Kusama and the crowds
I’ve just received an email from the National Gallery of Victoria proudly boasting that 120,000 people have visited the Yayoi Kusama exhibition in its first month. Great news for the gallery I guess, but not so for the viewer.
(Geoff Harrison)
Thinking that things may be quieter between Christmas and New Year (and the fact that my NGV Member’s free ticket was about to expire), I decided to pay the exhibition a visit. Big mistake - I could hardly move in the place. We were hurried through the installations in 20 seconds flat which was a raw deal for those non members who had to pay $38 for the privilege.
(Geoff Harrison)
There was an almost circus atmosphere in the gallery which I’m not sure is consistent with the overall theme of the exhibition. Kusama’s work seems to derive from disturbing hallucinations she experienced during childhood, including seeing the space around her covered in polka dots and nets. As no one else around her sensed these things, this had an alienating impact on her.
(Geoff Harrison)
Given that she had the ability to draw well from a young age, it was inevitable the she would dedicate her life to art in order to explore these visions and coexist with them. And given the vastness of her output, it’s inevitable that there is some unevenness in her work, but so crowded was the gallery that I found it impossible to fully appreciate Kusama’s vision and motivations. It simply became a “happening.” Wait a few weeks, I reckon. It finishes on 21st April.
John Mather - Heidelberg Artist From Scotland
One of the lesser known, but equally talented of the famed Heidelberg School artists was Scottish born John Mather. He studied art at the Edinburgh National Gallery School before deciding to emigrate to Melbourne around 1877/78 for health reasons, apparently. It was thought that the move would be beneficial for his asthma.
There was once a social magazine titled ‘Table Talk’ which was published in Melbourne from 1885 until 1939. This magazine provided commentary on politics, literature, finance, arts, and social issues. It had a particularly clear and unpretentious approach to arts commentary as evidenced by its appraisal of Mather’s work. “Mather looks nature straight in the face, so to speak, and presents her in the bright apparel she loves to wear, especially in the lucid atmosphere of Australia”. 27 April, 1888.
Picnic Point, near Brighton, oil on canvas, 1886 (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery)
It’s Mather’s technical skill that I admire the most, and his understanding of light, although it’s claimed that he never attained the freshness and sense of delight which pervaded the work of the Heidelberg artists. I’m not so sure about that.
His treatment of the foreground in “Morning Walk By The Yarra” with those soft, feathery brushstrokes and subtle gradations of colour is superb. This is not easy to reproduce in a photograph.
Morning Walk By The Yarra, oil on canvas (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery)
Whilst Mather’s paintings may have lacked the free-flowing spontaneity of the Heidelberg artists, that doesn’t make him a lesser artist in my view. He was a wonderful painter of moods and atmospheres as evidenced by his painting of Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens. There is almost an other worldliness to this work.
Autumn In The Fitzroy Gardens, oil on canvas, 1894, (National Gallery of Victoria)
Mather had an interesting and varied career in Melbourne, including decorating the interior of the dome of the Exhibition Building in 1880. He enrolled at the Gallery School under George Folingsby in 1882, became a founder member of the Australian Artists Association in Melbourne in 1886 and painted at various locations around Australia and New Zealand. He was also a prolific etcher.
He became a popular teacher and was the first artist trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria, a position he held until his death in 1916. According to Wikipedia, his grave at the Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery was completely unmarked until July 2023 when a small plaque was placed on the grave stating “Mr John Mather 1848 – 1916 The beauty of his Art endures.”
Mather’s grave (Wikimedia Commons)
References;
‘Golden Summers - Heidelberg and Beyond’, National Gallery of Victoria, 1985
‘The Heidelberg School - The Golden Summer of Australian Painting’, William Splatt & Dugald McLennan, 1986
Wikipedia