Fred Williams in the You Yangs: a turning point for Australian art
A new exhibition features more than 50 works by Fred Williams, centred on the You Yangs peaks, west of Melbourne. They illuminate a breakthrough moment in Australian art.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Painting
Displaying 1 - 20 of 58 articles
Is Ryan Kelly’s iconic photograph an American ‘Guernica’?
Ryan Kelly's iconic photograph from Charlottesville evokes a 'Unite the Right' moment from 1937 – and the anti-war masterpiece by Picasso that emerged from it.
The Archibald finalists – and why Tony Albert deserves to win
The packers' favourite has gained prominence and there are few portraits of politicians in this year's popular art prize. The stand out work is a deceptively innocent re-appropriation of Aboriginal kitsch.
Andrew Wyeth and the artist’s fragile reputation
His rise was just as swift as his fall. To mark the painter's 100th birthday, an art historian explores the forces – cultural, political and personal – that created a polarizing legacy.
Edward Hopper: the artist who evoked urban loneliness and disappointment with beautiful clarity
Hopper's brand of Americanism was a counterpoint to American optimism. Fifty years after his death, his legacy lives on.
Terahertz spectroscopy: the new tool to help detect art fraud
Artworks can look very different if you view them with more than the unaided eye, and that can help you spot the fake from the genuine.
Can art put us in touch with our feelings about climate change?
A new art festival featuring climate-related works offers a new way to see an issue that is often framed in purely scientific terms.
The schoolgirls of Charles Blackman – haunting works from a politically innocent age
Today, the idea of a male artist making a major series of paintings about schoolgirls, or any sort of children, sits uncomfortably with the public. But these were memorable and original works when painted in the 1950s.
Here’s looking at: Vincent Van Gogh’s Olive grove with two olive pickers
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.
Chasing the rainbow: how John Constable combined science with a stroke of artistic licence
Why a mysteriously placed rainbow made perfect symbolic sense – and how weather experts knew the exact date that it appeared.
Rose Skinner: the firebrand Perth dealer neglected by a new art history
Rose Skinner opened her Perth gallery in 1958. But her contribution to the art world has been skimmed in Christopher Heathcote's recent look at Australia's early art market.
How the graphic novel got its misleading moniker
The graphic novel has become a literary phenomenon, but the name doesn't adequately describe the medium's flexibility, diversity and potential.
Here’s looking at: black ground, 1989 by Judy Watson
Judy Watson pours ochre and pigment onto unstretched canvases laid on the ground. The puddling and drying created an image of a simple termite mound with a profound connection to country.
Why did Shakespeare’s father paint over iconic medieval murals?
Due to recent restoration, the paintings are clearer than they have ever been over the last 600 years.
Abstract Expressionism: how New York overtook Europe to become the epicentre of Western art
This quintessential modern art movement couldn't have gained precedence without the work of critics – and the Cold War.
Here’s looking at: Mike Parr’s Jackson Pollock the Female
Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles is one of Australia's most famous cultural acquisitions. When Mike Parr lay supine before it, streaked with his own blood, he offered a new way of looking at the act of painting.
Under the Influence of … Paul Stopforth’s Biko painting called ‘Elegy’
Works like "Elegy" are ciphers for what it means to be human and vulnerable within a social and political regime in which not all bodies are considered equal
How we used a particle accelerator to find the hidden face in Degas’s Portrait of a woman
It took cutting edge technology and a collaboration between the Australian Synchrotron and the CSIRO to reveal the mysterious hidden lady in Degas's famous painting.
Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada and the art of painting politics
The value of the Armada painting, soon to go on show in Greenwich, lies in its masterful storytelling.
Lucian Freud denied this painting was his – so how could the BBC claim otherwise?
How expert opinion can out-trump the artist's own word.
Top contributors
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Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia
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Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW
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Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
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Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University
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Associate Professor in History of Art, University of Nottingham
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Assistant Professor of Arts Management, Purchase College State University of New York
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Honorary Research Fellow, University of Melbourne
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Associate Director Student Experience, Monash University
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Research Program Leader, Surfaces and Nanosciences, CSIRO
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ARC DECRA Climate Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
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Emeritus Professor, School of Humanities, University of New England
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Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL
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Researcher, Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics
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Artist, PhD Student, School of Architecture, RMIT University
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Junior Research Fellow in Art History, University of Oxford
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