and faded flowers in the same image.” He reaches for a letter written by his great-grandmother Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Theo’s widow, the family member who did so much to spread the word about Vincent’s art. The letter, dated 24 January 1924, is addressed to Charles Aitken, then-director of the National Gallery of London.
The letter records part of the negotiation surrounding the gallery’s acquisition of Sunflowers that same year. She agrees to take back “the postman” — presumably, Vincent’s portrait of Joseph Roulin — in exchange for Sunflowers. The decision had been a difficult one because she “could not bear to separate from the picture I have looked on every day for more than thirty years.” In the end, she concluded that no other picture would represent Vincent in the gallery better than Sunflowers: “It is a sacrifice for the sake of Vincent’s glory.” Van Gogh’s Sunflowers carries with it a long, rich history. There are even further connotations inside the family home, where Vincent’s pictures have been the background images of childhood memories. Willem, among others, grew up surrounded by his work. His grandfather — also called Vincent, but known as The Engineer to distinguish him from the artist — displayed several pictures on rotation at home, among them The Potato Eaters and Almond Blossom, plus one of the Sunflowers above the sofa. “I knew he was a famous artist,” Willem says, “but I didn’t feel the impact as nowadays.” He’s referring to the explosion of contemporary art, both in terms of celebrity and value, in the years since Andy Warhol redefined the borders of cultural fame. “Before that, in the 70s, or the 60s or 50s or last century, Vincent van Gogh and Picasso, they were famous names, and everybody knew they were the best artists ever. But they had not that status as nowadays, and they were not hyped like today.” The Sunflowers are a series of paintings that date back to the Yellow House, one of the most fertile and mythologised residencies in modern art history. Vincent wanted to decorate his rented home in Arles, south of France, ahead of the arrival of a fellow artist, his friend Paul Gauguin. He painted the first group in August, 1888, and the second he following January. A meditation on colour and life, he depicts the sunflowers at various stages throughout their life cyclein that singularly energetic, expressive style. To read his letter to Theo in August, 1888, even the process of creation appears to have been intoxicating: “I’m painting with the gusto
Left Willem’s great grandmother Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (Theo’s widow) holding her son (Willem’s grandfather, also named Vincent Willem), the first in a long line of descendents to be named after the artist. Right Willem’s grandfather Vincent van Gogh as an adult withhis wife Josina in the Van Gogh family home in Amsterdam. Images courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Summer 2020
15
of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large SUNFLOWERS.” For Willem, those flowers are the symbol of friendship, connection and love, of Vincent anticipating Gauguin’s arrival in Arles. They are also strikingly innovative pictures, from their lack of spatial depth to the various shades of yellow that the artist introduces to the image. The Yellow House itself might have been a short-lived experiment – Gauguin returned to Paris two days before Christmas after Vincent cut off part of his own left ear — but the works produced during those difficult, frustrating, tormented weeks have demonstrated a remarkable longevity. “Maybe,” says Willem, “it was the most productive period in his career.” As artists take on new levels of celebrity and notoriety, so too do some of the works they have left behind. Few are more iconic than those created by Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night, for instance, is one of New York’s top tourist attractions at the Museum of Modern Art. According to The Times (of London), the patch of floor next to Sunflowers is the most worn spot in the National Gallery of London. And in Amsterdam, visitors to the Van Gogh Museum can buy a Sunflowers likeness on a dizzying spread of products, from a duvet to a pillow to luggage, T-shirts, scarves, egg cups, cheese slicers, oven mitts and even skateboards. When Bill Clinton visited the museum the former US president told staff that he had had a Sunflowers poster on his wall as a student. This multiplicity of reproduction warms Willem’s heart, a constant reminder of how this seemingly simple, transformative image has endured. Vincent van Gogh produced seven Sunflowers canvases between 1888 and 1899. Of those, five are owned by museums, one sits in a private collection and the other was destroyed during bombing in Second World War (See page 30 for more detail on the Sunflowers series). Two were made in anticipation of Gauguin’s arrival; the third was made in his presence. (Gauguin in turn painted his friend at work in The Painter of Sunflowers.) After Gauguin returned to Paris, he expressed further interest in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, prompting the Dutch painter to make two more. To Willem van Gogh, the most important of the series is the second, from 1888, the one the artist dedicated to Gauguin and displayed in the guest room of the Yellow House. “That one,” Willem says, “is the one the letter is about, and that is the one coming to your museum.” � Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London opens March 5. Tickets on sale now: www.nga.gov.au/masterpieces
16
nga.gov.au
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is organised by the National Gallery, London, Art Exhibitions Australia and the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition is supported by Government Partners VisitCanberra and the Australian Government International Exhibitions Insurance program, Principal Sponsor Mazda, Principal Donor Singapore Airlines and Major Partner the Seven Network. The Gallery acknowledges Principal Patrons Julian and Alexandra Burt through the Wright Burt Foundation and Exhibition Patrons Philip Bacon AM, Maurice Cashmere, The Hon Ashley Dawson-Damer AM, Wayne Kratzmann, Dr Michael Martin and Elizabeth Popovski, Penelope Seidler AM, Paul Taylor, and Sally White OAM and Geoffrey White OAM.
Floriade Head Gardener Andrew Forster at the Yarralumla Government Nursery in Canberra.
Here comes the sun A step-by-step guide to planting sunflowers by ANDREW FORSTER, Floriade Head Gardener.
“I find comfort in contemplating the sunflowers” — Vincent van Gogh
Photo by Sam Cooper
One of the inspiring things about horticulture is that you can start with something as small as a seed and a couple of months later end up with a beautiful sunflower worthy of a Van Gogh painting. Sunflowers are many people’s favourites. I like their vibrant colour, sun-shaped petals, and how they follow the sun; they look like a smiley emoji and make you feel happy. There are approximately 70 species of annual and perennial sunflowers, or Helianthus, and some can grow up to six feet tall. Sunflowers take approximately three months to grow, so if you plant seeds now your flowers will bloom just in time for the opening of the Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London exhibition. Then you’ll be able to see your own flowers at home and come to the Gallery and see Van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers on the wall.
1. Collect your supplies from your local garden centre. You will need: a packet of sunflower seeds, potting mix, a seed tray (ideally 10 cells) or pot (200mm or bigger). 2. Place the potting mix in the seed tray or pot. 3. Make a hole with your finger into the pot or each sell of the tray, approximately a finger-tip deep, and pop one seed each into the hole. Don’t plant it too deep or the seed won’t germinate. 4. Lightly cover each seed with potting mix. Think of it as if you are putting the doona over it and they going to bed! This will keep them nice and warm so they can germinate. 5. Be aware that in cold climates, such as Canberra, sunflowers can get affected by frost. So if you are planting in Spring, place the pot or seed tray into a protective spot to keep the seeds warm and moist – but not wet – and allow them to germinate. 6. Once they germinate (7-14 days), take them out of the seed tray and plant them in a sunny spot in the garden. Or if in a pot move them into a sunnier position. 7. Be aware of garden predators such as slugs or snails once they have germinated. 8. Water your sunflowers regularly, depending on where you have them located, ie: if they are in a sunny spot they will need to be watered three times a week. 9. In approximately 12 weeks your sunflowers should be tall and blooming! Summer 2020
17
The Seven Sunflowers By Sally Foster
18
nga.gov.au
“I’m painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large SUNFLOWERS.” — Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh painted seven sunflower pictures in Arles, France, between 1888 and 1889: four were painted in one week of August 1888, one in late November – early December 1888 and two in January 1889. Together, the seven Sunflowers produced by Van Gogh make up one of the most famous series of works in art history. 1. Sunflowers, August 1888 Private collection The first in the series features a green vase with three sunflowers set against a turquoise background. 2. Sunflowers, August 1888 Destroyed in 1945 in Ashiya, Japan Similar to the first it has three sunflowers in a vase, but the background is dark blue and three more sunflowers have been painted lying on the table. 3. Sunflowers, August 1888 (signed) Neue Pinakothek, Munich The third shows 14 sunflowers against a background of a light turquoise, with the vase and the table painted in yellow.
5. Sunflowers, November – December 1888 Sompo Museum, Tokyo Van Gogh often made copies of works he regarded as successful and important. He did this so that he could keep the original for himself but give a copy to his sitters, family and friends, and exhibit with a view to sell. Between late November and early December 1888, Van Gogh painted his fifth version and the first copy of Sunflowers, a thick impasto painting after the previous version. 6. Sunflowers, January 1889 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia An ‘absolutely equal and identical’ copy of the third version. 7. Sunflowers, January 1889 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam The final in the series, and an ‘absolutely equal and identical’ copy of the fourth version. — Sally Foster is Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
4. Sunflowers, August 1888 (signed) National Gallery, London Towards the end of the summer, Van Gogh painted the fourth Sunflowers. While the previous three works contrasted yellows and blues, in this version he painted 15 sunflowers on a yellow background. By the artist’s own admission the third and fourth versions were the most important of the series. Signing them ‘Vincent’, these two paintings were hung in the guest bedroom of his Van Gogh’s ‘yellow house’ in Arles for friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. The ‘yellow on yellow’ version – which will be on display as part of the Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London exhibition – received great praise from Gauguin, who described it as “a perfect page of an essential ‘Vincent’ style”.
Clockwise from top left Sunflowers, August 1888 (signed), Neue Pinakothek, Munich. Oil on canvas, 91 x 72cm (Photo by Art Images via Getty Images); Sunflowers, November – December 1888, Sompo Museum, Tokyo. Oil on jute, 100 x 76cm, photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images ; Sunflowers, January 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Oil on canvas, 92 x 72cm © Philadelphia Museum of Art; Sunflowers, January 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Oil on canvas, 95 x 73 cm © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation); Right Sunflowers, August 1888 (signed), National Gallery, London. Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm © National Gallery, London
Summer 2020
19
Above Robert Freson’s Joan Mitchell in her Vétheuil studio, 1983. Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives, New York. © Joan Mitchell Foundation Right Joan Mitchell and master printer Kenneth Tyler in the artist studio, Tyler Graphics Ltd, Bedford Village, New York, 1981. Photo by Hans Namuth.
As the mind sees it 20
nga.gov.au
A house in France brought different inspirations to JOAN MITCHELL and CLAUDE MONET, writes DAVID GREENHALGH.
Summer 2020
21
There is a house known as La Tour on the outskirts of the small, picturesque French village of Vétheuil that has been home to two very different artists: French Impressionist Claude Monet and American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell. When Monet lived there in 1878 he would carry his paints and easel into the surrounding fields to capture the view towards the town cathedral. Working in the light of day, he strove to put on canvas the vibrant hues of the natural world as he immediately saw it, building up quick marks of pastel colour to convey the evening light across the Seine. Almost a century later in 1967, Mitchell moved to La Tour (situated 56km from Paris) and became inspired by the same countryside. But instead of working in the light of day, she worked in the studio at night, under the hum of the electric lights, with all the windows blocked by a thick canvas. Mitchell was a brash young artist from Chicago and part of the Abstract Expressionist movement that originated in New York in the 1940s. Inspired by the bold, gestural painting style of her contemporaries Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, Mitchell quickly impressed herself upon what was a male -dominated art scene. Her mastery of colour and athletic brushwork produced arresting abstract compositions that for many critics and curators would remind them of landscape painting. Art critic Louis Finkelstein speculated in 1969 that: “Virtually all of [Mitchell’s] paintings are in some sense landscapes. Yet in what sense?”. Curators accused her of trying “too hard to be like Monet”, and while Mitchell’s move to France reinforced such notions – particularly her choice to work in a place integral to the history of Impressionism – she repeatedly disavowed such comparisons. In Mitchell’s own words, making art was a deeply personal affair. In an interview with French philosopher Yves Michaud in 1986 she described the act of making as a means of “feeling living”, as a way of putting herself back together again. Unlike Monet and many of the Abstract Expressionists, Mitchell’s work was not performative or public; she made work privately. Mitchell worked from what she called the ‘remembered landscape’, a process that puzzled visiting curators who couldn’t understand why she chose to work late at night, indoors, when there was such stunning inspiration to be found in the natural world that was at her doorstep. But Mitchell depicted more than just what she saw, drawing on a complex process for creating her abstract work. “I ‘frame’ everything that happens,” Mitchell told Michaud. “This will be a photograph in my head … of course there is movement, what people call movement, within the frame but it is certainly caught and if the painting works, the motion is made still, like a fish trapped in ice … I don’t set out to achieve a specific thing, perhaps to catch motion or to catch a feeling.” This synthesis of emotions and the natural landscape, and the distortive process of carrying this image around in her memory before committing it to paper or canvas produced unique works that retained a sense of the natural world, yet transformed it. Interviews with Mitchell attest to the importance of memory in her process from as early as 1965, when art historian Dorothy Seckler asked if she worked outdoors to depict the landscape. 22
nga.gov.au
Clockwise from top left Kenneth Tyler and Joan Mitchell at the entrance to her studio in Vétheuil, France, in 1989; Kenneth and Joan in the Vétheuil studio in 1992; Kenneth and Joan in the Tyler Graphics studio, Mount Kisco, 1991; the pair at Mitchell’s home in Vétheuil in 1989; the view of Vétheuil’s Notre Dame Cathedral from Joan’s backyard in 1989. All photos by Marabeth Cohen-Tyler.
Summer 2020
23
24
nga.gov.au
Left (above) Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers II, 1992, Mount Kisco, New York, from the Sunflowers series published by Tyler Graphics Ltd lithograph printed in colour inks, from eight aluminium plates. (below) Trees I, 1992, Mount Kisco, New York, from the Trees series, published by Tyler Graphics Ltd lithograph printed in colour inks, from six aluminium plates. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Poynton Bequest 2002.
“No, no. I do drawings in the studio”, Mitchell responded. “So this is memory then … you begin with a kind of a sense of a more or less place, more than anything?” asked Seckler. “Yes, or a feeling about it,” said Mitchell. Towards the end of Mitchell’s life, she adapted her painting practice to create bold and innovative lithographic prints. Making a lithographic print is a collaborative affair, involving a team of printmakers. Mitchell was at first reluctant to work with master printer Kenneth Tyler in 1981. To accommodate the artist’s methods of working and need for isolation, Tyler set up a private room for Mitchell’s experiments when she visited his workshop in Bedford Village, on the outskirts of New York. It was only by accident one day that he caught a glimpse of Mitchell working, which is something that few people had ever seen. He remembers the confidence she possessed in her command of colour, and the surety of her mark making as she moved between the printing plates, on which she drew with thick and greasy lithographic crayon, and the far side of the room where she would observe the work’s progress, preparing her next approach. Layering marks, she began to build depth without the need to ever erase or revise. Tyler recounts that it was “as close as you’re going to get to Zen drawing. You think about it, and then you make the stroke. You don’t go back on it. You just leave it.” In 1991 Mitchell returned to Bedford Village to work with Tyler once again. The editions that she produced in 1992, such as Trees and Sunflowers, were among her last works before she died from advanced lung cancer that October. These works, which form an integral part of the National Gallery of Australia’s Kenneth Tyler Collection, are a testament to Mitchell’s commitment to her practice. For Mitchell, her art was more than an activity, it was a fundamental part of her. As Mitchell once said, her identity was: “a sort of scaffolding made of painting stretchers around a lot of coloured chaos”. – David Greenhalgh is the Curatorial Assistant, Kenneth Tyler Collection, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books. � Joan Mitchell: Worlds of Colour opens on February 13. For more information: nga.gov.au/mitchell
Summer 2020
25
The artist Jo Lloyd choreographing Archive the archive in Melbourne during lockdown.
26
nga.gov.au
In preparing her new work responding to the archive material of PHILIPPA CULLEN, choreographer and dancer JO LLOYD navigated forming a relationship with someone from the past who she has never met.
A delicate dance
Summer 2020
27
“In dance, the body is an archival place, a body begins with history, gathers history and leaves history behind. We transmit knowledge through sharing practice�
28
nga.gov.au
I recently discovered that the Yeats quote; ’How can we know the dancer from the dance’?, was one of my Mum’s favourites. Mum died over ten years ago, so I can’t ask her about it. But it is possible to understand more of someone by looking at what their choices were when they lived. I’m currently working with the archival material of choreographer Philippa Cullen. The National Gallery of Australia invited me to create a choreographic piece in response to her work for the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. Philippa died at the age of 25 in 1975, eight days after I was born. I only know Philippa through her archive and conversations with those who knew her. I am drawing out distinct elements from documentation, correspondence, articles, photographs, video footage, and notebooks. So how does one form a relationship with someone from the past who they have never met? In dance, the body is an archival place: a body begins with history, gathers history and leaves history behind. We transmit knowledge through sharing practice. Practices provide ways to archive, transmitting from one dancer to the next, and we become riddled with each others’ histories. When I was once asked: ‘who is Jo Lloyd?’, I responded: ‘she dances’. I was suggesting my dance contains my history and everything that contributes to it, proposing that the body operates as a conduit for information and a place where history resides. By researching Philippa’s history – specifically her physical history – my collaborators and I attempt to connect in depth.
the dance; when we watch someone dance, we are watching the artist thinking. What was Philippa thinking? What dance did she not get to do? Even with the archival material, the transmission is incomplete. What elements are omitted? And how do I address my desire to fill the gaps, in order to create the choreography? Fiction plays an important role in the methods I use. To avoid pretense and show respect, I gather information and evidence to contribute to creating fiction, as a solution to what is absent. I entertain and imagine in order to find the dance, and my preference is for the imaginings to be informed by knowledge. Since I cannot speak to Philippa, I imagine what might be said if she and I were to have a conversation. With an archive, what disappears often reveals more, if what is missing cannot be traced or found, perhaps by entertaining the fictitious we fill the gap between us and the intangible. The fiction is created from our own perspective. By finding a perspective and a way of communicating that, I can propose a new dance and contribute to another history. � Jo Lloyd’s Archive the archive is featured in the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, on now. For more information: knowmyname.nga.gov.au Performance commission by Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin (The Keir Foundation). With thanks to The SUBSTATION, Melbourne.
Handling the artefacts of a choreographer’s archive can provide an intimate and almost tangible experience. An artist’s work, and the documentation of it, contributes to a collective archive, containing evidence of the choices made by all involved, even those seemingly indirectly. I am contemplating what an archive becomes through the handling of it, and who’s gaze creates the visual materials we see and how that inspires our imaginings, speculations and assumptions of what is included and what is left out, whether deliberate or accidental.
Jo Lloyd, Archive the archive, 2020, Narrm/ Melbourne, Dancers: Deanne Butterworth, Rebecca Jensen, Jo Lloyd; Cinematographer: James Wright; Composer:Duane Morrison; Costumes: Andrew Treloar; Producer: Michaela Coventry. Single channel digital video; colour, sound, duration: 10 minutes. Photos by Peter Rosetzky.
Rather than demonstrating or reflecting Philippa’s archive back in my work, I’m revealing the archive’s influence on my body, and how her work remains relevant through its integration into the work of another. The distinct interests and methodologies that align and cross over between Philippa and I – including transmission, telepathy, irreproducible results, and the intangible – are conducive to this task and drive the work I am creating. Here I am transmitting the actions of Philippa and what I know of her life into a dance, 45 years after her death. I work with thoughts that stimulate Summer 2020
29
Above John Coburn’s Aubusson Green, 1973, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of John Coburn 1992. Right Tim Ross with Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup I, 1968, screenprint, printed in coloured inks, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS. Licensed by Copyright Agency. Poynton Bequest 2006. Photo by David Hempenstall.
30
nga.gov.au
Constant TIM ROSS explores how art is a silent but formative influencer on our lives.
We didn’t have much art in the house when I was growing up. But we certainly had books about art. One of them was Australian Painters of the 70s, edited by Mervyn Horton, which featured a selection of artists who were at the top of their game. The book – with John Coburn’s Valencia on the cover – loomed large when I was a kid. It was that pre-internet era when our home was our world of discovery: everything was examined and poured over, a time when we devoured whatever was written on the back of cereal packets. And Australian Painters of the 70s opened me up to a world of creativity. The book, a present to Mum from Dad in 1975, ended up in my possession and I’ve carried it from house to house over the decades, its pages dog-eared but well-read. It’s become one of my most cherished possessions, having introduced me to Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart, John Olsen, Syd Ball, Roger Kemp and Brett Whiteley. I recently rediscovered the book and it got me thinking about how those names, and so many others, have been a constant in our lives over the years, inspiring us in so many ways. On a recent return to my old study haunt – La Trobe University in Melbourne – I found myself staring at The Four Seasons, the large Leonard French stained glass sculpture under the main administration building. I thought about how it was the first thing I saw when I got off the bus on my first day all those years ago. Standing there alone in a campus full of strangers, it was like an old friend from another time, a reassurance. With older eyes, I re-examined it with a deep admiration for those who commission Australian public art as a gift to us all. That pride hit me again when I was honoured to perform in front of John Olsen’s commanding mural My Salute to Five Bells at the Sydney Opera House. It reaffirmed my belief that what we create or design in this country defines us in the long term, just as much if not more than what we achieve on the sporting field. Our first and enduring connections can be varied, simple and often rather humble. Our love affair with art might start with a school excursion, a gallery poster or a calendar on a grandparent’s fridge. Recurring images have formative powers, they turn receptors on and plant ideas in our subconscious. As the years go by, we can be surprised by how art is a silent influencer in our lives, a companion that asks for nothing and gives so much back in return. When I mentioned reconnecting with the French sculpture to an old university friend, she had trouble remembering it. As the conversation continued, suddenly her eyes lit up: “Oh! That’s why Dad gave me a Leonard French print when I graduated, I either forgot or never knew.” That print now sits on the wall of her young son’s room, ready to weave its magic. Tim Ross’ Constant podcast series is exclusive to the National Gallery of Australia and includes interviews with Ben Quilty on Margaret Olley, Stephen Ormandy and Vivienne Binns. Listen here: www. nga.gov.au/constant
Summer 2020
31
Remembering Robert Hughes To the wider world ROBERT HUGHES was an art critic and historian, but to former Sydney Lord Mayor, urbanist and businesswoman LUCY TURNBULL, AO, he was her much-adored uncle Bob.
Robert Hughes with his niece and nephew Daisy and Alex Turnbull c 1987. Photo courtesy of Lucy Turnbull.
32
nga.gov.au
Can it really be 40 years since the publication of The Shock of the New? It was wonderful to hear Adam Gopnik and Michael Kimmelman’s perspectives on my Uncle Bob as a friend and critic on the recent American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia webinar moderated by Michael Maher. I know Bob loved and respected both Adam and Michael deeply and it brought tears to my eyes to see him come back to life through these memories. Bob made his greatest contribution when he brought complicated things to wider attention. He did so vividly and compellingly, whether it was through Modernism and modern art in The Shock of the New in 1980, our early convict and bushranger-laden colonial history in The Fatal Shore in 1987, or modern political theory in The Culture of Complaint - The Fraying of America in 1992 (the latter was nothing if not prescient). He stretched and deepened our understanding of everything he explored and described. His message was never dumbed down. He thrived on controversy; he was certainly never beige on the page, or in real life either. Bob was just the most fabulous uncle: funny, great at playing games, and very good as a handyman or cabinet maker. In today’s vernacular he would be described as ‘awesome’. But he really was. He left for Europe when I was six-years-old and I missed him dreadfully. I am so glad that my children – Daisy and Alex (now 35 and 38 respectively) – were able to get to know him in their childhood. They, and my husband Malcolm, loved him just like I did. Bob and Malcolm shared a great friendship and became allies in their advocacy for the Australian Republican Movement. Seeing my Uncle Bob, (former Prime Minister) Bob Hawke and Malcolm speak at the Sydney Town Hall in favour of the Republic on the eve of the Referendum in 1999 was a very special moment for me.
Bob never changed, despite becoming one of our most famous expats. He never renounced his citizenship or lost his booming Australian accent. And he always found his way home. That was until his capacity failed him some years after the horrible car accident in Western Australia in 1999 which took a terrible toll on his life — physical, emotional, and mental. As it must have done for the other people involved. Apart from his family, one of the invisible cords that bound him to this nation was his sense of connectedness to institutions like the National Gallery. Bob was so happy – euphoric, even – when the Gallery was established in the early 1970s. He could see that Australia was moving to a more dynamic phase in its cultural and social evolution, one where we were much more confident and outward-looking, where we felt capable of being the best in the world. He almost burst with pride when Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles became part of the national collection. For Bob, it was a marriage of two things very close to his heart: great works by great Abstract Expressionists from his new home town of New York on the one hand, and his home country of Australia on the other. He used to tell us when he came to stay that Sydney Harbour was “the amniotic fluid of my memory”. Well, Australia and its landscape was the bedrock of his soul. He loved the crazy sounds of our native birds, the kangaroos in the bush, our weird scary reptiles, our trees, the quality of our Antipodean light, and the spectral stars in the night sky where you really can see the Milky Way on a clear night. Bob made a great contribution in many ways to Australia, and to the art world. But for our family, he was a much-adored uncle. One of the greatest ever.
Summer 2020
33
When it comes to authority on twentieth century art, few could surpass ROBERT HUGHES. The late Australian author and art critic’s mark is still felt on our cultural landscape and in particular the National Gallery of Australia. Hughes was partly responsible for the acquisition of Blue poles in 1973, convincing inaugural director JAMES MOLLISON to purchase the Jackson Pollock masterpiece for Australia’s fledgling national collection. This year marked the 40th anniversary of Hughes’ history of modern art, The Shock of the New, a BBC television series and companion book. To celebrate, the President of the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia MICHAEL MAHER gathered Hughes’ friends and colleagues – Australian author PETER CAREY, The New York Times journalist MICHAEL KIMMELMAN and ADAM GOPNIK from The New Yorker magazine – for a webinar to remember their brilliant, charismatic and complex friend.
The Shock of the New
34
nga.gov.au
MICHAEL MAHER (MM) It was said of Hughes that he was nothing if not critical (and) from the sheer breadth of his work we can see he was nothing but intellectually curious, as well. His connection with the National Gallery of Australia was a long standing one. He played a role in securing for the gallery the Jackson Pollock masterpiece Blue Poles, as well as other major works of post-war American art, which contributed to the Gallery building one of the finest collections of modern American art outside the United States. Forty years ago he was commissioned by the BBC to film The Shock of the New, an eight part series which charts the 100 year history of modern art – its rise, its dazzling achievement and its fall. It was watched by 25 million viewers. Adam, you mentioned that you gave a copy of The Shock of the New to a friend of your daughter, who is interested in art. Why did you choose The Shock of the New to give her? ADAM GOPNIK (AG) A friend of my daughter’s from college was staying with us, and got to asking me one day: “What’s a good book about modern art?” And I said instantaneously: “Oh, you have to read Bob Hughes’ book, The Shock of the New.” She hadn’t heard of it. My daughter had (also) done an art history course at university, but it (had) … very little about art and a great deal about history. I wanted them to read Bob because, even though that book now is dated, the account it gives, the synoptic gospel of modernism that it gives, is still incredibly acute, uniquely visual. Bob had many gifts but the single irreplaceable gift that he had was a gift for visual evocation. He could take a picture and write about it in a way that made you see it. When you re-read it, it is in many respects, and significantly, a very pessimistic book. It takes the history of modern art to be fundamentally one of glorious efflorescence, but pervasive failure. But for the sheer ability to give you the gospel of modernism, and to do it in a way that makes the pictures live, there is still no book remotely as good.
Michael Kimmelman, what is it about that BBC TV series do you think that so rattled the cage of the art world to the point that here we are 40 years later still talking about it?
MM
I agree with Adam, there is a pessimism that runs through the book, but there was about the television programs a kind of savoir faire and a kind of elegance. (It had) a kind of openness that was conveyed by Bob’s … articulateness, his joy in moving about the world (and) his joy in inventing this new forum of imperious television. I remember seeing that television show on a program and feeling that a universe had opened up. It was this life (that) had combined intellectual pursuit and passion – of a bon vivant traveling around the world. Once, toward the end of Bob’s life, we were looking through some of the yellowing scripts of the show and I was really struck by them because I remember how incredibly articulate Bob was and how he described things in such an incredibly vivid way. His language had contained all that life and vividness that you saw in the pictures. The book is full and rich but I think Bob’s television scripts understood the medium in a way that was so pioneering. What made the television shows multi-layered was that he could represent both this grand pessimistic vision and this optimistic openness. There was a very sophisticated use of word and image, which I think he probably doesn’t get enough MICHAEL KIMMELMAN (MK)
credit for because it’s become so embedded in what we think of as good, intelligent television. Peter Carey, what comes through in the television series is certainly the erudition of Robert Hughes as an art critic. But also the sheer force of his personality. You knew that personality well. How important was performance do you think in Hughes’ world?
MM
PETER CAREY (PC) [Publisher]
Jack Macrae, [on] first meeting Bob in New York, said it was like watching a chess master playing five people at once. He would pick up in this conversation there, and that conversation there, and Jack was going: “Who is this man?” That is Bob performing. He could be an awful show off. [But he had this] magic and the wonder of finding things out. He was like an artist – an artist doesn’t know the answer at the beginning, the artist finds things out, and I think a big part of the magic of Bob’s writing was that thing of discovery. Michael, I want to quote from you, I was at Bob’s memorial in 2012 at The Met, and you said in your speech there that Hughes had once told you that on TV you had to be yourself, only a quarter more, which you dryly noted that you found Bob in real life plenty already. He was a man of numerous dimensions.
MM
MK I think he did invent a personality for himself on television. He sucked up a lot of oxygen in person, plus his incredible sheer brilliance. I always felt that I was desperately running to catch up, so there was a kind of inexhaustible quality to Bob, but it was also about his generosity. He was really passionate in his friendships, as he was in other things. And so, I never felt he lorded anything over me as a friend, and I suspect Adam and Peter would agree. He could be so acerbic and difficult in print, but the truth was that he could just be so loving and generous in person, it was this interesting thing about him. He wasn’t trying to make you feel smaller, I think he was sharing … these passions. PC People talk about Bob being a manly man and all this macho stuff but there was a very sweet, very vulnerable thing about Bob. He was a writer, and like all of us, writers do tend to be needy characters and Bob could be needy like all of us could be about our work.
Adam, you’re saying his fame rightly rested on The Shock of the New, the book and the television series, but also point out that for 30 years he was the art critic for Time magazine. When Bob was writing for Time it had an enormous reach into middle America. Could (you) talk a little bit about that?
MM
It was a magazine at the dentist’s office, but it was also a magazine that had extraordinary cultural authority. If you ended up on the cover of Time, it was an event, it was an act of cultural benediction, you had arrived. Bob understood that. Coming back to something you, Peter, and Michael were saying about Bob’s presence as a friend and as a person in the house, if he was at a dinner with society ladies to impress – and he went to many dinners of that kind – he could play the part of the Antipodean genius. But one on one, Bob’s primary presence was his vulnerability, his enormous sensitivity, his,
AG
Summer 2020
35
Robert Hughes and National Gallery of Australia founding director James Mollison inspect Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles when it arrived in Australia in 1973.
to be blunt, own ability to bode forth his personal pain, which was real and multi-formed about many aspects of his life. I think the single most painful phone call I ever received in my life was when Bob called, it must have been at three in the morning, to say that his son had committed suicide in Australia. Bob was not a man of immense carapace, that was not his fundamental self. And he would not have been the writer he was, had that been who he truly was, because it was his vulnerability to experience, his readiness for experience, that distinguished him most. Forty years ago, when The Shock of the New came out, the documentary series and the book, it was a marquee event. People anticipated it, looked forward to it, watched it in great numbers. Michael Kimmelman, I wonder if today, in a very crowded content market of social media and streaming services, whether or not The Shock of the New would have made the same impact?
MM
MK It was an event because there were fewer places in which one could go to find something as ambitious about culture as that, certainly in a mass medium. The ubiquity now of not just social media but images in general [are very different to the way in which he revealed these things that were out in the world. That [made them] much more exciting to people who had not necessarily had access to them. The timing was great and it’s worth remembering Bob moved away from that narrow focus because the art world [had] changed too. He did that in a moment 40 years ago when the art world was a very different place. I cannot imagine Bob would undertake a project like that now, I am not sure who would broadcast it. The television
36
nga.gov.au
he did later in life was deeply pessimistic, and was focused on the failure of the art world, really, to get beyond money and fame. I think he felt truly depressed about what had happened to this thing, which The Shock of the New celebrates. MM I want to take that up because 25 years after the documentary
was released he filmed another hour-long documentary, The NEW Shock of the New, in which he addressed that very issue of how the art world became a marketplace. Writing for The Guardian, Hughes said: “We decided to put Jeff Koons in the new program, not because his work is beautiful or means anything much, but because it is such an extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks. Koons really does think he is Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it.” AG In my last volume of memoirs, I wrote about arguing with Bob about Jeff Koons, because Bob could never see the virtues in Jeff Koons at all. It simply broke too radically with even the last vestiges of a tradition of skill, artistry, artisanal ability that still lingered on in … Warhol, and lingered on not at all in Koons. We all go blind sooner or later [with] our capacity to respond and vibrate to new works of art, if you are in hostage to the gospel of The Shock of the New, [you] simply cease getting it after a while. It was a very odd thing about Bob. He understood what was a joke, what was spoof, what was grammar, what was beauty. Got it completely. It was right on the centre of his sensibility, but he could not get that in art that came along 20 years later. And, in my own view, he got fossilised a bit towards the end because he couldn’t recognise
that a lot of what he saw as the failures of art were partly the limitations of his own vision and his own sensibility. Michael, what was your view about how Robert Hughes evolved as a critic over the time that you knew him?
MM
MK I agree 100% with Adam. One does go blind, if you don’t, then you have to also be asking yourself whether you’re seeing well. I think Bob saw the practice of criticism as itself demanding a level of commitment and artistry of craft that he demanded of the things he was writing about. He saw the practice itself as having its own integrity and value. Bob did not see himself as a school master telling an artist what to do, I think he saw himself speaking in a voice of the informed …that this was a thing that really should matter to us all [and which] was carried by the weight of his prose, by the beauty, the pneumatic quality of that prose. He flirted with this problem that his own voice had such resonance and was so rich that he became a little obsessed with it... it made him seem smaller and kind of a shrill, which he wasn’t. He was big and generous. I think he came to feel the art world had shrunk around him, and that the only response he could have to it was to puff himself up more – and that wasn’t the best Bob.
I wonder, Peter Carey, how much of an impact the near-fatal car accident he had in Australia in 1999 – over which he was charged with dangerous driving – had on his work and his rather complicated relationship with his homeland as well. Did that seep into his work in his later years?
MM
PC Oh,
I think it just destroyed him slowly and in different ways. As someone who would occasionally spend a drunken evening with Bob being sentimental about Australia, I know he really loved Australia. He would say it should be taken out to sea and sunk, but he said that in response to Australia not liking him anymore. Bob was, I believe, misquoted in Australia at the time of his accident ... he’s meant to have said that the Indian prosecutor was a “curry muncher”. Now if you know Bob that just doesn’t sound like [him] – Bob’s a lot more elegant than that. That sounds like tabloid to me, and Bob always swore he never said such a thing, but the whole country turned on him. And that just hurt and hurt and hurt him, because of all the things deep in him, he was an Australian. He could be very sarcastic about Australia, and rightly critical of Australia, but he loved it. I felt it sort of destroyed him.
not just by the accident, but by the whole aftermath. I saw him as somebody who represented Australia in every conceivable way as a country of adventure and intelligence and energy. I think he was the ambassador of a kind of Australianness in the world. So, to be rejected by that, I think his whole life was proving to people at home that he had gone out and made it in this world, in Britain and in America. He was an Australian down to the last moment of his life, and I know that his disconnect from the country, I think, hastened his decline. His association with the National Gallery of Australia was a very longstanding one. And he did help procure the work that perhaps the Gallery is most famous for: that’s Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles.
MM
PC For Bob to be involved in that, that is like a love letter. It is a gift of love to his country, and I know he didn’t do it all by himself, but it is a hugely significant thing for him to have done.
This is an edited transcript of the first in a series of Art Talks by the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia (AFGNA). You can watch the full conversation here: www.afnga.org The next AFNGA Art Talk is a special on Know My Name moderated by TIME magazine editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe and featuring guests: Dr Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture from The Museum of Modern Art in New York; writer Dr Anne Summers AO; and the National Gallery of Australia’s Henry Dalrymple Head of Australia Art Dr Deborah Hart.
The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia is a non-profit organisation, whose mission is to foster the visual arts in, and cultural exchanges between, the United States and Australia, creating closer ties between the two countries. AFNGA also works to secure gifts of works of art and contributions in order to support the exhibition and educational programs of Australian public museums and galleries, and for the cultural enrichment of thousands of people who view them each year.
That is very sad. On Robert’s Australianness, how was he seen within the New York’s world of letters?
MM
He played the role of a professional Australian from time to time when it suited him. I remember for instance, when our first child, our son, was born, he came over with a huge armful of stuffed Australian animals. It was an element of, as I say, of being a professional Australian, but it was very touching at the same time because it was done with deep affection in the sense that I’m going to give a present to a newborn child, it should be an Australian present.
Edited by Sandra O’Malley
AG
MM
Was he seen as an outsider do you think, Michael?
MK As a native New Yorker, I never really thought of Bob as an outsider in the slightest, but I did think of him as an Australian. And I think what Peter says is so true, I think he was devastated
Summer 2020
37
LUCINA WARD explores ROBERT HUGHES’ close connection to the Gallery and how his approach to Modernism and internationalism influenced the formation of the national collection.
Influencing a national collection
“Probably the best introduction to modern art available … Hughes’ descriptive manner has a refreshing urgency and energy.” – The Sunday Times The Shock of the New offered an account of the development of modern art in the twentieth century and, in turn, how Modernism impacted on the broader world. Robert Hughes’ ideas — delivered in an erudite and pithy style — were highly provocative and influential. Over eight episodes, The Shock of the New explored the impact of technology, two world wars and mass media on major movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism and Pop, drawing innovative connections between art, world events and ideas. As Hughes explains in the first episode, his eight thematic essays “look at ourselves and our century through the lens of its art”. Hughes had a close association with the National Gallery of Australia and its first director James Mollison; a shared approach to Modernism and internationalism inflects both the writer’s projects and the early formation of the institution. The two men met in the 1960s when Mollison worked with Max Hutchinson at Gallery A — Hughes exhibited his own work at the short-lived Canberra branch of Gallery A in 1965 — and all three were later instrumental in negotiations towards the purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles from Ben Heller for the National Gallery in 1973. (The Gallery holds two landscapes by Hughes from the period, the gouache acquired from Hungry Horse Art Gallery, Sydney, where he showed regularly at the time). In 1976 Hughes presented The Collection, produced by the ABC, outlining the Gallery’s history, acquisitions and activities to date; touring the storage facilities with Mollison, he reviewed a nucleus of “exemplary objects” from the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, the “seminal years of Modernism” and international art since the 1950s, as well as the more encyclopaedic Australian collections rewriting art history. As he passed the Tiepolo ceiling to watch Blue poles being uncrated, Hughes described its impact: the eye travels into an “exquisite web of paint” as though pushing “into a forest, discovering layer upon layer of space and detail – as strictly
38
nga.gov.au
organised as a Uccello, a formal minuet of energy”. In Blue poles, Hughes concludes, it is the playoff between the canvas’ huge size and the care inflect by the artist in its “every inch” that makes the painting so absorbing: “one of the two or three supreme works of Pollock’s career, a feat of lyric invention”. In his introduction to The Collection Hughes also put the Gallery in the context of Canberra, one of the world’s “ideal” planned cities about which he was so scathing. In episode four of The Shock of the New, Trouble in utopia, explores the “pervasive modernist belief that ideal abstraction, mainly in architecture, would provide a solution to some of the world’s problems, and how this illusion arose”. Hughes singles out Brasilia for his most extreme criticism: “I used to think that Canberra was the boring national capital on Earth. But compared to Brasilia, at least as it was in 1979, Canberra was like Belle Epoque Paris”. The Gallery building, then just emerging from its foundation, was mired in delays rivalling those of the Sydney Opera House. Finally completed in 1982, Hughes observed wryly: “What an impressive building — makes even Blue poles look like a postage stamp”. Although Blue poles is the only work from the National Gallery collection to appear in The Shock of the New – described as sort of “abstract Tiepolo” with “the same kind of airy, light and spritely drawing” — Hughes addresses many common
artists, related works or those from series, and ideas about contemporary culture. With a heavy emphasis on European and Anglo-American traditions, Hughes’ account omits the work of many artists of diverse backgrounds, women and minorities. And even though notions of modernity have been scrutinised in the four decades since the series was first broadcast, The Shock of the New and its associated publications are remembered for highly sophisticated layering of text and images, and for bringing modernism to a broad public. Here are works from our collection that connect with episodes from the series as told by Hughes in The Shock of the New. Episode 1. Mechanical Paradise “[Fernand Leger] wanted to make a public style of cubism, a popular art, images of the machine age for the man in the streets. He was the son of a Normandy farmer, an instinctive socialist who became a practising one in the trenches of World War I … Metal or flesh, it made no difference. Leger (whose Les Trapézistes [Trapeze artists] is pictured below) painted the body as though it were made of interchangeable parts, like machinery … To him, society as machine meant harmony, an end to loneliness. [His best paintings are] mong the great didactic images of French classicism … Leger’s vision of human relationships working as smoothly as a clock with the binding energy of desire transformed into rhymes of shape.”
Left Hannah Höch, Imaginäre Brücke [Imaginary bridge], 1926, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1983 © Hannah Höch. VG Bild-Kunst/ Copyright Agency. Right Fernand Léger, Les Trapézistes [Trapeze artists], 1954, oil on canvas, Natoinal Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1981 © Fernand Léger. ADAGP/Copyright Agency.
Summer 2020
39
Episode 2. The powers that be “To be modern [in Berlin] meant to be engaged in a theatre of politics in a city torn by shortages and every other kind of post-war misery, as the left battled the centre and the right for possession of the streets. … [Expressionism was already] a strong thread of protest against war and authority in German art [but Berlin Dadaists] wanted a more realistic and sardonic tone of voice. They wanted an art of the billboards and the streets, not one of confession and self-searching. … The best political collagist among the Dadaists was a woman named Hanne Hoch whose acrid little images from the 20s (including Imaginäre Brücke [Imaginary bridge], pictured on page 38) ARE Weimar. She was never sentimental, never a party tub-thumper and being a woman, she has regularly been written off as a minor artist. That she was not and for a vision of a world that was at the same time clear, estranged, bleakly funny and poisoned at the root, nobody could touch her.” Episode 3. Landscape of pleasure “[The essential Impressionist, Monet] was to trees and grass and wind what Renoir was to women’s skin. [His waterlily pond at Giverny] was as artificial as painting itself. It was flat, as a painting is. What showed on it, the clouds and lily pads and cat’s-paws of wind, was caught in a shallow space, just on the surface, like the space of painting. The willows touched it like brushes. No foreground, no background – a web of connections. Monet’s waterlilies (such as Nymphéas [Waterlilies], pictured opposite) were a slice of infinity. In them, emptiness matters as much as fullness, reflections have the weight of things. To seize the indefinite, to fix what is unstable, to give form to sights so complex, so nuanced, that they can hardly be named. This was a basic project of Modernism. It went against the smug view of reality that materialism gives us. And it could only be developed in a context of visual pleasure. No distractions.”
40
nga.gov.au
Episode 4. Trouble in utopia “De Stijl was Dutch for ‘the style.’ … As a group, it didn’t last long [but], the half dozen artists and architects in the movement were very clear about their aims … they wanted to be international men and art could supply the model for this frame of mind. Down with frontiers, up with the grid. A new world of lucidity would rise from the wreckage [of World War I]. No curved lines, masonic rectitude, De Stijl – whose Berlijnse stoel [Berlin chair] is pictured below – was against the individual and for the collective and the universal. … It laid out a general grammar of shape for every visual art, [and its most severe rebukes] to the pleasure-seeking body [were made] by a Dutch designer called Gerrit Rietveld. [His chairs are considered classics because they go] far beyond ordinary functionalist discomfort. The human body for which it was reputed to be made simply doesn’t exist. Insofar as it ever was designed to accommodate a human bottom, that bottom is a platonic solid existing somewhere out in the ether but never made flesh.” Episode 5. The threshold of liberty “The best painter amongst the Surrealists [Miro] grew up in this landscape south of Barcelona. [His work is a] free lyrical mixture of folk tales, eroticism, sardonic humour and absurdity.… The creatures are laid out flat and bright, one by one, as in one of the Romanesque frescos of northern Spain. … This is a metamorphic landscape, everything in it can become something else. [Miro] had the range of a man who owns all his sensations and is ashamed of none of them. And he set forth his immense vitality with a diction of pure, flat colour that almost no other modern artist except Matisse had used with such mastery. In the twilight of his work, Miro – whose Paysage (Landscape) is pictured on page 42 – is probably the last great national painter of the twentieth century, a Catalan to the fingertips.”
Left Gerrit Rietveld, Berlijnse stoel [Berlin chair], 1923, furniture, chairs, painted wood, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1987 Š Gerrit Thomas Rietveld/ Beeldrecht/Copyright Agency. Above Claude Monet, NymphÊas [Waterlilies], c 1914-17, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1979.
Summer 2020
41
42
nga.gov.au
Episode 6. The view from the edge “Some of the greatest images in modern art come from the tranquil assurance that however abstract you may get, there is no break between human culture and the natural order. The high priest of this feeling was the son of a Carpathian peasant. His name was Constantin Brancusi. [His studio is] sacred to tools and to the beauty of the marks that they make. Coming out of a strong craft background, Brancusi knew the nature of his substances very well — the qualities of bronze, timber, marble, limestone, plaster. He wanted his sculpture to have as substance the same perfection that his subjects had as organisms. [It looks] as timeless and as perfect as a new laid egg. Brancusi wanted to find the most compressed form that still contained the subject. Not geometrical, always organic … In every piece, the tightest possible image. [For Brancusi nature was pure and clearly defined].”
Episode 8. The future that was “Perhaps the last major artist to think [art could influence politics] is a German, Joseph Beuys, a former Luftwaffe pilot whose happenings and manifestos and general celebrity as a Pied Piper of youth politics have turned him into a strangely anomalous figure — a protestor against the German establishment whose work is invested in by half the bankers in West Germany … Beuys’ answer to the political decline of the aesthetic avant-garde was to define art as ‘any kind of being or doing’, rather than specifically making, and then to designate the whole social fabric, politics included, as what he called ‘a social sculpture’.” • the National Gallery collection includes several works by Beuys.
— Lucina Ward is Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
• see page 68 for Director’s Choice on Constantin Brancusi’s L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in Space]
Episode 7. Culture as nature “The human extension of the glut of images is celebrity [and Andy Warhol was] the artist who understood this best. Warhol (whose Electric chair is pictured opposite, below) loved sameness and [in the early 1960s his subversive desire to be] a machine, to print, to repeat which was the most cunning sort of dandyism. … Warhol’s autistic stare was the same for heroes and heroines. … And [like American TV in the 60] the violence Warhol enjoyed got filtered through a cool, indifferent medium—photography and silk screen. … [The Death and] Disaster paintings have one subject in common. Not just death, rather the state of being an uninvolved spectator. The eye passes them, like that man passing in the background. What this added up to was one piercing insight about the nature of media. But that was it. It could be done over and over again but not developed further as art. The idea had a half-life, like a radioactive isotope. It sent out a lot of radiation in the ‘60s, and then it became feeble. And then dead. Boredom finally became boring.”
Opposite (above) Joan Miro’s Paysage [Landscape], 1927, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1983, © Successió Miró. ADAGP/Copyright Agency; (below) Andy Warhol’s Electric chair, 1967, synthetic polymer paint screenprinted onto canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1977 © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS. Licensed by Copyright Agency.
Summer 2020
43
44
nga.gov.au
Modernity’s Limits
As the Gallery adds two prints by American artist MARY CASSATT to the national collection, joining the first acquired four decades ago, SALLY FOSTER explores the importance of their place in the artist’s renowned ‘group of ten’.
Two prints by the artist Mary Cassatt – The lamp and In the omnibus, were acquired by the National Gallery in October. Stored unframed and unseen by the public for six decades, the two perfectly preserved rare impressions join Afternoon tea party, which was purchased for the national collection in 1983. Together these three works belong to what become known as the ‘group of ten’ — the ten coloured drypoint and aquatint prints made in an edition of 25 by Cassatt between 1890–91 for her solo exhibition, held at the gallery of her dealer Durand-Ruel in Paris in April 1891. It is this group of works for which Cassatt, one of the pioneering modern women artists of the late-nineteenth century, is now most renowned. In 1873 the North American born artist settled in Paris and remained in France until her death in 1926. It was there Cassatt established herself as an artist and became the only American to ever be invited to exhibit with the French Impressionist group. The invitation came from Edgar Degas, who Cassatt had met shortly after her arrival in the city. In artistic terms, the relationship between Cassatt and Degas is reflected most closely in both artists’ exploration of the interplay between public and private mores, and in the way they used drawing and printmaking in unison with painting as a primary artistic medium. Historian Griselda Pollock writes in Mary Cassatt: painter of modern women: “Cassatt’s encounter with Degas in the 1870s was decisive and productive, for in him she found her alter ego who, by introducing her to experimental printmaking, prepared the way for her radical modernisation of a challenging subject: women and children”.
Mary Cassatt’s The lamp, 1890‑91, drypoint, softground etching and aquatint, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Poynton Bequest 2020.
Cassatt and Degas also connected, as many modern artists of the period did, over their admiration for Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut prints. It was after visiting the Exposition de la gravure
Summer 2020
45
This page (far left) Mary Cassatt (Self-Portrait) c1880, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. (left) Mary Cassatt, Afternoon tea party, 1890-91, drypoint and aquatint, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Purchased 1983. Opposite Mary Cassatt, In the omnibus 1890‑91, drypoint and aquatint, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Poynton Bequest 2020.
japonaise, an exhibition of 725 Ukiyo-e prints and illustrated books held in Paris in April 1890, that Cassatt made her ‘group of ten’. Cassatt was especially interested in the work of Kitagawa Utamaro. Utamaro’s practice of making series of works that explored the subject of women, (almost exclusively courtesans), with children, at their toilettes, engaging in daily rituals such as tea-drinking and in the performative roles their social station required clearly inspired Cassatt. Like the Ukiyo-e prints, her group was designed to show scenes from the day in the life of a woman, but in doing so she substituted the courtesan for the western ideal of middle-class women and woodblocks for drypoint on thick copper plates. Like the cloistered world of the Japanese courtesan, Cassatt created images of habitual privilege and confinement that were both gorgeous and melancholy in their depiction of women who chose the protection, and burden, of tradition. In her art, Cassatt spoke of the limits modernity set for middleclass women, and not of the more popularly held avant-garde belief in its permissive freedoms; it is this that sets her modern art practice apart from her male contemporaries and which garnered the respect of her peers. Cassatt’s colour prints are among the most technically accomplished of the period. Made on a small printing press installed in her home studio in Paris, she used a time-consuming process of hand-inking, known as á la poupée, to achieve her trademark soft chalky colourings. Intentionally creating ‘imperfections’ or ‘faults’, often smudging to leave her ‘signature’ fingerprint, her method resulted in each impression being slightly different and therefore unique. Although not widely commercially successful, Cassatt’s prints were acquired and closely held in the private collections
46
nga.gov.au
of artists and dealers alike — over 90 were found in Degas’ studio after his death. Significantly, all three prints now in the national collection share an important provenance, having remained in the artist’s studio before being acquired directly from her by modern art dealer Ambroise Vollard. He was one of Cassatt’s greatest admirers and, although he was primarily an art dealer and not simply a collector, there are no records to indicate that Vollard sold any ‘from the more than 500 prints and drawings he acquired directly from Cassatt’ in 1906 and 1913. When Vollard died in 1939 his inventory was purchased by collector Henri Petiet. A famously shrewd print dealer and the person responsible for issuing the Vollard Suite, the monumental print series Pablo Picasso made for Vollard between 1930 and 1937 (also in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection), Petiet not only kept many of Cassatt’s prints for himself but monogramed those which he wished to indicate were not for sale. While Afternoon tea party was among a group of Mary Cassatt prints Petiet sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 1980, the National Gallery’s two new acquisitions - marked with ‘HP’ - were never sold on the open market and have come from the heirs of Henry Petiet. Among of the most sought-after prints made by any artist from the period, the National Gallery is the only Australian collecting institution to hold any impressions from this groundbreaking series. Over time, the Gallery hopes to acquire the remaining seven and complete the ‘group of ten’ for the national collection. — Sally Foster is Curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
Summer 2020
47
48
nga.gov.au
Living with Grace
ANN MILLS talks to JANE ALBERT about living in the home of her aunt GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH. Photographs by Renee Nowytarger.
Left Grace Cossington Smith, Interior in yellow, 1962–64, oil on composition board, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1965. This page (Above) Ann Mills at ‘Cossington’ in 2020. (Below) Grace Cossington Smith in the same corner of the house in 1974, photographed by Carol Jerrems. (Grace Cossington Smith, OBE), 1974, gelatin silver photograph, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981 © Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems.
Grace Cossington Smith was a pioneer of Australian Modernism whose prolific output ranges from domestic interiors to landscapes, celebrations of modern life and her signature series capturing the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But to Ann Mills she was “just Aunt Grace”, an endearing relative she enjoyed visiting in her rambling home ‘Cossington’ on Sydney’s north shore. It is the same house Mills has called home for the last four decades, the house that features in many of Cossington Smith’s domestic interiors, a house that is a piece of Australian art history. “Growing up we had a lot to do with her, she was part of the family, but we never took any notice of her [painting]. She just sketched, it was part of her,” Mills says of her artist aunt who adopted the name Cossington after her mother advised her she couldn’t simply be known as Grace Smith. The heritage-listed house in Turramurra is a former Quaker’s meeting hall where Cossington Smith and her siblings grew up. After the death of their parents Cossington Smith continued to live there with two of her three sisters and the extended family would visit regularly, playing tennis and croquet on the grass court and celebrating Christmas around the large dining table. Summer 2020
49
When Mills was young her mother Mary would take her to visit Cossington Smith and they would take the artist shopping. Then when Mills began a family of her own with her husband John they continued to visit: “Aunt Grace would draw for my children when they were little, she’d draw them, or scenery. She was very much part of my growing up and of my children’s childhood.” She remembers Cossington Smith as a forthright woman who spoke her mind. “There used to be a piano here and one time my brother was playing and my mother was talking – she wasn’t very musical – and Aunt Grace said, ‘Mary! We’re listening to the piano.’ In a nice way, but definite.” It was because her aunt was constantly sketching that Mills doesn’t have a particular memory of the portrait of her that Cossington Smith drew and later painted, Portrait of Ann, which turned up unexpectedly in an exhibition. Cossington Smith exhibited with Macquarie Galleries for much of her life and it was in one of their earlier exhibitions in the Sydney CBD that Mills’ husband came across the portrait. “Grace liked to know how many red spots [sales] there were so John would go around the second day to let her know and one day he said, ‘there’s a portrait of you’.” Mills recalls. “I’d seen all the paintings they were putting in the exhibition and there hadn’t been one of me but John said, ‘well it’s there and it’s you and it says Ann’.”
Mills said her husband convinced Cossington Smith to withdraw the portrait from sale: “John spoke to Aunt Grace and said: ‘You’re not going to sell Ann!’ so she put a ‘not for sale’ sticker on it.” Painted by the fireside – either at Cossington or at the country property the family owned in Exeter in the Southern Highlands – the portrait bears an uncanny likeness to the young Ann who is depicted with red hair and bright blue eyes. Today the portrait takes pride of place above Ann’s bed (in the room that was also once Grace’s bedroom). Many of Cossington Smith’s works were painted at Cossington, including Interior in yellow, which is in the national collection and is currently on display in the Know My Name: Australian women artists 1900 to Now exhibition. Mills is proud that Cossington Smith is included in such an important exhibition. “She wasn’t known through my teenaged years, none of her pictures were selling, women artists weren’t really acknowledged. It’s very different now,” Mills says. “She liked galleries to buy her pictures because then lots of people could see them. That’s what she always said.” � Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now is on now. For more information: knowmyname.nga.gov.au
Cossington Smith’s paintings did not sell particularly well in the early days, so she would often paint on both sides of the canvas. On the reverse of Portrait of Ann she had painted a church scene.
Left Ann Mills in the living room at ‘Cossington’ Right Grace Cossington Smith, The bridge in building, 1929, oil on pulpboard, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Ellen Waugh 2005
50
nga.gov.au
Summer 2020
51
52
nga.gov.au
The Carpenters
You would be familiar with their work, but you might not know their faces. SANDRA O’MALLEY visits the workshop and meets the carpenters, a tight-knit group behind the scenes who recently nurtured the Gallery’s newest apprentice.
Many people have a ‘work’ husband or wife, who make a workday that little bit easier and more enjoyable. Aaron Marshall has his ‘work’ parents: fellow carpenters Brett Redfern and David Sharrock. The trio are the unsung heroes of the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition design; the team that builds the plinths, cabinets and other assorted pieces of furniture that help bring the exhibitions and displays to life. Brett and David have been finessing their craft at the Gallery for more than 20 years – they both joined in 1998 as the workshop was being restructured – but their working relationship goes back to 1986, when they first began working together. “We’re like an old, married couple,” joked Brett. Aaron is the most recent addition to the Gallery’s tight-knit workshop family. He started as a general maintenance officer when he was 19 and just out of college. Four years later in 2017, he seized a rare opportunity to complete a carpentry apprenticeship at the Gallery.
Photo by Sam Cooper
“This has been a huge opportunity, and now I have a trade and a certificate behind me,” said Aaron, now 26. Over three years, Aaron earned his certificate through his work on-site at the Gallery and one day a week in the classroom at Canberra Institute of Technology.
(left to right) Aaron Marshall, David Sharrock and Brett Redfern in the National Gallery of Australia workshop.
professionally, and shared their wisdom to help me personally.” “They have been very patient. At the beginning, I sometimes doubted I could complete the apprenticeship, but these guys cheered me on and that bore fruit. (My success) is due to their hard work as much as mine. “I was green when I started but Brett and David shared a lot of their knowledge, and still do. Even now, there is still a lot to learn. It’s been a really good process.” The exhibition design team came up with the idea of bringing in an apprentice when their previous workmate, Charlie Summerall, retired in 2016. “The best thing is to bring people into the workshop through an apprenticeship, there’s a lot of knowledge we can share and there’s a lot to learn, working with precious works of art,” said David. Aaron agrees there are benefits to working on the job in such a specialised field. “There’s a lot of structural integrity in what we build, to make sure that it is safe and compliant.” Brett and David are in no doubt they made the right call. “It’s worked really well,” Brett said. David concurs: “The results speak for themselves.”
He has appreciated the chance to fit into this work ‘family’: “It is a bit like a family, we’re a small group and these guys have invested a lot of time in me
Summer 2020
53
My Collection We visit the private collection of a National Gallery donor. This month: NAOMI MILGROM AC speaks with Director NICK MITZEVICH
Your collection sits within the private and public lens, so we are interested to hear about your approach to collecting art.
NICK MITZEVICH
NAOMI MILGROM For me, selecting art is not a single activity, it’s part of an aesthetic and a broad creative lens. It’s always been the combination of design and architecture – much more than just one discipline – it’s about looking at it through the lens of a lot of different disciplines. I don’t see the creative side as being uni-dimensional at all. The last thing that I supported was the ORA Singers at the Tate Modern (in September). So for me voice is also a creative a endeavour that sits very comfortably right across art, design and architecture.
And you’ve also supported theatre and live performances, which continue to define that approach.
NICK
NAOMI My philosophy is about creating public accessibility and supporting things that other people wouldn’t. I try to nurture provocative ideas and ambitious creatives who wouldn’t be enabled otherwise.
I can see how successful you’ve been in those endeavours, and it’s interesting when you look at the projects that you’ve supported over the years, that it has encouraged others to go into that field.
NICK
Definitely. If you look at the multi-dimensional work of William Kentridge and the exhibition William Kentridge:
NAOMI
54
nga.gov.au
That which we do not remember we put on at AGSA, the way that Kentridge works with both sound, film, drawing, sculpture – everything points to a multi-disciplinary way of looking at the creative industries or creative arts, and publishing books. We’re doing a lot of work with books – we recently published MPavilion: Encounters with Design and Architecture which illustrates this broad creative lens. It’s not just about collecting, it’s about collaborating and enabling. We talk a lot about this whole idea of collective creativity because that’s what we want to engender; recognition of how collaboration allows creativity. NICK I suppose the driving force behind that is to make sure that creativity in our world isn’t really pigeonholed because, when you start to define something and put it in a box, it somehow doesn’t achieve its full potential. NAOMI Of course. I’ve been thinking a lot about collective creativity and how we need to encourage or provide these unique opportunities to advance creative culture. And to present these opportunities to creative people who want to push the boundaries the hardest. For example we’re working with a furniture designer, who then works with a woodworker, who then works with a painter, who then works with a sculptor. So it’s that series of connections, collective creativity is to pull those connections through. NICK Can
you remember the first work of art that you connected with?
Left Naomi Milgrom AC, in the offices of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in Melbourne. Photo by Stephen Chee. This page The headquarters feature works of art from Naomi Milgrom’s private collection including Gabriel Kuri’s Column, 2010-2011, metal rods, collected receipts, cash, tickets, vouchers, proofs of purchase, variable dimensions. Photo by Ben Wrigley.
Summer 2020
55
“The lens is very broad. It’s not just about collecting, it’s about collecting and enabling, and then it reaches into this whole idea of collective creativity” NAOMI MILGROM AC
Above Works of art in the Sussan Group headquarters include Thomas Demand’s Hanami, 2014, UV print on non-woven wallpaper, variable dimensions; and Franz West’s Pouf, 2012, steel, foam, linen & cardboard. Right (Left to right) William Kentridge’s Cartographer, 1997, Charcoal, gouache and pastel on paper; and Ubu, 1997, charcoal, pastel, dry pigment & gouache on paper. All photos Ben Wrigley.
56
nga.gov.au
NAOMI Well, there’s a few things. When I was at university, I used to work for the dealer and collector Joseph Brown. He was a great mentor to me, he was just fabulous. There was a lot of influence from looking at the likes of Clifford Pugh and Rupert Bunny with his beautiful collection at home, as well as what he actually sold in the gallery. At the time I also really loved Godfrey Miller, he was one of my favourites. NICK
What was the first work of art that you acquired?
NAOMI It was two works. One was Rosalie Gascoigne, and the other artist I bought very early on was Marea Gazzard. That was when I was at the University of Sydney. I did a DipED in Sydney and I’d seen a Craft Australia book with Marea Gazzard. I knocked on her door in Paddington and asked her if I could come and see her work. She was incredibly generous and we became lifelong friends. NICK
You’ve assembled a large collection of her work.
NAOMI I’m a great admirer of her work. She’s an extraordinary woman and she was very generous to me.
When did you start thinking about putting together a personal collection, or did you just acquire things that you connected with and loved?
NICK
NAOMI Obviously, I’d seen the beautiful collection of my parents (Marc and Eva Besen), and lived amongst some of the most beautiful works – the Drysdales, the Dobells – that they were collecting in the 60s and 70s. My father used to take me on his travels, particularly to the Australian Galleries on a Saturday afternoon and we’d sit with Anne Purves and her son Stuart (who now runs the gallery) and we’d look at pictures together and talk about things. I also used to spend a lot of time with Georges Mora in Melbourne and then Rudy Komon in Sydney. So I was absorbing it – it was a natural osmosis in a way – but I was never conscious when collecting. One of the most exciting days was going to see a room full of Howard Arkley at Georges Mora’s Tolarno Gallery in St Kilda.
Was that before he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1999?
NICK
NAOMI Yes, and he was very excited doing that. These were all people who had a great love of books, who had excellent eyes for design. Georges in particular had a great love of food and wine, as we know with Mirka. So I think that I was exposed to this broader creative view and aesthetic from a very early age.
You’re supporting Patricia Piccinini’s upcoming Skywhales: Every heart sings project with us, which we’re so grateful about. What motivated you to support this project and your general approach to giving?
NICK
NAOMI I have a history with Patricia, I opened her exhibition Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through love… at TarraWarra last year. I’m a great admirer of hers, she’s doing extraordinary work that is really very much of the moment. I had the great pleasure of seeing Skywhale go up and over the Yarra Valley, which was very exciting. A lot of people see these works as balloons, but they’re actually sculptures, and with her sculptural works Patricia spans so much. She’s not uni-dimensional at all in her approach,
she uses a huge amount of texture and different materials in her work. I’m just such a great fan of hers. NICK I
love that she’s not limited by anything and she just moves ahead and has a quiet ambition about her practice that’s really bold, and she does it in a way that’s so confident. It’s very rare to see that.
NAOMI Patricia’s confidence is also generous. She’s very embracing, a person who thinks about the universe, and about what is happening in science. Her topics are so relevant today, more than any other time really. I believe this is clearly a very important view of life, particularly now.
You hang some of your collection in your offices at the Sussan Group headquarters in Melbourne. What affect does that have on the staff and how do they interact with it?
NICK
The office was never meant to be just an office, we wanted to test a new paradigm for a work environment, and encompass great design with all of the elements – sky, water, trees or forests, smell – in terms of the flowers or plants we chose. It was about creating a work environment that offered much more than a desk. And part of that was my love of art and design and architecture. So the architecture reflected this love, the art was part of that. It offered the opportunity to be inspired, to be at one with nature, to look at great design – sometimes you don’t understand what great design is, but you feel it. It’s a bit like when you hold a piece of cutlery; yes, it’s a piece of cutlery that’s been beautifully designed but somehow, it feels better in your hand. The Franz West chairs in the office were very much part of it as well, they are not art hanging on the walls in the traditional sense. You can look at a West as just as a utilitarian chair, which has beautiful colour and comfort, but it is also an expression of a desire to add creative layers into a working environment.
NAOMI
NICK Well,
the times I’ve visited, it feels very dynamic and it feels really alive.
NAOMI
And that was the point!
My final question: is there a work in the national collection that inspires you or is a favourite?
NICK
NAOMI I love this question. There is nothing else that is more beautiful and more inspiring than your Brancusi sculptures (L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space]). They are number one and number two.
I love them too. They are my favourite thing in the national collection by a long stretch.
NICK
NAOMI Me too. If there’s anything that speaks of ambition, that’s them.
The Naomi Milgrom Foundation is a Major Patron of the 2021-22 Touring Exhibition of Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhales: Every heart sings.
Summer 2020
57
Donors
The National Gallery acknowledges the support of all donors and recognises here the donations made between July and September 2020.
Supporters in Focus The National Gallery of Australia Foundation would like to acknowledge the exceptional generosity of Metal Manufactures Ltd. With the support of Metal Manufactures, the Regional Initiatives Program has been established and will give Australians all over the country an opportunity to engage with the national collection through outreach, loans and touring programs. The Regional Initiatives Program will include sharing works from the national collection, supplementing displays at regional venues through extended loans and collaborating with regional venues to present curated exhibitions. Through the generous support of Metal Manufatures Ltd, the National Gallery can ensure that the national collection will reach the widest possible audience countrywide. The Foundation would also like to acknowledge the generous contribution of Martin Dickson AM and Susie Dickson to the Know My Name initiative. Martin and Susie Dickson have been longstanding supporters of the National Gallery and the arts more broadly, making their first gift in 1983 to help the National Gallery establish its Foundation. We thank Metal Manufactures Ltd, Martin and Susie Dickson and all of our supporters for helping us to share the power of art for the benefit of all Australians. Australian Art and Sculpture Dr Lyn Riddett Donations to support the National Gallery Amanda Thomas Know My Name Dorothy Anderson Margaret Aston Robin Austin Australia Council for the Arts Helen Rhodes Barnett Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO Robert Blacklow Toni Brewster Kathryn Clarke Janet Crane Patrick Crone Robyn Dean and Phillip Dean Martin Dickson AM and Susie Dickson Kim Chun Eng Richard Flanagan Lindsay Fredericks Ian Gollings AM Margaret Hargraves Joanne Horan
58
nga.gov.au
Marisha Kelly Gail Kinsella Alana Kirby Claude Neumann Major Terry O’Brien and Lucinda Lang Diana-Rose Orr Jill Partridge and Brian Partridge Yvonne Paull and Alwyn Paull Dr Michael Priest Vera Robinson Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Rosalie Ryan Raoul Salpeter and Roslyn Mandelberg Fiona Sawyers Jennifer Sebire Barry Smith-Roberts David Stanley and Anne Stanley The Sun Foundation Paul Swain Amanda Thomas John Walton AM Guy Warren AM Gabrielle Watt Ian Wilkey Robyn Wright Ching Ching Yeoh Regional Initiatives Metal Manufactures Ltd Robert and Eugenie Bell Decorative Arts and Design Fund Martin Beaver and Susie Beaver Prof Arline Fisch
Partnerships
Strategic Partners
Indigenous Art Partner
Presenting Partner
Contemporary Art Partner
Touring Partners
Major Partners
Supporting Partners
Cultural Partners
sheila FO U N D A T I O N
Education Partners
Media Partners
Promotional and Retail Partners
Audi Centre Canberra Flash Graphics Forrest Hotel and Apartments Capital Brewing Co.
Corporate Member
Art Girl Rising Mud Australia Bonnie and Neil
Clayton Utz
Summer 2020
59
Gift Guide
The Gallery’s new Art Store has opened just in time for the festive season. The Art Store features a range of inspirational and contemporary art products, designer goods and bespoke items alongside the best art books from around the world. Located near the front entrance on the Gallery’s ground floor, the Art Store is more than just a shop: the new centre for visitors also includes Membership, information and ticketing services, self-serve cloaking and a place to sit and relax between exhibitions.
Add to the festive spirit with these special offerings from our partners *these alcohol items are not available in the Art Store
Archie Rose Know My Name Tailored Gin This Tailored Gin was conceived with our Cultural Partner Archie Rose Distilling Co. to showcase our initiative and current exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. The bespoke design was created to celebrate the significant contributions of all women artists. Made with individually distilled botanicals, the Know My Name Tailored Gin has a bright character, with individually distilled botanicals of strawberry gum, pink peppercorn, river mint and orange peel. RRP: $99 archierose.com.au
60
nga.gov.au
RRP: $99. archierose.com.au/shop/product/ know-my-name-tailored-gin
Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame 2012 by Yayoi Kusama Veuve Clicquot and Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama are spreading a cheerful message with a unique and colourful creation celebrating the House’s new vintage, La Grande Dame 2012. The original creation is Kusama’s vibrant tribute to “la grande dame” of Champagne, Madame Clicquot. Kusama has designed the La Grande Dame 2012 case and bottle using her iconic flowers and polka dots symbols. Stock available in Australia early 2021. www.veuveclicquot.com
Design & Decorate Clockwise from top left: Frankie vase, $110; A Century of Colour in Design by David Harrison (Thames & Hudson), $40; The Design Book (Phaidon), $30; Tjanpi Desert Weavers baskets including: Maringka Burton (Indulkana) small basket, $100, Anna Ginger (Kaltukatjara – Docker River) small basket, $100, Margaret Yai Yai (Mimili) medium basket, $150; large Tiff Manuel Blue poles clutch, $125; Margaret Worth Sukhavarti number 5 Know My Name cushion cover, $45; set of Mud Australia bowls (coming soon); Xenia dish, $110; Dinosaur Designs bangles, including: rock medium honeycomb, $90, rock medium cream, $90, organic large black, $85, organic large black marble, $85; Grace Crowley: Being Modern, by Elena Taylor (National Gallery of Australia), $29.95; Bonnie and Neil napkins (coming soon).
Summer 2020
61
Relax & Indulge Clockwise from top left: Aoracreo Commuter backpack, $196; Enigma Fine Chocolates Sweet Blue truffles (inspired by Blue poles), $45; Fink winter charcoal small vase, $140; Pottery for the Planet 8oz, $50; Kaweco brass sport fountain pen, $159; Falls The Shadow (Uro), $79; Chatty Feet artists socks, $15; Bon Parfumeur 001 3ml, $69.95; W&P Carry On Gin & Tonic Cocktail Kit, $44; And O earrings, $70.
62
nga.gov.au
Gift Guide photographed by Karlee Holland; styled by Jessica Barnes and Jessica Ausserlechner.
Make & Play Clockwise from top left: Mobile, $55; Margaret Worth Know My Name mug, $20; Melinda Harper Know My Name coaster, $10; Lyra coloured pencils, $3 each; Tony Albert jigsaw puzzle, $35; Find Frida: the Frida Kahlo seek-and-find book (Laurence King), $25; Women Artists A-Z by Melinda LaBarge, illustrated by Caroline Corrigan (Puffin), $25; CE Classic baby beads, $41; Blocky man, $ 55; Frida Kahlo moleskin notebook, $42.95; Ethel Spowers pencil case, $16; Artists Socks (sold as a set of 4), $ 55; Croc blocks, $60.
Summer 2020
63
The impressionist who captured Australia’s light, land and sea EXCLUSIVE TO SYDNEY Art Gallery of New South Wales 7 Nov 2020 — 14 Feb 2021
Strategic sponsors
Major sponsor
Media partner
64
nga.gov.au
Arthur Streeton Early summer – gorse in bloom 1888 (detail) Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, gift of Mrs Andrew Tennant through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1982
A COMMITMENT, A CELEBRATION, A SEASON OF EXHIBITIONS & DIGITAL EVENTS KNOWMYNAME.NGA.GOV.AU
ACU Art Collection: A new perspective
CRICOS registered provider: 00004G
Comprising highlights from the Australian Catholic University’s art collection revealed through essays by renowned art historians, religious commentators, curators, art writers and critical thinkers. This richly illustrated publication presents a range of artworks in diverse mediums, from early medieval sculpture, stained glass and textiles through to works in oil, acrylic, print, ceramics and, most recently, 21st Century glass. The international and Australian artists represented include Matteo di Giovanni, Taddeo di Bartolo, Justin O’Brien, Arthur Boyd, Angelina Pwerle, Pippin Drysdale and Helen Johnson. Contributors to A new perspective include the Hon John Fahey AC, GCSG, Professor Greg Craven AO, GCSG, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP, Professor Anne Dunlop, Dr Ursula Betka, Anne Marie Brody, Dr Felicity Harley, Associate Professor Alison Inglis, Simone Chetcuti, Fr Anthony Casamento CSMA, Dr Hilary Maddocks, Dr Louise Marshall, Caroline Field, Dr Christine Nicholls, Alasdair Macintyre and Victoria Perin. Each of their essays focuses on one or two works of art and invites the reader to look more closely and gain a new perspective. Available via: artsandculture.acu.edu.au/ exclusive-gifts
Summer 2020
65
Director’s Choice: L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space]
Constantin Brancusi’s L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space] – more commonly referred to as ‘Birds’ – is one of my favourite works in the national collection.
A personal highlight from the national collection by NICK MITZEVICH.
Considered a pioneer of Modernism, French-Romanian artist Brancusi stunned the twentieth century with his sculptural work, and I have long been a fan. The bird was a central theme in Brancusi’s practice – over a period of at least 30 years he completed 27 sculptures of birds in marble and bronze. The National Gallery’s inaugural Director James Mollison made an insightful acquisition when he purchased a unique black and white marble pair for the fledgling collection back in 1973. Brancusi was known for his dramatic, yet meditative simplification of complex structures – such as this example of living, flying creatures – sculpted into single black and white structures. Concentrating on the movement of a bird in flight, rather than the physical features of the animal itself, Brancusi reminds us that life is a journey. I feel a deep connection to this iconic pair. In the hallway near my office there is a window that peeps into the gallery space where the birds are currently displayed. As I gaze down I can see them, just a few steps from my desk in the Director’s office. I go to the Birds when I need grounding, and they never fail me. I love the story about how Brancusi designed these birds for the Maharaja of Indore, who wanted them and two other sculptures to stand around a square mirror of water in a temple for meditation. Although Brancusi went to India in 1937 to begin work on the temple, the structure was never built. When the Gallery first opened, James Mollison had positioned the sculptures in water, in the large-scale sculpture gallery on the lower ground. Brancusi’s Birds were intended for the water, and as we reorganise the displays of the collection we intend to return them to their original position in preparation for our 40th anniversary in 2022. Constantin Brancusi, L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space], c 1931-36, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1973. Copyright © Constantin Brancusi. ADAGP/Copyright Agency
68
nga.gov.au
PART ONE 14 NOVEMBER 2020 – 4 JULY 2021
FREE ENTRY ONLY IN CANBERRA
Vincent van Gogh. Sunflowers (detail) 1888. Š National Gallery, London
Government Partners
Principal Partner
Principal Donor
Major Partner
Organised by