artonview o art n v i ew

ISSUE No.45 ISSUE ISS U E a u t m n o.45 autumn 2006 autumn N o.45 2006 N AT ION A L 2006 a US T R A LI G A LLERYOF

constable • crescent moon • otto dix WAR The Prints of Otto Dix

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

Principal sponsor Supported by

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006

Organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia Otto Dix Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor [Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack] plate 12 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924 etching, aquatint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Otto Dix, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia Serat Dewi Ruci 1886 European paper, ink, pigment, gold leaf Presented by the Friends of the Gallery Library in memory of Tina Wentcher, 1982 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne contents artonview

Publisher National Gallery of Australia 2 Director’s foreword nga.gov.au 4 Director’s vision Editor Eve Sullivan 10 Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky Designer Sarah Robinson 16 Constable: the ecstasy of stormy elements

Photography Eleni Kypridis 21 Australia and Constable Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie 22 Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia Steve Nebauer John Tassie 32 War: the prints of Otto Dix Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia 38 New acquisitions Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra 50 Collection focus: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art artonview i s s n 1323-4552 54 Conservation: restoring the glow to Afterglow Published quarterly: Issue no. 45, Autumn 2006 56 Kenneth Tyler at the National Gallery of Australia © National Gallery of Australia

Print Post Approved 58 Tribute: Jimmy Wululu pp255003/00078 60 Faces in view All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

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front cover: John Constable Harwich Lighthouse c. 1820 (detail) oil on canvas Tate, London, gift of Maria Louisa Constable, Isabel Constable and Lionel Bicknell Constable in 1888 director’s foreword

Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky curated by the Gallery’s Head of Australian Art, Anna Gray, continues the Gallery’s commitment to analysing the historical legacy of European and, in particular, British art, with a major focus on this important landscape artist. Over 100 works have been selectively drawn together from distinguished museums and private collections in Great Britain, the United States and Australia, including the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, Tate Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, and the Frick Collection, New York. Qantas Freight and The Seven Network have once again generously supported the Gallery by transporting the works and providing television promotion for this exhibition. Ron Radford with Harold This is a very exciting time at the Gallery with the opening The exhibition showcases the extraordinary range of Mitchell AO, outgoing chairman of the National of two major and contrasting exhibitions, Crescent Constable’s work, from his exuberant outdoor sketches to Gallery of Australia Council moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia masterpieces such as Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s and Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky. Grounds 1822–23 and The Vale of Dedham 1827–28. The As the first major international exhibition to focus exhibition is presented thematically to show key phases of on the Islamic art of Southeast Asia, Crescent moon Constable’s approach to the landscape, such as his well- introduces Australian audiences to the beauty and known cloud and sea studies, and what may well be his complexity of Islamic culture within our region, to reveal favourite subject, the lock – including his Royal Academy the unique developments in the arts of Islamic Indonesia, Diploma work, A boat passing a lock 1826. Malaysia, but also the Muslim communities of the A special display titled Australia and Constable has Philippines, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. Splendid been included within the exhibition to explore Constable’s objects in silk, gold, lacquer, porcelain and stone illustrate influence on Australian art through the much-loved the transformation of indigenous motifs and techniques Australian landscape paintings of John Glover, Tom into new art forms to express the message of the Prophet Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen, leading up to Mohammed. the work of contemporary practitioners, such as Howard Crescent moon brings together 180 valuable loans Taylor, Philip Wolfhagen and Lesley Duxbury. from museums, palace treasuries and private collections If you have not already done so, please also take this of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, displayed opportunity to see the remarkable portfolio of prints by alongside objects from Australian institutions, in Otto Dix, Der Krieg [War] 1924. Modelled on Francisco particular, textiles from the National Gallery of Australia’s Goya’s famous Los desastres de la guerra [The disasters spectacular collection of Southeast Asian textiles, and of war], and acquired recently by the Department of Islamic ceramics from the Art Gallery of South Australia. International Prints and Drawings. The complete cycle I would especially like to acknowledge all the lenders, of fifty prints is now on view in the Project Gallery. As the curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of South curator Mark Henshaw states in his essay in this issue, Australia, James Bennett, Principal Sponsor Santos, it is ‘one of the most powerful indictments of war ever and the particular enthusiasm of John Ellice-Flint, CEO conceived’ by an artist. and Managing Director, along with the extraordinary I would also like to take this opportunity to generosity of the Gordon Darling Foundation in providing acknowledge the retirement of Harold Mitchell as funding to produce the splendid catalogue, and the chairman of the National Gallery of Australia Council. support for special education projects by The Myer During his term as both a member (1998–2001) and Foundation’s Beyond Australia and the Sidney Myer Fund. chairman (2001–05) of the council Harold gave a great

2 national gallery of australia credit lines

deal of his time, passion and enthusiasm, and made a Donations significant impact on the National Gallery of Australia’s Ross Adamson direction. We were privileged to have Harold’s strong Philip Bacon AM Anthony Berg AM and family leadership. What the general public have not known Graham Bradley to this point is that Harold is one of our most generous Antony G Breuer benefactors. And although Harold oversees the largest Joan Daley OAM media-sales organisation in the country, he still found time Lady Nancy Fairfax OBE to fly to Canberra to officiate at every exhibition opening, Di Gregson Andrew Gwinnett affirming wholeheartedly, ‘As I always like to say, “this is a Catherine Rossi Harris PSM great gallery, in a great city, in a great country”’. In every John Hindmarsh sense Harold maintained a supportive, hands-on role as Reverend Theodora Hobbs chairman, and was always at the end of the telephone line Peter Jopling QC for advice to both Brian Kennedy and myself. Harold Mitchell AO Cameron O’Reilly He is succeeded in the role of chairman by Rupert Angus Paltridge Myer, whose appointment was announced on 18 Jennifer Prescott December 2005 by the Minister for the Arts and Sport, Alan D Rose AO and Helen E Rose Senator the Hon. Rod Kemp. Penelope Evatt-Seidler Rupert has been a National Gallery of Australia Council Raphy Star Caroline Turner Member since 2003 and is director of the National Gallery Anonymous of Australia Foundation. In January 2005 Mr Myer was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to Gifts the arts, for support to museums and galleries and to the Rosemary Dobson Bolton Louise Dauth community through a range of philanthropic and service eX de Medici organisations. John Eager I had the personal privilege of working with Rupert, Helen W Drutt English when he spearheaded the Commonwealth Government’s Thea Exley Inquiry into the Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft Sector Peter Fay William Hamilton 2001–02, an initiative that achieved a much-needed boost Russell Harper in funding to the contemporary visual arts sector, during Pauline Hunter my own term as chair of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Terrance Lane Australia Council (1997–2001). I know that Rupert is well- David Rose John F Turner regarded by the visual arts community, and has significant Robert H Turner experience on museum boards and foundations. Rosalind Turner Zuses I hope that many of you will agree, this is an exciting time for the Gallery. Grants The Myer Foundation Sidney Myer Fund

Principal Sponsor Santos Ltd

Supporting Sponsors Qantas Freight Seven Network Ron Radford Director Sponsors Casella Wines Saville Park Suites, Canberra SMS Management & Technology

artonview autumn 2006 3 Vision for the National Gallery of Australia: part two

Part two of the vision statement presented by Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery of Australia, on the Gallery’s birthday, 12 October 2005

The building and the collection displays Building additions: Stage One. New entrance The National Gallery of Australia’s building was conceived and Indigenous Australian galleries in the late 1960s. Plans, by the architectural firm Edwards, In Stage One, a new more visible and accessible ground- Madigan, Torzillo & Briggs, were finished at the beginning level entrance is being planned for the south of the of the seventies, before the collections were formed. It building, facing the current ground-surface car park. The took nearly a decade to build. Opened by HM Queen new entrance area will have escalators to and from the Elizabeth II in 1982, it is an important architectural galleries on the main level; a lift will also provide access example of seventies concrete architecture in the Brutalist to the underground car park. The entrance area will have style. Costing $82 million, it was an extremely expensive a new cloakroom and a new enlarged bookshop. An building for its time. The building has architectural adjacent ground-level space will be created for openings distinction and is part of Canberra’s heritage. However, and events, and will open onto a newly created Australian as an art museum it has always been criticised by the garden. It will be a space that can be commercially hired museum profession and the public alike, particularly as out when not required for Gallery functions and, if its interior is unsympathetic to most works of art. The necessary, can be divided into three separate spaces. building has been an ongoing challenge to former and At the new ground-level entrance there will be a current directors and curators of the Gallery. There were specifically created area for the 1988 Aboriginal Memorial, conceptual problems in the earliest brief. one of the most important works in the collection. Since the National Gallery had neither collections Appropriately, this impressive sculptural installation, a nor staff when the building was first designed, it could major work of art, will be the first that visitors see as they not be designed around a known or probable collection. enter the Gallery. It will be displayed in a way that relates Moreover, it was conceived to show 1,000 works, to the outside landscaping. but the collections have grown to well over 100,000 Immediately above the new entrance and its facilities works. The collections have long outgrown the building there will be specially created galleries for Indigenous and lack of display space is overwhelmingly the Gallery’s Australian art that will connect to the existing galleries greatest problem. There are many other limitations to the on the main level. Each of these new galleries will be building. Ceilings are far too high in the main entrance- designed to accommodate the needs of specific types of level display galleries and too low on the upstairs display Indigenous Australian art, with areas for small early dot floor. The concrete-aggregate wall surface visually paintings, large galleries for larger dot paintings, spaces interferes with the viewing of most paintings. The public for bark paintings, and for Hermannsburg watercolours, entrance is confusing; visitors don’t know where to enter Indigenous textiles, prints, ceramics and sculpture. The the building. Confusing interior circulation remains an main Indigenous art galleries will be sky-lit, apart from ongoing complaint. The facilities for openings, other those areas intended for the display of light-sensitive events, and catering are limited. There has never been any works such as textiles, baskets and watercolours. These special provision for the display of Indigenous Australian will be the first galleries in Australia designed around the art, now a major component of the collection. specific needs of displaying different aspects of Indigenous Many of these problems will be addressed in Stage Australian art. One of the building alterations currently being planned, in The famous Ned Kelly series by Sidney Nolan, arguably which process Andrew Andersons, of PTW Architects, and the Gallery’s most popular Australian work, will be I are working with Col Madigan. brought downstairs to the main level and given a special room at a location currently occupied by a lobby area and

4 national gallery of australia the Gallery Shop. The Kelly paintings will be among the first works seen on the principal display floor. Existing shop and cloakroom spaces will be converted to small spaces for the decorative arts and on the opposite side of the hallway from the Kelly paintings, a space is reserved for displaying works from the photography collection. The overwhelming problem with the current building – apart from the lack of a noticeable entrance to the Gallery, and the fact that the collection has long outgrown the building – is that Australian Art is relegated to secondary status. Australian art is confined to the low-ceilinged ‘attic’ upstairs. The area is too small to show either the full richness of our culture or even our existing extensive collection. The inaccessibility, in the present building, of Australia’s own visual culture – and its placement in an unattractive corridor-like space – could be seen as the ultimate cultural cringe. Some visitors never find the present upstairs galleries containing Australian art. The National Gallery of Australia should display Australian visual culture much more accessibly, attractively and expansively. Stage One of the building program will do this for introductory gallery showing eighteenth-century and A provisional concept design Indigenous Australian art. Stage Two will similarly redisplay for the front entrance for early-nineteenth-century European art in the Pacific. All Stage One of the proposed the rest of Australian and Australasian art. the galleries should be designed to accommodate the additions to the National Gallery of Australia building Building additions: Stage Two. specific scale and diverse forms of Australian art. For Australian Art (non-Indigenous) example, spacious galleries with high ceilings are required In Stage Two of the building program, completely new for large Edwardian figure paintings and Federation galleries for Australian art should be created in a new landscapes; smaller, lower-ceiling galleries would suit wing built to encircle the present temporary-exhibitions modernist pictures of the 1920s and 1930s; while larger galleries. Australian art should be brought downstairs galleries are again necessary for neoclassical figure from the ‘attic’ to occupy this large area of its own on the paintings and sculptures of the same period and smaller main level, the ‘piano nobile’ floor. These new Australian galleries for Australian modernism of the 1940s. Large galleries will be illuminated from above with sunlight, the high spaces will be designed to accomodate the diverse same light by which most of the works were created. forms of contemporary Australian art. The future Stage Two galleries for Australian art Adjacent to the main chronologically arranged day-lit should connect to the new galleries for Indigenous galleries will be small side galleries, with lower ceilings and Australian art that are part of Stage One. Indigenous art, without natural light, for light-sensitive works on paper appropriately, will be encountered first. Chronologically- – watercolours, drawings, prints and photographs – and arranged galleries will proceed from the colonial period also for textiles. Such galleries are especially important for onwards. Preceding colonial art there should be an the periods of Australian art when works on paper (e.g.

artonview autumn 2006 5 early colonial watercolours) are artistically stronger and These galleries for the Pacific arts should be more numerous than oil paintings. The National Gallery of strategically placed towards the end of the future Australia has the finest and largest collection of Australian Australian wing, in proximity to contemporary Australian works of art on paper. These adjacently arranged art, reflecting their geography in relation to Australia. This exhibition spaces will also feature Australian design and great attention to the Pacific past and present has never decorative arts. been attempted before in any art museum in Australia – or The Australian galleries should be planned to indeed elsewhere. It is a major new initiative and must be incorporate exceptional works in the collection such as seen as very significant for our region. Napier Waller’s large mural design I’ll put a girdle round In summing up, for art-political reasons and ease of about the earth (which currently cannot be displayed) and access, the art of all the major cultures should have a John Olsen’s major painting Sydney sun installed as it was significant presence on the same accessible main-level intended – as a ceiling. floor: the piano nobile. And Stage Two should also be Furthermore, the Gallery’s proposed new wing designed in a way that allows much better circulation than for Australian art will hopefully attract major private the present building. collections. With new spaces the National Gallery of Sculpture Gallery: Stage One Australia can offer donors naming rights to certain Gallery 9, where the main Asian display is currently galleries. There exist private collections that could located, will return to being a sculpture gallery. When significantly help complete aspects of the national the building opened in 1982 most visitors and museum collection of Australian art. professionals agreed this was the one gallery that really Galleries in the future Australian art wing also provide worked. Indeed it was strikingly successful, centred upon an opportunity for offering naming rights to prospective the exquisite Brancusi Birds in space which will return to donors of cash to Australian art. the sculpture gallery. Sculptures representing all cultures Displaying Asian art: Stage One could be displayed in this beautiful gallery. Asian Art, too, should be brought to the piano nobile Open study storage: Stage Two floor, up from the lower-level Gallery 9 to main-level Beneath the main-level galleries for the future display of Galleries 11 and 12 (and in Stage Two also add Gallery Australian art, open study-storage galleries should be 8, the current Orde Poynton Gallery). We should focus created for Australian art. Study storage is where very on sympathetic displays of mixed media (sculptures, dense and unaesthetically arranged displays are accessible paintings and textiles) beginning with Indian Hindu, Jain to the general public, either all the time or on selected and Buddhist art. The redisplay of the Indian art collection days each week. Study storage is becoming common will be completed in August 2006 and Indian Islamic art in America – for example the American Decorative Arts will link with Southeast Asian Islamic art. Southeast Asian display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – and Ancestral and Animist art, and other arts of Southeast exists for Old Master paintings at the National Gallery, Asia, will also link into the Indian display. London, yet it has never been incorporated successfully Each major Asian sculpture will have its own custom- into an art museum in Australia. It would help relieve the made pedestal of concrete in keeping with the concrete Gallery’s acute storage problem and make the Australian architecture of the Gallery building. Chinese and Japanese collections (other than light-sensitive textiles and works on art, Middle Eastern Islamic art and other Central Asian arts paper) completely accessible to the public. will remain where they are in the lower-level Gallery 10, connected by the two ramps to the rest of Asian art on The Research Library and the Collection-Study the main level above. Rooms: Stage Two The National Gallery of Australia Research Library is the Displaying Pacific arts: Stage Two most important art library in Australia. The ground-level A special large gallery should be created in Stage Two for space beneath the future galleries for Australian Art traditional art of the Pacific Islands, including the Maori should be used not only for open study-storage but also to art of New Zealand, the traditional Melanesian art of create an expanded library with easier access from outside New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the Solomon for visiting researchers and scholars. Adjacent to the Islands, and the Polynesian art of Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, library should be collection-study rooms and storage for Hawaii, etc. The works will be shown as art and not our huge collection of Australian works on paper, which is anthropology. This display should be connected to a large stored in solander boxes. Adjacent to this area could be a gallery devoted to contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific. similar study arrangement for textiles, especially the major Southeast Asian textile collection.

6 national gallery of australia The much enlarged Australian displays and, on the A solution must be found not only to honour the ground level below them, the Open Study Storage, the integrity of the original building interior but also, at Collection-Study Rooms and the Research Library together the same time, to be sympathetic to the works of will form a unique and important Centre for Australian art. Naturally textured and carefully coloured wall cladding Art. Such a centre should eventually establish formal links and temporary partition walls are required to complement with Canberra’s Australian National University. the concrete structure. The Gallery curators and designers are currently working with me on a solution. Office space: Stage Two Furthermore, newly planned International and Asian The present library space could be easily converted into the Art collection displays in the current building will attempt much needed expansion and consolidation of office space. to integrate, where possible, prints, drawings, textiles and Works on paper and textile displays: upstairs decorative arts into the displays of paintings and sculptures. galleries. Stage Two This has always been done, with varying degrees of success, The National Gallery of Australia holds more works in the awkward upstairs Australian galleries. on paper than any other art museum in Australia. This Importantly, highlights of Australian art should be includes the largest collections of International and included in the International displays. Australian art Australian photographs, twentieth-century American must be seen in an international context as well as in a prints, nineteenth- and twentieth-century European prints, comprehensive national display. In the past this has been Australian prints and drawings and illustrated books. The done occasionally, but must be done more consistently, Gallery also holds Australia’s largest collection of Asian particularly where Australian artists can be favourably textiles. The upstairs galleries, currently used to display compared with their international peers. (In the current Australian art, may not be suitable, with their smaller upstairs Australian display, wall colours have already been spaces, lower ceilings and lack of natural daylight, for very recently changed and a new display of nineteenth- displaying Australian paintings and sculptures but they are and early-twentieth-century art, including many very ideal for a series of galleries in which to install changing recent acquisitions, has just been completed.) displays of photographs, European prints and American More radical changes to the newly integrated prints. The series could also accommodate a special gallery International displays will be finished within the for Indian and, particularly, Indonesian textiles. A new next twelve months after the Aboriginal Memorial is Orde Poynton Gallery (or several Orde Poynton Galleries) temporarily moved from its present location in Gallery 1 could be created for works on paper. A small gallery for to Gallery 9, the past and future Sculpture Gallery, before late-nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century being permanently relocated to the new ground-level design could also be established on this upper level. entrance area of the Stage One extensions. Galleries such as these will be significant and unique in Relighting Australia, particularly for visitors who enjoy intense study The collection-display spaces also need to be completely of such material. relit. There are too many gloomy areas. The lighting International contemporary art: Stage Two system is antiquated; lighting fixtures have become The one high-ceilinged space on the upstairs level, Gallery unsightly and inconsistent. The lighting is not only 7, currently used for contemporary Australian art, could inadequate and inflexible but the systems are highly be used for the most recent international art, and include unattractive. We need to engage experienced international Australian contemporary art. lighting experts who can undertake this major expensive, Redisplays of current International galleries: but necessary, task. Stage One Exhibitions In the current International display, the walls have been Temporary exhibitions keep the public and the clad with white-painted plasterboard in a desire to media vitally interested in the National Gallery of make the building more sympathetic for the works of Australia. Special exhibitions provide in-depth access to art, covering the concrete-aggregate walls that were artists, periods or themes and they provide audiences so particularly unsympathetic for paintings. While the with new insights not readily available in the permanent works of art are now better-displayed, the interior look collections. They also provide a focus for associated of the building has changed from what was described as public programs. The Gallery’s exhibition program should a ‘concrete bunker’ to something worse, an insubstantial complement the collections. On the one hand exhibitions white ‘cardboard box’. The internal architectural integrity should parallel the strengths of the Gallery’s collections of the building has been compromised. and, on the other, bring in the kinds of art absent from the collections.

artonview autumn 2006 7 In Stage Two of the building alterations we plan to It should go without saying that the National Gallery increase the temporary-exhibitions area so that a new of Australia must also continue its excellent program space for our smaller collection-based exhibition projects of touring exhibitions around Australia and – after the could be adjacent to the main exhibition space. The success of the Out & About program – by continuing present Project Gallery is, unfortunately, the furthest space to release small focus displays drawn from the national from the entrance to the building. collection. The ongoing travelling-exhibitions program is The Gallery should stage at least one fine blockbuster an important way to share the collections with the nation. exhibition every year to bring in large numbers of Children’s Gallery: Stage Two visitors and generate income to maintain the exhibition A new and larger Children’s Gallery should be established program. There should be an attempt to make various in the Stage Two construction. The present Children’s middle-sized shows largely pay for themselves. And we Gallery is very popular but far too small for school should also undertake more esoteric shows, which may groups. This future gallery should be placed adjacent not necessarily be popular with audiences, and therefore to the other temporary-exhibitions galleries. need to be highly subsidised, but which stretch one’s knowledge, imagination and understanding. Publishing the collections In the exhibition program over a period of years there Art museums should publish or perish. Since the National should be balance between traditional and contemporary Gallery of Australia is located in Canberra, a city with a art, and between European, Asian, Pacific and Australian population of about 350,000 (and only the sixth-largest art. The program should also include exhibitions city in Australia), publishing allows the Gallery to extend containing different media, not just painting but sculpture, its audiences both nationally and internationally. The photographic media, prints, drawings and the decorative curators, and others, must be encouraged and given arts. The National Gallery of Australia has a particular role every opportunity to research the collections and related in developing and displaying imaginative exhibitions of material, and publish the results. Australian artists, movements or periods that may have A great national gallery must contain in-house been neglected. We could also help smaller art museums scholarship in order to maintain its international by becoming a partner in presenting shows of their credibility. We must of course fulfil the expectation that nationally significant local artists. we should be the world’s principal centre of scholarship A great many publicly-funded exhibition spaces for in Australian art. At present we are also a world centre for contemporary art are to be found throughout the nation scholarship in Indonesian textiles. and also in Canberra. Even so the National Gallery of The collection should be published electronically as Australia should include contemporary projects in its well as made available through print publications in the program. Such projects help develop audiences that form of books and catalogues. The Gallery should aim to might never find their way to their local contemporary make all works in all collections available online through art spaces, and they can contextualise difficult new art both images and texts. Much has been done already to for inexperienced audiences. But this should never be make them digitally accessible to all Australians and to a main thrust of the program; the National Gallery of promote the collections worldwide. The online collections Australia should not compete with or threaten the role will assist in disseminating information with which to of Australia’s contemporary art spaces and museums of educate and whet a very large public appetite for the contemporary art. treasures we hold in trust for the nation. Unfortunately, organising exhibitions (especially At the same time we must continue to publish books blockbusters) has effectively become three times more on artists, collections and collecting areas of artistic and costly in the past six years or so. We should therefore cultural significance. The scholarship should be of the look at doing no more than three or four shows per year highest quality, and so should the design and production. a

in the major temporary-exhibitions galleries, and avoid Part one of the 2005 Director’s Vision for the National the practice of removing the permanent collection to Gallery of Australia was published in the summer 2005–06 accommodate temporary exhibitions. We will continue issue of artonview. The full Director’s Vision is also available online at nga.gov.au/Vision. to produce high-quality low-cost exhibitions from our rich collections for the Project Gallery, the Orde Poynton Gallery and the Children’s Gallery.

8 national gallery of australia development office

Masterpieces for the Nation appeal Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Sydney Long Flamingoes c. 1906 Looking to the future, we are proud to present the Southeast Asia oil on canvas opportunity for Members to participate in acquiring We welcome and thank Santos as the Principal Sponsor a major work for the collection. This year the Director of this special exhibition. As a major Australian oil and takes delight in proposing an oil painting by Sydney gas exploration and production company with expanding Long, Flamingoes c. 1906. Sydney Long was the leading interests in the Asia Pacific region, their support represents proponent of the art nouveau style in Australian painting significant commitment to developing cultural ties with at the beginning of the twentieth century and this work our Southeast Asian neighbours. is a remarkable example of Long’s decorative style. The Gordon Darling Foundation’s generous grant Flamingoes were a popular motif for Sydney Long as in towards the curator’s research and the production of art nouveau more generally, their sinuous necks and exotic the splendid catalogue ensures readers many hours of connotations highly appropriate to the flowing lines and pleasure and in-depth knowledge about the exceptional sensual nature of the art nouveau style. works in the exhibition. Flamingoes will be an important addition to the We also acknowledge the value of The Myer Gallery’s select collection of turn-of-the-century art Foundation’s grant directed to a family day and children’s nouveau and symbolist painting, complementing works workshops; the Sidney Myer Fund’s grant for the study by Bernard Hall, Rupert Bunny, DH Souter and Bertram day and education resource, with the support of the Mackennal, as well as Sydney Long’s The spirit of the Australia Indonesia Institute and the Australia Malaysia plains 1914 already in the collection. This is your Institute, enabling the attendance of Indonesian and opportunity to make a donation and share the excitement Malaysian speakers at the special cultural day. of knowing this exceptional work will bring pleasure to many future generations. Please forward your donation Conservation equipment donation to Silvana Colucciello in the Development Office or On behalf of the Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, telephone her on 02 6240 6454. conservation research colleague Dr Simon Watts kindly donated an Ion Chromatograph. The gift will greatly assist Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky with the research currently being undertaken by Paper Once again we thank our committed and long-term Conservators at the Gallery, and will enable the Gallery to supporters: Qantas Freight for airfreighting the works monitor air quality in Solander storage boxes, display cases to Australia; and Channel Seven for creating and and gallery spaces. broadcasting the inspiring television advertisement. Lyn Conybeare Head of Development

artonview autumn 2006 9 exhibition galleries

Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3 March – 12 June 2006 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington 5 July – 8 October 2006

John Constable John Constable (1776–1837) is one of the greatest British A boat passing a lock 1826 oil on canvas Royal Academy landscape painters, renowned for his ‘pure and unaffected of Arts, London, Diploma representation of nature’. Constable: impressions of work, accepted in 1829 land, sea and sky showcases the extraordinary range of Constable’s work, from his outdoor sketches to his cabinet pictures to some of his larger exhibition pieces. It presents the breadth of his approach to image making and shows the brilliance of his depiction of nature: how he captured light in the sky and reflected on the ground, how he showed it glistening on water and sparkling in the trees, how he animated the landscape and created a sense of air that brought nature alive. It especially demonstrates the vitality of his many impressions of specific places and of particular times of day, and how he gave these brief moments a continuing existence. It also indicates the significance of these sketches, how Constable used these impressions in creating his exhibition pictures, in transporting something of their directness and immediacy into his larger work. The son of Golding Constable, a prosperous corn and coal merchant, mill owner, and barge operator, and his wife Anne (née Watts), Constable was born on 11 June 1776. He grew up at East Bergholt, along the Stour River in Suffolk, England. He spent several years working in his father’s milling business, where he learnt to understand the importance of weather to an agricultural community and to observe atmospheric phenomena with a disciplined

10 national gallery of australia artonview autumn 2006 11 John Constable eye. At the same time, he privately pursued his ambition to For the most part, Constable painted places with View towards the rectory, East Bergholt be a painter, working in the fields, painting one view for a which he felt a deep emotional attachment, or that were 30 September 1810 certain time each day until the shadows changed. In 1796, associated with his family and friends. He visited the oil on canvas laid on panel the engraver and antiquarian John Thomas (‘Antiquity’) cathedral city of Salisbury for the first time in September John G Johnson collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smith advised Constable not to people his landscapes 1811 as a guest of the Bishop, Dr John Fisher. He met with bequeathed in 1917 with imaginary figures as was common at the time, but the Bishop’s nephew and namesake, John Fisher, later

John Constable to include figures actually observed in the landscape. He Archdeacon of Berkshire, who became Constable’s closest Salisbury Cathedral from the also suggested that Constable use varying shades of green friend. Constable’s letters to Fisher provide insights into his Bishop’s Grounds 1823 when depicting vegetation, a feature of Constable’s work world and his art and many of his thoughts and feelings. oil on canvas Victoria and Albert Museum, London, gift which was later admired by the French artist, Eugène On his visits to Salisbury over the years Constable painted of John Sheepshanks in 1857 Delacroix. important images of the cathedral and the surrounding

John Constable Constable went to London in February 1799, with countryside, such as Salisbury Cathedral from the A cottage in a cornfield a small allowance from his father, to study at the Royal Bishop’s Grounds 1823, in which he captured the air and c. 1816–17 oil on canvas Academy Schools. After viewing the works on display at atmosphere of a summer morning, with the silver grey of Amgueddfa Cymru the Royal Academy in 1802, he wrote to his East Bergholt the cathedral shining through the golden foliage. National Museum Wales, friend John Dunthorne that ‘Nature is the fountain’s head, On the death of his father on 14 May 1816 Constable Cardiff, purchased with the assistance of the National the source from whence all originality must spring’ and received an inheritance of £400 a year, which gave him Art Collections Fund in 1978 returned to East Bergholt to make ‘laborious studies from a degree of financial independence and enabled him to nature’ to achieve a ‘pure and unaffected representation marry Maria Bicknell, whom he had been courting for of the scenes’. seven years. During their honeymoon they stayed with Between 1808 and 1816, Constable spent most of John and Mary Fisher at their vicarage in Osmington, the summers and early autumns in Suffolk, sketching in near Weymouth, Dorset – with Constable and Fisher the fields and the surrounding countryside, producing spending time sketching the environs of Weymouth Bay works such as View towards the rectory, East Bergholt, 30 and visiting Salisbury. In advance of the visit Fisher had September 1810. He also made drawings in small pocket written to Constable: sketchbooks, which provided the source for a number of My house commands a singularly beautiful view: & you may future paintings. In 1813, he wrote ‘How much real delight study from my very windows … we never see company: I have had with the study of Landscape this summer’. Over & I have brushes paints & canvas in abundance. My wife is the succeeding years he made many sketches in the open quiet & silent & sits & reads without disturbing a soul & Mrs air in Suffolk, creating works that are remarkable for their Constable may follow her example. Of an evening we will freshness and spontaneity, and for the freedom of their sit over an autumnal fireside read a sensible book perhaps brushwork. a Sermon, & after prayers get us to bed at peace with ourselves & all the world. 12 national gallery of australia artonview autumn 2006 13 John Constable Constable was a great innovator, but he also had a Constable is known for his large exhibition pictures Brighton Beach (A sea beach) 1824 passionate interest in the works of the Old Masters, and of the landscape and life in the area around the Stour oil on paper laid on canvas in particular the great tradition of landscape painting of Valley. In A boat passing a lock 1826 he created a Detroit Institute of the Claude Lorraine and Jacob van Ruisdael. He continued landscape full of life, with a strong sky and dramatic light Arts, bequeathed by Mr and Mrs Edgar to study and copy the work of his predecessors as long permeating the scene. Constable sold two of his large B Whitcomb in 1953 as he lived, constantly juxtaposing their interpretations Stour Valley paintings The haywain 1821 and View on the of the natural world against his own experience of it. Stour near Dedham 1822 (Henry E Huntington Library For five weeks in 1823, he visited Sir George Beaumont and Art Gallery, San Marino) to the Parisian dealer John at his home, Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. Constable Arrowsmith who exhibited them at the Paris Salon in wrote to Maria: ‘this is a lovely place indeed … such 1824, where Constable was awarded a gold medal. The grounds – such trees – such distances – rock and water paintings created a sensation in Paris, and were acclaimed – all as it were can be done from the various windows by French artists. of the house’. He studied intensively his host’s collection In the summer of 1824, Constable took his family to and made careful copies of two of Beaumont’s paintings Brighton, hoping that the sea air would restore Maria’s by Claude, including Landscape with goatherd and health. At first he was critical of Brighton, describing goats, after Claude 1823. Although Constable shared Sir it as ‘Piccadilly … by the sea-side’. But in spite of this George’s love of the Old Masters, they disagreed about unflattering assessment, Constable found a new stimulus some technical matters, and Constable’s biographer CR there. He painted a number of oil sketches, such as Leslie recorded their debate about the colours of nature: Brighton Beach (A sea beach) 1824, which reflect his ‘Sir George recommended the colour of an old Cremona enthusiastic response to the moods of the sky and the fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and this effects of light on the sea, at times using a small palette Constable answered by laying an old fiddle on the green knife instead of a brush. lawn before the house’.

14 national gallery of australia Constable and his family moved permanently to On 31 March 1837, aged 60, Constable died suddenly John Constable Stormy sea, Brighton Hampstead in 1827, leasing no. 6 (now no. 40) Well Walk at his home in London. As Leslie reported: 20 July 1828 – opposite the chalybeate well, which had helped to make It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven oil on paper laid on canvas Hampstead into a fashionable spa in the early eighteenth he had read himself to sleep, and his candle, as usual, was Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, gift of Mr and century. ‘This house is to my wife’s heart’s content’, he removed by a servant. Soon after this, his eldest son, who Mrs Paul Mellon in 1981 wrote to Fisher. That year, The Times wrote that Constable had been at the theatre, returned home, and while preparing ‘is unquestionably the first landscape painter of the day’. for bed in the next room, his father awoke in great pain, and In 1828, however, Maria’s health rapidly declined and called to him … He took some rhubarb and magnesia, which she died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Hampstead, on 23 produced sickness, and he drank copiously of warm water, November. For Constable ‘the face of the world [was] which occasioned vomiting. totally changed’; he never fully recovered from the loss Within half an hour of the first attack of pain he had died. and dressed in black for the rest of his life. He began to He was buried alongside his wife in the churchyard of St use stormy weather more self-consciously to express his John’s, Hampstead. a own feelings, as in Stormy sea, Brighton, 20 July 1828, Anne Gray which he painted just four months before Maria died. Assistant Director, Australian Art, and co-curator of He painted it with vigour, applying the paint thickly Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky and quickly to capture the stormy weather and his own This exhibition has been organised by the National personal turmoil. Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Constable was finally elected a Royal Academician on Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 10 February 1829, and Turner visited him to congratulate Further information on the exhibition and symposium him. He was required to present a work to the Academy on Saturday 8 April at the National Gallery of Australia, as his Diploma painting, and he selected A boat passing Canberra, is available at nga.gov.au/Constable. a lock, such was the value he placed on this work.

artonview autumn 2006 15 Constable: the ecstasy of stormy elements

John Constable Constable’s intense study of nature was translated Rainstorm over the sea c. 1824–28 into an unprecedented broad handling of his materials, oil on paper laid on canvas whether pencil or chalk, watercolour or oil paint. As the Royal Academy of Arts, French art critic Ernest Chesneau wrote in the 1880s: London, gift of Isabel Constable in 1888 ‘He is a poet whose nature is roused to ecstasy by stormy elements; although not blind to tranquil beauty, it is life and movement which stir the depths of his soul’. Change, movement and variety were what John Constable chiefly prized. At Brighton, only the breakers and sky could interest a painter: he felt they were ‘lovely indeed and always varying’. The sky was the paradigm of natural change, and Constable threw himself into the study of it more intensely perhaps than any painter before him. In 1821 and 1822 alone he made around one hundred studies of skies. The starting point in what must surely be Constable’s most famous letter to his friend John Fisher, of 23 October 1821, constitutes an aesthetic manifesto. The skies in some of his exhibition pictures had been criticised, and Fisher had defended them, so the painter felt he should explain his principles of sky painting. He began by telling his friend that he had been doing a good deal of ‘skying’, since it was the most difficult part of landscape painting, but one of the most important. Quoting the painter and academician Joshua Reynolds who stated that Titian, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorraine had made their skies ‘sympathise’ with their subjects, Constable went on to say that the sky was ‘the key note, the standard of “scale”, and the chief “organ of sentiment”’, as well

16 national gallery of australia artonview autumn 2006 17 John Constable as being ‘the “source of light” in nature – and governs later, but also for a major Stour Valley subject. A storm off the coast of Brighton 1824 every thing’. He explained that the execution of his skies The inscription also puts a premium on movement, oil on paper laid on card was often faulty because he was too anxious about them, and this was even more marked in a number of others, private collection ‘which alone will destroy that Easy appearance which such as that on Cloud study, Hampstead, trees at right

John Constable nature always has – in all her movements’: a particularly 11 September 1821: Cloud study, Hampstead, telling idea, because Constable seems to be thinking here Hampstead, Sepr.11, 1821. 10 to 11. Morning under the sun trees at right 11 September 1821 of the movement of nature as related to the movement of – Clouds silvery grey, on warm ground. Sultry. Light wind to oil on paper laid on board his brush. the S.W. fine all day – but rain in the night following. Royal Academy of Arts, These were generalities, but the most important This highly circumstantial description tells us how quickly London, gift of Isabel Constable in 1888 evidence of Constable’s involvement with the sky lies Constable worked (10 to 11am), how he took notice of in the many inscriptions he wrote on the reverse of the the direction of light, the wind, the temperature and sketches. The best-known (because it was published humidity, as well as of the later weather situation, and it by his friend and biographer CR Leslie, who owned is the type of inscription that has led some commentators the sketch) is on the Melbourne sky study, Clouds to believe that the painter was a close student of 5 September 1822: meteorology at this time. 5th September 1822, 10 o’clock. Morning looking South- Certainly all these features of the weather were East very brisk wind at West, very bright and fresh grey discussed in a book Constable acquired and annotated clouds running very fast over a yellow bed about half way heavily: Thomas Forster’s Researches about Atmospheric in the sky. Very appropriate for the coast at Osmington. Phaenomena (1815). He often found himself disagreeing Constable had hoped to join John Fisher at Osmington with Forster, but he also marked several passages where in April 1822, but could not. This sketch was made later he found the meteorologist’s account of special interest. at Hampstead, and the inscription tells us that Constable One concerned the formation of cumulus clouds: had no problem thinking that an inland sky could suit a … in the evening, when the heat is diminished, the air coastal scene, just as he used a Hampstead sky of 1819 deposits its vapour again in the form of dew, which not only for an upland Hampstead scene several years gravitates to the ground, becoming more dense as it

18 national gallery of australia approaches the earth, because the lower atmosphere is not Forster also dealt with perhaps the most important John Constable Clouds 5 September 1822 the coolest; and finally lodges on the surface of the herbage, function of meteorology, weather forecasting, and oil on paper laid or on the ground, where it awaits the reascending sun to be Constable inscribed several notes in this section of the on cardboard again evaporated. book, including the word cumulostrati against the line: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, acquired through Constable was proud of being able to produce the ’Large clouds, like rocks, forebode great showers’. He is the Felton Bequest in 1938 effect of dew in his paintings: ‘there goes all my dew’ he interpreting folk wisdom in modern scientific terms, and complained to Leslie when another artist warmed up one this raises the question of the date of his reading of Forster, of his exhibition paintings with a glaze of asphaltum just whose book is first mentioned by Constable in a letter of before the opening of the 1829 Royal Academy show. 1836. My own view is that he became interested in the Forster’s account of this cycle of nature must have science of meteorology only after 1830, when he began especially appealed to Constable because it chimed with recording unusual heavenly phenomena, as in London from another account of a water cycle in a work of natural Hampstead Heath in a storm; with a double rainbow 1831; theology by William Paley, recommended to him by Fisher when he was preparing the often meteorological letterpress in 1825: for English landscape; when he was having difficulties with From the sea are exhaled those vapours which form the the rainbow in David Lucas’s large mezzotint of Salisbury clouds; these clouds descend in showers, which penetrating Cathedral from the meadows, which was not published into the crevices of the hills, supply springs; which springs until 1848 as The rainbow; and when was planning (but flow in little streams into the valleys; and these uniting never delivered) a lecture on the sky for the Hampstead become rivers; which rivers, in turn, feed the ocean. So Institute Literary and Scientific Society. there is an incessant circulation of the same fluid; and not The key to Constable’s intensive involvement with one drop probably more or less now than there was at the the sky in the early twenties is surely the changeability creation. of the weather, its ‘before’ and ‘after’, and it brings a Constable’s brilliant sketch, Rainstorm over the sea landscape element into the lively academic debate on c. 1824–28, could well serve as an illustration to this the relationship of painting and poetry. History painters religious idea. within the Royal Academy were anxious to show that

artonview autumn 2006 19 John Constable their art, like poetry, could represent time as well as washes (hence depth of tone) to be applied to various Cloud study 1822 oil on paper space, by selecting the ‘pregnant moment’. Speaking of parts of the design; there is no hint of an interest in The Frick Collection, New Raphael in 1801, the Professor of Painting, Henry Fuseli, weather. Attention to light and shade, or chiaroscuro, was York, bequest of Henrietta told the students (Constable possibly among them) that Constable’s most constant and significant preoccupation ES Lockwood in memory of her mother and father, ‘the moment of his choice never suffers the action to as a painter. Whereas, as a painterly device, chiaroscuro Ellery Sedgwick and Mabel stagnate or to expire; it is the moment of transition, the has a long history in art, Constable’s interpretation was Cabot Sedgwick in 2001 crisis big with the past and pregnant with the future’. substantially original, for he regarded it not simply as a John Constable Constable in 1821 was in the thick of his campaign to function of visual structuring, but as an attribute of nature Harwich Lighthouse c. 1820 impress the public with his six-foot canvases, and to raise itself. For the 1833 second edition of English landscape oil on canvas Tate, London, gift of the status of landscape in the Academy; and it is more he amplified its title to show that the mezzotints were Maria Louisa Constable, than likely that he would want to take a leaf from the ‘Principally intended to display the Phenomena of the Isabel Constable and Lionel Bicknell history painters’ book. Chiar’oscuro of Nature’; and in a Prospectus of 1835 he Constable in 1888 One of Constable’s most vivid memories as a student wrote that he hoped: at the Royal Academy was being told by Benjamin the Landscape Painter shall be aware that the West – who was correcting one of Constable’s pictures CHIAR’OSCURO really does exist in NATURE (as well as Tone) with white chalk – ‘Always remember, Sir, that light – and, that it is the medium by which the grand and varied and shadow never stand still‘, and that his skies should aspects of Landscape are displayed, both in the fields and on always aim at brightness. When staying with Sir George canvass … a Beaumont in 1823 Constable showed a rather abstract John Gage concern for the way clouds serve to distribute light and shade in any sky, by copying all twenty schemata of John Gage taught for twenty years in the Department clouds by Alexander Cozens, from his compilation, A New of History of Art, Cambridge University, is a fellow of the British Academy and recently worked on the Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Paris ‘Constable’ show, 2002–03. He is co-curator of Compositions of Landscape (c. 1785). Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky. John Gage, Constable’s pencilling gives the clouds more with other leading international scholars, will contribute to the Constable symposium at the National Gallery of volume and more movement than the originals, whose Australia, Canberra, on Saturday 8 April 2006. Further inscriptions simply prescribe the number of watercolour information available at nga.gov.au/Constable.

20 national gallery of australia Australia and Constable National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3 March – 12 June 2006

The landscape painter has to realise that [the sky] is not Among the most recent of the works in the exhibition Philip Wolfhagen The path of least resistance something secondary, like a backdrop, but that are those by Lesley Duxbury who has looked to Constable (to J. Constable) 1989 it is above you, at the sides of you, and all around. for inspiration in a series of paintings and prints. In her oil and powder pigment on paper laid on canvas Thus wrote the prominent Australian landscape artist, Untitled 2003 series, she painted on paper on canvas artist’s collection Hans Heysen, a great admirer of Constable’s work who, because this was a method Constable used, not only with like Constable, was aware of the expressive significance his Hampstead cloud studies but also in other paintings. of the sky and its ability to dictate the mood of a landscape. Like her contemporary Philip Wolfhagen, she has been Such is the power of Constable’s art that it has interested depicting the movement of clouds as indicators inspired many artists, including Hans Heysen and a range of passing time. of Australian artists: Conrad Martens, Tom Roberts, The works in this exhibition show that Constable’s art Arthur Streeton, Howard Taylor, Philip Wolfhagen and has continued to inspire artists – and viewers – into the Lesley Duxbury, among others. It is for this reason that in present day. a Australia we are presenting a second exhibition alongside Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky, called Anne Gray Assistant Director, Australian Art Australia and Constable, which will include examples of the works of some of these Australian artists, and one New Zealand artist, Toss Woollaston.

artonview autumn 2006 21 Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

Malaysia Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in derived from a Western orientalist perspective, the Keris 19th century gold, iron, nickel Southeast Asia is the first international exhibition to mechanist model of the ‘layer cake’ used to describe the Department of Museums and present the spectacular heritage of five hundred years sequential relationship of Islam to Hindu and Buddhist Antiquities, Kuala Lumpur of Islamic art, from the fourteenth to twentieth century, traditions in Southeast Asian history has reinforced Malaysia in our region. It is astonishing that the contribution of studies which emphasised the dichotomy between Breast plate 19th century, Islam to Southeast Asian art has been so neglected religion (agama) and indigenous customs derived gold, gemstone Department of Museums and when the archipelago is the most populous region from ancestral tradition (adat). The focus on perceived Antiquities, Kuala Lumpur of Islam on the planet today. Since the publication gulfs between a textural theory of Islam and its local of Sir Stamford Raffles’s seminal study The History daily practice underlined an implication that Islam in of Java in 1817, European scholars working from the Southeast Asian societies was somehow less authentic viewpoint of an increasingly secular society have often than that of the Middle East. This discourse created been ill equipped to understand the subtle dialogue an intellectual climate where discussion on the role of between art and spirituality in the Islamic world of Islamic art, seen as a foreign overlay on a more real Southeast Asia. In much historical art scholarship, indigenous foundation, often became marginalised.

22 national gallery of australia Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

artonview autumn 2006 23 Kelantan, Malaysia Nevertheless the term ‘Islamic art’, invented by its most beautiful and elaborate forms through various Qur’an c. 1900 European paper, nineteenth-century Western scholarship, is also fraught regional styles such as in Trengganu, Patani and Banten. pigment, gold leaf with difficulties and serves more to emphasise ideas In Southeast Asia the decoration of the Qur’an National History Museum, of difference rather than define aesthetic goals. Many and other sacred texts articulated the believer’s deep Kuala Lumpur Muslims would suggest that perhaps the only true reverence for faith. Rulers and religious institutions also Islamic art is the decoration of the Qur’an, and other sponsored the production of illuminated manuscripts in religious texts, represented in Crescent moon by local regional languages, including Malay and Javanese. thirty-five of the finest illuminated manuscripts from One of the most exquisite works of art in the exhibition Southeast Asia, including one of the earliest surviving is the Javanese manuscript Serat Dewi Ruci, dated 1886 Qur’an from the collection of the National Library of and possibly decorated by the famous Yogyakarta Indonesia. The written Qur’an is the revealed message court painter Jayadipura. It depicts the wondrous story of God and hence the calligrapher is often regarded as of the warrior Werkudara’s search for the elixir of life. the quintessential Muslim artist: any other art may be Although Werkudara is more commonly known as created by a non-Muslim, but God’s holy word, revealed Bima, the hero of the Indian Mahabharata epic, and to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel, should only be the manuscript is illustrated in the style of wayang written by a pious believer in a state of ritual purity. kulit conventionally identified with the Hindu epics of Religious inscriptions are found on a wide variety of the shadow puppet theatre, nevertheless the Serat art objects, including luxurious royal keris. But it was in Dewi Ruci is quintessentially Sufi in its mystical tale of the decoration of religious manuscripts, rather than the the perilous journey towards the conquest of self. transcription of the Arabic text, that Islamic art achieved

24 national gallery of australia The Dewi Ruci story was composed in the include a humorous depiction of two servant figures Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia sixteenth century and another highlight of Crescent (panakawan), engaged in a startling sexual encounter. Serat Dewi Ruci 1886 moon is a small collection of rare wood carvings The panels, with their distinctive style similar to the European paper, ink, that dates from around the transitional era from Hindu- stone reliefs of East Javanese Hindu-Buddhist temples, pigment, gold leaf Presented by the Friends of Buddhism to Islam in Java. The uncertainties of time may even have originated from a late fifteenth-century the Gallery Library in memory and the tropical climate of Southeast Asia have not Majapahit palace context as historical evidence of Tina Wentcher, 1982 National Gallery of Victoria, favoured the survival of many art media, including suggests it was once a common practice to recycle Melbourne the wood once used widely to decorate mosques and architectural ornament for new building construction. palaces as well as utilitarian objects. These unique The occurrence of pre-Islamic art motifs, and works are from Cirebon’s Kraton Kasepuhan palace literary themes, in the context of Islamic civilisation in which was established by the Muslim saint Sunan Southeast Asia is not surprising given the nature of Gunung Jati and today is the oldest continuously transmission of the new belief into the archipelago occupied Islamic palace in Southeast Asia. and the receptiveness to cross-cultural engagement The exhibition includes two unusual panels, amongst early Sufi teachers, many of whom were decorated on both sides, which appear to be the only practising craftspeople, in comparison to the stricter surviving narrative wood sculpture from that period. doctrinal orthodoxy that followed in the wake of the Local people describe the scenes as the story of Adam nineteenth-century Wahhabi reformist movement. A and Hawa (Eve) but they probably depict the Sri Tanjung spectacular Cirebon batik Skirt cloth, recently restored tale from the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist period and for this exhibition, includes the curious depiction

artonview autumn 2006 25 of elephants in the form of rocks. Such images are often attributed to orthdox Islamic injunctions against naturalistic representations; nevertheless, the precedent for this image may be found in an episode from the Javanese version of the Mahabharata epic where the exiled Arjuna discovers an enormous stone in the shape of an elephant. This event occurs just as the hero meets the god and goddess of love sporting in an idyllic natural setting and the landscape pattern on many Cirebon batik cloths, like on this example, are often described as representing fantastic pleasure gardens (taman sari). The depiction of rocky landscapes in Cirebon textiles appears to be inspired specifically by the famous Sunyragi Gardens, with its fantastic grottoes, built by the local sultan in the eighteenth century as a retreat for meditation. One wood carving with a clearly documented religious provenance and dated to the early period of Islam is a lively statue of a lion. This originally adorned the burial vault of the holy man Sunan Sendang located at the famous East Javanese mosque of Sendang Duwur erected about 1561. It is most unusual to find three-dimensional zoomorphic images in a religious context in Islam, and only occurs in Southeast Asia during this Javanese period marking the transition from Hindu-Buddhist belief to Islam. The elegant decorative portrayal of the lion reflects the influence of Chinese aesthetic traditions at a time when many Muslim Chinese communities were being established in the coastal ports of the Southeast Asia archipelago. These Chinese merchant settlers were key participants in the international commerce in blue- and-white high-fired ceramics that became an integral part of the archipelago’s Islamic art history. Porcelain was a major commodity in the legendary ‘spice trade’ stretching from Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The trade ware is a reminder that, while the precise parameters of the term ‘Islamic art’ may at times be difficult to define, there is a very clear and recognisable Islamic sensibility pervading art produced by both Muslims and non-Muslims for the context of Islamic patronage. Included in Crescent moon are Chinese ceramics from the Yuan until Qing Dynasty as well as Vietnamese and European export ware intended for these markets. These ceramics embody a distinctive Islamic sensibility through the use of Arabic inscriptions, decorative motifs based on markedly geometrical designs and a variety of vessel shapes, such as the long-spouted ewer, clearly derived from Middle Eastern and South Asia metal prototypes.

26 national gallery of australia Mantingan, Central Cirebon, north coast Java, Java, Indonesia Indonesia Skirt cloth (detail) One side of two panels 19th century cotton, natural depicting figures in the dyes, hand-drawn batik landscape 16th century Conserved with the teak, wood assistance of the Maxwell Collection of Kraeton Family in memory of Kasepuhan Museum, Anthony Forge, 2005 Cirebon National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Makam Sunan Sendang, Sendang Duwur, East Java, Indonesia Lion 16th century wood National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta

Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, found in Maluku, Indonesia Plate late 14th century, Yuan Dynasty 1271–1369 underglaze blue porcelain National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta Richly patterned Indian trade cloths, formerly preserved as ancestral heirloom objects in both Islamic and non-Islamic societies of the archipelago and now assembled into one of the greatest collections at the National Gallery of Australia, also formed part of this cultural exchange alongside the ceramics. The textiles document the international identity of Islamic aesthetics in the pre-modern era and include a spectacular Ceremonial cloth and sacred heirloom whose distinctive quadrature design, a symbolic map of paradise, reflects the influence of Sufi cosmic symbolism. Islamic mystical cosmograms had a significant influence on a variety of Southeast Asian arts, including textiles like batik headcloths. The symmetrical mirrored patterns convey concepts of unity and multiplicity related to the Islamic doctrine of tauhid, although their geometrical balanced appearance is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the influence of mandala designs from earlier Hindu-Buddhist art. In the preparation of Crescent moon, an award- winning Indonesian calligrapher and scholar of Southeast Asian Qur’an illumination, Bpk Ali Akbar was invited to suggest three Islamic quotes that encapsulated a Muslim perspective for this exhibition. These quotes are displayed in each of the three galleries that present the rich heritage of the sultanate arts, the international identity of Islam aesthetics in the archipelago and the beauty of the holy word revealed in the Qur’an. It is the second inscription that perhaps most directly speaks to the aspiration of Crescent moon to promote a Coromandel coast, India, greater understanding and appreciation in Australia found in Toraja region, South Sulawesi, Indonesia and overseas for the Islamic art of our region: Ceremonial cloth and sacred heirloom early-to-mid 18th century O Mankind… handspun cotton, We made you into nations and tribes, natural dyes, mordant painting, batik that ye may know one another. Gift of Michael and Al Qur’an, Surah 49: 13 Mary Abbott 1987 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

James Bennett Curator of Asian Art Art Gallery of South Australia

30 national gallery of australia san1230_297x233_Artonview 11/1/06 2:24 PM Page 1

Not your typical hard hat.

Santos searches for oil and gas all over the world. But recently, we’ve discovered something quite

different – precious gold, silk, porcelain and even stone from SouthSoutheast East Asia, including Indonesia. It’s the

Crescent Moon exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. In becoming the principal

sponsor of Crescent Moon: Islamic Art & Civilisation in Southeast Asia, our aim is to

help Australians develop a better understanding of our closest neighbours. And that’s of benefit to everyone.

Banten, Java, Indonesia, Crown, 18th century, gold, precious stones, enamel, metal, 17.0 x 11.5cm (outer crown). National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta. project gallery

War: the prints of Otto Dix

17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006

all images Otto Dix (1891–1969) was born in Untermhausen, men killed in an arbitrary, anonymous and indiscriminate © Otto Dix, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia Thuringia, the son of an ironworker. He initially trained way, the landscape itself is torn apart, desecrated and in Gera and at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts ravaged. Often the landscape appears alien, other-worldly, Otto Dix Zerfallender Kampfgraben as a painter of wall decorations and later taught nightmarish. It appears sometimes as a simple backdrop [Collapsed trenches] plate 9 from the portfolio himself how to paint on canvas. He volunteered as a to human tragedy, but often as a more integral part of the Der Krieg [War] 1924 machine-gunner during the First World War and in the destruction – see for example plate 9, Collapsed trenches. etching, aquatint The Poynton Bequest 2003 autumn of 1915 he was sent to the Western Front. He Collapsed trenches is also typical of a recurrent National Gallery of Australia, was at the Somme during the major allied offensive psychological strategy that underpins much of what Dix Canberra of 1916. During the war, he was wounded a number does in his portfolio. In this image, we are immediately of times, once almost fatally. War profoundly affected aware that something terrible has happened, a perception Dix, and as an artist he took every opportunity, both that is reinforced subliminally by the piece of cloth that during his active service and afterwards, to document seems to loom, vulture-like, over the disintegrated trench. his experiences. These experiences would become It is only on closer inspection, however, that images of the subject matter of many of his later paintings and skeletons, disarticulated limbs and the other debris of war are central to the Der Krieg [War] cycle of prints. slowly reveal themselves – many viewers fail to see, for A portfolio of fifty-one etchings, Der Krieg is example, the foot in the extreme lower left foreground modelled on Francisco Goya’s equally famous and on first inspection, and are horrified when they do. equally devastating Los desastres de la guerra [The Dix’s work is less about objectively documenting disasters of war]. Los desastres detailed Goya’s own the experience of war in the way that many account of the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion and commissioned war artists do; although it does this the Spanish War of Independence from 1808 to 1814. as well, it is about recapturing the nightmare-like Goya’s cycle of eighty-two etchings, which he worked quality of its psychological impact. The images in on for a decade after the Spanish War of Independence, this portfolio convey the immediacy of authentic was not published until 1863, long after his death. experience. Many of them are based on the diary Like Los desastres, Der Krieg uses a variety of etching sketches that Dix made while fighting in the trenches. techniques and does so with an equally astonishing GH Hamilton in the Oxford companion to twentieth facility. Similarly, it exploits the cumulative possibilities century art describes Dix’s cycle as ‘perhaps the of a long sequence of images and mirrors Goya’s most powerful as well as the most unpleasant anti- unflinching, stark realism. The focus of Der Krieg is, in war statements in modern art’, and it has become many respects, quite different from that of Los desastres. a commonplace to see it as an admonition against War for Goya was an intimate horror, its initial impact the barbarity of war. And there is no doubt that localised, its ultimate effect incremental. As the images as a human document it is a powerful cautionary which open Dix’s cycle in particular demonstrate, Dix’s work. At a psychological level, however, its truth war is a modern war – the scale is vast. Not only are goes deeper than this. Dix was both horrified and fascinated by the experience of war.

32 national gallery of australia

Otto Dix In 1963, explaining why he volunteered for the reduced to dark, fugitive shapes seemingly trapped by Mahlzeit in der Sappe army in the First World War he had this to say: ‘I had to the dramatic, vortex-like perspective of the scene. As the (Loretthöhe) [Mealtime in the trenches – The Loretto Hills] experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over bomber swoops down on Lens, one can almost hear the plate 13 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924 and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to noise and feel the panic it creates. Its shadow ominously etching, aquatint experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I’m therefore divides the two groups of people, while the endless The Poynton Bequest 2003 National Gallery of Australia, not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was an inquisitive façades of the buildings stretching into the horizon from Canberra person. I had to see all that myself. I’m such a realist, you both right and left create a narrowing tunnel from which Otto Dix know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in the citizens of Lens seem to have no prospect of escape. Lens wird mit Bomben belegt [Lens being bombed] order to confirm that it’s like that. I have to experience Years later, Dix had this to say: ‘As a young man plate 33 from the portfolio all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself.’ you don’t notice at all that you were, after all, badly Der Krieg [War] 1924 etching, aquatint We can see what Dix was talking about clearly in affected. For years afterwards, at least ten years, I The Poynton Bequest 2003 plate 13, Mealtime in the trenches. Here, in an image kept getting these dreams, in which I had to crawl National Gallery of Australia, Canberra that is as ghastly as it is macabre, a lone soldier gulps through ruined houses, along passages I could down a hasty meal, apparently indifferent to the human hardly get through.’ This nightmarish, hallucinatory skeleton trapped in the frozen landscape beside him. quality pervades all of the Der Krieg images. Dix was not only interested in portraying the impact As stated above, Der Krieg is modelled on Goya’s of war on its combatants, but was also interested in Los desastres. Two of the images that most directly analysing the impact it had on civilian populations. In echo Goya’s work are plate 22, Night-time encounter the brilliantly dynamic composition Lens being bombed with a madman, and the devastating plate 35, The (plate 33), the viewer has an overwhelming sense of the madwoman of St Marie-à-Py. The original German terrifying reality of the actual moment the city of Lens title of plate 22 is Nächtliche Begegnung mit einem in Northern France was bombed. We are drawn into Irrsinnigen: in relationship to this work in particular, the image by the multiple receding lines of the street, the word Irrsinnig in German powerfully conveys the plunging into the distance. In the foreground, the faces of sense that all the neural networks that underpin both the fleeing civilians are distorted by fear and grief. Their one’s sense of self and the apparent rational structure hollow eyes echo the empty, boarded-up windows of the of one’s world have been irretrievably torn to shreds. houses they desert. In the background, these figures are

34 national gallery of australia

Equally harrowing is plate 35, The madwoman of St. in Brussels and plate 36 Visit to Madame Germaine in Otto Dix Marie-à-Py, which depicts a woman crazed with grief Méricourt, both of which depict soldiers visiting a brothel. Nächtliche Begegnung mit einem Irrsinnigen [Night-time proffering her breast to her dead child who lies before her. As a consequence, this image was excluded from the encounter with a madman] plate 22 from the portfolio One of the most famous etchings from Goya’s war portfolio when it was published. Subsequently, however, Der Krieg [War] 1924 cycle was entitled Yo lo vi [I saw it], and we have collectors of the portfolio who were aware of this fact etching, aquatint The Poynton Bequest 2003 the same sense of absolute observed authenticity have sought to re-integrate it into the cycle. In the National Gallery of Australia, in Dix’s portfolio, not only in the images mentioned present instance the image is numbered 59/70 and is Canberra above, but elsewhere – see for example plate 28, from a different edition to the rest of the cycle, which Otto Dix Die Irrsinnige von St. Marie- Seen on the escarpment of Cléry-sur-Somme, and is numbered 58/70, indicating that the original owner à-Py [The madwoman plate 29, Found while digging a trench – Auberive. sought to complete his portfolio of Der Krieg in this way. of St. Marie-à-Py] plate 35 from the portfolio While Dix’s work certainly documents the horrors In terms of the general corpus of Dix’s work, Der Der Krieg [War] 1924 of war, it is also paradoxically sensuous, conveying an Krieg occupies a central place amongst the large etching, aquatint The Poynton Bequest 2003 almost perverse delight in the rendering of horrific detail, number of paintings and works on paper devoted to National Gallery of Australia, indicating that, for Dix, there was an addictive quality the theme of war. This astonishingly powerful work Canberra to the hyper-sensory input of war – something that remains one of the most powerful indictments of war Otto Dix Soldat und Nonne would be familiar to many a war correspondent today. ever conceived, and is universally regarded as one of (Vergewaltigung) The portfolio on display in the exhibition War: the the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. Its [Soldier raping a nun] plate 51 from the portfolio prints of Otto Dix includes plate 51 Soldier raping a nun, acquisition in 2003 represented a major coup for the Der Krieg [War] 1924 which on the advice of Dix’s publisher Karl Nierendorf Gallery having been on the Department of International etching, aquatint The Poynton Bequest 2003 was suppressed when the portfolio was first published Prints desiderata list for years. As a document, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 1924. Nierendorf believed that this image would be cycle demonstrates that its concerns are as relevant seen as a ‘slap in the face for all those who celebrate our today as they were when it was originally conceived. a “heroes” [and] … for all those who have a bourgeois conception of a front-line soldier.’ Indeed, it could Mark Henshaw, Curator, Department of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books; and ‘threaten the whole work with confiscation … People will Gwen Horsfield, Department of International Prints, Intern make this one print into the target of their attacks.’ He had similar reservations about plate 34 Frontline soldiers

artonview autumn 2006 37 new acquisition Asian Art

Ancient aniconic images of the Buddha Shakyamuni

India The ruins of the great stupa at Amaravati was only Onto such slabs, a series of friezes were carved which Amaravati region, Andhra Pradesh rediscovered near the modern town of Guntur in the told the stories of the life (and previous lives) of the Scene from the life of eastern state of Andhra Pradesh in the 1840s, during the Buddha Shakyamuni. These narrative images served a the Buddha Shakyamuni 3rd century CE British colonial period. The stupa was never reconstructed, didactic function for the worshippers who circled the limestone National Gallery of Australia, and the great collections of Amaravati stone sculptures stupas, believed to conceal a relic of the Buddha himself Canberra were largely divided between the Madras Provincial buried within, as part of their pilgrimage. In this scene Museum in today’s Chennai, and the British Museum in worshippers – male and female – holding vases of lotuses London, with a smaller but growing collection located and (one woman) a fly whisk, flank the empty throne with in a museum at the Amaravati site. While this imposing its round cushions, beneath which the Buddha’s footprints marble panel is clearly in the Amaravati style, it may are clearly shown. A part of a trunk or pillar appears have originated from one of the many other stupas above the throne: it may have supported the branches known to have once existed in that region. Unlike the of the bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved contemporaneous sculptures of the better-known Enlightenment, or it may have been topped by a large disc Gandhara region in the north-west of the Indian representing the Wheel of Law, symbol of the Buddha’s subcontinent, this style was not influenced by the Hellenic First Sermon at the Deer Park at Sarnath near Benares traditions brought to Central Asian Buddhist centres by (Varanasi). Alexander the Great. Robyn Maxwell This is the lower register of one of the tall slabs Senior Curator, Asian Art which decorated the exterior of the dome of the stupa.

38 national gallery of australia new acquisition Asian Art

Ancestral gold

Throughout the Indonesian archipelago, valuable clan are an essential part of ritual and communication with Indonesia West Sumba treasures and royal heirlooms are created from gold. The the ancestors, and their display and, in some instances, Breast ornament or pectoral precious metal was part of a complex exchange network exchange (particularly through marriage), cements social [marangga] 19th century gold involving many other parts of Indonesia. In historical relationships. Less sacred versions of the same objects National Gallery of Australia, times, however, much of the gold in Sumba came to the are worn as jewellery on special occasions and for less Canberra island in the form of gold coins which were refashioned powerfully charged rituals. While senior figures rarely wear into elaborate sculptural ornaments, like this double-axe gold, it is common for their children to be adorned with shaped marangga chest ornament. The marangga appears heirloom jewellery for public rituals. Marangga are worn only to be used in the west of Sumba, an eastern island by girls and boys alike. located close to Timor. Similarly-shaped but smaller gold Marangga imagery is also found on stone grave items appear elsewhere in eastern Indonesia. The gold monuments and village altars throughout west Sumba. objects were often created in specific regional styles and Through the construction of stone megaliths for the forms by itinerant smiths from the small nearby islands of internment of great nobles, and the accompanying Savu and Ndao. sacrifices, the soul is said to be protected on its journey Precious heirloom treasures such as marangga are through the Afterlife. Marangga motifs also appear on viewed only on special ceremonial occasions, usually under Sumbanese heirloom textiles worn and displayed at such the supervision of village priests. (Despite the spread important rites. of Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Robyn Maxwell and Melanie Eastburn a large proportion of the population of Sumba still Asian Art follows many ancestral religious practices.) Such objects

artonview autumn 2006 39 new acquisition Australian Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

John Savage Prince Giolo

Prince Giolo, also known as Jeoly, was a native of the island of Meangis in the Philippines. Acquired by the explorer and sailor William Dampier as settlement for a debt, Giolo was taken to England in 1691 and introduced to the English elite, including the reigning monarchs William III and Mary II. This engraving is an advertisement to promote Giolo, the tattooed prince, as a ‘fashionable wonder’, a novelty brought from the ends of the earth to be scrutinised by English society. The engraved text beneath the image gives an account of Giolo’s lineage, admirable physical form, his homelands and a description of his tattoos and their meaning. Little is known of the life of artist John Savage. He flourished in London 1680–1700 and was both an engraver and a publisher. The Prince towers within the landscape and is an imposing figure placed centrally within the composition. His pose is noble and elegant; the small loincloth draped gracefully around his waist covers little of his tattooed body. Beneath the layer of tattoos the Prince’s figure is tall and muscular. The Prince was a particular curiosity for the English: on special request, preferred patrons could view Giolo privately to marvel at this exotic individual and his elaborately tattooed skin, a practice claimed to be reserved in his homeland for royalty. At the Prince’s feet, snakes, scorpions and lizards are repelled by the magical powers vested in his tattoos. This image of Giolo is an example of the introduction of tattooing to the West. Less than a century after Giolo’s death from smallpox, Captain James Cook introduced the word ‘tatau’, now tattoo, into the English language after observing the Tahitian practice, and the fame of a man called Omai.

Deborah Hill John Savage Gordon Darling Graduate Intern Prince Giolo, Son to the Australian Prints and Drawings King of Meangis c. 1692 engraving National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

40 national gallery of australia new acquisition Australian Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books

William Hodges Omai

Unlike Prince Giolo, Omai’s journey to England from Tahiti in 1774 was voluntary. This portrait of Omai was engraved by James Caldwell in 1777 after a drawing by William Hodges, several years after the return of the HMAS Resolution and HMAS Adventure to England. It was on Captain James Cook’s second voyage to Tahiti that Cook and Hodges met Omai. Hodges was an artist aboard the HMAS Resolution employed to document the landscape, flora and fauna, but his works from this period are better known for their sublime atmosphere rather than their topographical accuracy. Omai sailed as a crew- member on HMAS Adventure and was placed in the care of Joseph Banks and Dr Solander upon arrival in England. While the intentions of the English may have been to exhibit Omai as an ‘exotic wonder’, Omai was ambitious and hoped to use the journey to convince those in England to arm him in a war to reclaim his native island from the men of neighbouring Borabora. Hodges illustrates the famous islander dressed in white robes with loose black hair and a dignified pose, as he was popularly portrayed. Omai’s comfortable glance over his shoulder to engage the viewer gives the work an intimate atmosphere, as if we occupy his personal space. Omai’s tattoos are not visible in this portrait, but they were a significant part of his exotic appeal. Omai spent two years in England during which time he was the darling of polite society, celebrated in literature, studied for science, and even presented to King George III and Queen Charlotte at Kew. Unlike other men and women taken from the South Pacific to England, Omai did not fall prey to Western disease and was returned to Tahiti print after William Hodges on Cook’s third and fateful voyage to the Pacific. Omai engraver James Caldwell Omai 1777 engraving carried home with him an array of European trappings National Gallery of Australia, including weapons, crockery, animals and clothing. Canberra

Deborah Hill Gordon Darling Graduate Intern Australian Prints and Drawings

artonview autumn 2006 41 new acquisition International Photography

RA Cunningham’s Australian Aboriginal international touring company

[attributed to] In 1882 Canadian theatrical agent Robert A Cunningham to develop a crowd-pleasing repertoire of dances, William Robinson, photographer came to Queensland to secure ‘wild’ Aboriginal people songs, boomerang throwing and mock fights in stage H Negretti & Zambra as performers for touring in America and Europe in costumes (as they deeply resented requests to be printers and publishers PT Barnum’s show, ‘Ethnological Congress of Strange and photographed naked). Cunningham soon realised the Members of RA Cunningham’s Australian Savage Tribes’. Six of the nine troupe members ‘recruited’ value of professional photography, and sales of images Aboriginal international were from separate communities on Palm Island and became a feature of all the European venues. Relatively touring company, (left to right): Jenny, Toby three from Hinchinbrook Island. They did not all speak few copies of the tour images are known to survive. her son, her husband the same traditional languages. Only two spoke some Cunningham was undeterred by the death of the Toby, Billy, Bob, Jimmy English, and these were used to assert Cunningham’s majority of his first troupe and returned to recruit a and Sussy (Crystal Palace, London, April 1884) claims that they were not coerced. Their performance in second group in 1892 in preparation for the living albumen silver carte de visite Barnum’s Congress began in 1883 and in the following ethnological displays planned for the 1893 World’s on Negretti & Zambra yellow mount year two members of the troupe, Tambo and Wangong, Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The Gallery has also National Gallery of Australia, had died. Cunningham left Barnum in 1884 and began a recently acquired photographs of troupe members from Canberra long tour across Europe despite the deaths of Bob, Toby ‘Meston’s Wild Australia’, which performed in Brisbane, senior, Sussy and Jimmy in 1885. Only Jenny, her son Sydney and Melbourne in 1892–93. This company was Toby and Billy returned to Australia in 1888. Their full and established by the Queensland journalist Archibald extraordinary story has been told by the Australian writer Meston who had formerly assisted Cunningham. and anthropologist Roslyn Poignant in her 2004 book Gael Newton Professional savages: captive lives and western spectacle. Senior Curator, Photography Cunningham knew nothing of Aboriginal culture, so the members must have worked together as a group

42 national gallery of australia new acquisition Australian Photography

RA Cunningham’s Australian Aboriginal JW Lindt Coontajandra and Sanginguble, international touring company Central Australian Aboriginals

German-born photographer JW Lindt made his reputation in the 1870s–1880s for his studio tableaux portraits of Aboriginal people made in Grafton in 1872, and continued to market these images until his death in 1926. Coontajandra and Sanginguble, the two sitters in his 1893 portrait, were Workii clan members from the Mount Isa region. They were photographed, possibly in Sydney in late 1892 but more likely in Melbourne in January 1893, as members of ‘The Wild Australia Show’. This event was presented in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne by Archibald Meston, a Queensland journalist who later became the first Protector of Aborigines in Queensland. He hoped to tour the company to the 1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago whose organisers had called for living ethnographic displays. Meston’s partner in the venture was Harry Brabazon Purcell, a Brisbane-based stock and station agent who had rounded up the performers for Meston from across North Queensland and Central Australia. Purcell delivered lectures in Melbourne in 1893, showing his considerable ethnographic knowledge of the central Australian language groups. The gouges and gashes shown on Coontajandra’s arm and back, for example, were explained as evidence of a ritual fighting practice – not traditional initiation and scarification. Meston was, however, also a considerable bushman and expert in Aboriginal languages and culture. He was adept at boomerang throwing too. Throughout his life, Lindt presented himself as a gentleman-ethnographer but was more interested in New Guinea tribes. He never went to Central Australia. The work is one of his last ethnographic works but significantly was marketed as ‘art’. It has the tall thin ‘Japanese scroll’ format typical of a style of exhibition print which Lindt made around 1900. It is modelled on the new Pictorialist photography and in its elegiac humanism anticipates the portraiture of Edward S Curtis in America who began his first Native American Indian portraits in Seattle in 1895.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography

JW Lindt Coontajandra and Sanginguble, Central Australian Aboriginals 1893 carbon photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra artonview autumn 2006 43 new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Jeffrey Smart Waiting for the train

Jeffrey Smart I like living in the twentieth century – to me the world has These are in stark contrast to the painterly and dramatic Waiting for the train c. 1970 synthetic polymer paint never been more beautiful. I am trying to paint the real sky, which is threatening rain. Smart considers such on canvas world I live in, as beautifully as I can, with my own eye. skies to be an important formal element within his Gift of Alcoa World Alumina paintings: ‘Did you ever notice that Titian’s skies are Australia 2005 More than any other Australian artist, Jeffrey Smart National Gallery of Australia, dark? I need a dark sky for the composition, because has explored the aesthetics of the modern urban Canberra pale blue at the top of a frame looks nothing.’ environment. Born in Adelaide in 1921, he has devoted There has been a remarkable consistency in Smart’s himself to painting images unique to our time: highways paintings since the 1960s, and the artist repeatedly and airports, factories and road signs. Smart asks us to employs a basic repertoire of subjects and compositional look again at such prosaic subjects and to consider the devices in his works. This allows him to concentrate on possibility of discovering a new form of beauty in them. what he considers the most important aspect of his As with the best of Smart’s paintings, the subject work. He has said: ‘The subject matter is only the hinge of Waiting for the train c. 1970 is enigmatic. It features that opens the door, the hook on which one hangs the a small group of men, women and children on a coat. My only concern is putting the right shapes in railway platform, evoking a single moment captured the right colours in the right places. My main concern and rendered timeless. Smart’s passion for geometric always is the geometry, the structure of the painting.’ forms and artificial colours is evident in the precise depiction of the man-made elements in the work: the Elena Taylor Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture sign, platform, mesh fence, railing and the buildings.

44 national gallery of australia new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Fred Williams Landscape

Fred Williams is widely regarded as Australia’s finest Landscape 1977 was most likely painted on location Fred Williams Landscape 1977 synthetic polymer paint landscape painter of the twentieth century. His at Cavan, a historic property on the Murrumbidgee River on paper distinctive works have changed the way in which we near Yass, NSW, during a painting trip in August of that Gift of Alcoa World Alumina perceive the unique topography and vegetation of this year. It is a characteristic example of Williams’s later Australia 2005 National Gallery of Australia, country. In his paintings and gouaches of the Australian works. The composition, divided into horizontal bands, Canberra bush Williams devised his own formal language of emphasises the essential flatness of the landscape and the mark-making and spatial configuration, combining vast expanse of the sky above. The predominantly earth his interest in contemporary abstraction with his colours of the landscape are enlivened by vivid streaks enduring concern to express the essence of place. and dabs of crimson and teal green, the highly textured Born in Melbourne in 1927, Williams studied at the earth contrasting with the smooth and empty sky. National Gallery of Victoria School and at the George Painted in the same year as his solo exhibition Bell Art School in Melbourne. In 1951 he left for London of gouaches ‘Australian Landscape’ at New York’s where he continued his studies at the Chelsea College Museum of Modern Art, the generic title Landscape of Art and the Central Art School. On his return in 1977 reflects Williams’s interest at this time in not only 1956, the landscape became his artistic preoccupation describing the particulars of place, but in capturing and Williams began making frequent painting trips the essential nature of the Australian landscape. to the countryside around Melbourne, later also Elena Taylor travelling further afield to remote parts of Australia. Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

artonview autumn 2006 45 new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Lola Ryan’s Harbour Bridges

Lola Ryan Lola Ryan is from the Dharawal/Eora people and lived in I suppose I’d be 16 when I started making shell work. Dharawal/Eora people, I got started because there was money in it and in those La Perouse community the La Perouse Aboriginal community in Sydney until her A selection of Harbour death in 2003. She was a senior artist who, along with Depression years every little counted. I reckon that you Bridges 2000 shells, her sister Mavis Longbottom, had been making shell work have to be a bit artistic to do shell work, if not I don’t mixed media on cardboard (front, right and back) since the 1930s. This tradition dates back to the late 1880s think you could make it: to match all your shells and get Donated by Peter Fay 2005 and was a form of income for the displaced community, the colour into it …. The only place you can see my and and (far left) proposed Lola’s shell work at the moment is in the Powerhouse acquisition in memory of Dr which had relocated from Circular Quay in the early 1800s. Joan Kerr (1938–2004) The La Perouse women would use discarded Museum, which has a display of La Perouse history. National Gallery of Australia, cardboard as a foundation for their work and use a Now and again somebody will come along and ask Canberra fabric base, glitter and sometimes lace in conjunction us to make something like a box or a Sydney Harbour with small bivalve shells (two halves) and some mollusc Bridge for Mother’s Day or birthdays … Other than that shells to cover the forms. The combination of different we don’t go out of our way trying to make a sale. shell shapes, colours and textures enabled Ryan to create A selection of Lola Ryan’s Harbour Bridges striking patterns in deliberate, repetitive and contrasting were featured in the National Gallery of Australia’s designs that reflect the shape of the object. She used travelling exhibition Home sweet home: works the templates and the glue recipe developed by her from the Peter Fay collection and were donated father – flour and water mixed with powdered oyster to the Gallery by Peter Fay in 2005. shells – because, as she told collector Peter Fay, ‘we Tina Baum didn’t always have araldite’. Mavis Longbottom stated: Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

46 national gallery of australia new acquisition International Decorative Arts

Hermann Jünger Necklace

Whether adorning the neck or presented as a collection of stone elements is alleviated by the beautifully variegated Hermann Jünger Necklace 2005 sculptural objects, the geometrical elegance of Hermann character of these natural materials, while the play of gold, silver, lapis lazuli Jünger’s Necklace is strikingly effective. This necklace is light on the metal surfaces offsets their severe outlines. Gift of Helen W Drutt one of a number produced by Jünger that were designed Born in Hanau, Germany, in 1928, Jünger English, Philadelphia, through the American Friends of to give the wearer the opportunity to reconfigure the taught goldsmithing at the Akademie der Bildenden the National Gallery of work by adding or subtracting some of its elements. Künste in Munich from 1972. On his death early in Australia, Canberra These kits, comprising a gold neck ring and a collection of 2005, he left a legacy as an important inspiration pendants to thread onto it, fit into a customised wooden and mentor to many contemporary jewellers, among box meant for open display when the jewellery is not them a number of Australians. being worn. The pendants are made of stone and metal, This work is a recent gift to the National Gallery referencing both the man-made and the natural worlds, of Australia from the Philadelphia jewellery scholar and their geometric shapes taken from Euclidean geometry. collector, Helen W Drutt English, a passionate advocate This work bridges the space between abstraction and of the craft and a long-time friend of Hermann Jünger. nature, with the hard, shiny character of the metal Sarah Edge pendants contrasting with the softer, imperfect surfaces Curatorial Assistant, Decorative Arts and Design of the granite and lapis lazuli shapes. The heaviness of the

artonview autumn 2006 47 new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture

Joseph Beuys Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee

Joseph Beuys Ja, Ja, Ja, ‘If you have all of my multiples, then you have me entirely’, fur – sometimes human hair – with wool, cotton or other Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee [Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, said Joseph Beuys. For the German sculptor, performance fabrics, the insulating properties of felt are remarkable. No, No, No, No, No] 1969 artist, teacher, activist and self-styled shaman, multiples When opened, the object recalls a ‘book safe’ where felt squares, 32-minute audiotape are physical vehicles for his ideas. They mark his opposition pages are cut out to hide an item, whether firearm, no. 45 from an edition of 100 Gift of Dr K David G Edwards to panel painting and traditional sculpture as autonomous illicit substance or banned text. This prompts questions National Gallery of Australia, genres, while allowing distribution of his work to a of the contents: is this tape and the voices recorded on Canberra © Joseph Beuys, Licensed broader audience. Sometimes Beuys’s multiples are relics it being protected, concealed or censored? The soundtrack by Bild-Kunst and from a performance or action, in other cases they are described as ‘granny gossip’, co-narrated by Beuys’s VISCOPY, Australia elaborately planned objects derived from earlier works. long-time supporters Christian and Johannes Stüttgen, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee comprises was recorded at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, a stack of felt squares hollowed at the centre to house Düsseldorf, in December 1968. It was published an audio cassette. The object is reminiscent of Beuys’s by Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, Milan. larger sculptures in which stacks of felt are juxtaposed This work, and another generous gift from the David with sheets of copper or iron. They suggest the energy and Margery Edwards New York Art Collection, Painting needed to be stored, transmitted or received in order version 1–90 1976, join Beuys’s major installation Stripes to effect change in society. The artist’s use of felt is from the house of the shaman 1962–72 1980 and several usually traced to the wartime story of his aeroplane other multiples, artist’s books and a film in the collection. crash in the Crimea: to heal and warm his body, his Tartar rescuers rubbed him with fat and wrapped him Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture in felt. A combination of matted, compressed animal

48 national gallery of australia travelling exhibitions autumn 2006

No ordinary place: the art of David Malangi National Sculpture Prize and exhibition Supported by Principal Sponsor Newmont 2005 Australia Ltd, a proud partner of Reconciliation A partnership with Macquarie Bank Australia. Also supported by the Indigenous Arts Strategy, Northern Territory Government, The National Sculpture Prize is a partnership the Seven Network, Visions of Australia, an between the National Gallery of Australia Australian Government Program supporting touring and Macquarie Bank to support and promote exhibitions by providing funding assistance for Australian sculpture. It is one of the most the development and touring of cultural material generous prizes for contemporary art in Glen Clarke American crater near David Malangi Daymirringu across Australia. The project has been developed Hanoi #2 2005 (detail) Australia, with a non-acquisitive prize of Luku (foot) 1994 (detail) in association with Bula’bula Arts, Ramingining. Vietnamese and US currency, Private collection, Canberra $50,000 awarded to the winning artist. cotton thread, wood © David Malangi Licensed A celebration of the art and life of David Malangi National Gallery of Australia, The travelling component of the exhibition by VISCOPY, Australia Daymirringu, whose mortuary rites story bark Canberra will feature a selection of the finalists’ painting appeared on the Australian one dollar work. nga.gov.au/SculpturePrize05 note in 1966, this exhibition shows the extensive Dell Gallery @ Queensland College of Art, repertoire of this brilliant and innovative master Brisbane, Qld 18 February – 16 April 1006 painter to promote a broader perception and enjoyment of his work. nga.gov.au/Malangi Moist: Australian watercolours Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, WA Moist is a rare glimpse into the National 7 April – 4 June 2006 Gallery of Australia’s extraordinary collection of Australian watercolours. The title, Moist, Place made: Australian Print Workshop refers to the liquid nature of the medium Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian and an implied atmospheric, physical or Government Program supporting touring exhibitions emotional state of being. The watercolours by providing funding assistance for the development in Moist demonstrate how Australian artists and touring of cultural material across Australia Kenneth Macqueen have created visual representations of such This exhibition is a snapshot of the involvement Summer sky c. 1935 (detail) states, presenting works that are highly watercolour and pencil on paper of Australian artists in the production of prints Purchased 1965 National Gallery figurative alongside images of a more abstract at the Australian Print Workshop between of Australia, Canberra emotional intensity. nga.gov.au/Moist © The Macqueen family Tim Maguire Hollyhocks 1991 1981 and 2002. Reflecting a broad range (detail) National Gallery of of stylistic, technical and political concerns, Araluen Galleries, Alice Springs Cultural Precinct, Australia, Canberra Australian Alice Springs, NT 24 March – 7 May 2006 Print Workshop Archive 2, the prints are selected from an archive purchased with the assistance of of 3,500 works acquired by the National the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002 Gallery of Australia in 2002 through the The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Exhibitions Print Fund. nga.gov.au/Placemade The 1888 Melbourne Cup and three suitcase Albury Regional Art Gallery, Albury, NSW kits thematically present a selection of art 3 February – 26 March 2006 and design objects for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Vic. metropolitan centres that may be borrowed 7 April – 4 June 2006 free-of-charge. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn Red case: myths and rituals Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective Yellow case: form, space and design exhibition Seated Ganesha Sri Lanka Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Goulburn, NSW Proudly sponsored by Marsh 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals 1 February – 26 March 2006 One of Australia’s most important post- National Gallery of Australia, impressionists, Grace Cossington Smith Canberra Australian Embassy, Washington DC (1892–1984) was a brilliant colourist and played 10 April – 25 June 2006 a vital role in the development of modernism in Blue case: technology Australia. This exhibition draws upon a diversity Bundaberg Arts Centre, Bundaberg, Qld Grace Cossington Smith of themes including intimate portraits, iconic The lacquer room 1935–36 1 February – 26 March 2006 (detail) oil on paperboard on images of Sydney Harbour Bridge, landscapes plywood Art Gallery of New South and flower paintings, religious and war Australian Embassy, Washington DC Wales, Sydney © AGNSW Photo: images, ballet and theatre performances and Christopher Snee for AGNSW 10 April – 25 June 2006 the vibrant, shimmering interiors of her home Cossington. nga.gov.au/CossingtonSmith The 1888 Melbourne Cup Australian Embassy, Washington DC Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld 10 April – 25 June 2006 18 February – 01 May 2006 The 1888 Melbourne Cup (detail) The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Gift National Gallery of Australia, Please contact the Gallery before your visit. Canberra For more information please contact (02) 6240 6556 or email [email protected].

The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress.

artonview autumn 2006 49 collection focus

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

In March 2006 a number of recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art acquisitions will go on display. Highlights include a diversity of works and media by renowned artists from South Australia, East Kimberley, Far North Queensland, Victoria and the Torres Strait. Permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection displays draw from nearly 6,000 works and major changeovers are installed every six months, with minor changeovers for works on paper occurring every three months.

Yvonne Koolmatrie is acknowledged as one of the finest weavers in contemporary Indigenous visual art practice. From the Ngarrindjeri nation, and based in her traditional country at Gerard, in the Riverland of South Australia, Koolmatrie has initiated a revival of traditional Ngarrindjeri weaving practices. The Ngarrindjeri people lived along the Murray River, hence the emphasis on traps made for catching food from the river. Although Koolmatrie’s weaving uses customary methods and forms (e.g. baskets, eel and fish traps) Yvonne has pushed her weaving beyond the commonly perceived definitions of ‘craft’ as an ancient practice of utilitarian form. Ancient techniques are now used to create contemporary sculptural forms, intended for exhibition in art galleries and museums, rather than functional objects. Burial mat 2003 is constructed in the form of a mat, curved around and stitched together in the front. The bones of the deceased were parcelled together,

Yvonne Koolmatrie painted with ochres and wrapped in paperbark, Ngarrindjeri people then placed inside the woven burial mat, which Burial mat 2003 woven sedge grass was finally placed upright in the fork of a tree. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

50 national gallery of australia At only 26 years of age Rosella Namok is a rising young The artist’s statement for Old girls ... yarn for us young Rosella Namok Ungkum (Aangkum) people star on the national contemporary art scene and her work girls ... about country and family 2004 is: Old girls … yarn for us is sought by public institutions and private collectors alike. From before time … Kuuku Ya’u … Lockhart River young girls ... about country and family 2004 synthetic From the Aangkum people of Lockhart River, Far North sandbeach people … talk in the sand. Mission came … polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Queensland, Namok first gained significant notice for teachers showed people how to draw … today kids learn Canberra her distinctive large-scale paintings in the 2000 Adelaide to write … but we still talk in the sand. Those old girls … Biennial of Australian Art, Beyond the pale: contemporary they yarn for us … they remember before time … they Indigenous art, held at the Art Gallery of South Australia were small girls … grandmothers for them talk in the sand for the 2000 Telstra Adelaide Festival of the Arts. for them. When I was small … I remember ‘Queen’ … Namok’s technique involves painting with her fingers, grandmother for me … remember she yarned to me … a method derived from the sand-drawing style taught drew in the sand for me … about before time. Old girls to her by her grandmother. This process is important in yarn … specially when they make necklaces or weaving … understanding the relationship between the painting’s always yarn about when they were young. One old lady very tactile and sensual surface and the painting’s subject will draw in the sand … they will yarn about grass and matter. Her paintings make symbolic use of ovals and Puunya … show you where to walk … go find things. rectangles, and are often about family relationships and her country’s landscape and weather patterns.

artonview autumn 2006 51 George Mung Mung George Mung Mung (c. 1920 – 1991), a Gija/Kija Lee Darroch, from the Yorta Yorta nation, and Gija/Kija people, Jambin sub-section visual artist, was a great cultural leader, artist and Vicki Couzens, from the Kirrae/Wurrong nations, Texas Country 1985 teacher at Warmun community [Turkey Creek], East have been integral in reviving cultural awareness of natural pigments, binders, pencil, crayon on plywood Kimberley in Western Australia. A respected elder, Mung Victorian Indigenous material culture, particularly in National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Mung began painting in the early 1980s. Using ochres relation to the customary practices involving possum- and natural gum binders, he painted the inseparable skin cloaks. Both artists have worked with the relationship between land and life. Many of his works Australian Print Workshop, in Melbourne, Victoria, embody both Gija/Kija and Christian beliefs. In the which is where these works on paper were created. 1970s he set up the Ngalangangpum bicultural Christian Darroch’s print Possum skin cloak, circa 2000, is school with his friend, fellow artist and elder, Hector based on historical works held in the collection of Jandany. Both men taught the stories and songs of their Museum Victoria and, like Koolmatrie accessing her country to the children in the school, using paintings people’s cultural heritage in South Australia, Darroch as an educational tool. Mung Mung won the 1990 and Couzens have accessed historical collections holding National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award their ancestors’ cultural heritage in order to generate (paintings in introduced media) for Tarrajayan Country. greater understanding in the broader community about Texas Country 1985 by Mung Mung is a fascinating Indigenous art-making in the southeast region of Australia. painting: a mix of the mid-1980s Warmun school of Within Victorian Aboriginal clans possum-skin cloaks painting, with his own representation of the dark brown were owned by every member of a group: their utilitarian ochre rock formations outlined in white dotting on board. purpose was to keep the wearer warm and for use as This painting is similar in style to the watercolour paintings a blanket or bedding. Intricate designs and markings by Kimberley Wunambal artist Wattie Karruwara (c. incised into the underside of each cloak designated 1910 – 1983) that were on display for a major Aboriginal the specific clan designs of the wearer, in much the art auction in 2002. This is particularly evident in the same manner as ceremonial body painting marks. portrayal of the crocodile figure. The bird in the top right-hand corner is typically Warmun painting ‘school’. It is a beautiful example of dual-style painting, in much the same manner as the late Arrernte artist, Wenten Rubuntja (c. 1923 – 2005), painted in both the Western Desert ‘dot’ style and Hermannsburg watercolour style.

52 national gallery of australia Dennis Nona is from the Kal-lagaw-ya/Boigu Dennis Nona Kal-lagaw-ya/Boigu people language group from Badu Island in the Torres Strait Sesserae (Badu Island Story) and currently lives in Brisbane where he is furthering 2004–05 linocut National Gallery of Australia, his artistic studies. Nona is a highly expressive Canberra printmaker, drawing on the elaborate carving of Lee J Darroch his people, which he was taught as a young boy, Yorta Yorta people Possum skin cloak circa 2000 and his work is held in numerous national and 2000 etching on paper international collections. Inspired by the coastal life Australian Print Workshop Archive 2, purchased with of his people and his family Nona has stated: the assistance of the Gordon As a young boy I was taught the traditional craft of Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002 wood carving, which, along with my cultural heritage, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra learnt through story telling and ceremonies, helped me to develop my linocut skills that feature intricate decorative style based on the rich narrative legends of the Torres Strait Islander people. The symbols I use of sea creatures, masks and designs are from our traditional masks, artefacts and my concept-figured designs. The stunning hand-coloured linocuts Sesserae 2004–05 and Awai Yithuyil 2004 depict customary stories specific to Badu Island which is part of the west-central group of the Torres Strait Islands. Sesserae is the name of a young man of Tulu who went fishing every morning at low tide, and it is also the title of Nona’s solo exhibition, curated by the Dell Gallery, Queensland University, in 2005. The stories for both works are as complex as the images. a

Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

artonview autumn 2006 53 conservation

Restoring the glow to Afterglow

After treatment Frederick McCubbin completed Afterglow in 1912. on the left-hand side. This was matched on the reverse Frederick McCubbin Afterglow 1912 A colour illustration of the work published in a monograph with a considerable patch of painted canvas stuck oil on canvas by the Lothian Book Company, Melbourne, in 1916 over the original canvas, masking any real evidence National Gallery of Australia, shows a late afternoon scene with a pearlescent sky of the actual extent of the damage. There were also Canberra and the setting sun shining through the trees as bathers several smaller poorly executed repairs with retouching bask in its warmth. Ninety years later the painting over the original paint, plus significant additions by a appeared dramatically different. The colours were restorer to mask the changes wrought by the repairs. muted, muddied and dull, the surface was covered Although the painting entered the national collection with a thick, treacly varnish that obscured the vigorous in 1970, very little conservation work had been carried out brushwork characteristic of the artist’s late works, and since then. What had been done was largely confined to the trees on the left-hand side had become a dark, strengthening the weak original tacking margins to restore opaque block. More obvious changes included an more tension to the support. Closer investigation indicated extensive section of raised repair and poorly matched that the work had been previously cleaned and that the retouching covering a large proportion of the foliage present varnish layer comprised multiple applications with

54 national gallery of australia retouching and overpainting below, between and on top scraped away and it was discovered that the tear, (top left) Before treatment of the layers. The foreground and the trees on the left- although quite large, had not resulted in complete loss (top right) During varnish hand side had been given an overall tone, presumably to and there were in fact significant amounts of the artist’s removal, right hand side make the repaired areas less obvious. Testing with the original paint layer still intact under the fill. The remnants cleaned and part of the fill revealed on left-hand side usual range of solvents used to remove varnish layers of foliage uncovered in the process showed that the yielded little success; it was possible to swell the varnish original tone was lighter, with darkening of the exposed but removal was a slow and patchy process. Experiments paint caused by a combination of overpainting during with gelled solvent systems were more effective. The the previous restoration and the discoloured varnish. The process remained slow but the results were dramatic. tear was repaired using a combination of existing old and Subsequent analysis by FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra- new threads. The painting was lightly varnished to give an red) micro-spectroscopy, carried out at the Conservation even saturation to the surface and areas of damage were Department of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, re-integrated with new fills and localised retouching. showed that the varnish was a material more typically The painting now awaits a new frame to match its associated with sealing floors than enhancing paintings. revived ‘glow’. In the meantime we can once again

On removal of the varnish most of the overpaint also appreciate McCubbin’s masterly handling of paint in all came away. This revealed the colours in a truer light and, of its true vibrancy. a even at this stage, the painting bore more resemblance David Wise to the 1916 illustration. The areas of fill were carefully Paintings Conservator

artonview autumn 2006 55 kenneth tyler collection

Kenneth Tyler at the National Gallery of Australia

Following is an excerpt from Sasha Grishin’s speech for the dinner to thank Kenneth Tyler after he launched the exhibition Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler on 24 November 2005.

(top left, top right and Thirty-two years ago Ken Tyler, who was then based would ask of Tyler – the answer was always the same – yes middle right) The Kenneth Tyler masterclass in Los Angeles, decided to relocate from the West Coast it can be done. Whereas in an earlier generation, Fernand at Megalo Access Arts to New York. He was cash-strapped and was preparing Mourlot as a master printer changed our understanding of to sell his collection of printer’s proofs – several hundred printmaking, Tyler as an artist collaborator has redefined (middle left) Kenneth Tyler with James Mollison AO prints in number. The Australian National Gallery under the art of printmaking for our generation. While a Ken at the opening of Against its founding director, James Mollison, had gained a Tyler print has no single stylistic morphology, it does carry the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler reputation for bold purchases of major collections of the stamp of a new philosophy of printmaking – Tyler international prints, such as the Felix Man Archive, so prints can be big, technically adventurous, but what (bottom left) Professor with the assistance of a number of people, within several is more important, they are visually exciting. Anyone Sasha Grishin AM with Alan and Anne Rubenstein months, on Australia Day 1974, over 600 Tyler prints, who looks at Helen Frankenthaler’s Madame Butterfly at the opening of Against proofs and drawings arrived in Canberra. Through an colour woodcut and is not excited by it must have their the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler act of chance and serendipity this was the beginnings aesthetic receptors atrophied. For this transformation in of a continuous collaboration between Ken Tyler printmaking we are profoundly grateful to Ken Tyler. (bottom right) The opening of Against and what is now the National Gallery of Australia, a What I have learnt is that Ken Tyler is also a person the grain: the woodcuts collaboration which has continued until the present day. who has a great generosity. This is not only in reference of Helen Frankenthaler Thanks to this collaboration we now have an to his generosity as a benefactor who for over thirty internationally significant collection of American and years has constantly augmented the National Gallery of European prints from the 1960s through to the present Australia’s archive of international prints, or his funding day, covering some of the biggest names in American of the Tyler Print Fellowship, Tyler Print Internship and art from Albers to Warhol: including Hockney, Kelly, the Kenneth Tyler Collection website, but, and dare I Kitaj, Lichtenstein, Motherwell, Noland, Oldenburg, say more significantly, it is his generosity of spirit and Rauschenberg, Stella and many, many others. It is a intellect. So much of our public life is dominated by collection of great depth from which the Gallery has mean spiritedness and in Tyler we have a person who is managed to stage about a dozen significant exhibitions, totally committed to art and to printmaking, and who in possibly the most memorable of which have been Pat an intelligent and generous manner is promoting both Gilmour’s Ken Tyler: printer extraordinary 1985,Jane of these. Ken Tyler is a person who has devoted his life Kinsman’s Big Americans 2002, and now Jaklyn to printmaking and who has set himself a life mission to Babington’s Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen share this accumulated knowledge, to pass on the torch, Frankenthaler 2005. There is certainly scope in the and to do it here at the National Gallery of Australia. a collection for many more such major exhibitions. Professor Sasha Grishin is Head of Art History at Ken Tyler is an unusual artist–printer and a very the Australian National University, Canberra unusual person. One of his favourite aphorisms comes from the German poet Goethe: ‘In the realm of ideas, Further information on the Kenneth Tyler Collection is at nga.gov.au/InternationalPrints/ everything depends on enthusiasm. In the real world, all Tyler. On his visit to Canberra in November 2005, rests on perseverance.’ Some of you may remember David Kenneth Tyler also presented a master class and Hockney telling us a few years ago, that whatever he demonstration class at Megalo Access Arts

56 national gallery of australia artonview autumn 2006 57 tribute

Jimmy Wululu (1936–2005)

Jimmy Wululu was a proud Yirritja man of the Gupapuyngu people. In mourning he is known as Bulany Daygurrgurr, in reference to his skin name and clan group. He was born in 1936 at Mangbirri in central Arnhem Land. The Gupapuyngu homelands are around Djiliwirri country near Gapuwiyak in north- east Arnhem Land but many people, like Wululu, live in central Arnhem Land through family associations, for it is their mother’s or grandmother’s land. Wululu was of the freshwater Gupapuyngu people and his group can be classified according to their natural environment as Gulunbuy – from the waterholes. His subjects in painting and sculpture, the creatures and ancestors who inhabit those waterholes, reflect these associations. While living mostly in the communities of Milingimbi, Ngangalala and Ramingining, Wululu would maintain a strong physical and spiritual connection to significant Gupapuyngu ancestral sites, through attending ceremonies, family events and visits to country. On Milingimbi Island at the Methodist Mission (est. 1923) Wululu attended school and worked at various jobs there including tending pigs, milking cows, clearing bush for the garden and airport and building mud brick houses. Those years as a young adult were also spent travelling across the region attending his own and peers’ initiation ceremonies at bush camps on the mainland. After the Second World War Wululu also attended school in Darwin at Bagot Reserve and participated in ceremonies, having ‘foot walked’ there from central Arnhem Land. Living in a single men’s camp on Milingimbi, Wululu was taught to paint by his brother and father. He is one of the last of the generation of central Arnhem Land

Jimmy Wululu with Bongu painters who hail from the mission era. Like many Yolngu, (waterhole) sand sculpture when the homelands movement gained momentum at the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 1992 in the 1970s he moved to the newly established Photo: The Canberra TImes communities of Ngangalala and Ramingining on the mainland. Wululu was one of the key artists working out of Ramingining Arts and Crafts from this time and later, in the 1990s, worked with Bula’bula Arts. Wululu’s output was impressive. By the 1980s, he was an established and practised painter at the height of his powers. He held a position of cultural authority within his clan and had a significant international profile as an artist. In 1988, Wululu travelled to New York to attend the opening of the major exhibition

58 national gallery of australia Dreamings: the art of Aboriginal Australia at the Asia Jimmy Wululu Society Galleries. Wululu’s work seemed as ‘at home’ Gupapuyngu people, Yarrita Moiety in Indigenous and non-Indigenous group exhibitions. Niwuda-Yirritja Honey His work was selected for inclusion in numerous natural eucalyptus on bark National Gallery of Australia, exhibitions, including Magiciens de la terre, Centre Canberra Georges Pompidou, Paris (1989), l’ete Australien à Montpellier, Montpellier, France (1990); Paintings and sculptures from Ramingining, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra (1992); Aratjara: art of the first Australians, Düsseldorf, London, Denmark (1993–94); Tyerabarrbowaryaou 2, Havana, Cuba (1994); Stories, Hannover, Germany (1995) and The native born: objects and representations from Ramingining, Arnhem Land, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1996). As well, Wululu exhibited regularly in commercial galleries, community spaces, biennales and national Aboriginal art awards. He is represented in all major public and private collections in Australia and numerous art collections internationally. At the National Gallery of Australia Wululu’s work was included in the exhibitions Aboriginal art: the continuing tradition (1989), Flash pictures (1991), as well as in the touring of The Aboriginal Memorial to Switzerland, Germany and Russia. The Gallery holds several bark paintings acquired over some years, which focus on the subject of honey. The champion in this group is the sublime Niwuda, Yirritja native honey 1986. It is in such works that Wululu’s excellence as a painter comes to the fore. He was fastidious in his attention to detail and meticulous application of paint. Without doubt, Wululu’s contribution of a group of hollow log coffins to The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88 is his eulogy. His unmistakable stand of thirteen logs depicts the Yirritja ancestors: Burala the darter, Minhala the long- necked tortoise and Wuluwarri the catfish. It was their moved there with his family for a time. He is now buried travels from Gupapuyngu country further east, westward, there, next to Malangi. In the last few years of his life, that link Yirritja land and people across the area. The Wululu struggled with ill-health and moved back into predominant design on the logs is the fine white hatching Ramingining where he was cared for at home by family. which represents the bones of the eel-tailed catfish. The He is survived by a loving extended family including action of Burala, diving into the pool to snatch the young his wives and children who will carry on the traditions fish, is a metaphor for the transition from life to death. of the Gupapuyngu Daygurrgurr through painting. a Wululu will be remembered as a friendly, cheerful, robust, Susan Jenkins driven, witty man, whose infectious humour combined Former Acting Curator with a stoic sincerity in all that he did. When Wululu’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art uncle David Malangi died in 1999, Wululu assumed This obituary was written with the assistance of Wululu’s responsibility for Yathalamarra, his mother’s country, and family and in consultation with Bula’bula Arts, Ramingining.

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13 Remembering Philippa Winn

In March 2006 Philippa Winn was to celebrate ten years as an educator at the National Gallery of Australia. Unfortunately Philippa didn’t reach this significant career milestone as she died on January 3. faces in view During the past decade Philippa inspired thousands of students and their teachers who visited the Gallery. Philippa’s passion and 1 Robert Foster, Scott Chaseling, Alice Whish and Donald Fortescue at the opening of enthusiasm for visual art combined with a vibrant and engaging Transformations: the language of craft 2 Jukka Pennanen, Touvi Lindholm, Ambassador of Finland, Agneta Hobin and Robert Bell at the opening of Transformations: the language of craft personality contributed to her success in developing innovative 3 Tetsuo Fujimoto, Robert Bell and Tsukasa Kotushiwaki at the opening of Transformations: the programs for youth and people with disabilities. She developed language of craft 4 Gretchen Keyworth, Chris Rivkin, Dudley Anderson and Lisa Anderson at stimulating and enjoyable exhibitions for the Children’s Gallery the opening of Transformations: the language of craft 5 Raphy Star, Ann Star and Robert Bell at such as In the box, Big spooks and Dog. Philippa was integral the opening of Transformations: the language of craft 6 Lyn Conybeare, Elizabeth Nosworthy AO and Roslynne Bracher at the farewell to outgoing NGA Chairman Harold Mitchell 7 Incoming to the establishment and ongoing success of Gallery programs NGA Chairman Rupert Myer AM and Charles Curran AO at the farewell to outgoing NGA such as the Summer Scholarship, SubURBAN, the Registered Unit Chairman Harold Mitchell 8 Alice Whish with her work at the opening of Transformations: the program for Senior Secondary and College students and special language of craft 9 Lia Cook with her work at the opening of Transformations: the language programs such as those for the University of the Third Age. of craft 10 Deborah Hart, Philip Bacon AM and Roslyn Packer at the farewell to outgoing Philippa’s concern for and love of the environment and all living NGA Chairman Harold Mitchell 11 Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler with the Tyler team at the opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler 12 Christina creatures was well known, as was her love of family, her three dogs, Costaridis, Amy Crago, Hannah Gregory and Rob Bastian at the opening of Against the grain: and the farm she shared with her husband John. Philippa’s warmth, the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler 13 Marabeth Cohen-Tyler and Kenneth Tyler with curator energy and sense of the ridiculous made her a great colleague Jaklyn Babington at the opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler and friend to us all.

The Education team

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National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006

Organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia Otto Dix Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor [Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack] plate 12 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924 etching, aquatint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Otto Dix, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia Serat Dewi Ruci 1886 European paper, ink, pigment, gold leaf Presented by the Friends of the Gallery Library in memory of Tina Wentcher, 1982 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne artonview o art n v i ew

ISSUE No.45 ISSUE ISS U E a u t m n o.45 autumn 2006 autumn N o.45 2006 N AT ION A L 2006 a US T R A LI G A LLERYOF

constable • crescent moon • otto dix