So Tuesday morning started off horribly. I wanted to stomp all the way back to Arizona to yell at the University of Arizona for being absolutely horrible at everything they do. Well not everything, just their office of financial aid and registration. Long story short, they keep giving me false information about this fall, important dates and many other things that it making my life very difficult while I’m trying to figure out my study abroad details for this Fall while I’m abroad. It didn’t help the people in this ‘Free WiFi McDonalds’ were not of best health, again to say the least. It was a long quiet walk back to our place to drop off my netbook but our next stop was the Art Gallery of NSW (New South Wales).
Within 5 minutes of being in the art gallery I was so happy to be there I let everything else go and just focused on everything around me which was stories and room after room of art! They had 4 levels with all kinds of art such as: contemporary, aboriginal, 15-19th c European, 19-20 c Australian along with many more, but mostly importantly the Alfred Stieglitz and the Abstraction exhibitions! Tiffany was a sport and wandered through all the free areas with me and then I headed into the Abstraction, Paths to Abstraction 1867-1917exhibition alone.
I saw some of the first purely abstracted works that were exhibited in Paris at the Salon d’ Automne exhibition in 1912; James Abbot, McNeil Whistler, Walter Greares. I saw many pieces from the Nocturne series including Black and Gold – the Fire Wheel, 1875. All these painting were extremely abstract and singular toned. These artists were drawing attention to aspects that were typically overlooked such as color (or colour as they spell it), tone, shape and composition. Picasso’s work was also on display in this area. It was his early works such as Seascape 1896. Others that accompanied this work were Piet Mondrian, Georges Seurat and Alvin Langdon. I even got to see an Edward Steichen photogravure from Camera Work (a popular journal back then) Arp/July 1911; I was excited even though I still had his show to see upstairs!
The next part was work from the impressionists. They were the first to reject the absolute value of painting and no longer saw the relationship of objects but simplified it to the relationship of tones. Claude Monet, Sailboats on the Seiner, 1874, was the first painting I saw in the room. There was a lot of Monet and Cezanne works, as well as works by Denis and Vullard. They all had beautiful tones and a lot of color. Some were oil paintings and others were color lithographs.
Nabis, started around 1888 Paris, was next on display. These works had a frank use of non-naturalistic color, emphasis on design and the picture plane. This was where everyday scenes were becoming harder to extract but you could still makes sense of what the artist of portraying, such as “The Convalescent Women”, Henri Matisse, 1899. Kandinsky, Picasso, Mondrian and others spent time working in such a style, although it was ever changing.
They had an interesting section of woodcuts as well. Paul Gauguin did some primitive woodcuts that he showed saying they were rough, rudimentary but interesting and sure enough many other artists took interest and began expanding.
The fauvism section was interesting. “Fauves loves of color”; all the paintings were so bright and full of color. I got to see a lot of Matisse’s and Derain’s work. Others working during this time, early 1900’s, were also on display.
One of my favorite works was in the cubist section; Woman with a Mandolin, 1910, Picasso. It was so beautiful in real life. At times the cubist works are so abstracted that some people disregard or view it as controversial art, as if this entire movement as a whole wasn’t, but seeing it in real life made me appreciate the work so much more than I ever had. There were other artists, more contemporary, working in the same style and it doesn’t compare.
This exhibition ended with “1912-1917 Limits of Abstraction”. It listed information about the 1917 publication of De Stijl in a Dutch Magazine and in March the first Dada exhibition, both important events for abstract art. Hey, I even got to see a Duchamp ready made! It wasn’t The Fountain (which I plan to see in London in less than a month) but it was his “Bicycle Wheel” 1913.
This exhibit was such a good one for me to see in person. I got a chance to see a lot of the art I study and the information presented was at par with a college art history class, imagine that (HA!). I met poor Tiffany at the café on that floor as she was watching a movie and waiting for a hot sandwich, quite the trooper. Since she was waiting for food I went to the other paid entry exhibition….
Alfred Stieglitz! For those who don’t know he is one of the first American photographers and worked since the 1890’s to further the cause of photography as an art form. There were 4 huge rooms dedicated to photograph after photograph of his work. One of the highlights was definitely The Steerage, 1907, photogravure on Japanese vellum.
I saw some of his earliest works up into some of his lasts when he just decided to stop photographing. I saw photogravures, platinum prints, gelatin silver prints, palladium prints, toned prints and even actual Camera Work journals. I was such an excited person, it was kind of ridiculous. I found it really funny though, most (if not all) of the works were from all of our, meaning the US, main photography institutions such at MoMA, the George Eastman House, the Getty, the National Gallery of Art and so on. It’s pretty amazing an Australia museum was able to show these works and even more ridiculous I was actually here!
Something I didn’t realize and I wonder if my peers back in AZ do, Stieglitz and Georgia O’ Keeffe were great friends. They met in 1916, shared a studio starting in 1918 and it was in 1917 he started photographing her. The portraits were absolutely stunning and ranged everywhere from a standard close up to more abstracted close up of her hands to nude photography.
The 4 main grouping of his work was his earliest works, portraits of mainly O ’Keeffee, Clouds and Lake George. He was a pretty amazing person it seems and he no doubt did a lot for photography. Oh! And there was even a blurb about his using his 4x5, yey for 4x5 photography! : )
After keeping Tiffany waiting long enough, I left the exhibit to find her movie almost over and we were ready to go, after oh 4-5 hours there! We went a found a chicken parm in a very safe pub by the bridge climb, which was delicious, and then met Nick (same friend from Cairns). We adventured all over Sydney by foot in the pouring rain. Nick bought a cheap umbrella and explained how he was having a tough day and then the crappy umbrella he bought kept flipping inside out as he tried to walk and right as he was explaining it did it and I was laughing so find I couldn’t even stand up. I think we all know what those moments are like and it was hilarious…. For us!
He took us over to Darling Harbor and we got some last minute souvenirs, which I might add I did a good job on not over purchasing nicknacks and things I don’t have room for but a few special things were a nice addition. We said see ya later to Nick as we’ll probably see him in Auckland again and headed back ‘home’.
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