Dangerously Modern

Way back at the end of January, on my second day in Sydney, Anne and I walked to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see the exhibit Dangerously Modern. We knew it was about Australian and New Zealand women artists living in Europe from 1890 to 1940. After a hot walk, we were delighted to be inside a cool building, but not prepared for the scope and depth of the exhibition, 220 pieces of art, all by women from that era. Many words can describe our reaction, inspired, intrigued, educated, delighted, and overwhelmed. But can’t quite capture the feeling.

This post has been on my mind since seeing the exhibit. I was not very far into it when I realized that I wanted to create a post. I had no idea these women existed, lived in Paris, London, the French countryside, the English countryside, Ireland, following their own creative dreams, learning from each other, experimenting with new art forms, cubism for example, and of course co-existing with all the other creative artists that are so famous from that time, writing for instance. Virginia Woolf, Earnest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. So I started taking pictures, and that is what this post is, the exhibit through my eyes. And no, it is not all 220 of them, but a lot. (Still can’t believe that we can take pictures of the art.). Maybe it is for me, so that I can see it whenever I want to.

This piece was very small and intriguing, painted on ivory.

Some artists stayed in Europe for the rest of their lives, others returned to Australia or New Zealand and continued their careers, changing the art culture at home.

Is this how artists of the era do their sketches, paint them in the back of the box? Seems a sensible idea.

I love the way that two of the women are looking directly at you, one happy, one glum, while grabbing fabric. I can put myself in that picture, in a French market, or a sale where speed is of the essence in getting the choicest item. I didn’t photograph the next picture, but wanted the information about Iso Rae’s connection to other artists and her community in Etaples

I can feel the damp and cold bleakness in this picture in my bones.

Sadly this copy does not do the original justice. Standing in front of it I could feel the difficulty of working on a boat in a wind that made the Thames choppy, and how cold and miserable that would have been.

We took a break after about an hour and a half to give our brains a rest, they were full of art. We had a lovely lunch in the restaurant, but don’t ask me what, I have had so many lovely lunches since.

We have become quite familiar with the modern Circular Quay. The cruise ship began from there, and there is a fleet of commuter ferries that always seems to have at least three boats coming and going at once, and completely un-phased by the cruise ship sailing away, dodging this way and that around it.

I didn’t take a photo of Van Gogh’s room.

I really enjoyed the background information throughout the exhibit. It really added depth and understanding of the women and their art and lives.

She is painting the next picture.

The above refers to picture above. Oh, what English, but as you can imagine, keeping everything in order while I was there, then when I uploaded them to laptop, editing them and putting them into the WordPress app ready to put them here was quite a challenge, and time consuming. But I think worth it. It must have taken at least a couple of years to research the artists, assemble their work and then present them in an understandable way. And as far as I know an original, dare I say, unique exhibit.

Refugees. A horrendous human effect of man-made conflict. How can we not support their efforts to find settled lives? They did not ask for their misery

This room was much more interesting than Van Gogh’s.

Loved this one, stood for ages looking at the very humanness of it, but don’t seem to have recorded the artist. It was getting late in the show.

The star of the show. Anne and I have spent time trying to pin down the affect. Unapologetic. Saucy. Attitude. Self-confident. Defying convention. Would love to hear what she says to you.