Patrick McCaughey remains one of Australian art's most remarkable and charismatic figures. The Bright Shapes and the True Names is the story of his brilliant career-his emigration to Australia at the age of ten, his discovery of art in his late teens, his days as the dynamic and outspoken art critic for the Age and his glittering directorship of the National Gallery of Victoria. Together with memories of Fred Williams and other artists, the frenzied activity of the Whitlam government's Visual Arts Board, and an extraordinary account of the notorious theft of Picasso's Weeping Woman from the NGV, McCaughey offers a fascinating and enthusiastic insider's view of the Australian art world and its development over three decades.
Outside Britain itself, the richest holdings of British art are found in American collections. This extraordinary presentation of some 85 works pays tribute to this strength of American collecting, while offering a fresh and engaging account of the history of painting in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present. The selection is drawn from collections from around the United States, both public and private, and includes spectacular pictures from the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Art Collections in California, the two leading collections of British art in America. Among the highlights are such masterpieces as Sir Anthony Van Dyck's portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria with her dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, William Hogarth's Beggar's Opera, Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy, Henry Fuseli's Nightmare, John Constable's Hadleigh Castle, J. M. W. Turner's Staffa, Fingal's Cave, and William Holman Hunt's Lady of Shalott. Following introductory essays by Malcolm Warner on anglophilia and art, and by Robyn Asleson on the history of collecting British art in the States, each painting is reproduced in colour, with a discussion of its artistic importance and the circumstances o
Painting matters to Australia and Australians as it does in few other countries. It has formed our consciousness, our sense of where we come from, and who we are. It cries out for wider recognition and acknowledgement.' - Patrick McCaughey Why has Australia, an island continent with a small population, produced such original and powerful art? And why is it so little known beyond our shores? Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters is Patrick McCaughey's answer.
Includes selected writings on the gold sculptures of Sir Sidney Nolan; as well as method of manufacture and examples of work produced at the Workshop Hugo in France.
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