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Tommy McRae’s Sketchbooks
The National Gallery of Victoria has just acquired two extremely important sketchbooks by the great nineteenth-century Kwat Kwat artist Tommy McRae, c.1836–190
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Taboo or Not Taboo, the fashions of Leigh Bowery
Reading The Face magazine in early 1984 I was overwhelmed by a double-page spread entitled The New Glitterati featuring Leigh Bowery photographed in his ‘Paki from outer space’ look
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Enfilade and Intrafilament, the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square
In August 1968 when the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road was opened, reviews were mixed
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Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s View of Piazza di Monte Cavallo
During the eighteenth century painted and engraved views of Rome were popular among visitors to the city, in particular the wealthy young Englishmen who roamed the Continent on what was known as…
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Sassoferrato at the National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria has recently acquired a Madonna in prayer of exceptional beauty and quality by the seventeenth-century painter Giovanni Battista Salvi, ‘Il Sassoferrato̵
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Every thing in its right place
The Sarah Sze exhibition is extremely fragile. Please do not touch the works. Children must be accompanied by an adult and we would appreciate it if you could take them by the ha
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Imperial fashion victims in provincial Egypt: re-dating Egyptian mummy potraits
During the first three centuries of the Christian era, funerary artisans in the Roman province of Egypt produced a unique genre of mummy covering which reflected the multicultural society that existed there…
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The Multiple Worlds of Cindy Sherman’s History Portraits
It does not seem unlikely to me that there is a total book on some shelf of the universe; I pray to the unknown gods that a man – just one,…
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No Form Can Be Spatial, The origins of Lucio Fontana’s Spatial concept
In the first half of the 1960s, the Argentine–Italian artist Lucio Fontana created Spatial concept (fi
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Veronese and friends: a technical examination of Nobleman between active and contemplative life
The evaluation of paintings relies on many approaches. Assessments and judgements are sometimes made, however, without direct observation and at other times without consideration of a work’s material cont
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A Knight in Shining Armour, a Virgin – Uccello’s Melbourne Saint George and the dragon and Oxford Annunciation
Paintings by famous early Renaissance artists are rare in Australian collections, so the realisation that the Saint George and the dragon, c.1430 (fig.
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The Riddle of the Sphinx: An Attic red-figure lekythos
In 1980 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired a very fine Attic red-figure lekythos by the Achilles Painter (fig. 1
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A Paestan Vase by Python: In memory of Dale Trendall
About eighty kilometres south of Naples, a traveller will come upon the extensive ruins of an ancient Greek town with an impressive fortification wall some 4.
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A Life Revealed: Emil Todt, a German sculptor in nineteenth-century Melbourne
Emil Todt, the German sculptor whose plaster figure group The gold diggers (fig.
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Shark People: Djapu painting and the Miny’tji Buku Larrŋgay Collection
The Aboriginal community of Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land has produced some of the most masterful Australian painters of the mid- to late-twentieth century.