2009.Q1 | artonview 57 Autumn 2009

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SOFT SCULPTURE 24 APRIL – 12 JULY 2009

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I S S U E 5 7 

ISSUE 57  autumn 2009

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NAT I O NA L G A L L E R Y O F A U S T R A L I A

CANBERRA ONLY NGA.GOV.AU

The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency Claes Oldenburg Soft alphabet 1978 (detail) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen

SOFT SCULPTURE  DEGAS’ WORLD: THE RAGE FOR CHANGE

The National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

Issue 57, autumn 2009

published quarterly by National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 nga.gov.au ISSN 1323-4552 Print Post Approved pp255003/00078

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Director’s foreword

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Foundation and Development

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National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle 2009

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Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2009: Tom Roberts’s Shearing shed, Newstead

© National Gallery of Australia 2008 Copyright for reproductions of artworks is held by the artists or their estates. Apart from uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of artonview may be reproduced, transmitted or copied without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Australia.

Enquires about permissions should be made in writing to the Rights and Permissions Officer.

The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

Anne Gray exhibitions and displays

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Mark Henshaw

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editor Eric Meredith

collection focus/conservation

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rights and permissions Nick Nicholson advertising Erica Seccombe printed in Australia by Blue Star Print, Canberra enquiries The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 artonview.editor@nga.gov.au

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

The golden journey: loans of Japanese art to the Art Gallery of South Australia Melanie Eastburn

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Restoring Buddha and the sixteen protectors Andrea Wise

acquisitions

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advertising Tel: (02) 6240 6587 Fax: (02) 6240 6427 artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au

Soft sculpture Don’t touch, lick or smell Lucina Ward

designer Kristin Thomas photography Eleni Kypridis, Barry Le Lievre, Brenton McGeachie, Steve Nebauer, David Pang, John Tassie

Degas’ world: a rage for change

Hilda Rix Nicholas Les fleurs dédaignées Anne Gray

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Redback Graphix The 8-kin network Macushla Robinson

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Harry Tjutjuna Wangka Tjukurpa (Spiderman) Chantelle Woods

For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership: Membership Coordinator GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 Tel: (02) 6240 6504 membership@nga.gov.au

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Ethel Warburton Vase and bowls Robert Bell

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Peter Behrens Electric kettle Robert Bell

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Lan Xang Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king Niki van den Heuvel

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Tsukioka Yoshitoshi The lonely house on Adachi Moor Beth Lonergan

(cover) Eva Hesse Contingent 1969 cheesecloth, latex, fibreglass installation 350 x 630 x 109 cm (variable) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1973 Courtesy the Estate of Eva Hesse, Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich

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Travelling exhibitions

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Faces in view

Director’s foreword

As Spring 2008 wound to a close in November, Ray Wilson OAM, from whom we acquired the Agapitos/ Wilson collection of Australian Surrealism, gave an inspired speech at the National Gallery of Australia about wills and the benevolent opportunities they provide. Earlier in the year, Ray had announced that he and his late partner James Agapitos had also decided to generously include the National Gallery of Australia in their wills. We include an excerpt of the speech that Ray delivered at the launch of the Gallery’s Bequest Circle on page 8.

As Ray points out, wills are our formal opportunity to have the last word without anyone having the right of reply and, through bequests, we can make positive statements about what we believed in and cherished during our life. ‘It is your chance … to say thank you to the cultural institutions that have contributed to your quality of life’, he said. Through their passion for Australian art and their great generosity, Ray Wilson and James Agapitos have contributed significantly to the enjoyment of Australian art by today’s audiences and those of the future.

Speaking of philanthropy, every year we invite people to play a role in the life of the Gallery by encouraging them to contribute to the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund, our annual appeal for contributions toward acquiring a major work of art for the national collection. This year, we are appealing for donations, large and small, toward the purchase of an exceptional and potent work by Tom Roberts, Shearing shed, Newstead c 1894, the finest of the artist’s oil sketches left in private hands. This spontaneous image of a shearing shed and Australian pastoral life will be an extraordinary addition to our collection of Australian Impressionism. An article by Anna Gray, Head of Australian Art, is on page 10.

Two important and related exhibitions opened at the National Gallery of Australia in December and January: Degas: master of French art and Degas’ world: the rage for change. I hope your holiday schedule included a visit to the Gallery to see them both. Together, they give a rich account of a volatile period of change in European art.

Just over three weeks remain until Degas: master of French art ends on 22 March. This is the first ever Australian exhibition of his work. Don’t miss it!

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Degas’ world: the rage for change, however, continues until 3 May. It includes some of the Gallery’s most remarkable European prints of the nineteenth century by artists such as Honoré Daumier, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de ToulouseLautrec and Pierre Bonnard. In this issue of artonview, the exhibition’s curator Mark Henshaw, Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books, examines the radically changing industrial, political and social milieu of France and the role artists played in capturing the birth of a modern society—its moments of glory and, at times, degradation, the beauty and the grotesquery.

The touring exhibition from the Art Gallery of South Australia, Misty moderns: Australian Tonalists 1915–1950, opened in February at the National Gallery of Australia and continues until 26 April. Curated by Tracy Lock-Weir, the exhibition is the first to assemble works of Australian Tonalism, a movement that had a strong influence on artistic practice between the two world wars. The work of followers of Max Meldrum and his Tonalism is characterised by a particular ‘misty’ or atmospheric quality created by building ‘tone on tone’.

On 24 April, in the exhibition Soft sculpture, we leap ahead to an innovation in the arts in the second half of the twentieth century. Traditionally, when we think of sculpture, we think of solid and permanent objects, of enduring monuments. From the 1960s (although there are also earlier examples), some sculptors turned this notion on its head, using cloth, foam, rubber, paper, vinyl and similar pliant materials—rather than stone, bronze and wood.

Curated by Lucina Ward, Curator, International Painting and Sculpture, Soft sculpture presents the remarkable range of materials that artists have employed in the development of this major sculptural trend. The exhibition features the work of perhaps the most popular and certainly one of the earliest proponents of soft sculpture, Claes Oldenburg, whose large-scale creations can be seen at major art galleries around the world. The exhibition also includes works by international artists such as Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Annette Messager, Robert Morris and Robert Rauschenberg, and Australian artists such as Ricky Swallow, Mikala Dwyer, David Jensz and others.

Coinciding with Soft sculpture, the Gallery will open the exhibition Reinventions: sculptures and assemblages from the Australian collection at the end of May. This will include assemblages by some of Australia’s most important artists, such as Robert Klippel and Rosalie Gascoigne, as well as recent sculptural works by Ricky Swallow and Rodney Glick among others.

In this issue, we also feature the acquisition of an exceptional work by Hilda Rix Nicholas. Her largest painting, Les fleurs dédaignées (The scorned flowers) 1925, is the second acquisition of this artist’s work that we have highlighted in consecutive issues of artonview. Les fleurs dédaignées is another of the Australian painter’s European subjects—as Snow, Montmartre c 1914 was in our previous issue—although she painted it almost a decade later, during a visit to France in 1925, after she had already returned to Australia. She later moved to the Monaro district in the greater Canberra region.

The Gallery has also acquired its first early sculpture from the old Laos kingdom of Lan Xang. It is a fifteenthto sixteenth-century bronze sculpture of the Buddha seated in meditation under the seven-headed hood of the serpent king Muchalinda. This iconic naga Buddha is common in Theravada Buddhist cultures, particularly in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. An important addition to the Gallery’s expanding collection of Southeast Asian Buddhist art, it enhances our ability to introduce visitors to the full range of art and culture of our near neighbours.

The Gallery also received a gift of a large screenprint, The 8-kin network 1985 by the design and printmaking studio Redback Graphix. From 1979 to 1994, Redback Graphix produced posters that combined edgy and witty

graphics with eye-watering colours to give voice to a raft of pressing social issues. We are grateful to Alison Alder, Director of Canberra’s Megalo Access Arts and former co-director of Redback Graphix, for donating this vibrant poster of Australian social history. The 8-kin network also features alongside a vast array of other works by the studio in our recently published Redback Graphix. Written

by Anna Zagala, Redback Graphix is the third in the book series The printed image, which the Gallery will celebrate on Saturday 14 March with talks by some of the artists featured in the books.

I would like to extend my congratulations to Rupert Myer AM, who was recently reappointed as Chairman of the Council of the National Gallery of Australia for a further three years, and express, on behalf of the Gallery, our gratitude for his unerring service and generosity since he was first appointed Chairman in 2006. Rupert brings considerable business skill to the position and is a tireless promoter of the Gallery. We are fortunate to have a Chairman who is so well informed, so interested in all aspects of what we do and so willing to commit time and energy to the institution. It is also heartening (and fairly unusual) to have a Chairman who is extraordinarily knowledgeable and passionate about art and the contemporary art world.

Rupert Myer, Chairman, National Gallery of Australia, speaking at the opening of Degas: master of French art.

Sitting (l–r): John Mackay, Chairman of ACTEW Corporation, Guy Cogeval, Director, Musée d’Orsay, and Ron Radford, Director, National Gallery of Australia.

Ron Radford AM

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credit lines

Donations

Grants

Terrence Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Ian Crawford AM Michael Hobbs Jason Prowd Alison Rahill Diana Ramsay AO Maxine Rochester Janet Rodgers Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Peter Webster

Degas: master of French art has been indemnified by the Commonwealth through the Australian Government’s Art Indemnity Australia program, administered by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts Australia Council for the Arts through the Showcasing the Best International Strategy, and through its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Visual Arts Board and Community Partnerships and Market Development (International) Board The Gordon Darling Foundation Visions of Australia through its Contemporary Touring Initiative, an Australian Government program

Gifts University of Queensland Art Museum Impressions on Paper Gallery Aranday Foundation Alison Alder Rick Amor Gordon H Brown Rachel Burgess Mark Dodson Michael Florrimell Patricia Ganter John Gollings Robert Jacks Mathew Jones Jane Kinsman Alistair Legge Kevin Lincoln Vane Lindesay John Loane John McPhee Warren Muller Roslyn Packer AO Kirsteen Pieterse Robert Rooney Jorg Schmeisser Gene and Brian Sherman Imants Tillers Peter Van de Maele Notified bequests Mary Alice Pelham Thorman AM

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supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia, and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government, and state and territory governments Sponsorship ActewAGL Adshel Brassey Hotel of Canberra BHP Billiton Canberra Times Casella Wines Champagne Pol Roger Coopers Brewery Eckersley’s Art & Craft Forrest Hotel and Apartments Mantra on Northbourne National Australia Bank Qantas RM Williams, The Bush Outfitter Sony Foundation Australia Ticketek Yalumba Wine WIN Television

Foundation and Development

Margaret Olley donates Degas drawing to National Gallery of Australia Margaret Olley AC has been a supporter of the National Gallery of Australia for some time and, just prior to the opening of the major exhibition Degas: master of French art, she presented the Gallery with an important Degas drawing, Dancer in fourth position c 1885. The drawing is on display, publicly for the first time, in the exhibition Degas, which is open until 22 March.

A media launch was held on 4 December 2008 to formally announce the gift. At the launch, Margaret Olley said, ‘I was inspired to give this Degas drawing to the National Gallery of Australia as part of this milestone occasion, the first ever Degas exhibition in Australia, and to be on display for visitors to the National Gallery in the future’.

The Director, Ron Radford AM, also commented on how philanthropic support received by the National Gallery of Australia has greatly assisted in building the national collection of art: Benefaction of important works of art make a significant addition to the nation. We are grateful to Margaret Olley for her generous gift of this significant Degas drawing. Her support for the Gallery over a number of years has enabled us to acquire major works that would otherwise have been out of reach.

Dancer in fourth position depicts Degas’ fascination with illustrating movement. The artist’s method is clearly visible through his use of a series of charcoal lines (surrounding the arms and legs) to decide the most effective position for the dancer’s body.

National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle The National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle is a new initiative that formally acknowledges bequest donors during their lifetime and gives potential and existing bequest donors a unique opportunity to develop a closer relationship with the Gallery. An excerpt of Ray Wilson’s speech, which he presented at the launch of the Bequest Circle, is reproduced with an introduction by the Director on pages 8–9.

Bequests to the National Gallery of Australia come in a range of forms and sizes and all make a difference to the national collection of art and the National Gallery of

Australia’s programs. Some people may be able to bequeath a work of art and others a portion of their estate. We recommend that all works of art considered for bequeathing to the Gallery are discussed beforehand with the curator of the relevant collecting area.

If you would like to join the National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle or would like more information, please contact the Executive Director of the National Gallery of Australia Foundation, Annalisa Millar, on (02) 6240 6691.

Margaret Olley at the annoucement of her gift to the Gallery, Edgar Degas’s Dancer in fourth position c 1885.

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2009 Masterpieces for the Nation Fund is an annual appeal organised by the Foundation. The appeal enables a number of benefactors to make individual contributions. The donations combined then enable the Foundation to acquire a significant work of art for the national collection.

Since it was initiated in 2003, the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund has assisted the Gallery to acquire seven significant works for the national collection. These include William Robinson’s Creation landscape—fountains of the Earth 2002, Sydney Long’s Flamingoes c 1905–06, Jeffrey Smart’s Lovers by house 1956, the nineteenth-century Indian shrine hanging Festival of the cattle, Doreen Reid Nakamarra’s artonview autumn 2009 5

Ray Wilson and Rupert Myer, Chairman, National Gallery of Australia, at the launch of the Bequest Circle, 14 November 2008.

Michael Costello, Managing Director, ACTEW Corporation, and Ron Radford, Director, National Gallery of Australia, at the opening of the exhibition Degas: master of French art.

Untitled 2007 and the eighteenth-century shrine hanging Autumn Moon festival.

This year we are delighted to announce that the work of art selected for the fund is Tom Roberts’s magnificent painting Shearing shed, Newstead c 1894. An article written by Anne Gray, Head of Australian Art, is featured on pages 10–11.

For further enquiries regarding the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund or to donate, please contact the Foundation on (02) 6240 6454.

Degas: master of French art ActewAGL (Principal Partner) We would like to thank ActewAGL—in particular, CEO Michael Costello—for their generous support as the Principal Partner of Degas: master of French art. Thank you also to Mark Sullivan, Managing Director of Actew Corporation; John McKay, Chairman of ActewAGL, for his ongoing commitment to supporting the National Gallery of Australia; Paul Walshe, Director of Marketing and Corporate Affairs; and the entire team at ActewAGL. We are extremely grateful to ActewAGL for their sponsorship of Degas and furthermore for their support of the Gallery for over a decade. By supporting this exhibition, ActewAGL reaffirms their commitment to the local and national community and to promoting and celebrating the vital role that the arts play in our national identity. They have helped to ensure that Australians have access to some of the world’s most important and inspiring works of art.

Art Indemnity Australia (Principal Partner) The assistance of Art Indemnity Australia—the Australian Government’s art indemnity scheme through which loans to Degas have been indemnified—has been invaluable. Without this support this exhibition could not have taken place.

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Since 1979, the Commonwealth has indemnified approximately $13.9 billion worth of cultural objects in 102 exhibitions, with a combined audience total of almost 22 million visitors. The scheme was established to provide greater access for the people of Australia to significant cultural exhibitions.

We are grateful to Art Indemnity Australia for supporting the National Gallery of Australia in bringing this important exhibition to Australia.

WIN Television (Supporting Sponsor) We thank WIN Television for their supporting sponsorship of Degas. In addition to sponsoring Degas, we would like to thank WIN Television for their commitment to the exhibition Soft sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia from 24 April to 12 July 2009. We thank Corey Pitt, Station Manager, Natalie Tanchevski, Advertising Account Executive, and the entire team at WIN Television.

Canberra Times (Supporting Sponsor) We are also grateful to the Canberra Times for their contribution and support of Degas and for their further commitment to promote and support other exhibitions and activities throughout 2009. We thank Peter Fray, former editor, and wish him luck in his new position as the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. Our thanks also go to Ken Nichols, General Manager, and Kylie Dennis, Group Advertising Manager, and the team at Canberra Times.

Adshel (Supporting Sponsor) We also welcome Adshel back to the National Gallery of Australia as a supporting sponsor and thank them for their generous support of Degas. Adshel have provided a prominent street promotion campaign, ensuring high-visibility of the exhibition in Sydney, Melbourne and

Canberra. We thank Steve McCarthy, CEO, Peter Cosgrove, Chairman, Elvira Lodewick, Marketing Director, and the team at Adshel for choosing to support this exhibition.

Champagne Pol Roger Yalumba Wines and Coopers Brewery We also extend our appreciation to Champagne Pol Roger and Yalumba Wines as the official wine sponsors of the opening of Degas and all associated gala events.

The opening of the exhibition was a night to remember, with the ambience of the evening heightened by the presence of the quintessentially French Champagne Pol Roger. Thank you to the team at Yalumba Winery— especially Robert Hill Smith, Managing Director, Ralph Dunning, General Manager of Marketing, Duncan Sinclair, Brand Marketing Manager, and Sean Trenoweth, Area Manager—for their ongoing commitment to this successful partnership. We would also like to thank Coopers Brewery as the official beer sponsor for the Degas opening and associated events.

Mantra on Northbourne We thank the Mantra on Northbourne for their support as the official accommodation sponsor for Degas and for their ongoing commitment to the partnership with the National Gallery of Australia. Thank you to Alex Chapman, General Manager, and the entire team at the Mantra.

National Gallery of Australia and Sony Foundation Australia Summer Art Scholarship The consistent and generous sponsorship provided by Sony Foundation Australia has enabled the Gallery to build and strengthen the National Gallery of Australia and Sony Foundation Australia Summer Art Scholarship program.

This program provides 16 students from around Australia

with an invaluable learning experience through a week-long introduction to the visual arts. Sony Foundation Australia has been supporting this program for the past five years and we extend our appreciation to Rod McGeoch AM, Chairman, and the board and to Natalie Speranza, Administrator.

We are grateful to the Brassey of Canberra for their ongoing support of the Gallery, especially through their sponsorship of the National Gallery of Australia and Sony Foundation Australia Summer Art Scholarship. We thank Mark Sproat, General Manager, and Mark Huck, Director of Sales.

Jane Kinsman, curator of Degas, Michael Costello, Guy Cogeval, Director, Musée d’Orsay, and Ron Radford at the media launch of Degas.

Corporate Members Program Yalumba Wines, in conjunction with the Corporate Members Program, will hold its second evening of fine art, wine and dining on 5 March to celebrate the exhibition Degas: master of French art. Guest speaker and raconteur Jane Ferrari will once again entertain and inform guests with stories of her international travels and extensive wine knowledge.

Eckersley’s Art & Craft will again be sponsoring the National Gallery of Australia’s annual family day event, Sculpture Garden Sunday, on Sunday 8 March from 10.30 am to 1.30 pm. We would like to thank Eckersley’s for supplying art materials on the day.

We thank all our sponsors and corporate members.

If you would like more information about sponsorship and development at the National Gallery of Australia please contact Frances Corkhill on +61 2 6240 6740 or Belinda Cotton on +61 2 6240 6556.

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National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle 2009

Ray Wilson delivers his passionate speech about the importance of bequests to cultural institutions at the National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle launch in November 2008, and (left) Ron Radford, Director, National Gallery of Australia.

The launch in November of the National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle was an important milestone for the Gallery, which has been fortunate to benefit from many bequests and gifts in its short history. They range from a single fine work to significant amounts of money for the purchase of a major work. Be it a single work, a collection or an amount of money, bequests have strengthened the national art collection, enabling the Gallery to acquire significant works of art that might otherwise be out of reach.

For example, a major work by Colin McCahon, Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950, was purchased with funds from the bequest of Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel 2004. John Olsen’s remarkable three-panel painting, Sydney Sun 1965 was purchased with funds from the bequest of Nerissa Johnson in 2000. Originally conceived as a ceiling painting, this work was one of the most significant examples of a small group of ceiling paintings Olsen created in the 1960s. An important and rare early landscape by Hans Heysen, The saplings c 1904, came directly into the collection as a bequest of Millie Joyner of Adelaide in 1993. We under-represent the great landscapes of Hans Heysen in the national collection. And most significantly, in 2001, Dr Orde Poynton bequeathed over $13 million in perpetuity to the purchase of

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international prints, drawings and illustrated books. His bequest has enabled the Gallery to buy exemplary works by modern masters, including William Morris, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Otto Dix, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and many others.

Last year, the Gallery acquired, in part through a generous gift and bequest, the Agapitos/Wilson collection of Australian Surrealism from the late James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM. Comprising 285 works, the Agapitos/Wilson collection is the largest Australian Surrealist collection ever assembled. James and Ray also decided to include the National Gallery of Australia in their wills and Ray presented his eloquent case for bequests at the November launch of the Bequest Circle.

The following is an extract from his speech: Most people approach the subject of their will with varying degrees of trepidation. They don’t want to tempt fate by thinking about their mortality, which, despite all the advances in medicine, is inevitable, and having a will and being dead are the necessary parts of making and realising a bequest.

I have had no trepidation and I will admit to having fun writing my will.

If you discuss the subject of wills, you will hear the

usual platitudes: ‘You can’t take it with you’, ‘Blood is thinker than water’, ‘You can’t rule from the grave’ and so on.

I won’t dispute ‘You can’t take it with you’ and I suppose ‘blood is thicker than water’, and our families generally have a right to expect something from our estates but, frankly, to leave everything to family is the easy option.

Your will is your formal opportunity to have the last word, without anyone having the right of reply, and to make positive statements about what you believe in and what you cherished during your life.

It is your chance to recognise the kindness of friends and to say thank you to the cultural institutions that have contributed to your quality of life.

I specify cultural institutions because, after family, health and welfare are usually the next choices; the organisations that have enriched our lives can be forgotten.

I will add that you shouldn’t keep your bequests a secret from the institutions you are considering. Talk to them so they can manage your generosity in the best possible way while at the same time producing the results you desire; so you can ‘rule from the grave’ as well.

Another platitude relating to money is ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’. When it comes to a bequest to a cultural institution you can eat cake for the rest of your life.

By making a notified bequest, you can be certain they will be a grateful beneficiary and will ensure you continue to enjoy your association with them until the inevitable happens; and they will honour you after you’ve gone.

I will add that neither James nor I approve of anonymous donations or bequests. This is a very outdated Victorian concept. We should be proud to stand up, or be laid out, and say we believe in this institution and encourage or challenge, friends, relatives, associates and competitors to follow suit.

In this beautiful [Bequest Cirle] booklet announcing the establishment of the Bequest Circle I am quoted from the speech I made announcing James’s and my bequest and I’d like to repeat it here: ‘I am doing this in the hope that our example will encourage other supporters of the Gallery to follow suit and publicly demonstrate their faith in the future of this great, growing and exciting institution’.

Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 oil on canvas 89 x 117 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest, 2004

The purpose of the National Gallery of Australia Bequest Circle is twofold: to give us the chance to acknowledge and honour bequest donors during their life time; and to give potential and existing bequest donors an opportunity to develop a closer relationship with the Gallery.

Ron Radford AM Director

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Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2009 Tom Roberts’s Shearing shed, Newstead Tom Roberts Shearing shed, Newstead c 1894 oil on panel 22.2 x 33 cm

Selected for the 2009 appeal for the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund, Shearing shed, Newstead c 1894 is a significant and intimate work by Tom Roberts that makes a statement about the Australian Outback and Australian rural life. It is one of his most compelling impressions, a spontaneous sketch, conveying Roberts’s immediate response to his environment.

An image of outdoor country life, Shearing shed, Newstead shows the sheep yards with a hessian-shaded corrugated-iron shearing shed, freshly shorn sheep, a post-and-rail fence, a stand of eucalypts and a cloud of hot dust, viewed through the all-pervasive glare of the Australian midday sun. A bank of brilliant white cumulus clouds floats in the brilliant blue sky.

Working rapidly, Roberts applied his paint thinly in the foreground, with the texture of the wood panel clearly visible through the paint. He created the sense of a hot breeze through his expressive marks depicting the trunks and leaves of the trees. He used his paint more thickly to depict the dense blue sky, and applied scumbled impasto to create the mass of white clouds.

Roberts was Australia’s foremost artist in the late nineteenth century. Pastoral life fascinated him, and he loved to depict images of men at work in the bush.

He believed that ‘by making art the perfect expression of one time and one place, it becomes for all time and of all places’.1 Between 1889 and 1898, Roberts spent much of his time visiting rural properties and painting works of a national character, such as Shearing the rams 1888–90 (National Gallery of Victoria) and The golden fleece (shearing at Newstead) 1894 (Art Gallery of New South Wales). These works of strong, athletic men performing ritualistic work in rude timber buildings have become some of the most well-known and much-loved images in Australian art.

One of the places he visited frequently during the mid 1890s to get inspiration for these works was Duncan Anderson’s property, Newstead, near Inverell in the New England tablelands of northern New South Wales. He became immersed in the life of the sheep property and the landscape of that area. It was there that he painted

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Shearing shed, Newstead. It was there too that Roberts conceived and partly painted three of his most celebrated ‘national pictures’; as well as The golden fleece it was also the location for Bailed up 1895/1927 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and In a corner on the Macintyre 1895 (National Gallery of Australia).

Roberts painted Shearing shed, Newstead during the summer of 1893–94, shortly after his arrival at Newstead on 23 December and before the end of the New England shearing season the following month. He gave the painting to his host, Anderson—possibly as a present for him during the festive season. It is inscribed ‘Tom Roberts to DSA’, with the ideogram of a bulldog, which refers to Roberts’s nickname. The work shows a side view of the Newstead shearing shed, seen from the north. The shed had been built by Anderson’s parents for a larger Newstead, which was divided in two in 1883. By February 1894, Roberts had begun work on The golden fleece, which shows the interior of this shed.

Roberts wrote that ‘It seems to me that the best words spoken to an artist is, “Paint what you love, and love what you paint”, and on that I have worked; and so it came that being in the bush and feeling the delight and fascination of the great pastoral life and work I have tried to express it’.2 Like other works that he painted at Anderson’s property, Shearing shed, Newstead is a powerful rural image of sunlight, heat, woolshed and sheep. Unlike Roberts’s two other shearing images, however, this is not a picture of ‘strong masculine labour’ and the ‘subdued hum of hard fast working’.3 Rather it is a universal image of the Australian landscape with sheep grazing, and the nineteenth-century shed in which the shearing took place.

But, more than this, it is a painting of light and heat and dust—the glare on the roof of the shed, the dust rising from the parched ground of the high-summer landscape.

Roberts created a feel of the heat, the quietness and the blinding light—an experience of the Australian bush.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art notes 1–3 Tom Roberts, letter to the editor, Argus, 4 July 1890.

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exhibition

Degas’ world: the rage for change 23 January – 3 May 2009 | Orde Poynton Gallery

Paul Signac The port of Saint-Tropez 1897–98 lithograph image 43.5 x 33 cm sheet 52 x 39.9 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980

Maximilien Luce Blast-furnaces of Charleroi 1898 lithograph image 26.6 x 20.2 cm sheet 36.6 x 28.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Felix Man Collection, Special Government Grant, 1972

The exhibition Degas’ world: the rage for change is less specifically about Degas than the world he inhabited.

It is about his fellow artists and friends—those who inspired him, and those he, in turn, inspired. As an exhibition it seeks to avoid the clichés of sweetness and light with which Impressionism has been interminably burdened. Instead, it is about the real world of nineteenth-century France.

History, however, craves context, and it is impossible to understand the turbulent swirl of changing ideas that is at the heart of the exhibition Degas’ world, and the notion of the rage for change that underpins it, without examining the historical context in which these ideas came to fruition. Similarly, it is impossible to understand the unfolding character of Degas’ world, and the revolutionary Impressionist exhibitions (1874–86) of which Degas was

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a prime instigator, without first examining some of its conceptual precedents.

When we think of ‘the artist’, particularly visual artists, we are likely to fall back on a range of familiar clichés: genius, outsider, maverick, visionary, prophet, eccentric.

The romantic cliché of the artist as a talented but tortured visionary acting under the quasi-religious phenomenon of inspiration still has popular currency today. Fundamental to this conception of the artist is the notion that an artist is a gifted individual who somehow works, at best, alongside society, and, at worst, and more typically, outside it. He is, essentially, not like us; she is special, anointed. We privilege not only their activity, but their very identity.

But it has not always been so. The view of an artist as a gifted individual living somehow ‘outside’ society is a modern construct. Leaving aside a conceptual model based on the artist of antiquity, from post-medieval times until the late eighteenth century, an artist’s place in society was more likely to have been as an artisan. An artist was an employed tradesperson practising his (or, occasionally, her) craft within one of two dominant contexts—the Church or the State, the latter being not a modern state but a feudal state indissolubly linked to either a monarchy or dominant ruling aristocracy.

Each of these contexts depended on the notion of patronage. Subject matter was either religious—mostly allegorical paintings based on the Old or New Testaments, often with an overtly erotic content—or secular. Secular paintings could themselves be divided into three main categories: paintings based on mythology, again often with a highly eroticised lode (the birth of Venus, for example); paintings that were depictions of property under the guise of landscape; and paintings that were a form of portraiture, documenting either centuries-long aristocratic family lineages, a kind of DNA in paint, or much more short-term relationships based on lust.

The nineteenth century would see all of that change.

The fundamental reason for why this was the case, in historical terms, is intrinsically connected with the intersection of two revolutions—one technical, the Industrial Revolution, and one socio-political, the French Revolution. These became the warp and weft of a new sieve by which society (at least Western society) was sifted.

The glittering new currency that would be left once the dross was disposed of—what would come to underpin this new society’s basic structure—would be the idea of the sanctity of the individual.

The Industrial Revolution heralded a move away from a largely agrarian, feudal society to one that was more urban.

It saw the emergence of a new social order with new social stratifications—it saw, for example, the emergence not only of a new merchant class but also of a wealthy middleclass (a bourgeoisie) and an urban proletariat. What the French Revolution did was to take this new socio-economic order and liberate it from its now anachronistic feudal structure by imposing a new political order. Central to this order, was the 1804 Code Napoléon, the French civil code established under Napoleon I. The code not only established the fundamental democratic notion of popular sovereignty and civil equality but, importantly, introduced two new concepts upon which this new order was based—the notions of equality (at least for men) before the law and freedom of religious expression. In addition, Napoleon introduced the notion of promotion based on merit or talent or both. He specifically introduced this notion to subvert the sort of corruption that so thoroughly characterised the Ancien Régime. The effect of these three features of the Code Napoléon was, firstly, to formally entrench the notion of the individual as the fundamental unit in society in a way that had formally not been the case and, secondly, to consolidate the idea that

as individuals, members of society had certain inalienable rights. These ideas would be crucial in the unfolding of what would take place in artistic circles in the 1870s.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the French Revolution, or at least the idea of revolution as a popular uprising, also became the preferred template for social change in France and, later, elsewhere. The political structure of modern France was becoming well established: French society was increasingly urbanised and had a significant emerging merchant class, a developing bourgeoisie and a significant urban proletariat. The status of Napoleon himself had changed: he was now seen as a kind of archetype of the visionary individual, one who acted as an avatar for change.

Given that this was the case, what then was the nexus between the changing political landscape of nineteenth-century France and the aesthetic upheaval that followed the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874?

To answer this question, it’s necessary to step back and have a look at the role the Salon played in French artistic life.

From 1725, the Salon was the only significant arena in which artists in France could show their works. Organised annually, it was the official art exhibition of the Académie des BeauxArts. From 1748, works for display were selected by a jury who were either members of the academy or previously awarded artists. By 1848, the Salon was the biggest annual art event in the world. The structure of the Salon and the way it functioned deliberately echoed the structure of the

Honoré Daumier Artists looking at the work of a rival 1852 from Le charivari, 14 May 1852 lithograph 35.4 x 24.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980

Paul Gavarni The baby in St Giles Hospice 1852–53 plate 6 from the series The English at home 1852–53 lithograph image 21.5 x 18.5 cm sheet 36.4 x 26.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1986

(opposite) Edouard Manet The barricade 1871 lithograph image 47 x 34.2 cm sheet 60.4 x 47.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Felix Man Collection, Special Government Grant, 1972

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Clémentine-Hélène Dufau The sling 1898 lithograph image 96 x 132 cm sheet 100 x 140.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Orde Poynton Esq, AO, CMG, 1993

wider French world. It was simultaneously a quasi-judicial model—it had a jury—but, unfortunately, it was also one that was open to corruption, or was perceived to be corrupt.

In the 1850s and 1860s, many artists increasingly questioned the jury’s selections. As has been argued above, the social history of the first half of the nineteenth century from the perspective of an emerging middle class, of which artists were part, is the history of how the concepts of equality before the law and freedom of expression became imbedded in an individual’s psyche. These two principles had become the accepted and expected norm. The way the Salon behaved (or appeared to behave) offended, in particular, the now firmly established concept of equality before the law—in this case, represented by the judgments made by the Salon jury with respect to the works they selected. The consequences of this were important— selection or non-selection could make or break an artist’s career, and artists now lived in a modern commercial world without (generally) the patronage of either the Church or the State. In the 1860s particularly, the Salon’s increasingly arbitrary and aberrant behaviour also offended the now codified notion of promotion based on talent—no matter how subjective this notion of talent might have been—in a very significant way.

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While discontent with the Salon exhibitions and the jury process had been simmering for some time, and exhibitions of rejected works had been organised on a semi-regular basis for decades, the 1863 Salon show, with its rejection of more than 3000 works, caused an uproar. The State, for the first time, stepped in to sponsor an exhibition of works that had been rejected. This became known as the famous Salon des refusés (The rejects exhibition).

A comment by Théophile Thoré about the 1863 exhibition indicates just how moribund and irrelevant the Salon had become: The French School, such as it appears in the Salon show of 1863, doesn’t signify anything. It is no longer religious, or philosophical; there’s absolutely no history, and there’s no poetry. It simultaneously lacks any reference to the traditions of the old, or the imagination of the new.1

Eleven years later, in 1874, things came to a head. Unable to bear the continuing ignominy of having to submit works to a jury they perceived as being either incompetent or corrupt, Edgar Degas and a group of his friends decided they would no longer show with the Salon (although some of them still did). Instead, they formed the Société anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs (the Cooperative Society of Painters, Sculptors and Printmakers).

On 28 March 1874 the following simple notice appeared in La chronique des arts et de la curiosité (The Chronicle of Arts and Curiosities) and elsewhere: The exhibition of the Societé anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs will open on 15 April at M Nadar’s salons, boulevard des Capucines.

And so, in this modest, unembellished and unassuming way, the most revolutionary change in the history of art was quietly ushered in. Strategically, Degas and his coconspirators held their first show two weeks before the official Salon exhibition opened. Jean Prouvaire, in the edition of Le rappel (The Recall) of 20 April 1974, wrote: What [these artists] have done is quite audacious, and this in itself is enough to make claims on our sympathy. And audacity is not their only plus. It’s almost like the curtain going up before the real play begins—sometimes the prelude is better than the main event.

Reaction to the exhibition, given its modest heralding, was astonishingly instantaneous. Armand Silvestre, writing in L’opinion nationale a mere week after the exhibition opened, commented: ‘For a week now, they are all we’ve heard about …’. And while opinion was divided with respect to the relative merits of the works on display, some contemporary commentators were staggeringly astute

about the historical significance of what they were seeing.

A mere fortnight after the show opened, Jules Castagnary, in a wonderful summary of what had led up to this event, had this to say in the 29 April 1874 edition of Le siècle (The Century): A couple of years ago, there was a rumour getting around artists’ studios about the birth of a new school of painting … The members of the [Salon] jury, with their usual intelligence tried to block the way of these new comers.

They closed the doors of the Salon to them, prevented them from getting any publicity, and by every idiotic means which egotism, stupidity or envy has at its disposal in this world to express itself, did their best to make them the object of ridicule. Well, I swear to you on Cabanel’s ashes, and those of Gérôme, that there’s talent here, and a lot of it. These young people have a way of apprehending nature that has nothing dull or banal about it. It’s alive, agile, light. It’s ravishing. How quickly an object has been perceived, how intelligent has been its execution. Yes, it is a kind of summary, but how true the details are.

Eugène Grasset The morphine addict 1897 pencil image 41.2 x 31.2 cm sheet 46 x 36 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the assistance of Orde Poynton Esq, AO, CMG, 1995

Eugène Grasset The acid thrower c 1896 lithograph image 40 x 37.7 cm sheet 60.6 x 44 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Orde Poynton Esq, AO, CMG, 1993

Charles de Malte’s exhortation in the journal Paris à l’eaux-fortes (Paris Etched) of 19 April 1874, on the other hand, could not have been more simple: ‘In short, I urge you to go and see this fireworks display of riotous colour.

You’ll come away with a sense of something new …’.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Woman with a tub 1896 from the album Womankind 1896 lithograph 40.4 x 52.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1977

Not all the commentary, however, was positive.

But even if it was negative it was often expressed with characteristic nineteenth-century wit. In La patrie (The Homeland) on 21 April 1874, for example, a commentator writing under the initials ALT memorably expressed their distaste for the exhibition: Do you remember the Salon des refusés exhibition, the first one, where you could see nude women the colour of an indisposed Bismarck, and jonquil-yellow horses, and Marie-Louise blue trees. Well then! That exhibition was a Louvre, a Pitti Palais, an Uffizi compared to what’s on display at the boulevard des Capucines.

The level of sophistication, whether positive or negative, of much of the contemporary commentary on the first Impressionist exhibitions is still astonishing today. Of the second exhibition, held in 1876, in a piece that is as remarkable for its insight as it is for its achingly poetic elegance, Arthur Baignères wrote in the L’écho universel (The Universal Echo), 17 April 1876: 18 national gallery of australia

After having broken with tradition, [these artists] have systematically formulated the theory of the impression.

Nature renders us impressionable; art makes us impressionists. Our eyes are corrupted by study. What we have to do is to keep the eye innocent and allow it to do nothing but see. Our hands must be at the service of our eyes like a clumsy but sincere workman and they must restrict themselves to faithfully expressing only what the eyes have seen. Here we have then the art of painting reduced to a sort of telegraphic mechanism; the first apparatus is the eye, the second the hand, the third is the canvas onto which impressions are registered like letters on the sky-blue paper of a telegram.

The underlying rage for change in the 1874 exhibition, and those that followed (eight in total from 1874 to 1886), was so powerful that it would break, once and for all, the Academy’s stranglehold on the practice of art in nineteenth-century France. Finally, art would be freed of the tired and anachronistic classicism that it had been shackled with for the preceding 300 years. More importantly, Degas’

group of mavericks, and these breakaway exhibitions, would become the model for the myriad secession movements that would follow over the next 50 years.

More than 50 artists would show works at the eight so-called Impressionist (the name went through a number of changes) exhibitions from 1874 to 1886.

They included artists such as Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac, all of whom are represented in Degas’ world: the rage for change. Also included in Degas’ world are works by artists who were friends of the Impressionists and of Degas in particular: Emile Bernard, Pierre Bonnard, HenriEdmond Cross, Eugène Grasset, Maximilien Luce and the incomparable Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. And there are also works by a number of important precursors on display: Honoré Daumier, Paul Gavarni and Camille Corot and more.

What the collection of works in this exhibition demonstrates is that these representations of Degas’ world have little to do with the overused saccharine clichés of sweetness and light with which Impressionism and PostImpressionism have been interminably burdened. What we have here are depictions of a world in the throes of intense change—a world of factories, of pollution,

of a dispossessed and alienated urban poor, of nascent feminism. For every dancing floozy in this exhibition, there is an aging, hollow-eyed female junkie; for every innocent, oblivious child, there is the pathetic barely living corpse of some has-been courtesan; for every summery frolic on a beach, there is a spectral face caught in the momentary light of a Paris night. For all that is light, there is much that is dark. This is the real world, not some mindless confection that gives a bad name to the art of the time. Here is art’s other face, the one the Salon did not want to see.

Now that the historical dust has settled, we can see that each of the artists represented in this exhibition has in some way joined the pantheon of those who were at the forefront of the rage for change that characterised the period, a rage that would see the world of the nineteenth century hurtling headlong into the chaos of the twentieth.

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen Paris by night 1903 lithograph image 19 x 30.4 cm sheet 27.8 x 44.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Felix Man Collection, Special Government Grant 1972

Mark Henshaw Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books All works in the exhibition Degas’ world: the rage for change are from the National Gallery of Australia’s International Print collection. notes All translations from the original French are by the author.

1 Théophile Thoré, Salons de W Bürger 1861 à 1868, 2 vols, Librairie de Ve Jules Renouard, Paris, 1870, p 269.

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exhibition

Soft sculpture Don’t touch, lick or smell 24 April – 12 July 2009 | Exhibition Galleries

Claes Oldenburg Ice bag—scale B 1971 from edition of 25 moulded plastic, synthetic fabric, electric motor 101.5 x 122 (diam) cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1975

Meret Oppenheim Squirrel 1969 no 38 from edition of 100 fur, glass, plastic foam 23 x 17.5 x 8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Plastics surround us. The foam in a chair is polyurethane.

Drink bottles are polyethylene terephthalate. And keyboards are manufactured from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. The science of contemporary life is bewildering.

Our clothing is made of polyester and nylon, we eat with polystyrene cutlery from acrylic vessels and from polypropylene takeaway containers, and we live in buildings dominated by polycarbonates and polyvinyl chlorides. But if we concentrate on these substances and composites, with their seemingly endless number of applications, we may temporarily overlook the other common use of the term ‘plastic’: capable of being moulded or modelled, able to be influenced or formed.

Soft sculpture surveys the impact of unconventional materials on three-dimensional art practice over the last

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five decades. From the 1960s, artists began to use cloth, fur, rope, rubber, paper, leather, vinyl, plastics and other new substances to make forms that are persistent rather than permanent. The choice of these materials emphasises natural forces, such as gravity and heat, and in many cases have metaphorical or metaphysical implications.

The exhibition examines the historical relationship between anti-form works of the 1960s and 1970s, and later categories of art, to the present day. It shows the many diverse ways artists exploit substances to make works of art.

Traditional sculpture is by definition dimensional and durable; it requires the determination of the artist. In the plastic arts, a distinction is made between painting’s appeal to the eye and sculpture’s references to the body, and, by extension, to our senses. Materials evoke certain sensations.

Fur is a link to times when people relied on pelts for warmth and body covering. Felt likewise protects against the elements but, by the fact of its processing, is one step removed from fur, wool or hair; it retains the ‘memory’ of forms, be they the head in a hat or, in Man Ray’s The enigma of Isidore Ducasse 1920, something more mysterious.

Soft sculpture includes Surrealist and Pop art objects to suggest some of the precursors for anti-form tendencies.

Associated with the Paris Surrealists from a young age, Meret Oppenheim’s reputation was made by a single piece. Squirrel 1969—like her famous Object 1936, also known as Breakfast in fur (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)—combines an everyday item with fur. A beer tankard, its handle transformed into a tail and capped with a head made of foam, this work is wickedly funny, puzzling

and even somewhat macabre. Fur is, of course, pleasant to touch but repellent to the tongue. Beer quenches the thirst and fills the stomach. But, here, access to the golden amber is perversely blocked by the foam stopper.

Oppenheim’s elevation of a humble object has its origins in the readymade tradition set in train by Marcel Duchamp, but she also draws on fairytale figures from her childhood and notions of fabulist transformations.

One of the foremost proponents of Pop art, Claes Oldenburg is credited as the creator of soft sculpture.

Throughout the 1960s, he made oversized hamburgers and pieces of cake in vinyl stuffed with kapok, and miniature, collapsible canvas objects such as drum sets, which offer wry commentary on the dominance of fast food and mass culture. Oldenburg’s work marries the Surrealists’ absurdist

Les Kossatz Sheep on a couch 1972–73 sheepskin, leather, stainless steel 91 x 203 x 91 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1975

Joseph Beuys Stripes from the house of the shaman 1964–72 1980 felt, wood, coats, animal skin, rubber tube, pamphlets, copper, quartz and ground minerals, pigments installation 340 x 655 x 1530 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1981

disregard for scale and functionality with a Pop art fixation on the crassness of consumerism. His objects and sculptures are often issued in editions, thus echoing the mass production of the original items. For the Icebag series of sculptures, he combines fabric and moulded plastic sheet with a motorised mechanism to explore the impact of movement. Icebag—scale B 1971 initially appears as a playful, oversized object, but in motion it takes on human characteristics. At times, it is unpleasantly reminiscent of a prosthetic device, or mechanical lung, and the cap has an uncanny ability to follow the viewer around the room.

A familiar animal is omnipresent through the oeuvre of Les Kossatz. He takes sheep, one of the most potent vernacular symbols of Australia, and sets them in some unusual contexts, subjecting them to bizarre juxtapositions of recognisable objects. They lounge on chairs, fly through curtains, confront one another across a plaza, or tumble out of trapdoors and slide down shoots. The skin used for Sheep on a couch 1972–73 retains its shape by virtue of

a wire armature, giving the animal a taxidermist’s quality.

Positioned as if for shearing, it is bound to a leather bench—the type often found in museums and other modernist architectural settings, or in a psychiatrist’s room but, here, fitted with cart-like wheels. Is this support to counter the indignity of the animal’s situation? A comment on farming practices? Or could it be an involved joke about the state of sculpture per se, propped up by institutional support but sunk in the mire below? Sheep on a couch encapsulates the different types of ‘soft’ found throughout the exhibition: the sheep’s wool, the pliable couch and the lack of stability implied by the half-wheels.

Joseph Beuys’s materials are emotionally and symbolically charged—by notions of alchemy, by history, by the artist’s own psyche. Ideas of redemption and transformation are crucial to Stripes from the house of the shaman 1964–72 1980. The lengths of felt leading up to and through the wooden portal suggest transition.

As well as being a source of warmth and insulation, felt

absorbs dirt, dust, fat, water and sound and is therefore quickly integrated into its environment. Elements such as copper, iron phosphate, sulphur and cinnabar also relate to concepts of art as a spiritual force, which can heal through the use of ritual. But these substances are dangerous in certain contexts, especially when ingested. The coats—one sealskin, the other wool—in Stripes from the house of the shaman allude to Beuys’s performances, his self-conception as a mediator between the earthly and spiritual worlds.

The intense emotion, incorporation of myth and ritual and consistent use of particular materials and objects make his work one of the most powerful of the postwar period.

Other organic materials, such as jute and hemp fibres, preserve smells. These materials evoke movements of the 1970s and the revival of interest in craft traditions.

Like Beuys, Ewa Pachucka’s creative processes suggest an element of redemption. It took the Feminist art movement and re-evaluation of categories of fine art in the late 1960s and early 1970s for textile traditions, such as knitting

and weaving, to be considered appropriate vehicles for sculpture. The life-sized figures in Landscape and bodies 1972 emerge from apparently peaceful surrounds. Their anonymous slumber is emphasised by the over-all quality of the work, punctuated by the knots, stitching and other evidence of the artist’s hand. The sheer monumentality of Pachucka’s project proclaims the relevance and physicality of making; it asserts grand ideals of humans living in harmony with the environment as well as the artist’s own utopian socialist beliefs.

Soft sculpture includes large works that hang, glitter, drip or ooze, as well as installations into which we enter to be surrounded and suffused. Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, as access to plastics and plastic technology increased, artists produced increasingly experimental work. Eva Hesse’s desire for latex and fibreglass, her attraction to the painterly qualities and subtle colours of liquid rubber, overcame her misgivings about the material’s intrinsic vulnerability over time. Each component of the elegiac, hybrid installation

Ewa Pachucka Landscape and bodies 1972 jute, hemp, wire 202 x 308 x 302 cm (overall) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1973

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Contingent 1969 (on the cover of this issue)—one of Hesse’s last major works before her death at the age of 34—is a large rectangular stretch of latex-covered cheesecloth embedded at each end in a translucent field of fibreglass.

The combination of these materials sets up a distinct tension between rigidity and malleability, continuity and change.

Artists also exploit the performative in their work, incorporating chance into the decision-making process.

Using materials as diverse as liquid polyester resin and pigmented foam, Richard Van Buren and Lynda Benglis worked by pouring, spilling, even flinging their materials, making sculptures that embrace seemingly accidental forms. Elsewhere, the application of heat or a temporary reversion to liquid state produces startling effects of collapsing, melting and disintegration.

One room of the exhibition has been fashioned into a boutique of artists’ multiples and small-scale sculpture.

Here visitors will find objects that slump, bend or even bite.

Other objects are fluffy, squishy or squeezed. The materials of some works are hard and unyielding but have been manipulated by the artist to imply liquidity and movement or to recall substances that are actually soft. There are cakes made of foam, books knitted from wool and a satchel that is not leather. There are objects whose forms are less easily defined; things that should definitely never ever be touched, licked or smelled. In other rooms, visitors will find sculptures that incorporate air, objects made with hair, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Even the traditional materials of painting, oil and canvas, are recast as relief sculpture that simply won’t stay on the wall.

Boxes can be a metaphor for absence and loss, implying a sense of narrative or progression, for the

act of discovery or even forbidden knowledge. Lucas Samaras’s partially opened, pin- and stone-encrusted box incorporates a sense of anticipation. It is a perverse thing, both attractive and repellent, visually seductive and implicitly violent. Box no 85 1973 seems to invite touch but, like a Venus flytrap or some poisonous insect, we should keep our distance. Another box, Sylvie Fleury’s Vital perfection 1993, lined with snow-white fur and stamped with gold upper-case lettering, suggests a branded, expensive fashion item, perhaps with an element of fetishism. Like Oppenheim, Fleury uses fur but, in the 1990s, hers is acrylic. Her objects and multimedia installation explore notions of gender, ambivalence and consumerism, and while Vital perfection hints at luxury and fulfilment, it is, ultimately, empty.

Lauren Berkowitz’s use of plastic relies on accumulation, repetition and an element of surprise. Many hundreds of carefully cleaned and arranged bottles, used newspapers and collected bags were the stuff of her 1994 exhibition Bags, bottles and newspapers. She reminds us of the prevalence of non-perishable materials and single-use objects in our lives, but also demonstrates the continuing importance of serial, anti-form and minimalist tendencies in the 1990s. Originally part of that exhibition, Bags 1994 is constructed from two walls of white plastic shopping bags over a suspended wire armature. It is solid yet ethereal, a space in which sound is muffled yet light may pass. While the installation initially seems to promise comfort and protection, once inside, the viewer becomes aware of the precious fragility of the space and of its claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing qualities. A traditional memento mori causes us to reflect on the passing of time but, in Bags,

Lucas Samaras Box no 85 1973 pins and stones on cardboard 27.1 x 44.8 x 28.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1981

Sylvie Fleury Vital perfection 1993 no 53 from edition of 100 synthetic fur, cardboard 27.5 x 17 x 9 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1995

(opposite) Lauren Berkowitz Bags 1994 polyethylene bags installation 400 x 600 x 100 cm (variable) Collection of the artist Installed at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, 1998 Photograph: John Gollings

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Berkowitz has extended these ideas to warn of the dangers of over-consumption.

Much of Annette Messager’s work has an element of play as well as a tendency to catalogue and to fragment.

In Penetration 1993–94 we quite literally walk into a room of body parts. One hundred and one brightly coloured, sewn and stuffed fabric objects—intestines, hearts, lungs, spines and other internal organs—hang in a grid formation from the ceiling. They are based on diagrams from a biology textbook but reproduced as stuffed toys. On the one hand, the work suggests a child’s mobile or a place to explore. On the other, we can find more sinister references to an abattoir or surgery. The lights dangling among the body parts illuminate the forms and draw attention to their irregularity, the roughness of the stitching and the apparently casual nature with which they are hung with wool. Messager is concerned with the ways in which sex and science make use of the body and how domestic skills are trivialised.

There is nothing of the stitched, homemade quality in Nell’s The perfect drip 1999. This massive, stylised droplet has the viscosity of oil, the mirror finish of a finely polished automobile. The fact that it is dripping from the ceiling is immediately disconcerting: is this a water leak or build up of moisture? Could it be coolant from the air-conditioning?

Or perhaps something even nastier still? Trapped in time, we wait for the drip to fall while knowing perfectly well that it can’t. The amorphous, slightly surreal and space-age quality of The perfect drip suggests origins in a computergenerated, action-packed sci-fi film. Its disturbing but comical contradictions are the sculptural equivalent of Salvador Dali’s soft watches in his painting The persistence of memory 1931 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Nell’s work reprises ideas raised by Surrealist and Pop art artists, but is also a fine example of fluidity achieved in material form.

Soft sculpture reveals the qualities of softness and plasticity in many ways and across a range of media: furry, pliable, visceral, even liquid. Inspired by organic and inorganic forms, artists have transformed sculpture, engaging new materials and developing new forms of making. The impact of plastics and other resinous substances on art practice is especially remarkable when we consider just how recent is their development. Indeed very little contemporary work is actually completely hard. Just as Rodin in the nineteenth century broke with traditional sculpture—and the invention of pre-mixed paints in portable tubes is a factor in the beginning of Modernism— the introduction of pliable, petroleum-based substances has had a major impact on art of the last 50 years.

Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture

Nell The perfect drip 1999 polyurethane foam, fibreglass, acrylic paint 237 x 150 cm Collection of Catherine Lezer and Kevin McIsaac, Sydney

(opposite) Annette Messager Penetration 1993–94 cotton stuffed with polyester, angora wool, nylon, electric lights installation 500 x 500 x 1100 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1996

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collec tion focus

The golden journey: loans of Japanese art to the Art Gallery of South Australia

Muromachi period (1392–1573) Japan Pine trees by the shore c 1550 pair of six-fold screens; ink, colour, gold, silver and mica on paper each 175 x 366 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation 2006

The golden journey: Japanese art from Australian collections is a major exhibition being held at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 6 March to 31 May 2009.

Organised by James Bennett, Curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, the exhibition brings together treasures from private as well as public collections Australia-wide. Bennett was also the curator of Crescent moon: Islamic art & civilisation in Southeast Asia, which was shared by the National Gallery of Australia in 2006.

The Gallery is delighted to be lending a group of important works of art from the national collection to The golden journey. Some are well-known favourites from our display while others, primarily due to conservation requirements, are seen less often.

An important work in the exhibition is Pine trees by the shore, a celebrated pair of mid sixteenth-century Japanese screens (byobu). The sumptuously gilded painting shows horses among pine trees on the bank of an inlet on one screen, and boats returning from

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fishing on the other. Pines by a shore, or hamamatsu, has been a popular subject in Japanese art since the Heian era (794–1185) but is more closely associated with the Muromachi period (1392–1573), when these screens were painted. A rare example of an intact pair of screens from such an early date, the acquisition of this magnificent work was made possible through the support of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation. Pine trees by the shore is part of a select group of Japanese screens in the collection. Adding to these, the Gallery has recently purchased Miyuki: the imperial outing and hunt c 1600–1610, an elaborate pair of screens showing scenes from the eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. We look forward to displaying this exciting new acquisition in Canberra’s recently refurbished East Asian gallery in coming months.

Also travelling to Adelaide are woodblock prints and books by the renowned Edo-period (1603–1868) ukiyo-e printmaker Hokusai Katsushika (1760–1849). Among

the works being borrowed are his much-loved colour woodblock Peonies and butterfly c 1832 and the three-volume publication One hundred views of Mount Fuji 1834 – c 1842. Like Hokusai’s renowned Red Fuji from the series Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji 1826–33, One hundred views of Mount Fuji was inspired by the popularity of Japanese domestic tourism as well as the artist’s own fascination with Fuji, a sacred mountain and active volcano. Less well-known but certain to attract attention are two prints from The sleeve scroll (Sode no maki), a portfolio of 12 explicit erotic prints by Kiyonaga Torii (1752–1815). The long, narrow format of the subtly coloured prints, in which just a detailed sliver of the scene is visible, adds to their voyeuristic appeal.

The Gallery’s collection of important Buddhist works of art will also be represented in The golden journey.

Among these objects is an exquisite Buddhist priest’s cloak or mantle (kesa), which will have its first public showing as part of the exhibition. Constructed from a patchwork of

eighteenth-century Japanese and Chinese brocades, the motifs on the kesa include plum blossoms, dragons and clouds. The use of patchwork references the tattered and mended robes of a mendicant. While intended to reflect the poverty of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni (Shaka in Japanese) this example, like most kesa, is made from luxury fabrics originally intended for secular use. Donating fine textiles such as kimono, court costumes and Noh theatre robes to temples for reinvention into religious objects like kesa and altar cloths attracts spiritual merit. The rare combination of Japanese and Chinese silks makes this kesa, a gift from Gene and Brian Sherman, particularly special.

Another generous gift, a sculpture of a rakan Buddhist sage (arhat in Sanskrit), will also be shown in Adelaide.

The sculpture is one of a pair of rakans given to the Gallery in 1993 in memory of PE Kuring and GE Vest.

Probably once installed in the now-destroyed Fivehundred Rakan Temple (Rakan-ji) in Tokyo, the seated figure holds a wish-granting jewel (hoshu), a symbol of artonview autumn 2009 29

Hokusai Katsushika Peonies and butterfly c 1832 colour woodblock print 25 x 37.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1996

spiritual rather than material wealth. Rakans are holy men, often attributed with magical powers, who have achieved their own enlightenment and will attain nirvana at death.

Although revered, rakans are considered less important than bodhisattvas (bosatsu in Japanese), saviour beings committed to the enlightenment of others as well as themselves.

Temporarily removed from the National Gallery of Australia’s display of East Asian art for loan to The golden journey is a striking seventeenth-century sculpture of Zenzai Doji (Sudhana) by Enku (1632–1695). After entering a Buddhist monastery as a young man, Enku devoted most of his life to esoteric ascetic practice in the mountains. His faith took physical form in the thousands of distinctive sculptures he carved using an axe. One of Enku’s most popular subjects, Zenzai Doji travelled from one teacher to another in search of wisdom. He is said to have studied under 53 masters, including the bodhisattva Kannon (Avalokiteshvara), and to have reached in a single lifetime a level of spiritual understanding usually only associated with Buddhas.

A highlight for new audiences, as well as those familiar with the Gallery’s Japanese collection, is Buddha

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and the sixteen protectors. The fourteenth-century Kamakura-period scroll painting has recently returned from extensive conservation treatment and remounting in Japan where it is registered as a culturally significant Japanese work of art in an overseas collection. Andrea Wise, the Gallery’s Senior Paper Conservator, was closely involved with the conservation of the painting in Japan and has prepared a fascinating account of the process, which appears in this issue of artonview.

Buddha and the sixteen protectors shows the earthly Shaka Buddha surrounded by a range of figures including the 16 protectors of the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra. Paintings of this type were used as aids to meditation accompanying ceremonial readings of the sutra in Japanese temples. Often overshadowed in Japan

by Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise who had a great following in the early Kamakura period and remains popular today, the Shaka Buddha enjoyed renewed appeal during the later Kamakura period.

The Buddha is depicted seated on a lotus throne with his hands in a gesture of preaching. On either side of the

Buddha are two bodhisattvas: the compassionate Monju riding a lion and wise Fugen seated on an elephant.

In the foreground, to one side of the large central incense vessel, is the legendary seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang (Genjo- in Japanese) holding a bag containing the 600 Buddhist scriptures he collected during an epic journey to India. Among the texts he brought back were three versions of the 600-chapter Prajnaparamita Sutra, which he translated, unabridged, on his return.

Xuan Zang’s autobiography, Journey to the west in the great Tang dynasty, as well as numerous biographies

and fictional accounts of his life, including the 1970s Japanese television series Monkey (in which he is known as Tripitaka), have contributed to his fame.

The National Gallery of Australia is pleased to be lending a significant selection of works from our small but high-quality collection of Japanese art to the Art Gallery of South Australia for The golden journey—a rare opportunity to see Japanese treasures from collections across Australia.

Enku Figure of Zenzai Doji (Sudhana) late 17th century wood 54 x 15.7 x 12 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1977

(right) inscription on reverse of Figure of Zenzai Doji (Sudhana) late 17th century

Melanie Eastburn Curator, Asian Art

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collec tion focus /conser vation

Restoring Buddha and the sixteen protectors

Kamakura period (1185–1392) Japan The Buddha and the sixteen protectors 1300s ink, natural pigments and gold on silk; hanging scroll image 115.9 x 60.5 support 206.7 x 84.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1989

A treasure of considerable age, the National Gallery of Australia’s fourteenth-century Kamakura-period hanging scroll Buddha and the sixteen protectors was selected in 2005 by representatives from the National Research Institute in Tokyo as a candidate for conservation treatment in Japan. The initiative is part of a Japanese Government-funded program of caring for works of art of exceptional quality in overseas collections. The institute was founded in 1930 to research and preserve important Japanese works of art and, subsequently, the Division for International Co-operation for Conservation was established in 1993. Each year, a team of experts from the institute visits overseas museums to select a small number of works for treatment. In 2007, following extensive discussions between the Gallery’s curatorial and conservation staff and the National Research Institute about the nature of the treatment and the expected outcomes, the scroll was sent to the Bokunindo Studio in Shizuoka, who had been nominated to undertake the conservation treatment.

At the Bokunindo Studio, the scroll was thoroughly examined using a range of technical processes, and the information gathered about its condition was meticulously documented. The old mounting silks were removed and treatment to consolidate flaking and cracked paint began.

Buddha and the sixteen protectors was a very dark painting, with the exception of the three central figures— Buddha, Monju and Fugen—which were distinctly lighter in tone than the remainder of the image. Also, the lower half of the work lacked contrast and much of its detail and clarity had been lost. It is common for a scroll of this age to have been restored and remounted a number of times, at least once every 100 years.

Scrolls were only intended for short periods of display— in this case, as a visual accompaniment to readings of the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra—before being rolled up and put away until the next reading.

The Gallery’s scroll had clearly had a long and active life of rolling, unrolling and display, which had led to extensive creasing and cracking in the support layers, with paint loss throughout.

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To protect the paint during the long restoration process, a temporary facing was applied using rayon paper and funori, a weak adhesive derived from seaweed.

Once the painted surface was consolidated, and the facing attached, the work could safely be turned over to reveal the multitude of paper repairs on the back—scrolls of this age often have several layers of paper linings and many repairs made at different times and by different artisans.

To fully conserve a scroll, all the previous linings and repairs are removed. This makes it possible to access and repair the primary silk support. In the case of Buddha and the sixteen protectors, the paper layer immediately behind the image was intensely brown in tone, accounting for much of the corresponding darkness in the image. Further inspection of the previous restorations also explained the strangely bright appearance of the central figures: the lining papers, including the very dark lining paper directly behind the image, had been preferentially cut away in the area of the figures and replaced with lighter paper.

Once conservators at the Bokunindo Studio had removed the dark brown lining paper, the primary silk support on which the image is painted was revealed.

The silk has a plain, very open weave, common to early scrolls, which allows the paint to become incorporated into the support and offers some protection against mechanical stress. With all the lining papers removed, the extent of brittleness and damage to the scroll’s silk support was obvious, as were the numerous silk repairs, indicating a long history of restoration and centuries of wear and tear.

The distortion and stress created in a silk support can be dramatic if the repair is not exactly right, and many of the in-fills on the Gallery’s scroll did not match the original in texture, weight and alignment. The process to remove the silk repairs was a slow and delicate one, and some old repairs were simply too difficult to detach due to the condition of the support and the fragility of the paint applied to the back.

After removing as many of the silk repairs as possible, conservators closely matched the weave and weight of the repair silk to the original. Each silk repair was then precisely fitted and adhered with wheat starch paste. A new first

lining of dyed mino paper was followed with two further linings made from soft, delicate misu paper. A final lining of thick uda paper ensured strength as well as flexibility.

At various points in the process, the scroll was stretched flat to relax all the components and to prepare it for the next stage.

The last step was remounting. The Kamakura period saw the emergence of classifications of mounting styles appropriate to the purpose and significance of the work of art. Buddha and the sixteen protectors is classified as a shin painting, a high-quality work featuring a Buddhist subject, so the proportions and arrangement of the new mount were chosen accordingly. The silks for the mount are prepared in a similar way to the painting: they are lined and stretched before use. This ensures that materials of varying dimensions are of equal thickness in the final product and that their expansion and contraction is controlled.

Once mounted, rollers, decorative ends and hanging and tying cords were attached to the scroll, and a storage box was specially built to securely house and protect this remarkable, newly restored work.

The conservation and remounting of the scroll were extremely successful. The disparity in tone between the central figures and the remainder of the scroll has been reduced and more detail is apparent. The beautiful new mounting silks enhance and balance the image, creating a harmonious effect that should last at least another century.

The National Gallery of Australia would like to acknowledge the generosity of the National Research Institute and the Bokunindo Studio in giving new life to this splendid and important work of art.

Andrea Wise Senior Paper Conservator

acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Hilda Rix Nicholas Les fleurs dédaignées

Hilda Rix Nicholas Les fleurs dédaignées (The scorned flowers) 1925 oil on canvas 193 x 128.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

She stands proudly with chilly hauteur, wearing an eighteenth-century-style floral dress. What is she thinking?

Is that an expression of disdain or petulance? She has just spurned a bouquet of flowers, throwing them on the ground at her feet. Is it just by chance that these flowers are similar to those on her dress? Who is she looking at out of the corner of her eyes? And is that a pout, or the glimmer of a smile on her lips?

Who is this moody lady? Why is she wearing this sumptuous dress? And what is going on behind the scenes? She holds herself rigidly, with an apparent sense of control, but we perceive both arrogance and vulnerability. Her small head is made to look even smaller by the bulk of her dress.

In Les fleurs dédaignées (The scorned flowers), Australian artist Hilda Rix Nicholas created a polished sixteenth-century-Mannerist-style portrait reminiscent of the work of Agnolo Bronzino. In Mannerist fashion, Rix Nicholas gave her painting a surface coolness, but we feel a considerable emotional heat emanating from the subject. Rix Nicholas painted it in Paris in 1925, wanting to evoke the atmosphere of the works of earlier artists without copying them. Like the artists she emulated, she achieved a consciously artificial style, concentrating on details of costume and decoration—as well as obtaining acute psychological observation. The precise, rigid position of the woman’s arms, combined with the shape of her wide symmetrical skirt, form the silhouette of a vase. The subject’s pale skin appears smooth and without blemish, as though she herself was made of porcelain.

Les fleurs dédaignées is Rix Nicholas’s most arresting portrayal and the largest canvas by the artist. Rix Nicholas painted the work to submit it to the Salon in 1925, to impress by its size as well as through its accomplished technique and presence.

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The subject of this portrait was no lady, but a Parisian professional model and a prostitute, apparently with a reputation for being moody and cantankerous. The dress was not her own but a costume created by the artist specifically for the painting. The artist depicted her standing indoors before an early twentieth-century pastiche of a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry—a tapestry once owned by the artist but incinerated by a bushfire in 1985, which destroyed the artist’s house along with about 60 of her paintings and drawings.

Rix Nicholas was one of a group of prominent early twentieth-century women artists. In 1907 she travelled abroad with her mother and sister to study art. She visited France and became interested in depicting the peasants, already popularised by established artists. Visits to Morocco in 1912 and 1914 liberated her brushwork and especially her use of colour. During the First World War she fled France for England, where her mother and sister died from typhoid. In 1916 she married Australian Major George Matson Nicholas but, within weeks, he was killed in action on the western front. After her return to Australia in 1918 she painted works of Australian rural life. In 1924, Rix Nicholas returned to Europe. In Paris, she hired a studio overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens (which had once belonged to Rosa Bonheur), where she painted Les fleurs dédaignées. She returned to Australia in 1926 and, in 1928, married a young grazier, Edgar Wright. She remained on the property at Knockalong, near Delegate, for the rest of her life, working in a large studio (which still exists) near her (now destroyed) house.

The painting was recently purchased for the national collection from Rix Nicholas’s son, Rix Wright, and is now on view to the public for the first time in many years.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

acquisition Australian Print s and Drawings

Redback Graphix The 8-kin network

Michael Callaghan (designer and printer) Ray Young (designer and printer) Redback Graphix (print workshop) The 8-kin network 1985 screenprint, printed in colour, from six stencils 102 x 152 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Alison Alder, 2008

This poster was designed and printed by Michael Callaghan and Ray Young at Redback Graphix (1979–94) in 1985 to promote the Central Australian Aboriginal radio network 8kin FM. It is typical of the posters that Redback Graphix produced in the 1980s, combining vibrant, incandescent colours with a photographically derived composition to deliver a political message.

Redback Graphix was not an arts collective or a public-access workshop, but a socially engaged design workshop whose iconic images advocated and documented immense social change. Established in 1979 by Michael Callaghan, the group designed and printed posters for community events and services for clients that shared their humanitarian concerns and sociopolitical agenda. Their posters cut to the heart of social inequities and demanded that audiences take note of a range of issues, including HIV/AIDS, unemployment, nuclear disarmament and Aboriginal land rights.

Redback Graphix artists were often involved in the community-based projects that their posters promoted,

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and they sought social change through grassroots communication. This reflected the approach of 8kin FM, which, through its broadcasting and recording of Aboriginal languages and music, fosters pride in Aboriginal culture and identity.

The 8-kin network was gifted to the National Gallery of Australia by Alison Alder, former co-director of Redback Graphix and current Director of Megalo Access Arts, a community-access printmaking studio and gallery in Canberra. It is an important addition to the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive collection of over 200 Redback Graphix posters.

This acquisition also coincides with the publication of Redback Graphix, written by Anna Zagala and published by the National Gallery of Australia.

Macushla Robinson Curatorial Assistant, Australian Prints and Drawings Redback Graphix is available at the nga shop for $39.95 and includes illustrations of all the posters Redback produced from 1979 to 1994. Telephone (02) 6240 6420 or email ecom@nga.gov.au

acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ar t

Harry Tjutjuna Wangka Tjukurpa (Spiderman)

Harry Tjutjuna describes himself as a ‘spiderman’; not to draw a comparison to the wall-crawling, web-slinging Stan Lee comic-book creation of the 1960s, who was translated to the big screen for a new generation of Spidey fans, but because of the ancestral creatures of his Tjukurpa (creations stories). Aboriginal people often associate themselves with one or more of the creatures of their ngura (home place) in this way. Tjutjuna is a senior Pitjantjatjara leader in his community and is also a ngangkari (traditional healer) and, as a ngangkari, he uses spider webs to treat abrasions and skin injuries.1 Tjutjuna’s birthplace is Mount Davies in the northwest corner of South Australia. He moved to Ernabella as a young man and was educated at the Ernabella Mission School. He is now a senior elder and, like many of his contemporaries from remote communities, he came to painting in his later years—at end of 2005. Tjutjuna is associated with Tjala Arts, a newly established art centre closely affiliated with the oldest operating incorporated Indigenous art centre in Australia—Ernabella Arts. His experiences and intimate knowledge of country, its stories and his own personal obligations are evident throughout his work, and he has emerged as a highly innovative artist.

Although Tjutjuna is not known for figurative works, this painting affirms his position as a senior lawman and ngangkari. Tjutjuna’s primary totem is a spider, and the design in the background not only references the intricate pattern spun by spiders but also the inherent role the spider plays in his Tjukurpa. The brilliantly vibrant colours of this painting also resonate with the earthy oranges and reds found in Tjutjuna’s desert birthplace.

The exciting addition of Tjutjuna’s Wangka Tjukurpa (Spiderman) 2007 to the national art collection acknowledges a new phase of works on canvas in Ernabella’s artistic development. Harry Tjutjuna may not be fighting super villains but, as an artist, elder and a healer, he is keeping the law and culture of his people alive.

Harry Tjutjuna Wangka Tjukurpa (Spiderman) 2007 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 154 x 182 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Chantelle Woods Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art note 1 Spellings and meanings of Indigenous Australian words are from information about Harry Tjutjuna, Ernabella Arts, 2007.

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acquisition Australian Decorative Ar t s and Design

Ethel Warburton Vase and bowls

Ethel Warburton Bowl 1920 Vase 1920 Bowl with nasturtium decoration 1920 glazed earthenware 9.5 x 23 x 23 cm 24 x 10 x 10 cm 6.5 x 27 x 27 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

The Australian ceramicist and porcelain painter Ethel Warburton was born in Glen Innes, New South Wales, in 1894 and died in Sydney in 1992. She studied, as Ethel Beavis, at Sydney Technical College from 1912, taking art classes there from 1914. In 1918 she began a three-year pottery course, making a range of Art Nouveau-inspired pieces with incised and multi-glazed decoration on pressmoulded shapes from the college’s stock of moulds. She joined the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales in 1921 and married in 1920, setting up her own studio for china painting in her home in Cremorne, New South Wales. While exhibiting regularly with the Society of Arts and Crafts from the early 1920s, she took further classes at East Sydney Technical College from 1928 to advance her overglaze painting practice.

Her work from the 1920s and 1930s was characterised by reductive, geometric designs painted on imported European and English porcelain blanks and was often based on Australian flora imagery. Some designs, particularly

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those with fine black-lined graphic motifs, were developed in collaboration with her engineer-husband, Raymond Warburton, himself a skilled amateur craft-worker. She was recognised as a leading ceramic artist in New South Wales during her most active years as a china painter from 1930 to 1965.

These pieces, from a recently acquired group of ceramic works from Warburton’s early years of practice reveal the development of her distinctive design and decorating style.

The influence of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury British and American Arts and Crafts ceramics can be seen in the organisation of the design elements of each work. They add to Warburton’s representation in the national collection and allow a fuller picture to be gained of the work of an influential Australian craft artist of the early twentieth century.

Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

acquisition International Decorative Ar t s and Design

Peter Behrens Electric kettle

Peter Behrens was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1868 and died in Germany in 1940. He trained in architecture and design at the Gewerbeschule in Hamburg from 1886 to 1888, and in painting at the Kunstschule in Karlsruhe from 1888 to 1891. In 1893 he joined the avant-garde design group Münchner Sezession, and in 1897 he founded the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Art in Handwork). He produced buildings and designs for objects for the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony in 1901 before moving to Düsseldorf to head the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1903 to 1907 and to establish the influential design association Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Association). From 1907, he worked as the product designer for the giant German industrial company Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft (AEG), designing electric kettles, fans, clocks and complete buildings and interiors, while also working as a designer for other ceramics and glass manufacturers.

This electric kettle was designed and produced during Behrens’s early and most productive period. It is a development of the well-known electric kettle produced

by AEG from 1909 (and later by Gebrüder Bing, from 1920 to 1924). It was part of a range that was produced from standardised parts and available with different handles—a particularly interesting transitional design showing Behrens move from the handcraft aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts and Jugendstil styles of the late nineteenth century to the direct expression of industrialised production processes and materials. This kettle is presented in polished brass with machine-hammered decoration, a cane-covered handle and ebonised wood knob. While retaining an organic form and texture, it also incorporates the modern and practical aspects of electric power with a solid heating element that slides out for replacement. Its serial number indicates that it was manufactured prior to 1914.

This humble appliance shows how the major German industrial designer of the early twentieth century was able to bring modernity to the domestic environment.

Peter Behrens, designer AEG, manufacturer Electric kettle c 1910 brass, cane, ebonised wood, metal element 23 x 12.9 (diam) cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Robert Bell Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

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acquisition A sian Ar t

Lan Xang Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king

Lan Xang kingdom (1353–1707) Laos Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king 15th–16th century bronze 84 x 46.5 x 30 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king is the latest addition to the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive collection of Southeast Asian Buddhist art.

The exquisite bronze is the Gallery’s first acquisition of sculpture from Laos, where it was made some time during the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. Renowned as the pinnacle of Lao Buddhist art, this period saw the production of images that manifest a distinct local identity.

Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king exemplifies the prevailing concepts of ideal beauty with its serene expression, well-proportioned facial features, symbolic elements and high-quality craftsmanship.

During the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, the regions of present-day Laos and north-eastern Thailand formed the territories of Lan Xang, the Land of a Million Elephants. The first ruler of Lan Xang, King Fah Ngum the Great (1316–1393, reigned 1353–72), a Lao prince who had been exiled and raised in Cambodia’s Angkor court, is credited with unification of Lan Xang and the subsequent adoption of Theravada Buddhism. Immediately after his ascension, Fah Ngum invited Khmer Buddhist monks and artists to attend his court. From that time, Cambodian Pra Bang sculptures showing the standing Buddha in the favour-bestowing posture (vara mudra) became a source of inspiration for Lao sculptors. By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, Lao Buddhist art had blossomed into a distinctive style, with diverse iconography influenced by neighbouring Cambodia and Thailand.

Seated in a posture of meditation (dhyana mudra), the historical Budhha Shakyamuni is shown with eyes cast downward and the suggestion of a smile that alludes to his understanding of the truth about life.

His compassionate expression also invites worshippers to have faith in his teachings. This serene countenance is further emphasised by the slender nose and high arch of his brows, both of which reveal the strong influence of Sukhothai images made in Thailand during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.

Other symbols of the Buddha’s great wisdom and spiritual advancement are the ushnisha, a slight

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protuberance at the crown of the head, and his elongated earlobes. The ushnisha is one of the Buddha’s 32 lakshanas, the marks of a great man that appeared as a result of meritorious acts in the Buddha’s previous lives. In this sculpture, it is covered in tight curls of hair and culminates in a flame-shaped radiance encompassed by four open lotus petals. The elongated ears also allude to the Buddha’s former life as an Indian prince, his lobes having been stretched by elaborate and heavy jewellery.

Narratives from the life of the Buddha pervade the art of Southeast Asia, where they serve to reinforce the eternal truths of Buddhism and assist believers in understanding the faith’s more complex concepts. Images of Shakyamuni taking shelter beneath the multiple heads of Muchalinda, the serpent or naga king, are especially prominent.

In the Gallery’s sculpture, Shakyamuni is shown seated in the half-lotus position upon the coils of Muchalinda.

The canopy of Muchalinda’s seven heads rises up behind the Buddha from an eighth head at the rear of the sculpture. A slight variation from the iconography of Thai and Cambodian sculptures depicting the same subject, the eighth head suggests a distinctly Lao treatment of the theme.

While Muchalinda is present in a number of accounts of the Buddha’s life, this sculpture appears to correspond with an episode following Shakyamuni’s attainment of nirvana. Residing in the bliss of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha was threatened by a violent storm. Stirring from his abode at the base of the tree, Muchalinda coiled himself around Shakyamuni for seven days to shield him from the raging elements. Thereafter, Muchalinda was considered the Buddha’s protector and was designated by the Enlightened One as the guardian of mantras and sacred texts.

Buddha sheltered by Muchalinda, the serpent king is now on display in the Southeast Asian gallery. It joins other important Buddhist images from Burma, Cambodia and Thailand.

Niki van den Heuvel Assistant Curator, Asian Art

acquisition A sian Ar t

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi The lonely house on Adachi Moor

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi The lonely house on Adachi Moor 1885 colour woodblock print diptych 72 x 24 cm (overall) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2008

In the folktale The hag of Adachigahara, a cannibalistic old woman preys upon travellers, particularly pregnant women and children, on the Adachi Moor in northern Japan. In this scene, the hag is sharpening the knife she will use to kill her heavily pregnant captive and the unborn child. Created in 1885, The lonely house on Adachi Moor is macabre but, by not showing the actual moment of violence, it is less bloody than some of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s earlier prints, such as those for the 1867 series Twenty-eight famous murders.

Yoshitoshi is considered the greatest ukiyo-e woodblock print artist of the Meiji era (1868–1912).

With periods of poverty and mental illness, the artist’s life may be seen to mirror the tumultuous times in which he lived. Japan was grappling with the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate, rice shortages, sporadic lawlessness and the new presence of Europeans and Americans.

Yoshitoshi was concerned about the erosion of Japanese culture and chose to work with traditional themes, including horror—a popular genre in Japanese theatre, literature and art during the nineteenth century.

While traditional in his choice of subject matter, Yoshitoshi was an innovator in style and technique, demonstrated by his masterful use of perspective and realism, his expressive line work and his bold adoption of the synthetic inks that began to replace vegetable colours in the 1860s. He created prints of great beauty and dramatic power. Yoshitoshi used a variety of formats, including the vertical oban diptych that is so effective in this work.

Although one of Yoshitoshi’s most notorious prints, The lonely house on Adachi Moor is surprisingly rare.

The Japanese authorities suppressed it when it was first released, and a planned second edition was never published. This acquisition complements the National Gallery of Australia’s existing collection of more than 60 Yoshitoshi prints, representing several themes of his diverse oeuvre from observational portraits of women to ghost stories.

Beth Lonergan Assistant Curator, Asian Art

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Travelling exhibitions autumn 2008 Exhibition venues and dates may be subject to change. Please contact the Gallery or venue before your visit. For more information on travelling exhibitions, telephone (02) 6240 6525 or send an email to travex@nga.gov.au.

Ocean to Outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950

Imagining Papua New Guinea: prints from the national collection

The National Gallery of Australia’s 25th Anniversary Travelling Exhibition

Imagining Papua New Guinea is an exhibition of prints from the national collection that celebrates Papua New Guinea’s independence and surveys its rich history of printmaking.

Artists whose works are in the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia. The exhibition is also proudly sponsored

by RM Williams, The Bush Outfitter, and the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund Arthur Streeton The selector’s hut (Whelan on the log) 1890 oil on canvas 76.7 x 51.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1961

Mathias Kauage Independence celebration I 1975 stencil 50.2 x 76.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Ulli and Georgina Beier Collection, purchased 2005

To mark the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia, Director Ron Radford, AM, curated this national touring exhibition of treasured works from the national collection. Every Australian state and territory is represented through the works of iconic artists such as Clarice Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell Drysdale, Hans Heysen, Max Meldrum, Sidney Nolan, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Guérard. nga.gov.au/OceantoOutback

The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions

Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra, ACT 14 February – 17 May 2009

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial

Maringka Baker Kuru Ala 2007 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 153.5 x 200.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2007 © Maringka Baker

Proudly supported by BHP Billiton; the Australia Council for the Arts through its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Board, Visual Art Board and Community Partnerships and Market Development (International) Board; the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program; and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments; the Queensland Government through the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency Culture Warriors, the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, presents the highly original and accomplished work of thirty Indigenous Australian artists from every state and territory.

Featuring outstanding works in a variety of media, Culture Warriors draws inspiration from the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum (Aboriginals) and demonstrates the breadth and calibre of contemporary Indigenous art practice in Australia. nga.gov.au/NIAT07 Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Qld 14 February – 10 May 2009

Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill, New Zealand 21 February – 19 April 2009 Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art History, Masterton, New Zealand, 2 May – 11 July 2009

Karl Millard Lizard grinder 2000 brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws 10.0 x 8.0 x 23.5 cm in Blue case: technology The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift

Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: technology. These suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects that may be borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn For further details and bookings telephone (02) 6240 6650 or email travex@nga.gov.au.

Blue case: technology Royal Institute for the Deaf and Blind, Sydney, NSW, 16 February – 30 April 2009 Koe-Nara, Schools as Community Centre, Cessnock, NSW, 6–20 May 2009 Kurri Kurri and District Pre-school, Kurri Kurri, NSW, 21–29 May 2009 Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, space and design

Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century bronze 10.0 x 6.8 x 4.4 cm in Red case: myths and rituals The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift

St Mary‘s College, Broome, WA, 23 February – 16 March 2009 Broome Senior High School, Broome, WA, 17 March – 7 April 2009 Broome Public Library, Broome, WA, 13–24 April 2009 Derby District High School, Derby, WA, 27 April – 8 May 2009 Kimberley School of the Air, Derby, WA, 8–18 May 2009 St Joseph’s School, Kununurra, WA, 22 May – 5 June 2009 Kununurra District High School, Kununurra, WA, 8–19 June 2009

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

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Emma Joy Smith and Annika Hutchins at the opening of Degas: master of French art, 11 December 2009.

2

Vanessa Carlin and Norman Korte at the opening of Degas.

3

Kaye Pembeton, David Whitney and Peter Wilkins at the opening of Degas.

4 Ruth Waller and Jude Ray at the opening of Degas.

5

Celia McKew, Stephen McKew Mark Stacey, Kathy Stacey, Simon Hawkins and Gabriella Hawkins at the members opening of Degas.

6

Rex Sulway and his daughter Donna Gibbons at the members opening of Degas.

7

The Gallery’s Adriane Boag (left) helps the participants of the National Gallery of Australia and Sony Foundation Australia Summer Art Scholarship in a printmaking workshop.

8

Jane Wild, textile conservator, shows Summer art scholars a Leon Bakst costume that is being conserved for the Gallery’s exhibition Ballets Russes: the art of costume, 4 December 2009 – 26 April 2010.

9

Mike Parr presenting a talk to Summer art scholars during their visit to the Gallery.

10/ Children and their carers have 11 plenty of fun activities to entertain them in the specially designed Degas Family Activity Room.

12

12 Summer art scholars on a guided tour of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gallery.

13 Members Christmas wishes children’s ballet in the Gallery’s James O Fairfax Theatre in December 2008.

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CAMPBELLTOWN ARTS CENTRE 21 MARCH–3 MAY NEWCASTLE REGION ART GALLERY 9 MAY–19 JULY Produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre and Newcastle Region Art Gallery. Curator John Murphy Image: Rick Harris, opening of Peter Powditch’s exhibition at Gallery A Sydney 1966, showing his painting Fabulous.

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