Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

I ,r The Sydney Morning Herald 19 June 1982 0 N THE bank of the Brisbane River beside the Captain Cook Bridge, a raw outcrop of whit~ cubes announces... an• otJ:tcr \ shQpping centre? An airpo~ for helicopters? No, it's the new Queensland Cultural enue which will be • Jhowpiece of civic pride during the coming C monwcaltii Ounea, 1 tourist attra ion for ycan IO c:ome. and the for Queensland c:ulturati. · •.'nte Qu S28 million . orth of building - is open in& tb· weekend. It is the first P,!Ut . of' a plell. of theatres and .concert bal to be completed. ., , ·' Brisbane's new g·allery outspends and· outshines Sydney's q, ·~~ .,,\'b ?- the other side of the river, the arts complex is a nondescript space• filler. It contributes nothing to the waterfront view, except at night. The chancterless facades arc ·cause for strong criticism, but this is my only criticism or the building. Apart rrom the tremendous ex• pcnscr or tbe building itself, tho Queensland Art Gallery hu spent a fortune titivating its permanent collection. In the last 12 months it 1111 acquired paintings by Rubens, Tintomto, Vandyck and Vuillard. lbe pllery senea a city with a population of' one million, with one major aruc:bool, one univenlty 111 depanment and • small community of' local artilta. Yet it hu inore than double the exhibiting space of the :.rt Gallery of' NSW, and a much larger budget for ruqning the gallery and purcllasing works ofart. For the openin~ of the gallery, the greater part of the permanent collection will be on display, u well as five temporary exhibitions brought from overseas. These arc: Kandinsky; Edward Hopper; Ma• sterpieces from the Idemitsu ·Mu• seum in Tokyo; Rcnais.~ance bronzes from the Victoria and Albert and Ashmolcan Museums in England; and British drawings and watercolours from the Fitzwilliam Museum. Art Terence Maloon The head of the architectural .firm who designed the centre, · Robin Gibson, won the Queens• lander of the Y car award. His design for the art gallery is a classic of streamlined functional• ism. This gigantic commission hasn't been a pretext for him to show off, or to make a radical gesture (as in Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New · York, or Piano and Rodgers' Porn• pidou Centre in Paris). Gibson has ignored the trendy rhetoric of post-modernist theory. and has passed up the opponunity t.o translate the charming ver• nacular of Quecnsland's suburban homes into the terms of a public building. This has been a mixed blessing for the gallery. Or rather, it has heen an unquali• lied blessing for the gallery and a bit of a setback to the city. From While these artists are major histo~ figures, and their works aell rpr major prices 011 the inter• national market, only the Vandyck is superlative in ill own term • u well u In tem1s or the artist's total output. 1be Rubens portrait is fine. but the Vuillard didn't impress mo at all, and the Tintorctto (if it hasn't been botched by restorm. and is indeed a Tintorctto) must be the worst painting he ever did. The gallery hasn't -skimp.eel on Australian art, either, and one of its prized possessions is Dobell's por• trait. the Cypriot (1940). This painting will come as a revelation to anyone like myselr, who has seen 100 many of •D · U's later paint• ings and has bet.. put off by their hysterically over-wrought man• nerism. The Cypriot is evidence of Dobell's early brilliance in portrai• ture. An excellent recent acquisition, a p:iinting by John Firth•Sm;th, is installed over a night or stairs and it is the perfect foil to the travertine marble, sandblasted concrete, sand-coloured carpets and p:uq•J et floors which give the gallery its medley or handsome textures. Firth-Smith's painting seems to , blow·the cover off all that discreet I refinement in its explosion of opulence. Will Sydney aliow the Art Galle- ry of NSW to remain un• der-funded, lagging behind the State galleries of Vi,ctoria, Queens– land - not to mention the Nation• al Gallery in Canhm-a'! In Brisbane, S4 million were contributed by the public and by industry while the new art gallery was still in the planning stages. Between that and the funds avail• able to the Art Gallery of NSW, there is, Edmund Capon says, -~imply no comparison." ,' •