Sex, Drugs and Negro Music
Jul. 27th, 2008 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharplittleteethWe went to the Art Deco exhibition at the National Gallery Victoria today, accompanied by the always charming ms_kismet.
I have a strange fascination with the 1920s and '30s. To me, it's the period when the modern world really began. It's the age of telephones and electricity and automobiles. It's the age of Dorothy Parker's droll quips and T. S. Eliot's mournful epics. And it's the age when they invented youth culture, when affluent young white people developed a taste for sex and drugs and negro music.
The exhibition does a nice job of showing some of the influences that fed into Art Deco - Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhmun's tomb leading to scarab brooches from Cartier, African tribal patterns inspiring French ceramics. There's a stunning bronze panel from a lift that would look right at home in an ancient Chinese temple.
After that, there are radios cast in jade-green bakelite, glittering geometric jewellery, a glass window designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, chrome tea services that look like little cruise ships, posters for actual cruise ships, video of Josephine Baker, cocktail glasses by Lalique, a standing lamp shaped like a serpent, and the foyer from the Strand Palace Hotel.
Like most NGV blockbuster exhibitions, I came out a bit dazed, knowing that I'd seen some fantastic things, but not quite remembering what they were.
After a fortifiying cup of tea while Ms K told us all about her new job, we bid her farewell and wandered over the the BMW Edge to look at the finalists in the 4th Australian Poster Annual competition.
You can download a PDF of all the finalist's designs here. I wish I could say my favourite was one of the ones promoting a worthy cause. But in terms of graphic design, cleverness of idea and "would I hang this on my wall?" factor, A Scientific Investigation by Mark Braddock was my clear favourite.
ms_kismet.I have a strange fascination with the 1920s and '30s. To me, it's the period when the modern world really began. It's the age of telephones and electricity and automobiles. It's the age of Dorothy Parker's droll quips and T. S. Eliot's mournful epics. And it's the age when they invented youth culture, when affluent young white people developed a taste for sex and drugs and negro music.
The exhibition does a nice job of showing some of the influences that fed into Art Deco - Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhmun's tomb leading to scarab brooches from Cartier, African tribal patterns inspiring French ceramics. There's a stunning bronze panel from a lift that would look right at home in an ancient Chinese temple.
After that, there are radios cast in jade-green bakelite, glittering geometric jewellery, a glass window designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, chrome tea services that look like little cruise ships, posters for actual cruise ships, video of Josephine Baker, cocktail glasses by Lalique, a standing lamp shaped like a serpent, and the foyer from the Strand Palace Hotel.
Like most NGV blockbuster exhibitions, I came out a bit dazed, knowing that I'd seen some fantastic things, but not quite remembering what they were.
After a fortifiying cup of tea while Ms K told us all about her new job, we bid her farewell and wandered over the the BMW Edge to look at the finalists in the 4th Australian Poster Annual competition.
You can download a PDF of all the finalist's designs here. I wish I could say my favourite was one of the ones promoting a worthy cause. But in terms of graphic design, cleverness of idea and "would I hang this on my wall?" factor, A Scientific Investigation by Mark Braddock was my clear favourite.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 10:41 am (UTC)Or maybe it just feels small because it's split across the NGV International and the NGV Australia.
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Date: 2008-07-27 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 11:48 pm (UTC)