aaanz book/catalogue prizes
2013 prizes
Best Book
Judged by Associate Professor Susan Best and Professor Helen Ennis
Winner: Parallel Presents: The art of Pierre Huyghe by Amelia Barikin
Judges comments:
This year’s best book award goes to Amelia Barikin for Parallel Presents: The art of Pierre Huyghe. Her book elegantly elucidates the elusive practice of Pierre Huyghe, focusing on its complex philosophical implications. His very disparate works, which almost defy the idea of an oeuvre, are shown to be consistently exploring an interrelated set of ideas around duration and in particular the idea of ‘free time.’ Barikin tracks and explains the underpinning ideas extremely well, giving the reader a very clear idea of what is at stake in Huyghe’s work.
The contextualisation of his practice is extremely deft, drawing from a range of disciplines including philosophy, history, as well as pertinent art historical and cinematic precedents. Most notably, Barikin contextualises his oeuvre in layered, complex but readily accesssible ways An important contribution of the book is the recasting of ideas about art of the 1990s, and relational aesthetics more specifically.
Parallel Presents is very clearly structured. Huyghe’s art practice always drives the narrative and close attention is paid to his aims, methods and concerns. The readings of individual artworks are exceptionally well done. Barikin approaches each one as if unique and yet inter-related. She provides such detailed and engaging descriptions that even readers who have not seen the works are able to imagine them.
The book is also outstanding for the quality of its writing. Barikin has successfully written a rich, generous text that engages with Huyghe’s practice in such a way that interest in it will only be further increased. We commend, in particular, the open engagement with ideas that will no doubt generate more ideas.
Best Large Catalogue
Judged by Rachel Kent and Dr Jacqueline Strecker
Winner: 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7), QAGOMA, Brisbane
Best Small Catalogue
Judged by Dr Rebecca Coates and Associate Professor Tara McDowell
Winner: The Four Horsemen, Apocalypse, Death & Disaster, edited by Cathy Leahy, Jennifer Spinks and Charles Zika
From a field of fifteen entrants, the judges commented:
In an unusually strong group of small exhibition catalogues, we highly recommend the following publications:
Kendrah Morgan, Sidney Nolan: early experiments, with Narelle Jubelin: Coda, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2012
Scholarly and beautifully written essays that offer new insights into familiar subjects. Meticulous eye for detail. Scale of images sensitively chosen to marry with text, and offer useful contextualization and visual insights. Images range from small thumbprints and details, to large reproductions, and full-bleed installation shots of current exhibition. An important document of the show.
Luke Parker and Ann Stephen, Narelle Jubelin, Vision in Motion, University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney, 2012
A handsome publication, with exquisite use of colour and linencloth hardback binding, that sensitively responds to the artist’s work. Comprehensive catalogue details and information on each work offer future scholars a valuable resource.
The winner of the best small catalogue is:
Cathy Leahy, Jennifer Spinks and Charles Zika (eds), The Four Horsemen, Apocalypse, Death & Disaster, National Gallery of Victoria, 2012
Reproduction of images large and lush for such frequently small and meticulously detailed works on paper. Outstanding scholarship and range of essays. Extremely high production quality. Good sized catalogue for exhibition. Design, font and style reflect the content of the exhibition. Almost not a small catalogue.
Best Scholarly Article in AAANZ Journal
Judged by Dr Edward Colless and Dr Toni Ross
Winner: ‘Entropic Steps: Rocks, Ruins and Increase in John Ruskin, Robert Smithson, and Per Kirkeby’ by Allan Smith
This bumper issue of the journal, the last to be produced by the Brisbane team of editors and the Institute of Modern Art set us a difficult task. Not only did we have numerous essays providing new material and novel interpretations of episodes in modernism, it was gratifying to see four essays devoted to fine grained research on Australian art of the 1960s and ‘70s, fields yet to be carefully investigated by our discipline, a period exercising especial attraction for revision within our contemporary cultural milieu.
However, in addition to revision, the journal also included work of a speculative nature. And, in response to the latter, we have decided to award the best scholarly article prize to Allan Smith’s ‘Entropic Steps: Rocks, Ruins, and Increase in John Ruskin, Robert Smithson, and Per Kirkeby.’ This is an exhilarating piece of writing, full of conceptual surprises and stylistic élan. Competing as a peer with its protagonist Ruskin in descriptive power, the essay surges ahead in torrential poetic amalgamation of mineralogical and meteorological morphologies. The analogies between Ruskin, Smithson and Kirkeby appear in the essay like electrical arcs or solar flares, and thus may appear shocking, yet they are equally intriguing, encompassing and convincing. The method and style of the essay departs from typical art historical modes of exposition, yet is conceptually sure-footed and eloquent. We also appreciated an approach to late modern and contemporary art that activated the return of aesthetic perspectives that might be considered anachronistic or untimely.
Our congratulations to Allan, and considering the strength of this journal issue we would also like to commend two other outstanding contributions.
Susan Best’s illuminating account of Gerard Byrne’s art both refreshes Brechtian directorial doctrine and offers a stinging, timely critique of contemporary art discourses enamoured of performativity and affect. It’s a joy to hear the word “disagreement” contesting the word “difference”!
We also commend Sheila Christofides’ persuasive, empirically grounded revision of the commonplace political critique of Clement Greenberg, which had presumed Greenberg abandoned his Marxist allegiances from the late 1940s in the atmosphere of Cold War apologetics. The detection of a persistent Marxism, if in modified and even subterfuge guise, in Greenberg’s writing in the 1950s and early ‘60s is a provocative piece of interpretative and investigative work.
Best Artist Lead Publication
Judged by Associate Professor David Cross and Professor John di Stefano
Winner: Prototypes by Hany Armanious
Prototypes was a beautifully conceived and executed artist book project. Published on the occasion of The Golden Thread exhibition at Monash Museum of Art, the hardbound volume is an enticing parallel photo essay that draws together a rich assortment of images taken by the artist. Moving with ease across a range of source material that collectively interrogates a rough-hewn yet beautiful aesthetic of the everyday, Armanious offers new insights into his artistic practice. Choosing to eschew a written text, the book unfolds solely as a suite of images each one scaled and positioned on the page to accentuate key meanings and juxtapositions. The result is a publication that challenges conventional approaches to the artist book offering instead a dexterous blurring of artwork and critical reflection.
Best University Art Museum Exhibition Catalogue
Judged by Dr Chris McAuliffe and Dr Michael Brand
Winner: J.W. Power: Abstraction- Création, Paris 1934 by Ann Stephen and A.D.S. Donaldson
The judges, Dr Michael Brand and Dr Chris McAuliffe, reviewed a diverse range of publications against the award criteria. All served as effective records of exhibitions, as well as offering context on the practices of individual artists and their historical or cultural circumstances. Some showed ambition in design, with attention to the complementarity of text and image, along with a recognition of the impact of imaginative design on the reader’s engagement with the catalogue. The award was made to ADS Donaldson and Ann Stephen’s catalogue J W Power: Abstraction/Creation, University of Sydney Art Gallery, in recognition of the following exceptional qualities:
– Depth of historical research, including biography of the artist, reconstruction of historical milieu, use of archives and reconstruction of studio and exhibition practices
– A purposeful and challenging revision of the history of Australian artists’ engagement with abstraction and their participation in international activities
– A generous acknowledgement of the previous researches of peers, along with the presentation of multiple scholarly voices
– Thoroughgoing citation and meticulous tabling of documents and historical data
– An elegant and seductive design enhancing the character and impact of the volume
PhD Prize
Judged by Professor Andrew McNamara, Professor Cathy Speck and Dr Anthony White
Winner: Meredith Morse
Thesis title: Shake a Pan of Nails: Simone Forti’s Art of Movement and Sound After Cage and Halprin
Thesis awarded: November 2012 from the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney
The judges comment:
In a close field with such high standards the judges found it difficult to choose just one winner, but ultimately the decision did come down to one. Meredith Morse was declared the winner for several reasons: the clarity and succinctness of the argument, the persuasive style of presentation, and the elaboration of detail and depth in an efficient manner within the allocated three minutes.
A brief synopsis of her thesis from Meredith:
Simone Forti’s work of the early 1960s, regarded as dance at the time and soon discussed as Minimalist, has been acknowledged as influential, yet it has not been treated in the critical literature at any length. In my PhD thesis, I argue that Forti negotiated the unique approach to movement that she learned when working with dancer and teacher Anna Halprin in the mid-to-late 1950s through experimental composer John Cage’s revised models of sound, score, event, and ‘theatre’, innovations of central importance to New York’s new art. My book project, based on the thesis, considers Forti’s work from her landmark early 1960s ‘dance constructions’ and texts to her improvisatory practice of the 1980s. I examine Forti’s use of sound, particularly voice, allowing consideration of the affective nature of Forti’s work throughout her career, and locate her development of a ‘neutrality’ of body in her performance works within a longer history of the moving body in American social thought. The book, under contract with the MIT Press for 2016 publication, is provisionally titled Soft is Fast: Simone Forti in the 1960s and After.
2012 prizes
AAANZ Power Institute Prize for Best Book
Susan Best, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-Garde, London: I.B.Tauris, 2011
A wide range of high quality works was submitted this year, some with superb production values. They were indeed disparate works, creating something of a challenge for the judges, as they ranged from catalogue raisonné type approaches to carefully presented institutional histories and works that introduced complex interlinked visual and social ideas to the general public. They also had a wide range, covering Soviet, New Zealand, Australian, British and also comparative perspectives.
We make the following comments:
Elias, Ann, Camouflage Australia: Art, Natures, Science, and War, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2011 – A very well written book which serves well the intersections between art practice, scientific understanding and the social history of artists at war.
Feeney, Warren, The Radical, the Reactionary and the Canterbury Society of Arts 1880-1996, Canterbury: Canterbury University Press, 2011 – A thorough, archive-based contribution to the study of a regional art society and its context with many implications for comparison with other such art-worlds elsewhere. The book draws its strength from a refusal to historically over-generalise.
Hurlston, David, et al, Ron Mueck, Melbourne: NGV Foundation &New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011 – A detailed, usefully arranged, and multi-opinionated catalogue raisonné which accompanied an exhibition of the artist’s work. It provides material for future art historical treatment of the artist.
Krell, Alan, Burning Issues: Fire in art and the social imagination, London: Reaktion Books, 2011 – A well understood, appealing and also eclectic and richly researched book, intended for a more general public in this excellent thematic series.
Murray, Philip, The NGV Story, Melbourne: NGV Foundation 2011 – A useful and well-narrated set of materials arranged for understanding the function of museum collections in Melbourne in the formation of an Australian art. Certain works are specified as historically exemplifying what were thought, at different times, to be period styles.
Wolf Erika, Koretsky: The Soviet Photo Poster: 1930-1984, New York: The New Press, 2012 – An excellent, clear analysis and commentary on the work of a major Soviet poster artist, beautifully illustrated with cogent examination of each plate. A good example of the global reach of AAANZ member research.
From the works selected a short list of 3 emerged.
The judges wish to commend two equal runners-up:
Stephen Jones, Synthetics: Aspects of art and technology in Australia 1956-1975, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2011
This clearly written and thoroughly researched monograph is the first overview of the uses made of the technologies developed in wartime as they were applied to art in Australia. These included the impact of radar and subsequently computers and their utilisation for data visualisation and later computer art, figure animation, the design of objects (later called CAD) and tonal images. This interesting subject, hitherto largely ignored in art history, amounts to an empirical history of its field, not just for Australia. It is based on based on careful archival research. The author is sensitive to art debates surrounding the birth of computer-dependent art. Sometimes technical description of processes or mechanisms needs further explication for a general, educated reader, but the history of early computing is outlined with clarity. There is a careful examination of networks of exchange and as with another work submitted this year, considerable attention paid to Mike Parr and Peter Kennedy at Inhibodress. The work contains fascinating material regarding what is called a struggle between Professor Bernard Smith and Donald Brook over the nature of the curriculum at Power and also the situation of the act of making – resulting, we are told, in the space that was the Tin Sheds. There is much here to study to understand contemporary struggles, too, and useful warnings against anti-intellectualism in the arts. The work is an important piece of recovery and indeed, ‘synthesis’. Overall, this is undoubtedly a very important contribution to Art History.
Richard Haese, Permanent Revolution, Mike Brown and the Australian Avant-Garde 1952-1997, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2011
Written by a major thinker who has changed the way we think about Australian art, Permanent Revolution explores the groundwork laid for an Australian post-modernism between 1960 and 1975. The case is Mike Brown and Imitation Realism. The book exceeds a monographic approach to an artist’s life by creating a series of scapes – social, political, aesthetic and historical, that together reanimate the bohemianism of Sydney and Melbourne in the 1960s. It successfully brings together the ‘cultural layerings’ and ‘dynamic harbour-based topography’ that Haese argues characterise the imbrication of art, life and place in Sydney. It clarifies many aspects of the recent history of Australian art in ways that are not completely understood. This handsomely produced monograph continues the fine tradition established at Miegunyah Press of publishing high quality books that propel the history of visual culture in this nation. Attention has also been successfully given to getting good reproductions of works whose importance would not otherwise have been clear from poorer black and white images.
The Winner is:
Susan Best, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-Garde, London: I.B.Tauris, 2011
This is a theoretically enriching and empirically well-informed subject of the imbrication of aesthetics and conceptualist art practice: it uncovers the affect that the anti-aesthetic paradoxically encourages in reaction. The book rewards re-reading and stimulates further and deeper understanding of the works of the chosen female conceptualist artists. Unlike many contemporary books, the project is perfectly balanced, neither too long nor too brief. The judges commend the careful prose in which there is not an extraneous line. The work is also impressive for the way in which it marshals a very wide range of sources from art history and aesthetics as well as including a judicious use of criticism and very careful looking at works of art – in this sense it is exemplary for an Art History prize. Furthermore, it carries the interesting sense of an ongoing project –the preface opens with the introduction of the personal in its description of a feminist reading group, subtly stated – the book is then closely argued without pedantry, and the personal reappears in the final line, amounting to a very clever strategy of writing as well as argument. The book represents research in several continents and languages, and several decades of conduct as a thoughtful art historian.
Judges: Professor John Clark, University of Sydney; Professor Peter McNeil, UTS and Stockholm University
AAANZ Best Edited Book or Anthology
Ian McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, Sydney: Institute of Modern Art & Power Publications, 2011
It was of course most difficult to judge the Prize for Best Anthology. Beyond any statement about the high quality of all submissions, let us all be grateful that art books of this calibre continue to come out of Australasia and that scholars – usually the editors of these volumes – are generous enough to include others in their obsessions.
In order to reflect our gratitude, we want to spread the love as widely as possible and draw your attention not only to our winner but also to two other highly recommended anthologies: They are
Fiona Pardington The Pressure of Sunlight Falling, edited by Kriselle Baker & Elizabeth Rankin, Uni of Otago Press, Dunedin – an exquisite publication based in elegant design, sumptuous illustrations, luxurious paper and meditatively written scholarly essays. It is extraordinary to think that this exemplary publication comes from the very edge of our AAANZ kingdom.
The Poetics & Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul & British Orientalism, published by Pera Museum & University of Washington – an important work of post-colonial scholarship. It is edited by Reina Lewis, Zeynep Inakur & Mary Roberts. Mary, as many will know, has along with Roger Benjamin, been weaving one of the threads of the new world art history: European and oriental interactions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Both these books are highly recommended – buy them, read them and think about them.
But our winner for the Best Anthology Prize for 2012 – how could you go beyond it? – is Ian McLean’s How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, published by the Institute of Modern Art & Power Publications.
This is a book that captures a revolution: a revolution both in art by indigenous artists and a revolution in thinking by both black and white critics and commentators. The book continues McLean’s argument from his earlier White Aborigines which might be put in a nutshell: Australian art is an aboriginal thing. This remarkable & innovative book will become essential to all future discussions of not only Australian and aboriginal art but perhaps even world art.
Judges: Rose Hawker and Rex Butler
AAANZ Melbourne University Prize for Best Large Catalogue
The Mad Square — Modernity in German Art 1910-37, Jacqueline Strecker (ed), Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales
There was a very strong field for this year’s prize with some very lavishly illustrated and strikingly designed catalogues from the National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery amongst others.
From this strong field we decided to highly recommend two catalogues:
Highly Commended:
Eugene von Guerard — Nature Revealed by Ruth Pullin et al, National Gallery of Victoria;
Origins of Western Desert Art — Tjukurrtjanu by Judith Ryan, Philip Batty et al, National Gallery of Victoria.
The winner is: The Mad Square — Modernity in German Art 1910-37, ed. Jacqueline Strecker, Art Gallery of NSW. The winning catalogue, Mad Square, is scholarly, yet reader friendly, in fact we found there was a distinct spring in the prose that made the individual essays very engaging. The essays by a range of local and international writers address a broad range of modernist practices in Germany, and thereby give a rich and cogent account of a very complex historical period. The balance of scholarship and accessibility was also complemented by a catalogue design that was simple and elegant.
Judges: Terence Maloon and Sue Best
AAANZ University of Western Australia Prize for Best Small Catalogue
From a field 16 entrants, the have commented:
In an unusually strong group of small exhibition catalogues, the entries submitted by the National Gallery of Victoria stood out. Where some catalogues continue to reproduce paintings across the gutter, thus destroying the visual integrity of the art work, the NGV catalogues are elegantly designed, written with a careful balance of accessibility and scholarly substance, and are sumptuously illustrated. They are a pleasure to look at and to read, and beautifully complement their respective exhibitions.
Rather than pick one out for special distinction, we have decided to divide the prize for best small exhibition catalogue between a group of small booklets—Living Water, Ranjani Shettar, Looking at Looking, and Deep Water—that function almost as four fascicles of a single collective volume devoted to recent NGV exhibitions; and a stylish, slightly larger catalogue—ManStyle / Men + Fashion—written and curated by Paola Di Trocchio, Laura Jocic, Roger Leong, Katie Somerville and Danielle Whitfield, that admirably locates contemporary men’s fashion design within a tradition represented by paintings from the NGV’s own collections.
We congratulate the NGV on the superb quality of its small exhibition catalogues. They have set a standard to which all other museums and galleries can now aspire.
Judges: Geoff Batchen & Roger Blackley
AAANZ Best Scholarly Article in AAANZ Journal
Edward Colless, ‘Pop life and living death’, AAANZ Journal of Art
We would like to begin by commending the intelligent liveliness and lateral vision of the 2011 edition overall and congratulate both authors and editors. The issue engages with a multiplicity of entree points to the interpretation of visual culture and we hope encourages further debate of this topic. The volume also is a vitally needed public demonstration of the importance of both our organisation and our discipline as art history per se continues to be under threat from an economic rationalist vision of public culture and education. Among a number of strong candidates, we have decided to award this year’s prize for best essay in the AAANZ Journal of Art to Edward Colless for his contribution ‘Pop Life and Living Death.’ Ted Colless has spent his career turning art historical commentary into literature, no easy task. This example of his work was beautifully written, both mirroring and creating his subject, with, as one judge has written, “a surface polish of rococo or Whistlerian finesse.” In particular, he elides effortlessly between present and past, demonstrating both traditional art history scholarship and a wide-ranging encyclopedic knowledge of the present. The essay demonstrates the ongoing relevance of art history to the making and reading of present day cultures and reveals the implicit art historical triggers and tropes that abound in current popular culture – but frequently elude the general fan. We would also like to give an honourable mention to the essay on cultural populism by Catherine Liu, a meticulous and informative charting of the para-Maoist strategies of the neo-cons in the US, demonstrating that excellent empiricism will always command a place in our field.
Judges: Geoffrey Batchen and Juliette Peers
2011
AAANZ Power Institute Prize for Best Book
John Clark, “Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art Compared 1980-1999”, Power Publications
The committee was impressed with the scope of the research, its breadth and in addition recognizes that it will make a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary art of our region of the world.
The comparative approach is unique, building our knowledge of two quite different cultures, while revealing similarities and attentive to differences.
“Asian Modernities” therefore makes a significant contribution to knowledge and will become one of the key texts consulted for art of this time in these two countries.
Judges: Jaynie Anderson and Andrew McNamara
AAANZ Best Edited Book or Anthology
Peter McNeil, “The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives”, Routledge, London and New York 2010
The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives (Routledge), edited by Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil, is an ambitious and comprehensive tome, basically establishing the possibility of a new field of study. Offering an intelligently selected group of essays, it also manages to stitch Australia into a global history, a singular achievement in itself. Judges: Geoff Batchen and Susan Best
AAANZ Melbourne University Prize for Best Large Catalogue
“Paths to Abstraction 1867–1917”, edited by Terence Maloon and published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales
The most outstanding publication in the Large Catalogue category is Paths to Abstraction 1867–1917 edited by Terence Maloon and published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This catalogue is noteworthy for the rigour of its scholarship, its innovative readings of both canonical and lesser known modernist works, and the range of critical voices included in the text of several distinguished international art historians alongside Terence Maloon, including Jean-Claude Lezbensztejn, Richard Shiff and Annegret Hogberg. The catalogue also stands out for its impeccable illustrations and design. Overall the judges felt it provides an excellent supporting document to the exhibition and that it is destined to have enduring significance in the field.
Among the publications that the judges thought should be highly commended are The First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors by Liu Yang and Edmund Capon, published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The detailed research underpinning this catalogue is exemplary for the way in which it contextualises the objects within their historical and political background, and provides an informed archaeological perspective on how the works were first discovered and how they fit together in a complex site. Another reason to commend this publication is its inclusion of bilingual texts.
Other publications worthy of high commendation are two monographs, John Davis: Presence by David Hurlston and published by the National Gallery of Victoria, and Justin O’Brien by Barry Pearce and Natalie Wilson, published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Both catalogues provide a definitive statement about a single artist’s oeuvre supported by a carefully documented and analysed history of their work within a broader social and/or artistic context.
Judges: Lesley Harding and Anthony White
AAANZ University of Western Australia Prize for Best Small Catalogue
The prize for best small catalogue is shared by two publications:
Te Mata: The Ethnological Portrait by Roger Blackley and published by the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington
Mirror Mirror: Then and Now curated by Ann Stephen with contributions from Keith Broadfoot and Andrew McNamara and published by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Te Mata is an extremely well written, thoughtful catalogue which allows new thinking across several disciplines to inform the reading of a significant, if relatively little-known body of work. This text, which draws on careful primary research, illuminates an important part of the social and artistic history of our region. Mirror Mirror is noteworthy, like Te Mata, for situating local art production in a broader global context, as well as for connecting its tight and engaging theme to issues relevant to contemporary thinking about art and aesthetics.
Highly commended in the small catalogue category are Utamaro: Hymn to Beauty by Khanh Trinh and Alfred Stieglitz: The Lake George Years by Judy Annear, both published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Utamaro, a beautifully designed publication with succinct and informative essays, is a pleasure to read and behold and provides a wealth of documentation with the images, thus serving as a very good scholarly resource. The judges wish to acknowledge the cogency and intelligence with which the images were brought together in the Alfred Steiglitz publication and the high photography and design values involved in their presentation.
Finally, the judges would like to commend the authors and publishers of the two exhibition catalogues Joe Rootsey: Queensland Aboriginal Painter 1918–63 and James Fardoulys: A Queensland Naïve Artist. These publications, from a three-year exhibition series mounted by the Queensland Art Gallery, feature the work of lesser-known artists who are strongly connected to local communities and which are examined through probing research into the artistic, political and social issues connected to their work.
Judges: Lesley Harding and Anthony White
AAANZ Best Scholarly Article in AAANZ Journal
Juliette Peers, ‘London, Paris, New York, and Collingwood’: Reconsidering Pre-1945 Australian Fashion’
The essay by Juliette Peers, ‘”London, Paris, New York, and Collingwood”: Reconsidering Pre-1945 Australian Fashion,’ is a well-organized and clearly written introduction to her subject, resulting in an excellent introductory text for anyone studying this nascent field.
Judges: Geoff Batchen and Susan Best
aaanz book prizes 2010
Best Book: “An Apprehensive Aesthetic: The Legacy of Modernist Culture”
Andrew McNamara, Peter Lang, Bern, 2009
The judges were won over by this thoughtful, carefully argued account of the emergence of modernism and its persistence over the last century. In an impressive investigation of his theme of apprehension and aesthetics, McNamara confronts the perplexing social and cultural aspirations of the art that dominated criticism over the twentieth century and its legacy into the new millennium.
Best Large Catalogue: “The Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections”
James Bennett and Amy Reigle Newland, Art Gallery of South Australia
Best Large Catalogue: “Cubism and Australian Art”
Lesley Harding and Sue Cramer, Heide Museum of Art
The judges were confronted with a daunting task in awarding the best catalogue prize with an unusually large and strong field this year. After lengthy discussion the judges awarded two outstanding catalogues the award for 2010 giving the prize to the Art Gallery of South Australia’s “The Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections” and “Cubism and Australian Art” published by the Miegunyah Imprint of Melbourne University Publishing. Both catalogues represented the fruits of several years of intensive work by the curators, presenting large survey exhibitions of significant themes that had not been previously presented in Australia before.
James Bennett and Amy Reigle Newland’s “The Golden Journey” brought together major Japanese painting held in a range of Australian collections producing important new research on national patronage of Japanese art and bringing to light the depth of Japanese material held in this country. The scholarly commentary and rich production values convinced the judges that this volume is indeed a worthy recipient of the prize of best catalogue.
Lesley Harding and Sue Cramer’s “Cubism and Australian Art”, from Heide Museum of Art, presented an equally important milestone in the historiography of Australian Art. Many years in the making, this exhibition presented a stunning survey of Australian Cubist art, demonstrating once again that Modernist art produced outside Europe and America is as vibrant and complex as the art of the centre. Drawing together the writing of many specialists and curators, this catalogue will be an essential reference work in the field for scholars and the general public alike. The judges congratulate the teams associated with the production of both of these outstanding catalogues.
Highly Commended
The judges also wish to commend two catalogues from New Zealand. David Cross and Claire Dougherty, for drawing together an impressive team of writers and artists who produced the interesting and innovative exhibition and catalogue “One Day Sculpture” which toured the North and South Island of New Zealand.
In addition, they congratulate Felicity Milburn and Lara Strongman et al from Christchurch Art Gallery for their catalogue and exhibition on the work of the New Zealand painter Séraphine Pick. Brilliantly produced and well written, this catalogue brings forward the work of a gifted artist working in a currently emerging new global surreal style.
Best Small Catalogue: “The Sleeping Room”
Natalie Poland, Hocken Collections at the University of Otago
“The Sleeping Room” captivated the attention of the judges, who felt that the small-format catalogue evidences all the best traits of a book in this category. It is a portable, engaging and evocative memoir of the exhibition of Helen Straka’s ‘Life Still’ paintings in the Hocken Collections at the University of Otago. The short yet informative essay by curator Natalie Poland perfectly complements Straka’s ghostly images, both in content and design.
Highly Commended
The judges would also like to commend “GBA: Print Publishing in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 1859-1933”, a small catalogue produced by the Adam Art Gallery at the Victoria University of Wellington. As teacher, curator and editor, David Maskill has shown the quality of exhibition catalogue that can be achieved through research-led teaching in a museum context.
The Judges: Jeanette Hoorn and Jennifer Milam
Best Edited Book or Anthology: “Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources. Late Medieval to Renaissance” (4 volumes)
Peter McNeil, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2009
As with the Best Large Catalogue this year, the judges were encouraged by the extraordinary quality of entries in this category. Several major volumes were put forward which represent diverse fields of international scholarship notable for their interdisciplinary approaches. This year the sheer wealth and breadth of scholarship of the anthologies has made the task of judging particularly challenging complicated by entries that encompass such diverse fields. For that reason we have chosen to highly commend two edited books, both of which bring new and original scholarship to focus on major fields of enquiry, along with high production values, useful indexes and wonderful covers: ‘Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida’, edited by Geoffrey Batchen and published by MIT Press can rightfully claim to reopen the conversation on Barthes’ most influential 1980 text, by introducing a new generation of scholars to interpret and interrogate such intellectual heavyweights as Michael Fried, Victor Burgin and Rosalind Krauss; and ‘Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia’ edited by Jeanette Hoorn, is a beautifully produced set of essays of original research by key experts in the field published by the wonderful Miegunyah Press at the University of Melbourne that makes a book into a beautiful object.
The judges noted two significant themes in the submissions this year: the art history of Charles Darwin’s anniversary and the relatively new field of fashion histories. ‘Reframing Darwin’ is just one of the excellent submissions in the former category. In the latter category the judges noted the high quality of new work in the field and would like to present the award of Best Edited book to Peter McNeil’s 4-volume Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources. This monumental contribution to fashion history spans the late medieval to modern period. It is the result of a Herculean effort of scholarship, which will undoubted change the way that the field is understood by specialists and taught to future generations of scholars.
The Judges: Anne Stephen and Jennifer Milam
aaanz book prizes 2009
Best Book
As there was only one nominated publication, we recommend that this award be held over for a combined 2009-2010 award next year, with additional books sought for consideration.
Best Large Catalogue: “Picasso & His Collection”
Arts Exhibitions Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, and Musée national Picasso, Paris
This catalogue accompanying one of the best exhibitions in Australia during 2008 brings together a number of short but significant essays by Anne Baldassari, Philippe Suneir and André Malraux. The quality of the plates is superb, and they are organised into informative sub-categories which bring into focus the diversity of Picasso’s collection and their potential as sources of influence and inspiration.
Finalist: “Half Light: Portraits from Black Australia”, Hetti Perkins and Jonathan Jones, Art Gallery of New South Wales
The committee was impressed by the way this catalogue had been put together, using an analytical preparatory essay to set the mood for transcribed interviews with the artists and reproductions of their works. This remarkable exhibition—the first major survey of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists engaged with photography and portrait—and this ground breaking catalogue that accompanied it make an important contribution to the field.
Best Small Catalogue: “Harold Cazneaux. Artist in Photography”
Natasha Bullock, Art Gallery of New South Wales
“Harold Cazneaux. Artist in Photography” contains superb scholarly essays that will have clear impact in the field. In many ways, the catalogue outstrips its category, as there is nothing ‘small’ about this book. More than a catalogue accompanying an exhibition, this is a comprehensive monograph on the artist that reveals his significance within Australian photographic history. In its tightly focused yet ambitious conception, professional execution and obvious potential for future impact in the field, this book ranks as the best catalogue of the year, small or large.
1st Finalist: “The Labours of Herakles: Marian Maguire”, Essays by Elizabeth Rankin & Patrick O’Sullivan, Papergraphica, 2008
Playing on the convergence of time and cultures found in the artworks of this exhibition, the catalogue pays homage to the content of the art works (a series of lithographs and etchings by Marian Maguire) by associating the catalogue in format and style with that of catalogues which accompanied exhibitions of classical art and antiquities during the second half of the twentieth century. The cleverness of form, however, does not eclipse the obvious scholarly quality of the two essays by Rankin and O’Sullivan. Drawing on the expertise of an art historian and classical scholar, the artist’s sources and understanding of the mythic past of Herakles are marvellously elucidated and combined with nineteenth-century primary source materials. This is a sophisticated publication to be commended.
2nd Finalist: “Once More With Feeling: Ann Shelton”, Natalie Poland, Hocken Collections, University of Otago
This small catalogue captured the spirit of what books in this category should be: pocket sized in format, yet highly informative; easy to carry through and use in the exhibition, but with a life outside the gallery, recalling to memory the exhibition’s content and context in order to provoke further reflection on the ideas raised by works of art. The faux marblised cover, lined pages and photographs give the reader an impression of holding a personal notebook disclosing the artist’s inspirations—specifically that of the scrapbook and palimpsest.
Best Edited Book or Anthology: “Art, Sex and Eugenics. Corpus Delecti”
Edited by Fae Brauer and Anthea Callen
“Art, Sex and Eugenics. Corpus Delecti”, edited by Fae Brauer and Anthea Callen, stands out as the winner of this year’s best anthology due to the depth of its essays that deal with the curious and disconcerting relationship between eugenics, beauty, aesthetics and social propaganda. The subject had not been properly addressed prior to this volume. Geographically, the essays are expansive in focus—dealing with the art of western and eastern Europe, the Americas and New Zealand—there is much to be learned by reading this book. Beyond what the essays accomplish as individual works of scholarship, as a group in this edited collection they signal the impact of debates around eugenics on art and open up new avenues for future work. This book is everything an edited collection should be.
All three books submitted for consideration in this category were of high quality and notable significance.
“Shifting Views. Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand”, edited by Andrew Leach, Antony and Nicole Sully bridges 25 years of scholarship in the field, with essays that provide the reader with an understanding of how the discipline has evolved in recent history, leading to thoughts about future directions for research and critical understanding.
“Antinomies of Art and Culture”, edited by Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee is equally thought provoking as a collection of writings by world-renowned theorists, artists, critics and curators who explore conceptions of the present in art and culture. This is a signifant collection that will no doubt give rise to much talk within the field.
The Judges
Jeanette Hoorn and Jennifer Milam
aaanz journal prize 2009
In considering this issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art on ‘21st Art History’ we agreed on the difficulty of deciding between at least five very commendable articles within a generally strong field of contributions. Apart from the winners we wish to single out for their merit Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson, “Stay, Go or Come: a History of Australian Art 1920-40”, Melissa Miles, “Focus on the Sun: the Demand for New Myths of Light in Contemporary Australian Photography” and Catherine Speck and Georgina Downey, “Cosmopolitanism and Modernism: On Writing a New Australian Art History”. However, our unanimous decision was that the joint winners should be Jan Baetens, “The Shock of the Past: What we can learn from French Impressionism in Film?” and Huw Hallam, “Globalised Art History: the New Universality and the Question of Cosmopolitanism”. We consider that each exhibited different strengths. The value of Baetens’ article rested in the way its author was able to demonstrate concretely how a new form of historiography could be realised for art history through an elegant and forceful case study on French impressionist cinema and its criticism. The value of Hallam’s article was the high degree of astuteness, trenchancy and balance in its critique of the philosophical underpinnings of universalist histories of art. These and other articles in the issue demonstrate the value of art historians looking outside the narrow confines of the discipline as it has been traditionally defined and gaining insights from other disciplines such as philosophy or literary or film history. We also welcome the tendency towards greater diversity of subjects and periods in the history of art addressed. Finally we applaud the higher consistency in this issue’s system of reference necessary for competition with top ranking international journals in our discipline, but feel that the quality of illustrations and of the journal’s physical binding leaves room for improvement within what are no doubt stringent constraints on cost.
Panel
Llewellyn Negrin, University of Tasmania School of Art Richard Read, University of Western Australia (Chair)
aaanz book prizes 2008
Large and Small Catalogues: Judges comments
The judges were given the difficult task of choosing from a variety of impressive large and small catalogues. These ranged from volumes dealing with contemporary art to those on various periods from the history of art and from thematic exhibitions to solo shows. Some were based on collections located all over the world while others focussed upon the collections of the institutions sponsoring the exhibition. Many catalogues accompanied exhibitions that had been planned for some years and demonstrated a lengthy research and writing time. There were many more very worthy entries than were able to be short-listed. The judges short-listed three large catalogues and three small catalogues.
Best Large Catalogue: “Andy Warhol”
Tony Ellwood et al., Queensland Art Gallery
The judges were impressed by the freshness of approach in both the design of the catalogue and in the essays contained in this volume. Published by QAG in co-operation with the Andy Warhol Museum for the opening exhibition at GoMA, with extremely high production values. This is an historically, intellectually and visually exciting catalogue to accompany an internationally important Warhol survey. It includes ten freshly commissioned essays by Australian art critics and writers, and a handful of essays and interviews by US writers. One of the most important of the US essays, by Crimp, was originally published in 1999, but is crucial for locating the book in relation to the turn from art history to cultural and visual studies, and importantly shows the role of Australian scholarship in this in references to Meaghan Morris, Ian Burn, John Fiske, Terry Smith and others. The catalogue illustrates the key themes of transnational modern pop culture—death, fear, consumer desire, celebrity—and offers an original perspective by illustrating the relation between mid 20th Australian culture and these NY movements rather than the usual British perspective.
SHORT-LISTED: “Bertram Mackennal”, Deborah Edwards (ed.)
A very high quality exhibition catalogue designed as a near comprehensive scholarly research record with a biography, catalogue raisonné on CD, and interpretive and historical essays by numerous important contributors, mostly Australian, assessing the career in terms of British/Australian cultural exchanges; the New Sculpture; and Edwardian ideologies. The judges were impressed by the volume’s thoroughness and innovative approach, and by its outstanding production values. This history of an Australian sculptor is comprehensive, and the treatment of the whole historiographic question of transnational careers in this era makes the volume a fascinating and timely study.
SHORT-LISTED: “Printed Images in Colonial Australia 1801–1901” and “Printed Images by Australian Artists 1885–1955”, Roger Butler
These two large exhibition catalogues are based on exhibitions mounted covering the extensive print collections of the National Gallery of Australia. The judges wish to commend Roger Butler and his staff for their remarkable achievement in gathering together an impressive body of research in what are now definitive volumes on the history of printmaking in Australia. Printed Images in Colonial Australia 1801–1901 covers the earliest days of Australian white settlement until the period encompassing the federation of the Australian states. Incorporating a vast range of materials that map both the development of printmaking as well as the history of colonial Australia itself, this represents many years of assiduous collecting and of research. Printed Images by Australian Artists 1885–1955, presents equally high standards of research and writing. This volume covers the emergence of modernism and deals in admirable depth with the new techniques that played such a crucial role in the emergence of modern printmaking.
Best Small Catalogue: “Pulp Fictions: The Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi”
David Maskill (ed.)
An admirable catalogue of short essays by art history honours students at Victoria University Wellington, responding to prints by Piranesi in good scholarly essays. The volume is attractively designed and printed with a feel for classical principles of book design appropriate to the period. The judges wish to commend David Maskill for his role as editor and the contributors for their scholarly contributions to an excellent small catalogue.
SHORT-LISTED: “Translucent World: Chinese Jade from the Forbidden City”, Liu Yang with Edmund Capon
This is an exemplary small catalogue covering an important exhibition shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the Chinese art of jade carving, an art form that stretches over many millennia. The judges wish to congratulate Liu Yang and Edmund Capon for the high production values pertaining to the reproduction of each work of art, and for the concise entries accompanying them. Overall, a user-friendly catalogue, conveying great scholarship in accessible language.
SHORT-LISTED: “Black Robe White Mist: Art of the Japanese Buddhist Nun Rengetsu”, Melanie Eastburn et al.
This catalogue accompanied the exhibition of the work of Otagaki Rengetsu, (Lotus Moon), a Buddhist nun who lived in Kyoto from the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century. This beautifully designed small catalogue reveals the biography of her life spanning the late Edo and Meiji periods and deals especially with her ceramic output in the context of her involvement in the cultural life of the city of Kyoto as well as the poverty that led her to turn to pottery in her late forties. Eight essays written by a team of scholars, curators and specialists, trace the development of the remarkably delicate ceramic work that she produced over the latter part of her life. The judges wish to commend Melanie Eastburn, John Stevens, Patricia A. Graham, Meher McArthur, Sandra Sheckter, Sayumi Takahashi and Chiaki Ajioka for their various roles in producing this outstanding small catalogue.
The Judges
Jeanette Hoorn and Jennifer Milam
aaanz journal prizes 2008
Judges Comments on Journal Prize
A very good range of high quality articles were included this year in the four issues of the journal considered for the 2008 prize. There were many other articles apart from those that were short-listed that were of excellent standard and worthy of commendation. The judges however were able to settle on a short-list of three. They are the following:
Ian McLean, “The Australianness of the English Claude…”
Ian McLean’s article assesses the shifting place of John Glover’s art in the canon of early Australian landscape painting exposing the investment of Australian art history in revealing what constitutes ‘Australianness’. In addition to its contribution to current ‘state of the field’ discussions around Australian landscape painting, the article convincingly demonstrates how Glover’s work has been enlisted to support some dubious nationalist agendas and proposes instead a new direction for consideration of the picturesque as a global style.
Petra Kayser, “The Intellectual and the Artisan”
The judges were impressed by the manner in which the author was able to demonstrate, in admirably clear prose, a keen understanding of the period and of the role of two artists who have been marginalised in conventional accounts. Through careful research into processes of production and casting techniques, a better understanding of the relationship struck between art and nature by the sixteenth-century artisan is revealed to the reader.
Catherine de Lorenzo and Deborah van der Plaat, “Southern Geographies…”
The judges were persuaded by the originality of the arguments presented by the authors in their reading of a series of photographs of J.W. Lindt’s famous botanical paradise, “The Hermitage”. Catherine de Lorenzo and Deborah van der Plaat uncover the influence of Humboldtian theories on Lindt’s botanising while contributing a feminist perspective to both garden history and the history of science in the late nineteenth century. They demonstrate that cross-disciplinary research provides a multitude of rewards for the art historian.