A Sydney librarian recently discovered a misfiled lost gem in the stacks: Virginia Woolf’s own copy of her first novel, with handwritten notes for revision. An expert explores what they tell us.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Modernism
Displaying 1 - 20 of 47 articles
Western approaches to studying African materials have had a colonial bias. A curator considers what it means to think of the collection as needing to exist in relation to communities.
Gwen John was very much her own woman and followed her own artistic instincts, producing small, intimate, idiosyncratic paintings that resonate.
One visionary modernist architect saw play spaces as crucial to the 20th-century city. But they have to be cared for in order to survive.
Too often, in discussions about tropical modernism, what African architects working in Africa were doing is overlooked. Their work matters.
Jean Toomer’s novel is a visionary masterpiece and one of the most influential works of African American modernism.
Mwili, Akili na Roho represents 50 years of art from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania – from 1950 to 2000.
Katy Hessel’s ambitious, weighty corrective to an art history canon that sidelines (or erases) women is ‘impressive and overdue’, writes Edwina Preston.
More is more in #cluttercore, the new interior trend championed by the young maximalists of TikTok.
The last great modernist of South African painting, he influenced a generation of black artists.
It might seem a daunting task, but the trick is to not start reading from the beginning.
By the standards of the day, Ulysses was extremely sexually explicit.
An ode to his hero Homer? The act of a man losing his sight? What is the story behind the famous Ulysses blue.
The Chichu Art Museum, on the Japanese island of Naoshima, is a breathtaking place to rethink the relationship between nature and people.
Written in 1929, this short, passionate book highlighting the silencing of women’s voices continues to shape our culture.
The radical hope we find in the arts, culture and literature is often a reflection of the times. Drawing from the past there are many examples of how dreams can become a form of resilience.
Mismanaged and in disrepair, many low-income housing complexes are nonetheless seen as important avatars of modern architecture. But are calls for their preservation forgetting those who matter most?
Joy Hester’s entire body of work can be understood as an exploration of human relationships, connections, in all their complexity. A major retrospective now acknowledges her contribution.
Beethoven’s compositions combine power, rhythm and deeply felt meaning - and they did not come easily. The composer was ahead of his time, and he knew it, even then.
Fake copies of works by legendary black South African modernist artists are flooding the market - and one university is deploying a range of scientific tests to expose them.
Top contributors
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Professor, University of Sydney
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Professor, Head of Visual Arts, Queensland University of Technology
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Clinical Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University at Buffalo
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PhD candidate in the History of Art, University of York
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Reader in Historical Geography, UCL
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Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University
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Joanna Mendelssohn is a Friend of The Conversation.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Art History, Newcastle University
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Post Doctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University
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Visiting Scholar, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge
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Lecturer in English Literature, University of Glasgow
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Senior Research Associate, The University of Melbourne
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Research Student, Modernist Literature and Culture, King's College London
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Senior Lecturer Art Theory, Monash University
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Professor, Urban Studies and Professor of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University
