sir stanley spencer

Recent content on Elsewhere by Graham Reid tagged as sir stanley spencer.

MOHOLY-NAGY AND THE BAUHAUS, PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION ESSAY (2003)

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy would argue that our eyesight was defective and limited. He would cite the pioneering 19th-century German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, who told his students if an optician made a human eye and brought it to him he would say, "This is a clumsy piece of work".The punchline for Moholy-Nagy would be that we have a...

culturalelsewhere/1683/moholy-nagy-and-the-bauhaus-photography-exhibition-essay-2003/

RHONA HASZARD: Portrait of the artist as a young woman (2004)

Popular culture loves nothing so much as the early death of an obvious talent. We are left with questions and the speculation on just what direction the gift might have moved in had the artist lived. Some of that discussion will doubtless be aired with the Auckland exhibition of works by Thames-born painter Rhona Haszard, who fell to her...

culturalelsewhere/1761/rhona-haszard-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-woman-2004/

ET.AL AT THE 2005 VENICE BIENNALE: Reporting on the site office

Pity the Welsh, and not just for their poor rugby team. At this year’s Venice Biennale their artists were at a site so removed you probably only found it if you got on the wrong boat heading out of town. In a city of bewildering lanes, many exhibitions were as elusive. Even those from Iran and Afghanistan -- their banners draped...

culturalelsewhere/1767/etal-at-the-2005-venice-biennale-reporting-on-the-site-office/

COLIN McCAHON IN MELBOURNE: Context is everything (2001)

It can happen anywhere: in Miami you hear OMC's How Bizarre, on late-night television in London Smash Palace turns up, in a Japanese park you come across Maori carvings, in Hong Kong a woman is wearing a bone pendant of familiar design ... This not the shock of the new, rather the frisson of the familiar.Our culture, inchoate some say, resonates...

culturalelsewhere/1783/colin-mccahon-in-melbourne-context-is-everything-2001/

COMPOSER JOHN TAVENER INTERVIEWED (1993): Lifting the Veil

Late in 1992 in one of his increasingly rare interviews, British classical composer John Tavener uncharacteristically hit back at the critics who had been sniping at his most recent work, The Protecting Veil. After noting that critics want their intellects tickled but had forgotten about the intellect of the heart, he skewered them for their...

culturalelsewhere/1830/composer-john-tavener-interviewed-1993-lifting-the-veil/

TARRAWARRA GALLERY IN THE YARRA: Art in the landscape

Out here in this bleached-brown landscape the wine is fine, and so are the views. Gazing across the rolling Yarra Valley less than an hour from inner-city Melbourne, the eye can take in columns of grape vines marching in orderly lines over low ridges, expensively manicured golf courses, and huge steroid-expanded homes running to many...

culturalelsewhere/1846/tarrawarra-gallery-in-the-yarra-art-in-the-landscape/

PIRANESI'S ENGRAVINGS: Exploring the dark discomforts of Roman ruins

When the English author Thomas DeQuincey was describing nightmarish drug-induced visions in his early-19th-century autobiography Confessions of an English Opium Eater, he reflected on curious and compelling images he had never seen. They were a set of engravings by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and DeQuincey referred to...

culturalelsewhere/1883/piranesis-engravings-exploring-the-dark-discomforts-of-roman-ruins/

SOPHIA SCARLET AND OTHER PACIFIC WRITINGS BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON reviewed (2008)

When Robert Louis Stevenson died at 44 in his Samoan home, half a world away from his birthplace of Edinburgh, he left a remarkably diverse body of work. In fewer than two decades he turned out popular romantic novels (among them Kidnapped and Treasure Island), the psycho-drama of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, numerous poems,...

writingelsewhere/1956/sophia-scarlet-and-other-pacific-writings-by-robert-louis-stevenson-reviewed-2008/

BETWEEN THE LIVES: PARTNERS IN ART edited by DEBORAH SHEPARD REVIEWED (2005): Lives in the margins

An intimate relationship between creative people may be as volatile and destructive as it can be productive and rewarding. And almost inevitably one partner, for reasons of success or force of personality, can dominate at the expense of the other. This illustrated collection of nine essays (which eschew the obscurantism of much academic...

writingelsewhere/1978/between-the-lives-partners-in-art-edited-by-deborah-shepard-reviewed-2005-lives-in-the-margins/

ANTOINE WIERTZ: Rape, damnation and the art of darkness

Antoine Wiertz was one pretty sick bastard all right. The gallery he demanded be built to house his gigantic paintings in his adopted hometown of Brussels is  testament to an artist obsessed by death, disembowelment, rape, damnation and a virulent sexuality. Everywhere flesh is impaled or torn, eyes glisten with horror, and spears drive...

culturalelsewhere/1993/antoine-wiertz-rape-damnation-and-the-art-of-darkness/

BARRY HUMPHRIES ON THE RECORD: The early life of an agent provocateur

At his first Pan-Australia Dada exhibition, Barry Humphries had packages printed up bearing the name Platitox, which allegedly contained a poison to put in creeks to kill the platypus, that much-loved, much-protected and playful native animal. “So why have an exhibit which offers a pesticide to destroy these animals? Because everything...

culturalelsewhere/2168/barry-humphries-on-the-record-the-early-life-of-an-agent-provocateur/

VENICE: PURE CITY by PETER ACKROYD (2010)

If you had been in Venice last year and gone to see the elegant Bridge of Sighs you would have had an unpleasant surprise. This passage between the Doge’s palace and the prison -- those taken to the clanger would, at the very least, sigh -- was itself a prisoner of the 21st century. It was surrounded by huge covers over the surrounding...

writingelsewhere/2834/venice-pure-city-by-peter-ackroyd-2010/

WITH GILBERT AND GEORGE, a film by JULIAN COLE (2008, Madman DVD)

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the artists Gilbert and George revealed in this insightful and candid documentary is -- aside from their alarming normalcy -- that they don't have a kitchen in their tidy but chock-full home. No kitchen means no smells, no time wasted on cooking or cleaning up, more space. So they eat locally around...

film/2835/with-gilbert-and-george-a-film-by-julian-cole-2008-madman-dvd/

CHINA POWER; ART NOW AFTER MAO, a documentary by PIA GETTY (DV1/Southbound DVD)

In a recent documentary Drilling for Art, the spotlight was put on Dubai as a place with no art history (other than some minor folkloric things) and a city where 95 percent of people come from somewhere else. A few years ago Dubai decided it needed Art -- and so in tentative steps started encouraging contemporary galleries to open, and...

film/3275/china-power-art-now-after-mao-a-documentary-by-pia-getty-dv1-southbound-dvd/

PICASSO, THE FINAL MASK (2003): Into the void

In his last self-portrait -- a crayon on paper work done nine months before his death in 1973, at age 91 -- Pablo Picasso created a disconcerting image: the eyes wide as if terrified, the mouth taut and drawn tightly over the teeth, and the face gaunt with defined cheekbones quite unlike what his bowling ball face actually looked like. It is...

culturalelsewhere/363/picasso-the-final-mask-2003-into-the-void/

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