Museums have pushed the narrative of Vincent van Gogh as a ‘tortured genius’ for decades, but in its 50th year the Van Gogh Museum is questioning this approach.
Edwina Preston pays tribute to the humble letter: from literary love letters to philosophical lessons to cherished family heirlooms. Letters impart lessons, reveal character – and are a form of art.
For many years the British government resisted requests for the UK’s National Gallery to tour its collection, one of the world’s greatest. Now 61 of these works can be seen in Canberra.
A still from the exhibition Van Gogh Alive in Mexico.
Grande Exhibitions
The blasting of giant reproductions with surround sound is an experience that has little to do with the art it purports to honour.
Tom Schilling as Kurt Barnert – a slightly blurred facsimile of the famous German artist Gerhard Richter – in Never Look Away.
Pergamon Film, Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion, Beta Cinema
Standing out among the crowd of recent artist biopics, the new film Never Look Away peels back some unhelpful tropes that have blinkered our understanding of the artist’s process.
Detail from John Russell:
Almond tree in blossom c1887.
oil on gold ground on canvas on plywood 46.2 x 55.1 cm.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The Joseph Brown Collection. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004 (2004.216)
The pickers and sinewy olives in this painting all strain upward towards the hope of spiritual salvation. But six months after he completed it, Vincent Van Gogh walked out into a wheat field and shot himself.
Dumile Feni’s ‘African Guernica’ - charcoal on paper.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne