TO THE ISLANDS: exploring works created by artists on Dunk, Bedarra and Timana Islands between the 1930s and 1990s, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville 18 October – 1 December 2013; Cairns Regional Gallery 10 January – 9 March 2014

Reviewed by SUE SMITH

Yvonne Cohen (1914-2004) Mango trees 1945 oil on composition board 45.5 x 50.5 cm
Purchased 1986 with the assistance of North Queensland Cement Ltd
City of Townsville Art Collection

The secret was in the cut and the combination of colours, according to the prince of prints

Sue Smith

DARK-eyed, good-looking Marchese Emilio Pucci (1914-1992), Italy’s aristocratic dress designer, known as “the prince of prints” and “the man who put women in pants”, always believed a good cut was the secret of casual style – along with an unerring eye for colour combinations.

Now a stunning new coffee table book (Emilio Pucci by Vanessa Friedman (Taschen) ), presenting hundreds of photographs, drawings and candid shots from the archive of the Emilio Pucci Foundation, reveals the vision of the Italian designer whose label grew from one tiny boutique on the isle of Capri to an international brand beloved by wealthy sophisticates, heiresses and movie stars.

Pucci, who began dabbling in fashion as an amateur after 14 years as an officer pilot in the Italian Air Force, created a sensation in 1948 with his slim, tapered trousers which he admitted came about largely by accident.

BOOK REVIEW

Sue Smith

THE audacious photograph was of Edith Sitwell, the English poet, taken as if she was a gothic tomb sculpture, with flowers all around her and her hands crossed on her chest.  On its first exhibition, in December 1927, at London’s Chenil Galleries in Bond Street, some people thought it rather beautiful.  On the other hand, on the show’s opening day a lady of title was heard to declare, “She looks as putrid as her poetry.”

This was probably the nearest thing to controversy experienced by the man behind the camera, Cecil Beaton, in his charmed career of more than half a century as photographer to socialites, cinema stars and royalty. 

Not that Beaton did not possess a needle-sharp and occasionally cruel wit, as a sumptuous new coffee table book, Beaton in Vogue, attests.  Beaton’s columns and articles for Vogue often had a critical edge, even when he wrote about those he admired, such as Greta Garbo: “her mouth being knife-like, and lips perpetually moistened by her adder-like tongue” — a rather startling description of the woman, who playfully called him “Beattie” and whom he had sought to marry.

1912:  Audiences 100 years ago adored Sarah Bernhardt, the flamboyant French actress and indomitable self-promoter

Sue Smith

FEATURE films as sophisticated entertainment and picture palaces with lavish decoration and comfortable seats really came into their own in every town in Australia in 1912.  That year, audiences everywhere thronged to see the leading lady of the age, Sarah Bernhardt, in Queen Elizabeth, the first five reel feature ever made and the most successful film of the French actress’s career.  (Today, it can be glimpsed on YouTube and is also available on video.)

Few have mastered the art of showmanship as spectacularly as the “Divine Sarah”.  Her acting was stellar and her affairs scandalous, matched only by her canny ability to turn both into cold cash, according to Robert Gottlieb in Sarah, a sharp 2010 biography of the woman whose name became a byword for theatrics.

Bernhardt’s first publicity stunt was to shout, “You miserable bitch” at a grande dame of the Paris theatre and slap her around the face, after the hapless woman shoved Bernhardt’s younger sister.  Henry James thought her an advertising genius, and indeed Bernhardt’s eccentric self-promotion topped the antics of even modern stars as extreme as Lady GaGa and Madonna.  Forget wearing meat and pointy bras – Sarah wore a hat adorned with a stuffed bat, always went on tour with her own coffin and once toured the US with an alligator called Ali-Gaga (which died, unfortunately, after consuming too much milk and champagne). 

An obsessive Japanese conceptual artist calls the outsider artist label into question, writes Sue Smith

Yayoi Kusama
TATE MODERN, London

Continues until June 5, 2012

PERHAPS one of the most alluring (if illogical) personas attributed to artists is that of the antisocial Outsider – the uneducated, untrained naïf, the tribal artist, the criminal, underprivileged or insane individual, who lives beyond the conventional norms of society and is motivated purely by the joy of making art, untainted by awareness of the art world and the art marketplace.

A perceptive woman had insight into an intense relationship, writes Sue Smith

December 3, 2011 ─ March 4, 2012

Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Over nearly half a century, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso inspired, challenged and continually surprised each other with powerful and inventive paintings and sculptures. 

Memories of the intense friendship and rivalry between the two titans of 20^th century art have been revived by two superb exhibitions now in their last weeks in Australia.  Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) is presenting Matisse: Drawing Life until 4 March 2012, while Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales has almost filled its ground floor with some 150 paintings, drawing and sculptures in Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, continuing until 25 March.

The friendship began in 1905 in Paris, where just two years later Matisse shocked the art world with his Blue Nude, its twisted, contorted form expressing a kind of brute force as it also departed from tradition in colour.  Soon afterwards, Picasso responded with the equally brutal Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The work challenged Matisse, and laid down the gauntlet for a lifetime of competitive taunting and prodding which eventually deepened into respectful acknowledgement and a lifelong exchange of ideas.

Crucially, writes Jack Flam, ‘both Matisse and Picasso were primarily painters of women, and the erotic plays an important part in the work of both artists.’  During the years between 1925 and 1940, Flam adds, ‘part of the artistic rivalry between Matisse and Picasso was acted out as a kind of duel that revolved around the depictions of some of these women. 

ART | REVIEW

Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde: Masterpieces from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Art Gallery of Ontario is bringing the magic, whimsy and wonder of a Jewish master to Canada in October, writes Sue Smith in her preview of this exhibition.

October 18, 2011 ─ January 15, 2012
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

"IF I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

In a major exhibition which opens in October at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the inner world of the Russian poet of Jewish life, love and despair will be on view in paintings never seen before in Canada.

The 118 works in the exhibition will be drawn entirely from the collection of the Musee National d'art Moderne in the Centre Pompidou. The show will feature 32 works by Chagall and eight by Kandinsky, alongside art works by Kasimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Sonia Delaunay and Vladimir Tatlin.

The exhibition aims to examine the influence of Chagall's Russian heritage on his art, and will show how he at turns embraced and rejected avant-garde movements in modern art as he developed his personal style.

The vibrant characters in Chagall's magical paintings reflect the world that bubbled up inside him: his love of wife Bella, music, theatre and his memories of Jewish tradition.

Neither dull reality nor the laws of gravity apply to the people and objects in these works. 

"Les maries de le Tour Eiffel" (1938) shows the artist with rubbery, bendy legs, tenderly holding his wistful bride as they fly through the air on the back of a cockerel.