This is a sortable list of Australian art critics who wrote for newspapers in the nineteenth [1] and twentieth centuries, a period in which such periodicals carried the majority of current, contemporaneous art criticism, [2] before most such papers ceased art reviews in the 21st century. [3]
Hamilton [4] writes to distinguish this genre:
...criticism that appears in newspapers is written for a general audience, and the real substance of newspaper art criticism can best be summed up as providing an antidote for the 'vernacular glance'. This term, coined by art historian Brian O'Doherty in 1974, [5] refers to the modern phenomenon of viewing an exhibition casually, with eyes darting indiscriminately from object to object in an ineffectual effort to take in the entire exhibition at once. The work of the critic is effectively to map an exhibition for an audience, and thereby transform the vernacular glance into an informed glance that is capable of discerning either meaning or emptiness in the work on show.
Barker and Green, noting the number of art critics writing for newspapers in the 1970s, consider that 'this writing was essentially ephemeral, based on the assessment of the wide spectrum of ... exclusively local, art exhibitions. It was essentially a form of reportage. [6]
In 2012 Osborne noticed a general devaluing and disparagement of the newspaper critic and warned that:
... the progressively weakened position of newspaper art criticism and the threat of it disappearing altogether from mass market newspapers ... could have far-reaching repercussions ... a nodal rupture in the network of relationships between the art world and the wider public. The complex ecology of the art world needs this link with the wider public. It needs a healthy balance between critical writing in art journals and newspapers. [7]
Minnie Pwerle was an Australian Aboriginal artist. She came from Utopia, Northern Territory, a cattle station in the Sandover area of Central Australia 300 kilometres (190 mi) northeast of Alice Springs.
Alan McLeod McCulloch AO was one of Australia's foremost art critics for more than 60 years, an art historian and gallery director, cartoonist, and painter.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
Warlugulong is a 1977 acrylic on canvas painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Owned for many years by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the work was sold by art dealer Hank Ebes on 24 July 2007, setting a record price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work bought at auction when it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million. The painting illustrates the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata, together with eight other dreamings associated with localities about which Clifford Possum had traditional knowledge. It exemplifies a distinctive painting style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, and blends representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".
John Ford Paterson, often referred to as Ford or J. Ford Paterson, was a Scottish-born Australian artist. He specialised in landscapes.
Constance Stokes was an Australian modernist painter who worked in Victoria. She trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School until 1929, winning a scholarship to continue her study at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Although Stokes painted few works in the 1930s, her paintings and drawings were exhibited from the 1940s onwards. She was one of only two women, and two Victorians, included in a major exhibition of twelve Australian artists that travelled to Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy in the early 1950s.
Girl in Red Tights is a painting by Australian artist Constance Stokes. Portraying a standing girl wearing red tights, the painting was exhibited in several shows, including the Commonwealth Jubilee Exhibition in Brisbane in 1951, and Twelve Australian Artists, in London in 1953. The work attracted significant critical acclaim.
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MPRG) is a public art gallery on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne, Australia. The gallery opened in 1971, and holds both traditional and contemporary Australian art. The gallery is host to the National Works on Paper (NWOP) acquisitive art competition, established in 1998.
Florence Ada Fuller was a South African-born Australian artist. Originally from Port Elizabeth, Fuller migrated as a child to Melbourne with her family. There she trained with her uncle Robert Hawker Dowling and teacher Jane Sutherland and took classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, becoming a professional artist in the late 1880s. In 1892 she left Australia, travelling first to South Africa, where she met and painted for Cecil Rhodes, and then on to Europe. She lived and studied there for the subsequent decade, except for a return to South Africa in 1899 to paint a portrait of Rhodes. Between 1895 and 1904 her works were exhibited at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy.
Chloé is an 1875 oil painting by French academic painter Jules Lefebvre. Measuring 260 cm by 139 cm, it depicts the naiad in "Mnasyle et Chloé", a poem by the 18th-century French poet André Chénier.
Ian Gardiner (1943–2008) was a Melbourne-based artist whose practice ranged from screen printing, linocuts and photographs through to woodblock prints, monoprint, collage and montage. Gardiner also returned to painting late in his career.
Christopher Robin Orchard is a South Australian artist and arts educator who began as a sculptor but subsequently specialised in drawing. His character, the Bald Man, is a recurrent motif. Orchard is Associate Professor at Adelaide Central School of Art and was the subject of the 2017 SALA Festival monograph, Christopher Orchard: The Uncertainty of the Poet. He is also the subject of the 2013 short documentary film Everyperson, by Jasper Button and Patrick Zoerner.
Miriam Stannage (1939–2016) was an Australian conceptual artist. She was known for her work in painting, printmaking and photography, and participated in many group and solo exhibitions, receiving several awards over her career. Her work was also featured in two Biennales and two major retrospective exhibitions.
William Frater (1890–1974) was a Scottish-born Australian stained-glass designer and modernist painter who challenged conservative tastes in Australian art.
Ann Elizabeth Galbally is an Australian art historian and academic.
Arnold Joseph Victor Shore was an Australian painter, teacher and critic.
Harold Brocklebank Herbert (1891–1945) was an early 20th century Australian painter and printmaker, an illustrator and cartoonist. A traditionalist, as an art teacher he promoted representational painting, and amongst Australian newspaper art critics was an influential detractor of modernism. He was the first war artist to be appointed for Australia in the Second World War, serving for 6 months with the Australian Infantry Forces in Egypt in 1941 and in the Middle East in 1942.
Samuel Laurence Atyeo was an Australian painter, designer and diplomat. Atyeo was active in Melbourne's modernist movement in the 1930s and was associated with the Heide circle. He later had a diplomatic career working under Herbert Evatt, and was noted for his unconventional approach to the work. He gave up both artistic and diplomatic work in the 1950s and spent the rest of his life farming in France with occasional returns to painting. Atyeo's art and design work made a considerable contribution to modernism in Australia, and his painting "Organised Line to Yellow" is considered Australia's first abstract painting.
Clive Travers Stephen was an Australian sculptor, painter in water-colour and oils, printmaker, and medical doctor.
Edith Annie Mary Alsop was an Australian artist.