Category Archive: ART
Nazi Philistines – Arthur Boyd – The Brians
Pyjamas
The Wall Street Journal reports that the art collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, who died on 6/5/14, has been bequeathed to a museum in Bern. The collection included works looted by the Nazis and ‘assayed’ under the stewardship of Gurlitt’s father, Hildebrand: Matisse, Franz Marc, Monet and Renoir (which last perhaps suggests the basic philistine nature of the national socialists). German authorities famously carried out a home invasion of Gurlitt’s Augsburg home in 2012 and confiscated the art as, according to the WSJ, “Gurlitt sat shocked in a corner wearing his pyjamas.” This property was never returned to him but the…
Continue Reading →Islamic Arts
(by J Bloom & S Blair) Despite ongoing conventions, Islamic Art (an extremely wide term, used here for convenience and coherence) flourished beyond the merely decorative or doctrinal. This sumptuous Phaidon edition is a good entrée to the flowers of the various Muslim empires in history.
Continue Reading →The Embarrassment of Riches
(Simon Schama) There’s the Amsterdam dutch And the Zaandam dutch And the Rotterdam dutch And the God-damn dutch… However, despite their slightly dodgy record in slave driving, tulip speculating, trade finance and robust colonization, this admiring and admirably crammed history of culture in the Dutch Golden Age is a delight. The ‘Burgemeester van Delft’ in Jan Steen’s painting on the cover is a dead ringer for Jeffrey Jones (Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
Continue Reading →Blue Collar & Cups
Hello again and thank you for joining me for this fourth edition of Lesley’s blog, “Annabel Lee”. The powers that be have declared that the colour of Thursday is blue. Accordingly I shall show you a blue beaded, appliqued and embroidered wristlet which I am working on. I am deliberating on how to do the actual lacy cuff bit. A detail of the wristlet-so-far is shown here with some beaded teapot & cup ornaments. I just cannot decide what to use for the actual lacy cuff bit of the wristlet. My sewing assistant and I have hauled out the masses of…
Continue Reading →The Turner Exhibition
(2013)* The Tate’s collection of works by J W M Turner came to Adelaide. Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway 1844 with its ludicrous train and hare is not in this collection, thank god, the picture that doubtless drove Dali, the consummate draftsman, to say “The worst painter in the world, from every point of view, without the foggiest hesitation or any possible doubt, is named Turner.” This is harsh, considering JMW’s Lorrain-inspired Carthage paintings and some of the more inspired proto-impressionist swishes of colour but really, he never could draw and his vivid whites, yellows and blacks…
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