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The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stop rushing through art galleries. Spend 10 minutes with just one masterpiece instead
On a recent Sunday afternoon, with a few hours up my sleeve, I decided: I want to see a Rothko. I wasn't in the mood to wander around the gallery, spending a couple of minutes with hundreds of pieces of art. I just wanted to find the Rothko at the National Gallery of Victoria, stand in front of it for 10 minutes, and then go outside again to enjoy the sunshine. We're extraordinarily lucky in Australia that the permanent collections at our state galleries are free to attend. Our public collections are just that: owned by the public, belonging to us, there for us to enjoy. When I was growing up, the Art Gallery of South Australia's kids program had a sort of hidden picture game where you had to find objects in various paintings around the gallery. More than anything, that program taught me that the gallery space was open to me. As an adult, I love a day planned around the gallery, and I can spend hours with the collection. I'll visit the same exhibitions again and again, noticing new paintings every time – or new things in paintings I've spent hours with previously. But there is beauty in building a visit around one work of art: popping your head into the gallery during your spare half-an-hour, to spend some time with an old friend. Mark Rothko is best known for his colour field paintings, large-scale canvases, swathed with colour. In these expanses of hues, Rothko somehow manages to capture the depths of our emotional worlds. The Rothko at the NGV is titled Untitled (Red), and was painted in 1956. The wall text features one of my favourite quotes from the artist about his work: 'I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on.' Standing in front of it during my recent visit, I found myself dwarfed by the painting. A thin dusky red barely obscures the canvas. Three squares of colour sit on top: a rich blood red, a light rose pink, and a terracotta orange. I stood close enough that it took up my whole field of vision; I stood back to take it all in at once. A few people wandered in and out of the room – in and out of my awareness – but I just stood there, quietly contemplating my emotions. A sense of peace, calm. Happiness researcher Arthur Brooks says that when you look at art, 'your perception of the outside world expands'. It unlocks what Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman calls our panoramic vision, where the gaze relaxes and widens to take in the peripheries. It is the opposite of the stress response, where our pupils constrict and our field of vision narrows. Art opens us up to the world. I think about this panoramic vision when I visit the Rothko; as I have many times in many galleries in front of many works of art. When you stop in front of one piece, you allow everything to slow down. It can feel like you're being subsumed, or embraced. Everything else fades away. You can exist fully in the moment: just you, and this work of art. I have my favourites at other galleries around the country. On a work trip to Canberra, I visited the Skyspace installation Within, Without (2010) by James Turrell at the National Gallery of Australia every sunset. The day John Olsen died I went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to stand in front of his incredible painting Five Bells (1963). I'm always overwhelmed by the intelligence in the seeming simplicity of Emily Kam Kngwarray's Awelye II (1994) and Awelye V (1994) paintings at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I love the way different art works take over the Watermall at the Queensland Art Gallery, the water changing the shape of the art, as the art changes the shape of the water feature. I have only ever been to Perth in the height of summer, and so Mr Ngarralja Tommy Way's Warla, Flat Country (2021), which brings the heat of the desert into the gallery, is the work I most remember from my time at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Not every trip to the art gallery needs to be a huge outing. What a privilege – and a joy – it is to just go and spend whatever time you have to hand with one work of art. A painting, a sculpture, a video piece. Our public collections belong to us: we should remind ourselves of this by stopping by, even for 10 minutes, as often as we can.
Japan Today
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
The kimono is more than an artifact and more than clothing. It is a concept artists will make their own
By Sasha Grishin The kimono garment, the national dress of Japan, carries within itself all of the magic and traditions of Japanese culture. The basic features of the kimono are fairly simple. It is a wrapped front garment with square sleeves that has a rectangular body where the left side is wrapped over the right, except in funerary use. The garment may be traced back to the Heian period as a distinctive style of dress for the nobility. In the Edo period (1603–1867) it came to a glorious culmination with colorful and expensive fabrics. The great poet Matsuo Basho once wrote 'Spring passes by / again and again in layers / of blossom-kimono'. Since childhood I've loved the mystical image 'blossom-kimono'. In 2020, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London staged their epic exhibition "Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk," where hundreds of garments, accessories, prints and photographs charted the history of the kimono from the 17th century through to the present. A new exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria is similarly ambitious. Over 70 fabulous garments of exquisite craftsmanship – some made of silk with gold and silver embroidery and dazzling designs – have been assembled within a context of over 150 paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts. Although many of the items have never been previously exhibited in Australia, most are now in the collection of the NGV, with many specifically acquired for this exhibition. Exquisite production There are seven newly acquired Edo-period silk and ramie kimonos, richly decorated with leaves, tendrils and falling snow. They provide us with a glimpse at the wealth and sophistication of the samurai and merchant classes of the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the highlights is the Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum and cranes, from the early to mid-19th century. It is a display of exquisite taste with satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, and embroidery with gold thread. The birds and the vegetation seem to float on the surface and must have created an amazing sight when worn. The garment is simple and functional and, despite the exquisiteness of its production, it is also restrained in contrast to the conspicuous exuberance of some examples of 19th century European courtly dress. Some of these Edo period kimonos can become quite narrative-driven in their design, as with the Hitoe kosode kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays of the late Edo period. Slightly smaller than the wedding kimono, that was 177.5 cm long as opposed to 167 cm, this one revels in a blue background on gauze satin silk with a multiplicity of little narrative scenes like an assembly of diverse stage sets. The exhibition also includes the work of contemporary Japanese kimono designers including Hiroko Takahashi, Jotaro Saito, Modern Antenna, Tamao Shigemune, Y&SONS, Rumi Rock and Robe Japonica. The kimono as a concept The kimono is more than an historic artifact, one where ideas and methods of production were to remain constant for centuries. It is also an idea that inspires designers working in international fashion houses. The NGV exhibition includes kimono-inspired works of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, Comme des Garçon, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Zambesi and Rudi Gernreich. Alexander McQueen's Gown, belt and sandals (Dégradé) (2007) is one of the takeaway memories from this exhibition. The humble functional kimono has been totally transfigured. To the silk-satin shell there have been added leather, metal and rubber accessories and synthetic shoulder pads. The purple and pink color scheme and the sweeping sleeves that trail along the ground create a mesmerising and dominant phantom-like character that owns and dominates the space. It is difficult not to be impressed by McQueen's vision, but we have now moved quite a long way from the kimono. The kimono is a wonderful concept – an armature on which to hang many different ideas. The beauty of this exhibition is that it frees the idea of a garment from a static piece of cloth, at best to be displayed on a dummy, to something approaching a concept in design that artists will clasp and from which they will create their own work. There are many rich nuances in the show, for example the superb almost monochrome and somewhat gothic men's undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon (c.1930). At the same time, we have women's kimono with geometric design and accessories (c.1930) with its polychrome exuberance with reds, blacks and grays combining geometric motifs with soft organic feather-like forms. Basho's 'blossom-kimono' was a meditation on the passing of time and the hope that a young girl will live to experience wrinkles that come with old age. The kimono in this exhibition celebrates the passing of time and generational change within the life of an immortal idea about function, form and ideas of beauty. Sasha Grishin is Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University. The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. External Link © The Conversation
The Advertiser
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Period scenes set mood for Impressionist masterpieces
An exhibition of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria - this may sound a little familiar. The show was first installed at the NGV in 2021, but was only open for a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than 100 paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro have returned to Melbourne for the gallery's winter blockbuster opening on Friday. The exhibition includes a whole room of Monet masterpieces that demonstrate his contribution to the groundbreaking late 19th century artistic movement, with its emphasis on light and colour, painting en plein air (outdoors), and everyday subject matter. The 16 artworks in the room, which were painted over three decades, show familiar scenes such as Monet's garden in Giverny, landscapes in Argenteuil, and the Normandy and Mediterranean coastlines. "You really get a sense of him as a man and a painter, by being able to be with him in those locations that were so important," said Katie Hanson from MFA Boston. "In his lifetime, he was the epitome of Impressionism, and still is today." Impressionist paintings are so widely reproduced - on everything from coffee mugs to calendars - that it's easy to take them for granted and forget just how radical Monet and his contemporaries really were, she said. And seeing these masterpieces in the flesh is a totally different experience, according to Dr Hanson. "You're able to feel so much of the immediacy of the painterly practice as the artist is putting the paint down onto the canvas, because the brush strokes are visible, and there is that wonderfully textured surface," she said. Dr Hanson worked on the first iteration of the show and four years later is finally in Melbourne to see it installed. Unlike the all-too-brief 2021 outing, this time around the NGV has gone for an "immersive" exhibition design with brocade fabrics, wallpapers, sconces and furniture creating a sumptuous surrounding for the artworks. The idea is to reference European and Bostonian interiors of the late 19th century - the homes in which early collectors would have hung the artworks. It's also a nod to the architecture of the Boston MFA, where a dedicated room to contemplate Monet has been a longstanding attraction. The museum is renowned for its Impressionist collection, thanks to the foresight of a handful of early Bostonians who bought what were then contemporary paintings with an eye to the future of the institution. "Their collection has the unique ability to narrate the entire trajectory of the Impressionist movement - from its precursors to its zenith - with rich detail and nuance," said NGV director Tony Ellwood. The 2025 exhibition also features three extra works: paintings by Degas, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Victorine Meurent (known for being Édouard Manet's favourite model). French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is on display from Friday until October 5 at NGV International on St Kilda Road in Melbourne. An exhibition of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria - this may sound a little familiar. The show was first installed at the NGV in 2021, but was only open for a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than 100 paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro have returned to Melbourne for the gallery's winter blockbuster opening on Friday. The exhibition includes a whole room of Monet masterpieces that demonstrate his contribution to the groundbreaking late 19th century artistic movement, with its emphasis on light and colour, painting en plein air (outdoors), and everyday subject matter. The 16 artworks in the room, which were painted over three decades, show familiar scenes such as Monet's garden in Giverny, landscapes in Argenteuil, and the Normandy and Mediterranean coastlines. "You really get a sense of him as a man and a painter, by being able to be with him in those locations that were so important," said Katie Hanson from MFA Boston. "In his lifetime, he was the epitome of Impressionism, and still is today." Impressionist paintings are so widely reproduced - on everything from coffee mugs to calendars - that it's easy to take them for granted and forget just how radical Monet and his contemporaries really were, she said. And seeing these masterpieces in the flesh is a totally different experience, according to Dr Hanson. "You're able to feel so much of the immediacy of the painterly practice as the artist is putting the paint down onto the canvas, because the brush strokes are visible, and there is that wonderfully textured surface," she said. Dr Hanson worked on the first iteration of the show and four years later is finally in Melbourne to see it installed. Unlike the all-too-brief 2021 outing, this time around the NGV has gone for an "immersive" exhibition design with brocade fabrics, wallpapers, sconces and furniture creating a sumptuous surrounding for the artworks. The idea is to reference European and Bostonian interiors of the late 19th century - the homes in which early collectors would have hung the artworks. It's also a nod to the architecture of the Boston MFA, where a dedicated room to contemplate Monet has been a longstanding attraction. The museum is renowned for its Impressionist collection, thanks to the foresight of a handful of early Bostonians who bought what were then contemporary paintings with an eye to the future of the institution. "Their collection has the unique ability to narrate the entire trajectory of the Impressionist movement - from its precursors to its zenith - with rich detail and nuance," said NGV director Tony Ellwood. The 2025 exhibition also features three extra works: paintings by Degas, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Victorine Meurent (known for being Édouard Manet's favourite model). French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is on display from Friday until October 5 at NGV International on St Kilda Road in Melbourne. An exhibition of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria - this may sound a little familiar. The show was first installed at the NGV in 2021, but was only open for a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than 100 paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro have returned to Melbourne for the gallery's winter blockbuster opening on Friday. The exhibition includes a whole room of Monet masterpieces that demonstrate his contribution to the groundbreaking late 19th century artistic movement, with its emphasis on light and colour, painting en plein air (outdoors), and everyday subject matter. The 16 artworks in the room, which were painted over three decades, show familiar scenes such as Monet's garden in Giverny, landscapes in Argenteuil, and the Normandy and Mediterranean coastlines. "You really get a sense of him as a man and a painter, by being able to be with him in those locations that were so important," said Katie Hanson from MFA Boston. "In his lifetime, he was the epitome of Impressionism, and still is today." Impressionist paintings are so widely reproduced - on everything from coffee mugs to calendars - that it's easy to take them for granted and forget just how radical Monet and his contemporaries really were, she said. And seeing these masterpieces in the flesh is a totally different experience, according to Dr Hanson. "You're able to feel so much of the immediacy of the painterly practice as the artist is putting the paint down onto the canvas, because the brush strokes are visible, and there is that wonderfully textured surface," she said. Dr Hanson worked on the first iteration of the show and four years later is finally in Melbourne to see it installed. Unlike the all-too-brief 2021 outing, this time around the NGV has gone for an "immersive" exhibition design with brocade fabrics, wallpapers, sconces and furniture creating a sumptuous surrounding for the artworks. The idea is to reference European and Bostonian interiors of the late 19th century - the homes in which early collectors would have hung the artworks. It's also a nod to the architecture of the Boston MFA, where a dedicated room to contemplate Monet has been a longstanding attraction. The museum is renowned for its Impressionist collection, thanks to the foresight of a handful of early Bostonians who bought what were then contemporary paintings with an eye to the future of the institution. "Their collection has the unique ability to narrate the entire trajectory of the Impressionist movement - from its precursors to its zenith - with rich detail and nuance," said NGV director Tony Ellwood. The 2025 exhibition also features three extra works: paintings by Degas, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Victorine Meurent (known for being Édouard Manet's favourite model). French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is on display from Friday until October 5 at NGV International on St Kilda Road in Melbourne. An exhibition of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria - this may sound a little familiar. The show was first installed at the NGV in 2021, but was only open for a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than 100 paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro have returned to Melbourne for the gallery's winter blockbuster opening on Friday. The exhibition includes a whole room of Monet masterpieces that demonstrate his contribution to the groundbreaking late 19th century artistic movement, with its emphasis on light and colour, painting en plein air (outdoors), and everyday subject matter. The 16 artworks in the room, which were painted over three decades, show familiar scenes such as Monet's garden in Giverny, landscapes in Argenteuil, and the Normandy and Mediterranean coastlines. "You really get a sense of him as a man and a painter, by being able to be with him in those locations that were so important," said Katie Hanson from MFA Boston. "In his lifetime, he was the epitome of Impressionism, and still is today." Impressionist paintings are so widely reproduced - on everything from coffee mugs to calendars - that it's easy to take them for granted and forget just how radical Monet and his contemporaries really were, she said. And seeing these masterpieces in the flesh is a totally different experience, according to Dr Hanson. "You're able to feel so much of the immediacy of the painterly practice as the artist is putting the paint down onto the canvas, because the brush strokes are visible, and there is that wonderfully textured surface," she said. Dr Hanson worked on the first iteration of the show and four years later is finally in Melbourne to see it installed. Unlike the all-too-brief 2021 outing, this time around the NGV has gone for an "immersive" exhibition design with brocade fabrics, wallpapers, sconces and furniture creating a sumptuous surrounding for the artworks. The idea is to reference European and Bostonian interiors of the late 19th century - the homes in which early collectors would have hung the artworks. It's also a nod to the architecture of the Boston MFA, where a dedicated room to contemplate Monet has been a longstanding attraction. The museum is renowned for its Impressionist collection, thanks to the foresight of a handful of early Bostonians who bought what were then contemporary paintings with an eye to the future of the institution. "Their collection has the unique ability to narrate the entire trajectory of the Impressionist movement - from its precursors to its zenith - with rich detail and nuance," said NGV director Tony Ellwood. The 2025 exhibition also features three extra works: paintings by Degas, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Victorine Meurent (known for being Édouard Manet's favourite model). French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is on display from Friday until October 5 at NGV International on St Kilda Road in Melbourne.
Perth Now
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Period scenes set mood for Impressionist masterpieces
An exhibition of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria - this may sound a little familiar. The show was first installed at the NGV in 2021, but was only open for a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than 100 paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro have returned to Melbourne for the gallery's winter blockbuster opening on Friday. The exhibition includes a whole room of Monet masterpieces that demonstrate his contribution to the groundbreaking late 19th century artistic movement, with its emphasis on light and colour, painting en plein air (outdoors), and everyday subject matter. The 16 artworks in the room, which were painted over three decades, show familiar scenes such as Monet's garden in Giverny, landscapes in Argenteuil, and the Normandy and Mediterranean coastlines. "You really get a sense of him as a man and a painter, by being able to be with him in those locations that were so important," said Katie Hanson from MFA Boston. "In his lifetime, he was the epitome of Impressionism, and still is today." Impressionist paintings are so widely reproduced - on everything from coffee mugs to calendars - that it's easy to take them for granted and forget just how radical Monet and his contemporaries really were, she said. And seeing these masterpieces in the flesh is a totally different experience, according to Dr Hanson. "You're able to feel so much of the immediacy of the painterly practice as the artist is putting the paint down onto the canvas, because the brush strokes are visible, and there is that wonderfully textured surface," she said. Dr Hanson worked on the first iteration of the show and four years later is finally in Melbourne to see it installed. Unlike the all-too-brief 2021 outing, this time around the NGV has gone for an "immersive" exhibition design with brocade fabrics, wallpapers, sconces and furniture creating a sumptuous surrounding for the artworks. The idea is to reference European and Bostonian interiors of the late 19th century - the homes in which early collectors would have hung the artworks. It's also a nod to the architecture of the Boston MFA, where a dedicated room to contemplate Monet has been a longstanding attraction. The museum is renowned for its Impressionist collection, thanks to the foresight of a handful of early Bostonians who bought what were then contemporary paintings with an eye to the future of the institution. "Their collection has the unique ability to narrate the entire trajectory of the Impressionist movement - from its precursors to its zenith - with rich detail and nuance," said NGV director Tony Ellwood. The 2025 exhibition also features three extra works: paintings by Degas, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Victorine Meurent (known for being Édouard Manet's favourite model). French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is on display from Friday until October 5 at NGV International on St Kilda Road in Melbourne.
AU Financial Review
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- AU Financial Review
A second chance to make a first impression at NGV's winter blockbuster
Four years ago, during the pandemic lockdowns, an exceptional group of French impressionists travelled to Australia – but barely got out of their crates. Nowhere in the world have artists such as Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cezanne had such a dismal reception, although the National Gallery of Victoria was more than willing to roll out the red carpet. Next month, in what must be a first for local museums, the NGV will restage the show that misfired four years ago. The impressionists are once again leaving their home in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), and taking the voyage to Melbourne, for this year's Winter Masterpieces exhibition. The return season is an extraordinary act of good will on behalf of the Boston museum, where many of these works are normally on permanent display. And it's a testament to the depth of Boston's holdings that they can fill the gaps with similar pieces.
