Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander art:
collection highlights from the National Gallery of Australia

edited by Franchesca Cubillo and Wally Caruana

To be published in conjunction with the opening of the ten new Australian Indigenous galleries at the NGA—the largest display of Indigenous Australian art in the world— this book will provide readers with an introduction to and a history of Indigenous art from early barks to today’s contemporary artists.

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selected bookstores and by mail order

Ballet Russes
the art of costume

edited by Robert Bell

To be published with a major exhibition of the National Gallery of Australia’s renowned collection of costumes from the Ballets Russes. Founder Serge Diaghilev and his successor Colonel Wassily de Basil commissioned contemporary artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Georges Braque, José Maria Sert, André Masson and Giorgio de Chirico to design costumes and scenery for their productions. Integrating design, music and dance, and encouraging the artistic experimentation and collaboration of artists, choreographers and composers, Diaghilev created the new art of modern ballet.

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Face to face
Australian portraits 1880-1960

Anne Gray

Featuring over 50 portraits by some 40 artists, this book takes a fresh look at Australian portraiture from 1880 to 1960. Australian artists have often challenged the possibilities of portraiture, rejected the predictable and pushed boundaries in both their choice of subject and their painterly approach. Artists include Tom Roberts, George W Lambert, Rupert Bunny, Margaret Preston, Grace Crowley, Napier Waller, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale and John Brack.

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In the spotlight
Anton Bruehl photographs 1920s - 1950s

edited by Gael Newton

From his studio in the heart of New York, Australian-born Anton Bruehl created inventive and perfectly realised colour photographs for advertisements in top American magazines such as Vogue and the Vanity Fair. Seen by the millions of readers, his ads had a dedicated following eliciting bags of fan mail. As well as advertising, Bruehl produced evocative images of stars of stage and screen, other celebrities, seasonal child studies and his personal photography in the classic documentary tradition including his award-winning photo book Photographs of Mexico (1933).

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Life death and magic
2000 years of Southeast Asian ancestral art

Robyn Maxwell

The first major exhibition and publication focussed on creations to honour the ancestors and appease the spirits. This publication will feature exquisite sculpture, jewellery and textiles revealing the power of art made for rituals of life and death from prehistoric to recent times. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia.

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Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and beyond
Post-Impressionism from the Musée d'Orsay

Essays by Guy Cogeval, Stéphane Guégan, Sylvie Patry and Christine Dixon

Featuring 112 work by some of the best-known Post-Impressionists, this stunning book includes works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Claude Monet, Maurice Denis, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edouard Vuillard. Drawn from the extraordinary collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the works seen here, diverse in style, colourful and experimental, announced the arrival of modern art in Europe.

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Robert Dowling
Tasmanian son of Empire

John Jones

Robert Dowling (1827–1886) holds a special place in the history of Australian art as its first locally trained artist. He is known for his portraits of colonial European society, genre, Oriental and biblical subjects and the largest mid 19th century paintings of Australian Aborigines. Beautifully illustrated and designed, this book features over 70 works. Meticulously researched, it is a significant addition to the scholarship on Australian colonial history and art. It will expose the reader to a much neglected but extraordinary chapter in Australian art and offer new visual insights into inter-racial relations in colonial Australia.

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Space invaders

edited by Jaklyn Babington

Off the street and into the gallery. This exciting book looks at work from the past five years by some 35 contemporary artists from around Australia. Playful, edgy, clever, satirical and political, street art has significantly altered Australian visual culture over the past decade and has announced the arrival of a new generation of contemporary artists. Space invaders engages with these developments and the radically differing aesthetic offshoots of street art, from stencils to paste-ups, stickers and zines. It also explores the legal and commercial issues particular to street art in Australia, and reveals the strategies artists have used to divide their practice between the street and the gallery.

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Stoned moon
Robert Rauschenberg

Jaklyn Babington

In 1969, Robert Rauschenberg was invited by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to witness the launch of the Apollo 11 mission to place man on the moon for the first time. At the end of a decade in which the war in Vietnam and social turmoil in America had left him disillusioned, this scientific and technological marvel gave the artist new hope for the future. That year, in response to the Apollo 11 achievement, and in collaboration with the Gemini GEL print workshop, Rauschenberg created the Stoned moon series—the title reflecting both the lithographic medium and the moon mission.

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Varilaku
Pacific arts from the Solomon Islands

Crispin Howarth with Deborah Waite

Through over 60 works, Varilaku: Pacific arts from the Solomon Islands explores traditional, or kastom, beliefs in ancestral ghosts, the world of spirit beings, ocean-bound raiding expeditions and the indigenous aesthetics of the self - the use of adornments to express identity and status from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. Varilaku brings together the finest traditional Solomon Islands arts from Australia's museums and galleries for the first time. It is also the first time the majority of these works have been publicy shown, despite many having been in Australian collections for over a century.

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selected bookstores and by mail order

Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and beyond
Post-Impressionism from the Musée d'Orsay

Essays by Guy Cogeval, Stéphane Guégan, Sylvie Patry and Christine Dixon

Featuring 112 work by some of the best-known Post-Impressionists, this stunning book includes works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Claude Monet, Maurice Denis, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edouard Vuillard. Drawn from the extraordinary collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the works seen here, diverse in style, colourful and experimental, announced the arrival of modern art in Europe.

Available from the NGA Shop,
selected bookstores and by mail order

Soft sculpture

Lucina Ward

Soft sculpture looks at the ways artists use unconventional materials and methods to challenge the nature of traditional notions of sculpture. It includes works by American and European artists Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys and Annette Messager as well as works by Australian artists such as Mikala Dwyer, David Jensz and Ricky Swallow.

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Degas' world
the rage for change

Mark Henshaw

Drawing on the National Gallery of Australia’s extraordinary European prints collection, Degas’ world includes works by Degas and his contemporaries, including Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassat, Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, August Rodin, Alfred Sisley and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. These artists changed the direction of art at the end of the 19th century towards a style that was revolutionary, independent and modern.

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Culture warriors
Australian Indigenous art triennial

edited by Brenda L Croft

Presenting the work of thirty artists from each Australian state and territory, the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial demonstrated the incredible range of contemporary Indigenous art practice. Showcasing these works Culture warriors presents a wide range of recent Indigenous art in a variety of media, including painting on bark and canvas, sculpture, textiles, weaving, new media, photomedia, printmaking, and installation. This substantial book provides an ongoing authoritative critical reference for contemporary Indigenous art in Australia.

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Degas
the uncontested master

Jane Kinsman with Michael Pantazzi

Born in Paris in 1834, Edgar Degas was radical in his adoption of modern subject matter and a key figure in the evolution of modern art. This lavishly illustrated book, with its illuminating text, features work from the many mediums Degas used—painting, sculpture, printing, pastels, monotypes and photography—and depicts his favourite subjects: scenes at the ballet, opera and racetrack, and evocations of women as milliners and laundresses, in bordellos and in the act of bathing. It conveys the richness of Degas’ colour and his experimental approach up to his final years, with his interest in photography and abstraction.

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Bonjour Degas

A delightful childrens word book in English and French. Looking at beautiful works by Edgar Degas—paintings of ballerinas and horses—children (and adults) will discover words and colours.

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Redback Graphix

Anna Zegala

From 1979 to 1994, design and screen printing studio Redback Graphix produced posters combining edgy social comment, witty graphics and eye-watering colours to give voice to a raft of pressing social issues ranging from AIDS awareness and alcohol abuse, to the promotion of local films and music gigs. Originally designed for the street, these posters are now highly sought collector pieces, considered icons of an era.

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Gods, ghosts and men
Pacific arts from the National Gallery of Australia

Crispin Howarth

Gods, ghosts and men introduces the Gallery’s significant but still little-known Pacific arts collection, comprising some 2000 works. The artworks included come from a wide array of Pacific nations, including Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the Federated States of Micronesia. Many of the works have never before been seen by the public.

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Australian artists books

Alex Selenitsch

Artists books are works of art created in a book format—such as pages in a box, scrolls, fold-outs or a Rolodex. Australian artists books presents 20 Australian works from the national collection, with detailed discussion by Ian Burn, Robert Jacks, Bea Maddock and Mike Parr.

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Collection highlights
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

edited by Ron Radford

This beautifully illustrated and engaging introduction to the national visual arts collection features over 235 works by 170 artists. Divided into the key collection areas—Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island art, nineteenth-century Australian art, twentieth-century Australian art, Pacific art, Asian art and European and American art—the book is a valuable reference for specialists, general readers and students alike.

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Picture paradise
Asia–Pacific photography 1840s–1940s

Gael Newton

Picture paradise introduces readers to early photography from the diverse Asia–Pacific region—India and Sri Lanka, Southeast and East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, and the west coast of North America. Including pioneer local photographers as well as European photographers working in the region, it features over 80 photographs and albums ranging from gem-like daguerreotype portraits through to modern film photography.

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Richard Larter

Deborah Hart with Deborah Clark and Joanna Mendelssohn

This publication celebrates one of Australia’s most significant and engaging artists. Born in England in 1929, Larter moved to Australia in 1962. His work dates from the late 1950s through to the present, and is at times audacious, confronting and political. This book confirms Larter’s place as a remarkable colourist, technical innovator and a painter of radiant luminosity.

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Turner to Monet
the triumph of landscape painting

Christine Dixon, Ron Radford and Lucina Ward

During the 19th century, landscape triumphed over other forms of art in Western culture. Turner to Monet takes a new look at landscape painting of this period, and considers the shift from depicting known places to exploring new terrains. The book includes works by the finest artists of the 19th century―Turner, Constable, Friedrich, Corot, Courbet, Glover, von Guérard, Church, Streeton, Roberts, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet.

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Australian Surrealism
Agapitos/Wilson Art Collection

Elena Taylor

Australian Surrealism publishes works from the recently acquired Agapitos/Wilson collection to reveal the extraordinary breath of Surrealist practice in Australia from the 1920s to the 1950s. It includes important works by some of the country’s greatest artists, including James Gleeson, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd and Max Dupain.

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Andy and Oz
parallel visions

Deborah Hart

Marking the 20 years since Andy Warhol’s untimely death, Deborah Hart draws unexpected parallels between ideas, ways of working and contemporary issues in her selection of Australian artists whose works are to varying degrees influenced by Warhol’s practice and exploration of popular culture. Artists include Martin Sharp, Richard Larter, Robert Rooney, Fiona Hall, Tim Horn, Tracey Moffatt, Juan Davila, Liu Xiao Xian and Christian Thompson.

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Robert Rauschenberg 1967–78

Jaklyn Babington

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) had an extensive impact on late 20th-century visual culture. Influencing many of the significant developments of post-war American art, he provided countless blueprints for artistic innovation by younger generations. This publication draws on the National Gallery of Australia’s important collection of Rauschenberg’s works, exemplifying his striking transitions in subject matter and material during the late 1960s and 70s.

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Black robe white mist
the art of the Japanese buddhist nun Rengetsu

Melanie Eastburn, Lucie Folan and Robyn Maxwell

Otagki Rengetsu (1791–1875) was a Japanese Buddhist nun whose tragic life inspired extraordinary creativity. One of a very few successful female artists of nineteenth-century Japan, she was primarily a poet and calligrapher, but also excelled in pottery and scroll painting. Black robe white mist brings together, for the first time, Rengetu’s work held in private and public collections from all over the world.

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Printed
images in colonial Australia 1801–1901

Roger Butler

This work is the first of a groundbreaking three-volume series on Australian printmaking, the most comprehensive coverage of Australian prints to be published. The series draws on the national collection, comprising over 36 000 prints. The second volume in the series is Printed: images by Australian artists 1885–1955 . The third volume Printed: images by Australian artists 1955–2005 is forthcoming. Every so often comes a book which makes us rethink what we know … generously illustrated, [this work] offers scholars, curators, collectors and dealers, and anyone interested in the history of Australia, a remarkable amount of information. John McPhee, 2007

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Printed
images by Australian artists 1885–1955

Roger Butler

The second of the three-volume series drawn from the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive print collection. Featuring 439 images reproduced alongside the author’s original research, this second volume follows printmaking through a 70-year period from the late nineteenth century to the mid 1950s. The book shows how industrial techniques became a vehicle for pure artistic expression, and how the print was co-opted to carry political messages reflecting the period’s social and political traumas. The volume concludes in the immediate post-war years, with prints signalling the artists’ search for meaning and an awareness of self.

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Ocean to outback
Australian landscape painting 1850–1950

Ron Radford

For one-hundred years, from 1850 to 1950, landscape painting was the ‘great’ subject of Australian art, reflecting the nation’s changing identity. Written by National Gallery of Australia Director Ron Radford, Ocean to outback reproduces works from the national art collection. Every Australian state and territory is represented, through such important artists as Thomas Baines, Clarice Beckett, Arthur Boyd, Charles Conder, Grace Cossington Smith, Ray Crooke, Russell Drysdale, Harry Garlick, Elioth Gruner, Hans Heysen, Sidney Nolan, Margaret Preston, Tom Roberts, Jeffrey Smart, Arthur Streeton, Howard Taylor, Albert Tucker and Eugene Von Guérard.

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George W Lambert
heroes and icons

Anne Gray

George Washington Lambert (1873–1930) was Australia’s finest war artist and an outstanding portrait painter; in the 1920s he also became an excellent sculptor. Discussing his life and influences, this comprehensive, highly illustrated publication confirms Lambert’s significant place in the history of Australian art.

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George W Lambert
heroes and icons

Anne Gray

George Washington Lambert (1873–1930) was Australia’s finest war artist and an outstanding portrait painter; in the 1920s he also became an excellent sculptor. Discussing his life and influences, this comprehensive, highly illustrated publication confirms Lambert’s significant place in the history of Australian art.

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Grace Crowley
being modern

Elena Taylor

In April 1926, Grace Crowley (1890–1879) made a pilgrimage to Cézanne’s studio at Aix-en-Provence. A subsequent stay in Paris further inspired her, and she returned to Australia in 1930 as a champion of Modernism. Establishing her own art school in Sydney she became one of the first Australian artists to paint purely abstract works. This publication, the only one dedicated to Crowley’s life and art, includes many newly discovered works and presents the full breadth of her oeuvre to assess her central role in the introduction of Modernism to Australia.

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