Kathleen Petyarre (Photo: Mimi Art Gallery) I was introduced to aboriginal art about 25 years ago after a friend spent several months in and around Alice Spring in Australia. When she returned to the U.S., she shared a breathless enthusiasm for a whole slew of artists she had discovered while she was Down Under. Of […]
Aboriginal art
Ways to Picture the World
Angelina Pwerle, Bush Plum, 2005. Pwerle is one of the artists featured in the exhibit, “Marking the Infinite.” (Photo: Bett Gallery) Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, is an exhibit that is making its tour of the U.S. before finishing up at the Phillips Collection in DC in June, 2018. The catalog […]
Aboriginal Art Collections in America
Lupulnga, by Makinti Napanangka I was first introduced to Aboriginal painting in the early 90’s when my friend Colleen Burke returned from the Australian Outback with a cache of gorgeous pieces on bark and canvas. I sat for hours with her paintings and searched constantly for what few books were available in this country (it […]
Ancestral Modern
Walu, 2008, Tommy Mitchell On display at the Seattle Art Museum: an extraordinary (as in EXTRAORDINARY) exhibit of contempoary aboriginal art. Mostly paintings, the show has been assembled from the collection of a Seattle couple, Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi. Some of my favorite aboriginal painters are well represented— Emily Kam Kngwarray, Wimmitji Tjapangarti, Doreen […]
I Feel You
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Linear Minnie Pwerle, Bush Melon Seed It is in the nature of an artist to look for commonalities between contemporary concepts of form and those of ancient or indigenous cultures. Brahms and Schubert wandered the countryside listening to and absorbing native, folk and gypsy musical idioms, incorporating many of those traditions into […]
Other Worlds
Warren Burger, by George Augusta My friend Carl Belz has written about his encounters with portrait art while heading up the Rose Museum at Brandeis a few years back. He was asked to recommend a portrait painter for the retiring chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees. ” I immediately suggested Andy Warhol,” Belz writes, […]
Icons of the Desert
Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi’s “Mystery Sand Mosaic”, 1974 (Photo: Grey Gallery) Ken Johnson of the New York Times recently wrote a review of the show, “Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings From Papunya” currently on view at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. I haven’t seen the show yet but will be down […]
More on Abstraction and Nature
Rock and fungi, Tasmania, 2007 Two of the comments to my earlier post, Threading through Abstraction, Micro and Macro, came in from Down Under. Both of these writers offered a thoughtful expansion of the discussion I began in my post. My experience is that this issue of nature and abstraction has particular significance in the […]
Spaciality and Language
Aboriginal rock painting, Kakadu, Aust. Credit: Thomas Schoch As a follow on to my earlier post on human spaciality, Stanford assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems Lera Boroditsky has written a piece on Edge that explores how individual languages shape the way speakers think about space, time, colors and objects. She demonstrates that […]
Breasts, Bodies, Canvas
I found a wonderful blog about all things Aboriginal–Will Owen’s Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye. He’s been at it for some time, so there is a lot of material to review and well worth the time. In a recent posting Owen reviews a new book by Jennifer Biddle, Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert […]