Sebastian Smee

Sebastian Smee was born in Adelaide in 1972. Smee was the national art critic for the Australian, before moving to Boston in 2008 where he wrote for the Boston Globe. He is currently a critic for The Washington Post, and has also contributed to The Guardian, The Times, and The Spectator. In 2011, Smee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, for his ‘vivid and exuberant writing about art’. Smee’s works include Lucien Freud (Taschen), Side by Side: Picasso v Matisse (Duffy and Snellgrove) and The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art (Profile Books). (photo credit: Pat Greenhouse)

Sebastian Smee reviews 'Fred Williams: An Australian Vision" by Irena Zdanowicz and Stephen Coppel

March 2004, no. 259 • 01 March 2004

Things shimmer in the distance, as idiosyncrasies of air and light press in upon the eye, causing the terrain before one to wobble, smudge and dissolve. It was the singular achievement of Fred Williams to find an original pictorial syntax to poeticise such distance as it was experienced in the Australian landscape. Williams (1927–82) can be counted among the four or five best Australian artists ... (read more)