Auction target points to a bargain Boyd - Heide Museum of ... · Auction target points to a bargain Boyd MICHAELA BOLAND IN a sign of just how far the art market has fallen, an Arthur

Auction target points to a bargain BoydMICHAELA BOLAND

IN a sign of just how far the artmarket has fallen, an Arthur Boydpainting offered for sale in 2008for $1.25 million will be auctionednext Monday with expectationsof selling for half that amount.

Boyd’s The Prodigal Son waspainted in 1946-47, a couple ofyears before the artist renderedanother, more famous ProdigalSon scene, on the wall of a houseowned by his uncle, novelist Mar-tin Boyd.

That Prodigal Son was re-cently displayed for the first timeas the centrepiece of a Boyd retro-spective at the National Gallery of

Australia in Canberra. The Boydsand the Murrumbeena Artists ex-hibition is currently being stagedat the National Gallery of Victor-ia. And the Heide Museum ofModern Art in Bulleen, Mel-bourne, will stage a Boyd exhibi-tion from November 29.

All of which means it should bea great time to offer for sale amajor work by the painter, whodied in 1999.

But Mark Fraser, the Austra-lian chairman of auctioneers Bon-hams, says the sale of The ProdigalSon is a matter of coincidencerather than opportunism.

The Prodigal Son for sale, withan estimate of $600,000 to$800,000, is the property of artist

Ceci Cairns and her brother andsister, the siblings havinginherited it from their parents in2004. They offered it for salethrough dealer Bridget McDon-nell in 2008 but could not find abuyer in a rapidly cooling market.

“It’s a very unusual painting; Ithink that’s why it hasn’t sold,”Ceci Cairns said. “Arthur used topaint in our orchard and our fam-ilies were often at Murrumbeenabeach together. It’s a beloved partof our family but we’ve come toterms with this.”

Forty-two works will beoffered at the Bonhams auction inSydney.

ARTS P 14-15

DAVID GERAGHTY

Ceci Cairns with Arthur Boyd’s The Prodigal Son

Copyright Agency licensed copy(www.copyright.com.au)

The Australian, Australia18 Nov 2014, by Michaela Boland

General News, page 3 - 143.00 cm²National - circulation 116,854 (MTWTF)

ID 341603360 BRIEF HEIDE INDEX 1 PAGE 1 of 1

sunsatfri

sunsatfrifri 2811am Media arts organisationExperimenta joins RMIT Galleryto present Experimenta

Recharge: Sixth International Biennialof Media Art. Features photography,installation, robotics, 3D printing andmore. Today, take a curator’s tour andmeet the contributing artists(12.30pm), attend video artist MatthewPerkins’ book launch (5pm) and checkout a film screening (6pm).RMIT GALLERY, 344 SWANSTON STREET, CITY, FREE,

9925 1717, EXPERIMENTA.ORG

7pm Fresh from aUS tour, DickDiver perform for a hometownaudience. The jangle-pop

quartet have beenworking on theirthird album, recordedwith producerMikey Young. In support will be HolyBalm, The Native Cats and Hierophants.THEHI-FI, 125 SWANSTON STREET, CITY, $21.50, 1300

843 443, THEHIFI.COM.AU

8pm Rock veteran Kim Salmon,of The Scientists and Beasts ofBourbon, is the focus of tonight’s

show at Yah Yahs. Salmon is in his 37thyear of performingmusic, beginningwith some early punk bands in Perthand, notably, with influential band TheScientists in the late ’70s. Support fromDrunkMums and Dumb Punts.YAHYAHS, 99 SMITH STREET, FITZROY, $15, 9419 4920,

YAHYAHS.COM.AU

7.30pm Talk show host andscribe Chelsea Handler recentlypublished her new book,

Uganda Be KiddingMe. A collection oftravel essays, complete with tongue-in-cheek tips and suggestions, the bookalso inspired her latest live show, whichshe performs inMelbourne tonight.PALAIS THEATRE, LOWER ESPLANADE, ST KILDA, $80,

136 100, TICKETMASTER.COM.AU

11.15pm You’ll need nerves ofsteel to go the distance at theFriday the 13thmarathon, part

of Cinema Nova’s Monster Festprogram. Take a trip to Camp CrystalLake and watch Jason Voorhees slashhis way through the first eight films,from Friday the 13th to Friday the 13thPart VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.CINEMA NOVA, 380 LYGON STREET, CARLTON,

$30-$35, 9347 5331, CINEMANOVA.COM.AU

8pm Jumpers for Goalpostscontinues at Red Stitch ActorsTheatre. It’s off to the amateur

leagues with Barely Athletic, a team inthe gay, lesbian and transsexualfootball league in northern Englandcity Hull. Directed by TomHealey.Runs until December 20.RED STITCH ACTORS THEATRE, REAR 2 CHAPEL

STREET, ST KILDA, $20-$39, 9533 8083,

REDSTITCH.NET


Age, Melbourne28 Nov 2014

The Shortlist, page 6 - 1,967.00 cm²Capital City Daily - circulation 130,767 (MTWTF--)


sunsatsatfri 29

Various Until December 7, the2014 Japanese Film Festival willscreen films at several

Melbourne cinemas. Some showingthis weekend include The Chart ofLove, a romance and sequel to the2011 film, In His Chart; the familyfriendly The Round Table; and littleforest – summer/autumn, a storyabout a girl who lives off the land.VARIOUS VENUES, $15-$18,

JAPANESEFILMFESTIVAL.NET

10am The Australian PrintWorkshop cuts the ribbonon its major fundraising

exhibition this weekend.Impressions 2014 celebrates theart of printmaking with limited-edition prints frommore than 150prominent and emergingAustralian artists, including RegMombassa, Rick Amor and VickiCouzens. The works reflect theprocesses available at theworkshop, including etching,lithography and relief printing.AUSTRALIAN PRINT WORKSHOP, 210

GERTRUDE STREET, FITZROY, FREE, 9419 5466,

AUSTRALIANPRINTWORKSHOP.COM

2pm/7.30pm With narrationby Billy Connolly and dancingby an acclaimed Brazilian dance

troupe, Brazouka shares the story offreestyle lambazouk dancer Braz DosSantos. DosSantos began hislife in a smallvillage, andeventually madehis way to theinternationalstage. Theperformance isled by DosSantos himselfand concludesits Melbournerun on Saturday.THE PALMS AT CROWN, 8 WHITEMAN STREET,

SOUTHBANK, $51-$102, 1300 795 012,

TICKETEK.COM.AU





sunsunsatfri 30 BY SEANWILSON AND [email protected]

7pm Them Swoops have savedtheir only headline show of2014 for the end of the year,

having spent much of the year on theirfollow-up to last year’sGlimmers EP.Supporting will be TheWorriers,Singing For Humans and Pretty City.THE TOFF IN TOWN, 252 SWANSTON STREET, CITY,

$7-$10, 9639 8770, THETOFFINTOWN.COM

7pm Fractures plays at theAbbotsford Convent as part ofthe Hallowed Ground tour,

following shows in the US and Europe.The solo project of Melbournemusician Mark Zito, Fractures releaseda debut self-titled EP earlier this year.SHADOW ELECTRIC BANDROOM, INDUSTRIAL

SCHOOL, ABBOTSFORD CONVENT, 1 ST HELIERS

STREET, ABBOTSFORD, $15, 9415 3600,

ABBOTSFORDCONVENT.COM.AU

8pm Illy plays a hometownshow in themiddle of his OneFor The Cities national tour. The

Frankston rapper is supported by TkayMaidza and special guests.FORUM THEATRE, CORNER FLINDERS AND RUSSELL

STREETS, CITY, $48, 136 100, TICKETMASTER.COM.AU

8pm Drone and electronicaoutfit Black Cab released theirfourth studio album,Games Of

The XXI Olympiad, this month. They’remarking the accomplishment with alaunch show. Support acts includeLowtide and Queens Head.HOWLER, 7-11 DAWSON STREET, BRUNSWICK, $15,

9077 5572, H-W-L-R.COM

10am The National Gallery ofVictoria’s olfactory artinstallation,Hyper-Natural,

curated byNew York Times perfumecritic and author Chandler Burr, closesthis weekend. In the gallery’s sculpturegarden, the exhibition explores howdesigners select synthetic fragranceswhen creating scent art.NGV INTERNATIONAL, 180 ST KILDA ROAD, CITY,

FREE, 8620 2222, NGV.VIC.GOV.AU

10am Works by painter ArthurBoyd are being exhibited at theformer home of John and

Sunday Reed, opening this weekend.*Brides* is an exhibit based on Boyd’sLove, Marriage and Death of a HalfCaste series, painted between 1957and 1960. Open until March 9 2015.HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, 7 TEMPLESTOWE

ROAD, BULLEEN, FREE-$16, 9850 1500, HEIDE.COM.AU

Noon The Bridge HotelRichmond presents its BridgeCaribbean Laneway Festival.

The afternoon street market is part ofGood FoodMonth. Enjoy the likes ofjerk chicken, tostones and pinacoladas from the pop-up stalls, whilelistening to live entertainment.THE BRIDGE HOTEL, 642 BRIDGE ROAD, RICHMOND,

FREE ENTRY, 9429 5734,

MELBOURNE.GOODFOODMONTH.COM

2pm You Beauty play an “arvo”show to celebrate the release oftheir album Jersey Flegg on

vinyl. The quartet mine Australianculture for songmaterial. Supportedby Tim Richmond, Monnone AloneandMagic Steven.THE EVELYN HOTEL, 351 BRUNSWICK STREET,

FITZROY, $12, 9419 5500, EVELYNHOTEL.COM.AU

5pm Calpurnia Descending,the story of a faded screengoddess, bids audiences adieu

on Sunday with a final performance.Created by Ash Flanders and DeclanGreene and presented by SistersGrimm, the play stars Paul Capsis asBeverly Dumont, a reclusive has-beenoffered a final shot at stardom.THE COOPERS MALTHOUSE, 113 STURT STREET,

SOUTHBANK, $30-$60, 9685 5111,

MALTHOUSETHEATRE.COM.AU

8pm Terry Mann’s bedroomproject Coach Bombay hasgrown into a band of five. The

group’s most recent single isGirls, asummery, bubble-gum-bright electro-pop song with vocals by Mann andfellow bandmates Luci Hodgson,

Cynthia Sear,AndrewCongues and EdSharp-Paul.Coach Bombayperform atBoney withspecial guestsLanks.BONEY, 68 LITTLE

COLLINS STREET, CITY,

$8-$12, 9663 8268,

BONEY.NET.AU

4pm/8.30pm Portugal TheMan continue their Australiantour with free shows in

Brunswick and Frankston today.Originating from Alaska, the bandmoved down to the warmer climes ofPortland, Oregon, to play their brandof indie psychedelic music, beforemoving on to the big stages ofCoachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.4PM THE PENNY BLACK, 420 SYDNEY RD,

BRUNSWICK; 8.30PM THE DECK, 2-4 DAVEY STREET,

FRANKSTON, FREE, CORONAEXTRA.COM.AU





WHAT'S ON \

\ EASTERNDANCE

ACADEMY OF DANCE VICTORIAThis Doncaster-based danceacademy will hold its two annualconcerts in December. Studentsfrom the school's junior and seniorclasses will interpret classic storybooks and tales, including PeterRabbit, The Secret Garden and AliceIn Wonderland. The budding youngdancers are trained in a range ofgenres, such as ballet, jazz, hip hopand song and dance, making for avaried and exciting show.• December 7 (4.30pm) andDecember 12 (6.30pm). WhitehorseCentre, 397 Whitehorse Road,Nunawading. Cost: $29.50;concession $25. Bookings: tickets®whitehorse.vic.gov.au or 9262 6555

THEATRE

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEYSet in the cut-throat business world,Jerry Sterner's award-winning playfeatures key players on opposingsides battling it out during acorporate takeover. Directed bytheatre, film and television veteranJohn Gauci, the production, fromTangled Web Theatre Productions,features actors Greg Pandelidis,

Michael Bate, Emma Officer, EdwardKennett and Gillian Hoi ley.• Until December 14. December10-13, 8pm; matinees December13 and 14, 2pm. DoncasterPlayhouse, 679 Doncaster Road,Doncaster. Cost: $25; concession$22; group of 15, $18 each.www.tangledweb.com.au Bookings:[email protected], phone9748 1468 or 0404 942 143 orwww.trybooking.com/FPXB

MARKET

THE FINE DESIGN MARKETExplore independent design, art,

boutique craft, fine food and musicat the Fine Design Market. The aimof the market is to support emergingand established designers and artistsby providing a platform to showcasetheir quality works and connect themwith their audience.• December 7, 10am-3pm.Manningham City Square,687 Doncaster Road, Doncaster.Entry: gold coin donation.www.thefinedesignmarket.com.au

ROUND SHE GOESThis pre-loved fashion market allowswomen to sell their unwanted qualityitems, with the option to donate any

unsold items to the Red Cross. Therewill be Christmas party frocks andone-of-a-kind gifts to browse. Themarket has more than 60 stalls, anindoor cafe and a food truck will stopby at lunchtime.• December 7, 10am-3pm.Box Hill Town Hall, 1022Whitehorse Road, Box Hill. Cost:$2 entry. Inquiries and to book astall: [email protected]

MUSIC

THE AMICI STRING QUARTETLocal musicians Anne and ZsoltMartonyi, and Christine and KeithJohnson - the Amici Quartet - willplay an assortment of light classicaland popular music at this event.They have performed with theMelbourne Symphony Orchestraand Queensland Symphony andTheatre Orchestras, and have touredextensively overseas. RSVP requiredby December 6.

• December 7, 2pm. All Saints'Anglican Church, corner ofWhitehorse Road and EdwardStreet, Mitcham. Cost: $21(includes afternoon tea). Inquiries:9878 3463 or allsaintsmitcham®bigpond.com

FIT TO MUSICThis exercise and dance programforms part of this year's International

Day of People with a Disabilitycelebrations. It is a fun fitness classusing music and some equipment toimprove self-esteem, strength andco-ordination, and is open to peopleof all abilities and fitness levels.Carers and support workers arewelcome.

• December 10, 1-1.45pm.Pines Learning Centre, 1/520Blackburn Road, Doncaster East.Cost: free. Bookings: 9842 6726.www.pineslearning.com.au

C O M M U N I T Y

NUNAWADING MEN'S PROBUS CLUBThe group helps retired andsemi-retired men make the transitionfrom their working life by keepingthem active and broadening theiroutlook. The group meets on thesecond Tuesday of each month, withspeakers at each meeting.• December 9, 10am. WillisRoom, Whitehorse Councilchambers, 379 Whitehorse Road,Nunawading. Inquiries: 9877 3452.www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au

CLASS

COLOUR MAGICStyle guru Fiona Etty-Leal will useher image skills to help participantsboost their image by wearingand matching correct colours. Apersonalised swatch with 50 shadescan be bought for an additional $77at the workshop. Participants areasked to wear little or no makeup onthe day.• December 6, 9am-noon.Cost: $60. Mitcham CommunityHouse, 19 Brunswick Road,Mitcham. Inquiries: 9873 4587or [email protected] \

COMPILED BY BRENDAN BALE


The Weekly Review - Eastern, Melbourne03 Dec 2014

General News, page 24 - 578.00 cm²Suburban - circulation 89,988 (--W----)


EXHIBITION \ BRIDESArthur Boyd's iconic Brides series of paintings was created between 1957 and 1960

after the artist travelled to central Australia. It represents a defining achievement in hiscareer and in Australian art of the 20th century, and offers a critique of Australia's racialdivide through the use of an invented love story.

Until March 9, Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm. Heide Museum of Modern Art,7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen. Cost: adult $16; seniors $14; concession $12;

children under 12 and members free. Inquiries: 9850 1500. www.heide.com.au

WANT YOUR EVENT LISTED?To be considered for a listing email \ [email protected]

EXHIBITIOArthu

after thcareer anddivide throug

Until Marc7 Templestow

childre


The Weekly Review - Eastern, Melbourne03 Dec 2014



At Heide MuseumA fantastic new exhibition has opened at

the Heide Museum olIVfodern Art in BulleenArthur Boyd's Brides is on show at the

museum until March 9,Also known asLove, Marriage and Death

of a Half Caste, the series was painted be-tween-1957 and 1960 after the famed artisttravelled to central Australia.

The works represents a defining achieve-ment in both the artist's career and in Austra-lian art of the twentieth century.

A milestone in the advancement of localmodernism and its humanist themes, the se-ries offers a critique of Australia's racial di-vide in the form of an invented love story.

The series earned Arthur critical acclaimbut was gradually dispersed across public andprivate collections around the world.

In recent years many of the works havereturned to Australia, providing an opportu-nity to bring much of the collection together.

Hdde'sexhibitionpresentanumberofflieBrides, along with related drawings and ce-ramicpieces,

Heide is open Tuesday toSunday, 10am-5pm.

• • Fiona Byrne is a former Journal-ist and is the Public Relations Man-ager at Sofitel Melbourne On [email protected]


Melbourne Observer, Melbourne10 Dec 2014



IT’S SHOW TIMEIt’s the time of the year when galleries pull out their big guns, the blockbusters, writes Christopher Allen

THIS is the season when the galleriesput up their summer blockbusters asfishermen put out their nets, thenleave and wait to see what kind ofhaul they pull in. The existences of

art world professionals and of the general publicare thus counter-cyclical, the former gratefullyescaping the grind of exhibitions and gallery lifejust as the holiday crowds look for something todo with the family on a rainy day.

In Sydney, one of the most highly publicisedattractions is the Art Gallery of NSW’s Pop toPopism blockbuster, which brings together im-portant works by figures such as Roy Lichten-stein and Andy Warhol as well as many thingsof lesser but complementary interest, and alarge sample of the art made in Australia moreor less under the impulse of pop.

If you feel the need for a more extreme ex-perience, the Australian Museum’s Aztecs is anintroduction to a society dominated by warfareand the capturing of prisoners to be offered upas sacrifices to appease bloodthirsty and seem-ing insatiable gods; the exhibition offers a strik-ing picture of one of the most unappealingcivilisations that has existed on earth. Recom-mended and thought-provoking holiday read-ing afterwards is Ruth Benedict’s classicPatterns of Culture (1934) in which she showshow radically a culture can affect the tempera-ment of its individual members.

After this, any metaphysical anxieties aboutthe nature of identity raised by the MCA’sChuck Close exhibition will seem, quite liter-ally, First World problems. This is, however, anabsorbing show in which we see how the artistdevelops from his photorealist beginnings,which cast doubt on the veracity of the photo-graphic image, into a deeper inquiry that is allthe more penetrating for being grounded in themeticulous practice of such printmaking tech-niques as etching and mezzotint.

Another Sydney exhibition that promises to

be of interest is Sydney Buddha by Zhang Huanat Carriageworks. Two enormous figures ofBuddha will face each other, one the metalmould in which the other was shaped; the latter,compounded of incense ash gathered from tem-ples and shrines and thus representing thephysical but ephemeral remains of myriadprayers, will gradually collapse in the course ofthe exhibition, demonstrating the transitory na-ture of all form according to Buddhist doctrine.

Finally, in a completely different vein, ManlyArt Gallery has an exhibition of 19th-century orpossibly earlier copies from old master paint-ings — the sort of works that would have beencommon in the grander homes of the colonialperiod and thus have a place in the history of artin Australia, yet that largely have been con-signed to the reserves of museums for the pastcentury or so.

In Canberra, the principal summer exhibi-tion is a retrospective of James Turrell, anAmerican artist who is concerned with light andspace and structures that frame and shape ourperception of light, most often chambers opento the sky, such as Within Without, a permanentstructure commissioned by the National Gal-lery of Australia and built in 2010. Impressionsof Paris, meanwhile, is a survey of prints andworks on paper by Honore Daumier, EdgarDegas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. All areof great interest, but as we have seen many ofthe works by the last two quite recently, it is theextensive collection of prints by Daumier that isparticularly fascinating, casting a sometimesbitterly satirical and sometimes gently humor-ous but always acutely perceptive eye over therealities of everyday life in the emerging mod-ern metropolis of Paris.

At the National Portrait Gallery, there is asmall but rewarding exhibition of portraits byRick Amor, spanning a range of media from

drawing and prints to painting, but always invit-ing us to follow the process of artistic thought inthe specificity of each medium. At the NationalMuseum, Spirited celebrates the place of thehorse in Australian society since the late 18thcentury, from the period when it was the princi-pal source of energy in rural work or city trans-port, to its role in war and finally, after the lossof most of its practical functions, to its contin-ued place in recreation and sport.

In the other capitals, there has been an extra-ordinary capitulation to fashion shows: this


Weekend Australian, Australia13 Dec 2014, by Christopher Allen

Review, page 16 - 1,597.00 cm²National - circulation 238,138 (S)


must be the first time the state galleries of Mel-bourne, Adelaide and Brisbane have all placedtheir biggest summer bets on frocks instead ofart. What is interesting is that these are all gal-leries that have made much of their commit-ment to contemporary art, even though this hasbeen largely because the contemporary itself isfashionable and appeals to corporate money.The reality has been a tendency to dilute and

degrade the concept of art by including designin various forms, thus opening the door to as-similation with a commercial culture whose val-ues are antithetical to those of art.

As for the frocks, they are essentially a cyni-cal way of tapping into an enormous potentialaudience of women who would not otherwisecome through the gallery doors, and who carefor art, as the old French saying goes, as a fishdoes for an apple. It is disingenuous to imaginethat after admiring the dresses they will stay fora careful look at the engravings or immersethemselves in Bill Viola’s Ocean Without aShore. But these worthless attendance figureswill be used to impress the political masters.

Fortunately there are several other things onat the National Gallery of Victoria, includingthe whimsical and oddly engaging David Shrig-ley and a survey of the imagery of the Mambogroup; Sacred and Profane is an exhibition ofRenaissance prints, and there is Takahiro Iwas-

aki’s elaborate reconstruction of the shrine ofItsukushima floating on a still expanse of water.Meanwhile, the Australian Centre for Contem-porary Art, not far from the NGV, has Men-agerie, devoted to the role animals play in theimaginative lives of humans, and the Ian PotterMuseum at the University of Melbourne has anexhibition of the portraits of Richard Avedon.

On the outskirts of Melbourne, Heide has asurvey of Arthur Boyd’s Bride series, perhapsthe artist’s single most important body of work.Farther out again, Ballarat Art Gallery has twoshows: an impressive selection of prints fromthe Baillieu Library of the University of Mel-bourne, Radicals, Slayers and Villains, and thebeautiful exhibition of Greek and Russian icons,mostly from a private collection, that was re-viewed in this column last week. And fartherafield still, Mildura has an exhibition that will bediscussed next week, recalling the MilduraSculpture exhibitions of the 1960s and 70s.

Still, even the capitals that have sold theirsouls to the fickle demons of fashion have exhi-bitions that deserve notice. In Adelaide, ArtGallery of South Australia has a survey of thework of Nicholas Folland as well an exhibitionof contemporary calligraphy from Japan, Chinaand Mongolia, and Rembrandt and the EtchingRevival, focused on an important new acqui-sition by the Dutch master. In Brisbane, thereare two exhibitions of modern and contempor-ary Japanese art, one devoted to the woodblockprint since 1950, the other to art after 1989.

In Hobart, the Museum of Old and New Artis showing River of Fundament by American art-ist and filmmaker Matthew Barney, best knownfor the Cremaster Cycle film series (1994-2002);the present work is a loose, and operatic, in-terpretation of Norman Mailer’s novel set inPharaonic Egypt, Ancient Evenings (1983).

In Perth, the Art Gallery of Western Austra-lia will show Treasures of the Jewish Ghetto ofVenice, precious ceremonial objects that wereburied in 1943 by religious leaders who subse-quently died in German concentration camps;the treasure was recovered during recent resto-ration work in the ghetto and is on tour beforereturning to permanent display in the MuseoEbraico in Venice.

Those travelling overseas will be spoiled forchoice. In London, the most spectacular exhibi-tion will undoubtedly be Rembrandt: The LateWork at the National Gallery. The British Mu-seum has Germany: Memories of a Nation aswell as a new exhibition devoted to the historyof trade in the Indian Ocean — a route betweenEast and West as important, since antiquity, asthe Silk Road far to the north. The Tate Gallery,coincidentally, has Late Turner: Painting SetFree, while the Tate Liverpool has TransmittingAndy Warhol for anyone whose appetite hasbeen whetted by the Sydney exhibition, ofwhich Warhol was the star.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has Con-stable: The Making of a Master. It also has justreopened the Italian Cast Room, which includesamong other remarkable things a full-scale castof Michelangelo’s David, newly restored. TheRoyal Academy is showing the first scholarlysurvey of Giovanni Battista Moroni, a very able16th-century portrait painter who used to bedismissed as superficial but is here reappraised.





Towards the end of January the RA will open animportant new exhibition: Rubens and His Leg-acy: Van Dyck to Cezanne.

In Paris, there are exhibitions devoted to an-cient Rhodes and medieval Morocco at theLouvre, to Hokusai and Niki de Saint-Phalle at

the Grand Palais, and to Marcel Duchamp andhis relation to painting at the Centre Pompidou.

In Rome, the Scuderie del Quirinalehas Flemish master Hans Memling, and PalazzoBarberini is presenting an exhibition of baroquepainting including works from the collection ofart historian Denis Mahon — a rare exampleof an expert wealthy enough to own works bymasters on whom he was the pre-eminentauthority.

In New York, the Metropolitan Museum hasan exhibition devoted to Cezanne’s portraits ofhis wife, a survey of the strange and often eroticGerman mannerist Bartholomaeus Spranger,and Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the ClassicalAge, dealing with the Mediterranean reach ofnear eastern and Phoenician civilisation beforethe rise and colonial expansion of Greece. Atthe Museum of Modern Art, there is an exhibi-tion of the paper cut-outs that occupied the lastyears of Henri Matisse.

In Washington, the National Gallery of Arthas an exhibition commemorating the 400thanniversary of the death of El Greco, and fromthe beginning of February Piero di Cosimo: ThePoetry of Painting, on the complex figure whoseiconography is still debated. At the Freer andSackler galleries, Nasta’liq shows how classicPersian calligraphy evolved from ornamentallettering into something more like a meditativepractice in which word and meaning becomeone with the art of penmanship

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Clockwise from main picture, Pan and Syrinx (1617) by Rubens; Untitled (1983) by Tetsuro Sawada; Self-Portrait No 9 (1986) by Andy Warhol; Boat of Ra (2014) by Matthew Barney





Wedding Group (1958) by Arthur Boyd, from his Bride series, on display at the Heide Museum of Modern Art until March 9









SydneyPop to Popism, AGNSW to March 1 Aztecs, Australian Museum to February 1 Chuck Close, MCA to March 15Sydney Buddha, Carriageworks to March 15 European copies, Manly to February 1

CanberraJames Turrell, NGA to June 8Impressions of Paris, NGA to March 10Spirited, National Museum to March 9Rick Amor, NPG to March 1

MelbourneSacred & Profane, NGV to March 15David Shrigley, NGV to March 1Takahiro Iwasaki, NGV to April 6EIKON: Icons of the Orthodox Christian World, Ballarat Art Gallery to January 26Arthur Boyd, Brides, Heide to March 9Menagerie, ACCA to March 1Richard Avedon People, Ian Potter Museum to March 15

AdelaideThe Extreme Climate of Nicholas Folland, AGSA to January 26Brush and Ink: Contemporary Asian Calligraphy, AGSA Rembrandt and the Etching Revival, AGSA

BrisbaneHanga: Modern Japanese prints, QAG to April 26

“We Can Make Another future”: Japanese Art after 1989, GOMA to September 20

HobartMatthew Barney’s River of Fundament, MONA to April 13

PerthTreasures of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, AGWA to March 16

London Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery to January 18; Peder Balke to April 12Germany: Memories of a Nation, British Museum to January 25; Connecting Continents: Indian Ocean Trade and Exchange to May 31Late Turner: Painting Set Free, Tate London to January 25; Transmitting Andy Warhol at Tate

Liverpool to February 8Constable: The Making of a Master at Victoria & Albert to January 11Giovanni Battista Moroni at the Royal Academy to January 25; Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cezanne from January 24

ParisRhodes: A Greek Island and Gateway to the East, the Louvre to February 10; Medieval Morocco: An Empire from Africa to Spain to January 19;Hokusai at Grand Palais to January 18; Niki de Saint-Phalle to February 2Marcel Duchamp: La Peinture, Meme, Centre Pompidou to January 5

RomeHans Memling at Scuderie del Quirinale to January 18From Guercino to Caravaggio: Sir Denis Mahon and Italian 17th-Century Art at Palazzo Barberini to February 8

New YorkMadame Cezanne at the Metropolitan Museum to March 15; Bartholomaeus Spranger: Splendour and Eroticism in Renaissance Prague to February 1; Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age to January 4Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at MOMA to February 8

Washington Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence at the National Gallery of Art from February 1; El Greco to February 16.

The blockbusters

From the Spirited exhibition, National Museum of Australia, Canberra





THIS WEEK: *ON SCREEN

The Cameo Outdoor Cinema will return thisweek to kick of its 2014/2015 season. Overthe season the program features cult classicssuch as The Blues Brothers, Monty Python's Lifeof Brian, Pulp Fiction and E. T, as well as newrelease arthouse, family and blockbuster titles,including The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies,Fifty Shades of Grey and Chappie. The CameoOutdoor Cinema season will run from ThursdayDecember 18 to Sunday April 5, and this weekfeatures The Princess Bride, Paddington, The WaterDiviner and Annie. Head to cameocinemas.com.au for more information.

ON STAGELully Lullay: Songs For Christmas, anintimate recital of beautiful Christmas musicfeaturing mezzo soprano Lotte Betts-Deanand friends, will take place this weekend. Theprogram includes an array of well known as wellas lesser performed Christmas music: a collectionof beautiful songs including Peter Cornelius'Weihnachtslieder Op 8, Frank Martin's TroisChants de Noel for voice flute and piano, as wellas songs by Britten, Grieg, Reger and Gounodamong others, a selection of solo piano worksby Percy Grainger, some yuletide favourites andcarols and a special a capella performance ofBach's masterwork Motet BWV 227 Jesu MeineFreude. Joining Lotte will be Konrad Olszewski(piano), Caitlin Ayers (flute), Daniel Thomson(tenor), Greta Williams (soprano), Niki Ebacioni(alto) and Matthew Tng (baritone). LullyLullay: Songs For Christmas will take place from3pm on Sunday December 21 at the RichmondUniting Church.

ON DISPLAYArthur Boyd's series Love, Marriage and Deathof a Half Caste, more commonly known as theBrides, was painted between 1957 and 1960 afterBoyd travelled to central Australia. It representsa defining achievement in both the artist'scareer and in Australian art of the twentiethcentury. A milestone in the advancement of localmodernism and its humanist themes, the seriesoffers a critique of Australia's racial divide in theform of an invented love story. The two mainprotagonists in the allegory—an Aboriginal manand his mixed-race bride—face the trials of a lovethwarted by both personal and cultural conflict.They embark on a metaphorical journey that istraced symbolically through complex imagerydenoting cyclical growth, decay and renewal. It'scurrently on display at the Heide Museum ofModern Art.

PICK OF THE WEEKJenny Lovell and Anna Renzenbrink are joiningforces for a Charles Dickens infused Christmasshow this week. What the Dickens! is improvisedtheatre carefully balancing cheeky audienceparticipation, carol singing and story-telling tocelebrate the classic themes of Dickens' novelsand stories - moral dilemmas, lost fortunes,found love and orphans. Anna Renzenbrinkand Jenny Lovell worked together in the ImproMelbourne Ensemble for over ten years beforecreating Bonnet Productions. Drawn togetherby their mutual passion for period romance andBBC bonnet dramas, over the last three yearsthey have successfully performed In the Parlourin various festivals including Short &c Sweet,Melbourne International Comedy Festivaland most the recently New Zealand ImprovFestival. What The Dickens! will come to TheButterfly Club from Wednesday December 17until Sunday December 21.


Beat Magazine (Melbourne), Melbourne17 Dec 2014

General News, page 22 - 179.00 cm²Magazines Lifestyle - circulation 30,485 (--W----)


Museums honour for Boyd SIMON PLANT

OPEN Country has long beenshut.

The sprawlingMurrumbeena plot whichpotter Merric Boyd establishedin 1913 was bulldozed in 1964,its pottery studio andweatherboard cottage clearedto make way for a block of flats. But 50 years on, the spiritof freedom which animatedthis fabled cultural site on theedge of a railway reservationhas been reawakened in aNational Gallery of Victoriaexhibition.

Outer Circle: The Boydsand the Murrumbeena Artists,at NGV Australia, recountsthe exuberant post-warproduction of paintings,drawings, ceramics, sculptureand furniture at OpenCountry by Merric’s son,Arthur, his good friend JohnPerceval and a host of otherart makers.

“This property, on what wasthen the southeast fringe of Melbourne, sawthe coming andgoing of some of the mostimportant figuresin 20th centuryAustralian art,’’ co-curator DavidHurlston says.

Black and whitephotographsconvey the semi-rural atmosphere,but the mostevocative imagemay be Perceval’s pencilsketch of Open Country’sramshackle garden with itswashing line, vegetable patchand mismatched chairs.

Arthur Boyd’s daughter,Polly, remembers the scenewell and, visiting Outer Circleat Federation Square, she was

delighted to find so manyfamiliar objects on show. Notjust paintings by her gifted dadfrom the 1940s and ’50s, butglazed earthenware tiles,ceramic angels and pots, mostof them drawn from theNGV’s own collection.

“It’s quite wonderful seeingit all together, one thingalongside the next,” she says.

Another summerexhibition, at the HeideMuseum of Modern Art, picksup where Outer Circle leavesoff.

Arthur Boyd: Brides unitescore paintings from a hugeseries of works that Boydcompleted between 1954 and1960 after visiting CentralAustralia. Deeply affected bythe plight of indigenousAustralians, he conceived alove story between an

Aboriginal man and his mixed-race bride and the resulting cycle — titled Love, Marriage and Death of a Half Caste — was at once beautiful and disturbing, conveying a universal message about the human condition.

The Brides, as the series iscommonly known, elevated Boyd to the front rank of Australian painting and the Heide show is a rare chance to re-evaluate the pictures that secured his reputation.

By chance, a third Boyd exhibition has landed at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. An Active Witness, a touring show organised by the Bundanon Trust, shows how the artist’s political concerns (for social equity, for environmental protection) were played out on his canvases.

“Art for Boyd was a way tocombine compassion,’’ the curators explain. And Polly

Boyd — compelled to paint from an early age — sensed

that empathy first-hand.

“I don’tremember beingtaught anything,really,’’ she says,“but Dad wasalways veryencouraging.

Was it everintimidatinghaving such afamous father?

“No, it wasnever, ‘Will I be good

enough?’ It was always, ‘This will be OK, next time it might be better’,” she says.

“There was a very goodworkaday attitude (at Open Country). The memory I have is of being in the landscape, painting what was around me. It was such a terrific feeling.”

Polly Boyd — who contributed a family tree to the Outer Circle exhibition — continues to make art.

“I’ve got some ideas ... a bitof painting, a bit of pottery. I love using clay. Always have. And when the urge to do it again came back a few years ago, I was determined to conquer it. Just like my father did.”

� Outer Circle: The Boyds and the Murrumbeena Artists, NGV Australia (Federation Square), until March 1. Free entry.

Arthur Boyd: Brides, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, until March 9.

Arthur Boyd: An Active Witness, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, until February 15.


Herald Sun (Melbourne), Melbourne12 Jan 2015, by Simon Plant

Arts & Entertainment, page 35 - 695.00 cm²Capital City Daily - circulation 399,638 (MTWTFS-)



Herald Sun (Melbourne), Melbourne12 Jan 2015, by Simon Plant



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IN DECEMBERTHIS MONTH MELBOURNE IS FILLED WITH A WIDE

RANGE OF EVENTS TO EXCITE AND INSPIRE.

Award winning

photos on show

The works of some of Australia's

best press photographers are

on display at the State Library

of Victoria. The Nikon-Walkley

Press Photography exhibition

showcases 89 works by

photojournalists shortlisted for

the prestigious Nikon-Walkley

awards. Heartbreak, triumph,

jubilation, devastation, it's all on

show. The annual awards are

the pinnacle of achievement for

Australian press photographers

and are judged by a panel of

senior photographers and

picture editors. The exhibition

includes images from finalists

in such awards as Photo of the

Year, Press Photographer of

the Year, Sport Photography,

News Photography, Feature/

Photographic Essay, Portrait Prize

and Community/Regional Prize.

Ongoing, State Library of

Victoria, 328 Swanston Street,

Melbourne. 8664 7000.

slv.vic.gov.au

Celebrate Xmas with

the Brandenburg

Noel! Noel! The Christmas

program of the Australian

Brandenburg Orchestra

promises magical singing

thanks to the Brandenburg

Choir as well as music of

yesteryear with the orchestra's

period instruments.

Highlights of the program

include a Gregorian chant,

medieval carols, French and

German hymns, English

Christmas songs and many

favourites such as Christmas

Night, O Come All Ye Faithful,

Once in Royal David's City and

Stille Nacht.

6 December, Melbourne

Recital Centre, 31 Sturt Street,

Southbank, 1300 782 856.

brandenburg.com.au

Iconic Paris on show at Sofitel

To celebrate its 50th

anniversary French hotel

brand Sofitel Luxury Hotels

commissioned Donald Williams

of Global Arts Projects

to curate an exhibition of

compelling and evocative

images of Paris by San

Francisco-based, Melbourne

born photographer, Jon

Rendell. The results are on

display at Sofitel Melbourne.

Most of the Paris photographs

in the exhibition. Iconic Paris,

Above: Nikon-Walkley Community Regional Prize- winner Adam Hourig

Images from The Daily Examiner. Eric Lyons stands in front of his carav

and a wall of flame, after helping his neighbour, Allan Lawrence, burn i

paddock at his Palmers Island property. From The Nikon-Walkley Press

Photography exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.

Photographs by John Rendell,

were taken by Rendell in

January 1978 and 9 years later

in January 1987 just after the

opening of the Musee d'Orsay.

Rendell's subjects are the

familiar iconic images of Paris

and follow in the tradition of

other photographers of that city

including Henri Cartier-Bresson,

Robert Doisneau, BrassaT, and

Eugene Atget.

From 9 December, Lobby,

Sofitel Melbourne on Collins,

25 Collins Street, Melbourne.

9653 0000.

sofitel-melbourne. com

Mapping Melbourne

Multicultural Arts Victoria

(MAV) is presenting Mapping

Melbourne 2014, a four-day

showcase of independent

contemporary Asian arts

celebrating the vibrant

influence Asia continues


Where Magazine (Melbourne), Melbourne01 Dec 2014

General News, page 22 - 1,559.00 cm²Magazines Lifestyle - circulation 32,341 (Monthly)


to have on Melbourne's cultural

dynamism. With over 40 local

and international artists, this

multidisciplinary four-day festival

spans art, theatre, music,

spoken word, dance and film

in the heart of Melbourne.

Mapping Melbourne 2014 also

features three major exhibitions

and special projections featuring

newly made works and some

never shown before in Australia.

3-6 December, various

locations around Melbourne.

multiculturalarts.com.au/

events2014/mapping.shtml

Arthur Boyd at Heide

Heide Museum of Modern

Art is staging Arthur Boyd's

series Love, Marriage and

humanist themes, the series

offers a critique of Australia's

racial divide in the form of an

invented love story.

Ongoing, Heide Museum

of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe

Road, Bulleen. 9850 1500.

heide.com.au

NICA's Dreams

The National Institute of Circus

Arts (NICA) is presenting

Dreams from the Second Floor,

a new circus work featuring

NICA's graduating artists.

Dreams from the Second

Floor explores different types

of dreams - from those

which come to us at night,

sometimes so vivid that we

can smell, taste and touch,

Arthur Boyd. Bride Watching Soldiers Fight 1958-59. Oil on composition board. 136.8x183.5cm.

Shepparton Art Museum. Gift of Frank McDonald 1976.1976.1 © Bundanon Trust.

From the exhibition Biidesat Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Death of a Half Caste, more

commonly known as the

Brides. Painted between

1957 and 1960 after Boyd

travelled to central Australia,

it represents a defining

achievement in both the

artist's career and in Australian

art of the 20th century. A

milestone in the advancement

of local modernism and its

to those which we carry

with us through our waking

reality. Performers weave

their way through their own

dreams, where things are

uncharted and the world is

upside down. Twenty one

artists will present high level

circus skills on a range of

apparatus, including aerial

ring, aerial straps, contortion.

Art Aquarium makes a splash at SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium

rope, German wheel, hand

balancing, hula hoops, roue

cyr, dance trapeze, tightwire

and tumbling.

Until 6 December, NICA

National Circus Centre,

41 Green Street, Prahran.

9214 6975. nica.com.au

St Kilda's Openair Cinema

Ben and Jerry's Openair

Cinema features an

assortment of the latest and

greatest new releases, a

selection of sci-fi thrillers, cult

classics and family favourites.

On Saturdays and Sundays

entertainment also includes

live music from an array of

Melbourne's best up-and-

coming artists.

Until Sunday 21 December,

South Beach Reserve,

St Kilda Esplanade, St Kilda.

openaircinemas. com. au/

melbourne/home

School holiday fun at Sea Life

A new Art Aquarium is a special

feature of SEA LIFE Melbourne

Aquarium's school holiday

program. After seeing hundreds

of amazing tropical fish visitors

can use their imagination to

create their very own sea

creature and watch it come to

life as it's magically released

into the huge nine-metre virtual

aquarium where it moves

like a real sea creature in the

virtual underwater world. The

experience is part of the all-new

Coral Caves tropical wonderland.

Other school holiday highlights

include special presentations,

interactive animal encounters

and 12-zones of discovery where

you can learn about how fish

swim, what they like to eat and

how they survive in the wild.

From 20 December,

SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium,

Corner King and Flinders Streets,

Melbourne. 1800 026 576

melbourneaquarium.com.au

Top cricket at MCG

Attending the Boxing Day

Cricket Test at the Melbourne

Cricket Ground is a Melbourne

tradition and this year's match

between India and Australia

is set to be just as popular.

There's keen competition

between players from both

countries while fans can be

equally as passionate.

26-30 December,

Melbourne Cricket Ground,

Brunton Avenue,

Richmond. 9657 8888.

cricket.com.au


Where Magazine (Melbourne), Melbourne01 Dec 2014

General News, page 22 - 1,559.00 cm²Magazines Lifestyle - circulation 32,341 (Monthly)


STATE OF THE UNION

Christopher AllenArthur Boyd: Brides Heide Museum of Modern Art. Until March 9

IT is a credit to the Heide Museum to bepresenting this important exhibition de-voted to Arthur Boyd’s Bride series, butalso slightly puzzling, because one mighthave expected work of this significance to

be shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.After all, the series is the one with which Boydestablished himself as one of the handful of de-fining Australian painters of the postwar years,and it is one whose originality and evocativepower was never surpassed and perhaps notequalled in his later oeuvre.

In this regard it is comparable to SidneyNolan’s Ned Kelly series of a decade earlier: theKelly pictures made Nolan’s reputation, andthey remain arguably the most memorableworks he produced; there was a vast output inthe decades that followed, but of disturbinglyvariable quality.

Both series have always been recognised asoutstanding contributions to the Australian artof their time, but the circumstances of theirpainting and subsequent ownership has meantNolan’s Kelly series became better known.Most of them remained together in the collec-tion of John and Sunday Reed until the lattergifted a set of 25 to the National Gallery of Aus-tralia in 1977 — confirming their place in thehistory of Australian art.

Boyd’s pictures did not have the good for-tune of belonging to a single patron, but weresold to many collectors and scattered aroundthe world, and have only in recent decadesbegun to make their way back to Australia. Thismade it hard to see them as a series, and manyof them have rarely if ever been shown sincetheir first commercial exhibitions. Outstandingindividual pieces, such as Shearers playing for abride (1957, NGV), Persecuted lovers (1957-58,

Art Gallery of South Australia), or The Reflectedbride (1957-58, NGA), are in public collections,but most remain in private hands.

It will be interesting to see how this situationevolves over the next decade or so. One wouldexpect more works to come on to the market,and it would be a good thing if the NGV couldacquire several more of the essential pictures inthe series, such as Half-caste child (1957) andBride running away (1957), as well as perhapsThe Frightened bridegroom (1957-58) — thissmaller version is much better painted than thelarger one made in 1958, Bridegroom going to hiswedding (1957-58) and one or two others from1958. The subsequent pictures made in 1959 and1960 generally lack the focus and intensity ofthe earlier ones.

We could eventually look forward to a roomor bay at the NGV grouping the core of theBride series, which would be given the promi-nence it deserves and become accessible as partof the narrative of Australian art in the decadesafter World War II. But the fact the show is onat Heide does not suggest the NGV has any-thing like this in mind. Perhaps it will take anenlightened gift or bequest to set something likethis in train.

Part of the problem seems to be a reticenceabout the subject matter of the series, even adistinct angst about the artist’s treatment of Ab-original themes. Boyd, who had hardly seen anyAborigines as he grew up, encountered the re-ality of their lives during a trip to the outback in1951. He was struck by a number of things: thepoverty, the exploitation and the constraintsunder which they lived. But as an artist, he wasespecially gripped by the image of brides ridingto a wedding in the back of a ute, and he wasmoved by the pathos of half-caste children whoseemed to belong neither to the indigenous norto the white world.

There is a first picture in which some of thesethemes appear, but do not yet cohere into a po-


Weekend Australian, Australia31 Jan 2015


ID 366873777 PAGE 1 of 5

etic narrative: Half-caste wedding (1954). It wasonly in 1957 that the impressions of the trip ma-tured in his imagination and produced two im-ages that are fundamental to the series. In one,Half-caste child, we see what appears to be awhite girl clinging to a black man; then we re-alise she has black legs and feet, a strikingly sim-ple way of visually representing her mixedparentage. The narrative is clear: the weepingAboriginal woman in the door of the hut behindis her mother, and she is the product of an adul-terous relationship with a white man; the manfrom whom she seeks affection and who looksaway so grimly is not her father.

The other remarkable early picture from thesame year is Bride running away, in which thegirl — here represented as all white — is shownfleeing from an older man who is presumablyher father, or at least her mother’s husband.

The third fundamental early picture in theseries is Shearers playing for a bride, where thegirl, on the right, seems to be waiting for fate todecide which of the three black shearers willwin her. The game of cards is played by moon-light, with moths gathering around a lamp

above, just as the shearers are drawn to her. Herrole is deeply ambiguous: she is impassive butfor a certain melancholy; she holds a bouquet offlowers, while Boyd’s ramox — a dark hornedbeast symbolic of lust and base passions — isjumping up on her like a dog.

The reasons these pictures and themes havecaused unease today is perhaps to do with whatmight be considered an exaggerated treatmentof Aboriginal features, though any exaggera-tions need to be seen in the context of Boyd’sexpressionistic style in which figures from thevisionary early pictures to the Nebuchadnezzarseries are all violently distorted. Perhaps there isconcern about the subject of the half-caste brideand the alienation entailed by her mixed-racedstatus, especially in light of what we now knowabout the removal of mixed-race children.

One can see how even Boyd himself, 20years after the pictures had been painted, couldbe led by changing cultural attitudes to feel a lit-tle guilty about the series. He is reported to havesaid he could have been more explicit or force-ful in his commentary on Aboriginal disadvan-tage. On the other hand some recent admirersof Boyd’s work and of this series in particularhave tried to argue for a politically engagedreading of his images.

But Boyd was a poetic, not a political painter,and the truth is the series is not primarily aboutthe plight of the Aborigines any more than theNebuchadnezzar series is literally about theBiblical character. The figures of the shearersand the brides and the half-caste children have

all become, in Boyd’s imagination, universalsymbols of love, desire, loss, loneliness and pain;ultimately, images of the impossibility of whole-ness and harmony.

Boyd was not an intellectual, a theorist or anideologue; he followed his imagination insearching for images that could articulate hisdeepest instincts about the human condition.Here we can see that quite early in the series, heabandons the half-caste theme and emphasisesinstead the tension of black suitor and whitebride. Time and again, he evokes longing, appe-tite, separation and despair: the bridegroom rid-ing a horse that has the head of the bride; thebride weeping over the dead groom. These arenot subjects that can be decoded into a politicaliconography, they are simply intuitive images ofthe impossibility of union.

The impossible conjunction is primarily that

of man and woman, and commentators neverfail to recall the painful memories he had of hismother refusing his father entry to her bed-room. Other pictures allude, as his recent bi-ography has shown, to a difficult time in hisown life, when his wife had suffered a nervousbreakdown, and he was engaged in a secret liai-son with another woman. It was typical of theway Boyd’s imagination worked that whateverhe was experiencing would become grist to themill of his work.

The picture of lovers threatened by a manwith a gun has been plausibly identified as re-flecting his dread of being found out by hislover’s husband. Here, Boyd is the black bride-groom and the bride is his lover. It is significantthat the man with the rifle is represented with ablack face; Boyd clearly wanted to exclude anysuperficial and distracting reading of him as awhite man threatening a black man. By thistime the white and black colours were almostnothing to do with their original Aboriginalreferent, but primarily stood for the polar op-position of male and female.

This use of the colours black and white tosignify the irreconcilable difference betweenthe lovers is much less to do with any observa-tion about the difficulties of relations betweenindividuals of different ethnic and culturalbackgrounds than an archetypal symbol ofwhat is antithetical and yet complementary,like male and female or the moon and the sun.

Indeed the more we look at these pictures,the more we find the overt subject transform-ing into poetic ideas of more general conno-tation. The impossibility of the union orsynthesis of male and female itself transcendsthe objective distinction between the sexes andseems to become a more universal principlewithin the human subject, something like




ID 366873777 PAGE 2 of 5

j , gJung’s idea of the animus and the anima.

The pictures, ultimately, seem to speak ofthe irreconcilable duality within the humansoul: the dark and the light, the masculine andthe feminine, the assertive and the receptive. Ina classical and humanist view of the world,these elements may come into a harmonioussynthesis or rhythmic alternation. In Boyd’sbleak post-Christian vision of a world populat-ed with suffering, guilty sinners, they are eter-nally at odds, eternally in tragic opposition.

So the Bride pictures, although initially in-spired by glimpses of Aboriginal life, are farwider and more general in meaning. This cer-tainly does not mean Boyd was indifferent tothe suffering of Aborigines. In the end hisgreatest tribute to the Aboriginal people wasnot in making any superficial and tendentiousstatement about their social situation, but rath-er in adopting them as powerful symbols ofuniversal human experience and suffering.

NEW YORKMuseum of Modern Art The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and PostersMoMA is exhibiting the works of French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition concludes on March 22.

PARISThe Louvre Animals and Pharaohs — The Animal Kingdom in Ancient Egypt This show explores the bond between the Egyptians and the animal world. On display are more than 430 objects, most of which come from the Louvre collection. Runs until March 9.

LONDONThe National Gallery Monet: The Water Garden at GivernyThis free exhibition displays the National Gallery’s holdings of Monet’s Giverny paintings. It is the first time in 17 years these pictures have been shown together.

LONDONThe British Museum Ancient Lives, New DiscoveriesDiscover the hidden secrets of eight mummies at the British Museum’s latest exhibition. Ends April.

International Round-up

Nicholas Rider

ONE CAN SEE HOW EVEN BOYD COULD BE LED BY CHANGING CULTURAL ATTITUDES TO FEEL A LITTLE GUILTY ABOUT THE SERIES

© B

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Bridegroom waiting for his bride to grow up (1958), right; Shearers playing for a bride (1957), below




ID 366873777 PAGE 3 of 5




ID 366873777 PAGE 4 of 5

Half-caste child (1957), top; Bride running away (1957), left

©BU

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ID 366873777 PAGE 5 of 5

STATE OF THE UNION

Christopher AllenArthur Boyd: Brides Heide Museum of Modern Art. Until March 9

IT is a credit to the Heide Museum to bepresenting this important exhibition de-voted to Arthur Boyd’s Bride series, butalso slightly puzzling, because one mighthave expected work of this significance to

be shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.After all, the series is the one with which Boydestablished himself as one of the handful of de-fining Australian painters of the postwar years,and it is one whose originality and evocativepower was never surpassed and perhaps notequalled in his later oeuvre.

In this regard it is comparable to SidneyNolan’s Ned Kelly series of a decade earlier: theKelly pictures made Nolan’s reputation, andthey remain arguably the most memorableworks he produced; there was a vast output inthe decades that followed, but of disturbinglyvariable quality.

Both series have always been recognised asoutstanding contributions to the Australian artof their time, but the circumstances of theirpainting and subsequent ownership has meantNolan’s Kelly series became better known.Most of them remained together in the collec-tion of John and Sunday Reed until the lattergifted a set of 25 to the National Gallery of Aus-tralia in 1977 — confirming their place in thehistory of Australian art.

Boyd’s pictures did not have the good for-tune of belonging to a single patron, but weresold to many collectors and scattered aroundthe world, and have only in recent decadesbegun to make their way back to Australia. Thismade it hard to see them as a series, and manyof them have rarely if ever been shown sincetheir first commercial exhibitions. Outstandingindividual pieces, such as Shearers playing for abride (1957, NGV), Persecuted lovers (1957-58,

Art Gallery of South Australia), or The Reflectedbride (1957-58, NGA), are in public collections,but most remain in private hands.

It will be interesting to see how this situationevolves over the next decade or so. One wouldexpect more works to come on to the market,and it would be a good thing if the NGV couldacquire several more of the essential pictures inthe series, such as Half-caste child (1957) andBride running away (1957), as well as perhapsThe Frightened bridegroom (1957-58) — thissmaller version is much better painted than thelarger one made in 1958, Bridegroom going to hiswedding (1957-58) and one or two others from1958. The subsequent pictures made in 1959 and1960 generally lack the focus and intensity ofthe earlier ones.

We could eventually look forward to a roomor bay at the NGV grouping the core of theBride series, which would be given the promi-nence it deserves and become accessible as partof the narrative of Australian art in the decadesafter World War II. But the fact the show is onat Heide does not suggest the NGV has any-thing like this in mind. Perhaps it will take anenlightened gift or bequest to set something likethis in train.

Part of the problem seems to be a reticenceabout the subject matter of the series, even adistinct angst about the artist’s treatment of Ab-original themes. Boyd, who had hardly seen anyAborigines as he grew up, encountered the re-ality of their lives during a trip to the outback in1951. He was struck by a number of things: thepoverty, the exploitation and the constraintsunder which they lived. But as an artist, he wasespecially gripped by the image of brides ridingto a wedding in the back of a ute, and he wasmoved by the pathos of half-caste children whoseemed to belong neither to the indigenous norto the white world.

There is a first picture in which some of thesethemes appear, but do not yet cohere into a po-





etic narrative: Half-caste wedding (1954). It wasonly in 1957 that the impressions of the trip ma-tured in his imagination and produced two im-ages that are fundamental to the series. In one,Half-caste child, we see what appears to be awhite girl clinging to a black man; then we re-alise she has black legs and feet, a strikingly sim-ple way of visually representing her mixedparentage. The narrative is clear: the weepingAboriginal woman in the door of the hut behindis her mother, and she is the product of an adul-terous relationship with a white man; the manfrom whom she seeks affection and who looksaway so grimly is not her father.

The other remarkable early picture from thesame year is Bride running away, in which thegirl — here represented as all white — is shownfleeing from an older man who is presumablyher father, or at least her mother’s husband.

The third fundamental early picture in theseries is Shearers playing for a bride, where thegirl, on the right, seems to be waiting for fate todecide which of the three black shearers willwin her. The game of cards is played by moon-light, with moths gathering around a lamp

above, just as the shearers are drawn to her. Herrole is deeply ambiguous: she is impassive butfor a certain melancholy; she holds a bouquet offlowers, while Boyd’s ramox — a dark hornedbeast symbolic of lust and base passions — isjumping up on her like a dog.

The reasons these pictures and themes havecaused unease today is perhaps to do with whatmight be considered an exaggerated treatmentof Aboriginal features, though any exaggera-tions need to be seen in the context of Boyd’sexpressionistic style in which figures from thevisionary early pictures to the Nebuchadnezzarseries are all violently distorted. Perhaps there isconcern about the subject of the half-caste brideand the alienation entailed by her mixed-racedstatus, especially in light of what we now knowabout the removal of mixed-race children.

One can see how even Boyd himself, 20years after the pictures had been painted, couldbe led by changing cultural attitudes to feel a lit-tle guilty about the series. He is reported to havesaid he could have been more explicit or force-ful in his commentary on Aboriginal disadvan-tage. On the other hand some recent admirersof Boyd’s work and of this series in particularhave tried to argue for a politically engagedreading of his images.

But Boyd was a poetic, not a political painter,and the truth is the series is not primarily aboutthe plight of the Aborigines any more than theNebuchadnezzar series is literally about theBiblical character. The figures of the shearersand the brides and the half-caste children have

all become, in Boyd’s imagination, universalsymbols of love, desire, loss, loneliness and pain;ultimately, images of the impossibility of whole-ness and harmony.

Boyd was not an intellectual, a theorist or anideologue; he followed his imagination insearching for images that could articulate hisdeepest instincts about the human condition.Here we can see that quite early in the series, heabandons the half-caste theme and emphasisesinstead the tension of black suitor and whitebride. Time and again, he evokes longing, appe-tite, separation and despair: the bridegroom rid-ing a horse that has the head of the bride; thebride weeping over the dead groom. These arenot subjects that can be decoded into a politicaliconography, they are simply intuitive images ofthe impossibility of union.

The impossible conjunction is primarily that

of man and woman, and commentators neverfail to recall the painful memories he had of hismother refusing his father entry to her bed-room. Other pictures allude, as his recent bi-ography has shown, to a difficult time in hisown life, when his wife had suffered a nervousbreakdown, and he was engaged in a secret liai-son with another woman. It was typical of theway Boyd’s imagination worked that whateverhe was experiencing would become grist to themill of his work.

The picture of lovers threatened by a manwith a gun has been plausibly identified as re-flecting his dread of being found out by hislover’s husband. Here, Boyd is the black bride-groom and the bride is his lover. It is significantthat the man with the rifle is represented with ablack face; Boyd clearly wanted to exclude anysuperficial and distracting reading of him as awhite man threatening a black man. By thistime the white and black colours were almostnothing to do with their original Aboriginalreferent, but primarily stood for the polar op-position of male and female.

This use of the colours black and white tosignify the irreconcilable difference betweenthe lovers is much less to do with any observa-tion about the difficulties of relations betweenindividuals of different ethnic and culturalbackgrounds than an archetypal symbol ofwhat is antithetical and yet complementary,like male and female or the moon and the sun.

Indeed the more we look at these pictures,the more we find the overt subject transform-ing into poetic ideas of more general conno-tation. The impossibility of the union orsynthesis of male and female itself transcendsthe objective distinction between the sexes andseems to become a more universal principlewithin the human subject, something like





j , gJung’s idea of the animus and the anima.

The pictures, ultimately, seem to speak ofthe irreconcilable duality within the humansoul: the dark and the light, the masculine andthe feminine, the assertive and the receptive. Ina classical and humanist view of the world,these elements may come into a harmonioussynthesis or rhythmic alternation. In Boyd’sbleak post-Christian vision of a world populat-ed with suffering, guilty sinners, they are eter-nally at odds, eternally in tragic opposition.

So the Bride pictures, although initially in-spired by glimpses of Aboriginal life, are farwider and more general in meaning. This cer-tainly does not mean Boyd was indifferent tothe suffering of Aborigines. In the end hisgreatest tribute to the Aboriginal people wasnot in making any superficial and tendentiousstatement about their social situation, but rath-er in adopting them as powerful symbols ofuniversal human experience and suffering.

NEW YORKMuseum of Modern Art The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and PostersMoMA is exhibiting the works of French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition concludes on March 22.

PARISThe Louvre Animals and Pharaohs — The Animal Kingdom in Ancient Egypt This show explores the bond between the Egyptians and the animal world. On display are more than 430 objects, most of which come from the Louvre collection. Runs until March 9.

LONDONThe National Gallery Monet: The Water Garden at GivernyThis free exhibition displays the National Gallery’s holdings of Monet’s Giverny paintings. It is the first time in 17 years these pictures have been shown together.

LONDONThe British Museum Ancient Lives, New DiscoveriesDiscover the hidden secrets of eight mummies at the British Museum’s latest exhibition. Ends April.

International Round-up

Nicholas Rider

ONE CAN SEE HOW EVEN BOYD COULD BE LED BY CHANGING CULTURAL ATTITUDES TO FEEL A LITTLE GUILTY ABOUT THE SERIES

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Bridegroom waiting for his bride to grow up (1958), right; Shearers playing for a bride (1957), below









Half-caste child (1957), top; Bride running away (1957), left

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Boyd’s powerfulBrides reunitedArthur Boyd: BridesHeide Museum of Modern Art,7 Templestowe Road, Bullen, VictoriaCloses March 9, Tues – Sun10am – 5pmReviewed by Sasha Grishin

Earlier in 2014 the NationalGallery of Australia held itsmagnificent Arthur Boyd:Agony and Ecstasy

exhibition, which was largely drawnfrom Boyd’s gift to the gallery ofthousands of works from his owncollection. Although Boyd’s gift to thenation was outstanding in its size anddepth, covering much of his workfrom the late 1930s through to theearly 1970s, an obvious gap was hisBrides series of paintings. I recallBoyd telling me the Brides sold welland in those days he was not in afinancial position to put aside worksfor his own collection, as he was to dolater.

The Brides consists of between 30and 40 paintings executed mainlybetween 1957 and 1960, whose fulltitle is Love, Marriage and Death of aHalf-caste. It was the series whichfirmly established Boyd’s reputationas an artist nationally andinternationally. The early paintings inthe series were first shown inMelbourne at the Australian Galleriesin 1958, then some of the paintingswere included in the notoriousAntipodean show of the followingyear, and the supplemented serieswas exhibited to considerable criticalacclaim in London at the ZwemmerGallery in 1960.

This exhibition at Heide, John andSunday Reed’s original property onthe outskirts of Melbourne, is themost comprehensive attempt to dateto bring together the key paintings ofthe Brides for a timely reassessment.

The Brides suffers from the

problem of attempts made to readthe series as a narrative on par withthe continuous narrative principle asfound in Nolan’s Kelly series. As inBoyd’s preceding works, although thefigurative and narrative aspects arealways strong, there exists no literaryequivalent, only a series of lyricaldigressions on a theme, or in thewords of the art historian, FranzPhilipp, a ‘‘dream play’’.

The leading theme of the series isan existentialist notion of frustration– the figures are endlessly waiting,but are self-conscious of their ownfutility. Boyd wrote of his ownresponse to the Aboriginal peoples hecame into contact with: ‘‘They areforced into this position and it has aserious effect on you, when you arenot used to it . . . you suddenly comeagainst it after imagining that theyare noble savage types living in thebush. In their rites and in theirdances . . . there is a sort of rhythmbut there isn’t any fire in the sameway as the Africans. It is an Australiansubject – I suppose – because theyare, as far as I know, the only native,aboriginal race that has thistremendous softness and passivity.’’

In a key painting in this series,Shearers Playing for the Bride, 1957,we see the half-caste child in herwedding dress, with the bridal train

pinned down by the feet of theshearers, who are trampling on herdress together with the beast. Thebunch of flowers held by the bride isa patented hallmark by the Russianartist Marc Chagall. In Chagall’s art,flowers are a sign of celebration, ofjoy in marriage or the happiness oflovers, but for Boyd’s bride theflowers are a sign of funerarybereavement. The exaggerated

insects, which appear on the figures,such as the beetle on the foot of theextreme left-hand shearer or the

butterfly in his beard, are motifs thatcan be traced back to Flemish art,which Boyd had studied in thecollection of the National Gallery ofVictoria. The exaggerated size of thefeet and hands, and the curiousdislocation of the features of the face,are all reminiscent of early Picasso.

The effective power of the Bridespaintings lies in the fact theytranscend mere commentary on thesuffering of the Aboriginal peoples,and serve as a broader comment onhumanity.

In a way, the tormented half-castesare no different from the tormentedwhites, both suffer through theirattempt to survive, and the series canbe interpreted as a broadexistentialist comment on the‘‘everyman’’.

The Brides are without doubt a keygroup of paintings in the history of

Australian art and in Arthur Boyd’sdevelopment as an artist. However,seeing them now half a century later,how do these paintings appear asworks of art?

In them there is a combination oflyricism and dramatic intensity, butthis is seen through the prism ofappropriations from Chagall andPicasso. The brushwork is bold andrough in places, thedraughtsmanship uneven. In thestrongest pieces, including ShearersPlaying for the Bride, 1957,Bridegroom Going to His Wedding,

1957-58, Persecuted Lovers, 1957-58and Phantom Bride, 1957-58, there isa pure and intense power. Otherpaintings appear as overstated,somewhat repetitive and a littlehollow in their pictorial rhetoric.

Among the Brides are greatpaintings, but they are very much ofthe 1950s and Boyd was to developinto a much finer artist later in life.


Canberra Times, Canberra31 Jan 2015, by Sasha Grishin



Unlike Nolan’s early Kelly series,with which the Brides are sofrequently compared, Boyd’s Bridesdo not transcend the period of theircreation.

Shearers Playing for a Bride, 1957.

Persecuted Lovers by Arthur Boyd, 1957.


Canberra Times, Canberra31 Jan 2015, by Sasha Grishin



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Auction target points to a bargain Boyd - Heide Museum of ... · Auction target points to a bargain Boyd MICHAELA BOLAND IN a sign of just how far the art market has fallen, an Arthur