For over 60 years, Daniel Thomas has shaped and extended our understanding of Australian art. Sometimes cheeky, always erudite, Thomas's writings are collected in a new book.
Detail from Fiona Foley Native Blood Type C photograph x cm Edition copy.
Fiona Foley
Art historians argue that the life of the artist should be viewed independently of their art but, for most Aboriginal artists, art is a cultural expression that encompasses their lives.
Culture depends on the conversations between artists and critics, audiences and researchers.
Theatre image from www.shutterstock.com
In 1955 two plays – The Torrents and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – burst into Australian theatre. Funny and tragic in deeply Australian ways, they marked a new horizon of creative possibility.
Why is criticism so often associated with killjoy negativity? It can convey joy as well as discrimination.
Byron Barrett/flickr
Grumpy curmudgeons, ex-artists writing about friends ... art critics here rarely help viewers understand the challenges of new work.
Some of the earliest applications of photography came in the fields of archaeology and botany. Pictured is a photograph from botanist Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843).
Art raises a lot of questions. That’s what it does. If an art work in a gallery or a news story has made you ask “what the …?”, it has already started to do its job. But for many who are not familiar with…
American comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black.
Foxtel
Over the past decade we have witnessed the rise and rise of long form television – from The Sopranos to The Wire, Game of Thrones to Orange Is the New Black – and no one has been watching this transformation…
I am currently in San Francisco to attend the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). It’s the biggest event in the games industry, depending on what measuring stick you use. E3 in Los Angeles is the…
Does the art critic speak for the broader public, for the artist or the connoisseur?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uber-tuber
The contemporary art critic cannot say with certainty whether something is good or bad. What good criticism does today is to help the public “see” the artwork. It does not explain and close down meaning…
Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne