Corporate Engagement

Picasso in Brisbane: I just can't wait

Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net.

BRISBANE.- An exhibition of Pablo Picasso's personal art collection will be held for the first time outside of Europe, and exclusively in Brisbane, at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) through 14 September.

The exhibition features over 100 works from Picasso's extraordinary collection plus more than 80 important works by the artist himself. A range of documentary photographs also feature.

'Picasso & his collection' includes paintings, drawings and prints by artists such as Chardin, Matisse, Renoir, Cézanne, Rousseau, Miró, Modigliani and Braque, as well as an extraordinary selection of Oceanic and African works.

The exhibition is being generously lent by the musée national Picasso, Paris, and curated by its director Anne Baldassari.

In association with the exhibition, the Australian Cinémathèque will present a curated film program and the Children’s Art Centre will present a major program for children and families.

'Picasso & his collection' will give unique insights into the thinking and visual language of an artist who played the most vital role in the creation of modern art. The range of work Picasso collected over his lifetime reflects a very personal, idiosyncratic collection, and paints in its own way an intimate portrait of Picasso the artist.

Picasso’s collection was donated by his family to the French state after his death in 1973, and is now held by the musée national Picasso in Paris. An exhibition of Picasso’s collection has only ever previously been mounted in Paris, Munich and Barcelona.

"Turner to Monet" exhibition; Australian National Gallery

I spent a few hours visiting this exhibition (subtitled the triumph of landscape) last week and I think it is a very good collection of paintings, well-organised and with a good narrative and a point to make about a period of art (this is important because I think many visitors hope to learn something from these big exhibitions)

Of course, having JWM Turner and Claude Monet in the title must be great for marketing as they are two of the most popular painters with modern (general) viewers. After all, Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire", housed in the National Gallery, London, was voted Britain's favourite painting in a BBC poll a few years ago; ahead of John Constable's The Haywain. Both Turner and Constable are strongly represented in the current exhibition.

Monet's water lilies are also almost universally known with the target audience for blockbuster exhibitions. The NGA's own much loved water lilies painting is, of course, in the exhibition along with its Haystacks and a few other very good Monets including Waterloo Bridge (from the Stokes collection) and Morning Haze (from Philadelphia). There are, of course, plenty of examples from impressionists and neo-impressionists and a couple of Cezannes.

There is much else of value between Turner, Constable and Monet to please the exhibition goer but one of the good things is the inclusion of some great Australian paintings particularly those by Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts , Charles Conder, Eugene von Guerard and John Glover. Many of these paintings are well-known to most of us but they stand up well in this company and I think many Australians will give them more respect after this exhibition.

Two pleasant surprises for me in this exhibition was "Camaret, moonlight and fishing boats" (pictured right) by french neoimpressionist (also described as a pointillist or a social realist) Maximilien Luce. I found this to be a very strong picture with the single narrow beam of moonlight cutting through the rich dark blue greens of the night scene to create a powerful even poignant effect.

The second was an Australian picture that particularly struck me was "Flood in the Darling, 1890" by W. C. Piguenit (pictured right). The painting captures the sheer vastness of this part of the world and the terrible beauty and power of it.

Is Emily Kngwarreye's work abstract expressionism

I've been doing a course on australian aboriginal art recently and as part of that I have written an essay on this topic. If any of you have an interest in this area I'd love to hear your feedback. Download emilyK.pdf