Art Gallery of NSW

Whew. The final of my 3 part Sunday posting. Worth noting, today marks my 4th week in Sydney.

Today was a slower pace day. I talked with my fiancee and sisters in the morning. I then made my way over towards the Art Gallery of NSW. Along the way, I stopped inside the St. Mary's cathedral I blogged about earlier. Beautiful inside. No photos allowed, so just trust me on that.

The Art Gallery was really cool (and free!). Had some Asian and European art, but I focused on checking out the Aussie art. I also got to go on the 1 hour free Australian art tour. Very informative. With art, I really need to know the context, history, etc in order to really get a lot outta viewing it.

The first piece I noticed on my own was this one:

Wallabies!

The next paint that struck me was this one, The Cockatoo,  1895

What struck me about this one was I swore I've seen a similar European painting but with a duck instead of a cockatoo. My initial guess was that it was a type of Australian copy, or rather, painting in that style/tradition. I did some quick research and I think I was wrong. Looks like Jean-Baptiste painted rabbits.

But my initial suspicion of Australian painters following European traditions was correct. During the tour, we learned that landscape paintings became the calling card of Australian paintings, given the "unique" landscape (compared to Europe) but often painted in a European style.

The tour guide then took us to another wing. She asked us to look left and then look down to the right. She asked this little boy if he noticed a difference between the paintings from the left and right. I know what I first thought of.

To the left

To the right...

The correct answer was that there were more "humans" in the paintings to the right, but more animals and landscape to the left. The left is what became more traditional Australian subjects. The paintings to the right were from Australian painters who went to Europe and tried to make it big there (aka, paint more European type stuff).

The last thing she showed us was some aborigine art.

You'll note (or maybe not) that there are a lot of dots in aborigine paintings. That's because traditionally a wood utensil is used to paint, so the paint is just kind of dotted on there.

Wrapping up the museum, I went to the modern and post-modern area. I got to see Richard Serra. Studied that guy in school. He was a famous minimalist who often used industrial materials for his artwork.

Probably the coolest thing, though, was this installation on the bottom floor. I should have taken a picture or at least got a name. But I didn't. It was a room you walk into. There was a warning about it being dark and tight spaces. You're supposed to tell the guard that you're going in. I went in, and wow, it was spooky. It was small, dark, and just the way it was designed made you want to turn around and leave. Like you're in a small, abandoned basement. However, I told myself I couldn't turn around because the guard knew I went in. I made may way through the first tiny room (talking 6' X 5' maybe) and opened the first door. Darkness. Hmm... Do I go left or do I go right? Left ended up being the right answer. You turn another small bend and there it is! That has to be the exit! Whew, it was. I step out and she goes "you made it." Yep. Although, I felt a little guilty. At the point where I needed to figure out if I should go left or right, I broke out my cell phone (only for 1 second!). Oddly, I felt like I should have told her that, but I didn't. We talked about the installation a little bit. It was cool to get the guard's perspective. Her take is that it's designed to get that apprehension and fear going. She's seen all kinds of people walk in and seconds later come out the front. But wow, I made it all the way through (ughh! making me feel so guilty!). Pretty cool. Really heightened your senses.

On my walk home, I saw the weirdest thing. I didn't get the best photo. Just took a snapshot.

Building in the back is the gallery

There were about 6 - 8 guys standing on the grass or on a soap box talking (with others around). I couldn't really figure out what it was, but made me think of Athens or something back in the day with all the philosophers talking and arguing. There was a guy talking about Christianity, someone talking about Communism (maybe?), about atoms (Atheism?), matter and atoms, unions (again, maybe? Wow, I really should have paused a bit longer).

Afterwards, I went to Cole's, worked out, did some laundry, and posted on my blog. Exciting day. Bedtime soon to get ready for a big week. Should probably book a hotel in Christchurch, though...

Oh, and it was brought to my attention that in order to leave comments, you had to sign up. give you SSN, your first born, etc. I changed the default setting to let anyone post without opening an account. Because nothing could go wrong with allowing the Internet to post freely...