Max Dupain (1911-1992)

Olive Cotton
Max Dupain
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Self Portrait
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Olive Cotton
Max
1935
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Fashion Shot
1937
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Fashion Shot for retailer David Jones
1937
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Surreal Portrait of Miss Peggy Buchanan
for The Home [Australian magazine]
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Olive Cotton
Max Dupain
1939
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Olive Cotton
Max after surfing
1939
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Miss Noleen Woodward
1940
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Portrait of Loudon Sainthill
(illustrator and stage designer)
1946
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Ticket Sellers, Minerva Theatre
1946
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Meat Queue
1946
gelatin silver print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Max Dupain
Office of Harry Seidler & Associates, Architects,
Milsons Point, Sydney
1973
C-print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Theatre Royal, Sydney
designed by Harry Seidler & Associates
1976
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Max Dupain
Untitled
1978
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Jill White
Portrait of Max Dupain
1989
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

"I find that my whole life, if it is going to be of any consequence in photography, has to be devoted to that place where I have been born, reared and worked, thought, philosophised and made pictures to the best of my ability.  And that's all I need."  – Max Dupain

Decorative Impulses

Roman Empire
Necklace
2nd-3rd century AD
gold, garnet, emerald
Art Institute of Chicago

French Workshop
Dagger Handle
ca. 1300-1320
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Martin Schongauer
Shields with Rabbit and Moor's Head, held by Wild Man
ca. 1480-90
engraving
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giovanni della Robbia
Frieze Fragment with Cherub Head
ca. 1510
glazed terracotta
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Giovanni Bernardi
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1520
glass relief-panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Francesco Salviati
Emblematic Design with Double-Headed Horse and Moth
ca. 1550-60
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Burgundian Workshop
Cabinet
1580
walnut and oak
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bernard Picart
Ornament with Head in a Wreath
ca. 1710
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Johann Heinrich Koehler
Dwarf as Gardener
ca. 1720-25
ivory, silver, copper, diamonds
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

John Michael Rysbrack
Putti supporting Architrave
ca. 1730
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Augustus Pugin (designer)
Wallpaper Fragment
(Heraldic Lion-Heads and Monogram)
ca. 1850
color woodblock print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Franz Heinrich
Summer Room of Queen Olga at Stuttgart New Palace
ca. 1870
watercolor
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

British Workshop
Window Cornice
1931
carved and painted wood with silk brocade
(commissioned replica of 18th-century cornice)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Dana Bartlett
Ornamental Design
ca. 1934
watercolor and gouache
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jim Blashfield
The Doors
1967
lithograph (poster)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Susan Phillips McMeekin
Design for Dragon Clock
ca. 2012
presentation drawing, with watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

from Scorpio, or, The Scorpion 

This belt of fretted stars that so promiscuously plays

Upon our eyes, we learn to name them all,
Picking our favourites out like horses in a race.
But now their steady passages recall
How, geared to the years,
They tick our lives out: and we cease to see
Much hope in false futurity:

Instead we falsify stars that have been

With promise that we alter since those stars,

Raising reality

Not in what we see,

Nor in what meteors there yet may be,

But in fixed stars we would we once had seen.

– Joseph Gordon Macleod, from The Ecliptic (1930)

Wight - Shunsen - Sander - Salle

Normana Wight
Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones
(series, Movies on Television)
ca. 1985
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Normana Wight
R. Redford, All the President's Men
(series, Movies on Television)
ca. 1986
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Normana Wight
William Hurt
(series, Movies on Television)
ca. 1986
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Normana Wight
Self Portrait with Blue Hand
1986
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Natori Shunsen
Ichikawa Sumizo VI as Shirai Gonpachi
in The Floating World's Pattern
1926
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Natori Shunsen
Nakamura Ganjiro I as Sakata Tojuro
in Tojuro's Love
1925
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Natori Shunsen
Nakamura Kaisha I as Okaru in
Love Suicides, Eve of the Koshin Festival
1928
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Natori Shunsen
Onoe Baiko VI as Sayuri
in Bridge of Return
1925
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

August Sander
The Architect Hans Poelzig, Berlin
1929
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

August Sander
The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

August Sander
Gerd Arntz (painter)
1929
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

August Sander
Otto Freundlich (painter)
1929
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

David Salle
Low and Narrow
1994
lithograph, woodcut, etching and collage
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

David Salle
Long and High
1994
lithograph and woodcut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

David Salle
High and Low
1994
lithograph, woodcut and screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

David Salle
Up and Down
1994
lithograph, woodcut, etching and collage
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from Music is International

     Orchestras have so long been speaking
This universal language that the Greek
     And the Barbarian have both mastered
Its enigmatic grammar which at last
     Says all things well. But who is worthy?
What is sweet? What is sound? Much of the earth
     Is austere, her temperate regions
Swarming with cops and robbers; germs besiege
     The walled towns and among the living
The captured outnumber the fugitive.

     Where silence is coldest and darkest,
Among those staring blemishes that mark
     War's havocking slot, it is easy
To guess what dreams such vaulting cries release:
     The unamerican survivor
Hears angels drinking fruit-juice with their wives
     Or making money in an open 
Unpoliced air. But what is our hope,
     As with an ostentatious rightness
These gratuitous sounds like water and light
     Bless the Republic? Do they sponsor
In us the mornes and motted mammelons,
     The sharp streams and sortering springs of 
A commuter's wish, where each frescade rings
     With melodious booing and hooing

As some elegant lovejoy deigns to woo
     And nothing dreadful ever happened?
Probably yes. We are easy to trap,
     Being Adam's children, as thirsty
For mere illusion still as when the first
     Comfortable heresy crooned to
The proud flesh founded on the self-made wound,
     And what we find rousing or touching
Tells us little and confuses us much.

     As Shaw said – Music is the brandy
Of the damned. It was from the good old grand
     Composers the progressive kind of 
Tyrant learned how to melt the legal mind
     With a visceral A-ha; fill a

Dwarf's ears with sforzandos and the dwarf will
     Believe he's a giant; the orchestral
Metaphor bamboozles the most oppressed
     – As a trombone the clerk will bravely
Go oompah-oompah to his minor grave –.

     So that to-day one recognises
The Machiavel by the hair in his eyes,
     His conductor's hands. Yet the jussive
Elohim are here too, asking for us
     Through the noise. 

– W.H. Auden (1947)

Graphic Narratives

Monogrammist A.I.
The Rich Man and Death
1553
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan Sadeler the Elder after Dirck Barendsz
Mankind awaiting the Last Judgment
ca. 1581-83
hand-colored engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Monogrammist D.V.H.
Two Lame Couples Dancing
16th century
engraving
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Andrea Andreani after Giambologna
Abduction of the Sabine Women
before 1623
chiaroscuro woodcut, assembled from multiple panels
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giuseppe Caletti (il Cremonese)
Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1620-30
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Christoffel Jegher after Peter Paul Rubens
Hercules Triumphant over Discord
ca. 1633-34
woodcut
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Salvator Rosa
Combat of Tritons
1660-61
etching
Milwaukee Art Museum

Sébastien Bourdon
Freeing the Captive
(from the series, Seven Acts of Mercy)
ca. 1660-70
etching
Milwaukee Art Museum

Gérard de Lairesse
Mercury with the Head of Argus
ca. 1670-72
etching
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Joseph Van Loo after Peter Paul Rubens
Mercury and Jupiter served by Baucis and Philemon
before 1740
engraving
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Richard Earlom after Andrea Sacchi
The Death of Abel
1766
etching
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Isidore Stanislas Helman after Nicolas Lavreince
The Dangerous Novel
1781
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

William Dent
Grand and Effectual Attack in the Baltic
1791
hand-colored etching
Yale Center for British Art

James Barry
Milton dictating to Ellwood the Quaker
ca. 1804-1805
etching, engraving and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

James Gillray
Phaeton Alarmed!
(George Canning facing political opponents)
1808
hand-colored etching
Morgan Library, New York

Anonymous German Artist
Napoleon in disguise on his way into exile on Elba in 1814
ca. 1820
hand-colored etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

     Around four in the morning on 6 May 1527, an Imperial army under the command of Charles of Bourbon began its attack on the city of Rome.  His armor draped in a white coat for visibility, Bourbon circulated among his men – mostly Spanish and German Imperial troops, augmented with some French and Italian soldiers – urging them onward.  At first they directed their attack against the city walls that enclosed the Vatican and the Borgo districts on the west side of the Tiber River, concentrating their efforts upon a low point in the south wall near the Porta San Spirito.  The defenders repelled the initial assaults, but within an hour an unusually dense fog rolled in, rendering useless the cannons of the nearby papal fortress, the Castel Sant' Angelo.  Early in the fighting, an arquebus shot mortally wounded the Duke of Bourbon as he was urging his men to scale the walls at the Porta Torrione.  But his troops persevered, and around six a.m. they breached the defences in three places just as the fog – which many would interpret as divinely sent – began to lift.

     There followed an immediate breakdown of discipline among the defenders.  Most sought to flee either by bridge or by boat across the Tiber to the intact center of the city.  Renzo da Ceri, the commander who had been responsible for organizing the Romans' defense, responded to the incursion with mingled bewilderment and terror, and he himself ultimately fled into the papal fortress.  When Pope Clement VII, at prayer in his private chapel in the Vatican, heard the commotion of the approaching troops, he and several others – including the humanist Paolo Giovio and the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (the future Pope Paul III) – fled along the Alexandrine corridor to the Castel Sant' Angelo.  From its confines, crowded with around a thousand refugees*, the pontiff could look out upon the destruction below, helpless to halt it.    

     Next, the Imperialists set upon Trastavere, the district lying to the south of the Vatican on the west side of the Tiber.  Soon they broke through the defenses at the Porta Settimiana and continued their conquest.  That evening they made their way across the Ponte Sisto and into the central districts of Rome, shouting triumphantly as they went.  The disoriented populace offered little resistance, and by the following morning, with the exception of the Castel Sant' Angelo and a handful of private palaces, all Rome had fallen to the Imperialists. 

     Thereafter, the plight of the Roman only became more desperate.  The death of Bourbon had left the contingents of the Imperial army without a common commander who could put a stop to the sacking of the city.  If out of righteous zeal German Lutheran troops desecrated relics, Spanish Catholic soldiers proved no less eager to strip precious metals and stones from the statues and tombs of saints and of popes.  Even the German and Spanish churches in Rome did not escape the plundering.  Often Romans were captured, tortured, and ransomed by one contingent of soldiers only to endure similar treatment from another.  Those who lacked the resources to pay at once might be killed on the spot, or else enslaved until a ransom could be extorted from their relatives.

– Kenneth Gouwens, from Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Brill, 1998)

*André Chastel's 1983 volume on the Sack numbers those taking refuge on May 6 inside Castel Sant' Angelo at "nearly three thousand" – (Chastel's scholarship, on the whole, encouraging more confidence than that of Gouwens).