PERHAPS the finest engraver, painter and art theorist of the early Northern Renaissance was the Nuremberger, Albrecht Dürer. The range and diversity of his work is astonishing. His woodcuts made him famous across Europe, his engravings unparalleled. As a painter, he was equally successful – commissions for religious icons and portraits for the rich, powerful and cultured were abundant and diverse. He was naturally curious and well-traveled, too.
c3 Contemporary Art Space – current exhibitions
Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers St Abbotsford
Open 10.00AM-5.00PM Wednesday to Sunday (closed Monday and Tuesday).
Closed June 12.
NESTLED in the under-story of the old convent in Abbotsford’s art precinct on the Yarra, c3 Contemporary Art Space has been a showcase for emerging artists for more than eight years. Currently, six artists are on show, presenting a veritable cornucopia of different ideas, views, thoughts, objectives and interests. Culture, place, history and experience all provide a wealth of opportunity for artistic expression.
IN SIX weeks, the National Gallery of Victoria International opens its latest Winter Masterpieces exhibition, Degas, a New Vision. Works have been drawn from collections across the globe and, in the words of the NGVI’s press office, offer a ‘fresh and dynamic reappraisal of this legendary artist’s genius.’
IN recent days, news of the discovery of a painting by Caravaggio has occupied and divided arts writers and critics, world-wide. Apparently disinterred in 2014 from the roof of a house in Toulouse, France, Judith beheading Holofernes (c.1604) has been subjected to scrutiny by a number of experts, not all of whom believe the work to be genuine.
BY THE early 1980s, Warhol was not an artist in critical favour. The art world had moved on from the Pop Art and Minimalist sensibility of the 1960s and ’70s and was looking for new commentary on a western world that was changing rapidly. Warhol’s ‘art about nothing’ no longer reflected the spirit of the time or place – the zeitgeist – to use the noun of the moment. Robert Hughes, an art critic widely respected for his insight and critical rigour, wrote in The New York Review of Books in February 1982 that ‘…Warhol’s output for the last decade has been concerned more with the smooth development of product than with any discernible insights…. It scarcely matters what Warhol paints; for his clientele, only the signature is fully visible.’
The Pinacoteca