artonview o art n v i ew

ISSUE No.51 ISSUE ISS UE SPRING o.51 spring 2007 spring N o.51 2007 NATIONAL 2007 GALLERYOF AUSTRALIA

Richard Bell Australian art it’s an Aboriginal thing 2006 synthetic polymer paint on canvas Acquired 2006 TarraWarra Museum of Art collection courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery

13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CELEBRATING¬¬YEARS A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency nga.gov.au/NIAT07

Sculpture Gallery • ROBERT Rauschenberg • Ocean to Outback OC E A N to OUTBACK Australian landscape painting 1850 –1950 The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

1 September 2007 – 27 January 2008

Proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund National Gallery of Australia, Canberra This exhibition is supported by the CELEBRATING¬¬YEARS nga.gov.au/Rauschenberg Embassy of the United States of America

Russell Drysdale Emus in a landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Estate of Russell Drysdale Robert Rauschenberg Publicon – Station I from the Publicons series enamel on wood, collaged laminated silk and cotton, gold leafed paddle, light bulb, perspex, enamel on polished aluminium National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1979 © Robert Rauschenberg Licensed by VAGA and VISCOPY, Australia, 2007 The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency artonview contents

2 Director’s foreword Publisher National Gallery of Australia 6 Development office nga.gov.au

Editor Jeanie Watson 8 A new gallery for sculpture: wood, stone, metal, glass

Designer MA@D Communication 14 Pacific arts in the Gallery

Photography Eleni Kypridis 20 The ‘big guns’ of Culture Warriors Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie 26 Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 Steve Nebauer John Tassie

Designed and produced 34 Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia 40 Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra 48 Collection focus: Ricketts photography collection artonview issn 1323-4552

Published quarterly: Issue no. 51, Spring 2007 54 New acquisitions © National Gallery of Australia

Print Post Approved 66 Drawn in pp255003/00078

All rights reserved. Reproduction without 68 Faces in view permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. 70 Travelling exhibitions

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 [email protected]

Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 [email protected]

RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia

For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 [email protected]

front cover: Giorgio de Chirico La Mort d’un esprit [Death of a spirit] 1916 oil on canvas 36.0 x 33.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the assistance of Harold and Bevelly Mitchell, Rupert and Annabel Myer and the NGA Foundation © Giorgio de Chirico Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007 director’s foreword

Foundation for this major acquisition. It is featured on the cover of this issue of artonview. The second important acquisition, mentioned briefly in the last issue of the magazine, is Max Ernst’s Habakuk 1934/1970. The giant black creature presides over the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery, its four-and-a- half-metre form appearing to change as you approach it. The knife-thin head, the eyes on stalks and the flowerpot- like body seem to rotate in a cylinder. The Gallery holds Ernst’s private collection of Indigenous art, which was so influential on Surrealism. Habakuk is a significant example of his work as a Surrealist artist and by far his largest work. The National Australia Bank generously helped us purchase the sculpture for the collection. The third major acquisition is from India and is the Gallery’s earliest image of the Buddha. The superb and imposing early Indian sculpture is a cornerstone for the Gallery’s ability to introduce visitors to the development of Buddhist art in India and beyond. The bold red sandstone seated Buddha from the second century Kushan centre of Mathura sits marvellously – physically and art historically – between the aniconic symbolism of our rare Amaravati marble panel depicting the life of the Buddha and the Director Ron Radford Activity around the Gallery this year has been recently purchased large Gandharan Head of a bodhisattva with Senator the Hon. George Brandis SC, building up towards the twenty-fifth anniversary on with its strong Hellenic influence. We are enormously Minister for the Arts and Sport, 12, 13 and 14 October. It will culminate in a gala weekend grateful for the generous assistance of Council member who opened the successful George W Lambert exhibition of celebrations, including the launch of the National Roslyn Packer in this purchase. (closes 16 September 2007) Indigenous Art Triennial and an open day welcoming The fourth important acquisition is Clifford Possum people to help recognise a quarter of a century of art and Tjapaltjarri’s Warlugulong 1977, a seminal work by this inspiration. The Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary year is a pioneer of Papunya Tula painting of Central Australia. celebration of our magnificent past and more recent Although the Gallery holds the largest Aboriginal art acquisitions, our excellent exhibitions and programs, the collection, we have lacked a significant work by Clifford recent refurbishment and radical refocusing of our Possum. Warlugulong will be on permanent display in our collection displays and, of course, the commencement of main Central Desert room of the new Aboriginal and Torres our building redevelopment. Stage one has recently begun. Strait Islander wing. A more detailed essay about this work I am pleased to announce four very significant new will appear in the next issue of artonview along with the acquisitions in celebration of our twenty-fifth anniversary. announcement of other significant twenty-fifth anniversary La Mort d’un esprit [Death of a spirit] 1916 is an early acquisitions. work by Giorgio de Chirico, an important Metaphysical The new Pacific Arts Gallery is now open to the public artist who had a profound effect on Surrealism. This is the and features a number of spectacular works collected in Gallery’s first early European modernist painting acquired the late 1960s and early 1970s alongside some recent in fifteen years. We have been searching for a work of this acquisitions. Highlights include an imposing carved house kind for some time and it is especially valuable for us to post figure from the Sawos people, near the Sepik River, find one produced in Europe at a crucial period during the New Guinea, purchased in 1969. Conservation has recently First World War. It is one of only two de Chirico works held removed a layer of dirt to reveal an orange, yellow and in the country and the only early one. We acknowledge black painted face design. All too often the names of the the financial assistance of Harold and Bevelly Mitchell spirits associated with traditional art from the Pacific were and Rupert and Annabel Myer along with the Gallery’s

2 national gallery of australia neglected. However, this is a very rare instance when created within the past three years and provide a highly Rupert Myer AM, Chairman of the National Gallery of a work can be re-associated with its identity. We have considered snapshot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia Council, been fortunate to learn more about this particular piece contemporary art practice. The exhibition features the Steven Münchenberg, National Australia Bank, through an original photograph held at the Metropolitan work of thirty-one artists and encompasses a wide range and Director Ron Radford Museum of Art which has the personal name of the figure of media including painting on canvas and bark, sculpture, contemplate the new acquisition, Max Ernst’s written on the reverse: ‘Mogulapan’. Another particularly textiles, weaving, new media, photo-media, printmaking, Habakuk, purchased with noteworthy work in the Pacific Arts Gallery is the figure of and installation work. the assistance of the National Australia Bank a man wearing a distinctly western hat yet also wearing Spring sees the opening of Robert Rauschenberg, our Indigenous adornments. This figure, a recent acquisition latest temporary exhibition in the Orde Poynton Gallery. from the Anthony Forge collection, is the only known Robert Rauschenberg entered the New York art world in portrait of an Australian undertaken by a New Guinean 1950 at a time when Abstract Expressionism was at its artist during the early twentieth century. Also featured is peak. Working outside the restrictions imposed by media, a refined and masterful stone pestle that exhibits a rare style and convention, he adopted a unique experimental clarity of form for a daily utensil from any culture in the methodology that paved the way for a number of world. It comes from a little known prehistoric culture subsequent movements, including Pop Art. His invention of in New Guinea and is very likely to be 3500 years old, ‘combines’ and unique photo-collage and image transfer produced during the same era as the Gallery’s iconic practices made him one of the most influential figures of Ambum stone which is also on display. Both stoneworks the postwar period. This exhibition is supported by the from New Guinea are the most ancient works in the Embassy of the United States of America. Gallery’s large collection. Another new exhibition is Black robe, white mist: art The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial opens of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu. The tragic life of in October with the title Culture Warriors. This innovative Rengetsu (1791–1875), whose name translates as Lotus exhibition, very generously sponsored by BHP Billiton, will Moon, inspired extraordinary creativity. One of a very few be a permanent event in the Australian and international successful professional female artists of nineteenth-century art calendar. Works selected for the Triennial have been Japan, Rengetsu was primarily a poet and calligrapher

artonview spring 2007 3 but also excelled in pottery and scroll painting. Largely Finally, I am pleased to announce the release of Printed drawn from international private collections, Black robe, images by Australian artists 1885–1955 by Roger Butler, white mist shows contemplative works of paper and clay the second volume in our series of publications on the inscribed with Rengetsu’s elegant poetry and understated history of printing in Australia. It is as splendid as the first calligraphy. Her work reflects the beauty of the imperfect volume, Printed images in colonial Australia 1801–1901. and unconventional. This is the first time a major museum The third volume, which deals with contemporary exhibition on her work has been staged outside Japan. printmaking, will be released later this year. The major travelling exhibition for the Gallery’s twenty- The celebrations for our twenty-fifth year won’t stop in fifth anniversary year, Ocean to Outback: Australian October! Keep an eye out for more twenty-fifth anniversary landscapes 1850–1950, has been curated by me specifically events and major acquisitions throughout the year. for the smaller galleries around Australia. Concentrating on the dynamic century of Australian landscape painting from the colonial 1850s and gold rush era to the period immediately following the Second World War, the exhibition features many of the Gallery’s treasured Australian landscapes alongside some fine but lesser Ron Radford known works from the national collection which have been especially cleaned and appropriately reframed for the exhibition. Ocean to Outback is truly national, travelling to and including images of every state and territory – from urban and suburban landscapes to outback and coastal views. The exhibition, sponsored by RM Williams, is accompanied by a substantial and very accessible fully illustrated catalogue. Internationally, as part of the Gallery’s anniversary celebrations, an exhibition of Australian art will be displayed at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, in October. The show, Andy and Oz: parallel visions, curated by Tom Sokolowski, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum and Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (after 1920), coincides with a festival of Australian culture, and focuses on the work of Australian artists whose art has affinities with renowned American artist Andy Warhol. The Australian artists cross several generations and include works from the 1970s through to the present day. Artists such as Martin Sharp, Richard Larter, Tracey Moffatt, Juan Davila, Fiona Hall, Christian Thompson and Tim Horn will be featured. The works in the exhibition will be drawn predominantly from the Gallery’s collection. Some parallels between these artists’ works and Andy Warhol’s art are immediately apparent, while others are totally unexpected and surprising. This exciting event will provide a greater awareness of significant Australian art and artists internationally. We are grateful to Ann Lewis AM, Henry Gillespie and Penelope Seidler for their generous support of the exhibition.

4 national gallery of australia credit lines

The following donations have been received Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 W Newbigin as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s In memory of Pixie Parsons (nee Roper) Susan S Rogers Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program. David Adams Roslyn Russell, Museum Services Donations Ross Adamson Heather G Shakespeare Aranday Foundation Robert Albert AO George and Irene Skilton Myer Foundation Peter and Gillian Alderson EJ Smith Rotary Belconnen Robert C Allmark Wendy Smith Bill Anderson Sheila Bignell Barry Smith-Roberts Susan Armitage Roslynne Bracher Ann Somers John Calvert-Jones AM and Janet Calvert-Jones Stuart Babbage Prof. Ken and Maggie Taylor Patrick Corrigan AM Belinda Barrett H Neil Truscott AM David Craddock Peter Boxall AO and Karen Chester Chris van Reesch Snr The Curran Family Foundation Dr Berenice-Eve Calf Diana Walder OAM Ferris Family Foundation Diana Colman in memory of her husband James Jane Flecknoe Austin Colman Joy Warren OAM, Director, Solander Gallery Henry Gillespie Joan Daley OAM The Hon. E Gough Whitlam AC QC June P Gordon Winifred Davson MBE Y Wildash Rolf Harris AM OBE MBE Maxwell Dickens Muriel Wilkinson Maree Heffernan Rosemary Dunn Tessa and Simon Wooldridge His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery AC Tony Eastaway We would also like to thank the numerous CVO MC Peter Eddington and Joy Williams anonymous donors who have donated to the Lou Klepac Brian Fitzpatrick Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007. Ann Lewis AM Dr R and Mrs A Fleming Robert and Susie Maple-Brown Bill Galloway in memory of Ann Maria Paget Grants Harold Mitchell AO and Bevelly Mitchell Neilma Gantner Australia Council for the Arts through the Charles Nodrum Pauline M Griffin Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Roslyn Packer AO Aileen Hall Board, Visual Arts Board and Community Jennifer Prescott and John Prescott AC Bill Hamilton Partnerships & Market Development Maxine Rochester Cheryl Hannah (International) Board Penelope Seidler Natasha Hardy Australia–Japan Foundation Morna E Vellacott Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs Australian Government through Visions of The National Gallery of Australia Foundation John Harrison Australia would like to thank the family, friends and Ann Healey in memory of her husband colleagues of Philippa Winn (NGA Educator David Healey Japan Foundation (Tokyo) 1996–2005) who have contributed to the Elizabeth Heard Arts NT through the Northern Territory Philippa Winn Memorial Acquisition. Shirley Hemmings Government’s Department of Natural Gifts and Bequests Janet D Hine Resources, Environment and the Arts From the collection of Sir Francis Aglen Rev Theodora Hobbs Queensland Government (Australia), through (1869–1932). Given in memory of his Joanne Glory Hooper the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing daughter and their mother, Mrs Marion Rev Bill Huff-Johnston and Rosemary and Export Agency (QIAMEA) Arts Hutton, by Peronelle Windeyer, Margaret Huff-Johnston Hutton, Jeremy Hutton and John Hutton Elspeth Humphries Partnership Program of Department of Gift of Allan Behm and Rhyan Bloor Dr Anthea Hyslop Premier and Cabinet Gift of Sue and Ian Bernadt Fr WGA Jack Sponsorship Gift of Christopher and Philip Constable in Chris Johnson and Ann Parkinson NAB memory of their mother Esther Constable Pamela V Kenny BHP Billiton Gift of Antony de Jong, grandson of the artist Dr Peter Kenny ActewAGL King O’Malley’s on behalf of The Duldig Studio Qantas Gift of the artist, Ruth Faerber Sir Richard Kingsland AO CBE DFC Embassy of the United States of America Gift of Sara Kelly Robyn Lance Hindmarsh Gift of Mrs Ineke Kolder-Wicks Paul and Beryl Legge Wilkinson R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter Gift of Corbett Lyon and Yeuji Lyon Collection of Judith MacIntyre Yalumba Australian Contemporary Art, Melbourne Jennifer J Manton Gift of Colonel NH Marshall, in memory of Prue Simon McGill O’Leary Walker Wines Marshall Diana McRobbie in memory of her sister-in-law, Lambert Vineyards Gift of the artist, Tracey Moffatt Andrea Gibson McRobbie Casella Wines The Poynton Bequest Joyce McRobbie in memory of her Forrest Inn and Apartments Gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler daughter-in-law, Andrea Gibson McRobbie Gordon Darling Foundation in memory of Harry Seidler Eveline Milne Saville Park Suites Gift of Dr Beverley Wood Joananne Mulholland and David Rivers WIN Television

artonview spring 2007 5 development office

The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges and thanks the government and corporate supporters involved in our major twenty-fifth anniversary exhibitions, acquisitions and education and public programs.

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial (QIAMEA) Arts Partnership Program of Department of Premier and Cabinet. The exhibition and the accompanying The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial features a catalogue include ten Indigenous artists and five writers range of contemporary Australian Indigenous art practice with cultural links to Queensland. and pays tribute to a key group of dedicated and important artists – in particular those whose respective careers span the four decades since the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals). Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting In recognition of the national significance of the exhibition, 1850–1950 the following organisations have provided their support, This bold and generous twenty-fifth anniversary initiative along with that of principal sponsor BHP Billiton. aims to ensure that people across Australia have access Visions of Australia to the treasures of the national collection. The exhibition Visions of Australia is an Australian Government program will travel to Tamworth, Hobart, Mount Gambier, Ballarat, supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding Perth, Cairns, Alice Springs, Newcastle and Canberra. assistance for the development and touring of Australian R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter cultural material across Australia. The National Gallery We welcome R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter as a valued of Australia is very proud of its longstanding relationship sponsor of the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary travelling with Visions of Australia which has seen fifteen travelling exhibition, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape exhibitions visit 110 venues throughout regional, remote painting 1850–1950. This is a historic partnership between and metropolitan Australia over a period of twelve years. two iconic Australian organisations that will see fifty-eight Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial has important landscape paintings travel 18,500 km over a been granted funds under Round 4 of the Contemporary nineteen-month period to every state and territory in Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian the country. It is a project that goes to the heart of the Government program, and the Visual Arts and Craft Gallery’s mandate of being truly national and the generous Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and support of R.M.Williams (celebrating their seventy-fifth state and territory governments. anniversary) has ensured that people in regional, remote Australia Council for the Arts and metropolitan Australia will have access to the treasures The Australia Council for the Arts, through its Aboriginal of their national collection. and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Arts Board Visions of Australia and Community Partnerships and Market Development In Round 28, Visions of Australia also granted funds to tour (International) Board, has generously provided Ocean to Outback. funding support. The National Gallery of Australia Council Arts NT Exhibitions Fund Arts NT, through the Northern Territory Government’s The fund has generously sponsored the national tour of Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Ocean to Outback. Arts, has provided support to artists and writers with cultural links to the Northern Territory to travel to Canberra for the opening of the exhibition and to participate in Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist associated education and public programs. nun Rengetsu

Queensland Indigenous Art Marketing Export Agency Australia–Japan Foundation and Japan Foundation The exhibition has been generously supported by (Tokyo) the Queensland Government (Australia), through the The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency Australia–Japan Foundation and the Japan Foundation

6 national gallery of australia (Tokyo) through its Japan Foundation Exhibitions Abroad Philippa Winn Memorial Acquisition (left to right) The Hon. Mark Vaile MP, Support Program have both generously contributed funds Deputy Prime Minister, Friends, family and colleagues of Philippa Winn, National to the exhibition and publication, Black robe, white mist: Leader of the Nationals and Gallery Educator (1996–2005), have been very generous Minister for Transport and art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu. Their support Regional Services; Rupert in their donation of funds to acquire a work of art for Myer AM (Chairman of NGA ensures that the work of this important nineteenth-century Council) and Ken Cowley AO, the national collection. Philippa was greatly admired and Chairman of R.M.Williams, Japanese artist will reach a new and broader Australian The Bush Outfitter at the respected as an educator and for her ability to present audience. media launch of Ocean and develop creative education and public programs at to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850– the Gallery. 1950, the National Gallery of Andy and Oz: Parallel Visions Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

This exhibition is a collaborative project between the Corporate Members Program National Gallery of Australia and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, that will be the National We are grateful to and thank the following for their Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary international exhibition. continued corporate support: Casella Wines Pty Limited, The work of four generations of Australian artists who The Brassey of Canberra, The Forrest Inn and Apartments have been inspired by the famous artist, Andy Warhol, will and Saville Park Suites. We formally welcome Lambert be brought together and exhibited at The Andy Warhol Wines, Yalumba Wines, O’Leary Walker Wines, and JQ Pty Museum as part of the Australia Festival in Pittsburgh this Limited to the Corporate Members program and thank October. We are grateful to Qantas, which has generously them for their generous support of the National Gallery’s provided sponsorship to this exhibition, with support from Twenty-fifth Anniversary Program and the Decorative Arts Ann Lewis AM, Penelope Seidler and Henry Gillespie. and Design Fund respectively.

Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program and Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 We welcome the generous support of the Embassy of the United States of America towards the exhibition, Our thanks go to all the donors who have generously Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978, which draws together donated to both the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program works from the Gallery’s rich collection of prints and and the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund for 2007. multiples and features the artist’s innovative printmaking For further information please contact the NGA processes from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Foundation Office on (02) 6240 6454.

artonview spring 2007 7 national australia bank sculpture gallery

A new gallery for sculpture: wood, stone, metal, glass

Constantin Brancusi On the evening of 22 May 2007 the National Gallery Rocks and mirror square II 1971 unites a clean, crisp L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space] 1931–36 white of Australia opened its new sculpture gallery, generously construction of factory-made mirrored glass with rough, marble, limestone ‘collar’, sponsored by the National Australia Bank. A range of works hard rocks picked up in the countryside by the artist. sandstone base overall 318.1 x 42.5 (diameter) cm and by American, European, Australian and Indigenous artists Robert Smithson’s installation – which like Judd’s is placed L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird in space] c.1931–36 black are on show. When the Gallery opened in October 1982, directly onto the floor – hugs the ground, striving to merge marble, white marble ‘collar’, this impressive space originally showed sculpture from the into it and levitate at the same time. In his Suspended sandstone base overall 328.4 x 51.4 (diameter) cm modern collection. It again features masterpieces including stone wallpiece 1976, Ken Unsworth uses river stones, Purchased 1973 Brancusi’s two Birds in space placed in a calm reflecting made round through erosion over time, each tied up with pool. The architects have created a beautiful and generous thin wire. The rocks form a semicircle above the floor, space, where light falls softly onto the works of art. Every which seems to defy the laws of physics. Stone becomes season and every time of day is marked by changing light, lighter than air. which alters our perceptions of the sculptures. The most common manifestation of wood on show in Made from traditional materials, often in unconventional the gallery is not carved, but roughly hewn or found objects, ways, the works on show are created by carving and casting, painted rather than raw or varnished. Louise Bourgeois assembled from found objects or even manufactured by made her sculpture originally between 1941 and 1948, industrial processes. Donald Judd’s untitled brass boxes and covered it with red and black paint. She talked of its of 1974, for example, replicate the exact geometry and genesis: as children, she and her brother hid under a table uniformity of modern factory products. Their shiny, and watched their parents’ legs as they walked to and fro. regulated march across the floor reflects and refracts their The work’s meaning changed in 1979 when Bourgeois re- surroundings, which include the feet of visitors and the painted it salmon pink and renamed it C.O.Y.O.T.E. after the beautiful smoky grey tiles of the renewed slate flooring. prostitutes’ rights campaign ‘Call off your old tired ethics’.

8 national gallery of australia artonview spring 2007 9 (left to right) Both Robert Klippel and Rosalie Gascoigne Combining stone and metal is unusual, because of Jannis Kounellis Untitled 1990 (detail) three steel collected and re-used wooden objects. Klippel plays possible contradictions between the methods of carving panels, clothes and beams with architectonic elements in No. 757 Painted wood or casting employed by the sculptor. Anthony Caro’s each 200.0 x 181.0 x 25.0 cm Purchased 1992; Louise construction 1988–89 to create a new reality, based on Duccio variations no. 7 2000 is a promised gift from Ken Bourgeois C.O.Y.O.T.E. 1941–48 painted wood manufactured things but now useful only as art. The Tyler and Maribeth Cohen through the American Friends 137.4 x 214.5 x 28.9 cm weatherbeaten panels of Gascoigne’s Plenty 1986 are of the Australian National Gallery. When Caro was invited Purchased 1981; Robert Klippel No. 757 painted made of recycled box slats. The installation shines on a to respond to a painting in the collection of the National wood construction dull grey concrete wall, its golden hues and title perhaps Gallery, London, he made seven works in different 1988–89 painted wood 253.0 x 171.0 x 146.0 cm implying fields of wheat or blond grass stretching out materials. Each was based on Duccio’s Annunciation 1311, Purchased 1989; Donald before our eyes. but responds to the painter’s depiction of architecture Judd Untitled 1974 brass each 101.6 x 101.6 x 101.6 cm The earliest work on display is Elie Nadelman’s Horse rather than the traditional subject. Here Caro assembles a Purchased 1975; Anselm Kiefer La Vie c. 1911–15, which seems to gallop into the gallery. The new altarpiece with pieces of golden sandstone and found secrète des plantes [The animal’s sturdy body, carved from white plaster, balances metal objects, painted gunmetal grey-blue. secret life of plants] 2002 lead, oil, chalk, pigment on its absurdly delicate thoroughbred legs. The modernist Max Ernst’s giant bronze Habakuk is a major new 195.0 x 300.0 (diameter) cm sculptor’s impulse to pure form is taken to its ultimate acquisition, purchased with the help of the National Purchased 2003; Robert Smithson Rocks and abstract end in Brancusi’s black marble and white marble Australia Bank. It is a curious figure, conjuring up thoughts mirror square II 1971 basalt rocks and mirrors Birds in space of 1931–36. They embody the idea of flight, of birds, or reptiles, even partly machine or human. Ernst 36.0 x 220.0 x 220.0 cm an upward striving which separates the earthbound from was a major Surrealist sculptor: this is a large version of Purchased 1977; Anselm Kiefer Abendland [Twilight the free. Purchased from the sculptor by the Maharajah of an original work which he made in plaster in 1934, and of the West] 1989 lead Indore, the works were originally meant to be installed in a reworked later that decade. A small edition in this size was sheet, synthetic polymer paint, ash, plaster, cement, pavilion designed by Brancusi. Their current placement on authorised by the artist in 1970. His alter-ego was a bird- earth, varnish on canvas and wood 400.0 x 380.0 x 12.0 cm simple geometric sandstone bases in a silent pool is based man called Loplop. Habakuk’s body was created from casts Purchased 1989 on a similar idea of contemplation and reflection. of flowerpots, stacked on top of and inside one another.

10 national gallery of australia Ernst then added a head, consisting of a giant tilted bill and Cardoso uses the remains of real starfish in her installation (left to right) Klippel No. 757 painted eyes. At the foot of the figure is a third eye, and the plinth Woven water: submarine landscape II 2003, where delicate, wood construction 1988–89; also bears a negative impression of another. Together these porous white skeletons float above the viewer, suspended Kounellis Untitled 1990; Max Ernst Habakuk 1934/70, stand for inward and outward vision, forming a veiled on almost-invisible wires. Bronwyn Oliver weaves a similarly cast 1995–98 bronze 449.9 x 162.9 x 162.9 cm reference to the biblical prophet Habakuk, for whom the fragile web in Clasp 2006 and Garland 2006, but her Purchased with the assistance sculpture is named. medium is metal. Originally taken from the earth, the wire of the National Australia Bank; Ken Unsworth An untitled triptych by Jannis Kounellis from 1990 is forged and remade into forms analogous to nature’s. Suspended stone wallpiece combines hard-grade steel panels with I-beams used in The only artist with two objects in the Sculpture 1976 river stones, steel wire 215.0 x 140.0 x 104.5 cm building construction and pieces of men’s clothing. It Gallery is Anselm Kiefer, a German who now lives in Purchased 1976; Anthony serves as a contemporary crucifixion, implying Christ’s France. Kiefer’s artistic practice centres on encounters Caro Duccio variations no.7 2000 sandstone and steel absent body, as well as the Trinity, by a man’s coat, jacket with his country’s history and universal moral choices. His 189.5 x 198.0 x 103.0 cm On loan from Kenneth Tyler and trousers. The three parts also refer to conventional magisterial Twilight of the West 1990 combines embossed and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler medieval and Renaissance iconography, the painted lead sheeting with oil paint and plaster below, depicting altarpiece with two wings around a central panel. The railway tracks leading into a desolate landscape. References clothes provoke a more recent memory, that of the great include the soft, poisonous and alchemical metal lead, the post-war artist Joseph Beuys, whose use of men’s jackets, impression of a manhole cover representing the sun, the as well as felt and fat, haunts contemporary art. Nazis’ use of trains to transport people to death camps, References to the natural world include a new sculpture while the German title ‘Abendland’ implies the sun setting by Glen Farmer Illortaminni, Jongijongini [Egret] 2005–06. on civilisation. Bronze is an unusual choice of material for a Tiwi artist, In his massive book The secret life of plants 2002, but the bird’s essentialised form, as with Brancusi’s birds Kiefer obscures the possibility of anyone reading this and Nadelman’s horse, is conveyed by combining intense tome inscribed with oil paint, chalk and pigments. observation with artistic simplification. Maria Fernanda The sculpture has a secret life of its own. As Shaun Lakin

artonview spring 2007 11 (opposite, left to right) (left to right) Kiefer La Vie secrète des plantes Brancusi Birds in space 1931–36; [The secret life of plants] 2002; Cy Twombly Untitled 1987–2004 Smithson Rocks and mirror square II bronze, no. 4 from an edition of six 1971; Kiefer Abendland [Twilight of 368.3 x 88.9 x 34.3 cm Purchased the West] 1989 2006 with the generous assistance of Roslyn Packer and members of the NGA Foundation: John Kaldor and Naomi Milgrom, Julie Kantor, Andrew Rogers; Kounellis Untitled 1990 (detail); Bourgeois C.O.Y.O.T.E. 1941–48

12 national gallery of australia has remarked, it is named after a 1973 book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird which investigates the physical, emotional and spiritual relations between plants, humans and the universe. Another contemporary artist who cogitates on questions of culture and history is the American Cy Twombly, who has lived and worked in Italy for the last fifty-five years. As well as paintings and drawings, Twombly makes sculptures. They are often assembled from industrial metal, plastic or wooden objects, then painted white and occasionally cast in bronze in small editions. Untitled 2005, one of an edition of six, has a unique patina, or surface treatment, of mottled pale grey-green. The patina has something of the quality of lichen covering gravestones in a shady cemetery, which is appropriate as it serves as a kind of memorial to a friend of the artist. Inscribed on the base are the words ‘In memory of Dominique Bozo’, who was head of the Pompidou Centre until his premature death in 1993. But ‘Victory’ is also written high on the work. It has a sail form, and a rectangular base, and stands the same height as a classical Greek sculpture in the Louvre, the Victory of Samothrace. She was the goddess of victory. The equivocal nature of death and memory is recalled when we consider that Admiral Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar from his flagship – and was fatally wounded on board – the Victory. Returning sculpture to the grand, meditative space of the lower level, now known as the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery, hopefully restores the original intention of the National Gallery’s founders to showcase sculpture as a central part of the collection, and to display it as a powerful and extraordinary medium of modern art. a

Christine Dixon Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

artonview spring 2007 13 pacific arts gallery

Pacific arts in the Gallery

The National Gallery has a long history in bringing the arts of the non-Western world to its visitors – from Indian miniature paintings to faïence figures from Ancient Egypt. However, until recently, the Pacific Arts collection remained perhaps the least known of the world’s many spheres of art to our visitors. With the opening of the new Pacific Arts Gallery in July, some of the finest Pacific artworks in Australia, dating from around 3500 years ago to the mid- twentieth century, are now on display. The origins of the collection stem from 1968 when the first item – a wood sculpture of a Papua New Guinean woman wearing a rain cape – was purchased from a Sydney art dealer by acting chairperson for the Commonwealth Advisory Board, Sir William Dargie. In broad geographic terms, the Pacific Arts collection encompasses around one-third of the world’s surface and is divided into three main areas: Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Within each of these areas exist many unique cultures, some sustained by less than 100 people and each with their own artistic forms of expression. Melanesia is by far the most diverse area of the collection, with works from New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and the great landmass of Papua New Guinea where more than 800 languages are spoken. Given the diversity of Papua New Guinea’s Indigenous cultures, its proximity to Australia and the long and entwined history we share, it is not surprising that a greater portion of the collection is from

Raharuhi Rukupo Papua New Guinea. Aotearoa [New Zealand], The next area of the Pacific Arts collection comes North Island, Manutuke, Rongowhakaata people from Polynesia (meaning many islands), a vast triangular Figure from a house post region of the Pacific with the three outermost points being [poutokomanawa] c. 1825–1840 (detail) New Zealand, Hawaii and remote Easter Island. Within wood, natural pigments 79.7 x 26.5 x 20.2 cm the Polynesian triangle are the islands that fascinated National Gallery of Australia, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European society Canberra Purchased 1981 with notions of noble savages and idyllic paradises – Tahiti, the Cook Islands, the Austral Islands and the Marquesas Islands. The Gallery holds only a small collection from these islands yet each work is more than 150 years old. Notable among them is the very fine Poutokomanawa house post figure carved by the great carver-priest and warrior Raharuhi Rukupo in the early 1840s. The qualities of the collection’s sometimes sublime, sometimes aggressively confronting works can be appreciated through their sculptural value alone. However,

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they are all the more impressive after reflecting upon how unsaid ideas and concepts. The colours used in arts from Lower Sepik people Papua New Guinea, Lower each work was created. Connections to the environment the Pacific were sourced from a variety of natural resources Sepik River area played a great part in sourcing raw materials for sculpture. – plants, pounded shells, ochre and soot obtained by Spirit mask c. 1885–1920 wood, pigment, laundry For example, the tree trunk used for the impressive burning fruits such as candlenut all contributed to the dye 89.0 x 24.0 x 28.0 cm Kanganaman village house post at the entrance to the artists’ palette. An exception is the Lower Sepik Spirit mask National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1970 Pacific Arts Gallery would have been selected because the which is highlighted with Reckitt’s laundry bluing dye. This Te Fenua ‘Enata people spirit that lived in the tree made itself ‘known’ to the artist. interesting adaptation shows that artists were not afraid French Polynesia, Marquesas Islands, Tahuata Island Once the tree was chosen, the artist simply worked on the to incorporate exotic materials. (Indeed the use of Western Fan [tahi’i] 1800–1850 natural shape of the wood to reveal the spirit’s true form. materials may have been considered a way to imbue a work wood, pandanus, coconut fibre National Gallery The tools used by some artists are remarkable in with extra magical capabilities.) What seems to be a limited of Australia, Canberra themselves – sharply ground edged stones (which in range of natural resources did not dim the imagination of Purchased 1972 themselves took considerable time to produce) acted as the artist – the individuality, uniqueness and latent power the cutting blades of adzes for hewing out the mass and of each artwork can still be felt in works that have endured volume of an object. Smaller pieces of worked shell and many years of exposure to the tropical elements. bone, even the sharp teeth from small mammals, were Specialisation in certain media was common for many employed to complete the finer details of a figure, mask or Pacific artists and their communities. A prestigious object sculpture. To achieve a pleasingly smooth surface required such as a delicate Marquesan fan, Tahi, was made by laborious rubbing with the tough edge of a boar tusk or specialists known as tuhuna who focused on refining the rough skin of rays, sharks and certain plant leaves with the singular aspect of fan making in order to elevate the abrasive properties. production to an artform difficult for others to replicate. For Pacific art, colour can be equally as important Fans were made only on Tahuata Island and were exported as form, and the application of colour was often a ritual great distances across the Marquesas group. The finely event in itself. Particular colours are known to be powerful braided continuous cordage of the Hawaiian necklace, visual communicators for different island cultures. Colour, Lei niho palaoa, was once the preserve of artists who when used within an important event or ceremony for worked only with human hair – one of the most important many communities, symbolically communicates otherwise materials in Hawaii. Hair was highly regarded as being

artonview spring 2007 17 charged with mana, a spiritual power, as it grows that do not immediately conform to the Western eye. Hawaiian people United States of America, directly from the head, which was considered the seat In particular, the works from Melanesia hold great physical Hawaiian Islands of the human spirit. As with the Marquesan fan, this complexity, an example of which is the spirit figure Necklace [lei niho palaoa] 1820–1860 marine ivory, necklace was a collaborative work and likely to have been Maunwial whose vestigial limbs, bulbous head and intense human hair, plant fibre commissioned by a wealthy member of the community. An National Gallery of Australia, colours are a synthesis of the concrete and the abstract. Canberrra Purchased 1970 artist skilled in working marine ivory would have produced Maunwial and several other works have been displayed the refined central hook-shaped pendant. These pendants floating free of the wall, in much the same manner as they have long been considered stylised fishhooks. They are also once were displayed in spirit houses suspended from the said to represent ‘the tongue of god’ in a protruding and rafters by cords of fibre. aggressive manner. The pendant is fashioned from a whale Recognition of Pacific arts has been a slow process due tooth, indicating a connection to Kanaloa, the god of the to the blossoming of anthropology in the late nineteenth sea, who provides a bounty of fish and seafood and whose waters surround all the Hawaiian Islands. These kinds of and early twentieth century when the arts of Indigenous connections between art and life in the Pacific were and peoples were exhibited solely in museums and primarily as are inseparable. documents to one aspect of human history. Appreciation, Many of the works in the Pacific Arts Gallery however, did grow through the esteem shown by were created to give younger generations a better individuals in the Expressionist, Dadaist and Surrealist art understanding of what it meant to be a member of collectives, including Pablo Picasso, Max Pechstein, André a community. Initiation on the Sepik River was often Breton and Paul Éluard, whose passion was guided by an part of the process of becoming an adult member of aesthetic approach of pure contemplation and intuitive the community. The initiate would undergo a period of interpretation rather than any deeper understanding of hardship and stressful rituals that culminated in a short- the cultures of the Pacific. This appreciation blossomed lived confrontation with a powerful spirit in the Haus during the mid-twentieth century, as seen in the history of tambaran (a place where spirits dwell). Pacific artists the exquisite To-reri uno double figure from Lake Sentani conceived works with the greatest possible visual force for that has been internationally acknowledged as one of the Haus tambaran in order to create a menacing reverence the finest known works from the Pacific. For more than which viewers would clearly remember and cautiously a decade, when works from the Pacific were making the regard all their lives, even if their glimpse was only fleeting. Artists depicted otherworldly beings, ancestors or spirits slow transition from artefact to art, it stood in the gallery of in forms that held a physical presence that conveyed the Parisian art dealer Pierre Loeb, overlooked and unsold. The ancestors’ will and underlined their mastery over the beauty inherent in the sculpture did not change, but the environment in which the community lived. For some comprehension and susceptibility of the viewer did. cultures, this environment was shaped by the deeds of In the intervening years from the building of our distant primordial ancestors and was demonstrated by Pacific Arts collection in the late 1960s to today, this same connections to natural features – lakes, mountains and transitory process means visitors to the gallery will see the coastlines. Animals such as crocodiles, hornbill birds, masks and sculptures as more than curiosities or specimens sago beetles, sea eagles, bonito fish and sharks were also of ‘the other’. They are objects of potent visual force incorporated into ancestral mythologies. These connections that stand equally next to art from any period, culture or were stressed to the young so they would never forget individual artist across the world. a their association with the local environment. Visitors to the Pacific Arts Gallery may be unsettled by Crispin Howarth the convulsive nature and compositions of some sculptures Assistant Curator, Pacific Arts

artonview spring 2007 19 exhibitions galleries

The ‘big guns’ of Culture Warriors

13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008

Jean Baptiste Apuatimi Through their art and culture, the artists in Culture Warriors ensures that their work is seen and celebrated Tiwi people Yirrikapayi 2007 natural earth pigments on Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial tell the stories during their lifetime. canvas 160.0 x 200.0 cm of their communities in an incredible diversity of ‘voices’ – Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, the only female artist in National Gallery of Australia, Canberra humble, venerated, spiritual, customary, poignant, satirical, ‘the big guns’, is a Tiwi elder whose traditional name is Philip Gudthaykudthay political, innovative and overt. Among the thirty-one artists Pulukatu (female buffalo) and dance Jarrangini (buffalo). Liyagalawumirr people Wagilag Sisters 2007 featured in the Triennial, a core group of dedicated and Apuatimi began working as an artist alongside her natural earth pigments husband, acclaimed Tiwi elder and artist, Declan Apuatimi and Liquitex Matte Binder significant artists deserve singular focus. Jean Baptiste on Belgian linen Apuatimi, Philip Gudthaykudthay, John Mawurndjul, Lofty (1930–1985). Earlier this year, Jean talked with Angela Hill, 172.0 x 120.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Bardayal Nadjamerrek and Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Art Centre Co-ordinator at Tiwi Designs, about her art Canberra Jr are fêted through major installations of their work in and culture: the exhibition, and through essay contributions in the My name is Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. I am a painter. accompanying exhibition publication. Colloquially referred My husband Declan Karrilikiya Apuatimi taught me to as ‘the big guns’, their respective careers span the four how to paint. I love my painting, I love doing it ... decades since the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals). Culture Now I am doing that. Painting makes me alive.1

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Apuatimi learnt by assisting her husband with his art-making John Mawurndjul is a member of the Kurulk clan of John Mawurndjul Kuninjku (Eastern Kunwinjku) people and had her first solo exhibition in 1991. She has created Kuninjku-speaking people of Western Arnhem Land. He is Billabong at Milmilngkan a striking series of large canvases especially for Culture without doubt the most renowned Kuninjku artist working 2006 natural earth pigment on bark 200.0 x 47.0 cm Warriors, which include figurative representations of tutini today, with an international reputation and lauded as a National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and pukumani objects, and body painting. A tiny figure, she ‘maestro’ by former French president Jacques Chirac at nonetheless has a powerful presence, accompanied by a Arthur Koo’ekka the opening of the Australian Indigenous Art Commission Pambegan Jnr wicked sense of humour, declaring herself ‘a famous artist Wik Mungkan/Winchanam for the newest Parisian museum, Musée du quai Branly, peoples Face painting 2006 now’, through her inclusion in Culture Warriors. in June 2006. natural earth pigments Philip Gudthaykudthay, one of the last conversant and hibiscus charcoal with synthetic polymer binder Liyagalawumirri speakers, was born c. 1925 and is a My work and my rarrk (cross-hatching) have on canvas 56.0 x 168.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, senior custodian of the Wagilag creation narrative. changed a lot since I started painting a long time Canberra Gudthaykudthay’s totem is Burruwara, the native cat, ago [late 1970s]. That was with my brother [Jimmy which has seen him endowed with the nickname of Njiminjuma] and together, we have changed the ‘Pussycat’. In 1983 Gudthaykudthay was the first Central rarrk and started to paint in a new style. We are Arnhem Land artist to have a solo show at a contemporary new people … Now, I concentrate on painting gallery, Garry Anderson Gallery in Sydney, making him important places, my land, my djang [sacred places]. possibly the first Aboriginal artist in Australia to hold a I paint the power of that land … I keep thinking, I solo exhibition in a contemporary artspace. keep finding new ways, new styles for my paintings. Although consistent in his artistic output, since being I just can’t stop thinking about my paintings. awarded an artist fellowship from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Board in 2006, his creative well- Mawurndjul’s representations of Mardayin and sites spring has been replenished, and he has produced a associated with his traditional country of Milmilngkan – magnificent series of badurru (hollow logs) for Culture on bark and hollow logs – have become increasingly Warriors in his characteristically elegant and spare miny’tji refined in his expert use of rarrk. Inspired by great classical (clan body design) and rarrk (cross-hatching), quite Kuninjku artists such as Peter Marralwanga (Mawurndjul’s distinct from the larrakitj and lorrkon from Yirrkala and wife, Kay, is Marralwanga’s daughter and an artist in her Maningrida, respectively. own right) along with Yirawala and his elder brother Jimmy

I’m botj [boss] here. Ramingining … Me, number Njiminjuma, Mawurndjul’s artistic and cultural mastery one painter … Right up from painting, Milingimbi, was acknowledged when he was awarded the Clemenger Ngangalala, Ramingining, Maningrida, now come Contemporary Art Award in 2003, and honoured in the here, Ramingining. Stop here. Number one painter solo exhibition Rärrk: John Mawurndjul journey through here. Bark, finish ‘im up here; canvas, finish ‘im up time in Northern Australia at the Museum Tinguely, Basel, here. Hollow log. All painting here. Me, number one. in 2005.

artonview spring 2007 23

Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek is rightly acknowledged renown) who was among the first of the Wik-speaking Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek as one of the most learned elders of the Arnhem Land people to live at Aurukun, a mission established by the Kundedjnjenghm people escarpment known as ‘Stone Country’, and is the last of Moravians at Archer River in 1904. Ngalyod I 2005 natural earth pigments on bark the painters of the magnificent rock art galleries of the 45.0 x 134.0 cm on loan I’d just say … I WON’T STOP DOING IT. This belong region; his final work, a simple, dynamic kangaroo and from Joseph Fekete and to all of us. We share it together … we share our Annie Bartlett hunter in white ochre, was created in 2005. From the culture and you sharing your culture. The culture, Kundedjnjenghm people, Mok clan, Nadjamerrek was born what you see in the carvings, in the body painting, c. 1926 at Kukkulumurr, Western Arnhem Land, and, as his what you see in the canvas, they more important, name suggests, his elevated, graceful physique was often because this is the way we are, not going to lose it. seen traversing the length and breadth of Arnhem Land in his early adult years. Pambegan Jnr is known for his wonderful sculptural Now residing at his outstation at Kabulwarnamyo, installations of ancestral stories, Bonefish Story Place and Bardayal paints sparingly, passing on his traditions to his Flying Fox Story Place. The distinctive art of Aurukun – grandsons, who sit quietly watching him as he paints. trademark body-paint design worn by performers in a set Although his hand is now somewhat unsteady, his great of horizontal stripes, alternating red, white and black2 – skill as an ‘old-style’ rock art painter is evident in the has also enjoyed a gradual move into the art market in the stunning barks and works on paper which have been past twenty-five years, with younger artists encouraged secured for Culture Warriors. Bardayal may scrape back by elders such as Pambegan Jnr. He is equally renowned some of the ochre pigments on the bark canvases or for his skill and acumen as a ceremonial dancer and leader. paper sheets when dissatisfied with a particular line, but Culture Warriors presents the first works on canvas by the stature of his figures – creation beings and totemic Pambegan Jnr alongside his installations. animals – remains unchallenged. Whereas Mawurndjul It has been a great honour to work with such continually works on refining his sublime rarrk, filling the inspirational artists and cultural activists, whose work and entire surface of his canvas, Bardayal’s painting reflects lives inspired the title of the inaugural National Indigenous a fidelity to his cultural traditions, with the figurative Art Triennial. a elements reigning supreme. Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jnr is one of the most Brenda L Croft respected Winchanam ceremonial elders in Aurukun, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Curator, Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial a community based on the western side of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland. Pambegan Jnr comes notes 1 From an essay with Angela Hill, ‘Jean Baptiste recorded this from a family of great standing in the community, learning introduction in Tiwi at Nguiu, Bathurst Island, on 3 February 2007 his cultural traditions through his father, Arthur Koo’ekka which was transcribed and translated by Margaret Renee Kerinauia’. 2 Peter Sutton, essay for the exhibition catalogue accompanying Pambegan Snr (also an artist and cultural activist of great Culture Warriors.

artonview spring 2007 25 orde poynton gallery

Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978

1 September 2007 – 27 January 2008

Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look. John Cage, avant-garde composer, 19611

Artist Robert Rauschenberg Robert Rauschenberg has had an extensive impact in 1953 Photo by Allan Grant, Life Magazine © Time on late twentieth-century visual culture. His work has Warner Inc/Robert been of central influence in many of the significant Rauschenberg/VAGA, New York/DACS, London developments of post-war American art and has provided countless blueprints for artistic innovation by younger Booster 1967 from the Booster and generations. Rauschenberg’s radical approach to his artistic seven studies series 1967 practice was always sensational, with the artist producing colour lithograph, screenprint 183.0 x 89.0 cm works so experimental that they eluded definition and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1973 categorisation. The National Gallery of Australia holds an important collection of Rauschenberg’s works. These works exemplify the artist’s striking transition in subject matter and material during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s – a shift from the imagery of American popular culture to a focus on the handmade and unique combinations of natural and found materials. Many of the works exhibited in Robert Rauschenberg 1967–1978 reveal the artist’s overarching aim to ‘drag ordinary materials into the art world for a direct confrontation’.2 It has been Rauschenberg’s perpetual mix of art with life that has ensured that his work appears as innovative today as it was forty years ago. The legendary Bauhaus figure, Josef Albers, was the head of fine art at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, when Rauschenberg enrolled in 1948. Under the supervision of the strict disciplinarian, Rauschenberg learnt about the essential qualities, or unique spirit, within all kinds of materials. Rauschenberg said of their student- teacher relationship, that Albers was ‘a beautiful teacher and an impossible person. He didn’t teach you how to “do art”. The focus was on the development of your own personal sense of looking. Years later … I’m still learning from what he taught me. What he taught me had to do with the whole visual world’.3

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Storyline I It was also at Black Mountain College that Rauschenberg Despite his ‘prankster’ reputation, Rauschenberg from the Reels (B+C) series 1968 came into contact with several other key art world figures was highly self-disciplined and determined to challenge colour lithograph who had a vital and long-lasting impact upon his thinking himself. In 1951, Rauschenberg completed a series of white 54.6 x 43.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, and artistic pursuits. The artists Ben Shahn, Robert paintings, which were in contrast, followed by a series of Canberra Purchased 1973 Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Jack Tworkov, Franz Kline black paintings. By limiting himself to a monochromatic Storyline III and Aaron Sisskind were all teaching at Black Mountain. from the Reels (B+C) palette, Rauschenberg performed an artistic exorcism, series 1968 However, the most significant influence on the young rendering the restrictions imposed by media, style and colour lithograph 54.6 x 44.6 cm artist was the celebrated avant-garde composer John convention obsolete so that there were no psychological National Gallery of Australia, Cage. Rauschenberg and Cage developed a relationship of Canberra Purchased 1973 boundaries to what he could do from that point onwards. reciprocal inspiration – a connection that provided both the Only after such self-imposed regulation was Rauschenberg artist and the composer with the daring that was required in prepared for what he was to attempt next. In a radical the creation of their most innovative works. transgression of artistic conventions, Rauschenberg In contrast to the environment of Black Mountain began to fuse vertical, wall-mounted painterly works with College, the New York avant-garde art scene in 1949 horizontal, floor-based sculptural elements, usually in the was dominated by Abstract Expressionism. The artistic form of found objects. His fusion of the two-dimensional giants Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock had picture plane and the three-dimensional object is now of established themselves as the most innovative of the legendary status. It was the invention of a new ‘species’ of Abstract Expressionists. Discussions focused on the inner art, which Rauschenberg termed ‘Combines’. emotional state of the individual artist as expressed in Rauschenberg developed his own unique style by highly charged painted gestures. The more free-thinking Rauschenberg, however, worked outside these confines, combining gestural mark-making with its antithesis – adopting a methodology that sought to reunite art with mechanically reproduced imagery. It was this remarkable everyday life, an ideology that was in complete opposition clash of visual elements in Rauschenberg’s art that provided to the central tenets of Abstract Expressionism. Early in his a major aesthetic fracture – a departure from the heroic career, Rauschenberg created controversy within the New painterly gestures of Abstract Expressionism and a move York art scene with a series of ‘artistic pranks’, including towards the adoption of popular culture as subject matter. his infamous erasure of a Willem de Kooning drawing. This This radical schism, however, would not have occurred had rebellious act of destroying an established artist’s work it not been for Jasper Johns, with whom Rauschenberg gained him instant notoriety and secured Rauschenberg had a long and intense partnership, beginning in 1954. the position of New York’s enfant terrible. Rauschenberg and Johns lived above one another in the

28 national gallery of australia same building, visiting each other every day and setting Rauschenberg’s series of dense collage works, Albino cactus (scale) 1977 from the scale series artistic challenges for each other. Rauschenberg has said Horsefeathers thirteen, is a striking example of the artist’s 1977–81 of his partnership with Johns that, ‘He and I were each innate talent in constructing compositions of detailed ink transfer on silk, synthetic polymer paint other’s first critics … Jasper and I literally traded ideas. sophistication. Mass media action images, such as running on composition board, mirrorised synthetic He would say, “I’ve got a terrific idea for you” and then I races, horse-riding and rowing, are mixed with more polymer film, electric light, would have to find one for him’.4 The Rauschenberg–Johns generalised subjects that blend the natural environment wood, rubber tyre 88.7 x 442.1 x 122.0 cm relationship was one of the great creative relationships of with the manufactured environment. Each image is National Gallery of Australia, the twentieth century. It propelled them both in radically poised on the precarious dynamic moment and, in this Canberra Purchased 1978 new directions and contributed to the development of the way, Rauschenberg succeeds in investing his works with a Pop Art movement. simultaneous sense of movement and suspense. There is no Rauschenberg’s modus operandi has always been hierarchy of images – the path of visual exploration for each collage – the combination of disparate elements within a composition is of our own choosing, despite the occasional single composition. He has been a cultural archaeologist – (and humorous) directional arrow. The Horsefeathers a master of collecting, editing and assembling the imagery thirteen series is a visual experiment in the ‘random order’ of society, the environment, life and time. He insists that of experience.5 By presenting us with a series of signs there is no personal narrative embedded within his work, that encourage multiple complex readings, the artist has but rather that his imagery is arranged through a series of attempted a collaboration with the specific memories, rapidly made associations based upon intuition. associations and thought processes of the individual viewer.

artonview spring 2007 29 Publicon – Station IV While the images and objects selected for inclusion combination of two-dimensional photographic imagery from the Publicons series 1978 enamel on wood within the artist’s compositions may not be personally and three-dimensional found objects can be considered a construction, collaged symbolic, they do reveal much about the American social late ‘Combine’ work. laminated silk and cotton, bicycle wheel, events and political issues of the cultural period in which A ‘found’ tyre in Albino cactus (scale) is incorporated fluorescent light fixture, they were created. The garishly coloured Reels (B + C) into Rauschenberg’s artistic expression, but it cannot be perspex, enamel on polished aluminium series appropriate the film stills from the 1967 Bonnie and completely detached from its life spirit. The Duchampian open 154.8 x 146.2 x 29.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Clyde movie, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, displacement of the found object from life, and its Canberra Purchased 1979 and expose Rauschenberg’s fascination with celebrity and subsequent transference to art, creates something akin to a the entertainment industry. In a similar fashion, the photo- split personality; that is, all found objects bring with them a collage work Signs operates as a succinct visual summary history and/or pre-function which the artist allows to seep of the cultural and political events of the 1960s, depicting into the composition. Thus, in a collaborative encounter the tragic musician Janis Joplin, the assassination of with his material, Rauschenberg becomes a choreographer John F Kennedy, America’s race riots and the Vietnam War. of the historical meaning and value of the found object. Rauschenberg has always been an artist-activist, skilled The images collaged along the material panel in employing art to raise individual awareness of social, backdrop of Albino cactus (scale) have been printed via a environmental and political issues. solvent-transfer process – a technique that Rauschenberg Rauschenberg’s work from the 1950s and 1960s can began to experiment with in 1959. However, the look of also be seen as a presentation of the street culture of the Albino cactus (scale) also recalls Rauschenberg’s many urban environment. During this period, Rauschenberg lived screenprinted paintings, first explored by the artist in 1962. in New York and regularly walked the streets in order to (It was at the same time that Andy Warhol also adopted collect the ‘surprises’ that the city had left for him. Many the screenprinting technique and the two artists traded of these found objects were incorporated into his artwork, ideas about the method.) The solvent transfer process and the most famous of which is a stuffed goat (Monogram screenprinting technique liberated Rauschenberg’s work. 1953–59). The Gallery’s Albino cactus (scale) with its With both forms of printmaking, the artist discovered ways

30 national gallery of australia in which he could quickly and repetitively transfer his found use a life-sized X-ray portrait of himself combined with Cardbird III from the Cardbird series imagery to the canvas of his paintings and Combines. an astrological chart, magazine images of athletes, the 1971 photo-lithograph, Rauschenberg believed that the printmaking technique image of a chair and the images of two power drills. screenprint, corrugated cardboard, tape of lithography was old-fashioned and is notorious for Printer Kenneth Tyler was a masterful facilitator for 98.0 x 90.6 cm having stated that ‘the second half of the twentieth Rauschenberg’s ambitious project and the collaboration National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1973 century is no time to start writing on rocks’. Ironically, radically altered the aesthetic possibilities of planographic it is Rauschenberg who became a significant figure in printmaking. Rauschenberg and Tyler pushed beyond what the resurrection of American printmaking that occurred had previously been done by combining lithography and during the 1960s. He has subsequently worked with many screenprinting in a new type of ‘hybrid’ print. The rules leading print workshops to create more than 800 published governing the size of lithographic printmaking were also editions. Printmaking is a technique that was perfectly ignored, and at the time of its creation Booster stood suited to his methodology of layering found images and as the largest and most technically sophisticated print one which gave him total control over the size and scale of ever produced. Today, Booster remains one of the most each component image. It was through printmaking that significant prints of the twentieth century, a watershed that Rauschenberg was able to once again blur the distinctions catapulted printmaking into a new era of experimentation. between media and perfectly unite his obsessive use of the Rauschenberg’s collaborations with printmakers and photographic image with painterly techniques. print workshops have often not resembled traditional One of the most successful of Rauschenberg’s prints at all. In his typical mix of techniques and processes, collaborations has been with the Gemini GEL print the artist has radically re-interpreted the traditional notion workshop – a printmaking partnership that has permanently of what constitutes a print. Seizing upon the notion of changed the terrain of American printmaking. The artist’s multiplicity, inherent in the printed form, Rauschenberg highly experimental approach to print processes comes to has frequently applied it to sculpture to create multiple the fore in the colour lithograph and screenprint Booster, sculptural works that are editioned, just as a traditional created in 1967. For Booster, Rauschenberg decided to print can be editioned. His three-dimensional Publicon

artonview spring 2007 31 station multiples are seven physical expressions of the clash Donald Judd. By selecting the most mundane of materials, of art and religion and a reference to Christ’s fourteen Rauschenberg once again succeeds in a glamorous stations of the cross. Early in his life Rauschenberg was very makeover of the most ordinary of objects. This is an involved in the Church and wanted to become a preacher. exploration of a new order of materials, a radical scrambling His decision was reversed, however, when he was told of the material hierarchy of modernism. that the Church would not tolerate dancing (an activity During the 1970s, Rauschenberg’s new international that Rauschenberg was particularly good at). Just like this focus required him to travel to several countries where he clash of religion and culture in life, the Publicon stations entered into significant collaborations with local artists represent a similar clash of visual elements in art. They are and craftspeople. The first was in 1973 with the medieval paper mill Richard de Bas in Ambert, France. Once again, austere containers that unfold to display intricately Rauschenberg imposed a disciplined stripping back of his collaged, bright fabrics and electrical components. Akin to art materials – this time it was not to do with colour but the individual steps that make up a choreographed dance, with the notion of the handmade. In particular, the artist the works are adjustable through various configurations. wanted to engage with handmade paper as one of the As box-like containers, the Publicon stations also reveal most ancient of artistic traditions. The resulting series, the influence of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell. Pages and fuses, is a group of paper pulp works where Rauschenberg closely studied the works of the two masters the Pages are formed from natural pulp and shaped into and repetitively referenced them in his own work. paper pieces that incorporate twine or scraps of fabric. In A fundamental shift in subject and material occurred contrast, the Fuses are vivid pulp pieces dyed with bright in Rauschenberg’s work from the 1960s to the 1970s. pigments. It was precisely this innovative experiment with In the 1960s he relied heavily upon American visual paper pulp that sparked a renewed interest in handmade culture whereas in the 1970s Rauschenberg embraced paper, which inspired major paper works by artists such as an international perspective. The works from the 1970s Ellsworth Kelly, David Hockney and Helen Frankenthaler. also reflect the artist’s incessant experimentation with Throughout his career, Rauschenberg worked with fabric new materials. Where the 1960s were dominated by in the creation of theatre costumes and stage sets. In 1974, repetitive mass media imagery, the 1970s reveal a focus however, his interest in the inherent properties of natural on natural fibres, a simplification of the artist’s materials to materials led him to experiment with the combination incorporate fabric, cardboard and other natural elements of fabric and printmaking. The Hoarfrost editions series, such as mud, rope and handmade paper. The catalyst for created at Gemini GEL, is named after the thin layer this dramatic change in both subject matter and material of ice that forms on cold surfaces and was inspired by can be explained by a change in Rauschenberg’s physical Rauschenberg’s observation of printmakers using ‘large environment – his decision to move from New York City sheets of gauze … to wipe stones and presses … and hung to Captiva Island, Florida, had a profound effect on the about the room to dry … how they float in the air, veiling 7 appearance of his work. machinery, prints tacked to walls, furniture’. The imagery With no city to offer up its detritus, the artist turned of the Hoarfrost editions was drawn from the Sunday Los Angeles Times and printed onto layers of silk, muslin to the things that surrounded him in his new environment and cheesecloth. The artist has exploited the transparent and the move had yielded numerous cardboard boxes. layering of material in order to suspend the image within Rauschenberg has suggested that his choice of cardboard the work itself, enabling the viewer to both look at and as a new material was the result of ‘a desire … to work look through the work – to see both the positive space and in a material of waste and softness. Something yielding the negative space in conjunction with the environment with its only message a collection of lines imprinted like a behind the work. Everyday objects, such as paper bags, are friendly joke. A silent discussion of their history exposed in sophisticated contrast with the ghostly imprinted imagery by their new shapes’.6 The Cardbird series of 1971 is a and the delicate fabric folds and layers. tongue-in-cheek visual joke, a printed mimic of cardboard Rauschenberg’s quest for continued international constructions. The labour intensive process involved in the involvement took him to Ahmadabad, India, to work in creation of the series remains invisible to the viewer – the a paper mill that had been established as an ashram for artist created a prototype cardboard construction which untouchables. Rauschenberg was immediately struck by was then photographed and the image transferred to a the contrast between the rich paper mill owners and the lithographic press and printed before a final lamination absolute poverty of the mill workers. The artist’s specific onto cardboard backing. The extreme complexity of environment once again provided him with materials construction belies the banality of the series and, in this and in 1975 he set about making the Bones and unions way, Rauschenberg references both Pop’s Brillo boxes by series. For the Bones, the collaborative team wove strips of Andy Warhol and Minimalist boxes, such as those by bamboo with handmade paper embedded with segments

32 national gallery of australia of brightly coloured Indian saris. In the creation of the clippings, paper, fabric and mud to electric lightbulbs and Preview from the Hoarfrost editions Unions, Rauschenberg sought to incorporate the mud old tyres. In this way, Rauschenberg has imbued his art series 1974 that was used by the villagers to build their homes. He with the visual ‘poetry of infinite possibilities’.8 a lithograph and screenprint transferred to a collage achieved this by concocting a rag-mud mixture consisting of paper bags, silk chiffon, Jaklyn Babington silk taffeta of paper pulp, fenugreek powder, ground tamarind Curator, International Prints and Drawings 175.3 x 204.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, seed, chalk powder, gum powder and copper sulphate This exhibition is supported by the Embassy of the Canberra Purchased 1976 mixed with water, all of which was then kiln fired. For United States of America Rauschenberg, the striking contrast between the sensuous notes 1 John Cage, ‘On Robert Rauschenberg, artist, and his work’ (first colour of the saris against the aromatic and earthy published in Metro, Milan, 1961); republished in Silence, 4th edition, The M.I.T Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, aesthetic of the rag-mud encapsulated the manifest social 1970, p. 98. and cultural contrasts of India. 2 Walter Hopps, ‘Introduction: Rauschenberg’s art of fusion’ in Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson, Robert Rauschenberg: a retrospective, The In all of his artistic pursuits, Rauschenberg has been Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1997, p. 29. 3 Calvin Tomkins, Off the wall: the art world of our time, Doubleday & an enthusiast for collaboration, working with numerous co., New York, 1980, p. 32. artists, composers, papermakers and printmakers. His joy in 4 Tomkins, p. 118. 5 Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Random order’, Location, New York, Volume 1 creating works of art within a reciprocal exchange has also Spring 1963, pp. 27–31. 6 Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Note: Cardbirds’ in Rauschenberg: Cardbirds, extended to his materials. By looking beyond the apparent promotional brochure, Gemini G.E.L, Los Angeles, 1971, n.p. 7 Ruth Fine, ‘Writing on rocks, rubbing on silk, layering on paper’ ordinariness of everyday experience, Rauschenberg in Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson, Robert Rauschenberg: a celebrates the life spirit of all things, realising the unique retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1997, p. 384. qualities of everything from individual colours, mass media 8 Cage, p.103.

artonview spring 2007 33 project gallery

Black robe, white mist: art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu

8 September 2007 – 27 January 2008

Rengetsu’s memorial stone Black robe, white mist celebrates the life and work of and his wife Nawa. Teruhisa and Nawa had five sons at Saihoji, near Jinkoin. The calligraphy was designed Otagaki Rengetsu or Lotus Moon (1791–1875). Featuring only one of whom, Katahisa, was still alive at the time by Tomioka Tessai delicate ceramics, calligraphy and scroll painting, it is the of Rengetsu’s adoption. When she was eight or nine, first exhibition outside Japan to focus solely on the work of Rengetsu went to live at Kameoka Castle where, as a lady- Rengetsu, who lived an exceptional life at a time of great in-waiting, she received training in poetry, calligraphy, social and political upheaval. Black robe, white mist brings dance, needlework and martial arts. During the time together many objects never before exhibited, the majority Rengetsu was at Kameoka, Nawa and Katahisa both died. of which are in private collections. At the age of sixteen or seventeen Rengetsu returned Born the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan and a to Kyoto and married Oka Tenzo. In keeping with custom, high-ranking samurai in a Kyoto pleasure district, Rengetsu he was adopted into the Otagaki family and his name died a Buddhist nun renowned as a poet, calligrapher, changed accordingly. He became Naoichi Mochihisa. potter and painter. She was included in Heian jinbutsu Rengetsu’s first child, a son, was born soon after the shi, a list of prominent people in Kyoto, in 1838, 1852 marriage but lived only twenty days. The couple also had and 1867, and even today she is one of the characters in two daughters but they too died young, one at a few Kyoto’s annual Jidai Matsuri or Festival of the Ages, which months and the other as a small child. In a rare occurrence includes a parade of historical figures. for the time, Rengetsu eventually divorced the apparently Despite her fame, relatively little is known with depraved Mochihisa. certainty about Rengetsu and much that is believed about Her second marriage was a happy match but ended her owes more to fantasy and romantic conceptions of tragically when her husband Ishikawa Jujiro (who became her character and astonishing beauty than to reality. She Hisatoshi upon adoption) died from tuberculosis. The pair endured personal tragedy from early in her life and it was had at least one daughter and possibly two. The night these experiences that led to her remarkably productive before his death, Rengetsu marked her intention never to artistic career. remarry by cutting off her hair. Aged thirty-three, she soon Originally called Nobu, Rengetsu was adopted as became a nun, adopting Lotus Moon as her name. Teruhisa a baby by Otagaki Hanzaemon Teruhisa, a lay priest at was ordained at the same time and, with Rengetsu’s Chion’in, the major Pure Land Buddhist temple in Kyoto, remaining child, or children, they moved to a Chion’in

34 national gallery of australia

hermitage. Within a decade Teruhisa and the last of and that every Kyoto household included at least one The Makuzuan hermitage at Chion’in, Kyoto, where Rengetsu’s children had died. The nun then left the temple example, be it a tea vessel, sweets dish, sake flask or Rengetsu lived with her to make her own way in the world. cup, tanzaku poem sheet, or a painting with calligraphy. daughter/s and her adoptive father Teruhisa In search of a means of support, she considered Rengetsu’s work was so popular that even within her (opposite) teaching the board game gõ, which Teruhisa had taught lifetime it was imitated and faked, a practice that has Otagaki Rengetsu and her, or waka poetry, which she had studied at Kameoka. Tomioka Tessai In this continued intermittently to the present and which makes world hanging scroll (Waka poems have thirty-one syllables divided into five it difficult to confidently attribute many Rengetsu- [kakemono] c. 1855 ink on lines of five-seven-five-seven-seven syllables.) Although paper 92.0 x 20.0 cm overall style objects to the artist herself. In many ways this is National Gallery of Australia, neither career was a success, Rengetsu’s verse did Canberra unimportant as such things did not concern Rengetsu. contribute to her later work. In her late forties or early Otagaki Rengetsu and She is believed to have willingly helped others make Wada Gozan/Gesshin fifties, Rengetsu began making tea ceramics. In describing their ceramics and paintings more saleable by adding her The goddess Amaterasu’s her teapots, Rengetsu modestly wrote, ‘they were very divine light hanging scroll calligraphy to them. In one story, a ceramics manufacturer [kakemono] 1864 (detail) humble and the shapes were unrefined. The poems I ink on paper asked Rengetsu to inscribe copies of her work because carved on them I wrote when I had a moment free. I never sheet 33.1 x 56.6 cm they couldn’t duplicate her calligraphy. She agreed, even Museum DKM/Stiftung DKM, had much free time.’1 Duisburg, Germany presenting some originals so better copies could be made. Rengetsu’s combination of pottery, poetry and Down to the Kamo river vase calligraphy, usually using Japanese kana rather than To keep up with demand for her ceramics, Rengetsu also [hanaire] 1850–75 glazed ceramic, incising Chinese kanji characters, was inspired. These simple, worked with professional potters, including Isso (dates 29.3 x 3.5 x 3.5 cm Private collection, Basel often roughly made, objects proved enormously popular. unknown) and Kuroda Koryo (1822–1895). Known as Though doubtless an exaggeration, it has been said that Rengetsu II, Kuroda had Rengetsu’s permission to sign his Rengetsu made more than 50,000 works in her lifetime work with her name and continued to do so after her death.

artonview spring 2007 37

With her work sought after and a reputation for beauty Rengetsu’s poems also appear without illustration on Set of five sencha tea cups 1873 glazed stoneware as well as generous acts of charity, the reclusive Rengetsu tanzaku poem sheet and scrolls. height: 4.5 cm each often moved several times a year to avoid unwanted In 1875 Rengetsu died in the temple tearoom she Private collection, Brussels attention. She eventually settled at Jinkoin, a Shingon had lived and worked in for a decade. She requested that (opposite) Let us consider ageing, Buddhist temple outside Kyoto city, and stayed there Tessai alone be contacted following her death, and it was teapot [kyusu] c. 1850 until the end of her life. Rengetsu’s time at the temple ceramic, incising her adored friend who designed the calligraphy on her 11.1 x 17.0 cm resulted in thousands of works, especially paintings and unassuming memorial stone near Jinkoin. In her eighties, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra calligraphies. In a poem about calligraphy that evokes Rengetsu wrote her autobiography in waka and prose in Fluttering merrily sake flask the feeling of her delicate, but powerful, rounded hand, a letter to Tessai. It included the poem: [tokkuri] 1870 glazed Rengetsu wrote: stoneware, incising The day begins 15.0 x 8.0 x 8.0 cm Taking up the brush Museum DKM/Stiftung DKM, I’m busy with my crafts Duisburg, Germany just for the joy of it, the day ends writing on and on, I pray to Buddha leaving behind and I have nothing to worry about. long lines of dancing letters. (translation Lee Johnson)4 a (translation John Stevens)2

At Jinkoin, Rengetsu often collaborated with Wada Melanie Eastburn Gozan/Gesshin (Moon Mind), who became a priest at Curator, Asian Art the temple after the death of his wife. She also created The exhibition catalogue is available from the National collaborative works, gassaku, with a number of other Gallery of Australia Shop on 02 6240 6420 artists, including the painters Mori Kansai (1814–1894) Further information at nga.gov.au/Rengetsu and Tomioka Tessai (1835–1924). Rengetsu and the much notes younger Tessai were very close and she thought of him as a 1 Lee Johnson, ‘The life and art of Otagaki Rengetsu’, Master of Arts thesis, University of Kansas, 1988, appendix 2. son. A scroll painting in the Gallery’s collection featuring a 2 John Stevens, Lotus Moon: the poetry of the Buddhist nun Rengetsu, painting of eggplants by Tessai and calligraphy by Rengetsu Buffalo: White Pine Press, 2005, p. 98. 3 Patricia Fister, ‘Waka poet-painters in Kyoto’, in Japanese women reads: ‘In this world there are certain forms which bring artists: 1600–1900, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, [welcome] thoughts to mind. The eggplant serves as a New York: Lawrence, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1988, p.153 4 A translation of Rengetsu’s autobiography appears in Johnson, 1988, symbol of happiness’ (translation Patricia Fister).3 appendix 2.

artonview spring 2007 39 travelling exhibition

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950

4 August 2007 – 3 May 2009

… it is continually exciting, these curious and strange rhythms which one discovers in a vast landscape, the juxtaposition of figures, of objects, all these things are exciting. Add to that again the peculiarity of the particular land in which we live here, and you get a quality of strangeness that you do not find, I think, anywhere else. Russell Drysdale, 19601

From the white heat of our beaches to the red heart of 127 of the 220 convicts on board died.2 Survivors’ accounts central Australia, Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape said the ship’s crew fired their weapons at convicts who, in painting 1850–1950 conveys the great beauty and diversity a state of panic, attempted to break from their confines as of the Australian continent. Curated by the National Gallery’s the vessel went down. Director Ron Radford, this major travelling exhibition is The painting is dominated by a huge sky, with the a celebration of the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary. It broken George the Third dwarfed by the expanse. Waves features treasured Australian landscape paintings from the crash over the decks of the ship while a few figures in the national collection and will travel to venues throughout each foreground attempt to salvage cargo and supplies. This is Australian state and territory until 2009. a seascape that evokes trepidation and anxiety. The small Encompassing colonial through to modernist works, the figures contribute to the feeling of human vulnerability exhibition spans the great century of Australian landscape when challenged by the extremities of nature. art. From 1850 to 1950 landscape was the most painted Australia’s finest late colonial landscape artist from and celebrated theme in Australian art. As well as images the period, Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901), painted which convey the geographical extremes of the continent, images of Australia from the perspective of an observer, Ocean to Outback includes works that reflect significant explorer and a resident. Von Guérard received numerous events that transformed the social fabric of Australia – Knut Bull commissions for ‘homestead portraits’. These commissions The wreck of the droughts and bushfires, the gold rushes, the Depression, were generally paintings of properties owned by graziers ‘George the Third’ 1850 and times of war. oil on canvas who were keen to display the results of their hard 84.5 x 123.0 cm The exhibition begins with a dramatic shipwreck scene National Gallery of Australia, off Tasmania’s east coast painted by convict artist Knut Bull labours on the land. Schnapper Point from ‘Beleura’ 1870 Canberra Purchased with funds from the Nerissa (1811–1889). The wreck of the ‘George the Third’ 1850 was painted for James Butchart who owned Beleura Johnson Bequest 2001 depicts the aftermath of the shipwreck in 1835 of the homestead, built in 1863. Schnapper Point is located near Eugene von Guérard Mornington Peninsula on Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay Schnapper Point from convict transport ship. Following a four-month voyage from ‘Beleura’ 1870 oil on canvas London and bound for Hobart, the 35-metre ship entered (approximately forty kilometres from Melbourne). Von 66.1 x 104.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, D’Entrecasteaux Channel on the evening of 12 April 1835. Guérard depicts the sweeping views from the property Canberra From the James Less than 200 kilometres from its destination, the ship across the bay – an area that had become a popular Fairfax collection, gift of Bridgestar Pty Ltd 1995 struck submerged rock and in the catastrophe that followed holiday destination for Melbourne residents.

40 national gallery of australia

Thomas Baines Exploration of the Australian continent by Europeans Melbourne continued to expand. Rail soon connected Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, was a risky and arduous pursuit. The professional townships located close to the Blue Mountains and 58 feet circumference, near explorer–artist Thomas Baines (1820–1875) was one of Dandenong Ranges to Sydney and Melbourne. Tom Roberts a creek south-east of Stokes Range, Victoria River 1868 a group of eighteen people who formed the 1855 North (1856–1931) and Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the oil on canvas 45.2 x 66.5 cm Australian Expedition party. The purpose of this expedition National Gallery of Australia, rail to travel to the outskirts of Melbourne where they Canberra Purchased 1973 was to determine the existence of natural resources for established artists’ camps on the fringe of suburbia, first at settlement in far north-west Australia. Under the command Box Hill and later at Eaglemont. of Augustus Charles Gregory the expedition lasted from August 1855 to November 1856, with the group reaching Tom Roberts first visited Box Hill to paint in 1882, the mouth of the Victoria River on the upper north-west accompanied by Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917) and coast of the Northern Territory on 15 September 1855. Louis Abrahams (1852–1903). The artists set up camp on Baines’s official role in the party was as artist and land owned by a local farmer, David Houston.3 In A Sunday storekeeper – he made hundreds of sketches, recorded afternoon c. 1886 Roberts depicts an intimate picnic. weather conditions and kept a detailed journal of daily Framed by spindly gums and bathed in dappled light, a life. Painted in London some thirteen years after the young couple relax in the bush, the woman reading to her expedition, Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 companion from a newspaper. At the time, a belief in the feet circumference, near a creek south-east of Stokes health benefits of country air was becoming popular with Range, Victoria River 1868 depicts the party campsite city dwellers, who sought recreational activities in the bush and an enormous water-yielding baobab tree. The artist has painted himself in the lower right-hand side, sitting or by the ocean. Roberts’s observant eye depicts small underneath a makeshift shelter sketching the tree. details in this scene such as the trail of smoke from the While artists such as Thomas Baines recorded the far man’s pipe, the dark wine bottle on the crisp white cloth reaches of Australia, the major settlements of Sydney and and the light falling softly on the leaves of the eucalypts.

42 national gallery of australia Arthur Streeton’s The selector’s hut (Whelan on the Beckett always painted outdoors, usually in the early Tom Roberts A Sunday afternoon c.1886 log) 1890 is an image that conveys the ‘pioneering spirit’ morning or evening, around the bays and streets of oil on canvas 41.0 x 30.8 cm which underpinned the Australian nationalist attitude her family home in the Melbourne beachside suburb of National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1984 of the late nineteenth century. Streeton depicted iconic Beaumaris. She sought to convey the beauty of her local Arthur Streeton elements of the land – the ‘blue and gold’ of sky and environment, be it through the afterglow of a bright The selector’s hut earth, golden grass and shimmering light, a slender sunset, the shimmering heat of a tarred road or (Whelan on the log) 1890 oil on canvas 76.7 x 51.2 cm silhouetted gum tree, and a bush pioneer. He shows a headlights shining through misty rain. She excelled at National Gallery of Australia, man at rest from the toil of clearing the land and making depicting particular effects of nature, such as haze, Canberra Purchased 1961 his home. The man depicted is Jack Whelan, the caretaker rain, mist and smoke. Beaumaris seascape c. 1925 is a of the Eaglemont estate where Streeton had been given meditative image of a still sea, a tree-lined cliff and distant permission to set up ‘camp’ in an old house in the summer coastline. Beckett has paid close attention to the subtle of 1888. Early the next year he was joined by Charles effects of light and shade reflected in the water. The soft Conder (1868–1909) and Tom Roberts. The camp provided lilac and pink hues of the sea, coastline and sky dissolve the perfect working environment – a reasonably isolated into bands of colour. The subject is so tonally reduced it bush location close to the city of Melbourne. appears to be almost abstracted. Works by Australian Impressionists such as Roberts, Work by another female artist of the period, Elise Streeton and Conder showcase the national collection’s Blumann (1897–1990), depicts a ferocious storm scene great holdings from this period. Alongside these are scenes on Perth’s Swan River. Blumann painted the Swan and the of modern, misty Melbourne as captured by Clarice Beckett native melaleuca trees of the region many times. Escaping (1887–1935). Beckett’s lyrical and evocative landscapes the Nazi regime that devastated much of Europe, German- remained largely unknown to Australian audiences during her born Blumann came to Perth with her husband and two lifetime. She was a dedicated artist who, despite dismissive children in 1938. Educated at the Berlin Academy of Arts reviews and few sales, continued to paint and exhibit regularly. and the Royal Art School Berlin, Blumann was familiar

artonview spring 2007 43 with the modern art of Europe. In Australia her modernist by vivid greens that portray the forest floor and foliage. Elise Blumann Storm on the Swan 1946 painting was unconventional, and she was regarded as a De Maistre has explored a range of colour tones, using subtle oil on paper mounted on valued member of Perth’s artistic community. shifts in greens, reds and browns throughout the painting. cardboard on composition board 57.0 x 67.0 cm In Storm on the Swan 1946 Blumann uses broad Forest landscape belongs to a period when de Maistre National Gallery of Australia, sweeping gestures – strong horizontal and diagonal was interested in the broken colour approach of Cézanne Canberra Purchased 1978 brushwork – to capture the power of a storm. Wind and and the relationship between colour and music. He had Roy de Maistre Forest landscape c.1920 rain beat against the limbs of the trees which appear studied violin and viola at the Sydney Conservatorium, oil on cardboard to almost float in space. This dynamic and sensitive and art at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales and 35.4 x 40.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, composition displays Blumann’s modern approach to her Julian Ashton Art School. Working with musician Adrian Canberra Purchased 1971 art and her desire to capture the ‘essential spirit’ of nature.4 Verbrugghen he developed a colour music scale where (opposite) Clarice Beckett Areas of the painting’s surface are blank, while others are the spectrum of colours related to notes of the major and Beaumaris seascape c.1925 scratched with the end of her brush to indicate sharp, fast minor musical scales. The colour music theory was further oil on cardboard 50.0 x 49.0 cm rain. This is a vigorous, physical and quickly executed work, underscored by de Maistre’s interest in the psychological National Gallery of Australia, a powerful response to the speed in which a storm can effects of colour and its relationship to the expression of Canberra Purchased 1971 approach and pass. emotional states. Quoting the English poet-performer and Modernist experiments of colour theory by Roland colour theorist Beatrice Irwin, de Maistre wrote that colour Wakelin (1887–1971) and Roy de Maistre (1894–1968) are ‘brings the conscious realisation of the deepest underlying included in the exhibition. In de Maistre’s rarely exhibited principles of nature … it constitutes the very song of life Forest landscape c. 1920 he has adapted the subject of a and is, as it were, the spiritual speech of every living thing’.5 felled tree to create a painting concerned with modernist A number of paintings in Ocean to Outback reveal how principles of form, rhythm, symmetry and colour. artists used the landscape as inspiration during difficult Historically, the subject of the felled tree in the Australian times of drought, depression or war. Works by Russell bush has reflected artistic interests in rural industry, the Drysdale (1912–1981) and Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) natural grandeur of forests and, in some instances, an explore the drama and expressive possibilities inherent awareness of conservation issues related to loss and in the land. In 1944 Drysdale was commissioned by the destruction. For de Maistre, tree trunks have been reduced Sydney Morning Herald to accompany journalist Keith to angular planes of colour and the composition is united Newman to western New South Wales to document

artonview spring 2007 45 Russell Drysdale the effects of the drought. This experience significantly the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Emus in a landscape 1950 oil on canvas changed the way he viewed the Australian landscape. Australia. This trip, from June to September 1949, inspired 101.6 x 127.0 cm The photographs and sketches he made on the trip a body of work and a series of paintings that depict inland National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1970 informed much of his work in the following years. Australia from an aerial perspective. In Emus in a landscape 1950 Drysdale explores the Inland Australia 1950 is an extraordinary aerial image of strange and surreal qualities of the Australian outback. the ‘heart’ of the continent, possibly of the Durack Range. The native birds move quietly through the landscape, With the composition board lying flat on a table Nolan has passing a precariously arranged structure of wood and pushed the paint around the surface of the work. In some corrugated iron. This sculptured mass of refuse represents areas the paint has been wiped back, exposing the white the remains of a previous settlement. It could be an undercoat of the composition board. The undulating shapes abandoned dwelling or a wrecked ship on a dried inland and intense colour of the red earth evoke an ‘otherworldly’ sea. Drysdale creates a sliding space between reality and sensation – a feeling of the land’s inherent grandeur, imagination, fact and myth, and captures the vast space timelessness and mystery. Nolan described the work as ‘a and timelessness of the outback. composite impression of the country from the air’. Painted Between 1947 and 1950 Sidney Nolan spent months in his Sydney studio, he used photographs taken from the travelling through remote areas of Australia. Using money aeroplane as a visual aid. Inland Australia is an example of he had made from a successful exhibition of Queensland Nolan’s technique of fusing elements from existing locations outback paintings held at the David Jones Gallery in Sydney with a landscape remembered from experience. in March 1949, Nolan, accompanied by his wife Cynthia Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting and stepdaughter Jinx, travelled through Central Australia, 1850–1950 includes images of the furthest points of

46 national gallery of australia distance and geography across Australia. Created by some Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth NSW, Sidney Nolan 4 August – 22 September 2007 Inland Australia 1950 of our greatest landscape artists, these paintings reveal the oil and enamel paint on compelling beauty, extreme conditions and qualities of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart composition board Tas., 5 October – 25 November 2007 91.5 x 121.0 cm Australian environment that have made landscape painting National Gallery of Australia, a vital force in Australian culture. a Riddoch Art Gallery, Mt Gambier SA, Canberra Purchased 1961 8 December 2007 – 20 January 2008

Beatrice Gralton Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat Vic., Associate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture 2 February – 30 March 2008 The exhibition catalogue is available from the National Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth WA, Gallery of Australia Shop on 02 6240 6420 13 April – 1 June 2008 Further information at nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns QLD, 21 June – 27 July 2008 notes 1 Russell Drysdale, interview by Hazel de Berg, 1960, Canberra: Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs NT, National Library of Australia, [deB 27]. 9 August – 19 October 2008 2 Michael Roe, An Imperial disaster: the wreck of George the Third, Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 2006, p. 12. Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle NSW, 3 Leigh Astbury, ‘Memory and desire: Box Hill 1855–88’, in Terence 8 November 2008 – 18 January 2009 Lane (ed.), Australian impressionism, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2007, p. 51. Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra ACT, 4 John Scott & Richard Woldendorp, Landscapes of Western Australia, 31 January – 3 May 2009 Claremont, Western Australia: Aeolian Press, 1986, p. 17. 5 Roy de Maistre, extract from lecture on ‘Colour in relation to painting’, in Colour in art, exhibition catalogue, The Art Salon, Penzance Chambers, Sydney, 1919.

artonview spring 2007 47 collection focus

Ricketts photography collection

Samuel Bourne Since 1973 the Gallery’s photography collection has daguerreotype was superseded by the alternative process Wanga Valley, view 1860s albumen silver photograph grown to include about 15,000 Australian and international of photographs on paper from a negative on glass. The 29.0 x 24.0 cm works, with the latter category chiefly being by twentieth- process appealed to the legions of mostly British men National Gallery of Australia, Canberra century European and American photographers. An stationed in India as part of the East India Company and energetic program of acquiring South and Southeast Asian other colonial ventures. It was a diversion and a way of photographs began in 2006 after Director Ron Radford conveying what India was like to families, friends and initiated a more central role for art of the Asia–Pacific investors. Photography also became for Indians a means region. In February 2007 the Gallery acquired more than of presenting themselves to the foreigners. Government 200 nineteenth-century photographs from India along with bodies also soon adopted pioneering survey projects using a small group of works from Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon photography to encompass and manage the huge physical (Sri Lanka). These came from a collection assembled over and cultural diversity of India. thirty years in London by Howard and Jane Ricketts whose Among the earliest works in the Ricketts collection are holdings and research have formed the basis of a number twenty-six views from 1858 of significant sites in the First of pioneering survey shows of Indian photography. Chiefly War of Independence (also known as the Indian ‘Mutiny’). dating from the 1850s to the 1880s, the photographs These were taken by Italian-born British professional from the Ricketts collection acquired by the Gallery include photographer Felice Beato, who, having previously individual photographs on paper and those in albums and photographed in the Crimea and the Middle East, was illustrated books by the best-known British photographers who collectively made some of the earliest images in India, the most experienced photographer to work in India. His Burma and Ceylon. images are the only known photographs of many of the India was one of the first countries outside Europe historic buildings in the conflict that were later demolished. and America to take up photography. By January 1840 Beato went on to China in 1860 where he made pictures a daguerreotype apparatus was for sale in Calcutta of the Boxer rebellion (of which an album is also held by (Kolkata). Despite the difficulties of photochemistry in the Gallery) and then established a studio in Japan. Beato a tropical climate, a number of daguerreotype studios went to Burma in 1885 to document the Third Burma War. existed in India. Surviving daguerreotypes from anywhere He remained there developing studios which specialised in in Asia, however, are scarce. From the mid-1850s the photographs of ‘Burmese beauties’ and ‘native types’.

48 national gallery of australia artonview spring 2007 49 Colin Murray Large-scale albumen prints are the exemplary of mammoth plate paper negatives. The Gallery holds two Reversing station on the S.I.P. at Khandalla on the achievements of the nineteenth century; costly and of his dense but mezzotint-like prints, including one from Bhue Ghats albumen silver technically demanding, only the best resourced his 1858 portfolio Agra and its vicinity. photograph 18.8 x 30.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, photographers could undertake such mammoth prints. Bombay photographers William Johnson and William Canberra Those who did included military officers who had learned Henderson were among the earliest to make ethnographic Charles T Scowen photography in India and came to be assigned on official studies in India in 1857. Johnson’s The oriental races and Sinhalese girl 1870s albumen silver photograph monuments surveys or took on projects out of personal tribes, residents and visitors of Bombay (issued in two 28.0 x 22.0 cm interest and ambition. In the Ricketts collection this type volumes in London from 1863 to 1866) was the first National Gallery of Australia, Canberra of survey work is represented by eleven large prints from photographically illustrated ethnographical publication 1855 to 1857 by Captain Thomas Biggs (1822–1905) of on India. the Bombay Artillery and Dr William Pigou (1818–1858) Consumption of photography was by no means of the Bombay Medical Service, which come from limited to foreigners’ interests; royalty and upper echelon Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore, a three-volume administrators in India and elsewhere in Asia were keen photographically illustrated book by Anglo-Indian scholar to present images of themselves as presents in exchange Colonel Meadows Taylor published in London in 1866. for the many photographs sent to them by the crowned Working from 1855 to 1857 Biggs and Pigou were the first heads and statesmen of Europe. A small group of portraits designated ‘architectural photographers’ of sites in western of maharajas by unknown photographers in the Ricketts India. Dr John Murray (1809–1898) of the Bengal Medical collection reveal the splendour of the royal courts. Establishment specialised in Mughal architecture of Agra, The largest individual holding and aesthetically the Fatehpur Sikri and Delhi and mastered the difficult process ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Ricketts collection is the group

50 national gallery of australia artonview spring 2007 51 of sixty-four large prints by landscape photographer photographer was Lala Deen Dayal (1844–1905), a civil Unknown photographer Maharana’s elephant, Samuel Bourne, an experienced landscape and portrait engineer who became skilled as an amateur photographer Udaipur 1880s–90s photographer in England active in societies and salons who by the 1870s while working for Sir Henry Daly, the Agent albumen silver photograph 19.2 x 24.4 cm National moved to India in 1862 and worked there until 1870 and to the Governor General for Central India. Deen Dayal Gallery of Australia, Canberra returned in the 1880s. He was in partnership with Charles set up on his own studio in 1885, becoming the most (opposite) Shepherd and later Colin Murray at various times. Bourne prominent and acclaimed photographer of Princely India Charles Shepherd Khyber Pass 1860s made a series on the sites of the ‘Mutiny’ in 1864 but his until his death in 1905. albumen silver photograph renown comes from the distinctive elegant abstract design Research into the spread of photography in the 19.9 x 29.1 cm National Gallery of Australia, of his landscape and wilderness views taken on extensive Asia–Pacific region has revealed that while some Canberra journeys to Simla, Kashmir and Himalayas in the 1860s, photographers and eras are widely celebrated, others such Felice Beato The Mosque which won him medals in Britain. Picket on the ridge, Delhi as Charles Scowen in Ceylon and Beato in Burma are not 1858 albumen silver Photography in India was impossible without local because their works are later than the colonial era of high photograph 25.5 x 30.4 cm labourers. Bourne, for example, had some thirty porters National Gallery of Australia, adventures or ‘first’ views. The Gallery aims to bring to Canberra and assistants on his Himalayan journeys. Indians were greater prominence many of these lesser-known bodies widely employed as assistants to foreign photographers of work by pioneer photographers in the Asia–Pacific in but increasingly became photographers in their own the National Photography Festival exhibition from July right. In the 1870s a photographer at the Madras School until October 2008. The Gallery’s survey exhibition will of Industrial Art was employed by James Breeks to take showcase many works from the Ricketts collection and will photographs for his book An account of the primitive be the first such survey of photographic art in the region. a tribes and monuments of the Nilagiris, published in 1873.

Current scholarly consensus is that the photographer was Gael Newton a local, C Lyahsawmy. The first high profile Indian-born Senior Curator, Photography

artonview spring 2007 53 new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture

Max Ernst Habakuk

Max Ernst Habakuk Max Ernst was a towering figure in the revolutionary to curse his enemies. These include the Chaldeans, and 1934/1970 bronze 449.9 x 162.9 x 162.9 cm artistic and literary movement of Surrealism, a sculptor, interestingly, the makers of idols, that is, sculptors: no. six of a planned edition painter, graphic artist and inventor of frottage. His of ten, cast 1995–1998 What profiteth the graven image that the maker National Gallery of Australia, monumental bronze Habakuk is a memorable and thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a Canberra Purchased with outstanding statement of modern art. A dark, looming, the assistance of the teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth National Australia Bank bird-like column, Habakuk is engaging and eccentric, yet at therein, to make dumb idols? the same time its huge size and shiny black patina make it seem severe, even ominous. The sculpture is a large version When Ernst first worked with plaster maquettes, of the original plaster executed by Ernst in 1934 and he had no money to cast them in bronze. According to reworked later in the 1930s. Werner Spies in Max Ernst: sculptures, maisons, paysages, Habakuk’s body was created from casts of flowerpots, ‘Ernst agreed, in 1970, that a monumental version of stacked on top of and inside one another. Ernst then added Habakuk should be carried out, expressing above all the a head, consisting of a giant tilted bill and eyes, and a still-remaining Dada refusal to accept formal purism, which circular plinth. At the foot of the figure is a third eye, and he had denigrated in Cologne [fifty years earlier] ...’ One the plinth also bears a negative impression of one of the cast of the larger version was made in 1970 for Düsseldorf, eyes. These were cast from a desert stone found by Roland and is now installed in the Grabbeplatz. The Gallery’s Penrose, the English Surrealist collector, painter and poet, cast is numbered ‘6’, part of the planned edition of ten who gave it to Ernst in 1929. He called it Rose de sable, œil authorised and plaster signed by Ernst in 1970, and cast de sphinx [Rose of sand, eye of the sphinx]. by Susse Fondeur, Paris. Only four were realised. The large Together, the eye and the impression on the plinth plaster has been destroyed, so no more can be made. represent inward and outward vision, and form a veiled Its totemic form places Habakuk within the context of reference to the biblical prophet Habakuk, after whom Ernst’s own enthusiastic and discerning collecting of art the sculpture is named. In his study, Max Ernst: sculpture, from Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. These sculptures Jürgen Pech draws a parallel between Ernst’s perceived reflect his personal taste, acquired as they caught his eye connection ‘between the soothsayer and visionary of the and resonated with him aesthetically. Ninety-six works from Bible and the visionary, transcendental aspects of his own his collection are held in the National Gallery of Australia. work.’ The Book of Habakuk is one of the last, and shortest,

books of the Old Testament. It is a song, a conversation Christine Dixon and Bronwyn Campbell between the prophet and God, in which Habakuk asks God International Painting and Sculpture

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new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture

Giorgio de Chirico Death of a spirit

Giorgio de Chirico Giorgio de Chirico is an important figure in twentieth- Death of a spirit features two French biscuits frontally La Mort d’un esprit [Death of a spirit] 1916 century art, renowned for his invention of Metaphysical placed onto orange geometric receding planes, flanked oil on canvas 36.0 x 33.0 cm painting (pittura metafisica), which preceded Dada and by a black disc and surrounded by yellow, red and green National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with Surrealism from about 1911 into the 1930s. The artist’s forms. The elements crowd uneasily into an ambiguous the assistance of Harold and imaginative symbolic language – especially human figures Bevelly Mitchell, Rupert and space, which reads as an interior, opening onto an Annabel Myer and the meshed with machines, often placed in incongruous unsettling urban landscape. The tense composition and NGA Foundation settings such as classical or mechanical landscapes – is bright, constrained palette animate this small and vigorous seminal to modern art. painting. Its content and style embody an extraordinary Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines moment in modern painting when Cubism, Dada and the nature of reality. For de Chirico, true reality was hidden Abstraction collided in de Chirico’s new Metaphysics. behind appearances. He invented a language of images The style of Metaphysical painting strongly influenced which represented human presence by placing everyday Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, as objects such as statues, mannequins, set-squares and Gale notes in the Grove Dictionary of art: biscuits within a compressed and fictional space. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the style ‘metaphysical’ On his arrival in Paris in 1922, Ernst’s painting in 1913. According to the art historian Matthew Gale, reflected the admiration of his poet friends for de de Chirico thought that reality was ‘visible only to the Chirico … the painters who became Surrealists after “clearsighted” at enigmatic moments’. Ernst almost all passed through a period of stylistic De Chirico studied art in Munich from 1905, moving to debt to de Chirico, notably Salvador Dalí and Alberto Paris in 1911. There he met such Cubist and Fauvist artists Giacometti (the leading creators of the Surrealist as Picasso, Derain, Braque and Brancusi, and avant-garde Object), René Magritte [and others]. writers such as Apollinaire. His first solo exhibition, largely De Chirico was also important to the Australian unsuccessful, was held in Rome in 1919. Viewers found his painters James Cant and James Gleeson. Indeed, Cant paintings disturbing, especially the unusual treatment of almost certainly saw Death of a spirit in London. It was space: claustrophobic interiors, unusual angles and cut-off shown there twice while he lived there, first in 1937 at the planes, with deadpan representations of classical statues or Zwemmer Gallery in the exhibition Chirico–Picasso, and tailor’s dummies lending an eerie quasi-human presence. again at the London Gallery in Giorgio de Chirico 1911– In 1914 de Chirico enlisted in the Italian army and was 1917, in October–November 1938. Some of the costumes sent to Ferrara. There he met Carrà and Papini, soon to be de Chirico designed for Diaghilev’s production of Le Bal in his colleagues in Metaphysical painting, and mixed with 1929 are held in the Gallery’s collection. Futurist and Dada artists. By 1916 de Chirico concentrated on

small, stifling still-life compositions, often featuring biscuits, Christine Dixon set-squares, planks, maps, military insignia and flags. Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

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new acquisition Asian Art

Kushan Buddha

Kushan dynasty This superb Indian sculpture has recently been added anthropomorphic form, was established. This is a fine Mathura, India Seated Buddha 1st–2nd to the permanent display of art from South Asia. The early example of this key development in Asian art. century red sandstone unusually large seated Buddha is not only a spectacular Characteristic of the evolving, quintessentially Indian 129.5 x 101.6 x 30.5 cm Purchased with the example of early Indian sculpture, but also a key image style of sculpture from Mathura, the torso of the Buddha generous assistance of in understanding the development of Buddhist art is robust and powerful, with a plump, gently smiling Roslyn Packer 2007 throughout Asia. The sculpture has survived, largely intact, face and wide-open eyes. He is shown with several of from the second century of the Current Era. the thirty-two marks (lakshanas) of a great man – the During the first to third centuries a large part of broad ‘chest of a lion’, the urna or tuft of hair between northern and western India and Pakistan was ruled the eyebrows (which in this case would once have been by the powerful Kushan dynasty that originated in embellished with a precious jewel), circles or wheels on central Asia. The two great Kushan political centres – at the soles of his feet, webbed fingers, folds of flesh at the Gandhara and Mathura – each developed its own style of neck, elongated earlobes and a topknot of hair. The last monumental Buddhist art. Importantly, both were noted of these is the ushnisha, or cranial protuberance, that for their anthropomorphic depictions of the Buddha who signifies Buddha’s spiritual advancement. In contrast to had hitherto been represented by symbols such as his the Gandharan images of Buddha and bodhisattvas clad footprints, the empty throne, the bodhi tree and the wheel in elaborate royal robes, Mathuran Buddhas are depicted of law. These are the central focus of the Gallery’s fine in almost diaphanous garments that cling to the body and large marble Amaravati frieze from a stupa from eastern accentuate the human form. India, dated to roughly the same period. The Buddha is seated in the meditation posture with Mathura was a prosperous city and an ancient religious his legs crossed, the upturned soles of his feet carved with and political capital that predated the rise of the Kushan two auspicious symbols in shallow relief – a discus (cakra) dynasty. It was also a centre for stone carving to serve and a triratna. The cakra represents the wheel of Buddhist the temple complexes. A bold and distinctively Indian teachings, with the ‘turning of the wheel’ signifying the style of figurative sculpture developed at Mathura, in transmission of Buddhist teachings. Each of the Buddha’s contrast to the strongly Hellenic but rather delicate toes is carved with a small swastika, another recurring symbol of Buddhism. The figure holds one hand, now figures of neighbouring Gandhara, which are superbly missing, aloft in what would have been the fear-dispelling represented in the Gallery’s collection by a large grey-schist gesture (abhaya mudra), while his other hand is placed standing bodhisattva and the recently acquired head of squarely on his left knee. a bodhisattva. In contrast, this sculpture is formed from Installed in a niche in the new Indian Gallery, the the striking mottled-red Sikri sandstone typical of the Seated Buddha provides visitors with new insights into Mathuran region of northern India. the history of Asian art. We are grateful to Ros Packer, Buddhism flourished in India at this time and it was Chair of the Acquisitions Committee of the Gallery’s during the Kushan dynasty that the representation governing Council, for her timely donation that secured of the Buddha, with his characteristic features this masterpiece for the national collection. of a cranial protuberance and extended earlobes

dressed in the monastic robe that would become the Robyn Maxwell enduring iconography for the depiction of Buddha in Senior Curator, Asian Art

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new acquisition Photography

Robyn Stacey Gorilla skull

Robyn Stacey Robyn Stacey belongs to a generation of photomedia grounded in popular culture with a slightly sixties Pop look, Gorilla skull 2005 Type C colour photograph artists who came to prominence in the 1980s. These but presented a modern world made somewhat anxious 100.0 x 162.0 cm artists were unconcerned with, even suspicious of, the and edgy. By contrast her work since the 1990s has made National Gallery of Australia, Canberra claims to truth by various styles of personal documentary use of science and the deathly quiet of a number of natural photography dominant in art museums in the 1970s. They history museum collections in which she worked during spurned reportage photography and embraced visual several residencies. culture as a source rather than the ‘real’ world. The artists Gorilla skull 2005 comes from Stacey’s Beau monde of this movement (later called Postmodernism) happily series which draws on collections at the Macleay Museum, appropriated images from the past as well as popular Sydney, and recalls the tradition of the Dutch genre of culture, including the look of ‘old master’ paintings or nature morte paintings in which the still-life objects provide fifties and sixties magazines and television. a moral lesson on the vanity of world. The reference to the From her earliest series in the mid 1980s, Robyn Stacey gorilla (a threatened species symbolising humankind) and has created seductive and vibrantly coloured tableaux coral (a threatened wonder of Australia’s northern coast) alongside dead specimens under the microscope and an involving great technical expertise in synthesising multiple ominously placed geological hammer, combine to create sources and motifs which has been greatly facilitated by an anxiety often found in her early works. Stacey’s art the emergence of digital manipulation. Her earliest efforts entertains and yet reminds us of dangers to the planet. are hand-coloured black-and-white prints; later works

involve complex overlays. Stacey’s series works, such as Kiss Gael Newton kiss bang bang 1985 and All the sounds of fear 1990, were Senior Curator, Photography

60 national gallery of australia new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Howard Taylor Rainbow and supernumerary

Howard Taylor was an incessant observer of nature, bush landscape and forest forms which became central to Howard Taylor Rainbow and supernumerary concerned with recording perceived phenomena in nature. his work. In 1967 he moved to Northcliffe in the heart of 1976 oil on composition In 1976, largely influenced by his admiration of Constable, the tall-timber karri and jarrah forests of the south-west board 21.7 x 30.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Taylor painted a group of paintings in a small format in of Western Australia where he produced some of his most Canberra Gift of Sue and which he focused on clouds and the skies. One of these is powerful, impeccably crafted evocations of nature. He died Ian Bernadt 2007 Rainbow and supernumerary 1976. He based the works on 19 July 2001. on drawings in his sketchbook, where he made day–to-day As Daniel Thomas has remarked, ‘Howard Taylor was observations, including details of weather, sunlight and an Australian and his brilliant gifts and stunning vision was shadow. Rainbows were a particular source of fascination. totally focused on the depiction of his beloved Australian In Rainbow and supernumerary Taylor demonstrated his bush. His vision, however, went far beyond the focus of commitment to looking, his fascination with the natural any painter before him, in that none of them, irrespective world and his sensitivity to recording the transient of their unquestioned brilliance, ever interrogated and effects of light. captured the complexity of structure, the ephemeral quality Taylor was born in Hamilton, Victoria, on 29 August of its light and colour, or the rich and subtle patina of its 1918 and moved to Perth with his family in 1932. He living forms, as he did’. served with the air force during the Second World War until his capture in 1940. In 1949 Taylor returned to Anne Gray Head of Australian Art Western Australia and settled in the Darling Ranges on the outskirts of Perth, where he became fascinated with the

artonview spring 2007 61 new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings

Roy Kennedy I’m never alone

Roy Kennedy Wiradjuri artist Roy Kennedy was born in the early 1930s people lived on the mission during the Depression. Of Wiradjuri people I’m never alone 2005 in Griffith in central New South Wales. Kennedy spent I’m never alone he writes ‘all my lovely memories of my etching, printed in black ink his childhood on a government-run mission located on mission are always there. Some are sad times and some are from one plate platemark 25.0 x 33.0 cm the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, downstream from good memories’. His family had been moved from nearby National Gallery of Australia, stations to the mission many years before and the concept Canberra Narrandera and Hay. As a young man he worked on farms in the district and later moved to Sydney. In 1995 he enrolled of relocation is a constant theme in his art. Of Mission boy at the Eora Centre for Aboriginal Studies at the Sydney dreams Kennedy recalls ‘from far back as I can remember Institute of Technology where he pursued his interest in I’ve always wondered when we would have our own home printmaking. He was student and artist of the year at Eora in and years on I’m still wondering’. 1999, and won a NAIDOC Week award that same year. The mission on which Kennedy spent his youth was closed in 1941. His graphic etchings provide us with a Kennedy’s etchings provide a graphic documentation historically acute and sensitive picture of mission life of his memories of the Aboriginal mission environment. during this period. Through his sure placement of key elements – the church,

the police station, his own mission hut and recreation Mary-Lou Nugent areas – a vivid and very personal picture emerges of how Curatorial Assistant, Australia Prints and Drawings

62 national gallery of australia new acquisition Australian Prints and Drawings

William Nicholas Lady and child

A ready market for portraiture arose with the spread of settlement and the rise of prosperity in colonial Australia. From the 1820s to the 1850s there were more professional portraitists working in both watercolour and oil in the colony than landscape artists. Watercolourist, etcher and lithographer William Nicholas (1807–1854) found acclaim after just ten years in Australia, with the Sydney Morning Herald of 27 July 1847 reporting: ‘His fame is now established in Sydney as the best portrait painter in watercolours in the colony, and the consequence is that there are more heads offered to him for decapitation than he is able to take off.’ Nicholas’s sensitively rendered untitled watercolour reflects the much sought-after English portrait style of the period. An exquisitely painted portrait, the faces in particular are superb examples of the stippling technique for which Nicholas was renowned. Further research may well reveal the identity of this fashionable, well-to-do young mother and her child, dressed in finely embroidered christening robe and bonnet. Even in the distant colonies, the quiet, demure aspects of women’s dress of the Victorian period dictated fashion. Watered silks in pastel tones were the height of fashion in the 1840s, and the woman’s gown of celestial blue typically has a high bodice with a low-waisted, V-shaped William Nicholas front panel trimmed with a white lace collar. The influence not titled [Lady and child] c. 1847 of medievalism is evident in the angular lines of the bodice watercolour, pencil and with its reference to the Gothic arch. Showy, full sleeves ground gold leaf and gum arabic on cardboard slowly lost favour in the Victorian period and the dress has image 22.4 x 17.6 cm stylish, closely fitting sleeves with pleating at the elbow. By National Gallery of Australia, Canberra contrast, the skirt is full, to emphasise the narrow sculpted waistline. The hairstyle is also typical of contemporary fashion: centrally parted, held by combs, ringlets forward of the ears, and a plaited knot at the back. The gold brooch on her bodice, painted in a blend of ground gold leaf and gum arabic, is a delicate final touch.

Anne McDonald Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

artonview spring 2007 63 new acquisition Decorative Arts and Design

Toots Zynsky Pennellata

Toots Zynsky Pennellata The ethereal quality of Toots Zynsky’s 2005 work, known as Urban Glass), where she developed technical 2005 glass filet de verre 27.0 x 59.5 x 31.0 cm Pennellata, is characteristic of the extraordinary glass processes for the production of the fine glass threads, or National Gallery of Australia, vessels that have placed her among the leading ‘canes’, used as a key element in the design of her glass Canberra practitioners of contemporary studio glass. Its layered works. Zynsky describes the technique of constructing colours are animated by reflected and refracted light, open vessel forms works entirely composed of these fused each linear element inflecting the visual quality of the and thermo-formed glass elements as ‘filet de verre’. next as the viewer’s gaze moves from its outer to its inner From 1983 to 1999, she worked from a studio base in surfaces. Their shaded, drawing-like quality is the result Amsterdam, The Netherlands, immersing herself in the of a complex and demanding process of construction by traditions of European glass, drawing inspiration and which two layers of glass threads, in about sixty colours, technical knowledge from Venetian glass in particular. are assembled flat before being fused and formed into a An interest in music also took her to West Africa, where circular sheet of glass. This sheet is then mould-slumped she participated in a recording project of West Ghanaian in the kiln before final manipulation into the undulating, traditional music, an experience that exposed her to the organic form that characterises all of Zynsky’s work. vibrant colours and patterns of the region’s traditional art Mary Ann (Toots) Zynsky was born in Boston, and design, influences that were interpreted in the complex Massachusetts, in 1951, and gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts colour orchestrations of her later work. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. After

moving to New York in 1980, she founded and developed Robert Bell the second New York Experimental Glass Workshop (now Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

64 national gallery of australia new acquisition Decorative Arts and Design

Marion Mahony Griffin Window panel

Marion Mahony Griffin was born in the United States of and delineated by his staff in Chicago from 1907 to 1912. Marion Mahony Griffin, in association with America in 1871 and died there in 1961. She graduated While ‘leaded glass’ is used as a generic descriptor for Walter Burley Griffin in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of such window panels, the glass elements of the work are and Frank Lloyd Wright Window panel c. 1910 Technology in 1894, and became one of the world’s first fixed together with zinc, allowing a more precise fit of the glass, zinc cames, wood frame 45.0 x 45.0 x 4.5 cm registered women architects. In 1895, she joined the complex geometrical elements of Wright’s designs. Such National Gallery of Australia, Chicago practice of architect Frank Lloyd Wright where, work was usually carried out to Wright’s specifications by Canberra in addition to working as an architect, she became the Linden Glass Company in Chicago. The design of this Wright’s key delineator and developed his designs for panel has been attributed to Marion Mahony Griffin and architectural glass and other decorative arts and interior it is a work closely associated with her and Walter Burley design projects. A professional relationship with another of Griffin during a critical time in their partnership with Frank Wright’s staff, the architect Walter Burley Griffin became Lloyd Wright. As it was a valued part of their personal personal with their marriage in 1911. When Walter Burley possessions in Australia, it is highly probable that the Griffin won the competition for the design of Canberra, Griffins intended to use the panel in one of their projects with an entry prepared jointly with Marion, she joined him in Australia, or to use it as a model for further works and in Australia, living and working in Canberra, Melbourne, a demonstration of their design approach to architectural and Castlecrag in Sydney from 1914 to 1937. decoration. This coloured and iridised glass window panel, with a geometric border design around a clear glass centre panel, Robert Bell is similar to designs for window panels designed by Wright Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

artonview spring 2007 65 children’s gallery

Drawn in

14 July – 25 November 2007

Mike Brown Half lady A dot becomes a line and then a form; each drawing in his drawing MN at Papunya 1987. This drawing uses on chair 1975 pen on paper sheet 26.0 x 26.0 cm unfolds from a single mark. It is the finished drawing that tone rather than line to hint at a figure in the landscape. National Gallery of Australia, shows how this simple beginning can be transformed. Johnson’s airy technique suggests the heat of central Canberra More than any other medium, drawing is accessible Australia, and the Indigenous artist working in the open is Sidney Nolan Bushranger head with to everyone. Sketching a map, doodling while on the shown as part of the country, rather than separate from his red and yellow mask telephone, even writing can be considered drawing. surroundings. 1947 charcoal, enamel 31.4 x 25.2 cm Design, animation, architecture, mathematics and the Drawing examines the act of looking – looking out National Gallery of Australia, Canberra sciences all use drawing. Individual observations are and looking in. Drawing can also link directly to memory interpreted through drawing by both the maker and and imagination. The charcoal drawings of Sidney Nolan’s their audience. It is a means to record experience, rugged band of bushrangers, including Bushranger head whether literally or imaginatively. Children draw, and so with red and yellow mask 1947, display an uncertainty did Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein. For all three, and vulnerability through their smudged and broken lines. drawing is a means for experimentation and exploration. In these drawings Nolan is not only examining these men Drawn in, an exhibition for children, highlights figure as individuals with thoughts and feelings, he is also using drawing by many Australian artists. The drawings selected them to think about the bushranger as an expression of include portraits, self-portraits, figures in landscapes and Australian identity. imaginary forms. Even within this relatively narrow range of Drawing is a wonderful activity used with skill and subjects, the materials and techniques used by each artist humour by a range of Australian artists in this exhibition. show the diversity of drawing. Drawing can be neat or messy, cool or hot and it can Children will be able to see that drawing is not one be about concrete and abstract ideas. Drawn in invites thing. It can be about replicating the world around them, it children and their parents to participate in various drawing can be about the creative power of mark making and it can activities in the exhibition space. An easel and mirror allow be about the process itself, how each mark predetermines visitors to observe and draw themselves, tables provide the ones that follow. Some drawings focus on line, some materials for drawing in response to music, free drawing on tone, some use colour and some incorporate all of with pencil and paper and the mechanical etch-a-sketch these elements. The vertical black pen lines used by which makes a continuous line as two dials are rotated. Richard Larter in his drawing, Untitled, portrait of a woman The exhibition will give children and their parents the with a scarf 1975, are confident and bold. This work confidence to see that when it comes to drawing, there is demonstrates Larter’s unique use of line, for the balance no right way to do it. he creates between his marks and the page forms the

portrait. Another artist in the exhibition who plays with the Adriane Boag arrangement of positive and negative space is Tim Johnson Educator, Youth and Community Programs

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faces in view

1 Anna Gray, curator, and Daniel Thomas AM at the opening of the exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 2 Sir Richard Kingsland AO CBE DFC and Lady Kathleen Kingsland at the opening of the exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 3 John Mackay, ActewAGL, and Colette Mackay at the opening of the exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 4 Brian and Lesley Oakes at 16 the Members’ opening of the17 exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 5 Geoffrey King OAM and Rae King at the Members’ opening of the exhibition, George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 6,7,8 Children participating in a shell workshop with Marilyn Russell (pictured) and Esme Timbery during NAIDOC Week 9 Children at the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery open day 10 Performance by Emma Bossard and Jane Ryan in response to Brancusi’s Birds in space; part of the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery open day 11 Family attending the tour of the Aboriginal memorial during NAIDOC Week 12 Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Angela Hill, Philip Gudthaykudthay, Peter Mingululu, Belinda Scott, Arthur Pambegan Jr, Luke Kawangka, Daniel Boyd and Brenda L Croft at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 13 Rupert Myer AM at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 14 Arthur Pambegan Jr at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 15 Peter Mingululu and Belinda Scott at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial 16 His Excellency Mr Robert McCallum Jr, United States Ambassador to Australia and Mrs Mary McCallum with Director Ron Radford AM 17 Jean Baptiste Apuatimi performing at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial

artonview spring 2007 69

17 travelling exhibitions spring 2007

An artist abroad: the prints of Grace Crowley: being modern James McNeill Whistler One of the leading figures in the development of James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in modernism in Australia, Grace Crowley’s life and art the European art world of the 19th century. intersected with some of the major movements of 20th Influenced by the French Realists, the Dutch, century art. This will be the first exhibition of Grace Venetian and Japanese masters, Whistler’s Crowley’s work since 1975 and will include important prints are sublime visions of people and the works from public and private collections. Spanning the places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler 1920s through to the 1960s, the exhibition will trace her James McNeill Whistler Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston Grace Crowley Abstract painting remarkable artistic journey from painter of atmospheric Portrait of Whistler 1859 1947 (detail) oil on cardboard Australian landscapes to her extraordinary late abstracts. (detail) etching and drypoint Tas., 1 September – 4 November 2007 National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra nga.gov.au/Crowley Canberra Stage fright: the art of theatre Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide SA, In partnership with Australian Theatre for Young People 27 July – 28 October 2007 Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting Government Program supporting touring exhibitions 1850–1950 by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition Stage fright: the art of theatre raises the curtain on the world of theatre and dance through works Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions of art, interactives and a program of workshops Loundon Sainthill Costume by providing funding assistance for the development design for the ugly sister from conducted by educators from the National and touring of cultural material across Australia Cinderella 1958 (detail) Gallery and Australian Theatre for Young People. Russell Drysdale Emus in a gouache, pencil and watercolour Worlds from mythology, fairytales and fantasy Proudly sponsored by R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter and on paper landscape 1950 (detail) the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund National Gallery of Australia, characters intended for the ballet, opera and oil on canvas Canberra National Gallery of Australia, stage are shown in exquisitely rendered finished Canberra Purchased 1970 To mark the Gallery’s 25th anniversary, this exhibition drawings alongside others that have been quickly of treasured works from the National Collection has executed capturing the essence of an idea, posture, been curated by Director Ron Radford for a national movement or character. nga.gov.au/StageFright tour. Every Australian state and territory is represented Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Booragul NSW, through the works of iconic artists such as Clarice 14 September – 28 October 2007 Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell Drysdale, Hans Heysen, Max Meldrum, Sidney Nolan, Michael Riley: sights unseen Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Guérard. Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth NSW, and touring of cultural material across Australia 3 August – 22 September 2007 Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart Tas., important contemporary Indigenous visual artists 5 October – 25 November 2007 of the past two decades. His contribution to the The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Michael riley untitled from the contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian Exhibitions series cloud [cow] 2000 visual arts industry was substantial and his film (detail) printed 2005 Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and chromogenic pigment and video work challenged non-Indigenous rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs photograph National Gallery perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design of the Michael Riley Foundation among the most disenfranchised communities in reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue and Viscopy, Australia the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley case: technology. These suitcases thematically present Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane Qld, a selection of art and design objects that may be 27 July – 18 November 2007 Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children 9th–10th century (detail) from and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres. Imagining Papua New Guinea: screenprints Red case: myths and rituals from the national collection National Gallery of Australia, For further details and bookings telephone Canberra This exhibition of screenprints from the national 02 6240 6432 or email [email protected]. collection celebrates Papua New Guinea’s nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn independence and surveys its rich history Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, of printmaking. Artists whose works are in space and design the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, Caloundra Qld, Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin 16 July – 21 September 2007 Mathias Kauage Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining Independence Celebration I Blue case: technology 1975 (detail) stencil National Noosa Regional Gallery, Noosa Qld, Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree NSW, Gallery of Australia, Canberra 9 November – 5 December 2007 9 July – 30 September 2007 Colin McCahon The 1888 Melbourne Cup A focus exhibition showcasing the Gallery’s Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor NSW, holdings of one of the Australasian region’s most 20 July – 16 September 2007 renowned and respected artists – Colin McCahon (1919–1987). The exhibition includes paintings and works on paper spanning the period from the 1950s Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Karl Lawrence Millard Please contact the gallery or venue before to early 1980s. It is significant that the exhibition’s Lizard grinder 2000 tour of Australia and New Zealand coincides with the (detail) brass, bronze, copper, your visit. For more information please phone sterling silver, money metal, +61 2 6240 6556 or email [email protected] Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand government Peugeot mechanism, stainless apple branch 1950 (detail) gifting to Australia in 1978 the iconic work Victory steel screws National Gallery of oil on canvas Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Australia, over death 2 1970. nga.gov.au/McCahon Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Dell Gallery@QCA, Brisbane Qld, Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004. 19 September – 28 October 2007

The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress. a new star is born

Vibrant. Dynamic. Inspiring. Unique. It’s what made the National Gallery of Australia one of the world’s great art institutions and it’s why we’re shaping a new direction with the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery. Create a new direction for yourself and enjoy the new star of the Sculpture Gallery. NAB is proud to partner with the National Gallery of Australia to bring you the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery. 03Art on view ad.indd 1 28/6/07 10:51:49 AM

The art of relaxation at SAVILLE. With Saville Park Suites Canberra’s convenient location in the heart of the city, the National Gallery, shopping and many of Canberra’s attractions are all just a short stroll away. View one of the many exhibitions on display at the National Gallery and enjoy apartment facilities or relax and be pampered by traditional hotel services at Saville. * Gallery Packages start from $189 per night Includes overnight accomodation and breakfast for two. Special car parking rate of $5.00 per day and 25% discount off food when dining in Zipp Restaurant in conjunction with this package. *Subject to availability and conditions apply. Valid to 14 September 2007. For more information or to make a booking call 1800 630 588 or visit

, -, bronze. Purchased with the assistance of National Australia Bank Australia National of assistance the with Purchased bronze. -, , savillehotelgroup.com Habakuk  Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. ©Max Ernst. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, . Australia, VISCOPY, by Licensed Ernst. ©Max Canberra. Australia, of Gallery National Collection:  Max Ernst, Ernst, Max

extraordinary every day

©2007 National Australia Bank Limited ABN 12 004 044 937 30874 �7/07� Proud Supporter of the National Gallery of Australia

To purchase O’Leary Walker wines visit www.discountwines.com/nga.htm

Proudly supporting the National Gallery of Australia

To purchase Yalumba wines visit www.discountwines.com/nga.htm Open Garden & Gallery 28th October - 4th November, 2007 Southern Highlands 10am - 4pm

Blue Pond by John Kirton

An exciting collection by: John Kirton Margie Mullins This exquisite ten acre garden, often likened Nadine Harvey to the garden of French impressionist Claude Libby Hobbs Monet in Giverny, France and which HighLife Margaret Shepherd Magazine described as a “Highlands’ Garden Jenny Stewart Oasis with a Touch of Monet”, will be open Cindy Pryma to the public for the first time this year. Jean Griffin The Burrows is a roaming garden transformed Patrice Cooke from bare paddocks at Canyonleigh. Situated Melinda Haylock on the south-western edge of the Southern Martial Cosyn Highlands, half way between Sydney and Vanessa Forbes Canberra, The Burrows has been part of the Australian Open Garden scheme and has been featured in a number of magazines. Also open will be The Kirton Gallery, a private The Burrows art gallery housed in a restored hay shed Tugalong Road adjacent to the garden. Canyonleigh NSW 2577

Take the Illwarra Hwy exit from the Hume Highway and follow the signs to Canyonleigh.

Entry to garden $5.00 - supporting NSW Rural Fire Service. THE LEADING AUSTRALIAN OWNED ART AUCTIONEERS AND VALUERS Final Entries Invited Major Fine Art Auction SYDNEY 5+6 December 2007 Entries close 24 October 2007

For confi dential appraisals by our art specialists, please contact: Melbourne 03 9822 1911 Sydney 02 8344 5404

www.deutschermenzies.com Robert Klippel NO. 251 1985-86 1970, www.lawsonmenzies.com.au 87.0 cm height.

74 national gallery of australia C•A•N•B•E•R•R•A

BARTON

celebrating 25 years

LAMBERT, George The red shawl (Olave Cunninghame Graham) 1913 oil on canvas 96.70 (H) x 76.00 (W) cm Gallery of New South Art Wales, Sydney, purchased in 1934 Sydney photograph: Jenni Carter The Brassey of Canberra Celebrating our 80th birthday

National Gallery of Australia Package $175.00 per night. Based on Twin share/double and includes full buffet breakfast for 2 people, admission to the National Gallery including George Lambert Exhibition and entry for 2 at Old Parliament House. $30.00 extra person per night. Valid until 16th September 2007. The Brassey of Canberra Belmore Gardens and Macquarie Street, Barton ACT 2600 Telephone: 02 6273 3766 Facsimile: 02 6273 2791 Toll Free Telephone: 1800 659 191 Email: [email protected] http: //www.brassey.net.au Canberran Owned and Operated artonview spring 2007 75 Richard BELL (1953) Kamilaroi/Kooma/Jiman/Gurang Gurang peoples Australian Art It’s an Aboriginal thing, 2006 (detail) synthetic polymer paint on canvas Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria Courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery

INDIGENOUS HERITAGE MANY STORIES, MANY FORMS

The deep wealth of Indigenous art, music and dance enriches all Australians. BHP Billiton values our Indigenous heritage, traditional and contemporary.

Through our offi ces and operations across Australia, many of which are located within rural and remote areas, we have long-standing relationships with Indigenous communities. We have a long history of supporting Indigenous cross-cultural programs in Australia and we continue to look for ways that we can help contribute to the communities in which we operate or have a presence, so that we can leave a lasting, positive legacy within our communities. BHP Billiton are immensely proud to be associated with the National Gallery of Australia and their landmark event, the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, CULTURE WARRIORS.

May the Indigenous stories in all their forms be seen and heard forever. bhpbilliton.com OC E A N to OUTBACK Australian landscape painting 1850 –1950 The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

1 September 2007 – 27 January 2008

Proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibition Fund National Gallery of Australia, Canberra This exhibition is supported by the CELEBRATING¬¬YEARS nga.gov.au/Rauschenberg Embassy of the United States of America

Russell Drysdale Emus in a landscape 1950 (detail) oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Estate of Russell Drysdale Robert Rauschenberg Publicon – Station I from the Publicons series enamel on wood, collaged laminated silk and cotton, gold leafed paddle, light bulb, perspex, enamel on polished aluminium National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1979 © Robert Rauschenberg Licensed by VAGA and VISCOPY, Australia, 2007 The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency artonview o art n v i ew

ISSUE No.51 ISSUE ISS UE SPRING o.51 spring 2007 spring N o.51 2007 NATIONAL 2007 GALLERYOF AUSTRALIA

Richard Bell Australian art it’s an Aboriginal thing 2006 synthetic polymer paint on canvas Acquired 2006 TarraWarra Museum of Art collection courtesy the artist and Bellas Milani Gallery

13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CELEBRATING¬¬YEARS A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government agency nga.gov.au/NIAT07

Sculpture Gallery • ROBERT Rauschenberg • Ocean to Outback