AUGUST 2009 - FEBRUARY 2010 ISSUE 77AUSTRALIA $16.95 NZ $20.95SINGAPORE $20.00 UK £7.00

US $13.00 €10.50

a biannual magazine for col lectors of mater ia l cul ture

ART IN IRANINSIGHTS INTO A COUNTRY,

ITS HERITAGE AND CHALLENGES

PLANNING A COLLECTINGEXCURSION TO THE UK

WHAT TO EXPECT

RECENT RELEASESESSENTIAL ADDITIONS TO

A COLLECTING LIBRARY

FOLK ART ACROSS THE CONTINENTS

FRESH PERSPECTIVES

ACQUISITIONS130 Bugla ma’a’agll, prehistoric stone mortar

National Gallery of Australia

132 South Indian or Sri Lankan Female figure, c. 18th-19th century

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

134 Joseph Hoffmann, Vase, c. 1919

National Gallery of Victoria

135 Li Lihong, McDonald’s M, 2007

Hamilton Art Gallery

136 Hunt & Roskell, Presentation Vase, 1864

Queensland Art Gallery

138 Cabinet card portraits, c. 1900

National Gallery of Australia

140 Sir William Dargie, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second, 1954

National Museum of Australia

142 Karl Bertsch, Table and armchair, c. 1910

National Gallery of Victoria

144 Penleigh Boyd: Three watercolours

Australian War Memorial

146 Historical movie poster, c. 1928

Australian National Maritime Museum

148 Iso Rae: art behind the front lines, 1915

Australian War Memorial

152 AROUND THE AUCTIONSAuction highlights from the major houses

ART26 Trompe l’oeil: art as illusion

Annamaria Giusti

32 Contemporary art in Iran

Helen Musa

48 The Conversation Piece: fashionable life

in the 17th and 18th centuries

Desmond Shawe-Taylor

102 Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts

Elspeth Moncrieff

112 Preparing an exhibition: a personal appreciation

Ian A C Dejardin

62 EXHIBITION REVIEWVenice Biennale 2009

Vivienne Sharpe and Tim McCormick

ARTNEWS82 A review of the UK’s arts fairs

Duncan Phillips

88 A selection of international events to diarise

167 CONTRIBUTORS

DECORATIVE ART AND DESIGN70 American folk art in Britain

Laura Beresford

78 The renaissance of contemporary jewellery in Britain

Corinne Julius

84 Marine ivory and scrimshaw

Christopher Proudlove

106 Chanukah lamps from North Africa

Melody Amsel-Arieli

124 The Thomson Collection of ship models

Simon Stephens

4 EDITORIAL

HERITAGE56 The North-West Passage

Claire Warrior

74 National Art Gallery for Singapore

Helen Musa

168 INDEX OF ADVERTISERS

LIBRIS12 Hand written illuminated prayer books from Bohemia and Moravia

Jana Vytrhlik

66 The art of book conservation

Julie Sommerfeldt

116 Book Review: The Art and Life of Josef Herman

Andrew Lambrith

Recent Releases119 China at the Court of the Emperors: Unknown masterpieces

120 Van Dyck & Britain

121 A Journey into the World of the Ottomans:

The art of Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (1671-1737)

122 Voices of Contemporary Glass

123 Medals of Dishonour

PHOTOGRAPHY10 John Gollings, New Guinea Suite, 1973-74

Gael Newton

W O R L D O F A N T I Q U E S & A R T

2

Contents

COVERJohn Gollings (Australian b. 1944), New Guinea suite,1973-74, ed 1/3 printed 2006-07; 60 colour photographs,colour pigment inkjet on paper, 61 x 100 cm. National Gallery of Australia. Gift of John Gollings 2008

W O R L D O F A N T I Q U E S & A R T

10

This work is from the National

Gallery of Australia’s recent

acquisition of John Gollings’ New

Guinea Suite, photographs of Papua

New Guinean 1973-74 annual cultural

shows called ‘sing sings,’ that

dramatically capture traditional songs,

music and dance, ceremonial clothing

and body decorations. Gollings, an

architecture student turned professional

photographer, acting on suggestions by

his former lecturer Professor Neville

Quarry, went to Papua New Guinea to

photograph the dance styles and body

decorations at sing sings. Gollings

stayed with parents of Quarry’s Papuan

students, seeing their preparations and

travelling with them to the shows.

The ‘shows’ are an artificial construct

of Australian patrol officers in the 1950s,

as a method of integration and

pacification. They continue to be

massive, well attended events. The

theatricality and vitality of ancient

cultural practices manifest in the

performances inspired Gollings. Using

an array of camera and film

technologies he imparted an edgy,

expressive and interpretive character to

images rather than detailed

ethnographic reportage.

Melpa people have a patrilineal culture,

living in highlands villages separated by

valleys and steep mountain ridges.

Communication between villages

developed through yodelling requests,

directions, commands and challenges,

yodelled back and forth by men across a

ravine or a ridge, without visual contact,

using vantage points such as atop the

men’s houses, captured by Gollings.

Traditional items displayed include men’s

wigs of human hair, elaborate

headdresses decorated with feathers and

shells, body painting using local dyes

mixed with pig fat, pig tusk jewellery,

holding stone axes and digging sticks.

The quest for an interpretative,

animated and dramatic realisation would

shape Gollings’ subsequent career,

almost four decades of photographing

ancient and modern architecture across

Australia, Asia and America. Sally Ingleton’s

documentary, John Gollings Eye for

Architecture launched at the Melbourne

International Film Festival in August.

photography

John Gollings

New Guinea suite, 1973-74

1 John Gollings (Australian b. 1944), NewGuinea suite, 1973-74, ed 1/3 printed 2006-07; 60 colour photographs, colour pigmentinkjet on paper, 61 x 100 cm. National Galleryof Australia. Gift of John Gollings 2008

1

Gollings’ photographs of Papua New Guinean 1973-74 annual cultural shows called ‘sing

sings,’ were artistic interpretations of the traditional songs, music and dance, ceremonial

clothing and body decorations, rather than ethnomusicological research images.

W O R L D O F A N T I Q U E S & A R T

12

JANA VYTRHLIK

Illuminated manuscripts have a long

history in European culture. Scriptoria

(scribe’s workshops) flourished at the

end of the fourteenth and early fifteenth

century in and adjacent to monasteries.

The richly decorated miniature Catholic

libris

Rescued from obscurity: hand written, illuminated prayer books

from Bohemia and Moravia

1

Unique to rural Bohemia and Moravia was the tradition of

hand transcribed miniature prayer books. Undertaken by non-

professionals and translated into Czech and German, a

significant collection dating from the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries provides important insights into folk art

traditions of the region

1 Spiritual Treasure or Catholic Prayers…, 1760, 19. x 12.2 cm,160 pp. This is an example of an original approach todecoration, not influenced by printed work

W O R L D O F A N T I Q U E S & A R T

32

HELEN MUSA

The word Fajr carries its own

mystery. It literally translates from

Farsi and Arabic as ‘dawn,’ the dawn of

the Revolution. Metaphorically, it

indicates the awakening of a national art

movement in Iran. The newcomer in a

group of such arts festivals, this one

now joins the Fajr International Film

Festival and the Fajr International

Theatre Festival to make a

triumphant triumvirate.

Not that there was a vacuum before

the Ayatollah Khomeini stepped off the

plane from Paris thirty years ago to

spearhead the Islamic revolution.

One thing that strikes you

immediately in Iran is a deeply-

embedded love of culture and the arts

that goes back to the Achaemenid

Empire and far beyond. The average

Iranian can be relied upon to throw

stanzas from the poets Hafiz and Rumi

into a casual conversation—this is one

1

art

Attending a conference and festival in Tehran marking thirty years of Islamic revolutionary art

was always bound to throw up a few conundrums and mysteries, and so it proved to be

during February when I joined a group of Australian, French, and German writers to present a

paper at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s Fajr celebration of contemporary art. The

aspirations of Iranian artists now seem all the more elusive following post election unrest.

Fajr festival and conference at theTEHRAN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Art in Iran:

W O R L D O F A N T I Q U E S & A R T

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