Claude Monet, France, 1840-1926, Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie rose (Water lily pond, pink harmony), 1900, oil on canvas, 101.4 x 112 cm; Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France, ©photo Musée d’Orsay / rmn.
Auguste Renoir, France, 1841–1919, Gabrielle à la rose (Gabrielle with a rose), 1911, oil on canvas, 81.2 x 71.2 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France, ©photo Musée d’Orsay / rmn.
Claude Monet, France, 1840-1926, La pie (The magpie), 1868-1869, oil on canvas, 121.4 x 164.1 cm; Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France, ©photo Musée d’Orsay / rmn.
Auguste Renoir, France, 1841-1919, Claude Monet, 1875, oil on canvas, 109.9 x 86 cm; Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France, ©photo Musée d’Orsay / rmn.
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.
Equal parts monumental and fleeting, the sand sculptures of French artist Théo Mercier chart the histories—beyond our lines of vision—that a landscape reveals and conceals. Mercier’s MIRRORSCAPE is now showing at Mona.
For Chinese painter Gao Ping, the interplay between shadow and light is as much a symbol of our relationship with history as it is a visual technique. The artist’s latest exhibition Between the Shadow and the Soul, curated by Dr Luise Guest, is now showing at Vermilion Art.
Examining the documentary photography of the 1950s to 1980s might seem like an exercise in looking back, but as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, Imagining a Real Australia calls loudly to the present. It’s full of arresting works on subjects that still speak to us today, from land rights to war and feminism.
First held in 1990 at Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs, Desert Mob is the oldest of Australia’s thriving annual program of Aboriginal art fairs. With its 30th anniversary coming up in September 2020, Kate Hennessy looks back on Desert Mob 2019.
In her audacious new exhibition, the Filipina Australian artist Marikit Santiago skewers the myths of the western canon and give pleasure and power—as experienced by women of colour—an arresting new form.
Existing in the space between ritual, performance and ceremony, the body-centred work of Latai Taumoepeau rewrites the stories that shape our perception of Oceania—while using ancient traditions to tackle our most urgent modern concerns. Taumoepeau is now participating in Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania at Artspace.
