art ew - nga.gov.au

constable • crescent moon • otto dix

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WAR The Prints of Otto Dix

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006Otto Dix Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor [Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack] plate 12 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924 etching, aquatint

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Otto Dix, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

Principal sponsor Supported by

Organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia

Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia Serat Dewi Ruci 1886 European paper, ink, pigment, gold leaf Presented by the Friends of the Gallery Library in memory of Tina Wentcher, 1982

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

2 Director’s foreword

4 Director’s vision

10 Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky

16 Constable: the ecstasy of stormy elements

21 Australia and Constable

22 Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

32 War: the prints of Otto Dix

38 New acquisitions

50 Collection focus: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

54 Conservation: restoring the glow to Afterglow

56 Kenneth Tyler at the National Gallery of Australia

58 Tribute: Jimmy Wululu

60 Faces in view

contents

Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au

Editor Eve Sullivan

Designer Sarah Robinson

Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer John Tassie

Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra

artonview issn 1323-4552

Published quarterly: Issue no. 45, Autumn 2006 © National Gallery of Australia

Print Post Approved pp255003/00078

All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 [email protected]

Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 [email protected]

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For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 [email protected]

front cover: John Constable Harwich Lighthouse c. 1820 (detail) oil on canvas Tate, London, gift of Maria Louisa Constable, Isabel Constable and Lionel Bicknell Constable in 1888

artonview

2 national gallery of australia

director’s foreword

This is a very exciting time at the Gallery with the opening

of two major and contrasting exhibitions, Crescent

moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia

and Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky.

As the first major international exhibition to focus

on the Islamic art of Southeast Asia, Crescent moon

introduces Australian audiences to the beauty and

complexity of Islamic culture within our region, to reveal

the unique developments in the arts of Islamic Indonesia,

Malaysia, but also the Muslim communities of the

Philippines, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. Splendid

objects in silk, gold, lacquer, porcelain and stone illustrate

the transformation of indigenous motifs and techniques

into new art forms to express the message of the Prophet

Mohammed.

Crescent moon brings together 180 valuable loans

from museums, palace treasuries and private collections

of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, displayed

alongside objects from Australian institutions, in

particular, textiles from the National Gallery of Australia’s

spectacular collection of Southeast Asian textiles, and

Islamic ceramics from the Art Gallery of South Australia.

I would especially like to acknowledge all the lenders,

the curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of South

Australia, James Bennett, Principal Sponsor Santos,

and the particular enthusiasm of John Ellice-Flint, CEO

and Managing Director, along with the extraordinary

generosity of the Gordon Darling Foundation in providing

funding to produce the splendid catalogue, and the

support for special education projects by The Myer

Foundation’s Beyond Australia and the Sidney Myer Fund.

Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky

curated by the Gallery’s Head of Australian Art, Anna

Gray, continues the Gallery’s commitment to analysing

the historical legacy of European and, in particular, British

art, with a major focus on this important landscape artist.

Over 100 works have been selectively drawn together

from distinguished museums and private collections in

Great Britain, the United States and Australia, including

the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, Tate

Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Yale Centre

for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, and the Frick

Collection, New York. Qantas Freight and The Seven

Network have once again generously supported the

Gallery by transporting the works and providing television

promotion for this exhibition.

The exhibition showcases the extraordinary range of

Constable’s work, from his exuberant outdoor sketches to

masterpieces such as Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s

Grounds 1822–23 and The Vale of Dedham 1827–28. The

exhibition is presented thematically to show key phases of

Constable’s approach to the landscape, such as his well-

known cloud and sea studies, and what may well be his

favourite subject, the lock – including his Royal Academy

Diploma work, A boat passing a lock 1826.

A special display titled Australia and Constable has

been included within the exhibition to explore Constable’s

influence on Australian art through the much-loved

Australian landscape paintings of John Glover, Tom

Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen, leading up to

the work of contemporary practitioners, such as Howard

Taylor, Philip Wolfhagen and Lesley Duxbury.

If you have not already done so, please also take this

opportunity to see the remarkable portfolio of prints by

Otto Dix, Der Krieg [War] 1924. Modelled on Francisco

Goya’s famous Los desastres de la guerra [The disasters

of war], and acquired recently by the Department of

International Prints and Drawings. The complete cycle

of fifty prints is now on view in the Project Gallery. As

curator Mark Henshaw states in his essay in this issue,

it is ‘one of the most powerful indictments of war ever

conceived’ by an artist.

I would also like to take this opportunity to

acknowledge the retirement of Harold Mitchell as

chairman of the National Gallery of Australia Council.

During his term as both a member (1998–2001) and

chairman (2001–05) of the council Harold gave a great

Ron Radford with Harold Mitchell AO, outgoing

chairman of the National Gallery of Australia Council

artonview autumn 2006 3

credit lines

deal of his time, passion and enthusiasm, and made a

significant impact on the National Gallery of Australia’s

direction. We were privileged to have Harold’s strong

leadership. What the general public have not known

to this point is that Harold is one of our most generous

benefactors. And although Harold oversees the largest

media-sales organisation in the country, he still found time

to fly to Canberra to officiate at every exhibition opening,

affirming wholeheartedly, ‘As I always like to say, “this is a

great gallery, in a great city, in a great country”’. In every

sense Harold maintained a supportive, hands-on role as

chairman, and was always at the end of the telephone line

for advice to both Brian Kennedy and myself.

He is succeeded in the role of chairman by Rupert

Myer, whose appointment was announced on 18

December 2005 by the Minister for the Arts and Sport,

Senator the Hon. Rod Kemp.

Rupert has been a National Gallery of Australia Council

Member since 2003 and is director of the National Gallery

of Australia Foundation. In January 2005 Mr Myer was

made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to

the arts, for support to museums and galleries and to the

community through a range of philanthropic and service

organisations.

I had the personal privilege of working with Rupert,

when he spearheaded the Commonwealth Government’s

Inquiry into the Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft Sector

2001–02, an initiative that achieved a much-needed boost

in funding to the contemporary visual arts sector, during

my own term as chair of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the

Australia Council (1997–2001). I know that Rupert is well-

regarded by the visual arts community, and has significant

experience on museum boards and foundations.

I hope that many of you will agree, this is an exciting

time for the Gallery.

Ron RadfordDirector

Donations Ross Adamson Philip Bacon AM Anthony Berg AM and family Graham Bradley Antony G Breuer Joan Daley OAM Lady Nancy Fairfax OBE Di Gregson Andrew Gwinnett Catherine Rossi Harris PSM John Hindmarsh Reverend Theodora Hobbs Peter Jopling QC Harold Mitchell AO Cameron O’Reilly Angus Paltridge Jennifer Prescott Alan D Rose AO and Helen E Rose Penelope Evatt-Seidler Raphy Star Caroline Turner Anonymous

Gifts Rosemary Dobson Bolton Louise Dauth eX de Medici John Eager Helen W Drutt English Thea Exley Peter Fay William Hamilton Russell Harper Pauline Hunter Terrance Lane David Rose John F Turner Robert H Turner Rosalind Turner Zuses

Grants The Myer Foundation Sidney Myer Fund

Principal Sponsor Santos Ltd

Supporting Sponsors Qantas Freight Seven Network

Sponsors Casella Wines Saville Park Suites, Canberra SMS Management & Technology


The building and the collection displaysThe National Gallery of Australia’s building was conceived

in the late 1960s. Plans, by the architectural firm Edwards,

Madigan, Torzillo & Briggs, were finished at the beginning

of the seventies, before the collections were formed. It

took nearly a decade to build. Opened by HM Queen

Elizabeth II in 1982, it is an important architectural

example of seventies concrete architecture in the Brutalist

style. Costing $82 million, it was an extremely expensive

building for its time. The building has architectural

distinction and is part of Canberra’s heritage. However,

as an art museum it has always been criticised by the

museum profession and the public alike, particularly as

its interior is unsympathetic to most works of art. The

building has been an ongoing challenge to former and

current directors and curators of the Gallery. There were

conceptual problems in the earliest brief.

Since the National Gallery had neither collections

nor staff when the building was first designed, it could

not be designed around a known or probable collection.

Moreover, it was conceived to show 1,000 works,

but the collections have grown to well over 100,000

works. The collections have long outgrown the building

and lack of display space is overwhelmingly the Gallery’s

greatest problem. There are many other limitations to the

building. Ceilings are far too high in the main entrance-

level display galleries and too low on the upstairs display

floor. The concrete-aggregate wall surface visually

interferes with the viewing of most paintings. The public

entrance is confusing; visitors don’t know where to enter

the building. Confusing interior circulation remains an

ongoing complaint. The facilities for openings, other

events, and catering are limited. There has never been any

special provision for the display of Indigenous Australian

art, now a major component of the collection.

Many of these problems will be addressed in Stage

One of the building alterations currently being planned, in

which process Andrew Andersons, of PTW Architects, and

I are working with Col Madigan.

Vision for the National Gallery of Australia: part two

Part two of the vision statement presented by Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery

of Australia, on the Gallery’s birthday, 12 October 2005

Building additions: Stage One. New entrance and Indigenous Australian galleriesIn Stage One, a new more visible and accessible ground-

level entrance is being planned for the south of the

building, facing the current ground-surface car park. The

new entrance area will have escalators to and from the

galleries on the main level; a lift will also provide access

to the underground car park. The entrance area will have

a new cloakroom and a new enlarged bookshop. An

adjacent ground-level space will be created for openings

and events, and will open onto a newly created Australian

garden. It will be a space that can be commercially hired

out when not required for Gallery functions and, if

necessary, can be divided into three separate spaces.

At the new ground-level entrance there will be a

specifically created area for the 1988 Aboriginal Memorial,

one of the most important works in the collection.

Appropriately, this impressive sculptural installation, a

major work of art, will be the first that visitors see as they

enter the Gallery. It will be displayed in a way that relates

to the outside landscaping.

Immediately above the new entrance and its facilities

there will be specially created galleries for Indigenous

Australian art that will connect to the existing galleries

on the main level. Each of these new galleries will be

designed to accommodate the needs of specific types of

Indigenous Australian art, with areas for small early dot

paintings, large galleries for larger dot paintings, spaces

for bark paintings, and for Hermannsburg watercolours,

Indigenous textiles, prints, ceramics and sculpture. The

main Indigenous art galleries will be sky-lit, apart from

those areas intended for the display of light-sensitive

works such as textiles, baskets and watercolours. These

will be the first galleries in Australia designed around the

specific needs of displaying different aspects of Indigenous

Australian art.

The famous Ned Kelly series by Sidney Nolan, arguably

the Gallery’s most popular Australian work, will be

brought downstairs to the main level and given a special

room at a location currently occupied by a lobby area and


the Gallery Shop. The Kelly paintings will be among the

first works seen on the principal display floor. Existing

shop and cloakroom spaces will be converted to small

spaces for the decorative arts and on the opposite side of

the hallway from the Kelly paintings, a space is reserved

for displaying works from the photography collection.

The overwhelming problem with the current building –

apart from the lack of a noticeable entrance to the Gallery,

and the fact that the collection has long outgrown the

building – is that Australian Art is relegated to secondary

status. Australian art is confined to the low-ceilinged

‘attic’ upstairs. The area is too small to show either the

full richness of our culture or even our existing extensive

collection. The inaccessibility, in the present building,

of Australia’s own visual culture – and its placement in

an unattractive corridor-like space – could be seen as

the ultimate cultural cringe. Some visitors never find the

present upstairs galleries containing Australian art. The

National Gallery of Australia should display Australian visual

culture much more accessibly, attractively and expansively.

Stage One of the building program will do this for

Indigenous Australian art. Stage Two will similarly redisplay

the rest of Australian and Australasian art.

Building additions: Stage Two. Australian Art (non-Indigenous)In Stage Two of the building program, completely new

galleries for Australian art should be created in a new

wing built to encircle the present temporary-exhibitions

galleries. Australian art should be brought downstairs

from the ‘attic’ to occupy this large area of its own on the

main level, the ‘piano nobile’ floor. These new Australian

galleries will be illuminated from above with sunlight, the

same light by which most of the works were created.

The future Stage Two galleries for Australian art

should connect to the new galleries for Indigenous

Australian art that are part of Stage One. Indigenous art,

appropriately, will be encountered first. Chronologically-

arranged galleries will proceed from the colonial period

onwards. Preceding colonial art there should be an

introductory gallery showing eighteenth-century and

early-nineteenth-century European art in the Pacific. All

the galleries should be designed to accommodate the

specific scale and diverse forms of Australian art. For

example, spacious galleries with high ceilings are required

for large Edwardian figure paintings and Federation

landscapes; smaller, lower-ceiling galleries would suit

modernist pictures of the 1920s and 1930s; while larger

galleries are again necessary for neoclassical figure

paintings and sculptures of the same period and smaller

galleries for Australian modernism of the 1940s. Large

high spaces will be designed to accomodate the diverse

forms of contemporary Australian art.

Adjacent to the main chronologically arranged day-lit

galleries will be small side galleries, with lower ceilings and

without natural light, for light-sensitive works on paper

– watercolours, drawings, prints and photographs – and

also for textiles. Such galleries are especially important for

the periods of Australian art when works on paper (e.g.

A provisional concept design for the front entrance for Stage One of the proposed additions to the National Gallery of Australia building


early colonial watercolours) are artistically stronger and

more numerous than oil paintings. The National Gallery of

Australia has the finest and largest collection of Australian

works of art on paper. These adjacently arranged

exhibition spaces will also feature Australian design and

decorative arts.

The Australian galleries should be planned to

incorporate exceptional works in the collection such as

Napier Waller’s large mural design I’ll put a girdle round

about the earth (which currently cannot be displayed) and

John Olsen’s major painting Sydney sun installed as it was

intended – as a ceiling.

Furthermore, the Gallery’s proposed new wing

for Australian art will hopefully attract major private

collections. With new spaces the National Gallery of

Australia can offer donors naming rights to certain

galleries. There exist private collections that could

significantly help complete aspects of the national

collection of Australian art.

Galleries in the future Australian art wing also provide

an opportunity for offering naming rights to prospective

donors of cash to Australian art.

Displaying Asian art: Stage OneAsian Art, too, should be brought to the piano nobile

floor, up from the lower-level Gallery 9 to main-level

Galleries 11 and 12 (and in Stage Two also add Gallery

8, the current Orde Poynton Gallery). We should focus

on sympathetic displays of mixed media (sculptures,

paintings and textiles) beginning with Indian Hindu, Jain

and Buddhist art. The redisplay of the Indian art collection

will be completed in August 2006 and Indian Islamic art

will link with Southeast Asian Islamic art. Southeast Asian

Ancestral and Animist art, and other arts of Southeast

Asia, will also link into the Indian display.

Each major Asian sculpture will have its own custom-

made pedestal of concrete in keeping with the concrete

architecture of the Gallery building. Chinese and Japanese

art, Middle Eastern Islamic art and other Central Asian arts

will remain where they are in the lower-level Gallery 10,

connected by the two ramps to the rest of Asian art on

the main level above.

Displaying Pacific arts: Stage TwoA special large gallery should be created in Stage Two for

traditional art of the Pacific Islands, including the Maori

art of New Zealand, the traditional Melanesian art of

New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the Solomon

Islands, and the Polynesian art of Samoa, Fiji, Tonga,

Hawaii, etc. The works will be shown as art and not

anthropology. This display should be connected to a large

gallery devoted to contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific.

These galleries for the Pacific Arts should be

strategically placed towards the end of the future

Australian wing, in proximity to contemporary Australian

art, reflecting their geography in relation to Australia. This

great attention to the Pacific past and present has never

been attempted before in any art museum in Australia – or

indeed elsewhere. It is a major new initiative and must be

seen as very significant for our region.

In summing up, for art-political reasons and ease of

access, the art of all the major cultures should have a

significant presence on the same accessible main-level

floor: the piano nobile. And Stage Two should also be

designed in a way that allows much better circulation than

the present building.

Sculpture Gallery: Stage OneGallery 9, where the main Asian display is currently

located, will return to being a sculpture gallery. When

the building opened in 1982 most visitors and museum

professionals agreed this was the one gallery that really

worked. Indeed it was strikingly successful, centred upon

the exquisite Brancusi Birds in space which will return to

the sculpture gallery. Sculptures representing all cultures

could be displayed in this beautiful gallery.

Open study storage: Stage TwoBeneath the main-level galleries for the future display of

Australian art, open study-storage galleries should be

created for Australian art. Study storage is where very

dense and unaesthetically arranged displays are accessible

to the general public, either all the time or on selected

days each week. Study storage is becoming common

in America – for example the American Decorative Arts

display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – and

exists for Old Master paintings at the National Gallery,

London, yet it has never been incorporated successfully

into an art museum in Australia. It would help relieve the

Gallery’s acute storage problem and make the Australian

collections (other than light-sensitive textiles and works on

paper) completely accessible to the public.

The Research Library and the Collection-Study Rooms: Stage TwoThe National Gallery of Australia Research Library is the

most important art library in Australia. The ground-level

space beneath the future galleries for Australian Art

should be used not only for open study-storage but also to

create an expanded library with easier access from outside

for visiting researchers and scholars. Adjacent to the

library should be collection-study rooms and storage for

our huge collection of Australian works on paper, which is

stored in solander boxes. Adjacent to this area could be a

similar study arrangement for textiles, especially the major

Southeast Asian textile collection.


The much enlarged Australian displays and, on the

ground level below them, the Open Study Storage, the

Collection-Study Rooms and the Research Library together

will form a unique and important Centre for Australian

Art. Such a centre should eventually establish formal links

with Canberra’s Australian National University.

Office space: Stage TwoThe present library space could be easily converted into the

much needed expansion and consolidation of office space.

Works on paper and textile displays: upstairs galleries. Stage TwoThe National Gallery of Australia holds more works

on paper than any other art museum in Australia. This

includes the largest collections of International and

Australian photographs, twentieth-century American

prints, nineteenth- and twentieth-century European prints,

Australian prints and drawings and illustrated books. The

Gallery also holds Australia’s largest collection of Asian

textiles. The upstairs galleries, currently used to display

Australian art, may not be suitable, with their smaller

spaces, lower ceilings and lack of natural daylight, for

displaying Australian paintings and sculptures but they are

ideal for a series of galleries in which to install changing

displays of photographs, European prints and American

prints. The series could also accommodate a special gallery

for Indian and, particularly, Indonesian textiles. A new

Orde Poynton Gallery (or several Orde Poynton Galleries)

could be created for works on paper. A small gallery for

late-nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century

design could also be established on this upper level.

Galleries such as these will be significant and unique in

Australia, particularly for visitors who enjoy intense study

of such material.

International contemporary art: Stage TwoThe one high-ceilinged space on the upstairs level, Gallery

7, currently used for contemporary Australian art, could

be used for the most recent international art, and include

Australian contemporary art.

Redisplays of current International galleries: Stage OneIn the current International display, the walls have been

clad with white-painted plasterboard in a desire to

make the building more sympathetic for the works of

art, covering the concrete-aggregate walls that were

so particularly unsympathetic for paintings. While the

works of art are now better-displayed, the interior look

of the building has changed from what was described as

a ‘concrete bunker’ to something worse, an insubstantial

white ‘cardboard box’. The internal architectural integrity

of the building has been compromised.

A solution must be found not only to honour the

integrity of the original building interior but also, at

the same time, to be sympathetic to the works of

art. Naturally textured and carefully coloured wall cladding

and temporary partition walls are required to complement

the concrete structure. The Gallery curators and designers

are currently working with me on a solution.

Furthermore, newly planned International and Asian

Art collection displays in the current building will attempt

to integrate, where possible, prints, drawings, textiles and

decorative arts into the displays of paintings and sculptures.

This has always been done, with varying degrees of success,

in the awkward upstairs Australian galleries.

Importantly, highlights of Australian art should be

included in the International displays. Australian art

must be seen in an international context as well as in a

comprehensive national display. In the past this has been

done occasionally, but must be done more consistently,

particularly where Australian artists can be favourably

compared with their international peers. (In the current

upstairs Australian display, wall colours have already been

very recently changed and a new display of nineteenth-

and early-twentieth-century art, including many very

recent acquisitions, has just been completed.)

More radical changes to the newly integrated

International displays will be finished within the

next twelve months after the Aboriginal Memorial is

temporarily moved from its present location in Gallery 1

to Gallery 9, the past and future Sculpture Gallery, before

being permanently relocated to the new ground-level

entrance area of the Stage One extensions.

RelightingThe collection-display spaces also need to be completely

relit. There are too many gloomy areas. The lighting

system is antiquated; lighting fixtures have become

unsightly and inconsistent. The lighting is not only

inadequate and inflexible but the systems are highly

unattractive. We need to engage experienced international

lighting experts who can undertake this major expensive,

but necessary, task.

Exhibitions Temporary exhibitions keep the public and the

media vitally interested in the National Gallery of

Australia. Special exhibitions provide in-depth access to

artists, periods or themes and they provide audiences

with new insights not readily available in the permanent

collections. They also provide a focus for associated

public programs. The Gallery’s exhibition program should

complement the collections. On the one hand exhibitions

should parallel the strengths of the Gallery’s collections

and, on the other, bring in the kinds of art absent from

the collections.


In Stage Two of the building alterations we plan to

increase the temporary-exhibitions area so that a new

space for our smaller collection-based exhibition projects

could be adjacent to the main exhibition space. The

present Project Gallery is, unfortunately, the furthest space

from the entrance to the building.

The Gallery should stage at least one fine blockbuster

exhibition every year to bring in large numbers of

visitors and generate income to maintain the exhibition

program. There should be an attempt to make various

middle-sized shows largely pay for themselves. And we

should also undertake more esoteric shows, which may

not necessarily be popular with audiences, and therefore

need to be highly subsidised, but which stretch one’s

knowledge, imagination and understanding.

In the exhibition program over a period of years there

should be balance between traditional and contemporary

art, and between European, Asian, Pacific and Australian

art. The program should also include exhibitions

containing different media, not just painting but sculpture,

photographic media, prints, drawings and the decorative

arts. The National Gallery of Australia has a particular role

in developing and displaying imaginative exhibitions of

Australian artists, movements or periods that may have

been neglected. We could also help smaller art museums

by becoming a partner in presenting shows of their

nationally significant local artists.

A great many publicly-funded exhibition spaces for

contemporary art are to be found throughout the nation

and also in Canberra. Even so the National Gallery of

Australia should include contemporary projects in its

program. Such projects help develop audiences that

might never find their way to their local contemporary

art spaces, and they can contextualise difficult new art

for inexperienced audiences. But this should never be

a main thrust of the program; the National Gallery of

Australia should not compete with or threaten the role

of Australia’s contemporary art spaces and museums of

contemporary art.

Unfortunately, organising exhibitions (especially

blockbusters) has effectively become three times more

costly in the past six years or so. We should therefore

look at doing no more than three or four shows per year

in the major temporary-exhibitions galleries, and avoid

the practice of removing the permanent collection to

accommodate temporary exhibitions. We will continue

to produce high-quality low-cost exhibitions from our

rich collections for the Project Gallery, the Orde Poynton

Gallery and the Children’s Gallery.

It should go without saying that the National Gallery

of Australia must also continue its excellent program

of touring exhibitions around Australia and – after the

success of the Out & About program – by continuing

to release small focus displays drawn from the national

collection. The ongoing travelling-exhibitions program is

an important way to share the collections with the nation.

Children’s Gallery: Stage TwoA new and larger Children’s Gallery should be established

in the Stage Two construction. The present Children’s

Gallery is very popular but far too small for school

groups. This future gallery should be placed adjacent

to the other temporary-exhibitions galleries.

Publishing the collections Art museums should publish or perish. Since the National

Gallery of Australia is located in Canberra, a city with a

population of about 350,000 (and only the sixth-largest

city in Australia), publishing allows the Gallery to extend

its audiences both nationally and internationally. The

curators, and others, must be encouraged and given

every opportunity to research the collections and related

material, and publish the results.

A great national gallery must contain in-house

scholarship in order to maintain its international

credibility. We must of course fulfil the expectation that

we should be the world’s principal centre of scholarship

in Australian art. At present we are also a world centre for

scholarship in Indonesian textiles.

The collection should be published electronically as

well as made available through print publications in the

form of books and catalogues. The Gallery should aim to

make all works in all collections available online through

both images and texts. Much has been done already to

make them digitally accessible to all Australians and to

promote the collections worldwide. The online collections

will assist in disseminating information with which to

educate and whet a very large public appetite for the

treasures we hold in trust for the nation.

At the same time we must continue to publish books

on artists, collections and collecting areas of artistic and

cultural significance. The scholarship should be of the

highest quality, and so should the design and production.

Part one of the 2005 Director’s Vision for the National Gallery of Australia was published in the summer 2005–06 issue of artonview. The full Director’s Vision is also available online at nga.gov.au/Vision.

a


Masterpieces for the Nation appeal

Looking to the future, we are proud to present the

opportunity for Members to participate in acquiring

a major work for the collection. This year the Director

takes delight in proposing an oil painting by Sydney

Long, Flamingoes c. 1906. Sydney Long was the leading

proponent of the art nouveau style in Australian painting

at the beginning of the twentieth century and this work

is a remarkable example of Long’s decorative style.

Flamingoes were a popular motif for Sydney Long as in

art nouveau more generally, their sinuous necks and exotic

connotations highly appropriate to the flowing lines and

sensual nature of the art nouveau style.

Flamingoes will be an important addition to the

Gallery’s select collection of turn-of-the-century art

nouveau and symbolist painting, complementing works

by Bernard Hall, Rupert Bunny, DH Souter and Bertram

Mackennal, as well as Sydney Long’s The spirit of the

plains 1914 already in the collection. This is your

opportunity to make a donation and share the excitement

of knowing this exceptional work will bring pleasure to

many future generations. Please forward your donation

to Silvana Colucciello in the Development Office or

telephone her on 02 6240 6454.


Once again we thank our committed and long-term

supporters: Qantas Freight for airfreighting the works

to Australia; and Channel Seven for creating and

broadcasting the inspiring television advertisement.

Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in

Southeast Asia

We welcome and thank Santos as the Principal Sponsor

of this special exhibition. As a major Australian oil and

gas exploration and production company with expanding

interests in the Asia Pacific region, their support represents

significant commitment to developing cultural ties with

our Southeast Asian neighbours.

The Gordon Darling Foundation’s generous grant

towards the curator’s research and the production of

the splendid catalogue ensures readers many hours of

pleasure and in-depth knowledge about the exceptional

works in the exhibition.

We also acknowledge the value of The Myer

Foundation’s grant directed to a family day and children’s

workshops; the Sidney Myer Fund’s grant for the study

day and education resource, with the support of the

Australia Indonesia Institute and the Australia Malaysia

Institute, enabling the attendance of Indonesian and

Malaysian speakers at the special cultural day.

Conservation equipment donation

On behalf of the Oxford Brookes University, Oxford,

conservation research colleague Dr Simon Watts kindly

donated an Ion Chromatograph. The gift will greatly assist

with the research currently being undertaken by Paper

Conservators at the Gallery, and will enable the Gallery to

monitor air quality in Solander storage boxes, display cases

and gallery spaces.

Lyn ConybeareHead of Development

development office

Sydney Long Flamingoes c. 1906 oil on canvas


exhibition galleries

John Constable (1776–1837) is one of the greatest British

landscape painters, renowned for his ‘pure and unaffected

representation of nature’. Constable: impressions of

land, sea and sky showcases the extraordinary range

of Constable’s work, from his outdoor sketches to his

cabinet pictures to some of his larger exhibition pieces.

It presents the breadth of his approach to image making

and shows the brilliance of his depiction of nature: how

he captured light in the sky and reflected on the ground,

how he showed it glistening on water and sparkling in the

trees, how he animated the landscape and created a sense

of air that brought nature alive. It especially demonstrates

the vitality of his many impressions of specific places

and of particular times of day, and how he gave these

brief moments a continuing existence. It also indicates

the significance of these sketches, how Constable used

these impressions in creating his exhibition pictures, in

transporting something of their directness and immediacy

into his larger work.

The son of Golding Constable, a prosperous corn and

coal merchant, mill owner, and barge operator, and his

wife Anne (née Watts), Constable was born on 11 June

1776. He grew up at East Bergholt, along the Stour River

in Suffolk, England. He spent several years working in his

father’s milling business, where he learnt to understand

the importance of weather to an agricultural community

and to observe atmospheric phenomena with a disciplined

John Constable A boat passing a lock 1826

oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London, Diploma

work, accepted in 1829


National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3 March – 12 June 2006 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington 5 July – 8 October 2006


eye. At the same time, he privately pursued his ambition to

be a painter, working in the fields, painting one view for a

certain time each day until the shadows changed. In 1796,

the engraver and antiquarian John Thomas (‘Antiquity’)

Smith advised Constable not to people his landscapes

with imaginary figures as was common at the time, but

to include figures actually observed in the landscape. He

also suggested that Constable use varying shades of green

when depicting vegetation, a feature of Constable’s work

which was later admired by the French artist, Eugène

Delacroix.

Constable went to London in February 1799, with

a small allowance from his father, to study at the Royal

Academy Schools. After viewing the works on display at

the Royal Academy in 1802, he wrote to his East Bergholt

friend John Dunthorne that ‘Nature is the fountain’s head,

the source from whence all originality must spring’ and

returned to East Bergholt to make ‘laborious studies from

nature’ to achieve a ‘pure and unaffected representation

of the scenes’.

Between 1808 and 1816, Constable spent most of

the summers and early autumns in Suffolk, sketching in

the fields and the surrounding countryside, producing

works such as View towards the rectory, East Bergholt, 30

September 1810. He also made drawings in small pocket

sketchbooks, which provided the source for a number of

future paintings. In 1813, he wrote ‘How much real delight

I have had with the study of Landscape this summer’. Over

the succeeding years he made many sketches in the open

air in Suffolk, creating works that are remarkable for their

freshness and spontaneity, and for the freedom of their

brushwork.

For the most part, Constable painted places with

which he felt a deep emotional attachment, or that were

associated with his family and friends. He visited the

cathedral city of Salisbury for the first time in September

1811 as a guest of the Bishop, Dr John Fisher. He met with

the Bishop’s nephew and namesake, John Fisher, later

Archdeacon of Berkshire, who became Constable’s closest

friend. Constable’s letters to Fisher provide insights into his

world and his art and many of his thoughts and feelings.

On his visits to Salisbury over the years Constable painted

important images of the cathedral and the surrounding

countryside, such as Salisbury Cathedral from the

Bishop’s Grounds 1823, in which he captured the air and

atmosphere of a summer morning, with the silver grey of

the cathedral shining through the golden foliage.

On the death of his father on 14 May 1816 Constable

received an inheritance of £400 a year, which gave him

a degree of financial independence and enabled him to

marry Maria Bicknell, whom he had been courting for

seven years. During their honeymoon they stayed with

John and Mary Fisher at their vicarage in Osmington,

near Weymouth, Dorset – with Constable and Fisher

spending time sketching the environs of Weymouth Bay

and visiting Salisbury. In advance of the visit Fisher had

written to Constable:

My house commands a singularly beautiful view: & you may

study from my very windows … we never see company:

& I have brushes paints & canvas in abundance. My wife is

quiet & silent & sits & reads without disturbing a soul & Mrs

Constable may follow her example. Of an evening we will

sit over an autumnal fireside read a sensible book perhaps

a Sermon, & after prayers get us to bed at peace with

ourselves & all the world.

John Constable View towards the

rectory, East Bergholt 30 September 1810

oil on canvas laid on panel John G Johnson collection,

Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequeathed in 1917

John Constable Salisbury Cathedral from the

Bishop’s Grounds 1823oil on canvas Victoria and

Albert Museum, London, gift of John Sheepshanks in 1857

John Constable A cottage in a cornfield

c. 1816–17oil on canvas

Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales,

Cardiff, purchased with the assistance of the National

Art Collections Fund in 1978


Constable was a great innovator, but he also had a

passionate interest in the works of the Old Masters, and

in particular the great tradition of landscape painting of

Claude Lorraine and Jacob van Ruisdael. He continued

to study and copy the work of his predecessors as long

as he lived, constantly juxtaposing their interpretations

of the natural world against his own experience of it.

For five weeks in 1823, he visited Sir George Beaumont

at his home, Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. Constable

wrote to Maria: ‘this is a lovely place indeed … such

grounds – such trees – such distances – rock and water

– all as it were can be done from the various windows

of the house’. He studied intensively his host’s collection

and made careful copies of two of Beaumont’s paintings

by Claude, including Landscape with goatherd and

goats, after Claude 1823. Although Constable shared Sir

George’s love of the Old Masters, they disagreed about

some technical matters, and Constable’s biographer CR

Leslie recorded their debate about the colours of nature:

‘Sir George recommended the colour of an old Cremona

fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and this

Constable answered by laying an old fiddle on the green

lawn before the house’.

Constable is known for his large exhibition pictures

of the landscape and life in the area around the Stour

Valley. In A boat passing a lock 1826 he created a

landscape full of life, with a strong sky and dramatic light

permeating the scene. Constable sold two of his large

Stour Valley paintings The haywain 1821 and View on the

Stour near Dedham 1822 (Henry E Huntington Library

and Art Gallery, San Marino) to the Parisian dealer John

Arrowsmith who exhibited them at the Paris Salon in

1824, where Constable was awarded a gold medal. The

paintings created a sensation in Paris, and were acclaimed

by French artists.

In the summer of 1824, Constable took his family to

Brighton, hoping that the sea air would restore Maria’s

health. At first he was critical of Brighton, describing

it as ‘Piccadilly … by the sea-side’. But in spite of this

unflattering assessment, Constable found a new stimulus

there. He painted a number of oil sketches, such as

Brighton Beach (A sea beach) 1824, which reflect his

enthusiastic response to the moods of the sky and the

effects of light on the sea, at times using a small palette

knife instead of a brush.

John Constable Brighton Beach (A sea beach) 1824

oil on paper laid on canvas Detroit Institute of the

Arts, bequeathed by Mr and Mrs Edgar

B Whitcomb in 1953


Constable and his family moved permanently to

Hampstead in 1827, leasing no. 6 (now no. 40) Well Walk

– opposite the chalybeate well, which had helped to make

Hampstead into a fashionable spa in the early eighteenth

century. ‘This house is to my wife’s heart’s content’, he

wrote to Fisher. That year, The Times wrote that Constable

‘is unquestionably the first landscape painter of the day’.

In 1828, however, Maria’s health rapidly declined and

she died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Hampstead, on 23

November. For Constable ‘the face of the world [was]

totally changed’; he never fully recovered from the loss

and dressed in black for the rest of his life. He began to

use stormy weather more self-consciously to express his

own feelings, as in Stormy sea, Brighton, 20 July 1828,

which he painted just four months before Maria died.

He painted it with vigour, applying the paint thickly

and quickly to capture the stormy weather and his own

personal turmoil.

Constable was finally elected a Royal Academician on

10 February 1829, and Turner visited him to congratulate

him. He was required to present a work to the Academy

as his Diploma painting, and he selected A boat passing

a lock, such was the value he placed on this work.

On 31 March 1837, aged 60, Constable died suddenly

at his home in London. As Leslie reported:

It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven

he had read himself to sleep, and his candle, as usual, was

removed by a servant. Soon after this, his eldest son, who

had been at the theatre, returned home, and while preparing

for bed in the next room, his father awoke in great pain, and

called to him … He took some rhubarb and magnesia, which

produced sickness, and he drank copiously of warm water,

which occasioned vomiting.

Within half an hour of the first attack of pain he had died.

He was buried alongside his wife in the churchyard of St

John’s, Hampstead.

Anne GrayAssistant Director, Australian Art, and co-curator of Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky

This exhibition has been organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Further information on the exhibition and symposium on Saturday 8 April at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, is available at nga.gov.au/Constable.

John Constable Stormy sea, Brighton 20 July 1828oil on paper laid on canvas Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, gift of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon in 1981

a


Constable’s intense study of nature was translated

into an unprecedented broad handling of his materials,

whether pencil or chalk, watercolour or oil paint. As the

French art critic Ernest Chesneau wrote in the 1880s:

‘He is a poet whose nature is roused to ecstasy by stormy

elements; although not blind to tranquil beauty, it is life

and movement which stir the depths of his soul’. Change,

movement and variety were what John Constable chiefly

prized. At Brighton, only the breakers and sky could

interest a painter: he felt they were ‘lovely indeed and

always varying’. The sky was the paradigm of natural

change, and Constable threw himself into the study of

it more intensely perhaps than any painter before him.

In 1821 and 1822 alone he made around one hundred

studies of skies.

The starting point in what must surely be Constable’s

most famous letter to his friend John Fisher, of 23

October 1821, constitutes an aesthetic manifesto. The

skies in some of his exhibition pictures had been criticised,

and Fisher had defended them, so the painter felt he

should explain his principles of sky painting. He began by

telling his friend that he had been doing a good deal of

‘skying’, since it was the most difficult part of landscape

painting, but one of the most important. Quoting the

painter and academician Joshua Reynolds who stated that

Titian, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorraine had made their

skies ‘sympathise’ with their subjects, Constable went

on to say that the sky was ‘the key note, the standard

of “scale”, and the chief “organ of sentiment”’, as well

Constable: the ecstasy of stormy elements

John Constable Rainstorm over the sea

c. 1824–28 oil on paper laid on canvas

Royal Academy of Arts, London, gift of Isabel

Constable in 1888


as being ‘the “source of light” in nature – and governs

every thing’. He explained that the execution of his skies

was often faulty because he was too anxious about them,

‘which alone will destroy that Easy appearance which

nature always has – in all her movements’: a particularly

telling idea, because Constable seems to be thinking here

of the movement of nature as related to the movement of

his brush.

These were generalities, but the most important

evidence of Constable’s involvement with the sky lies

in the many inscriptions he wrote on the reverse of the

sketches. The best-known (because it was published

by his friend and biographer CR Leslie, who owned

the sketch) is on the Melbourne sky study, Clouds

5 September 1822:

5th September 1822, 10 o’clock. Morning looking South-

East very brisk wind at West, very bright and fresh grey

clouds running very fast over a yellow bed about half way

in the sky. Very appropriate for the coast at Osmington.

Constable had hoped to join John Fisher at Osmington

in April 1822, but could not. This sketch was made later

at Hampstead, and the inscription tells us that Constable

had no problem thinking that an inland sky could suit a

coastal scene, just as he used a Hampstead sky of 1819

not only for an upland Hampstead scene several years

later, but also for a major Stour Valley subject.

The inscription also puts a premium on movement,

and this was even more marked in a number of others,

such as that on Cloud study, Hampstead, trees at right

11 September 1821:

Hampstead, Sepr.11, 1821. 10 to 11. Morning under the sun

– Clouds silvery grey, on warm ground. Sultry. Light wind to

the S.W. fine all day – but rain in the night following.

This highly circumstantial description tells us how quickly

Constable worked (10 to 11am), how he took notice of

the direction of light, the wind, the temperature and

humidity, as well as of the later weather situation, and it

is the type of inscription that has led some commentators

to believe that the painter was a close student of

meteorology at this time.

Certainly all these features of the weather were

discussed in a book Constable acquired and annotated

heavily: Thomas Forster’s Researches about Atmospheric

Phaenomena (1815). He often found himself disagreeing

with Forster, but he also marked several passages where

he found the meteorologist’s account of special interest.

One concerned the formation of cumulus clouds:

… in the evening, when the heat is diminished, the air

deposits its vapour again in the form of dew, which

gravitates to the ground, becoming more dense as it

John Constable A storm off the coast

of Brighton 1824oil on paper laid on card

private collection

John Constable Cloud study, Hampstead,

trees at right 11 September 1821

oil on paper laid on board Royal Academy of Arts,

London, gift of Isabel Constable in 1888


approaches the earth, because the lower atmosphere is not

the coolest; and finally lodges on the surface of the herbage,

or on the ground, where it awaits the reascending sun to be

again evaporated.

Constable was proud of being able to produce the

effect of dew in his paintings: ‘there goes all my dew’ he

complained to Leslie when another artist warmed up one

of his exhibition paintings with a glaze of asphaltum just

before the opening of the 1829 Royal Academy show.

Forster’s account of this cycle of nature must have

especially appealed to Constable because it chimed with

another account of a water cycle in a work of natural

theology by William Paley, recommended to him by Fisher

in 1825:

From the sea are exhaled those vapours which form the

clouds; these clouds descend in showers, which penetrating

into the crevices of the hills, supply springs; which springs

flow in little streams into the valleys; and these uniting

become rivers; which rivers, in turn, feed the ocean. So

there is an incessant circulation of the same fluid; and not

one drop probably more or less now than there was at the

creation.

Constable’s brilliant sketch, Rainstorm over the sea

c. 1824–28, could well serve as an illustration to this

religious idea.

Forster also dealt with perhaps the most important

function of meteorology, weather forecasting, and

Constable inscribed several notes in this section of the

book, including the word cumulostrati against the line:

’Large clouds, like rocks, forebode great showers’. He is

interpreting folk wisdom in modern scientific terms, and

this raises the question of the date of his reading of Forster,

whose book is first mentioned by Constable in a letter of

1836. My own view is that he became interested in the

science of meteorology only after 1830, when he began

recording unusual heavenly phenomena, as in London from

Hampstead Heath in a storm; with a double rainbow 1831;

when he was preparing the often meteorological letterpress

for English landscape; when he was having difficulties with

the rainbow in David Lucas’s large mezzotint of Salisbury

Cathedral from the meadows, which was not published

until 1848 as The rainbow; and when was planning (but

never delivered) a lecture on the sky for the Hampstead

Institute Literary and Scientific Society.

The key to Constable’s intensive involvement with

the sky in the early twenties is surely the changeability

of the weather, its ‘before’ and ‘after’, and it brings a

landscape element into the lively academic debate on

the relationship of painting and poetry. History painters

within the Royal Academy were anxious to show that

John Constable Clouds 5 September 1822oil on paper laid on cardboard National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, acquired through the Felton Bequest in 1938


their art, like poetry, could represent time as well as

space, by selecting the ‘pregnant moment’. Speaking of

Raphael in 1801, the Professor of Painting, Henry Fuseli,

told the students (Constable possibly among them) that

‘the moment of his choice never suffers the action to

stagnate or to expire; it is the moment of transition, the

crisis big with the past and pregnant with the future’.

Constable in 1821 was in the thick of his campaign to

impress the public with his six-foot canvases, and to raise

the status of landscape in the Academy; and it is more

than likely that he would want to take a leaf from the

history painters’ book.

One of Constable’s most vivid memories as a student

at the Royal Academy was being told by Benjamin

West – who was correcting one of Constable’s pictures

with white chalk – ‘Always remember, Sir, that light

and shadow never stand still‘, and that his skies should

always aim at brightness. When staying with Sir George

Beaumont in 1823 Constable showed a rather abstract

concern for the way clouds serve to distribute light and

shade in any sky, by copying all twenty schemata of

clouds by Alexander Cozens, from his compilation, A New

Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original

Compositions of Landscape (c. 1785).

Constable’s pencilling gives the clouds more

volume and more movement than the originals, whose

inscriptions simply prescribe the number of watercolour

washes (hence depth of tone) to be applied to various

parts of the design; there is no hint of an interest in

weather. Attention to light and shade, or chiaroscuro, was

Constable’s most constant and significant preoccupation

as a painter. Whereas, as a painterly device, chiaroscuro

has a long history in art, Constable’s interpretation was

substantially original, for he regarded it not simply as a

function of visual structuring, but as an attribute of nature

itself. For the 1833 second edition of English landscape

he amplified its title to show that the mezzotints were

‘Principally intended to display the Phenomena of the

Chiar’oscuro of Nature’; and in a Prospectus of 1835 he

wrote that he hoped:

the Landscape Painter shall be aware that the

CHIAR’OSCURO really does exist in NATURE (as well as Tone)

– and, that it is the medium by which the grand and varied

aspects of Landscape are displayed, both in the fields and on

canvass …

John Gage

John Gage taught for twenty years in the Department of History of Art, Cambridge University, is a fellow of the British Academy and recently worked on the Paris ‘Constable’ show, 2002–03. He is co-curator of Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky. John Gage, with other leading international scholars, will contribute to the Constable symposium at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, on Saturday 8 April 2006. Further information available at nga.gov.au/Constable.

John Constable Cloud study 1822

oil on paper The Frick Collection, New

York, bequest of Henrietta ES Lockwood in memory

of her mother and father, Ellery Sedgwick and Mabel

Cabot Sedgwick in 2001

John Constable Harwich Lighthouse c. 1820

oil on canvas Tate, London, gift of

Maria Louisa Constable, Isabel Constable

and Lionel Bicknell Constable in 1888

a


The landscape painter has to realise that [the sky] is not

something secondary, like a backdrop, but that

it is above you, at the sides of you, and all around.

Thus wrote the prominent Australian landscape artist,

Hans Heysen, a great admirer of Constable’s work who,

like Constable, was aware of the expressive significance

of the sky and its ability to dictate the mood of a landscape.

Such is the power of Constable’s art that it has

inspired many artists, including Hans Heysen and a range

of Australian artists: Conrad Martens, Tom Roberts,

Arthur Streeton, Howard Taylor, Philip Wolfhagen and

Lesley Duxbury, among others. It is for this reason that in

Australia we are presenting a second exhibition alongside

Constable: impressions of land, sea and sky, called

Australia and Constable, which will include examples of

the works of some of these Australian artists, and one

New Zealand artist, Toss Woollaston.

Australia and Constable

Among the most recent of the works in the exhibition

are those by Lesley Duxbury who has looked to Constable

for inspiration in a series of paintings and prints. In her

Untitled 2003 series, she painted on paper on canvas

because this was a method Constable used, not only with

his Hampstead cloud studies but also in other paintings.

Like her contemporary Philip Wolfhagen, she has been

interested depicting the movement of clouds as indicators

of passing time.

The works in this exhibition show that Constable’s art

has continued to inspire artists – and viewers – into the

present day.

Anne GrayAssistant Director, Australian Art

a

Philip Wolfhagen The path of least resistance (to J. Constable) 1989 oil and powder pigment on paper laid on canvas artist’s collection

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3 March – 12 June 2006


Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in

Southeast Asia is the first international exhibition to

present the spectacular heritage of five hundred years

of Islamic art, from the fourteenth to twentieth century,

in our region. It is astonishing that the contribution of

Islam to Southeast Asian art has been so neglected

when the archipelago is the most populous region

of Islam on the planet today. Since the publication

of Sir Stamford Raffles’s seminal study The History

of Java in 1817, European scholars working from the

viewpoint of an increasingly secular society have often

been ill equipped to understand the subtle dialogue

between art and spirituality in the Islamic world of

Southeast Asia. In much historical art scholarship,

derived from a Western orientalist perspective, the

mechanist model of the ‘layer cake’ used to describe the

sequential relationship of Islam to Hindu and Buddhist

traditions in Southeast Asian history has reinforced

studies which emphasised the dichotomy between

religion (agama) and indigenous customs derived

from ancestral tradition (adat). The focus on perceived

gulfs between a textural theory of Islam and its local

daily practice underlined an implication that Islam in

Southeast Asian societies was somehow less authentic

than that of the Middle East. This discourse created

an intellectual climate where discussion on the role of

Islamic art, seen as a foreign overlay on a more real

indigenous foundation, often became marginalised.

Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast AsiaNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

MalaysiaKeris 19th century

gold, iron, nickelDepartment of Museums and

Antiquities, Kuala Lumpur

MalaysiaBreast plate 19th century,

gold, gemstoneDepartment of Museums and

Antiquities, Kuala Lumpur


Crescent moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast AsiaNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006


Nevertheless the term ‘Islamic art’, invented by

nineteenth-century Western scholarship, is also fraught

with difficulties and serves more to emphasise ideas

of difference rather than define aesthetic goals. Many

Muslims would suggest that perhaps the only true

Islamic art is the decoration of the Qur’an, and other

religious texts, represented in Crescent moon by

thirty-five of the finest illuminated manuscripts from

Southeast Asia, including one of the earliest surviving

Qur’an from the collection of the National Library of

Indonesia. The written Qur’an is the revealed message

of God and hence the calligrapher is often regarded as

the quintessential Muslim artist: any other art may be

created by a non-Muslim, but God’s holy word, revealed

to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel, should only be

written by a pious believer in a state of ritual purity.

Religious inscriptions are found on a wide variety of

art objects, including luxurious royal keris. But it was in

the decoration of religious manuscripts, rather than the

transcription of the Arabic text, that Islamic art achieved

its most beautiful and elaborate forms through various

regional styles such as in Trengganu, Patani and Banten.

In Southeast Asia the decoration of the Qur’an

and other sacred texts articulated the believer’s deep

reverence for faith. Rulers and religious institutions also

sponsored the production of illuminated manuscripts in

local regional languages, including Malay and Javanese.

One of the most exquisite works of art in the exhibition

is the Javanese manuscript Serat Dewi Ruci, dated 1886

and possibly decorated by the famous Yogyakarta

court painter Jayadipura. It depicts the wondrous story

of the warrior Werkudara’s search for the elixir of life.

Although Werkudara is more commonly known as

Bima, the hero of the Indian Mahabharata epic, and

the manuscript is illustrated in the style of wayang

kulit conventionally identified with the Hindu epics of

the shadow puppet theatre, nevertheless the Serat

Dewi Ruci is quintessentially Sufi in its mystical tale of

the perilous journey towards the conquest of self.

Kelantan, MalaysiaQur’an c. 1900

European paper, pigment, gold leaf

National History Museum, Kuala Lumpur


The Dewi Ruci story was composed in the

sixteenth century and another highlight of Crescent

moon is a small collection of rare wood carvings

that dates from around the transitional era from Hindu-

Buddhism to Islam in Java. The uncertainties of time

and the tropical climate of Southeast Asia have not

favoured the survival of many art media, including

the wood once used widely to decorate mosques and

palaces as well as utilitarian objects. These unique

works are from Cirebon’s Kraton Kasepuhan palace

which was established by the Muslim saint Sunan

Gunung Jati and today is the oldest continuously

occupied Islamic palace in Southeast Asia.

The exhibition includes two unusual panels,

decorated on both sides, which appear to be the only

surviving narrative wood sculpture from that period.

Local people describe the scenes as the story of Adam

and Hawa (Eve) but they probably depict the Sri Tanjung

tale from the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist period and

include a humorous depiction of two servant figures

(panakawan), engaged in a startling sexual encounter.

The panels, with their distinctive style similar to the

stone reliefs of East Javanese Hindu-Buddhist temples,

may even have originated from a late fifteenth-century

Majapahit palace context as historical evidence

suggests it was once a common practice to recycle

architectural ornament for new building construction.

The occurrence of pre-Islamic art motifs, and

literary themes, in the context of Islamic civilisation in

Southeast Asia is not surprising given the nature of

transmission of the new belief into the archipelago

and the receptiveness to cross-cultural engagement

amongst early Sufi teachers, many of whom were

practising craftspeople, in comparison to the stricter

doctrinal orthodoxy that followed in the wake of the

nineteenth-century Wahhabi reformist movement. A

spectacular Cirebon batik Skirt cloth, recently restored

for this exhibition, includes the curious depiction

Yogyakarta, Central Java, IndonesiaSerat Dewi Ruci 1886European paper, ink, pigment, gold leafPresented by the Friends of the Gallery Library in memory of Tina Wentcher, 1982National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne


of elephants in the form of rocks. Such images

are often attributed to orthdox Islamic injunctions

against naturalistic representations; nevertheless, the

precedent for this image may be found in an episode

from the Javanese version of the Mahabharata epic

where the exiled Arjuna discovers an enormous

stone in the shape of an elephant. This event occurs

just as the hero meets the god and goddess of love

sporting in an idyllic natural setting and the landscape

pattern on many Cirebon batik cloths, like on this

example, are often described as representing fantastic

pleasure gardens (taman sari). The depiction of rocky

landscapes in Cirebon textiles appears to be inspired

specifically by the famous Sunyragi Gardens, with

its fantastic grottoes, built by the local sultan in the

eighteenth century as a retreat for meditation.

One wood carving with a clearly documented

religious provenance and dated to the early period of

Islam is a lively statue of a lion. This originally adorned

the burial vault of the holy man Sunan Sendang located

at the famous East Javanese mosque of Sendang

Duwur erected about 1561. It is most unusual to find

three-dimensional zoomorphic images in a religious

context in Islam, and only occurs in Southeast Asia

during this Javanese period marking the transition

from Hindu-Buddhist belief to Islam. The elegant

decorative portrayal of the lion reflects the influence

of Chinese aesthetic traditions at a time when many

Muslim Chinese communities were being established

in the coastal ports of the Southeast Asia archipelago.

These Chinese merchant settlers were key

participants in the international commerce in blue-

and-white high-fired ceramics that became an integral

part of the archipelago’s Islamic art history. Porcelain

was a major commodity in the legendary ‘spice

trade’ stretching from Asia to the Middle East and

Europe. The trade ware is a reminder that, while the

precise parameters of the term ‘Islamic art’ may at

times be difficult to define, there is a very clear and

recognisable Islamic sensibility pervading art produced

by both Muslims and non-Muslims for the context of

Islamic patronage. Included in Crescent moon are

Chinese ceramics from the Yuan until Qing Dynasty

as well as Vietnamese and European export ware

intended for these markets. These ceramics embody a

distinctive Islamic sensibility through the use of Arabic

inscriptions, decorative motifs based on markedly

geometrical designs and a variety of vessel shapes,

such as the long-spouted ewer, clearly derived from

Middle Eastern and South Asia metal prototypes.

Mantingan, Central Java, IndonesiaOne side of two panels depicting figures in the landscape 16th centuryteak, woodCollection of Kraeton Kasepuhan Museum, Cirebon

Cirebon, north coast Java, Indonesia Skirt cloth (detail) 19th century cotton, natural dyes, hand-drawn batikConserved with the assistance of the Maxwell Family in memory of Anthony Forge, 2005National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Makam Sunan Sendang, Sendang Duwur, East Java, IndonesiaLion 16th century wood National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta

Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, found in Maluku, IndonesiaPlate late 14th century, Yuan Dynasty 1271–1369underglaze blue porcelainNational Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta


Richly patterned Indian trade cloths, formerly

preserved as ancestral heirloom objects in both Islamic

and non-Islamic societies of the archipelago and

now assembled into one of the greatest collections

at the National Gallery of Australia, also formed part

of this cultural exchange alongside the ceramics.

The textiles document the international identity of

Islamic aesthetics in the pre-modern era and include

a spectacular Ceremonial cloth and sacred heirloom

whose distinctive quadrature design, a symbolic map

of paradise, reflects the influence of Sufi cosmic

symbolism. Islamic mystical cosmograms had a

significant influence on a variety of Southeast Asian

arts, including textiles like batik headcloths. The

symmetrical mirrored patterns convey concepts of

unity and multiplicity related to the Islamic doctrine of

tauhid, although their geometrical balanced appearance

is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the influence

of mandala designs from earlier Hindu-Buddhist art.

In the preparation of Crescent moon, an award-

winning Indonesian calligrapher and scholar of

Southeast Asian Qur’an illumination, Bpk Ali Akbar was

invited to suggest three Islamic quotes that encapsulated

a Muslim perspective for this exhibition. These quotes

are displayed in each of the three galleries that present

the rich heritage of the sultanate arts, the international

identity of Islam aesthetics in the archipelago and the

beauty of the holy word revealed in the Qur’an. It is the

second inscription that perhaps most directly speaks

to the aspiration of Crescent moon to promote a

greater understanding and appreciation in Australia

and overseas for the Islamic art of our region:

O Mankind…

We made you into nations and tribes,

that ye may know one another.

Al Qur’an, Surah 49: 13

James BennettCurator of Asian ArtArt Gallery of South Australia

Coromandel coast, India, found in Toraja region,

South Sulawesi, IndonesiaCeremonial cloth and

sacred heirloom early-to-mid 18th century

handspun cotton, natural dyes, mordant

painting, batikGift of Michael and Mary Abbott 1987

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Not your typical hard hat.

Santos searches for oil and gas all over the world. But recently, we’ve discovered something quite

different – precious gold, silk, porcelain and even stone from South East Asia, including Indonesia. It’s the

Crescent Moon exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. In becoming the principal

sponsor of Crescent Moon: Islamic Art & Civilisation in Southeast Asia, our aim is to

help Australians develop a better understanding of our closest neighbours. And that’s of benefit to everyone.

Banten, Java, Indonesia, Crown, 18th century, gold, precious stones, enamel, metal, 17.0 x 11.5cm (outer crown). National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta.

san1230_297x233_Artonview 11/1/06 2:24 PM Page 1

Southeast


project gallery

Otto Dix (1891–1969) was born in Untermhausen,

Thuringia, the son of an ironworker. He initially trained

in Gera and at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts

as a painter of wall decorations and later taught

himself how to paint on canvas. He volunteered as a

machine-gunner during the First World War and in the

autumn of 1915 he was sent to the Western Front. He

was at the Somme during the major allied offensive

of 1916. During the war, he was wounded a number

of times, once almost fatally. War profoundly affected

Dix, and as an artist he took every opportunity, both

during his active service and afterwards, to document

his experiences. These experiences would become

the subject matter of many of his later paintings and

are central to the Der Krieg [War] cycle of prints.

A portfolio of fifty-one etchings, Der Krieg is

modelled on Francisco Goya’s equally famous and

equally devastating Los desastres de la guerra [The

disasters of war]. Los desastres detailed Goya’s own

account of the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion and

the Spanish War of Independence from 1808 to 1814.

Goya’s cycle of eighty-two etchings, which he worked

on for a decade after the Spanish War of Independence,

was not published until 1863, long after his death.

Like Los desastres, Der Krieg uses a variety of etching

techniques and does so with an equally astonishing

facility. Similarly, it exploits the cumulative possibilities

of a long sequence of images and mirrors Goya’s

unflinching, stark realism. The focus of Der Krieg is, in

many respects, quite different from that of Los desastres.

War for Goya was an intimate horror, its initial impact

localised, its ultimate effect incremental. As the images

which open Dix’s cycle in particular demonstrate, Dix’s

war is a modern war – the scale is vast. Not only are

men killed in an arbitrary, anonymous and indiscriminate

way, the landscape itself is torn apart, desecrated and

ravaged. Often the landscape appears alien, other-worldly,

nightmarish. It appears sometimes as a simple backdrop

to human tragedy, but often as a more integral part of the

destruction – see for example plate 9, Collapsed trenches.

Collapsed trenches is also typical of a recurrent

psychological strategy that underpins much of what Dix

does in his portfolio. In this image, we are immediately

aware that something terrible has happened, a perception

that is reinforced subliminally by the piece of cloth that

seems to loom, vulture-like, over the disintegrated trench.

It is only on closer inspection, however, that images of

skeletons, disarticulated limbs and the other debris of war

slowly reveal themselves – many viewers fail to see, for

example, the foot in the extreme lower left foreground

on first inspection, and are horrified when they do.

Dix’s work is less about objectively documenting

the experience of war in the way that many

commissioned war artists do; although it does this

as well, it is about recapturing the nightmare-like

quality of its psychological impact. The images in

this portfolio convey the immediacy of authentic

experience. Many of them are based on the diary

sketches that Dix made while fighting in the trenches.

GH Hamilton in the Oxford companion to twentieth

century art describes Dix’s cycle as ‘perhaps the

most powerful as well as the most unpleasant anti-

war statements in modern art’, and it has become

a commonplace to see it as an admonition against

the barbarity of war. And there is no doubt that

as a human document it is a powerful cautionary

work. At a psychological level, however, its truth

goes deeper than this. Dix was both horrified

and fascinated by the experience of war.

all images © Otto Dix, Licensed by

VISCOPY, Australia

Otto Dix Zerfallender Kampfgraben

[Collapsed trenches]plate 9 from the portfolio

Der Krieg [War] 1924etching, aquatint

The Poynton Bequest 2003 National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra

War: the prints of Otto Dix 17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006


In 1963, explaining why he volunteered for the

army in the First World War he had this to say: ‘I had to

experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over

and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to

experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I’m therefore

not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was an inquisitive

person. I had to see all that myself. I’m such a realist, you

know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in

order to confirm that it’s like that. I have to experience

all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself.’

We can see what Dix was talking about clearly in

plate 13, Mealtime in the trenches. Here, in an image

that is as ghastly as it is macabre, a lone soldier gulps

down a hasty meal, apparently indifferent to the human

skeleton trapped in the frozen landscape beside him.

Dix was not only interested in portraying the impact

of war on its combatants, but was also interested in

analysing the impact it had on civilian populations. In

the brilliantly dynamic composition Lens being bombed

(plate 33), the viewer has an overwhelming sense of the

terrifying reality of the actual moment the city of Lens

in Northern France was bombed. We are drawn into

the image by the multiple receding lines of the street,

plunging into the distance. In the foreground, the faces of

the fleeing civilians are distorted by fear and grief. Their

hollow eyes echo the empty, boarded-up windows of the

houses they desert. In the background, these figures are

reduced to dark, fugitive shapes seemingly trapped by

the dramatic, vortex-like perspective of the scene. As the

bomber swoops down on Lens, one can almost hear the

noise and feel the panic it creates. Its shadow ominously

divides the two groups of people, while the endless

façades of the buildings stretching into the horizon from

both right and left create a narrowing tunnel from which

the citizens of Lens seem to have no prospect of escape.

Years later, Dix had this to say: ‘As a young man

you don’t notice at all that you were, after all, badly

affected. For years afterwards, at least ten years, I

kept getting these dreams, in which I had to crawl

through ruined houses, along passages I could

hardly get through.’ This nightmarish, hallucinatory

quality pervades all of the Der Krieg images.

As stated above, Der Krieg is modelled on Goya’s

Los desastres. Two of the images that most directly

echo Goya’s work are plate 22, Night-time encounter

with a madman, and the devastating plate 35, The

madwoman of St Marie-à-Py. The original German

title of plate 22 is Nächtliche Begegnung mit einem

Irrsinnigen: in relationship to this work in particular,

the word Irrsinnig in German powerfully conveys the

sense that all the neural networks that underpin both

one’s sense of self and the apparent rational structure

of one’s world have been irretrievably torn to shreds.

Otto Dix Mahlzeit in der Sappe

(Loretthöhe) [Mealtime in the trenches – The Loretto Hills]plate 13 from the portfolio


The Poynton Bequest 2003National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra

Otto Dix Lens wird mit Bomben belegt

[Lens being bombed]plate 33 from the portfolio


The Poynton Bequest 2003National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra


Equally harrowing is plate 35, The madwoman of St.

Marie-à-Py, which depicts a woman crazed with grief

proffering her breast to her dead child who lies before her.

One of the most famous etchings from Goya’s war

cycle was entitled Yo lo vi [I saw it], and we have

the same sense of absolute observed authenticity

in Dix’s portfolio, not only in the images mentioned

above, but elsewhere – see for example plate 28,

Seen on the escarpment of Cléry-sur-Somme, and

plate 29, Found while digging a trench – Auberive.

While Dix’s work certainly documents the horrors

of war, it is also paradoxically sensuous, conveying an

almost perverse delight in the rendering of horrific detail,

indicating that, for Dix, there was an addictive quality

to the hyper-sensory input of war – something that

would be familiar to many a war correspondent today.

The portfolio on display in the exhibition War: the

prints of Otto Dix includes plate 51 Soldier raping a nun,

which on the advice of Dix’s publisher Karl Nierendorf

was suppressed when the portfolio was first published

in 1924. Nierendorf believed that this image would be

seen as a ‘slap in the face for all those who celebrate our

“heroes” [and] … for all those who have a bourgeois

conception of a front-line soldier.’ Indeed, it could

‘threaten the whole work with confiscation … People will

make this one print into the target of their attacks.’ He

had similar reservations about plate 34 Frontline soldiers

in Brussels and plate 36 Visit to Madame Germaine in

Méricourt, both of which depict soldiers visiting a brothel.

As a consequence, this image was excluded from the

portfolio when it was published. Subsequently, however,

collectors of the portfolio who were aware of this fact

have sought to re-integrate it into the cycle. In the

present instance the image is numbered 59/70 and is

from a different edition to the rest of the cycle, which

is numbered 58/70, indicating that the original owner

sought to complete his portfolio of Der Krieg in this way.

In terms of the general corpus of Dix’s work, Der

Krieg occupies a central place amongst the large

number of paintings and works on paper devoted to

the theme of war. This astonishingly powerful work

remains one of the most powerful indictments of war

ever conceived, and is universally regarded as one of

the great masterpieces of the twentieth century. Its

acquisition in 2003 represented a major coup for the

Gallery having been on the Department of International

Prints desiderata list for years. As a document, the

cycle demonstrates that its concerns are as relevant

today as they were when it was originally conceived.

Mark Henshaw, Curator, Department of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books; andGwen Horsfield, Department of International Prints, Intern

Otto Dix Nächtliche Begegnung mit einem Irrsinnigen [Night-time encounter with a madman]plate 22 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924etching, aquatintThe Poynton Bequest 2003National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Otto Dix Die Irrsinnige von St. Marie-à-Py [The madwoman of St. Marie-à-Py]plate 35 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924etching, aquatintThe Poynton Bequest 2003National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Otto Dix Soldat und Nonne (Vergewaltigung) [Soldier raping a nun]plate 51 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924etching, aquatintThe Poynton Bequest 2003National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

a


The ruins of the great stupa at Amaravati was only

rediscovered near the modern town of Guntur in the

eastern state of Andhra Pradesh in the 1840s, during the

British colonial period. The stupa was never reconstructed,

and the great collections of Amaravati stone sculptures

were largely divided between the Madras Provincial

Museum in today’s Chennai, and the British Museum in

London, with a smaller but growing collection located

in a museum at the Amaravati site. While this imposing

marble panel is clearly in the Amaravati style, it may

have originated from one of the many other stupas

known to have once existed in that region. Unlike the

contemporaneous sculptures of the better-known

Gandhara region in the north-west of the Indian

subcontinent, this style was not influenced by the Hellenic

traditions brought to Central Asian Buddhist centres by

Alexander the Great.

This is the lower register of one of the tall slabs

which decorated the exterior of the dome of the stupa.

new acquisition Asian Art

Ancient aniconic images of the Buddha Shakyamuni

India Amaravati region,

Andhra PradeshScene from the life of

the Buddha Shakyamuni 3rd century CE

limestoneNational Gallery of Australia,

Canberra

Onto such slabs, a series of friezes were carved which

told the stories of the life (and previous lives) of the

Buddha Shakyamuni. These narrative images served a

didactic function for the worshippers who circled the

stupas, believed to conceal a relic of the Buddha himself

buried within, as part of their pilgrimage. In this scene

worshippers – male and female – holding vases of lotuses

and (one woman) a fly whisk, flank the empty throne with

its round cushions, beneath which the Buddha’s footprints

are clearly shown. A part of a trunk or pillar appears

above the throne: it may have supported the branches

of the bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved

Enlightenment, or it may have been topped by a large disc

representing the Wheel of Law, symbol of the Buddha’s

First Sermon at the Deer Park at Sarnath near Benares

(Varanasi).

Robyn MaxwellSenior Curator, Asian Art


new acquisition Asian Art

Throughout the Indonesian archipelago, valuable clan

treasures and royal heirlooms are created from gold. The

precious metal was part of a complex exchange network

involving many other parts of Indonesia. In historical

times, however, much of the gold in Sumba came to the

island in the form of gold coins which were refashioned

into elaborate sculptural ornaments, like this double-axe

shaped marangga chest ornament. The marangga appears

only to be used in the west of Sumba, an eastern island

located close to Timor. Similarly-shaped but smaller gold

items appear elsewhere in eastern Indonesia. The gold

objects were often created in specific regional styles and

forms by itinerant smiths from the small nearby islands of

Savu and Ndao.

Precious heirloom treasures such as marangga are

viewed only on special ceremonial occasions, usually under

the supervision of village priests. (Despite the spread

of Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

a large proportion of the population of Sumba still

follows many ancestral religious practices.) Such objects

Ancestral gold

are an essential part of ritual and communication with

the ancestors, and their display and, in some instances,

exchange (particularly through marriage), cements social

relationships. Less sacred versions of the same objects

are worn as jewellery on special occasions and for less

powerfully charged rituals. While senior figures rarely wear

gold, it is common for their children to be adorned with

heirloom jewellery for public rituals. Marangga are worn

by girls and boys alike.

Marangga imagery is also found on stone grave

monuments and village altars throughout west Sumba.

Through the construction of stone megaliths for the

internment of great nobles, and the accompanying

sacrifices, the soul is said to be protected on its journey

through the Afterlife. Marangga motifs also appear on

Sumbanese heirloom textiles worn and displayed at such

important rites.

Robyn Maxwell and Melanie EastburnAsian Art

Indonesia West SumbaBreast ornament or pectoral [marangga] 19th centurygoldNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra


new acquisition Australian Prints, Drawings and I llustrated Books

Prince Giolo, also known as Jeoly, was a native of the

island of Meangis in the Philippines. Acquired by the

explorer and sailor William Dampier as settlement for a

debt, Giolo was taken to England in 1691 and introduced

to the English elite, including the reigning monarchs

William III and Mary II. This engraving is an advertisement

to promote Giolo, the tattooed prince, as a ‘fashionable

wonder’, a novelty brought from the ends of the earth

to be scrutinised by English society. The engraved text

beneath the image gives an account of Giolo’s lineage,

admirable physical form, his homelands and a description

of his tattoos and their meaning. Little is known of

the life of artist John Savage. He flourished in London

1680–1700 and was both an engraver and a publisher.

The Prince towers within the landscape and is an

imposing figure placed centrally within the composition.

His pose is noble and elegant; the small loincloth draped

gracefully around his waist covers little of his tattooed

body. Beneath the layer of tattoos the Prince’s figure is

tall and muscular. The Prince was a particular curiosity

for the English: on special request, preferred patrons

could view Giolo privately to marvel at this exotic

individual and his elaborately tattooed skin, a practice

claimed to be reserved in his homeland for royalty.

At the Prince’s feet, snakes, scorpions and lizards are

repelled by the magical powers vested in his tattoos.

This image of Giolo is an example of the introduction

of tattooing to the West. Less than a century after Giolo’s

death from smallpox, Captain James Cook introduced the

word ‘tatau’, now tattoo, into the English language after

observing the Tahitian practice, and the fame of a man

called Omai.

Deborah HillGordon Darling Graduate InternAustralian Prints and Drawings

John Savage Prince Giolo

John Savage Prince Giolo, Son to the

King of Meangis c. 1692engraving



new acquisition Australian Prints, Drawings and I llustrated Books

Unlike Prince Giolo, Omai’s journey to England from

Tahiti in 1774 was voluntary. This portrait of Omai was

engraved by James Caldwell in 1777 after a drawing

by William Hodges, several years after the return of the

HMAS Resolution and HMAS Adventure to England. It

was on Captain James Cook’s second voyage to Tahiti

that Cook and Hodges met Omai. Hodges was an artist

aboard the HMAS Resolution employed to document the

landscape, flora and fauna, but his works from this period

are better known for their sublime atmosphere rather

than their topographical accuracy. Omai sailed as a crew-

member on HMAS Adventure and was placed in the care

of Joseph Banks and Dr Solander upon arrival in England.

While the intentions of the English may have been to

exhibit Omai as an ‘exotic wonder’, Omai was ambitious

and hoped to use the journey to convince those in England

to arm him in a war to reclaim his native island from the

men of neighbouring Borabora. Hodges illustrates the

famous islander dressed in white robes with loose black

hair and a dignified pose, as he was popularly portrayed.

Omai’s comfortable glance over his shoulder to engage

the viewer gives the work an intimate atmosphere, as if

we occupy his personal space. Omai’s tattoos are not

visible in this portrait, but they were a significant part

of his exotic appeal.

Omai spent two years in England during which time he

was the darling of polite society, celebrated in literature,

studied for science, and even presented to King George

III and Queen Charlotte at Kew. Unlike other men and

women taken from the South Pacific to England, Omai did

not fall prey to Western disease and was returned to Tahiti

on Cook’s third and fateful voyage to the Pacific. Omai

carried home with him an array of European trappings

including weapons, crockery, animals and clothing.

Deborah HillGordon Darling Graduate InternAustralian Prints and Drawings

William Hodges Omai

print after William Hodges engraver James CaldwellOmai 1777 engraving National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


new acquisition International Photography

In 1882 Canadian theatrical agent Robert A Cunningham

came to Queensland to secure ‘wild’ Aboriginal people

as performers for touring in America and Europe in

PT Barnum’s show, ‘Ethnological Congress of Strange and

Savage Tribes’. Six of the nine troupe members ‘recruited’

were from separate communities on Palm Island and

three from Hinchinbrook Island. They did not all speak

the same traditional languages. Only two spoke some

English, and these were used to assert Cunningham’s

claims that they were not coerced. Their performance in

Barnum’s Congress began in 1883 and in the following

year two members of the troupe, Tambo and Wangong,

had died. Cunningham left Barnum in 1884 and began a

long tour across Europe despite the deaths of Bob, Toby

senior, Sussy and Jimmy in 1885. Only Jenny, her son

Toby and Billy returned to Australia in 1888. Their full and

extraordinary story has been told by the Australian writer

and anthropologist Roslyn Poignant in her 2004 book

Professional savages: captive lives and western spectacle.

Cunningham knew nothing of Aboriginal culture,

so the members must have worked together as a group

RA Cunningham’s Australian Aboriginal international touring company

[attributed to] William Robinson,

photographer H Negretti & Zambra printers and publishers

Members of RA Cunningham’s Australian

Aboriginal international touring company,

(left to right): Jenny, Toby her son, her husband

Toby, Billy, Bob, Jimmy and Sussy (Crystal Palace,

London, April 1884) albumen silver carte de visite

on Negretti & Zambra yellow mount


to develop a crowd-pleasing repertoire of dances,

songs, boomerang throwing and mock fights in stage

costumes (as they deeply resented requests to be

photographed naked). Cunningham soon realised the

value of professional photography, and sales of images

became a feature of all the European venues. Relatively

few copies of the tour images are known to survive.

Cunningham was undeterred by the death of the

majority of his first troupe and returned to recruit a

second group in 1892 in preparation for the living

ethnological displays planned for the 1893 World’s

Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The Gallery has also

recently acquired photographs of troupe members from

‘Meston’s Wild Australia’, which performed in Brisbane,

Sydney and Melbourne in 1892–93. This company was

established by the Queensland journalist Archibald

Meston who had formerly assisted Cunningham.

Gael NewtonSenior Curator, Photography


German-born photographer JW Lindt made his reputation

in the 1870s–1880s for his studio tableaux portraits

of Aboriginal people made in Grafton in 1872, and

continued to market these images until his death in

1926. Coontajandra and Sanginguble, the two sitters in

his 1893 portrait, were Workii clan members from the

Mount Isa region. They were photographed, possibly

in Sydney in late 1892 but more likely in Melbourne

in January 1893, as members of ‘The Wild Australia

Show’. This event was presented in Brisbane, Sydney and

Melbourne by Archibald Meston, a Queensland journalist

who later became the first Protector of Aborigines in

Queensland. He hoped to tour the company to the

1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago whose

organisers had called for living ethnographic displays.

Meston’s partner in the venture was Harry Brabazon

Purcell, a Brisbane-based stock and station agent who

had rounded up the performers for Meston from across

North Queensland and Central Australia. Purcell delivered

lectures in Melbourne in 1893, showing his considerable

ethnographic knowledge of the central Australian

language groups. The gouges and gashes shown on

Coontajandra’s arm and back, for example, were explained

as evidence of a ritual fighting practice – not traditional

initiation and scarification. Meston was, however, also a

considerable bushman and expert in Aboriginal languages

and culture. He was adept at boomerang throwing too.

Throughout his life, Lindt presented himself as a

gentleman-ethnographer but was more interested in New

Guinea tribes. He never went to Central Australia. The

work is one of his last ethnographic works but significantly

was marketed as ‘art’. It has the tall thin ‘Japanese scroll’

format typical of a style of exhibition print which Lindt

made around 1900. It is modelled on the new Pictorialist

photography and in its elegiac humanism anticipates the

portraiture of Edward S Curtis in America who began his

first Native American Indian portraits in Seattle in 1895.

Gael NewtonSenior Curator, Photography

JW Lindt Coontajandra and Sanginguble, Central Australian Aboriginals

new acquisition Australian Photography

JW Lindt Coontajandra and Sanginguble, Central Australian Aboriginals 1893 carbon photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

RA Cunningham’s Australian Aboriginal international touring company


new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

I like living in the twentieth century – to me the world has

never been more beautiful. I am trying to paint the real

world I live in, as beautifully as I can, with my own eye.

More than any other Australian artist, Jeffrey Smart

has explored the aesthetics of the modern urban

environment. Born in Adelaide in 1921, he has devoted

himself to painting images unique to our time: highways

and airports, factories and road signs. Smart asks us to

look again at such prosaic subjects and to consider the

possibility of discovering a new form of beauty in them.

As with the best of Smart’s paintings, the subject

of Waiting for the train c. 1970 is enigmatic. It features

a small group of men, women and children on a

railway platform, evoking a single moment captured

and rendered timeless. Smart’s passion for geometric

forms and artificial colours is evident in the precise

depiction of the man-made elements in the work: the

sign, platform, mesh fence, railing and the buildings.

Jeffrey Smart Waiting for the train

These are in stark contrast to the painterly and dramatic

sky, which is threatening rain. Smart considers such

skies to be an important formal element within his

paintings: ‘Did you ever notice that Titian’s skies are

dark? I need a dark sky for the composition, because

pale blue at the top of a frame looks nothing.’

There has been a remarkable consistency in Smart’s

paintings since the 1960s, and the artist repeatedly

employs a basic repertoire of subjects and compositional

devices in his works. This allows him to concentrate on

what he considers the most important aspect of his

work. He has said: ‘The subject matter is only the hinge

that opens the door, the hook on which one hangs the

coat. My only concern is putting the right shapes in

the right colours in the right places. My main concern

always is the geometry, the structure of the painting.’

Elena TaylorCurator, Australian Painting and Sculpture

Jeffrey Smart Waiting for the train c. 1970

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Gift of Alcoa World Alumina Australia 2005



new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Fred Williams is widely regarded as Australia’s finest

landscape painter of the twentieth century. His

distinctive works have changed the way in which we

perceive the unique topography and vegetation of this

country. In his paintings and gouaches of the Australian

bush Williams devised his own formal language of

mark-making and spatial configuration, combining

his interest in contemporary abstraction with his

enduring concern to express the essence of place.

Born in Melbourne in 1927, Williams studied at the

National Gallery of Victoria School and at the George

Bell Art School in Melbourne. In 1951 he left for London

where he continued his studies at the Chelsea College

of Art and the Central Art School. On his return in

1956, the landscape became his artistic preoccupation

and Williams began making frequent painting trips

to the countryside around Melbourne, later also

travelling further afield to remote parts of Australia.

Fred Williams Landscape

Fred Williams Landscape 1977 synthetic polymer paint on paper Gift of Alcoa World Alumina Australia 2005 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Landscape 1977 was most likely painted on location

at Cavan, a historic property on the Murrumbidgee River

near Yass, NSW, during a painting trip in August of that

year. It is a characteristic example of Williams’s later

works. The composition, divided into horizontal bands,

emphasises the essential flatness of the landscape and the

vast expanse of the sky above. The predominantly earth

colours of the landscape are enlivened by vivid streaks

and dabs of crimson and teal green, the highly textured

earth contrasting with the smooth and empty sky.

Painted in the same year as his solo exhibition

of gouaches ‘Australian Landscape’ at New York’s

Museum of Modern Art, the generic title Landscape

1977 reflects Williams’s interest at this time in not only

describing the particulars of place, but in capturing

the essential nature of the Australian landscape.

Elena TaylorCurator, Australian Painting and Sculpture


Lola Ryan is from the Dharawal/Eora people and lived in

the La Perouse Aboriginal community in Sydney until her

death in 2003. She was a senior artist who, along with

her sister Mavis Longbottom, had been making shell work

since the 1930s. This tradition dates back to the late 1880s

and was a form of income for the displaced community,

which had relocated from Circular Quay in the early 1800s.

The La Perouse women would use discarded

cardboard as a foundation for their work and use a

fabric base, glitter and sometimes lace in conjunction

with small bivalve shells (two halves) and some mollusc

shells to cover the forms. The combination of different

shell shapes, colours and textures enabled Ryan to create

striking patterns in deliberate, repetitive and contrasting

designs that reflect the shape of the object. She used

the templates and the glue recipe developed by her

father – flour and water mixed with powdered oyster

shells – because, as she told collector Peter Fay, ‘we

didn’t always have araldite’. Mavis Longbottom stated:

Lola Ryan’s Harbour Bridges

new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

I suppose I’d be 16 when I started making shell work.

I got started because there was money in it and in those

Depression years every little counted. I reckon that you

have to be a bit artistic to do shell work, if not I don’t

think you could make it: to match all your shells and get

the colour into it …. The only place you can see my and

Lola’s shell work at the moment is in the Powerhouse

Museum, which has a display of La Perouse history.

Now and again somebody will come along and ask

us to make something like a box or a Sydney Harbour

Bridge for Mother’s Day or birthdays … Other than that

we don’t go out of our way trying to make a sale.

A selection of Lola Ryan’s Harbour Bridges

were featured in the National Gallery of Australia’s

travelling exhibition Home sweet home: works

from the Peter Fay collection and were donated

to the Gallery by Peter Fay in 2005.

Tina BaumCurator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Lola Ryan Dharawal/Eora people, La Perouse communityA selection of Harbour

Bridges 2000 shells, mixed media on cardboard

(front, right and back)Donated by Peter Fay 2005

and (far left) proposed acquisition in memory of Dr

Joan Kerr (1938–2004) National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra


Whether adorning the neck or presented as a collection of

sculptural objects, the geometrical elegance of Hermann

Jünger’s Necklace is strikingly effective. This necklace is

one of a number produced by Jünger that were designed

to give the wearer the opportunity to reconfigure the

work by adding or subtracting some of its elements.

These kits, comprising a gold neck ring and a collection of

pendants to thread onto it, fit into a customised wooden

box meant for open display when the jewellery is not

being worn. The pendants are made of stone and metal,

referencing both the man-made and the natural worlds,

their geometric shapes taken from Euclidean geometry.

This work bridges the space between abstraction and

nature, with the hard, shiny character of the metal

pendants contrasting with the softer, imperfect surfaces

of the granite and lapis lazuli shapes. The heaviness of the

Hermann Jünger Necklace

new acquisition International Decorative Arts

Hermann Jünger Necklace 2005 gold, silver, lapis lazuli Gift of Helen W Drutt English, Philadelphia, through the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

stone elements is alleviated by the beautifully variegated

character of these natural materials, while the play of

light on the metal surfaces offsets their severe outlines.

Born in Hanau, Germany, in 1928, Jünger

taught goldsmithing at the Akademie der Bildenden

Künste in Munich from 1972. On his death early in

2005, he left a legacy as an important inspiration

and mentor to many contemporary jewellers, among

them a number of Australians.

This work is a recent gift to the National Gallery

of Australia from the Philadelphia jewellery scholar and

collector, Helen W Drutt English, a passionate advocate

of the craft and a long-time friend of Hermann Jünger.

Sarah EdgeCuratorial Assistant, Decorative Arts and Design


‘If you have all of my multiples, then you have me entirely’,

said Joseph Beuys. For the German sculptor, performance

artist, teacher, activist and self-styled shaman, multiples

are physical vehicles for his ideas. They mark his opposition

to panel painting and traditional sculpture as autonomous

genres, while allowing distribution of his work to a

broader audience. Sometimes Beuys’s multiples are relics

from a performance or action, in other cases they are

elaborately planned objects derived from earlier works.

Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee comprises

a stack of felt squares hollowed at the centre to house

an audio cassette. The object is reminiscent of Beuys’s

larger sculptures in which stacks of felt are juxtaposed

with sheets of copper or iron. They suggest the energy

needed to be stored, transmitted or received in order

to effect change in society. The artist’s use of felt is

usually traced to the wartime story of his aeroplane

crash in the Crimea: to heal and warm his body, his

Tartar rescuers rubbed him with fat and wrapped him

in felt. A combination of matted, compressed animal

Joseph Beuys Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee

new acquisition International Painting and Sculpture

Joseph Beuys Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee, Nee,

Nee [Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No, No, No, No] 1969

felt squares, 32-minute audiotape

no. 45 from an edition of 100 Gift of Dr K David G Edwards National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra © Joseph Beuys, Licensed

by Bild-Kunst and VISCOPY, Australia

fur – sometimes human hair – with wool, cotton or other

fabrics, the insulating properties of felt are remarkable.

When opened, the object recalls a ‘book safe’ where

pages are cut out to hide an item, whether firearm,

illicit substance or banned text. This prompts questions

of the contents: is this tape and the voices recorded on

it being protected, concealed or censored? The soundtrack

described as ‘granny gossip’, co-narrated by Beuys’s

long-time supporters Christian and Johannes Stüttgen,

was recorded at the Staatliche Kunstakademie,

Düsseldorf, in December 1968. It was published

by Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, Milan.

This work, and another generous gift from the David

and Margery Edwards New York Art Collection, Painting

version 1–90 1976, join Beuys’s major installation Stripes

from the house of the shaman 1962–72 1980 and several

other multiples, artist’s books and a film in the collection.

Lucina WardCurator, International Painting and Sculpture

travelling exhibitions autumn 2006

No ordinary place: the art of David Malangi Supported by Principal Sponsor Newmont Australia Ltd, a proud partner of Reconciliation Australia. Also supported by the Indigenous Arts Strategy, Northern Territory Government, the Seven Network, Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia. The project has been developed in association with Bula’bula Arts, Ramingining.

A celebration of the art and life of David Malangi Daymirringu, whose mortuary rites story bark painting appeared on the Australian one dollar note in 1966, this exhibition shows the extensive repertoire of this brilliant and innovative master painter to promote a broader perception and enjoyment of his work. nga.gov.au/Malangi

Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, WA 7 April – 4 June 2006

Place made: Australian Print Workshop Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia

This exhibition is a snapshot of the involvement of Australian artists in the production of prints at the Australian Print Workshop between 1981 and 2002. Reflecting a broad range of stylistic, technical and political concerns, the prints are selected from an archive of 3,500 works acquired by the National Gallery of Australia in 2002 through the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund. nga.gov.au/Placemade

Albury Regional Art Gallery, Albury, NSW 3 February – 26 March 2006

Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Vic. 7 April – 4 June 2006

Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition Proudly sponsored by Marsh

One of Australia’s most important post-impressionists, Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) was a brilliant colourist and played a vital role in the development of modernism in Australia. This exhibition draws upon a diversity of themes including intimate portraits, iconic images of Sydney Harbour Bridge, landscapes and flower paintings, religious and war images, ballet and theatre performances and the vibrant, shimmering interiors of her home Cossington. nga.gov.au/CossingtonSmith

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld 18 February – 01 May 2006

Tim Maguire Hollyhocks 1991 (detail) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Australian Print Workshop Archive 2, purchased with the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002

David Malangi Daymirringu Luku (foot) 1994 (detail) Private collection, Canberra © David Malangi Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

Grace Cossington Smith The lacquer room 1935–36 (detail) oil on paperboard on plywood Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW Photo: Christopher Snee for AGNSW

National Sculpture Prize and exhibition 2005 A partnership with Macquarie Bank

The National Sculpture Prize is a partnership between the National Gallery of Australia and Macquarie Bank to support and promote Australian sculpture. It is one of the most generous prizes for contemporary art in Australia, with a non-acquisitive prize of $50,000 awarded to the winning artist. The travelling component of the exhibition will feature a selection of the finalists’ work. nga.gov.au/SculpturePrize05

Dell Gallery @ Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Qld 18 February – 16 April 1006

Moist: Australian watercolours Moist is a rare glimpse into the National Gallery of Australia’s extraordinary collection of Australian watercolours. The title, Moist, refers to the liquid nature of the medium and an implied atmospheric, physical or emotional state of being. The watercolours in Moist demonstrate how Australian artists have created visual representations of such states, presenting works that are highly figurative alongside images of a more abstract emotional intensity. nga.gov.au/Moist

Araluen Galleries, Alice Springs Cultural Precinct, Alice Springs, NT 24 March – 7 May 2006

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions The 1888 Melbourne Cup and three suitcase kits thematically present a selection of art and design objects for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres that may be borrowed free-of-charge. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn

Red case: myths and rituals Yellow case: form, space and design Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Goulburn, NSW 1 February – 26 March 2006

Australian Embassy, Washington DC 10 April – 25 June 2006

Blue case: technology Bundaberg Arts Centre, Bundaberg, Qld 1 February – 26 March 2006

Australian Embassy, Washington DC 10 April – 25 June 2006

The 1888 Melbourne Cup Australian Embassy, Washington DC 10 April – 25 June 2006

Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change. Please contact the Gallery before your visit. For more information please contact (02) 6240 6556 or email [email protected].

Glen Clarke American crater near Hanoi #2 2005 (detail) Vietnamese and US currency, cotton thread, wood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Seated Ganesha Sri Lanka 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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


The 1888 Melbourne Cup (detail) The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kenneth Macqueen Summer sky c. 1935 (detail) watercolour and pencil on paper Purchased 1965 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © The Macqueen family


collection focus

Yvonne Koolmatrie is acknowledged as one of the

finest weavers in contemporary Indigenous visual art

practice. From the Ngarrindjeri nation, and based in her

traditional country at Gerard, in the Riverland of South

Australia, Koolmatrie has initiated a revival of traditional

Ngarrindjeri weaving practices. The Ngarrindjeri people

lived along the Murray River, hence the emphasis on

traps made for catching food from the river. Although

Koolmatrie’s weaving uses customary methods and forms

(e.g. baskets, eel and fish traps) Yvonne has pushed her

weaving beyond the commonly perceived definitions of

‘craft’ as an ancient practice of utilitarian form. Ancient

techniques are now used to create contemporary

sculptural forms, intended for exhibition in art galleries

and museums, rather than functional objects.

Burial mat 2003 is constructed in the form of a

mat, curved around and stitched together in the front.

The bones of the deceased were parcelled together,

painted with ochres and wrapped in paperbark,

then placed inside the woven burial mat, which

was finally placed upright in the fork of a tree.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

In March 2006 a number of recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art acquisitions will go on display. Highlights include a diversity of works and media by renowned artists from South Australia, East Kimberley, Far North Queensland, Victoria and the Torres Strait. Permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection displays draw from nearly 6,000 works and major changeovers are installed every six months, with minor changeovers for works on paper occurring every three months.

Yvonne Koolmatrie Ngarrindjeri people

Burial mat 2003 woven sedge grass



Rosella Namok Ungkum (Aangkum) people Old girls … yarn for us young girls ... about country and family 2004 synthetic polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

At only 26 years of age Rosella Namok is a rising young

star on the national contemporary art scene and her work

is sought by public institutions and private collectors alike.

From the Aangkum people of Lockhart River, Far North

Queensland, Namok first gained significant notice for

her distinctive large-scale paintings in the 2000 Adelaide

Biennial of Australian Art, Beyond the pale: contemporary

Indigenous art, held at the Art Gallery of South Australia

for the 2000 Telstra Adelaide Festival of the Arts.

Namok’s technique involves painting with her fingers,

a method derived from the sand-drawing style taught

to her by her grandmother. This process is important in

understanding the relationship between the painting’s

very tactile and sensual surface and the painting’s subject

matter. Her paintings make symbolic use of ovals and

rectangles, and are often about family relationships

and her country’s landscape and weather patterns.

The artist’s statement for Old girls ... yarn for us young

girls ... about country and family 2004 is:

From before time … Kuuku Ya’u … Lockhart River

sandbeach people … talk in the sand. Mission came …

teachers showed people how to draw … today kids learn

to write … but we still talk in the sand. Those old girls …

they yarn for us … they remember before time … they

were small girls … grandmothers for them talk in the sand

for them. When I was small … I remember ‘Queen’ …

grandmother for me … remember she yarned to me …

drew in the sand for me … about before time. Old girls

yarn … specially when they make necklaces or weaving …

always yarn about when they were young. One old lady

will draw in the sand … they will yarn about grass and

Puunya … show you where to walk … go find things.


George Mung Mung (c. 1920 – 1991), a Gija/Kija

visual artist, was a great cultural leader, artist and

teacher at Warmun community [Turkey Creek], East

Kimberley in Western Australia. A respected elder, Mung

Mung began painting in the early 1980s. Using ochres

and natural gum binders, he painted the inseparable

relationship between land and life. Many of his works

embody both Gija/Kija and Christian beliefs. In the

1970s he set up the Ngalangangpum bicultural Christian

school with his friend, fellow artist and elder, Hector

Jandany. Both men taught the stories and songs of their

country to the children in the school, using paintings

as an educational tool. Mung Mung won the 1990

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award

(paintings in introduced media) for Tarrajayan Country.

Texas Country 1985 by Mung Mung is a fascinating

painting: a mix of the mid-1980s Warmun school of

painting, with his own representation of the dark brown

ochre rock formations outlined in white dotting on board.

This painting is similar in style to the watercolour paintings

by Kimberley Wunambal artist Wattie Karruwara (c.

1910 – 1983) that were on display for a major Aboriginal

art auction in 2002. This is particularly evident in the

portrayal of the crocodile figure. The bird in the top

right-hand corner is typically Warmun painting ‘school’.

It is a beautiful example of dual-style painting, in much

the same manner as the late Arrernte artist, Wenten

Rubuntja (c. 1923 – 2005), painted in both the Western

Desert ‘dot’ style and Hermannsburg watercolour style.

Lee Darroch, from the Yorta Yorta nation, and

Vicki Couzens, from the Kirrae/Wurrong nations,

have been integral in reviving cultural awareness of

Victorian Indigenous material culture, particularly in

relation to the customary practices involving possum-

skin cloaks. Both artists have worked with the

Australian Print Workshop, in Melbourne, Victoria,

which is where these works on paper were created.

Darroch’s print Possum skin cloak, circa 2000, is

based on historical works held in the collection of

Museum Victoria and, like Koolmatrie accessing her

people’s cultural heritage in South Australia, Darroch

and Couzens have accessed historical collections holding

their ancestors’ cultural heritage in order to generate

greater understanding in the broader community about

Indigenous art-making in the southeast region of Australia.

Within Victorian Aboriginal clans possum-skin cloaks

were owned by every member of a group: their utilitarian

purpose was to keep the wearer warm and for use as

a blanket or bedding. Intricate designs and markings

incised into the underside of each cloak designated

the specific clan designs of the wearer, in much the

same manner as ceremonial body painting marks.

George Mung Mung Gija/Kija people,

Jambin sub-sectionTexas Country 1985

natural pigments, binders, pencil, crayon on plywood



Dennis Nona is from the Kal-lagaw-ya/Boigu

language group from Badu Island in the Torres Strait

and currently lives in Brisbane where he is furthering

his artistic studies. Nona is a highly expressive

printmaker, drawing on the elaborate carving of

his people, which he was taught as a young boy,

and his work is held in numerous national and

international collections. Inspired by the coastal life

of his people and his family Nona has stated:

As a young boy I was taught the traditional craft of

wood carving, which, along with my cultural heritage,

learnt through story telling and ceremonies, helped

me to develop my linocut skills that feature intricate

decorative style based on the rich narrative legends of

the Torres Strait Islander people. The symbols I use of

sea creatures, masks and designs are from our traditional

masks, artefacts and my concept-figured designs.

The stunning hand-coloured linocuts Sesserae 2004–05

and Awai Yithuyil 2004 depict customary stories specific

to Badu Island which is part of the west-central group of

the Torres Strait Islands. Sesserae is the name of a young

man of Tulu who went fishing every morning at low tide,

and it is also the title of Nona’s solo exhibition, curated

by the Dell Gallery, Queensland University, in 2005. The

stories for both works are as complex as the images.

Brenda L CroftSenior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Dennis Nona Kal-lagaw-ya/Boigu peopleSesserae (Badu Island Story) 2004–05 linocut National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Lee J Darroch Yorta Yorta people Possum skin cloak circa 2000 2000 etching on paper Australian Print Workshop Archive 2, purchased with the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

a


Frederick McCubbin completed Afterglow in 1912.

A colour illustration of the work published in a monograph

by the Lothian Book Company, Melbourne, in 1916

shows a late afternoon scene with a pearlescent sky

and the setting sun shining through the trees as bathers

bask in its warmth. Ninety years later the painting

appeared dramatically different. The colours were

muted, muddied and dull, the surface was covered

with a thick, treacly varnish that obscured the vigorous

brushwork characteristic of the artist’s late works, and

the trees on the left-hand side had become a dark,

opaque block. More obvious changes included an

extensive section of raised repair and poorly matched

retouching covering a large proportion of the foliage

Restoring the glow to Afterglow

on the left-hand side. This was matched on the reverse

with a considerable patch of painted canvas stuck

over the original canvas, masking any real evidence

of the actual extent of the damage. There were also

several smaller poorly executed repairs with retouching

over the original paint, plus significant additions by a

restorer to mask the changes wrought by the repairs.

Although the painting entered the national collection

in 1970, very little conservation work had been carried out

since then. What had been done was largely confined to

strengthening the weak original tacking margins to restore

more tension to the support. Closer investigation indicated

that the work had been previously cleaned and that the

present varnish layer comprised multiple applications with

conservation

After treatment Frederick McCubbin

Afterglow 1912 oil on canvas



(top left) Before treatment

(top right) During varnish removal, right hand side cleaned and part of the fill revealed on left-hand side

retouching and overpainting below, between and on top

of the layers. The foreground and the trees on the left-

hand side had been given an overall tone, presumably to

make the repaired areas less obvious. Testing with the

usual range of solvents used to remove varnish layers

yielded little success; it was possible to swell the varnish

but removal was a slow and patchy process. Experiments

with gelled solvent systems were more effective. The

process remained slow but the results were dramatic.

Subsequent analysis by FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-

red) micro-spectroscopy, carried out at the Conservation

Department of the Art Gallery of New South Wales,

showed that the varnish was a material more typically

associated with sealing floors than enhancing paintings.

On removal of the varnish most of the overpaint also

came away. This revealed the colours in a truer light and,

even at this stage, the painting bore more resemblance

to the 1916 illustration. The areas of fill were carefully

scraped away and it was discovered that the tear,

although quite large, had not resulted in complete loss

and there were in fact significant amounts of the artist’s

original paint layer still intact under the fill. The remnants

of foliage uncovered in the process showed that the

original tone was lighter, with darkening of the exposed

paint caused by a combination of overpainting during

the previous restoration and the discoloured varnish. The

tear was repaired using a combination of existing old and

new threads. The painting was lightly varnished to give an

even saturation to the surface and areas of damage were

re-integrated with new fills and localised retouching.

The painting now awaits a new frame to match its

revived ‘glow’. In the meantime we can once again

appreciate McCubbin’s masterly handling of paint in all

of its true vibrancy.

David WisePaintings Conservator

a


kenneth tyler collection

Kenneth Tyler at the National Gallery of Australia

Following is an excerpt from Sasha Grishin’s speech for the dinner to thank Kenneth Tyler after he launched the exhibition Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler on 24 November 2005.

a

(top left, top right and middle right)

The Kenneth Tyler masterclass at Megalo Access Arts

(middle left) Kenneth Tyler with James Mollison AO

at the opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler

(bottom left) Professor Sasha Grishin AM with

Alan and Anne Rubenstein at the opening of Against

the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler

(bottom right) The opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler

Thirty-two years ago Ken Tyler, who was then based

in Los Angeles, decided to relocate from the West Coast

to New York. He was cash-strapped and was preparing

to sell his collection of printer’s proofs – several hundred

prints in number. The Australian National Gallery under

its founding director, James Mollison, had gained a

reputation for bold purchases of major collections of

international prints, such as the Felix Man Archive, so

with the assistance of a number of people, within several

months, on Australia Day 1974, over 600 Tyler prints,

proofs and drawings arrived in Canberra. Through an

act of chance and serendipity this was the beginnings

of a continuous collaboration between Ken Tyler

and what is now the National Gallery of Australia, a

collaboration which has continued until the present day.

Thanks to this collaboration we now have an

internationally significant collection of American and

European prints from the 1960s through to the present

day, covering some of the biggest names in American

art from Albers to Warhol: including Hockney, Kelly,

Kitaj, Lichtenstein, Motherwell, Noland, Oldenburg,

Rauschenberg, Stella and many, many others. It is a

collection of great depth from which the Gallery has

managed to stage about a dozen significant exhibitions,

possibly the most memorable of which have been Pat

Gilmour’s Ken Tyler: printer extraordinary 1985,Jane

Kinsman’s Big Americans 2002, and now Jaklyn

Babington’s Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen

Frankenthaler 2005. There is certainly scope in the

collection for many more such major exhibitions.

Ken Tyler is an unusual artist–printer and a very

unusual person. One of his favourite aphorisms comes

from the German poet Goethe: ‘In the realm of ideas,

everything depends on enthusiasm. In the real world, all

rests on perseverance.’ Some of you may remember David

Hockney telling us a few years ago, that whatever he

would ask of Tyler – the answer was always the same – yes

it can be done. Whereas in an earlier generation, Fernand

Mourlot as a master printer changed our understanding of

printmaking, Tyler as an artist collaborator has redefined

the art of printmaking for our generation. While a Ken

Tyler print has no single stylistic morphology, it does carry

the stamp of a new philosophy of printmaking – Tyler

prints can be big, technically adventurous, but what

is more important, they are visually exciting. Anyone

who looks at Helen Frankenthaler’s Madame Butterfly

colour woodcut and is not excited by it must have their

aesthetic receptors atrophied. For this transformation in

printmaking we are profoundly grateful to Ken Tyler.

What I have learnt is that Ken Tyler is also a person

who has a great generosity. This is not only in reference

to his generosity as a benefactor who for over thirty

years has constantly augmented the National Gallery of

Australia’s archive of international prints, or his funding

of the Tyler Print Fellowship, Tyler Print Internship and

the Kenneth Tyler Collection website, but, and dare I

say more significantly, it is his generosity of spirit and

intellect. So much of our public life is dominated by

mean spiritedness and in Tyler we have a person who is

totally committed to art and to printmaking, and who in

an intelligent and generous manner is promoting both

of these. Ken Tyler is a person who has devoted his life

to printmaking and who has set himself a life mission to

share this accumulated knowledge, to pass on the torch,

and to do it here at the National Gallery of Australia.

Professor Sasha Grishin is Head of Art History at the Australian National University, Canberra

Further information on the Kenneth Tyler Collection is at nga.gov.au/InternationalPrints/Tyler. On his visit to Canberra in November 2005, Kenneth Tyler also presented a master class and demonstration class at Megalo Access Arts


tr ibute

Jimmy Wululu (1936–2005)

Jimmy Wululu was a proud Yirritja man of the

Gupapuyngu people. In mourning he is known as

Bulany Daygurrgurr, in reference to his skin name

and clan group. He was born in 1936 at Mangbirri in

central Arnhem Land. The Gupapuyngu homelands

are around Djiliwirri country near Gapuwiyak in north-

east Arnhem Land but many people, like Wululu, live

in central Arnhem Land through family associations,

for it is their mother’s or grandmother’s land. Wululu

was of the freshwater Gupapuyngu people and his

group can be classified according to their natural

environment as Gulunbuy – from the waterholes. His

subjects in painting and sculpture, the creatures and

ancestors who inhabit those waterholes, reflect these

associations. While living mostly in the communities of

Milingimbi, Ngangalala and Ramingining, Wululu would

maintain a strong physical and spiritual connection to

significant Gupapuyngu ancestral sites, through attending

ceremonies, family events and visits to country.

On Milingimbi Island at the Methodist Mission (est.

1923) Wululu attended school and worked at various jobs

there including tending pigs, milking cows, clearing bush

for the garden and airport and building mud brick houses.

Those years as a young adult were also spent travelling

across the region attending his own and peers’ initiation

ceremonies at bush camps on the mainland. After the

Second World War Wululu also attended school in

Darwin at Bagot Reserve and participated in ceremonies,

having ‘foot walked’ there from central Arnhem Land.

Living in a single men’s camp on Milingimbi, Wululu

was taught to paint by his brother and father. He is one

of the last of the generation of central Arnhem Land

painters who hail from the mission era. Like many Yolngu,

when the homelands movement gained momentum

in the 1970s he moved to the newly established

communities of Ngangalala and Ramingining on the

mainland. Wululu was one of the key artists working

out of Ramingining Arts and Crafts from this time and

later, in the 1990s, worked with Bula’bula Arts.

Wululu’s output was impressive. By the 1980s, he

was an established and practised painter at the height

of his powers. He held a position of cultural authority

within his clan and had a significant international

profile as an artist. In 1988, Wululu travelled to New

York to attend the opening of the major exhibition

Jimmy Wululu with Bongu (waterhole) sand sculpture

at the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 1992

Photo: The Canberra TImes


Dreamings: the art of Aboriginal Australia at the Asia

Society Galleries. Wululu’s work seemed as ‘at home’

in Indigenous and non-Indigenous group exhibitions.

His work was selected for inclusion in numerous

exhibitions, including Magiciens de la terre, Centre

Georges Pompidou, Paris (1989), l’ete Australien à

Montpellier, Montpellier, France (1990); Paintings and

sculptures from Ramingining, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra

(1992); Aratjara: art of the first Australians, Düsseldorf,

London, Denmark (1993–94); Tyerabarrbowaryaou 2,

Havana, Cuba (1994); Stories, Hannover, Germany (1995)

and The native born: objects and representations from

Ramingining, Arnhem Land, Museum of Contemporary

Art, Sydney (1996). As well, Wululu exhibited regularly

in commercial galleries, community spaces, biennales

and national Aboriginal art awards. He is represented

in all major public and private collections in Australia

and numerous art collections internationally.

At the National Gallery of Australia Wululu’s work

was included in the exhibitions Aboriginal art: the

continuing tradition (1989), Flash pictures (1991), as

well as in the touring of The Aboriginal Memorial to

Switzerland, Germany and Russia. The Gallery holds

several bark paintings acquired over some years, which

focus on the subject of honey. The champion in this

group is the sublime Niwuda, Yirritja native honey

1986. It is in such works that Wululu’s excellence as

a painter comes to the fore. He was fastidious in his

attention to detail and meticulous application of paint.

Without doubt, Wululu’s contribution of a group of

hollow log coffins to The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88 is

his eulogy. His unmistakable stand of thirteen logs depicts

the Yirritja ancestors: Burala the darter, Minhala the long-

necked tortoise and Wuluwarri the catfish. It was their

travels from Gupapuyngu country further east, westward,

that link Yirritja land and people across the area. The

predominant design on the logs is the fine white hatching

which represents the bones of the eel-tailed catfish. The

action of Burala, diving into the pool to snatch the young

fish, is a metaphor for the transition from life to death.

Wululu will be remembered as a friendly, cheerful, robust,

driven, witty man, whose infectious humour combined

with a stoic sincerity in all that he did. When Wululu’s

uncle David Malangi died in 1999, Wululu assumed

responsibility for Yathalamarra, his mother’s country, and

moved there with his family for a time. He is now buried

there, next to Malangi. In the last few years of his life,

Wululu struggled with ill-health and moved back into

Ramingining where he was cared for at home by family.

He is survived by a loving extended family including

his wives and children who will carry on the traditions

of the Gupapuyngu Daygurrgurr through painting.

Susan JenkinsFormer Acting Curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

This obituary was written with the assistance of Wululu’s family and in consultation with Bula’bula Arts, Ramingining.

a

Jimmy Wululu Gupapuyngu people, Yarrita Moiety Niwuda-Yirritja Honey natural eucalyptus on bark National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


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Remembering Philippa WinnIn March 2006 Philippa Winn was to celebrate ten years as an educator

at the National Gallery of Australia. Unfortunately Philippa didn’t

reach this significant career milestone as she died on January 3.

During the past decade Philippa inspired thousands of students

and their teachers who visited the Gallery. Philippa’s passion and

enthusiasm for visual art combined with a vibrant and engaging

personality contributed to her success in developing innovative

programs for youth and people with disabilities. She developed

stimulating and enjoyable exhibitions for the Children’s Gallery

such as In the box, Big spooks and Dog. Philippa was integral

to the establishment and ongoing success of Gallery programs

such as the Summer Scholarship, SubURBAN, the Registered Unit

program for Senior Secondary and College students and special

programs such as those for the University of the Third Age.

Philippa’s concern for and love of the environment and all living

creatures was well known, as was her love of family, her three dogs,

and the farm she shared with her husband John. Philippa’s warmth,

energy and sense of the ridiculous made her a great colleague

and friend to us all.

The Education team

1 Robert Foster, Scott Chaseling, Alice Whish and Donald Fortescue at the opening of

Transformations: the language of craft 2 Jukka Pennanen, Touvi Lindholm, Ambassador of

Finland, Agneta Hobin and Robert Bell at the opening of Transformations: the language of craft

3 Tetsuo Fujimoto, Robert Bell and Tsukasa Kotushiwaki at the opening of Transformations: the

language of craft 4 Gretchen Keyworth, Chris Rivkin, Dudley Anderson and Lisa Anderson at

the opening of Transformations: the language of craft 5 Raphy Star, Ann Star and Robert Bell at

the opening of Transformations: the language of craft 6 Lyn Conybeare, Elizabeth Nosworthy

AO and Roslynne Bracher at the farewell to outgoing NGA Chairman Harold Mitchell 7 Incoming

NGA Chairman Rupert Myer AM and Charles Curran AO at the farewell to outgoing NGA

Chairman Harold Mitchell 8 Alice Whish with her work at the opening of Transformations: the

language of craft 9 Lia Cook with her work at the opening of Transformations: the language

of craft 10 Deborah Hart, Philip Bacon AM and Roslyn Packer at the farewell to outgoing

NGA Chairman Harold Mitchell 11 Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler with the Tyler

team at the opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler 12 Christina

Costaridis, Amy Crago, Hannah Gregory and Rob Bastian at the opening of Against the grain:

the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler 13 Marabeth Cohen-Tyler and Kenneth Tyler with curator

Jaklyn Babington at the opening of Against the grain: the woodcuts of Helen Frankenthaler

faces in view

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open seven dayslunch 12.00–2.30 pm weekend brunch 9.30–11.30 amavailable for private eventst: 02 6240 6666

WAR The Prints of Otto Dix

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 17 December 2005 – 30 April 2006Otto Dix Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor [Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack] plate 12 from the portfolio Der Krieg [War] 1924 etching, aquatint

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Otto Dix, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 24 February – 28 May 2006

Principal sponsor Supported by

Organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia

Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia Serat Dewi Ruci 1886 European paper, ink, pigment, gold leaf Presented by the Friends of the Gallery Library in memory of Tina Wentcher, 1982

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

constable • crescent moon • otto dix

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