Category Archive: ART
‘Nothing Better than the First Attempt’: Cabaret Life Drawing
(Cabaret Life Drawing, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 11 June 2022) A very pleasant hour passed in the Cabaret Festival’s Spiegeltent on the Festival Centre Plaza. This was a life drawing session (not really a lesson, more like a brief taste with a light touch). The assembled throng, their creative impulses enlivened by a glass of wine and some piano and bass versions of songs such as Puttin’ on the Ritz, Tea for Two and All of Me, attempted to depict model Letitia, striking various classy poses in an elegant gown (see below). It was conducted by Adelaide Central School of Art…
Continue Reading →Queensland Art Gallery: The Good
November 2021 After a few nasty snickers concerning the quaint homage to the Louvre (below), we entered the Gallery after finally mastering the Queensland QR codes. It’s full of good stuff. We have traversed the pitiful pieces: but thankfully there was plenty of fine art to be found here. Apart from the sublime Dürer woodcuts, and Artur Loureiro’s Study for “The spirit of the new moon” (1888)(see main image) inspired by the Luciads by Camoens, there were: A Madonna and child encircled by flowers and fruit (c. 1615), attributed to Andries Danielsz: “Wisdom supporting Liberty” by Jules Dalou (1889): No…
Continue Reading →Gallery of Modern Art
Brisbane, November 2021 TVC ploughed through the liquid heat, on Southbank along Gray Street, only to be told that most of the Gallery of Modern Art (that we’d been dreading anyway) was closed for some weeks to prepare a new exhibition based on the effects on art of colonization of Japan and Malaysia (we were tempted to ask the guard if any good effects might be featured – a depiction, say, of Madame Butterfly, or pieces of Chinese porcelain) but we let it drop. We liked Karam Shrestha’s “unhearing” (2020), (above), reminiscent of a Da Vinci sketch. There were some…
Continue Reading →Queensland Art Gallery – The Ugly
November 2021 In liquid heat TVC hit the street and made their way to the Art Array. We are pleased to report there is much good to be found here (of which more in a forthcoming post) but there is also a selection of work that can be kindly called comic (except by Queensland taxpayers). A sample below: The above work, signed by Ian Di-Jirus, c/- ‘The Lucky Country’, invites the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China to enter into a Treaty. But before treaties, first we have to have a war… One recalls Peter Garrett‘s comment: “[much] contemporary…
Continue Reading →This Thing Has No Heart
Statue of Lady Diana, Kensington Palace, England, unveiled 1 July, 2021 Move over, Robert Jacobsen: the title of Worst Sculptor in the World now passes to Ian Rank-Broadley, whose repulsive statue of Diana Spencer is scaring people. Stiff, awkward, vapid, completely lustreless, uncomfortably masculine and soapy in texture, the hulking, virtually generic Princess stands, surrounded by three kiddies, one lurking behind her recalling the artful dodger. She is wearing something from a discount couturière and has the casual indifference of smooth bronze. It is kitsch enough to be by Jeff Koons. Great sculpture entails inserting heart into stone or metal:…
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