For decades the donated painting was proudly displayed as an original. But then the university began an academic unit that tests the authenticity of artworks and objects…
The style and date given for the painted room never sat right with MA Katritzky, who spent lockdown investigating whether the room was actually created by one of Britain’s greatest painters.
December 1972: Billy Miargu, with his daughter Linda on his arm, and his wife Daphnie Baljur. In the background, the newly painted kangaroo.
Photograph by George Chaloupka, now in Parks Australia's Archive at Bowali.
How does rock art matter? New research finds it can act as a kind of intergenerational media –even when no longer visible to the eye.
Painting Queen Charlotte, the artist Nathaniel Dance-Holland employed quite a bit of creative licence, if her courtiers and critics are to be believed.
Wikimedia
50 years ago Art News published Linda Nochlin’s essay, Why have there been no great women artists? It would change how we see art and its institutions, and still reverberates today.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes.’
Google Art Project
A major survey of Gordon Bennett’s work showcases a dizzying blend of styles and themes.
‘Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, May 1919, oil on wove paper.
(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-223, Copy negative C-141851)
After Canadian painter Mary Riter Hamilton was rejected for service as a war artist because she was a woman, she trekked battlefields to create more than 320 works that recall the missing soldiers.
‘Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family,’ Swabian artist, c. 1470, and a picture showing a fly on U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence during the Oct. 7 debate at University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
(Wikimedia Commons/AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Flies have long held symbolic meaning in the history of art. In portraits made in Renaissance Europe, the presence of a fly symbolizes the transience of human life.
Vincent Namatjira’s Stand strong for who you are, acrylic on linen, 152 x 198 cm.
Photo: AGNSW/Mim Stirling
For the first time in its 99 year-history, the Archibald Prize has been won by an Indigenous painter. The Wynne and Sulman Prize winners also signal a time of change.
Decades of under-funding have left many Australian art schools in a perilous state. And the present political and intellectual hostility to the creative arts is threatening their very existence.
A detail from Abbott Thayer’s 1887 painting ‘Angel,’ in which his eldest daughter appears as a heavenly figure.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of John Gellatly
In a system that treats people as objects to be counted, chained, searched and assigned a number, art is a way for prisoners to reassert their agency – and reclaim their lives.
‘The Scream,’ by Edvard Munch, hand-coloured lithograph version from 1895.
(Munchmuseet)
Artist Edvard Munch depicted despair provoked by disease in turn-of-the-century works. In these coronavirus times, his iconic image speaks to our anxieties about illness and societal collapse.
At a time when surrealists were objectifying women’s bodies, American artist Dorothea Tanning was looking deeper at the transformative potential of female experience and the unconscious.
Bush Fire At Top Yalgamungken 2015. Collection: Art at Swiss Re.
Image courtesy: Martin Browne Contemporary
Though galleries have since closed their doors, this reviewer got to see Mavis Ngallametta’s works in all their glory. Their birdseye view of Country provides a perspective we’re missing right now.
A lithograph from Gaston Tissandier’s balloon travels depicts falling stars.
Archive.org
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne