World's Most Visited Art Galleries

According to the The Art Newspaper 's annual international survey published in April 2009, The Louvre in Paris took the top spot as the world's most attended mus­eum, as you might expect. Centre Pompidou in Paris was second, then the Tate Modern in London, British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria was the most visited art gallery in Australia. With 1.48 million visitors in 2007-08, it also ranked among the publication’s top 25 most popular art museums in the world. Since Melbourne (3.85 million) doesn’t have the population of Cairo-Tokyo-New York-London-Paris-Mexico City, nor the history of Vienna-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Jerusalem-London, this is an impressive feat.

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National Gallery of Victoria, front entrance

When it came to individual exhibitions, Nara National Museum (850 ks west of Tokyo) won the 13th annual survey with a display of items from Shoso-in, the imperial treasure house of the Todai-ji Temple. It had an average daily attendance of 12,700 people. The Tokyo National Museum ranked second with a display of national treas­ures from the Yakushi-ji Temple. In third place was the Grand Palais Nave in Paris, a large exhibition hall which reopened in 2005 after long renovations. The Nave saw an average of 10,350 people per day for a display of digital art including film, videos and instal­lations. Madrid's Reina Sofia (which exhibition?) came next and a large-scale exhibition of Van Gogh's works made the Albertina in Vienna the next most popular gallery programme.

Melbourne's Trams

Melbourne’s first form of public transport from the suburbs into the city centre, and vice versa, were the railways; they had started in 1854. This was quite impres­s­ive since Londoner Robert Hoddle had only arrived in the Port Phillip settlement in March 1837 and was appointed senior surveyor for the new town.

Another serious public transport system started up in 1885 when the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company grabbed a 30-year monopoly franchise for Melbourne’s new cable tram network. The first non-horse service ran from Spencer St/Flinders St in the centre of town, out to Haw­th­orn Bridge. It was a simple mechanism. The grip man/driver would grab one of the levers connected to the cable which in turn pulled the tram along the tram lines. When he want­ed to stop the tram, he’d let go of the grip on the cable and applied the brake.

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First cable tram, 1885

The network grew quickly and within six years of the first cable tram being on the road, 1891, the cable tramway network consisted of spoke lines running from the city out into all inner suburbs. However, as the population moved further away from the centre of town, it became clear that the cable tram system became could not reach further and further out, without any limit.

In 1906, the first electric trams were being built, not to replace cable cars but to extend the ends of cable tram lines to more distant suburbs. They “topped up” the cable car system. The initial monopoly ended in 1916 and, appropriately, the cable network was taken over by the State government. The newly formed Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board was now fully responsible. Almost immediately the MMTB started converting the old cable tram lines and the most famous of the new electric trams was the W class. From 1923 on, the W class was truly an Australian design, with compartments at either end closed by sliding doors and an open space in the middle. It was green, quiet, clean and wonderful.

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Melbourne's archetypal green tram

The final cable tram bowed out in 1940, only a year after World War 2 broke out. In time the entire population was serviced by tram lines that all started in town and extended as far as the outer suburbs. When most other cities in the world ripped out their trams and substituted smelly, smoke-filled buses, Melbourne kept her elegant, green ladies that were able to glide graciously through the tree-lined streets without petrol.

Of course Melbourne bloggers are very proud of their trams. I recom­mend you read “Review: Time-line history of Melbourne's Government Cable and Electric Trams and Buses” in melbourne on transit: April 2006.  And the beaut High Riser blog. Even foreigners unfavourably compare their own tram system to Melbourne's eg Poneke who wrote Bumblebee trams roll proudly through Melbourne while Wellington bumbles timidly on.

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Today Melbourne's trams are still petrol-free, but they are no longer green and are alas both ultra-streamlined and privatised. It feels like our city was taken over by foreign trams. In any case, there are other important public transport issues to be considered, as discussed by Hailing From Georgia blog in Guidelines for Effective Mass-Transit, discuss. However my favourite place to take overseas visitors is still a 3-hour tour in the splendidly refurbished 1927 Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.

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Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

Carlo Catani: planning Melbourne's foreshores

Carlo Catani (1852-1918) was born in Florence where he learned engineering at the Technical Institute. After graduation he was employed in railway con­struction. Early in 1876 Catani and two of his colleagues decided to move to New Zealand. They sailed out of Europe but on arriving in New Zealand, they found no professional work for the new arrivals. Catani and his friends decided instead to push on to Melbourne.

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Within a few weeks all three had joined the Department of Lands and Survey as draftsmen. In 1880 Catani was registered as a surveyor under the Land Act. Two years later he and his friends were transferred to the Public Works Dept, where they were employed as engin­eer­ing draughtsmen preparing plans for harbours, jetties and coast works, and by early 1886 they were assistant engineers. Melbourne was booming and needed keen, young, skilled men.

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Catani Gardens, main path looking towards the rotunda/bandstand built for the 1988 bi-centenary.

This Italian civil engineer supervised many significant projects in and around Melbourne. Casey Cardinia blog wrote that Carlo Catani was one of the Engineers in charge of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Drainage scheme just outside Melbourne and was Catani also responsible for the first mechanical equipment used on the Swamp. This transformed the area into prime farmland.
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Catani’s other work with the Public Works Dept included flood mitigation works on the Yarra River. He was responsible for planting the now-magnificent elm trees along Alexandra Avenue. And he designed the Morrell bridge.

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St Kilda Council created a foreshore committee in 1906. By that year Catani, who was Chief Engineer of the Public Works Dept, was con­tract­ed to reclaim and beautify the foreshore from St Kilda south-wards down the bay. His successful plan resulted in our famous strolling district, leaving space for beach facilities that became core parts of Melbourne’s foreshore incl Luna Park 1912, the Palais Theatre and Palais de Danse 1926 and just before World War 2, St Moritz Ice Rink 1939. As a result, several landmarks along the fore­shore were his creations. The gardens he designed at the end of Fitzroy Street were named after him, as was the Catani arch bridge on the St Kilda foreshore.

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Catani clock tower, with Catani's bust

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The clock tower is a very fine copper domed, classical construction that stands with pride on the StKilda esplanade/foreshore. Carlo Catani’s bust, as you can see in the photo, still appears on the Clock tower and it is this monument to a young Italian adventurer that I knew best. Alas, as Melbourne Heritage Watch wrote, the Catani Clock was stopped by rats.

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The hot sea baths and hotel on St Kilda main beach in 1910, which replaced the 1862 Gymnasium Baths. In time, the hot sea baths themselves burned down

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I was surprised and delighted to read that the Afrilog Construction, Kenya blog, in CON­STRUCTION NEWS AROUND AUST­RAL­IA, urged that the design of any new development in St Kilda (still being debated in 2009) should remain true to Federation-era legacy of Carlo Catani. Of course our Kenyan blogger colleague is quite correct.

Garden Design: Cloudehill

Cloudehill is a 2 hectare garden in the Dandenong Ranges, just on the edge of suburban Melbourne. Waverley Arts Society blog wrote Cloudehill Garden was a work of art. In the 1890s the Woolrich family cleared bush in Olinda to create a working fruit garden. Then in the early 1920s, they established Rangeview Nursery and developed a cut flower and foliage farm. The family prospered for many years, however in 1962 bushfires devastated the farm and the business languished.

Jeremy Francis had long sought land in the Dandenongs to create a garden. He was introduced to the owner Jim Woolrich, the last of the second generation of the family, and learned much of the history of the nursery trade. After Jim's death, the family offered the property to Jeremy and in 1992 Cloudehill was established. The new owner decided to create a Garden of Eden, based on the established design principles that arose out of Arts and Crafts gardens. Everything was planned: the paths, the trees, the flowers, the sculpture etc.

I'm not familiar with garden design principles, so Katya at Bosco Parrasio blog was super.  “Cloudehill is inspired by the famous arts and crafts gardens of England: Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Tintinhull and others. These, in turn, are derived from the renais­sance gardens of Italy such as Villa D'este and Villa Lante. Our green theatre is a tribute to those magnificent Italian hill gardens. Of course Cloudehill's location, with its gentle slopes, the dramatic forest to one side and exhilarating views to the mountains, provide plenty of inspiration and the placing of art works into the gardens give a contemporary twist to a classic design”. With the daffodils, she said, we see the change from the structured to the naturalistic.

See photos of Sissinghurst gardens, created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, in Gardens of a Golden Afternoon. Examine Bishop's Gate which connects the Tower Lawn to the White Garden - the plants are not Australian, but the vistas and garden architecture are familiar.

Intelligblog noted that Cloudehill was laid out in about 20 rooms or garden compartments, all on different levels and linked by paths. Each compartment has its own theme, but there are also integrating elements, like brick and stonework, lined by herbaceous borders and clipped hedges that make each compartment feel an essential component of an integrated whole. Water features and art pieces were the modernising highlight for Nicholas.

VARPORIUM CENTRAL blog suggested “to see the perennial borders at their best on a clear morning after rain with the mist rising and melting is nothing short of miraculous. Flora Aik blog was just mesmerised with the estate.

If there is any disagreement, it is over the sculpture. In a new experimental part of the garden where it is too steep to walk, the new owner has used C17th Italian commedia dell'arte figures by Lazlo Biro to create what he hoped would be a really bold element and a wonderful focal point. Perhaps C17th gardens in northern Italy really did have lawned spaces where commedia dell'arte troupes played. But for me they didn’t fit into C21st Melbourne. The hugs garden pots, on the other hand, were wonderful.

p.s People interested in the art of landscaping might like to look at a blog called Corporate Stay Solutions.

Traditional Vs Modern Art: 1930s Australia

In "Addled Art" by Lionel Lindsay and "Addled Art": dishonest art dealers, I noted that James S Macdonald and Lionel Lindsay were not the only fiercely anti-modernists in the Australian art world of the 1930s and early 40s. However they were definitely the most powerfully placed, thus influencing important public decisions. Jane Hunt’s 'Victors' and 'Victims'?: Men, Women, Modernism and Art in Australia in Journal of Australian Studies, 80, 2004 was very useful in explaining their fear of modernity, so I will quote her extensively.

In the years between the two world wars the Australian art estab­lish­ment was run by a band of traditionalists who were at first irritated and later ser­ious­ly threatened by a bunch of critical young innovators. The story of the emergence of modern art in Australia seems to be about the vict­ory of the innovators. It is the victors who write history. Four key art histories present this story of victory: Australian Painting by Ber­nard Smith; Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese; The Innovat­ors by Geoffrey Dutton; and Black Swan of Trespass by Humphrey McQueen. Smith argued that after WW1 'the old men of the tribe, their years of exile over, began to lay down the law for the guidance of the young'. Their chief objective entailed the prot­ection of the health, sanity and vitality of Australian art from the madness of Europe. In their day the Heidel­berg painters were regarded as innovative and modern. But many of them were in fact realists who mellowed with time and event­ually became art critics, publishers and trustees.

Their law-making coincided with the emergence in Sydney of small group of artists who, following European trends, exper­im­ented with a range of stylistic and technical innovations collect­ively thought of by many as modern art. By the 1920s a few artists had begun to ex­periment with modern aesthetic ideas. In 1926 two artists formed the Sydney Contemporary Group with a large proportion of modernist women artists. Two artists opened the Modern Art Centre in 1932. In 1932, two Melbourne art teachers formed the Melbourne Contemporary Group.

In the political and economic uncertainty of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the established experts to bellig­erence. By the late 1930s these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the Melbourne and Sydney art worlds. They re­volved around a dichotomous relationship between ideologically and artistically con­servative forces and aesthetically modern, politic­ally radical ones. The moments of greatest interest to art historians include the formation of the Academy of Australian Art in 1937 and the subsequent founding of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938; a series of challenges to the authority of the conservative art estab­lishment in Sydney; and the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell.

Modigliani, Portrait of Morgan Russell, 1919. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

When Robert Menzies (later Prime Minister) proposed the form­at­ion of an Australian Academy of Art, Melbourne modernists were con­cerned that their departure from conventional artistic practice would be marginalised. Their fears seemed confirmed when Menzies opened the Victorian Artists' Society show in April 1937 and singled out for attack a wall of modernist paintings. A deb­ate ensued in the press: Adrian Lawlor compiled the resulting copy in a booklet entitled Arquebus. Leaders of the modernist group, inc­lud­ing Lawlor and George Bell, formed the Contemporary Art Society 1938.

Herbert Vere Evatt M.P (later Leader of the Labour Party) be­came involved as an approving observer and occasional public advocate. At an exhibition opening in June 1937 Evatt urged Australian galleries to show more modern paintings. He drew a strong rejoinder from James MacDonald, a cultural conservative who had served as art director in New South Wales before moving to the National Gallery of Victoria; “Australian art galleries simply did not like modern art, and it should not be hung in public at all”, said MacDonald (11).

The Looking Glass blog recorded something very similar in The art of Mary Alice Evatt. The NSW Chief Librarian W.H. Ifould was also a trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. Ifould told people in the mid 1930s “there are no books on modern art in the Country Reference Section … because to the best of my knowledge no one in the country is interested in modern art”.

In March 1937 George Bell led an anti-Academy vote in the Vic­tor­ian Artists' Society on the grounds that the Academy would recognise only a lim­ited range of art­istic practices. Was it coincidence that mod­ernist exhibition entries were on prominent display when Menzies con­demned modernism at the opening of the Victorian Artists' Society exhibition? Evatt’s speech at the first Contemporary Art Society exhibit­ion, in June 1939, echoed the polemic of the debates.

Art historical accounts of the Sydney story draw on rich anti-labour, anti-Semitic, anti-modernist polemic, with the result of sketching neat divides that were more complex in real­ity. In particular, the art histories draw on the writings of Lionel Lindsay, member of the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The main confrontations centred on the public display of the Herald Exhibition of French and British Art from late 1939, the award of the 1943 Arch­ibald Prize to William Dobell, and the nomination of modernist sym­pathisers to positions on the board of trustees. Lindsay and other trustees complained to James S Macdonald in Melbourne, and to a politically embat­tled Robert Menzies, over the travesties being wrought in the name of art.

Embedded in modernism is a sense of ambivalence concerning the reality of late C19th and C20th society and politics. While some creative intellectuals may have revelled in The Modern, others were deeply troubled by it. In writing on the metaphysics of modernism, Michael Bell captures the anxiety that the spectre of modernity evoked in some, in his discussion of the Coll­apse of Idealism. It appears that anxiety, anti-modern loathing, racial suprematism and fascist inclinations on the one hand and the open embrace of urb­an­isation, mass production and new aesthetic possibilities, on the other, may both be regarded as characteristic of modernism.

Stanley Spencer, Parents Resurrecting 1933. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art.

While signs of modernity were apparent in Australia by 1913, modernism was something that, due to cultural lag, the highly liter­ate public only knew about European developments via newspapers. Modernism, in both its negative and positive strains, came late to Australia. It was only during WW1 that artistic modernism emerged in Australia, and in the wake of the war that the Lindsay brothers, state libraries and galleries and most newspaper critics and politicians, acting on a nostalgic isolationism, began to attack modernism in art and literary forms.

There was contradictory responsiveness to the modern. Lionel Lind­say's taste combined a conservative cultural nationalism with an isolationist horror at all the 'revolutionary manias of a rotted world', as he described modern Europe in 1923. Lionel Lindsay's views epitomised the fascist-leaning, anti-modern loathing described by Blair as one side of the possible intellectual response to modernity. However, as the William Dobell Archibald Prize nomination by Lindsay demonst­rat­ed, his rejection of modernist innovation was not absolute.

Artistic conservatives reasoned that art should serve as an educator in higher ideals, but did so in a way that justified their rejection of modernism in art in favour of idealised nature. The Lindsays genuinely believed that modernism threatened the Canons of Beauty. To James Macdonald, the New School set out 'to prove the innate ugliness of all that seems beautiful'. Modernists not only perverted beauty, but were 'unconcerned with and only affected infinitesimally man's search for truth'.(59) Only nationalist land­scape paintings were concerned with permanent things like Love, Truth and Beauty. It appears that artistic allusions to a set of eternal values, or lessons drawn from great traditions of the past were comforting in the uncertainty of the present, whatever the type of art that was seen to convey them. Idealism and nostalgia were both characteristic intellectual and artistic responses to modernity.

Edward Wadsworth, The English Channel 1934. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of British and French Contemporary Art.

Conclusion

In all of Hunt’s excellent analysis, two thoughts stand out. In the political and economic crises of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the establishment to fear-based respon­ses. James MacDonald, for example, assured the public that modernism was 'gangrened stuff which attracts the human blowflies of the world who thrive on putrid fare'. Hunt doesn’t explain why the traditionalists used the neo-Nazi language of Josef Goebbels, but she does explain why these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the art worlds in the late 1930s and early 40s.

And the flow of progressive ideas was eventually unstoppable. Lionel Lindsay was still writing with great venom in 1942, but he could no longer do any harm.

(11) Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1939; 3 July 1939.
(59) James S Macdonald Papers, NLA MS 430, box 1, pp 15, 27.

Excellent references:
1. Chanin, Eileen and Steven Miller The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, Melb, 2005
2. Haese, Richard Rebels And Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, Allen Lane, Melbourne, 1981 and

3.Dear Kitty. Some blog's post called Australia: modern art conflict in 1930s

First Australian-born governor-general: Sir Isaac Isaacs' homes

Isaac Isaacs (1855–1948) was a talented man. He spoke Russian, Yiddish and English equally fluently and graduated Law in 1880, followed by a Master of Laws degree in 1883. 

In the 1892 Victorian state election, Isaacs was elected to the Legislative Assembly as the member for a rural seat. His political programme was impressive: introduction of income taxation rather than indirect taxes which put the load on low income earners, reform of company law, conciliation machinery to resolution industrial disputes, railway reform and support for Federation.

Inevitably he became a major participant in the framing of the country's constitution at the Constitutional Convention of the late 1890s. So it was not a surprise that Isaacs was elected to the very first federal Parliament in 1901, straight after the declaration of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The Isaacs' Edwardian family home, Hawthorn, 1905

Isaacs was not totally behind Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, and his protectionist policies. Isaaces was one of a group of backbenchers pushing for more radical policies, but apparently he was difficult to get along with because of his personality, not his politics.

The second prime minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, appointed Isaacs Attorney-General in 1905, even though Isaacs remained a difficult colleague. But Isaacs did give strong support to his prime minister for the Judicary Act that established the High Court of Australia... and needed to be thanked. Deakin was keen to get him out of politics anyway, so he pushed him upstairs; Isaacs was appointed to the High Court bench.

Isaacs, 1906

Examine Isaac's home in the photo above. Edwardian homes in Melbourne had front verandas with decorative timber features, tiling on the patio floor and entry paths. The brickwork was usually a deep red. The roofs were typically terracotta tiles with decorative gables, motifs, timber features, tall chimneys and fretwork. Decorative leadlight windows were also common. Isaac Isaacs lived in this lovely Edwardian house in Hawthorn throughout the years before and after Federation. When he left politics in 1906 for the High Court, the family continued to live in this home.

He was knighted in 1928.

In 1930 Labour Prime Minister James Scullin appointed a now rather elderly Sir Isaac Isaacs to the position of Chief Justice. But he wasn’t in the position for a year when Scullin radically decided to appoint an Australian citizen, any suitable Australian, into the vice-regal position of Governor-General. A politician could come from any background, but since the GG personally represented the king or queen in Australia,  every Governor-General in our history had to have been British!

Scullin offered the post to Isaacs. Isaacs reflected or promoted the developing nationalism and centralism in Australia; he influenced the balance of power towards the Commonwealth and away from the individual states. It was a wonderful time to be an Australian, but Conservatives were not well pleased with the appointment. Neither was King George V who thought that only a British G-G could represent the crown.

Government House Canberra, 1927

The new Governor-General and his family left Melbourne and moved to the national capital, Canberra.

Only a few years earlier (January 1925), the Federal Cabinet had finally agreed to fit out the existing homestead at Yarralumla as a vice-regal residence in Canberra. The first enlargement consisted of the addition of another three-storey block, which you can see in the photo, behind the one already there. The two parts were connected by a wide hallway and a new entrance was created between the gables of the old south front. The results were decent enough to allow the Duke and Duchess of York to stay there when they came to open the new Houses of Parliament in May 1927.

The interiors of the refurbished house, along with much of their furniture, were designed by Ruth Lane Poole, of the Federal Capital Commission. They were in keeping with the prevailing "stripped-classical style", with more formal interiors provided for the official reception rooms, and a lighter scheme prevailing in the private residential rooms. Although the house was set amid 54 hectares of parkland, the house was still small in comparison to Government House in Melbourne where the governor-generals had lived prior to the move to Canberra.

Lord Stonehaven had been the first governor-general to live for part of his term in Government House Canberra aka Yarralumla, but in January 1931 Sir Isaac Isaacs achieved three important honours. Firstly he became the first Australian-born Governor General. Secondly he was the first governor-general to live at Government House in Canberra for his entire 5-year term (1931-6). Thirdly he was the first Jewish vice-regal representative in the whole British Empire, an empire that covered a third of the globe.

Many vice-regal families mumbled and grumbled about the space available for official entertaining. But plans for a much grander and more permanent home for the governor general didn’t become real until much later, given the terrible economic times during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the even greater threats Australia's security during WW2.

Sir Isaac Isaacs died in 1948 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.

Federation Edwardian domestic architecture

Before the terrible financial crash of 1891, Australian homes were most likely to be built in classical, Victorian taste. The houses were symmetrical, built from locally quarried stone, had gently slop­ing roofs and classical proportions in the handling of doors and windows. If the family made money after the gold rush ended, the home would have two storeys; otherwise it would be a single storey cott­age. Inside was one main passage from front door to the back kitchen, with com­part­mentalised rooms off that passage.

Victorian cottage, symmetrical, bullnosed corrugated iron veranda

The Victorian home was made thoroughly Australian by the addition of a tiled veranda on two of the four sides, with wrought iron poles and lacework on the veranda. Slate was chosen for the main roof, and galvanised corrugated iron covered the veranda.

After WW1 ended, hundreds of thousands of ex-servicemen wanted to marry and settle their children on free-standing suburban blocks of land. They wanted a small home that a] they could afford and b] did not need staff to help maintain the inside or out. No space was wasted on a passage, but vegetable plots and chicken coops in the garden were considered important. The Californian Bungalow: Australia's Favourite Interwar Home, was perfectly adapted for Australian suburbs.

But what happened architecturally in Australian cities and towns in between, from 1895-1914?

This period was not flush with gold rush wealth, but it was a time of: Federation excitement (before and after January 1901), the dev­el­opment of national identity and of maturity in the brand new century. Railways had extended from the centre of each state capital city to the most distant suburbs, making it sensible for families to build away from the bustle and dirt of the inner cities. As I discussed in an early post, the passion for planned Garden Cities and suburbs, so beloved in London and the Home Counties, was perfectly suited for Australian families.


Very large Federation home in South Yarra, with steep roof lines, low tower and conical top, half timbered gables, red bricks.

Edwardian domestic architecture from Britain emerged in Australia during the 1890s. Gently sloping roofs, bluestone building material, wrought iron pillars and lacework all disappeared. Symmetry was con­sidered outdated. Instead what emerged was Federation-Edwardian-Queen Anne taste that popularised red bricks; low towers with conical tops; steep, complex and non-symmetrical roofs; multiple gables with half timber decoration in them; timber posts and fancy timber brackets; and prominent and narrow brick chimneys with terracotta pots on top.

Sydney Daily Photo blog mentioned extra defining features in a post called Series: Local Domestic Architecture Part 3: Federation: tuck-pointed brick work, leadlight and stained or glass windows, and red Marseilles-style terracotta tiles. The colours changed from pale Victorian options to Brunswick green and deep Indian red. Images of the rising sun or of Australian flora and fauna represented a new pride in national identity.

Federation home in Ivanhoe. Note Brunswick green colour, terracotta roof tiles, timber decorative elements. dormer windows matching the gables

Inside, Federation homes were somewhat more open planned than earlier homes had been. They often had built-in furniture, bay windows with casement window openings, veranda space for outdoor living, simple use of mater­ials and timber panelling.
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Glyn, Federation living room, timber panelling, open planned rooms
Arts and Crafts homes were also built during the 1895-1914 era but they were not quite as popular as Queen Anne. What differentiated the Arts and Crafts homes was a concern for comfort and for honest expression of function.

Entire suburbs, newly developed after 1900, emerged with Federation homes and public buildings. They were often centred around the newly built railway station, Federation pub and Federation fire station. Federation Details blog in Federation Queen Anne style and Sydney Eye blog in Federation detailing are visually delightful sites. They suggest we examine the development of Federation homes in Burwood, Haberfield, Rozelle and Strathfield. Now I wonder why all the blogs I that located and cited have been Sydney-based, not Melbourne-based.

Napoleon, The Briars and the Melbourne connection: The Balcombe family

Earlier this year I published a post about Napoleon's house in exile, on St Helena Island and noted that sections of the Napoleon’s island House Museum were crumbling and in urgent need of repair. An appeal has been launched by the Foundation Napoleon to rescue the house, its grounds and its woods, hopefully attracting tourists and historians back to St Helena.

What I didn’t know and didn’t mention in that post was that there was a connection between Napoleon Bonaparte, St Helena Island and Melbourne. His intended prison home, Longwood, was not finished by the time he arrived on the island in December 1815. So Bonaparte had to stay with the merchant and Purveyor for the East India Company William Balcombe (1779-1929). The prisoner lived in a garden pavilion on the family estate, The Briars, and according to all reports, Napoleon became particular friends with the family's youngest teenage daughter Betsy.

Betsy’s friendship with the “enemy” did not endear the Balcombes to the governor of St Helena. But it seems more likely that William was suspected of being an intermediary in clandestine correspondence with Paris. In either case, William Balcombe decided to return to Britain in 1818 with all his family. Napoleon, as it happened, died soon after.

An excellent blog called Reflections on A Journey to St Helena was very useful. It discussed why the Balcombe family lived in very straitened circumstances back in England and why the governor of St Helena might have eventually removed his objections to Balcombe's juicy new preferment, a government post as Colonial Treasurer in New South Wales in 1823.

The Briars 1842, Balcombe homestead near Melbourne

The Balcombe family eventually settled in Australia in 1824. William died after only a few years while still Treasurer (in 1829), leaving his widow with a handsome land grant but no pension. She returned to London to plead her case and the Colonial Office gave her money to return to Sydney, together with promises of government posts for her sons.

William’s son Alexander Balcombe (1811-77) took up lots of land at Mt Martha just outside Melbourne in 1840. He and his wife were creating a large family, so they quickly built a rough-hewn slab house, and called it The Briars. The 1842 Briars homestead, one of the oldest pastoral properties on the peninsula outside Melbourne, recalled The Briars home on St Helena Island.

The family prospered and Mrs Balcombe moved to East Melbourne sometime in the 1850s, first into a prefabricated house that used British materials and an Indian design. Then the Balcombes built a new and large house in East Melbourne c1857 which they called East Court. Alexander Balcombe must have been dividing his time between town and country. He settled down to pastoral pursuits and the life of a country squire, was appointed a magistrate in 1855 and was first chairman of the Mount Eliza Road Board from 1860 on.

Napoleon's own furniture, in The Briars museum near Melbourne

In another remarkable connection, Dame Mabel Balcombe Brookes (1890-1975), Australia’s most famous society and charity leader, was the granddaughter of Alexander Balcombe. She was the president of every charitable and cultural organisation in Melbourne. And she married well. Her husband Norman Brookes won Wimbledon in both the singles and doubles, and was later appointed commissioner for the Australian branch of the British Red Cross in Cairo. After the war ended, Norman resumed his previous employment at Australian Paper Mills Co. Ltd, becoming chairman in 1921. He too led a blessed life.

But it was Dame Mabel’s connection with Napoleon that most interests me here. In her older age, she wrote St Helena Story and had the book published in 1960. She wrote of her family's substantial collections of furniture, objets d'art, books and relics of Napoleon. She even purchased the freehold of the pavilion that Napoleon had occupied on her great-grandfather's estate on St Helena, and presented it to a grateful French nation in 1960.

Dame Mabel Brookes’ city home, East Court, had some of the furniture used by Napoleon on St Helena, a teak table used by both Wellington and Napoleon, a writing desk bearing Napoleon's kick marks on the lower panels and the Frenchman’s death mask. The Briars homestead near Melbourne is now a museum where visitors can see the Dame Mabel Brookes Napoleonic Collection. It includes furniture that Bonaparte shared upon his stay with the Balcombes, plus some of his hair, papers, letters, a legion d'honneur medal and artworks.

The St Helena Story 1960, a book written by William Balcombe's great grand daughter

I was interested to see a reference to Betsy Balcome Abell's book To Befriend an Emperor: Betsy Balcombe's Memoirs of Napoleon on St Helena, Welwyn Garden City, Ravenhall, 2005. Betsy, the little girl who had been so kind to Prisoner Napoleon, was the great aunt of our other author, Dame Mabel Balcombe Brookes.

The link between Napoleon Bonaparte, The Briars on St Helena Island, William Betsy and Alexander Balcombe, The Briars in Melbourne and Dame Mabel Brookes' Napoleonic Collection is irresistible. The Briars homestead-museum is open daily.

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The connection between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Australian politician Michael Kroger is less persuasive, but the timing (for my blog post) is sublime.  My Napoleon Obsession noted that Kroger collected a vast array of Napoleonic objets d'art in his Melbourne home, taking decades to amass imperial eagles, candelabras, clocks, vases, paintings, furniture and military paraphernalia. In October 2011, all these precious Napoleonic objects went up for auction in Paris. And left Melbourne for good.

Buyers of Napoleonic artefacts at the Paris auction did not seem to have been deterred by the Euro’s recent difficulties. A clock in Levanto marble, with rich gilt and bronze decoration, sold for €22,000. A watercolour pennant design for Napoleon's 2nd Artillery sold for €39,000. A post-abdication portrait of Napoleon, by the school of Delaroche, made €39,000.

Portrait of Napoleon, by the school of Delaroche, painted 1845 or after

Other collectors of Napoleonic artefacts existed, of course, including collectors I had written up in this blog. The Napoleon Room in Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, for example, was large enough to accommodate the sprawling 22-piece acanthus-tailed griffin suite of furniture designed for the Emperor's uncle, Cardinal Fesch. All the furniture and artefacts in the Napoleon Room were bought by Lord Lever specifically because of their associations with the French Emperor, although many of these associations have subsequently been brought into question. 

Anti-Fascist Art Exhibition, Melbourne 1942

When he opened the new Victorian Artists’ Society exhibition in 1937, Robert Menzies (Australian prime minister from 1939-41 and 1949-66) said: “Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand, the people who call themselves modernists today talk a different language”. The metaphor that Menzies chose to protest about the incomprehensible visual coincided with the complaint by Anglophone Australians thatthe “Refujews jabbered away to each other in their own tongues, plotting sabotage for all one could tell”.

In response to Menzies and his conservative supporters, modernist artists formed the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne in July 1938.

Bergner, Pumpkins, 1942,  National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

In 1939, a Melbourne newspaper sponsored a show of the very best of modern European art. Called The Herald Exhibition of Modern French and English Painting, the works were exhibited in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney. It gave Australian audiences the opportunity to view original and modern works by Cezanne, Picasso, Seurat, Van Gogh, Vuillard, Gaugin, Matisse, Dali, Ernst, Leger and others. Modern yes, but it was politically neutral and not really radical in artistic terms.

However just one year later, in 1940, an exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society evoked a virulent attack upon foreign artists via a letter from Sir Lionel Lindsay to the Sydney Morning Herald. And it was reiterated in Lionel Lindsay’s book Addled Art. The art Establishment could be very vicious indeed to Jews, foreigners and refuges, even in the middle of a hideous world war.

I read about the 1942 Anti-Fascist Exhibition, held in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Gallery, in two separate sources. The first was Melbourne Art & Culture Critic. This source provoked a question - why did this exhibition move on to Adelaide and not, for example, Sydney or Brisbane? Perhaps because the Angry Penguins (a group of modern literary scholars) were founded in Adelaide in 1940. Or perhaps it was because Lionel Lindsay had become a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and was soon knighted for his services to Australian art. He may have been influential enough to ruin the Anti-Fascist Exhibition, had it attempted to open in Sydney.

The second source was Painting the Town: A Film About Yosl Bergner 1987. Bergner, a Polish Jew, arrived in Australia in 1937. Bergner had grown up in Warsaw where he took painting lessons and was inspired by European modernism. In Melbourne, he sought out and befriended painters like Albert Tucker, Jim Wigley, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff. He continued his studies at the National Art School in Melbourne and joined the new Contemporary Art Society.

Counihan, The New Order, 1942

Presumably, by 1942, influential figures in the social realism movement were horrified by the hardship caused by the Depression and the war. Bergner and his fellow artists were determined to paint the life of cities and the ordinary people around them, which brought them into opposition with both the art and political establishments of the day. They were painters with a message who wanted to deal with the injustices of the world in their work. But more than that. By 1942, information of the mass slaughter of Jews, gypsies and communists in Europe was becoming readily available in the West.

In his paintings, Bergner used his memories of Warsaw and observations and experiences of Australia. His depiction of refugees, ghettos and the destruction of Europe were exceptional, but most extraordinary were those of urban Aboriginal people. When the Contemporary Art Society of Australia mounted the anti-fascist exhibition in Melbourne and Adelaide, Bergner drew parallels between the dispossession of urban Aboriginal people and that of the Jews in Eastern Europe.

Finding details about the Anti Fascist Exhibition has been difficult. I have included paragraphs from each artist’s biography, if he/she participated in the exhibition, but I would love to have seen a contemporary, published catalogue.

Sidney Nolan, Going to School, 1942

The first 3 publicly exhibited paintings by John Perceval were shown at Melbourne's Contemporary Art Society in 1942. John Reed loved the 19-year-old's audacious work and published them in the Angry Penguins magazine .  Perceval's work was included in the Anti-Fascist Exhibition in Melbourne later that year, helping to establish the young man's reputation in the national art scene!

The exhibition had pieces from other artists who saw their work as having an important social and political role in documenting the suffering of the oppressed. James Wigley (1918–99) participated in the exhibition after he became friends with Noel Counihan and other social realist painters and writers. Noel Counihan and James Wigley clearly shared Bergner’s social conscience.

A founder-member of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938, Noel Counihan (1913–86)  initiated its 1942 anti-Fascist exhibition. The New Order, one of the few paintings that he preserved from the show (and perhaps the best of them), was influenced by one of William Gropper's paintings also entitled The New Order and also painted in 1942.  Later Counihan helped organise an Artists' Unity Congress, receiving awards for his paintings of miners in the Australia at War exhibition in 1945.

Other young contemporaries in Melbourne had already asserted the intellectual and imaginative freedom of the artist and his/her independence from political doctrines. But we can say that matters came to a head with the Anti-Fascist Exhibition produced by the Contemporary Art Society.

Reason in Revolt noted that Albert Tucker had been called up in April 1942. It was a critical time for him since he held deeply anti-war sentiments. It was the Communist Party's shift to an all-out support of the war effort after the invasion of Russia that placed him at greater odds with the party. Yet four months after the invasion, he still cited himself as a member of a neo-realist group that included Bergner and Counihan. Although he was doubtful about the wisdom of the Anti-Fascist Exhibition when it was first mooted, he did contribute 6 paintings and several drawings to the show. He was in fact, with Counihan and O'Connor, one of the three major contributors to the exhibition.

The Herald Sun said Sidney Nolan's reputation rests on a handful of masterpieces, including the famous Going to School 1942, shown at the anti-Fascist exhibition.

Once embarked on her art course, Ailsa O'Connor became involved in all the highly charged meetings of the period. She identified with the radical forces supporting modern art against Menzies' push for a traditionalist Art Academy and joined the Contemporary Art Society at its first meeting in 1938. She became increasingly politicised and was the only woman to exhibit in the 1942 Melbourne Anti-Fascist Exhibition, where she showed crayon drawings.

Tucker, Death of an Aviator, 1942

June Tuck and Dorrit Black certainly participated in the same exhibition the next year when it moved to the RSASA Gallery in Adelaide. And one of Jacqueline Hick’s paintings from this period, Landscape, 1943, was exhibited at this exhibition in Adelaide, and subsequently purchased by the National Gallery of SA.

I wonder if the Australian artists had seen a 1942 poster painted by Ben Shahn and printed by the USA Government Office of War Information. Shahn was referring to Lidice, a Czech mining village that was obliterated by the Nazis in retaliation for the June 1942 shooting of a Nazi official by two Czechs. All men of the village were killed in a 10-hour massacre; the women and children were sent to death camps. The destruction of Lidice became an anti-fascist symbol everywhere.

Shahn, This is Nazi brutality, 1942, poster

After all this time, I cannot be sure if the Australian Anti-Fascist Exhibition was directed to the fascists plundering their way across Europe, Africa and Asia OR to the right wing artists, thinkers and publishers in Australia. Clearly the Contemporary Art Society had been created by young radical artists to loosen the grip of the conservatives who dominated the Australian art establishment of the time. To me, these artists were stating that art had an important role in expressing political and social criticism at a time when the conservatives HERE bitterly opposed the exhibiting of art inspired by social concerns. Yet Reason in Revolt thought differently. They said that most of the paintings exhibited in the Anti-Fascist exhibition of 1942 had been urgent responses to events in Europe, grounded in feelings of political outrage.

Werribee Mansion 1874-77, Victorian elegance near Melbourne

Thomas Chirnside (1815-87) and his brother Andrew (1818-90) were born in East Lothian Scotland, sons of a farming family.

Thomas Chirnside arrived in Australia in 1838, with his Bible and some savings. He bought sheep on the Murrumbidgee, but moved on to Melbourne where he joined Andrew who arrived in 1839. Together they moved between the colonies but by 1842 they had returned to Victoria.

Just before the Gold Rushes started in 1851, the brothers began acquiring land at Werribee in outer Melbourne. There Thomas settled, gaining a freehold of 80,000 acres. Andrew settled on 50,000 acres near Skipton; he also owned a 38,900 acre Mt Elephant station. This family was doing very well! Along the way, Andrew had gained a wife Mary (née Begbie) and six children.

Italianate taste, complete with loggias, balconies with balustrading and a symmetrical pyramidal composition

Andrew wanted his wife and children to live in a very special home. In conjunction with his brother, he set about building an elaborate 60-room Italianate style home at their Werribee Park property, 20 ks outside Melbourne. Using the finest materials and expertise, the home was built in three years.

A number of architects’ names have been associated with the design, including London trained James Henry Fox and Scottish trained James Gall, but no-one seems to know for sure. This is bizarre! Of course I realise that documents can be destroyed over the decades, but surely Werribee Mansion was important enough for researchers to find some original architectural information. Or perhaps the older family members might know.

Completed in 1877, the bluestone house, faced on three sides with sandstone, featured a classical revival style called Italianate. You can easily see the loggias, balconies with Renaissance balustrading and the distinctive symmetrical pyramidal composition. All rather restrained.

The house had 60 rooms in several wings, and the interior was not at all restrained. The drawing room featured a fine cut-glass chandelier, ebony-and-gilt cabinets, an ottoman and attractive carpeting. There is a handsome staircase with rococo statues holding up lamps, a billiard room with a panelled ceiling and carvings, a marble-paved conservatory featuring a fine plastered ceiling and etched-glass windows, a library, bedrooms, dining room and morning room. The main hall has a particularly classical look with mosaic floor, Corinthian columns and gold-leaf.

From 1877 on, this grand landscaped estate was the centre of social life for the family; they hosted sporting events, hunts, balls, vice-regal visits and military displays.

Entrance (left) and stair case (right)

 
Most of the Chirnsides' furniture was made in Edinburgh and shipped in 58 crates. While on holiday London in 1881, Thomas Chirnside also acquired a collection of 73 paintings by contemporary artists and Old Masters. Today many rooms retain the Chirnside's original furnishings and lavish decoration of the Victorian period; in fact a third of the original Chirnside items brought from Scotland are in their rightful place. Thomas continued to live at his nearby property in Point Cook until his last few years, when he joined Andrew and Mary in the Werribee home.

The gardens and impressive views were integral parts of Werribee Mansion. The house was surrounded by 10 hectares of formal gardens which displayed a geometric parterre, pond, grotto, glasshouses and open space parkland. Possibly the garden designer responsible for Werribee was William Guilfoyle (1840–1912), curator of the famous Melbourne Botanic Gardens.

Main hall (left) and upstairs gallery (right)

Thomas died in 1887, Andrew passed away three years later, in 1890 and Mary died in 1908. Andrew and Mary were survived by four sons and two daughters. The sons subsequently divided the estate but kept the core part, the house and surrounds, for themselves. In 1921 son George sold the family’s last holding in Werribee Park.

Corpus Christi College opened in Werribee Park in 1923, and operated there for 50 years. This Catholic seminary was a training ground for young men entering the priesthood in the Dioceses of Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo and Hobart. During its time at Werribee Park, the Catholic Church added several wings to the original Chirnsides' home.

The Victorian Government acquired Werribee Park from the Catholic Church in 1973 and started restoring the man­sion and remaining 400 hectares of land to their former glory. The original house and gardens were eventually listed for Heritage protection, but the later seminary additions were excluded from the classification.

a small section of Werribee Mansion gardens

Vienna Art and Design exhibition, in Melbourne

Vienna Art and Design: Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann and Loos

In Vienna, it is often said that artists were used to a very traditionalist public life style based on Ringstrasse values: economic prosperity and artistic dependence on a classical past. These values had been core to ideal middle-class homes in mid-late C19th. But by the late 1890s, young Viennese artists resented the Ringstrasse mentality and felt that they could not create their own artistic visions.

In April 1897 Viennese architects Otto Wagner and his students Josef Hoffmann and Josef Olbrich joined with artist Gustav Klimt, designer Koloman Moser, Max Kurzweil and others in an arts and crafts renewal. Modelled on the Munich Secession of 1892 & the Berlin Secession of 1893, the Vienna Secession broke with the local Art Academy and declared their independence.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Emilie Flöge, 1902. Historical Museum of Vienna

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka used their good connections with Vienna’s New Money, to establish a new world for the arts. And they interacted with other Viennese intellectuals like Alma Schindler, Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius and Stefan Zwieg. Berta Zuckerkandl was the main patron of the group. Her home was entirely kitted out by Josef Hoffmann and in turn she obtained other architectural commissions for the young men. Her salon was The Centre!

To pursue their goal, Secessionist artists planned to create their own exhibition space. A site along the Ringstrasse was originally chosen, but it was only after a space became available on Friedrichstrasse, just off Ringstrasse, that the Council gave permission for a temporary pavilion. This building announced the arrival of The Secession publicly AND enabled modern artists to exhibit their work.

So why does turn-of-the-century Vienna draw us back repeatedly? Guest exhibition curator at the NGV in Melbourne, Christian Witt-Döring, made three main suggestions. Firstly by 1890, Vienna’s population was so large that it became the fourth largest city in Europe after London, Paris and Berlin. Secondly as capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna was the bustling cultural capital of a diverse, multinational and multi-lingual population of 51 million people. Finally, and not to be dismissed lightly, Vienna had a long-standing café culture second to none. At a time when the English were still supping on milk tea and sponge cake, the Australians and Germans were drinking beer, the French were drinking wine and the Americans were eating something awful, the Viennese had a passion for splendid coffee houses and patisseries.

Egon Schiele, Self Portrait with Hands on Chest, 1910. Kunsthaus Zug, in Zug Switzerland.

The 240 works in the Melbourne exhibition represent the best Viennese artists of the early 20th Century. They have been brought together from The Belvedere Museum in Vienna and the Wien Museum, predominantly, and also from other collections. I was not familiar with the Kunsthaus Zug in Switzerland. But I was pleased to read their home page which says the museum has amongst the most extensive collections of Vienna's modern art outside Austria. Zug includes works by some thirty artists including Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

The Melbourne exhibition focuses on the main art forms of the 1890-1928 era: paintings, architecture and all the decorative arts (furniture, jewellery and textiles). This exhibition’s own curators say the objects explore and display modernism, individualism, the rise of the Secession movement and the creation of a new style concentrating on the use of colour, design and opulent glamour. If you didn’t know from the exhibition’s name, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to an artistic revolution that modernised Vienna, creating a dynamic and trend-setting metropolis.

Although I personally don’t know anything about modern music, friends are looking forward to musical connections to the art exhibition. “Jewish Music in Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century” will be held in the NGV’s galleries (Sun 26/6/2011), presented by the Chief Cantor of Vienna’s Jewish community. “Mahler to Schönberg and the Expressionists” (Wed 27/7/2011) promises to develop an enriched understanding of the cultural environment that Mahler, Schönberg and other Viennese musicians experienced.

Thankfully this winter blockbuster will run for a decent length of time: 18/6/2011 - 9/10/2011. The scholarly catalogue called Vienna: Art and Design: Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann and Loos was published by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2011, to coincide with the exhibition.

From Germany to Australia: photographic art of the 1950s and 60s

The author Robert Deane refers to the years from 1938 till after WW2 as a period of foreign influences in Australian photography. As a young man, Deane didn’t know of non-British or non-Australian photographers in Australia, and was rather delighted to find an entire generation of beautifully trained artists on our shores. Sadly the efforts of Australian security and suspicion of enemy aliens had largely denied one immigrant photographer, Margaret Michaelis, the opportunity to work to her potential during the war. And three of her artist contemporaries had to serve their time in the Australian Army, labouring: Wolfgang Sievers and Henry Talbot in Employment Companies and Helmut Newton as a truck driver.

As this blog has shown before, several of Australia’s leading artists and art critics of the period were either virulently anti-Semitic or derisive of the new art forms being introduced by émigré artists. Nonetheless these emigres, largely German speaking, did eventually get into their proper careers.

I have analysed the contribution of Wolfgang Sievers in this blog in the past, but readers should also consider Athol Shmith, Helmut Newton and Heinz Tichauer/Henry Talbot. After the war, for example, Henry Talbot revived his passion for photography and in 1956, he set up a joint studio specialising in fashion and advertising in Melbourne with fellow Dunera internee Helmut Newton. Their joint contribution to the history of post-war photography in Australia was displayed in an enormous book of photographs from the 1950s-60s.

The Paris End of Collins Street: Photography, Fashion and Glamour Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (2006) showcased the work of some of Melbourne’s best-known photographers from the period up to the 1960s, including Athol Shmith, Jack Cato, Julian Smith, May and Mina Moore, Ruth Hollick, Helmut Newton, Henry Talbot and Wolfgang Sievers. All of them had established studios in the glamorous area at the top of Collins St, fondly called the Paris end.

Block Arcade Melbourne, 1960s, by Strizic

A few years ago, spouse and I were invited to visit the rural retreat of another very fine photographic artist, Mark Strizic. Mark gave a speech about what it was like being an artist after the war, who was doing good work and who was doing dodgy stuff, who was sleeping with whom etc. Then all the visitors moved into the studio where the tables were loaded up with photos, folders and documents, the massive papertrail of a long, creative life.

Strizic was born in Berlin in 1928, moved to Croatia during the war, and then finally moved to Melbourne in 1950. He became a labourer at Maribyrnong's Department of Works and Housing, then went to an office job at the railways. But even those dingy jobs were acceptable. I would imagine like many other Displaced Persons after the war, Strizic chose Melbourne to be as far away from the carnage of Europe as one could get, without falling off the globe. Fortunately Strizic had arrived in Australia more or less at the same time as these other art photographers, mainly German speaking as I noted. And in 1957 he felt he could take up photography as a career.

Arguably it was his new-comer status that allowed Strizic to photograph this booming city with fresh eyes. Boomerang Blog believed that as Strizic was the product of Europe, and viewed Australian life through post-war European eyes, his images did not celebrate our good fortune, but merely wondered at it. StevenClark also found the work of this immigrant photography to be incredibly interesting. He particularly loved the display “Melbourne: A City in Transition”.

Immigrants were very grateful for a secure, peaceful life and here was a grateful migrant with a good eye and a fine camera. I personally remember Melbourne in the early 1950s as a beautiful Victorian city, not yet destroyed by the developers’ bulldozers. Just as well Strizic captured those final years of Melbourne's architectural beauty and endless parkland. Young people today will have few other historical records of what Melbourne looked like, but for my generation it wasn’t history. It was our lives!

By the 1960s, the decision-makers wanted a smarter, taller, more modern Melbourne and “Whelan The Wrecker Was Here” signs started appearing on building sites (bomb sites?) everywhere. Even the very beautiful Paris End of Collins Street, Melbourne’s most prestigious address, was changing. And so were Melbourne's less than lovely back streets and inner-suburban slums.

In any case, Strizic had to move quickly. He photographed the destruction of buildings, before, during and after the wreckers were busy. Melbourne's architectural beauty, with its romantic European skyline of spires, cupolas and arches, was disappearing fast.

Modern domestic architecture, designed by Robin Boyd, by Strizic.

Strizic’s father had been an architect and Mark himself clearly had a lifelong interest in art and architecture. As well as the freelance photography of Melbourne’s architecture, Robin Boyd collaborated with Strizic on specific book called Living in Australia, in 1970. And in a special issue of the magazine Architecture in Australia commemorating Boyd in April 1973, Strizic did the photography.

Now a new book, by Emma Matthews, has emerged. Mark Strizic, Melbourne: Marvellous to Modern was published in 2009 by Thames & Hudson in association with the State Library of Victoria. Matthews said of Strizic that he was astounded by a general disregard for aesthetics in what he thought was such an opulent country, so his work became a kind of visual essay. Too late of course, but at least the book documents what was lost of the grand, the Victorian, the Marvellous Melbourne years.

Capers Restaurant, 1960s, by Strizic

Perhaps his most intimate photos were those of people going about their daily business in town. In the 1960s a shopping trip to the city was rather special, and restaurateurs created elegant, stylish environments where ladies could lunch. The restaurateur Ross Shelmerdine commissioned architect Robin Boyd to redesign Capers Restaurant in 1960. The renovation was finished in 1962 and included a courtyard cafe with umbrellas and plants.

In 2007, the State Library of Victoria acquired Strizic's entire archive of about 5000 negatives, colour transparencies and slides. Last year, the library received a collection of Strizic's photographs donated through the Australian Government's cultural gifts programme.

Emma Matthews' new book on Mark Strizic and Melbourne

Read: Foreign Influences in Australian Photography 1930-80 by Robert Deane (on line).

An exhibition called Melbourne – A City in Transition was held at Gallery 101 in Melbourne in 2009. Art Blart reviewed that exhibition and included some amazing Strizic photographs in the blog.