Field of Daize’s

Well, back from Melbourne. It is nice to be back in Sydney, since I never really warmed up to Melbourne, which surprises me. It seems to have everything that I should like in a city; cultural awareness, interesting architecture, cafe culture… etc. Yet it feels to me like it is a run down city, somewhere that was and is no longer.

The exception to this, and the one thing that makes me interested in finding out a lot more about Melbourne is the Art scene. I went to the Victorian Art Gallery, and it quite easily excretes all over AGNSW. Well, sort of. There is a different curatiorial emphasis, but I think that all in all I think VAG is a lot better organised. The builiding is gloriously well set out, and they have some exquisite pieces. I didn’t get to see it with as much rigour as I would have liked, but it is certainly a place where I shall return. Yes, it certainly fairs very well against AGNSW and the National Gallery. Which makes me think that perhaps the place to be in Australia to get some serious art experience might be south of the border.

While we were there, there was a travelling exhibit from the Musee d’Orsay. I would have liked to have seen it, but the prices were somewhat prohibitive for me. I can only hope that it comes to Sydney. In a sense, I’ve seen the major works from the Impressionists in different places in Europe, but there are allways pieces that are worthy to have a look in real life. I’m specifically thinking of some Degas that looked quite delectable.

However, the splendor of the VAG was nothign, and I mean nothing, to the sheer enjoyment that I got from two other exhibits. The first one was an exhibit of “The Age” cartoons throughout the 150 year history of the newspaper, held in the Victoria State Library. It was extraordinary. They picked out cartoons from the creme de la creme of australian cartooning; Michael Leunig, Bruce Petty, Kaz Cooke, Cathy Wilcox, John Spooner (drool), Ron Tanberg and the late Les Tanner, to name a few. Not only was the selection of breathtaking, but it was invaluable for me to see them up close in their original. Seeing a cartoon in it’s original is so exciting; they are normally a lot bigger than they appear in newspapers, and you can see pencil marks, shading, white gauche or other white out used.. etc. It really brings them to life. I can’t describe just how excited I was, and if I had only gone to Melb to see this one exhibit, it would have been worth it, no doubt in my mind.

Yet there was another exhibit that riviled that, in an unlikely location: The Jewish Museum. We were staying near St Kilda, and to get to the city, we had to pass this little museum. It turns out that they have a collection at the moment of original comics from ART SPIEGLEMAN!!!!!!! Art Spieglman is famous for his Halocust graphic novel “Maus”, but he is a prodigious artist as well as commentator, who is to this day producing brilliant work. The exhibit had original comics there, as well as sketches and art works for much of Spieglman’s work, including Maus. In this unassuming room (very well lit, I might add), lay the original rough drafts, as well as the final edit of the cover of Maus. It also had pages from the sketchbooks that were used to print it. It had the original three page comic that started it all, as well as some of the earlier work in his life. For a cartoon lover in Australia, this is the closest that I can get to Mecca. There is such little cartooning being produced for Public exhibit, and even less that makes it outside of Brussels or New York. The chance to see this can only have been fate. Ah… such bliss.

On a final note, I just finished reading Bill Bryson’s latest offering, “A short History of Everything”. It was a really good read, and it has prompted me to take up another pop-science book called “Genome”. I find myself a little obsessed with DNA at the moment…