The historic difference between modern and contemporary art might be more than half a century, but the 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’s 21st Century Modern celebrates a body of recent work that has confidently closed the gap.
“Modernism is being warmed up, given new life,” says Melbourne-based independent curator Linda Michael, who selected more than 80 works from the past two years by artists across three generations. Not just paintings, but sculptures, prints, photographs, video installations, lightworks, textiles and ceramics have been chosen for the qualities of modernism they either embody, remember or in some way represent.
It is as though, says Michael, contemporary artists who, in the past, shied away from acknowledging the work of modern artists, even those of the stature of Pablo Picasso, have somehow reconnected with it and are willing to move forwards. Picasso, disliked as a patriarchal figure with a poor record with women, has been rehabilitated.
At last, a dialogue with the greats, The Age.
Festival visitors to the Art Gallery of South Australia who see the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art may get the misleading impression that contemporary art always receives this much attention. In fact, this is the only contemporary art exhibition scheduled for 2006, a year marking the art gallery’s 125th anniversary.
With a collection of 35,000 artworks covering diverse collections, and space to display only about 1500 of these, the art gallery faces an impossible task in meeting the expectations of contemporary art lovers. Art of today is always on permanent display in a small, continuously changing exhibition drawn from the art gallery’s collection, but this is not enough, according to prominent artist Annette Bezor. She feels it gives art lovers like her no more than a teasing taste to whet the appetite.
“I feel really strongly about it,” she says. “I was in the art gallery the other day and went to have a look at the contemporary art on display. It was so unsatisfying, leaving me craving more. We are so desperately in need of somewhere that fills the gap for more exhibitions of contemporary art. I do believe there is an audience for it. People are buying it. Someone needs to bite the bullet and do something. Not everyone can go to Melbourne or Sydney to see the latest exhibitions there.”
Bright young things in need of a home, The Advertiser
Simon Burke is reclining in a pile of cushions in the Persian Garden. It’s in the middle of the day and the Adelaide Festival’s nightclub venue, strewn with masses of Persian carpets and cushions and cute little ottomans, is empty. But the palm trees are shady, the Torrens is rippling to a gently cooling breeze, and the drunken, tortured genius of British artist Francis Bacon seems a long way away.
Simon Burke, best known as a lively musical theatre star, is deeply ensconced in one of the 20th century’s most complex artistic characters, playing the role of Francis Bacon. “I knew absolutely nothing about him, and I don’t think I had even seen any paintings of his,” confesses Burke.
A Taste Of Bacon, The Advertiser.
Gunmen have taken advantage of Brazil’s carnival commotion to steal paintings by Picasso, Dali, Matisse and Monet from a Rio de Janeiro museum. The thieves reportedly brandished a hand grenade to threaten security guards at the Chacara do Ceu museum. They shut down the security cameras and then slipped away in a crowd of Samba revellers, said museum officials. Police numbers have been increased in Rio as the five-day celebration officially got under way on Friday. Pablo Picasso’s The Dance, Salvador Dali’s The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse’s Luxembourg Gardens and Claude Monet’s Marine were stolen.
Monet stolen under carnival cover BBC News
Iowa artist Grant Wood is famous for the painting “American Gothic,” depicting a dour pitchfork-wielding farmer and his prim female companion in front of a Carpenter Gothic-style house. The homespun scene has spawned numerous spoofs, sendups and entire books about its meaning. Like the Mona Lisa, it is an artwork that has become so familiar that it is banal. A new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery offers the opportunity to reappraise Wood’s 1930 masterpiece, including such small, overlooked touches as a loose strand of hair and the potted snake plant on the porch
Painting Out The Land, The Washington Times.
During his military service, Andrei Molodkin spent two frozen years guarding convoys of missiles as they rumbled across northern Russia. Looking for a way to keep the convoy trains warm, Molodkin and his fellow soldiers appropriated a large tank of oil from the roadside. Though it made them filthy, the oil was a blessing for its heat and its use as a bartering tool. But he later had nightmares about the experience. “I started to understand that in our world we don’t have any ideology, we have only economics,” he says. “Oil is a global currency. Countries discuss with each other through the transportation of the resource. The tube is our only language.”
Brainwaves: Crude Art The Guardian
Every year, the Archibald Prize becomes a little less about art and a little more about self-promotion and celebrity. Kings Cross artist Tony Johansen – who is embroiled in a Supreme Court battle over Craig Ruddy‘s 2004 Archibald win – was at the Art Gallery of NSW yesterday with his entry, a triple portrait of ebullient pop singer Leo Sayer. Johansen caused an upset with his claim that Ruddy’s portrait of David Gulpilil was a drawing rather than a painting, and therefore ineligible for the prize. He has been a regular entrant since 1996 and described Sayer as a co-operative, if lively, sitter.
The Archibald Winner is… Celebrity Culture,The Australian
The company launched by Charles Saatchi to run his art gallery on London’s South Bank was wound up in the high court yesterday after failing to pay debts of about £1.8m. Despite objections from legal representatives of Danovo, the company of which Mr Saatchi was a controlling stakeholder, chief registrar Stephen Baister brought the enterprise to an ignominious end after being told it had failed to pay debts owed to the owners of County Hall and that relations between the two were so “appalling” that any further negotiations would fail. The gallery, home to Mr Saatchi’s private collection of art, had a glittering celebrity launch in April 2003. Mr. Saatchi, who was earlier accused of “distortion, intimidation and evasion” in his dealings with the landlords, has already announced plans for a new gallery to display his collection, said to be the most important of British contemporary art in the world. It will open in Chelsea, west London, in 2007. A liquidator will now examine the assets of Danova.
Saatchi firm wound up with debts of £1.8m, The Guardian
How are we to judge an author when he fictionalises his own life, calls it a memoir and sells several truckloads, or more likely warehouses, worth of books on the strength of the resulting publicity?
James Frey‘s A Million Tiny Pieces, about his descent through alcoholism and drugs into prison, is the latest of several “memoirs” by both male and female authors to provoke hard questions about truth to one’s own self and respect for the reading public’s right to know what category of letters they are buying – autobiography or fiction?
And how do these questions translate into another form, say the visual arts? What levels of veracity should we expect from portraiture, self-portraiture and deliberately constructed narrative, as in the works of Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, or Patrick Pound?
Beside myself, The Age.
