![DETAIL : COLOGNE SCHOOL Germany Virgin and Child with Saints [Triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints (left panel) Virgin and Child with Saints (left panel)]](Graphics/Banner/EU/132452.jpg)
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| signed l.r., red/brown oil, "G. Garouste", not dated | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Purchased 1983 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| NGA 1984.468 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| © Gerard Garouste. Licensed by ADAGP & VISCOPY, Australia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Trapeze artists was commissioned by Douglas Cooper, the well-known historian of Cubism and collector of the works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. Cooper commissioned the painting specifically for the stairwell of his house, the Château de Castille at Argilliers, Gard, in the south of France. In correspondence with the Gallery, Cooper related the circumstances of the commission:
I bought the Château de Castille about one mile from the Pont du Gard and some fifteen miles from Nîmes in 1950. It was an old chateau, which had been internally rearranged at the end of the eighteenth century and had been left neglected since the mid-1930's. I therefore had a great deal of restoration [to do] in order to make it habitable. A rather splendid, broad staircase went from the ground floor to the second floor, and at the first floor landing, which was rather narrow, there was a tall bare wall which called for some special treatment. Fernand Léger, an old friend of mine and several of whose paintings and drawings I owned, was my first house-guest. I showed him this wall and suggested that, as he was always looking for large dreary wall surfaces to 'destroy' (his own word) with a colourful painting, here was a splendid opportunity. Léger welcomed the opportunity and we discussed possible subject-matter. I showed him a large lithograph with a group of trapezists which appeared in a book he had recently published called Le Cirque and said I thought this would be an excellent solution.1 Léger agreed, and then I asked him to add some of his favourite birds-parrots and doves. But after examining the wall on which the painting was to be executed, we discovered that its surface was not only uneven but also full of cracks. So we decided that the painting would have to be done on a specially cut and shaped canvas would cover the whole wall.
Léger finished the painting at Gif-sur-Yvette, where he lived, in late July 1954, and the painting was installed in my stairwell in September. With its brilliant colours and simulated movement it looked marvellous; the dead and limiting area of the wall became animated and entered into the surrounding space. I was very attracted to this painting which I always regarded as a major achievement.2
Because of the size of the painting it was carried out in a garage adjacent to Léger's studio at Gif-sur-Yvette.3 Having developed a gouache study for the painting from the Cirque print, it seems likely, as has been stated by John Richardson (who was living at the Château de Castille at the time) that Léger was prepared to oversee the execution of the huge painting 'largely by assistants'.4 He frequently employed assistants in his later years to cope with the numerous commissions for large-scale public works.
In 1964 Douglas Cooper decided to sand-blast the walls of the Château de Castille to remove the plaster and reveal the original stonework. In this operation the painting received a small tear in the canvas and in the process of repairing the damage Cooper had the painting backed on a plywood panel. This caused a problem when he sold the Château in 1976 and tried to remove the painting from the stairwell. 'It proved too big (on a panel) to get down the stairs and out of the house', Cooper wrote. 'So in order to get it loose it had to be specially sawn by my restorer. After that, he unstuck it from the 3 ply panel-now in two parts-and joined it up by re-lining on another canvas',5 hence the seam which runs vertically down the painting, slightly to the right of centre.
The Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot, has issued a limited edition of tapestries based on the Trapeze artists, though at 2.94 x 2.80 metres, they are considerably smaller than the original painting.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.270.
Meta-mecanique (Meta-Herbin) 1954 is one of a group of related works made by Tinguely in 1954-55 and given the umbrella title of Meta-mechanical sculpture. This name was provided by Pontus Hulten who recalls:
The question as to what Tinguely's machines ought to be called had arisen with his first exhibition. None of the names that had been suggested — automata, mechanical sculptures, mobiles — was really satisfactory; the last was too closely associated with Calder. My suggestion was 'meta-mechanical', by analogy with 'metaphysical', and on one of my daily visits to the Bibliothèque Nationale I was able to check in the Grand Dictionnaire Larousse that 'meta' can be used to mean 'with' and 'after' — which seemed just right. Also the association of ideas with words like 'metaphor' and 'metamorphosis' seemed to me to be very appropriate.1
The broad label of Meta-mechanical sculpture encompasses a smaller series of works, the Meta-Herbins of which the sculpture in the Australian National Gallery collection is a typical example. In all, there are six sculptures sub-titled Meta-Herbin, characterised by a tripod stand, wire braces and cog wheels, painted sheet-metal elements and a small electric motor providing the motive power.2
The title of this group refers to the French artist Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) and, like the series named Meta-Malevich and Meta-Kandinsky, also made at this time, pays homage — if rather mischievously — to an early exponent of abstract art. The reference to Herbin's work is apparent in the brightly painted triangular and circular shapes of the sculpture, which rotate as the sculpture moves, forming different configurations or 'compositions'. 'I was trying to get away from the imperative, the power of these artists …', said Tinguely; 'I began to use movement simply to make a recreation. It was a way of doing a painting so that it would become infinite — it would go on making new compositions with the help of the physical and mechanical movements I gave it. Then I gradually understood that movement was an expressive possibility in itself'.3
The movement of Meta-mecanique (Meta-Herbin), as with most of Tinguely's machines, is a deliberate travesty of mechanical precision; the sire sprockets bend and jump the cogs, the machine moves in unpredictable shudders. It would certainly destroy itself — simply fall apart — if run continuously.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.237.
Many variants exist of de Pasti's portrait medal of Sigismondo Malatesta (1417-1468), the powerful ruler of Rimini. The early version of the head shows Malatesta in court dress, the later in armour; it is the inscription which varies most. The reverses include Rimini castle, Malatesta arms and symbols, and as here, the figure of Fortitude, holding a broken column and seated on two elephants. The Malatesta family adopted the elephant as part of their heraldry, as it stood for strength and fame.
The inscription, 's[anctae] ro[manae] eclecie c[apitanus] genera[lis]', is translated as 'Captain-general of the Holy Roman Church'. Sigismondo was granted this title in 1435 by Pope Eugenius IV, but stopped using it later as his dispute with the church worsened. Much of his conflict with the papacy concerned the granting of the vicariate to him, and then its withdrawal. Pope Pius II was a deadly enemy, and 'canonised' Sigismondo into hell.
Sigismondo was greatly concerned with his fame, his reputation in history, and in continuing the family name. As well as the monuments he built to himself and his wife Isotta, he buried hundreds of medals with their images in the walls and foundations of his castles and churches. The date 1446 is commemorative, 'the triumphal year when Sigismondo consolidated his political power, dedicated his new castle, and won Isotta as his mistress.' De' Pasti is not recorded as being in Rimini before 1449.
Arakawa established his career during the 1960s in New York with paintings that combined words and schematic images, playing off the ambiguities between verbal and visual languages. Before he left Japan in 1961 he completed two diagram-like works in pencil on canvas and ink on photographic paper that announced the direction his art was to take in the United States. Describing the origins of these works, Arakawa said: 'Personal things were distressing me. With the diagrams I wanted to map my mental state.'
Arakawa continued to identify pictorial equivalents for an idea or 'mental state' in his first pieces made in New York, especially the Bottomless series, which he began in 1963. These works typically depicted a square form diminishing in perspective, much like a funnel with an interior mapped by endlessly subdividing grids. According to Arakawa's wife, the poet Madeline Gins, these images represent 'the thinking field ... which as far as we know ... is itself bottomless ... through which a volume of thought may pass'. In some of the Bottomless series of 1964 and 1965 a circular channel emerges from the diagram. The metaphor was extended and refined with the images of diagrammatic tubes which appeared in Arakawa's work in 1964. These open-ended structures were intended 'as visualisations of thought passages, and as such representations of some behaviour or aspect of the thinking field'.
Tubes 1965 is one of the earliest paintings by Arakawa using diagrammatic tubes, a motif that appears in a number of works of the mid-1960s and again in the 1970s. Tubes was begun in New York in 1964 and completed in 1965. The painting is, however, signed and dated twice-in the lower right as 1965 and as 1975 in the lower left: 'I was anticipating and incorporating the "Thickness" of a decade', explained the artist.
In 1978 the painting was damaged in transit from the vendor to the Australian National Gallery's shipping agents in London; the canvas was torn in the middle of the blank test-tube shape on the left. Tubes was returned to Arakawa in New York in 1980. He repaired it by collaging a new piece of canvas onto the damaged area which is the same test-tube shape but fractionally larger than the original shape underneath. Arakawa saw this as restoration rather than as a reworking of the painting.adapted from Michael Lloyd and Michael Desmond, European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: 1992 pp.350-52, by Christine Dixon
From the summer of 1949 until his death in 1976, Albers worked on a series of paintings called 'Homage to the square', in which he set out to explore the interaction of colours in a regular format. In these paintings, as also expounded in his teaching and in his book The Interaction of Colour (Yale, 1963), Albers sought to demonstrate that colour is an entirely relative phenomenon; colours change constantly according to their juxtaposition and relationship with other colours. Each of the paintings in the 'Homage to the square' series is based on an arrangement of squares stacked on inside the other, evenly placed on a horizontal axis and disposed with a bias to the bottom of the composition on the vertical axis. Four different formats exist. Format A, as it is sometimes known, has four squares. Study for Homage to the square is an example of this. The other formats have only three squares, one of the internal squares being omitted to permit greater quantities of a particular colour in the arrangement. In format B the largest of the internal squares has been dispensed with, as in Homage to the square: on an early sky 1964. Formats C and D omit the intermediate and smallest squares respectively. Albers produced works in this series by first making small colour sketches which he then enlarged to a painting of 24 x 24" (60.9 x 60.9 cm) (such as Study for homage to the square), 30 x 30" (76.2 x 76.2 cm) or 32 x 32" (96.0 x 96.0 cm). These, according to Albers, were made:
to find out whether an increase of the outer scale and consequently of the inner quantities, will increase the interaction of the colors used, which for a precise record are always listed on the back of the masonite panels. (I prefer them to canvas as more durable and more wall-like) … As to the term 'Study for Homage to the Square', the stepping-up in size often demands intervals of time — sometimes through years — for continued and repeated observation as to possible improvements, intensification. All preparatory studies up to the largest and last execution — the 'widest stage of performance' — I call 'Studies' which term is not used for the sizes of 40"2 and 48"2 (the latter is the largest square available in masonite.).1
This is the size of Homage to the square: on an early sky 1964.
In Homage to the square: on an early sky the contrasts of colour are unusually intense, the light red of the middle square barely mediating between the incandescent cadmium red of the internal square and the expanse of cerulean blue. Albers only subtitled some of his works and only after they were completed. Yet such subtitles as On an early sky, with its naturalistic connotations, is revealing of Albers' sense of the lyrical power of colour and distances him from the more formal experiments of the Minimalists with whom he is often now associated as a precursor.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.282.
This is one of a series of boxes in which Cornell evoked the luxurious grand hotels of la belle époque. Into these boxes he pasted advertisements for such hotels taken from newspapers and travel guides. The hotels mentioned on this box are the Hôtel du Cygne, the Hôtel de L'Etoile, the Hotel Three Moors, the Hotel Restaurant Nettuno and the Grand Hôtel de L'Univers. Some of these names were also used on other hotel boxes, for example clippings for the Hôtel de L'Etoile and the Grand Hôtel de L'Univers each appear on a number of boxes. In re-using the same advertisements Cornell used photomechanical reproductions. The collage material used in this box consists of photographs, with the exception of one stamp. On the inside of the box the side walls are painted white. The back wall is covered in white and dark blue enamel paint. The blue is suggestive of a night sky.
To distinguish this box from the many others dealing with the hotel theme, the Cornell Estate subtitled this box Hôtel du Cygne on the basis of the most prominent advertisement in the box. A portion of an advertisement pasted onto another hotel box, Untitled (Hôtel Beau-Séjour) c.1954, also depicts and briefly describes the Hôtel du Cygne and states that it is located at Lucerne. Built in 1836, it was the town's leading hotel until 1845. The advertisement for the Hôtel du Cygne in the Gallery's box boasts the refurbishing of the hotel in 1897, complete with electric lights, a lift and a 'grand vestibule'.
The lake at Lucerne in Switzerland was one of the fashionable resorts of the belle époque. The Hôtel du Cygne takes its name from the swans that are a feature of the lake. Cornell used the image of the swan in several works to suggest grace and melancholy, the same connotation the swan had for the French Symbolist poets he so admired.
Pasted near the centre of the box is a pale blue Belgian stamp. Cornell painted over the name of the country on the stamp, leaving it to show a portrait of Princess Josephine Charlotte, the elder sister of King Baudouin, the present king of Belgium; the stamp was first issued in 1937 when the princess was ten years old. Cornell used the same stamp in a number of other boxes.1
The figure in the lower half of the box is Andromeda, a princess in Greek legend who has chained to a rock and sacrificed to Neptune after he had been outraged by the vain declarations of Andromeda's mother, Cassiopeia. Cornell placed Andromeda, with chains flailing, against the speckled edge of the blue paint, leading up to the advertisement for 'Hotel Restaurant Nettuno' (Neptune), a deliberate compositional strategy. The image of Andromeda is cut out from a nineteenth-century engraving of a celestial map. The same figure appears in other boxes, for example Untitled (Andromeda) c.1954. Four of the hotel names on the Gallery's box have celestial connotations: 'Cygne' for the constellation Cygnus, 'L'Etoile', 'Nettuno' and 'L'Univers'.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.226.
The idea for Cubic modular piece no. 3 originated in 1965 when Sol LeWitt constructed a piece in wood which was exhibited at the Dwan Gallery, New York, in 1966.1 This early work, the first or no. 1 in the series, was an open grid of cubes, four cubes high and four wide. It has since disappeared.
There are two subsequent configurations of the cubic modular piece, both made in steel and painted white. Cubic modular piece no. 2, ascribed the date 1966, is an L-shaped configuration and is now in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Australian National Gallery's Cubic modular piece no. 3 is a slightly larger but more direct extension of the format of the original wood piece, being five cubes high by six wide.2
The Gallery owns a second, later, work by Sol LeWitt: Wall drawing no. 380 a-d: isometric figures (cube, rectangle, trapezoid, parallelogram 1982.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.376.
Bob 1970 is one of a series of eight large black and white portraits that Close painted between November 1967 and April 1970. He began work on Bob in the last months of 1969 and finished at the beginning of 1970.1 Bob immediately preceded Keith 1970 (collection of the artist),2 the last of the black and white series. Close then began using colour in his paintings.
Like all the black and white heads, Bob is painted from grided photographs onto a gessoed ground using black paint applied with an airbrush to build up the dark tones. White paint is used occasionally for the highlights but more often the black pigment is scraped back using a razorblade or an electric eraser. The subject of the painting is one of Close's friends, Robert Israel, a New York based opera designer. Israel later recalled:
I had wanted Chuck to ask me to pose for him, but I really didn't feel it was proper for me to ask. Chuck's decision of who he would paint had to do not only with whether you were a friend, but with the topology of your face. And I didn't really think it was my business to ask him if I could pose.
But eventually he did ask me and Joe Zucker to pose and I recall that it was on Memorial Day that Joe and I went to a photographic studio where Chuck wet up a box camera and took our pictures.3
During the painting of Bob Close remembers this incident:
I had taken a break and was walking back into the studio. Looking at the painting, I realised that a highlight in one of the eyes was too bright. And I said, 'Damn it, now I'm going to have to take his glasses off'. But when I realised what I had said, I pivoted on my heel and walked out leaving the lights on, the compressor on and the airbrushes full of paint. When you start believing in your own illusion, you're in serious trouble.4
At much the same time that Close was working on the painting Bob he made a film portrait of Israel, Slow Pan/Bob 1970 (16mm, black and white, 10 min. duration), in which the slowly moving camera minutely scrutinised areas of the sitter's face. The photograph used by Close for the painting Bob was used again in 1973, when the artist made a series of four pencil and ink drawings.5
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.408.
Duchamp purchased the original Bottle dryer from the Parisian department store Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. In a letter to his sister Suzanne, written from New York in mid-January 1916, Duchamp mentioned the bottle dryer he had left behind in his Paris studio in rue Saint-Hippolyte, and stated, 'I had purchased this as a sculpture already made' ('comme une sculpture toute faite'), the first mention of the concept of the Ready-made.1 'You take for yourself this bottle dryer', Duchamp continued in his letter, 'I will make it a "Readymade" from a distance. You will have to write at the base and on the inside of the bottom ring in small letters painted with an oil-painting brush, in silver white colour, the inscription that I will give you after this, and you will sign it in the same hand as follows: / (after) Marcel Duchamp'.2
By the time Suzanne received this letter, however, she had probably already thrown out the bicycle wheel and the bottle dryer in the process of cleaning Duchamp's vacated studio. Duchamp purchased a replacement in Paris around 1921, which is now in the collection of Robert Lebel, Paris. A third version was purchased in 1945 by Man Ray, and Robert Rauschenberg purchased a fourth in New York in 1960. A fifth version was made by Ulf Linde for the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 1963. The example in the Australian National Gallery's collection is from an edition of eight produced by Galleria Schwarz, Milan, in 1964 under Duchamp's supervision. Two further examples from this edition were reserved for Duchamp and Arturo Schwarz.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.116.
According to Hill, Lodovico Luti 'is presumably the man, an enemy of Pandolfo Petrucci, who was murdered in Florence on 26 June 1498'. Petrucci was the brutal tyrant who ruled Siena between 1487 and 1512. Niccolò's medal identifies Luti 'of Siena'; from his clothing he may have been a merchant. It is not possible to tell if this is a posthumous portrait, although given Luti's fate the motto on the reverse seems particularly pertinent - prius mori qua turpari, or 'rather death than dishonour'.
Niccolò's work has been characterised as follows:
Whatever the size of the medal, the portrait is distinctive and confident, dominating the circular field, although in most cases the lettering is not as elegant. Each head is strongly individualized and modelled in fairly high relief. The economical style includes the essential contours and features, while conveying a feeling for the plasticity of flesh and the bone structure that brings the subjects to life, despite their presentation in strict and impersonal profile. Few other Renaissance medallists were able to produce so evocative a series of portraits, but this was, perhaps, to be expected in the environment of Quattrocento Florence. By contrast, the reverses of Niccolò's medals are mostly either clumsy, derivative, repetitive or inappropriate. At best, they exhibit a rough charm ...
Like several other medallists of the time, Niccolò did not always pay much attention to the appropriateness of the reverse theme. In this instance, Fortune, the goddess of antiquity, is associated with the chances of the sea and mariners' lives. She is shown here on a dolphin, with a billowing sail to remind the viewer of the inconstancy of fate. An ermine watches from the shore. Prius mori qua turpari may have been a family motto, and the ermine a family emblem. It may possibly refer to Luti's occupation as a furrier or fur-trader, and thus dependent on fickle Fortune.
This reverse was used for at least two other medals Niccolò, one of Alessandro Vecchietti 1498, whose family arms include five ermines, and the other of Nicolas Tranquier 1503. Hill judged the Luti medal reverse as 'probably the original'; this seems possible given a likely latest dating of 1498.
Christine Dixon
This work consists of a box containing miniature replicas of three of Duchamp's Ready-mades: Paris Air 1919, Traveller's folding item 1916, and Fountain 1917, and sixty-eight printed reproductions of other works by the artist. The box is assembled in such a way that various parts slide out, fold out, or are lifted out for display to create a 'miniature museum'. The box is printed on the lid 'de ou par / Marcel Duchamp / ou / Rrose Sélavy' (from or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy).1
In an interview in 1955 Duchamp explained that:
It was a new form of expression for me. Instead of painting something the idea was to reproduce the paintings that I loved so much in miniature. I didn't know how to do it. I thought of a book, but I didn't like that idea. Then I thought of the idea of the box in which all my works would be mounted like a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak, and here it is in this valise.2
The various reproductions incorporated in the box, and the necessary components of the box itself, were produced between 1936 and 1940, first in Paris and then, during 1940, in Bordeaux and Arcachon.3 The reproductions were made in editions of 300. Rather than use the speedy reproduction techniques that were already available, Duchamp opted for an elaborate and obsolescent method - collotype printing with colouring applied by hand through stencils (pochoirs).
The first Box in a valise - the first of a deluxe edition enclosed in a leather valise and individually numbered and dedicated by Duchamp, I/XX to XX/XX - was completed in Paris at the end of 1940. Duchamp assembled perhaps five more boxes in this edition before sailing for New York in May 1942. During the next eight years in the United States he completed the deluxe edition and with the assistance of others, about 80 further boxes were completed without the leather valise. In March 1955 Duchamp sent most of the material for the rest of the boxes back to Paris. The remaining boxes from the ordinary edition, that is, without the leather valise, were issued in five groups between 1958 and 1968, each group distinguished by various modifications to the construction and distinctive coloured linen colouring. With the exception of the group of 30 copies issued in 1958 and assembled by Ilia Zdanevitch, all copies were assembled by Duchamp's step-daughter, Jacqueline Monnier. She completed the last in the edition of 300 boxes in March 1971.
The box in the Australian National Gallery is not covered and its construction is consistent with those boxes assembled in New York between 1942 and 1954. However there is an oddity about this box that is difficult to explain. The reproductions of Mariée (Bride) that appear in the boxes were printed in Paris in September 1937. In October 1937 a number of pochoir-coloured reproductions of Mariée were signed and dated by Duchamp over a 5-centimetre revenue stamp, apparently as gifts to friends. Unlike the normal reproductions in the box, these signed versions of Mariée are not varnished and are slightly larger. The Gallery's box contains one of these signed reproductions of Mariée.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.122.
Ladies with pearls and handbags, and often, as in this case, with aristocratic names, appear in Baj's work at the same time as the 'Generals'. André Breton considered them well matched:
The general's female companion obviously presents a rather subtler moving target. The splendid harangue announcing a 'guignol' show which starts off something like 'I, General Bludgeon … 'does not invariably include equally fervent publicity - heart-breaking at this stage rather than skull-breaking — in praise of his legitimate spouse' accomplishments and virtues. Even so, the attributes of femininity grant a partial immunity to this heroine of kockabout farce.1
Elisabeta de Bragance de la Felidad Garcia was a member of the royal family that ruled Portugal from 1640 to 1910. 'Often in the past,' Baj has written, 'I have ascribed to my characters the noble names and titles of historic characters, which I have found in the pages of the Grand Larousse Encyclopédique or from other encyclopedias. It was a means of historicising my work and at the same time negating history'.2
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.310.
The ballet L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird) was presented in London for the first time on 18 June 1912 by Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev. Tamara Karsavina danced in the title role of the firebird, while Adolph Bolm took the part of her captor, Ivan Tsarevich. Julian Lousada commissioned Gaudier-Brzeska to make a sculpture based on this performance.1
Gaudier-Brzeska chose the moment in Scene 1 when the firebird is seized by Ivan Tsarevich, a moment also singled out in The Sunday Times review of 23 June 1912 as being 'quite unforgettable … the suggestion of palpitating fear and violated purity with which she (Mme Karsavina) shrank from the arms of her captor'.2
It is not known if Gaudier-Brzeska attended the performance as he had done previously for an earlier commissioned sculpture - a portrait of the actress Maria Carmi as the Madonna in Max Rheinhardt's (1873-1943) play The Miracle. On that occasion the artist made many preliminary drawings for the sculpture. In the case of Firebird only two drawings for the sculpture are known (private collection, London).3
According to the list of his completed sculptures and prints that Gaudier-Brzeska compiled in July 1914, and which, with some annotations by H.S. Ede, was published in 1930 in Ede's biography of the artist, three plaster casts were made from the original clay sculpture of Firebird.4
One plaster was sent to the Parlanti Foundry, Parsons Green, to serve as the mould for the bronze for Julian Lousada. Lousada paid £20 for the bronze, the highest price paid for any of Gaudier's works during his lifetime, but not without some initial disagreement with the artist. On 14 November 1912 Gaudier wrote to Sophie Brzeska: 'The Lousadas want to change the colour of the group to light green. It has now a marvellous patine of old bronze. I have written to Parlanti to make it green like the leaves of a cabbage'.5
A few weeks earlier, on 28 October 1912, Gaudier had written to Sophie telling her that, following casting, the plaster of the 'Russian dancers' had been returned, and that he intended displaying the sculpture in Dan Rider's bookshop off Charing Cross Road.6 However, according to Gaudier's 1914 list of works, the plaster he took to Rider's shop was not the one returned from Parlanti, but another which he painted to resemble the dark patina of bronze.7 This painted plaster, sold to Leman Hare for £6, is almost certainly that which is now in the Australian National Gallery's collection.8 Subsequently purchased from Hare by Raymond Drey, who had three bronzes cast from it, the plaster was then sold, by 1918, to Leicester Galeries who had a further six bronze casts made.9 The present whereabouts of the two other plaster casts are unknown. They are presumed lost.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.107.
Man Ray's Dada objects, made in New York before he left for Paris in 1921, are more fantastic than Marcel Duchamp's (1887-1968) assisted ready-mades, although obviously related. Man Ray first me Duchamp in 1915, but they only began to work closely together after the First World War.
The enigma of Isidore Ducasse was assembled in New York in1920. Man Ray wrapped a sewing machine in an army blanket and tied it up with string. Like most of the objects which he made up to the late 1940s it was assembled primarily to provide an unusual subject for a photograph and then discarded.1
The inspiration and the title of this object derive from a famous line in the book Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) by Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym adopted by the French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-70): 'He is fair … as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!'.2 The strange juxtaposition of images in Lautréamont's writings, and especially this image of the sewing-machine, was to become almost a maxim for the Surrealists, who welcomed Man Ray when he arrived in Paris in 1921. His photograph of The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse was reproduced in the preface to the first issue of La Revolution Surréaliste (December 1924), the Surrealists' first major periodical.
In 1971 Galleria Schwarz, Milan, reconstructed The enigma of Isidore Ducasse in an edition of ten under Man Ray's supervision.3 The example in the Australian National Gallery's collection is no. 8 from this edition.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.140.
Confusingly, a number of works by Man Ray are titled Pain peint ('painted bread'). The first, made in1 958 and consisting of a set of scales of the kind once common in grocery shops and carrying two blue loaves of bread, is in the Australian National Gallery. The loaves lie across both baskets, frustrating the scales' balance. A second version of the work was made in 1960 for Cordier and Ekstrom, New York, and carries three loaves in its panniers. The same title is also applied to single loaves of blue-coloured bread, which were made by Man Ray in small editions either in polyurethane or plaster as required.1
When Man Ray first made Pain peint in 1958 he used stale loaves of bread and simply covered them with blue paint. But according to Man Ray, 'mice ate through the paint and the stale baguette'.2 The loaves in the Australian National Gallery's work are replacements made in plaster in 1964 when the work was purchased by Arturo Schwarz. The first loaf is inscribed underneath 'PAIN PEINT 59 / lere serie replique 1/4' and the second loaf is inscribed 'pain peint / lere serie replique - 2/4'.
Because of the play on homophones in the French title, Man Ray did not want it literally translated for English catalogues or books. He therefore gave it the alternative English title Blue bred and a subtitle, 'Favourite food for blue birds'. According to Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray mentioned that Pain peint is also 'an onomatopoeic representation of the firemen's motor-horns'.3
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.142.
f the paintings, SHA-DHA and E-JNA, which were painted in November and December 1970 respectively, the artist has written:
The titles of these paintings are non-referential and do not represent any particular meaning for these works. I choose titles for my paintings largely from ancient Sanskrit terminology. They often refer to either musical compositions, past events, places of historical reference, etc., even nature. These two particular titles are only selected for their sound. My paintings are totally abstract, and I prefer not to have the viewer led by the suggestion of the title. The paintings were painted with dry pigments with many, many layers on canvas saturated with acrylic medium.1
Bhavsar's technique consists of brushing dry pigment through a screen onto a horizontal canvas previously coated with an acrylic binder which holds the pigment. The process of sifting the pigment may be repeated as many as eighty times for a single work, using different pigments and adjusting the distance between screen and canvas to vary the density of colour. Bhavsar credits the origin of this distinctive technique to his Indian background.
In India, there is an old tradition that for each holiday, people create color decorations. You take color into a pouch and pour it through a screen onto the ground. When I was only twenty, the secretary of a college student group asked me if I would participate in a school celebration by creating a decoration in the hall on the floor. I did a very large painting, 80' long and 10' to 15' wide. So I have been working in that method since my childhood.2
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.406.
'"Why not sneeze?" was ordered by Katherine Dreier's sister [Dorothy Dreier], who wanted something of mine', wrote Duchamp. 'Since I didn't want to do a painting, in the usual sense of the word, I told her, "Fine, but I'll do what ever comes into my head". I took some little pieces of marble in the form of sugar cubes, a thermometer, and a cuttlebone, shut them up in a bird cage, and painted the whole thing white.'1
The confusion as to the true identity of the material used in the caged cubes … sugar or marble … would be revealed when the work was picked up: 'It weighs a ton', said Duchamp, 'and that was one of the elements that interested me when I made it … It is a Ready-made in which the sugar is changed to marble. It is a sort of mythological effect'.2
The thermometer protruding from the cage also draws attention to this effect, as it is intended to measure the difference in temperature between the (heat-giving) sugar and the colder marble. The inclusion in the cage of the cuttlefish bone further reinforces the fact that this is a bird's cage.
Duchamp commented on the title of this work during an interview on French television:
The cage with sugar cubes is called Why not sneeze … ? and, of course the title seems weird to you since there's really no connection between the sugar cubes and a sneeze … First of all there's the dissociational gap between the idea of sneezing and the idea of … 'Why not sneeze?' because after all, you don't sneeze at will; you usually sneeze in spite of your will. So, the answer to the question, Why not sneeze? is simply that you can't sneeze at will! And then there's the literary side if I may call it that … but 'literary' is such a stupid word … it doesn't mean anything … but at any rate there's the marble with its coldness, and this meant that you can even say you're cold, because of the marble, and all of the associations are permissible.'3
The 'Rose Selavy' of the title was a pseudonym Duchamp adopted in 1920. He had first considered using a Jewish name, as he was Catholic, but eventually decided that a female identity would be more extreme. Soon after this work was completed 'Rose' gained a double 'r', becoming 'Rrose'. When Duchamp returned to Paris in May 1921 he signed Francis Picabia's (1879-1953) painting L'Oeil Cacodylate (Musée National d'art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris) with a pun that suggested that Rose, like the name Lloyd, could begin with double letters.
Although commissioned by Dorothea Dreier, Why not sneeze Rose Sélavy? was not to her liking, and she passed it on to her sister Katherine who in turn was unable to live with it and asked Duchamp to sell it. It was eventually acquired by Walter Arensberg in 1934 and is now in the Louis and Walter Arensberg Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. A second version was made by Ulf Linde for the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
The Australian National Gallery's version is from an edition of eight produced by Galleria Schwarz, Milan, in 1964 under the supervision of Duchamp. Two further examples of this edition were reserved for Duchamp and Arturo Schwarz, with a third inscribed to the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
This edition differs from the original in Philadelphia in two respects. In accord with Duchamp's wishes, in this edition the title on the bottom of the cage is written in mirror writing so that when reversed by reflection it can be read correctly.
The second difference is more prosaic. Each of the marble cubes in the original work in Philadelphia bears the rubber-stamped caption 'Made in France' which was applied in 1936 to comply with customs regulations when the work was being returned to the United States after being exhibited at the Exposition Surrealiste d'Objets, held at the gallery of Charles Ratton in Paris.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.120.
The phrase 'nostalgia of the sea' occurs frequently in Cornell's diaries, and was an emotion he hoped to crystallise in his Navigation boxes: 'nostalgia of the sea / we pick up a piece of wood on the seashore / there is infinite legend & romance about flotsam and jetsam — equivalent in mounting to retain this quality / immaculate aspect of something surviving a hundred years'.1
The wooden frame of the box is washed over with thin blue paint, as if scoured by seawater. The interior of the box is painted white, revealing the wood grain on the lower edge. The paintwork has a weathered look. A mysterious map occupies the back of the box. Areas of the map are washed over with a light blue watercolour similar to the outside frame of the box.2 Cornell owned a number of nineteenth-century books covering astronomy, physics and meteorology and it is likely that this map was taken from such a volume. On the underside of the roof of the box Cornell has pasted a section of a German map showing an expanse of the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom, a segment indicating names which evoke hidden corners of the world and sea routes not part of mainstream voyaging.
A series of four wooden cylindrical blocks hang on a metal bar suspended beneath the roof of the box. On these blocks Cornell has pasted cuttings. One illustrates the path of Halley's comet (on the right wall of the box is a similar cutting illustrating the path of a meteor). These cuttings came from a simple guide to astronomy in Cornell's possession.3 On another block is a cutting with the words 'Belt of Orion' and showing the three stars from this large constellation on the celestial equator. Cornell was totally familiar with the appearance, movements and mythical lore connected with this constellation; he was also aware of the historic influence of astronomy on mathematics and science. Another illustration, pasted upside down, indicates a tiny globe of the world, turned to show the United States with the name of one city — Chicago — singled out, and showing the Pole Star. Cornell noted in his diary: 'Cynosure — star near North Pole by which sailors steer'.4 On the fourth block is an illustration of a butterfly, an emblem of ethereality often used by Cornell, perhaps as an evocation of the ballet. A brass orbit-like ring hands from the bar between the cylinders.
On a ledge at the bottom of the box a series of five liqueur glasses stand in hollows cut into the wood. Four of the glasses contain a marble; the fifth contains a white spiral shell whose shape conspires with the small geometrical objects in the box. Neatly fitted into the base of the box is a shallow drawer pained white on the inside and covered with a glass pane. The drawer contains a sprinkled mass of dark blue powder, three small metal ball-bearings, two small shells (one a cowrie) and two narrow strips of cork cut as fine elongated rectangles. Against the white paint the blue powder appears like sea against sand, while the metal ball-bearings sparkle like stars. Cornell has drawn a thin grid of white paint on the glass covering the drawer, inspired perhaps by the lines of latitude and longitude on the map inside the box. The five vertical lines of the grid seem to align with the five liqueur glasses.
Cornell admired the detail and finish found in seventeenth-century Dutch still-lifes — the 'ultra-graphic microscopic magic-realism' was how he referred to the genre.5 The same precision entwined with emblematic meaning applies to this box.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.224.
In a diary entry for 25 January 1947 Cornell refers to this box: 'work on etuis (small cabinets) progressed — Les Petites Filles Modèles, Les Caprices de Gizelle, Les Perles de l'Opera …',1 which provides a more precise date and title than has formerly been attributed to the work.
On the back of the box are pasted cuttings from a book which read:
Chère enfant, voici un volume que je te dédie. Je désire qu'il t'amuse, et que tes amis te reconnaissent dans les bonnes petites filles que j'ai mises en scène. C'est à cause de tes bonnes et aimables qualités, que ma tendresse pour toi ne viellit pas et qu'elle se maintiendra la même jusqu'au dernier jour de ma vie.
These cuttings are from a volume of plays for children entitled Comédies et Proverbes, published in Paris in 1869 by Hachette. Its author, the Comtesse Sophie de Ségur (1799-1874), wrote popular stories for children which she dedicated to her grandchildren. The text of this volume is interspersed with woodcut illustrations by Emile-Antoine Bayard (1837-91). Cornell must have owned a copy of this book, for not only did he cut out the Comtesse de Ségur's dedication which precedes the main text, he also singled out Bayard's illustrations from this volume for the play Les Caprices de Gizelle and pasted these over the box.3
Comédies et Proverbes belonged to the children's series called 'Bibliothèque Rose Illustrée and this may explain why Cornell washed over the outside of the box with rose-madder ink. Bibliothèque Rose circulated widely during the nineteenth century and the popularity of Madame de Ségur's stories extended into the early twentieth century. Cornell mentions the series several times in his diaries. In an entry for 24 January 1947, the same day that he refers to his work on The Caprices of Gizelle, he notes coming across a 'Windfall of Bibliothèque rose to cover etuis' in a second-hand bookshop on 59th Street.4 For Cornell these books evoked what he frequently termed 'the golden age of childhood', which he recreated in boxes like the Caprices of Gizelle. The box also captures the nostalgia and sense of romance Cornell felt for the nineteenth century.
The inside walls of the box are lined with deep blue plus velvet. Each shelf contains a small cardboard box coated with embossed paper imitating leather. Cornell stained the surface of these boxes with dark blue ink, and onto the bottom of each he pasted pieces of text in French taken from a volume of The Three Musketeers. Each text, on each of the three boxes, mentions the name of one of the musketeers. The middle box is a recent replacement.
The name 'Gizelle' also carries an echo of the ballet Giselle of 1841, which would not have escaped the notice of Cornell as a balletomane. Cornell's knowledge of ballet was extensive and scholarly. He devoted numerous boxes to this subject and was a regular contributor to the periodical Dance Index.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.220.
Called Petite rieuse to distinguish it from Grande rieus 1891 (Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan), a larger scupture also depicting a laughing woman, this work is thought to be a portrait of Bianca Garavaglia, a Parisian café–concert singer popularly known as Bianca de Toledo.1
In the catalogue for the exhibition 'Prima Mostra dell Impressionismo e du Medardo Rosso', organised by Ardengo Soffici and held in Florence in 1910, Petite rieuse is dated 1890, probably on the advice of Rosso himself. The date is supported by a letter to Felice Cameroni of 26 January 1890 in which Rosso mentions working on a portrait of 'a woman of the theatre'.2
Petite rieuse exists in three variant forms and casts thereof. In the first the head is fully modelled in the round and surrounded by a circular collar. In the second version only a vestige of this garment remains, protruding on the right side from the neck to the base of the ear. In the third version, exemplified by the work in the Australian National Gallery's collection, the face and a fringe of hair are cut out like a mask. These variations reflect a process of successive reduction, an attempt to pare the sculpture back to its essence. This occurred at some time after 1890, and possibly as late as the turn of the century.3 An unknown number of casts in wax over plaster exist in addition to the work in the Gallery's collection and include casts in the Museo Rosso, Barzio, Italy, and the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di la Pesaro, Venice.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.70.
In After Cézanne Lucian Freud enters into a dialogue with the French painter Paul Cézanne. Freud's composition is based on a Cézanne painting in his own collection, but the French artist also painted a number of versions of this theme. One of these works, Afternoon in Naples c.1875, is in the National Gallery of Australia's collection (NGA 1985.460). The paintings by Cézanne and Freud differ vastly in scale and effect. While Cézanne's easel painting is intimate and intended for private viewing, the drama in Freud's canvas has a monumental impact.
Freud's After Cézanne also differs in the emphasis on figures and objects. The painting shows three naked figures in an interior - as if a particular moment has been captured photographically. The upturned chair contribute disorder to the scene. Freud has paid particular attention to the upholstery, the tacks and the padding to ensure that this chair has real weight and physical presence. Minutiae such as the hanging castor wheels, indentations in the mattress and the rumpled sheets encourage speculation.
The reclining male and female figures have each been painted in an entirely different manner. The creamy palette chosen for the female's fleshy form contrasts starkly with the sinewy man, whose colouring is darker, and whose extremities are defined with accents of red. His features have been 'chiselled' in paint. Freud's painterly analysis of flesh is clinical and unromanticised. The sprawling, angular pose of the man gives emphasise to his penis against the white sheet.
Conjecture about the relationships portrayed is inevitable. What are we to make of this gaunt, morose young man and why is his companion attempting to console him, if that is what she is doing? Has the attendant interrupted this scene or is she also a protagonist in this drama? Whatever conclusions are drawn, the fact remains that Freud exercises a powerful control over his psychological portraits. The painting is a very contemporary one, exploring issues of dependence and independence, sexual engagement and ambivalence, intimacy and alienation.
The shape of the painting is unusual. The artist originally intended the attendant figure to be portrayed from the upper arms down, with her arms and the tray suggesting the reason for her presence. The extension at upper left was added later to accommodate the whole figure. Originally she was clothed, but Freud has painted over the gown. The inclusion of the attendant provides the most direct link with Cézanne's Afternoon in Naples. Freud is consciously positioning himself and the painting in the history of art. In this frank examination of privacy and exposure, Freud's After Cézanne makes a dramatic claim for painting and the genre of studio painting.
adapted from Catherine Lampert's and Rolf Lauter's reports on the painting, published in Lucian Freud: After Cézanne, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia 2001, another version in Developing the Collection: Acquisitions 1999-2001, Canberra: National Galley of Australia 2001, p.43 by Lucina Ward.
Untitled 1980 and Untitled 1979 are from a significant body of small paintings undertaken by the artist in the late 1970s. At the time the British art critic John McEwen outlined that:
Currently the smallness of his working space and desire to limit external reference, stylistic or otherwise, in order to make the painting as much of a self-contained object as possible, [have] led to a stark reduction in scale.
Whilst not individually as significant as a major work like Java 1980, when paired together Untitled 1979 and Untitled 1980 exhibit many of the features that drew critical attention to the artist's work in the 1970s. Buckley was widely recognised for his almost sculptural attitude to painting, especially his eclectic use of materials and techniques of construction.
Untitled 1980 is composed from a series of thin squares of composition board stapled together in a process of accretion. The viewer's understanding of the painting's fabrication and resultant structure is then confounded by the placement of a single floating decorative 'visual' panel. Untitled 1979, on the other hand, is deliberately deceptive from a frontal or traditional viewpoint. It is only by moving to the side of the painting, an unconventional viewing angle, that the depth of the work becomes evident. It is the painted edges that are crucial, defining and separating the planes as well as visually forcing the white frontal surfaces of the painting forward from the gallery wall.
The acquisition of the artist's two small untitled paintings in 1981 expanded the National Gallery's representation of internationally-recognised British painters, which includes among others, Buckley's contemporaries Howard Hodgkin, with The Buckleys at Brede 1974-76 and John Walker's Study for Luke's blue 1976.
Steven Tonkin
Hans Hartung's practice exemplified a rigorous dedication to an autonomous abstract art. He accordingly titled his painting in an unambiguous and practical fashion, scrupulously bare of extraneous references. T-1954-20 for example, is titled to announce the medium ('T' standing for Toile, implying oil on canvas), the year it was made, 1954, and the order in which it was painted that year.
Hartung's work changed markedly in 1954, precipitated perhaps by the example of American artists whose work he saw in Paris in the years 1951-53. In an interview with Henry Geldzahler in 1975, Hartung recalled being particularly impressed with the work of Franz Kline (1910-62) whose paintings 'progressed toward an abstraction pushed further and further along until, finally, the resulting paintings were tremendously enlarged details whose feelings and meaning were something totally different from their point of departure; they were extremely strong paintings.'1
Certainly the shift in Hartung's painting style is anticipated in the etchings that he produced at Roger Lacourière's print workshop in Paris in 1953. Made by dragging a steel comb along the surface of the printing plate, these prints demonstrate the reliance on line and simplifications in composition that were to become the stylistic hallmark of his later paintings.
In 1954 Hartung stripped back the repertoire of calligraphic marks deployed across the canvas that had characterised his previous work. He reduced the variety and number of marks to favour the near-straight lines of a slashing brushstroke, effecting a simpler, almost formal, composition made with a central flourish of brushstrokes. The painting T-1954-20 is one of the earliest examples of this new style, typically floating a sheaf of flexible black lines against a light background.
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.268.
Robyn Denny, Richard Smith and Ralph Rumney were involved in the collaborative installation of large free-standing paintings, entitled Place, held at the ICA in London in September 1959. Their aim was to create an 'environment' that addressed the role of the spectator as an active participant within the space. The following year Denny was included in the Situation exhibition at the RBA Galleries, London, in September 1960, where he exhibited the triptych Baby is three 1960 and 7/1960 1960. These two paintings are often considered as heralding the artist's major preoccupations of the next decade.
In the year separating the Place and Situation exhibitions, Denny undertook an exploratory series of domestic-scale paintings that at first glance appear to deny or rebuff the concepts underlying Place. However these small square-format and numerically designated paintings are best approached not in isolation, but as a series of investigations within a set of parameters. Six paintings from this body of work were included in Denny's mid-career retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London in 1973, with S12 1960 identified as 'the most interesting' as it 'anticipates Denny's classic dismissal of the claims of the image. The grid image … [is] simply swamped by the tonal intensity of the colours green, grey and blue.'
A process of experimentation, evaluation, rejection and evolution in the artist's work is particularly evident in this series of paintings. S14 1960 addresses similar concerns to S12 yet appears a more resolved painting, particularly as it anticipates the distinctive circuit-like geometry and symmetry that are often cited as hallmarks of Denny's subsequent work in the 1960s.
Steven Tonkin
Bishop left the United States for Europe in 1957, at a time when the influence of Abstract Expressionism was at its height in New York.
When I first started to work in Paris [1958] I still had something of the 'true believer' feeling I had had as a student which was that with Abstract Expressionism painters had at last begun simply to paint, at least in a certain way … I think of myself as somebody who tried to go on from Motherwell (who was the painter I loved most as a student) and later on Newman, Rothko and Reinhardt. Since they are inimitable, I had to find something to do myself. I don't know if I would have tried to combine them if I had been in New York, but in my own relative isolation in Paris it seemed to fit my own feelings. I think today I am an Abstract Expressionist of the quieter branch.1
Ad Reinhardt (1913-67) in particular, may have influenced the kind of 'veiled' geometric division of the canvas which Bishop adopted in 1968, in which the canvas, a perfect square, is divided exactly in the middle, the lower half remaining empty, the top half occupied by two squares, which are in turn bisected horizontally and vertically. However, Bishop's technique for creating his geometric format is paradoxical, and harks back to the more spontaneous painterly technique of Abstract Expressionism. After putting down pencil guidelines, Bishop 'pours' his geometric design, without the aid of tape or ruler. The blue' frames' in the Gallery's painting were poured in this way and then the whole painting was washed with white oil paint, diluted to the point of transparency, but growing more evenly opaque in the top left and top right-hand corners of the canvas:
After putting down pencilled guidelines, I put the stretched canvas on the floor, fill in an area with very liquid paint, and the, by picking up one edge of the canvas and then another, let the paint roll around until there is more in one part of that area than another, and consequently more, or less, of the undercoat showing through, this according to the idea I have of how the different sections of the painting should work together.2
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.388.
The bird was a central theme in Brancusi's oeuvre. Over a period of at least thirty years he completed twenty-seven sculptures of birds in marble and bronze. His first bird, Maiastra, 1910-12 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Katherine S. Dreier Bequest) was inspired by the legendary Pasarea maiastra (Master bird), a magic bird in Romanian folklore famed for its radiant plumage and marvellous song, a messenger of love who guided and protected Prince Charming in his search for his Princess.1 Brancusi returned to the theme again and again, each sculpture prompting refinements in the next. From the comparatively naturalistic Maiastra — with its majestic demeanour, outstretched neck and open beak — of which he made seven variations (three in marble, four in bronze) — through a series of four variations (two in marble, two in bronze) which he called Golden bird (L'oiseau d'or), the form becomes more attenuated, taller, absorbing the head and neck in a swelling urn of marble. Finally, in 1923, he established the form of Bird in space, which exists in sixteen versions (seven in marble, nine in bronze) an aeriform blade of marble or polished bronze soaring upwards in such equilibrium that the sculptor was obliged to anchor it by inserting a metal rod running internally from the narrow footing up into the body of the sculpture. The black and white marble Birds in the Gallery's collection are Brancusi's final marble versions of Bird in space, and the black marble version is the tallest he carved; from each a bronze was cast.1
A handwritten notation dated 19 January 1932, by Brancusi's friend Henri-Pierre Roché, states: 'Oiseau marbre noir, pas fini 250,000 frs'.3 This provides an approximate starting date for the black marble Bird in space but a certain completion date for both Birds cannot be established before the spring of 1936, when Brancusi sent photographs of them to their dashing new owner, Yeshwant Rao Holkar, Maharaja of Indore.4
A photograph of the black marble Bird in space taken by Brancusi in his studio has been dated to c.1933 by Marielle Tabart and Isabelle Monod-Fontaine.5 At the same time Brancusi photographed a white marble Bird using similar dramatic lighting. Traditionally this Bird has been identified with that made by Brancusi in 1930 and formerly in the collection of Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York. This identification is debatable.
According to information supplied by Marcel Duchamp to Athena T. Spear in 1962, Brancusi sold this Bird to Mrs. Charles Rumsey, New York, in c.1929-30.6 It seems more likely therefore, that if the dating of the photograph to c.1933 is correct, this photograph is of the white marble Bird subsequently sent to the Maharaja. Visually, this also seems more correct, as the photograph clearly shows that flaring of the 'neck' of the white Bird where it meets the collar, a distinctive feature of the Bird sent to the Maharaja. Brancusi accompanied the photographs he sent to the Maharaja in 1936 with a message, dictated to Henri-Pierre Roché, in which he said:
The height of the 'Bird' is meaningless in itself … It is the internal proportions of the object which count … The differences between the most recent 'Birds' can scarcely be seen in the photographs. Each, however, is the result of a fresh inspiration, unrelated to that of the one before … My 'Birds' are a series of different objects in a questhat remains the same. The ideal realisation of this quest would be an enlarged version that would fill the vault of the sky. My two most recent 'Birds', in black and white, are the ones where I got closest to the right proportion — and I approached this correct proportion to such a degree that I was able to rid myself of myself.7
Of the proportions of these Birds, Sidney Geist has written:
The white marble Bird in space is close to the taller Bird of 1930 (formerly collection Nelson Rockefeller, New York) in the proportion of footing to total height. But its body is newly slender where it springs from the footing, making for the easiest, swiftest such transition in the oeuvre. The black marble is unique among the' Birds' in its colour and is also the tallest he created, 1¾ inches taller than the Rockefeller. Although Brancusi placed no importance on size — valuing instead measure, proportion — great size, coupled with the extreme hardness of black marble, made the execution of the last Bird a demanding task. The proportion of footing to total height is below the average for this Bird in Space (while that of the white Bird is above the average) and close to that of the much smaller Zurich grey marble c.1925-31, (Kunsthaus, Zurich). But whereas the latter is quite erect, with a 'proud' stance, the black tilts to the rear as though to levitate. The emphasis on the body resulting from the relatively short footing is in keeping with the density of the black 'matière', in contrast to the more delicate body of the white Bird.8
It is worth noting that the subtle differences in the poise of the black and white marble Birds is also reflected in the proportions of the bases. In both cases the line of intersection of the 'legs' of the solid X bases does not occur at the centre but slightly lower (by exactly one-tenth of the total height of the bases), so that the basses appear to push their weight upwards in anticipation of this same action by the Birds themselves. Predictably, the base of the black marble Bird is the fatter of the two bases, and yet the indent cut to form the squatting X shape is shallower than in the base of the white marble Bird. Thus the deeply cut base of the white marble Bird in space appears springy by comparison.
Although the Maharaja of Indore did not take delivery of the black and white marble Birds until the end of 1936, he had reserved both and a further bronze Bird in space (now with the Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, California) on an earlier visit to Brancusi's studio, probably in late 1933.9 Henri-Pierre Roché, who conducted the Maharaja to Brancusi's studio, later recalled of this visit:
The visitor [the Maharaja] looked at every work slowly and quietly as in a fairy-tale. He had not much money at the time. He pulled his little notebook out of his pocket and began careful calculations. Why? He simply wanted to buy the three major and related works which were there: a large Bird in space in black marble, one in white marble and one in polished bronze. A unique trio. He was counting the money he was able to spend. He also wanted, later, to have a temple built for them by Brancusi, twelve steps by twelve, placed on the lawn near his palace, as if it had fallen from the sky without doors or windows, with an underground entrance, a temple in which to meditate, open to everybody but to only one person at a time. Inside, there would be a square mirror of water with the three Birds on three sides and a tall oak sculpture, Spirit of Buddha by Brancusi, on the fourth side, arranged so that the Golden Bird [in polished bronze] would be struck by the sun precisely at noon, through a circular hole in the ceiling, on a particular sacred day of the year. A drawing of the temple was soon made.10
In Roché's recollection it is the Maharaja who introduces the idea of a temple as the ultimate home of the Birds, although this was probably at the prompting of Brancusi, who had long cherished the idea of combining his sculpture and architecture.11
During 1936, with Roché acting as intermediary, a lively correspondence took place between Brancusi and the Maharaja regarding the final form of the temple.12 Originally it seems the Maharaja simply envisaged a 'sacred precinct', open to the air and 'enclosed by a tall, hardy hedge', with the 'Birds sheltering in niches at the sides of a rectangular pool of water'.13 A number of sketches have survived which show Brancusi experimenting with the design of these niches.14 However, as Brancusi took the initiative, the temple became enclosed, a small pantheon-like structure lit by a single open aperture in a vault or dome.15 Another sketch by Brancusi conceived of the monument as a small stupa-like building, very Indian in feeling.16 Clearly the external form of the temple remained in a constant state of change in the artist's mind. The Romanian engineer Stefan Georgescu-Gorjan (who worked with Brancusi on the installation of the memorial at Tirgu Jiu) has written that by the time Brancusi sought his assistance on the Indore project the sculptorenvisaged the temple as egg-shaped,'17 while according to the architect Octav Doicescu, Brancusi apparently talked of the temple in the form of an apple, 'an apple of monumental dimensions, on the scale of a mausoleum; it was to be executed in solid marble, in undulating country, at the end of a valley with a river running through'.18
The interior of the proposed temple also appears to have been in a continual state of metamorphosis in the artist's mind. The constant, already present in the correspondence of 1936, was the idea of the three versions of Bird in space purchased by the Maharaja — in white marble, black marble, and polished bronze — arranged around the sides of a square or rectangular pool of water. In the correspondence of 1936 the Maharaja also visualised that the fourth side, opposite the bronze Bird in space, would be occupied by 'a small temple of the Indian God',19 although in Brancusi's mind this later became his own tall, wooden sculpture, originally entitled The spirit of Buddha and subsequently King of kings (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Those who later heard Brancusi speak of the project also mention frescoes, of which a trial panel (collection Alexandre Istrati and Natalia Dumitresco, Paris) and a gouache design (Musée National d'art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris ), survive, showing white triangular birds floating horizontally on a blue ground.20 Brancusi visualised the temple as a chamber for spiritual contemplation in which the presiding spirits were to be the three versions of his Bird in space. Perhaps in this context the Birds would have assumed their real meaning for the artist, transcending their avian inspiration to become, rather, a metaphor for the human urge towards spiritual ascension — the flight of the soul. 'All my life', said Brancusi, without any specific reference to the Birds, 'I have only sought the essence of flight. Flight — what bliss'.21
Brancusi arrived in India on 30 December 1937 with the intention of beginning work on the temple but the Maharaja was away (apparently on a tiger hunt) and seemed to have lost interest in the project.22 Brancusi mooned about the palace at Manik Bagh for about a month, polished his Birds for the last time, and then departed on 27 January 1938.23 But he never lost interest in the project. Even in the 1940s and 1950s many friends recalled that Brancusi spoke often and with enthusiasm of the planned temple at Indore.24 Had it been realised it would surely have been one of the most remarkable monuments of modern art.
The installation of the black and white marble Birds in the Australian National Gallery pays homage to Brancusi's unrealised dream, while raising the Birds in the pond itself, rather than beside it, for their own safety.25
Shortly after the Gallery bought the Birds it was advised that the original limestone bases had been destroyed in India. With the aid of precise measurements of the lost originals, replicas were made in 1982, cut from Wondabyne sandstone from the Gosford region of New South Wales, which has the same grainless, even grey colour of the originals.26
Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.193.