Thrashing out the art of reproduction

[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 14  9 - 23 August 2004 ]

In 2004 the Ian Potter Museum of Art produced its first calendar in an ongoing, collectable series profiling key artworks from the University of Melbourne Art Collection, other collections on campus and past exhibitions. Potter Director Dr Chris McAuliffe discusses the themes in the 2005 calendar and the implications of reproducing art.

By Chris McAuliffe

There are two reflections on photography and the reproduction of art works, which continue to haunt the art world, even though they were first raised in the middle of the last century.

The first is André Malraux’s concept of ‘the museum without walls’. The photographic reproduction of art, Malraux thought, would free art works from their containment in museums, disseminating them into the café, the school and the home.

The second is Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the fate of art in what he called ‘the age of mechanical reproduction’. Benjamin famously argued that encounters with art works in the unique physical and cultural surroundings of their original location would decline. Substituting a photograph for the experience of the original would lead to the waning of art’s ‘aura’.

I’ve thrashed out the implications of these two reflections – one optimistic, the other pessimistic – in many a seminar. Now, with the publication of the Potter’s 2005 calendar, I’m happy to offer you all the opportunity to meditate on them as you circle an important date in the comfort of your home or office.

When the 2004 calendar was released we received high praise from members of university staff, who used it as an affordable gift and promotional tool. Comments such as, ‘unique, beautiful, functional . . . colour and format are great’, suggest that our colleagues lean more to Malraux than Benjamin. All calendars sold out.

Of course, the 2005 calendar is not primarily designed as a tool for promoting seminar discussion; it’s a celebration of the remarkable range of art works displayed at the University of Melbourne.

This year’s calendar, titled Highlights, profiles artworks from the collection that focus on Australian life and landscape, leisure and labour.

It includes work by renowned Australian artists as well as cultural treasures unique to the University of Melbourne.

The selection covers styles from European genre painting – a peasant wedding by Pieter Breughel III – through to contemporary abstraction. Pastoral landscapes meet urban icons such as the Sydney Opera House, and historical images of colonial Melbourne contrast with the contemporary architecture of the Sidney Myer Asia Centre.

Using a practical, spiral-bound format that fits in an A4-sized envelope and unfolds into a month-by-month wall hanging, the calendar features an explanatory text complementing each artwork.

Sample pages and order forms can be found on the Potter’s website at http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au Click on Highlights: Calendar 2005 in the News section on the home page. Place orders promptly, supplies are limited.


Michael Nelson Jagamara

Jagamara is a key figure in the renewal of contemporary Aboriginal painting, which began at Papunya, in the Western Desert, in the 1970s. His best-known work is a mosaic for the forecourt of Parliament House in Canberra. Kangaroo is a graphic representation of this totemic animal. Three strong black lines indicate the marks left by the two feet and tail of a kangaroo in the desert sand. Based on a traditional design, the energetic painting style shows the artist’s assimilation of western expressionist painting to the Indigenous totem. This artwork is part of a collection established in the 1990s by the Vizard Foundation in collaboration with staff and academics of the University of Melbourne. The collection remains on loan to the University in order to encourage the study and appreciation of contemporary Australian art.


Eric Thake

Eric Thake produced a linocut design each year as a Christmas card to send to family and friends; a total of forty-six cards from 1941 to 1975. The University of Melbourne holds a complete set of Thake’s Christmas cards. An Opera House in Every Home delivers a good dose of irreverent Australian humour. Thake suggests that the design of the Opera House building resembles a stack of freshly washed plates draining on the sink. He even includes a small insect, perched like a bird on one of the curves of the plates, and the lapping water in the sink to locate the image outdoors and by the water. Dated 1972, the card was produced the year before the Opera House was officially completed and embodies the heated debate that surrounded the controversial design and construction of this Australian icon.


Matthys Gerber

Born in the Netherlands, Gerber arrived in Australia in 1972. Based in Sydney, he has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally since 1980. The vibrant energy of Zone calls to mind the qualities of classical modernist abstraction; intense optical and graphic energy divorced from any need to represent the objects or experience of the world. Gerber is not, however, exclusively an abstract artist. Systematically exploring the genres of painting – landscape, portraiture, the nude, abstraction – Gerber assesses the formal languages of each, as well as their rises and falls in popularity. Typically, Zone sees the artist pushing abstraction to the limits of good taste; like a daredevil, he walks a tightrope between safety and danger, success and failure.


Edith Alsop

Edith Alsop was born in 1871, to very progressive parents who encouraged her involvement in the visual arts. Edith and her sisters went to Europe in the 1920s, searching for contemporary styles in art. She undertook many vivid, large-scale studies during her travels, depicting local people in traditional costume, architectural views and cityscapes, in coloured pencil, pastels and watercolour. On her return to Australia, she established friendships with other like-minded women artists, who were exploring printmaking techniques in lino and woodcut, using modern motifs and designs. Alsop collaborated with a number of other women artists to paint nursery rhymes in the foyers and corridors of Prince Henry’s Hospital in Melbourne. Kangaroos c.1930 is one of many images Alsop made of animals, including pets, exotic creatures at the Melbourne Zoo and native fauna. Opening in May 2005, the Potter will stage the first major survey of Edith Alsop’s art.