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Art and the Approval of Nature: Philosophical Reflections on Tom Roberts, Holiday Sketch at Coogee (1888)
Author(s) -
Newall Michael
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12287
Subject(s) - sketch , painting , subject (documents) , representation (politics) , art gallery , visual arts , art , art history , indigenous , abstract art , aesthetics , exhibition , computer science , law , ecology , algorithm , politics , library science , political science , biology
This paper, based on a talk given at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is presented as an example of philosophy done in an art gallery. Its subject is Tom Roberts’ painting Holiday Sketch at Coogee (1888), and as well as responding directly to the painting in the environment of the gallery, it draws on the author's memories of seeing that painting in other times and places. It draws on these personal experiences to relate Roberts’ painting to a controversial idea laid out by art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, and to more recent conventionalist and resemblance theories of pictorial representation. It finishes by affirming one of Roberts’ important achievements: his discarding of inherited European ways of picture‐making, and his place among the first generation of non‐indigenous artists to represent the real colours of the Australian landscape.