Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 1 : Presscuttings, 1959-1962

Flora "COURIER MAIL" Brisbane. QM. Although this to only presented in photographs, it is most stimulating and should not be missed, espec- ially not by members of the professions concerned and by those responsible for the erection of buildings. In this country, where the plastic arts rarely find a home in public buildings, we might well take a lead from what is being done elsewhere. The display shows how sculptors are not only com- missioned with figural work inside and outside buildings, but also with the artistic treatment of a staircase, a June 28. 1958 9 MAY 1967 SCULPTURE in BUILDING Gallery Show AN International Exhibition, "Sculpture In Architecture," is now on display at the Notional Gallery for four weeks. balustrade, a ceiling, a gate, and so forth. Apart from the use nl traditional materials, new ones are being exploited, such as afurninlum, moulded cement, and plastics. Our new type of architec- ture, os ytly onl steel skeletonm with curtaains of glass, does not offer the same opportunities to sculpture as the solid walls of former periods, or as In Gothic times, when nearly every building stone was also a caretone. Our new architectures calls AR1 REVIEW by DR GERTRUDE LANGER for sculptures of kindred spirit. Compact, solid forms unite well with solid walls. while a more ethereal --space rather than mass -emphasising -sculpture seems to unite bet- ter with the light structures of our age. Thh exhibition tains come line examples al a fierier: ultimo he. tween the hen arts. Among the works that created tatot interest Were: A cinema ceiling, a gate to a mausoleum. a bronze bal- ustrade tall in Italy). A relief "Pegasus" on the Postal Building in Berne, Switzerland. "Hanging Eternal Light,' Interfaith centre (U.S.A.); y"Follgitures in Theatre," New Epstein's beautiful Madonna (convent of the Holy Name, London); and Henry Moore's friezes of abstract shapes. THE MISER R THE ARTS 307 QUEENSLAND - BEAUTY WITHOUT ART THE QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY is the most aesthetically satisfying gallery in Australia. I hesitate to praise it too highly only because Mr Robert Haines, the Director. is hoping and working towards a brand-new contem- porary building, and I would not like it) say anything likely to stop him get- ting it. The Queensland art collection housed in the Brisbane Museum Building is small. and not even taxi.drivers are sure where the gallery is: but once within those 'School of Arts' portals and past the columns of hot.water-bag pink brick, one might be in cultural Japan. The great thing, though, is that the effect is not too cultural. Mr Haines, given one large room over 10011. square (I paced it) and with a dreadful Crystal Palace - type ceiling, has stretched a tent of calico beneath the dirty glass and then split up his big room with textured screens, each individually lit and ar- ranged to form odd -shaped. small par. lours in which are scattered a few easy chairs, and with the paintings on the walls just as you should see them in a normal -sized room. Naturally. if you look very closely. the gallery has a temporary appearance. The tented roof. reminiscent of rare papyrus to the casual visitor, is understandably just dusty calico to Mr Haines; and natur- ally he wants Queensland to have some- thing better-but in this question of 'how better' lies a problem. Artists. in the main. are poor. Art now, as ever. is born out of struggle and is rarely appreciated by State or country until it has first been appre- ciated by ordinary or extra -ordinary people. Surely, then, it is an anachro- nism to house Art either in halls of marble or in low-ceilinged. aseptic, plastic - walled. contemporary mauso- leums? Painters today paint smaller than ever before. They see their work hanging in houses-not galleries. For this reason, galleries should look like houses, and for this reason Brisbane Gallery is successful. In the Sculpture parlour there were only tell pieces, and from an easy chair could study Epstein's head of Bernard Shaw and his large Monte 'Esther.' a small dancing figure by Mgas and Iwo BY BLItNAKI) HISLING magnificent oak cherubs by the local sculptor. Ola Cohn. A.R.C.A.. as these were in my own some. From another chair in another tem- porary parlour I saw Dobell's large 'Por- trait of a Youth.' which. now that the Joshua Smith portrait is destroyed. is the only one lett of this particular cru: Drysdale's large litislifire (surely one of his best?) and a magnificent Paris painting by Melbourne's Roy Dalgarno. The Israeli Exhibition occupied a large part of the gallery. The Moreton Gallery is the only other home of art in Brisbane, and here we see (hat with rare exceptions. Queensland taste runs in the gum -tree rut. The exceptions are usually Sydney o ) tr. sr I. and Melbourne painters. but Herbert Carstens. a Queerislander with signs of a Grandma Moses approach, is excep- tional in quite a different manner. Mr Carstens is a representational painter whose success. to my mind, lies en- tirely in his determination to paint the unpaintable. His is a primitive tech pique. He records rather than composes. and his efforts are delightful. I ravelling further into Queensland I found . . . nothing. Perhaps it is be- cause that where you get beauty you don't get Art: but certainly, except for the remote North. where occasionally members of the world's oldest race squat around like maiden ladies dabbling in watercolour. you get no Art whatever. es, Is Ii :MOWER MAIL" Brisbane. Qid. .11IN IWO N AMBITION VAN GOGH) REALISATION of a lifetime's ambition yesterday for Mrs. B. Robertson, of Ipswich, who was ono of the first Q - larders to see Australio'sonly Van Gogh painting, "Teta d'Homme," valued at 120,000 at the National Gallery. Mrs. Robertson, an art lover, said, "All my life, I have wanted to see an original Von Gogh." The painting, on loan from the Melbourne Gallery, will be on display for a month. "Tete d'Homme" alit be on display at Queensland's gallery for one month, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday (in- clusive) and from 2 Dm. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and died by his own hand In 1890 aged 37. In a fit of insanity he cut off his right ear, Ills work was never appreci- ated in his own day. Gallery attendants and watchmen will guard the painting day and night during Its month's display in Brisbane.