Welcome to the April issue! In our cover story, ABR theatre critic Tim Byrne examines the ways in which Australian theatre companies are coping after lockdown and the strategies they are implementing to welcome back audiences. Senior journalist (and new ABR Board member) Johanna Leggatt reviews Alan Rusbridger’s new book in which the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian offers an uneven attempt to demythologise journalism. Shannon Burns examines Steven Carroll’s fictionalised look at the life of the woman behind the notorious French novel Story of O. Claudio Bozzi, a legal academic, looks at whether the election of Joe Biden has given cause to hope that the position of Science Advisor to the President of the United States might be returned to a position of influence after years of neglect under Donald Trump. Other reviewers include Robert Dessaix, Andrea Goldsmith, Barry Hill, Kim Mahood, and Zora Simic.
S.L. Lim’s second novel, Revenge, begins with an ‘all persons fictitious’ disclaimer. The paragraph concludes: ‘Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. LOL!’
Book 1 Title: Revenge
Book 1 Subtitle: Murder in three parts
Book Author: S.L. Lim
Book 1 Biblio: Transit Lounge, $29.99 pb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 1 Readings Link: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/mgg9xe
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S.L. Lim’s second novel, Revenge, begins with an ‘all persons fictitious’ disclaimer. The paragraph concludes: ‘Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. LOL!’
Article Subtitle: Cy Twombly and the spectre of antiquity
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If you were fortunate enough to take Franz Philipp’s course in Medieval and Renaissance Art at the University of Melbourne in the 1960s – the old Fine Arts B – you would have quickly encountered Erwin Panofsky’s masterpiece, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960). It set forth authoritatively the argument that from the Carolingian revival in the eighth century through the Ottonian and Romanesque survivals, culminating in the Italian Renaissance of the quattrocento and cinquecento, Western art was haunted by the spectre of antiquity. Admiration for its mighty surviving works throughout western Europe turned steadily towards emulating them.
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Article Hero Image Caption: <em>Empire of Flora</em>, Cy Twombly, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany (agefotostock/Alamy)
Alt Tag (Article Hero Image): Empire of Flora, Cy Twombly, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany (agefotostock/Alamy)
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Cy Twombly
Book 1 Title: Cy Twombly
Book 1 Subtitle: Making past present
Book Author: Christine Kondoleon with Kate Nesin
Book 1 Biblio: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US$65 hb, 264 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/4eekJn
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If you were fortunate enough to take Franz Philipp’s course in Medieval and Renaissance Art at the University of Melbourne in the 1960s – the old Fine Arts B – you would have quickly encountered Erwin Panofsky’s masterpiece, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960). It set forth authoritatively the argument that from the Carolingian revival in the eighth century through the Ottonian and Romanesque survivals, culminating in the Italian Renaissance of the quattrocento and cinquecento, Western art was haunted by the spectre of antiquity. Admiration for its mighty surviving works throughout western Europe turned steadily towards emulating them.
Article Subtitle: A long march through five centuries of art history
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The history of art history in the West over the past five hundred years is rich and complex and yet rests on clear historiographical foundations, themselves grounded in inescapable historical realities. Authors and artists in the Renaissance looked back to the civilisation of Greco-Roman antiquity, all but lost in the catastrophe of the fall of the Roman Empire and succeeded by centuries of dramatic cultural regression. They sought to regain the greatness of antiquity, and the bolder even hoped to surpass it.
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): A History of Art History
Book 1 Title: A History of Art History
Book Author: Christopher S. Wood
Book 1 Biblio: Princeton University Press, $59.99 hb, 459 pp
Book 1 Readings Link: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/MXXzrJ
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The history of art history in the West over the past five hundred years is rich and complex and yet rests on clear historiographical foundations, themselves grounded in inescapable historical realities. Authors and artists in the Renaissance looked back to the civilisation of Greco-Roman antiquity, all but lost in the catastrophe of the fall of the Roman Empire and succeeded by centuries of dramatic cultural regression. They sought to regain the greatness of antiquity, and the bolder even hoped to surpass it.
This is the basis of Vasari’s three-stage account of the rise of Renaissance art (1550), the first beginning with Giotto, the second with Masaccio, and the third with Leonardo. Vasari considered the greatest of his contemporaries, Michelangelo, to have equalled the ancients, but a later generation came to believe that the sixteenth-century Mannerists had lost their way. From the early seventeenth century, therefore, the model was extended to include an interval of decline before the new impetus beginning with the Carracci, and this process continued in academic debates about line, colour, and what we now call the Baroque.
Article Subtitle: A subtle volume with poignant depths
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Compiling a selection of letters for publication is a vexing task. Inclusions and exclusions tend to satisfy only the editors. Specialist readers will inevitably find their particular interests inadequately represented, while others will find material included to be offensive or inappropriate. The success of this volume has been secured partly because both editors have worked on books of Grainger letters before: Teresa Balough with Comrades in Art: The correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger, 1957–61, and Kay Dreyfus with her ground-breaking volume The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger, 1901–1914. Also, only 181 letters between Cross and Percy and Ella Grainger were available, which minimised the scale of the cull. The editors chose to exclude seventy letters, the quotidian content of which immediately flagged their redundancy.
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Alt Tag (Featured Image): Distant Dreams
Book 1 Title: Distant Dreams
Book 1 Subtitle: The correspondence of Percy Grainger and Burnett Cross, 1946–60
Book Author: Teresa Balough and Kay Dreyfus
Book 1 Biblio: Lyrebird Press, $40 pb, 199 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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Compiling a selection of letters for publication is a vexing task. Inclusions and exclusions tend to satisfy only the editors. Specialist readers will inevitably find their particular interests inadequately represented, while others will find material included to be offensive or inappropriate. The success of this volume has been secured partly because both editors have worked on books of Grainger letters before: Teresa Balough with Comrades in Art: The correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger, 1957–61, and Kay Dreyfus with her ground-breaking volume The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger, 1901–1914. Also, only 181 letters between Cross and Percy and Ella Grainger were available, which minimised the scale of the cull. The editors chose to exclude seventy letters, the quotidian content of which immediately flagged their redundancy.
Custom Article Title: An interview with Mark McKenna
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Article Title: An interview with Mark McKenna
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I’ve been fortunate to work with talented editors like Sally Heath (formerly with MUP and now with Thames & Hudson) and more recently with Chris Feik and Kirstie Innes-Will at Black Inc. I’d be lost without their close reading of my work and their suggestions for improvement. As Chris says, skilful editing helps to make any book the best version of itself.
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Alt Tag (Related Article Image): Mark McKenna
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Mark McKenna’s most recent book is Return to Uluru (Black Inc., 2021).
Mark McKenna
If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would it be, and why?
Suakin, the former Ottoman trading port on the Red Sea coast of Sudan. I spent time there in the early 1980s and I’m planning to write about it in the near future.
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