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Showing posts with the label Australian art

Feature Post.

The Unchanged Hand: On the Artistic Mastery of the Cave of Cosquer

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  Author - Brian Hawkeswood.                                                        Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung There are moments in the long contemplation of art when time folds in upon itself, when the distance between twenty-seven millennia and the present hour seems no greater than the space between the eye and the canvas. One stands before the painted animals of the Upper Paleolithic and senses not primitiveness but recognition. The line is assured. The form is understood. The creature breathes. And one realises, perhaps with some discomfort, that the human capacity for artistic perception has altered far less than our technologies would flatter us into believing. Among the most haunting of these early sanctuaries is the submerged cavern known as Cosquer Cave , hidden for tens of thousands of years along the Mediterr...
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Blue Poles: A Nation, a Painting, and the Storm It Never Meant to Cause

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Author - Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                           Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung There are moments in a nation’s cultural life when an artwork, through no intention of its own, becomes a lightning rod for anxieties that run much deeper than paint on canvas. Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles was one such catalyst. When the Whitlam government bought the painting in 1973 for the then-astonishing sum of $1.3 million, the Australian public reacted as if a great moral trespass had been committed. Ministers defended it, cartoonists mocked it, and the newspapers spoke of extravagance, waste, and elitism — all directed at a work whose purpose was far removed from the political theatre in which it suddenly found itself.         ...
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