Impressionism is beloved by Australian audiences, there’s no doubt about it. While firmly grounded in realism and representational art, it is also in many instances, an abandonment of form and line to chase instead, the momentary and the luminous.
According to Tony Magnusson, coordinating curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia, “there are few countries and cultures as transfixed by the experience of light as our own.” We have a fascination with the outdoors, he says, which is shared by Impressionists who championed breezy plein air painting. Lastly, the movement is so esteemed here because we have our own story of local Impressionism, otherwise known as the Heidelberg School.
Colours of Impressionism is an overview of the movement through an account of colour. Coming from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, AGSA will host 67 oil paintings by 25 artists, made over some 60 years.
Magnusson explains that these artists introduced peinture claire, “the expression of light tones through a predominantly pale palette”, this approach he continues, “revolutionised painting and underpins the development of Impressionism.”
Out of the usual run of things, the gallery will install the works in the Elder Wing of the gallery which was commenced in 1889 – the exact year the metro station which now houses the Musée d’Orsay in Paris was built.
“We are hoping that the experience of the paintings in the Elder Wing will in many ways collapse time and space with the Elder Wing recalling the light-filled interior of the former metro station,” says Magnusson.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
Josina Pumani’s electric ceramic work Maralinga—recently recognised at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards— deftly excavates a long-hidden past.
Ahead of his major retrospective at Jan Murphy Gallery, Ben Quilty spoke with fellow painter Georgia Spain about wrestling with mythology, the contradictions of joy and suffering, and a belief in art as an antidote to an increasingly volatile world.
