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

1------1111111111111111111,11,1111111111111111111,,,,,,111,,,,111,,1111111111111,1111,11111,11111,,,111111111111,,111111¥isual Arts11111111111,1111111111111111111,11,,,111,,,,111,,,,111111111HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Still Life With Bread and Circus The much-publicised Thyuen Bomemlsza exhibition at the Queensland Gallery (MIM Bldg) till March :l) really Is worth a visit, for more reasons than one. First, you 111111 get a rare look at the 1110,li ol SOME (by no means aU, no maner ho111 sweeping Its claims) ol the European and American greats, from Impressionism to the present. 11 one can honestly claim to have ·seen Renoir. Degas. et al' o n !he basis generally of one painting apiece (viz !he Courier Mail . Feb 26. has us ·Flocking to see the Masters') 1•ou'II dine out on the strength of such a visit for years to come And don't let the relatively unheralded fact that the show has been hawked around and about now for over 17 wars deter you 111 the slightest. Should some wiseacre try to upstage your post·prandial reflections on a century of ar· tistic developments by lemng on that he saw the show over a decade ago , you may still capitalize along the lines ol 'ad – ded historical value emergent patina of age' or even 'watching a Modern become an Old Master'. (No doubt the organisers had this son of thing in mrnd when they reminded 'the general public' that 1n 1ts wildest dreams it might 'never have expected to view the actual works themsel,·es 'I For that reason alone . you may think 1he S2 entrance fee worthwhile . Bot at no '"rra charge there Is an addi:ional reason to see :his e xhibinon. and that Is for the educational valuc of what you won 't see Now readers <)f the Courier Ma,I may be forgiven for think– ing that what they are daily. relentlessly being urged to visit is the definitive corpus of great modern palnnng (Yes I know the're also sponsoring the damned thing, I'm not talking Just now about objectivity 1l But the Courier's bluntly statistical ·,It'sTime approach to flogging the show (viz Feb 291h: 'Time were 1074 visitors to the Thyssen Bomem1sza collection yester· day. bnngmg the total 10 22.97 J') pales m companson with some of the glossier pr st· saturating Brisbane. You can'1get much more breathless or sweeping than 'The most 1mport,1n1 1ntemiltional c><htbl– tion ·urve1·mg 19th and 20th century an yet i;hown' us. For my money, it is a prelty selective ·survey' that has such a lot of 'most important' (to borr w a phrase! gaps As I norcc! . what Wll are b~mg of• fered arc aspen ,; of some pi!n • ds and schools featunng some greats. The collectlon. even 111 terms of period . is not as exhausllve dS 1s claimed· ii may well include ·•t least one work from each year of the century·. bul how true an ap· ·.prec1J.tion can there be of Pos1 lmpress1onlsm without Gaugln. or of Fauvism without a Matisse' With the mystenous with· drawal of 1he only Dall (sic rhe felephone Boorhs 1>1· R,clwd Estes transit Surrealism) and the depressing absence of anything Australian . (aren't we 'inter· nanonal' enough?) . this exhibi· tton could more truthfully be touted as 'A Century of Some Modern Masters' or even 'Selecttve Bits of a C"ntury elc etc'. Surely even to validate historically an exhibition that claims to 'chronicle' the developments of a century for an Australian public. a token presence of the Heidelberg \.. - · •. · -" - -I , ,. _') For instance. 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 corner to recover his manhood when he finally came face to face with the single offering of his hero's 111ork In the collection. It was not helped , of course, by being squashed into a tiny, dimly-lit alcove that 111ouldn't do justice even to a postage stamp, but 111e had been promised so much In a quirk t paintings them up my lmprc•, iortcal movem Hopper's /-1 (1956) a Iorio a window. ao out along tt ,• preceding wa, You'd ,we,, Ing 'Well ...so