Visual Arts
Picasso/Asia: A Conversation, at M+ in Hong Kong, is simply splendid. It is innovative: not a standard chronological parade of ‘masterpieces’, but a rich and probing interrogation of the most famous European artist of the twentieth century, paired with an intelligent consideration of the impact of his work in Asia, and how it connected with Asian artists.
... (read more)
Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson may well get lost in the promotion of other exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, but it is one not to be missed. Charting Crowley and Balson’s artistic journeys from the 1930s to the 1960s and their shared commitment to abstraction, it is an elegant, beautiful show that affords the rare opportunity to experience their work in depth.
... (read more)
These words put the case for and against Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in a nutshell. Kihara speaks with the authority of a Pasifika, a transgender Japanese-Samoan artist who wittily restaged two dozen Gauguin paintings as colour photographs in her Paradise Camp series. Kihara dressed and posed Fa’afafine – men living and dressing in the manner of women – and her work cements the iconic status of Gauguin’s ‘wonderful’ imagery.
... (read more)
We can all be grateful for Kandinsky, this summer’s main exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It is a strong and balanced show by the most influential among the early practitioners of modern abstract art. There are four main collections of Kandinsky’s work worldwide, but the strongest one belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was formed from the late 1920s by Baroness Hilla von Rebay, a German artist advising one of America’s richest men, the Philadelphian-born mining magnate Guggenheim. Friends of the artist, in 1939 they founded the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, whose collections, two decades later, were housed in the celebrated spiral building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
... (read more)
Photography has held humanity in its thrall since its nascent years. Celebrated and contested, the photograph is said to have inherent power, making it both a vital, and also dangerous, medium. This exceptional and ambitious new exhibition at the NGV, Photography: Real and Imagined, illuminates why we have an unwavering fascination.
... (read more)
The current show at Monash University Museum of Art, Thin Skin, is notable as the largest institutional exhibition in Victoria dedicated solely to contemporary painting in nearly a decade. Presumably for this reason, there has been much logistical support from MUMA for the new exhibition. A quarter of the thirty-six works here are new commissions by MUMA for the exhibition, while others have been borrowed from interstate and international collections.
... (read more)
