Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 8 : Pressclippings, 1977-1981

------... 1111111111,,11111111111111,111,111111111,1111111111111,1111,,111,,,1111,,111,11111111111111,,,11111,111,111111111:V-isual Arts,11111,,,11111111,,,,11,1111111111111111,11111,1111,11111,11H111111111111,,111111111111111111111,,11111111111111 IV ED I '9RO Still Life With Bread and Circus LAND '.LEA\' The much-publicised Thyuen Bomemluit exhibition lll the Queen1land Gitllery (MIM Bldg) 1111 March :ll really Is worth a \IUIII, for more rea10ns 1han one. Flrsr, you v;tll gel a rare look al the 111orli of SOME (by no means all, no matter hDIII 1111eeplng Ila claims) of the European and Amer1citn greata, from Impressionism 10 rhe p•·aenl. If one can honestly claim to have ·seen Renoir. Degas. et ar on 1he basis generally of one painting apiece (vlz 1he Courier MaU. Feb 26. has us 'Flocking 10 see the Masters) you ·11 dine out on the strength of such a visit for years to come. And don ·1 let the relatively unheralded fact that the show has been hawked around and about now fur over 17 years deter you 1n !he slighlest Should some 11.1seacre try to upslage your pos!•prandial retlecnons on a century of ar· nstJc developments by letting on that he saw the show over a decade ago. you may still capital,ze along the lines of 'ad– ded hislorical value emergenl patina of age· or even 'watching a Modern become an Old Master'. (No doubt the organisers had 1h1s son of thing In mind when they remmded ·the general public' that m its wildest dreams It might 'never have expected to view the actual works themselves ·1 For thal reason alone. you may think the $2 entrance lee wonhwhde . But at no extra charge there Is an additional reason to see :his exhibmon. and that is for the educational value of what you won ·1 see Now readers of the Courier Mail may be forgiven for think· ing that what they are da1I;•. relentlessly being urged to visit Is the definitive corpus of great modern painting (Yes I know there also sponsoring the damned thing. I'm not lalklng 1ust now about objectivity!) But the Couriers bluntly statistical approach to flogging the show (v,z Feb 29th: 'There were 1074 visitors to the Thyssen Bornem1sza collection yester· day. bnnging 1he total to 22.971') pales 1n companson with some of the glossier pr stuff sa1urat1ng Bnsbane. You can·t gel much more breathless or sweeping than 'The most imponant lntcrnanonal exh1bi• tion surveying 19th and 20th century an yet shnwn' us For my money. it Is a pretty selective ·survey' that has such a lot of ·most 1mponant' (to borrow a phrase! gaps As I noted . what we are being of• fered arc aspects of some penods and schools featuring some greats. The collection. even 111 terms of period. is not as exhaustive dS is claimed: ii may well include 'at least on~ work from each year of the century'. bur how true an ap· ' prec1a11on can there be of Post lmprns..s1omsm without Gaugln. or of Fauvism without a Mansse 7 With the mystenous with• drawal of rhe only Dali (sic The Telephon,• Boorhs bv R,clwd [ >1e• transit Surrealism) and the depressing absence of anything Australian . (aren't we 'inter• nanonar enough 71, this exhlbl· tion could more truthfully be touted as 'A Century of Some Modern Masters' or even 'Selective Bits of a Century etc etc'. Surely even to validate historically an exhibition that claims to 'chron icle· the developments of a century for an Australian public. a token presence of the Heidelberg C: ,_ - · -- ·• .. .J : ... . ') For ln~lance. my companion Is a great one for Magrine. Has books and books about him and seen nearly everything In reproduction. Well. I had to lead him gently Into a comer to recover his manhood when he finally came face lo face wtth the single offering of hts hero's work In the collection . II was not helped , of course, by being squashed Into a tiny, dimly-Iii alcove thar wouldn't do Justice even to a postage stamp, but we had been promised so much Realism - works by Wessel• mann. Rosenquist. Roghko and Est~• burst on the scene like sunbeams through cloud. In a quirk of placement, the paintings themselves summed up my Impression of the his· iorlcal movement. Irr Edward Hopper's Hotel Windo w (1956) a forlorn woman 5111 at a window. apparently staring oul along the gloom of the preceding walls of pictures. You'd swear she was thlnlc· Ing 'Well...so much for that