Title
Untitled
circa 1940
Artist
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Details
- Date
- circa 1940
- Media categories
- Collage , Drawing
- Materials used
- collage of wood-cut illustrations on book page
- Dimensions
- 16.7 x 11.2 cm sheet (irreg.)
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 2003
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 49.2003
- Copyright
- © The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust/DACS. Copyright Agency
- Artist information
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Sidney Nolan
Works in the collection
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About
Sidney Nolan created this collage using 19th-century wood-cut illustrations, changing its orientation and juxtaposing disparate images to defy any narrative interpretation. The stark tonal contrast of black and white lends emotive force and a surreal, dreamlike quality. Nolan’s unorthodox approach sought to disorient the senses in order to convey an intense emotional reality, inspired particularly by French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91).
Fascinated by the multi-functional potential of collage, Nolan combined its sculptural capacity with the shapes and tones of his source materials to create an abstract composition. His patchwork quilt-like structure suggests movement or fracture and forces our perception to slip between surface
and illusory depth. -
Exhibition history
Shown in 1 exhibition
Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes (working title), Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 09 Oct 2015–31 Jan 2016
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Bibliography
Referenced in 5 publications
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Jane Clark, Sidney Nolan - landscapes and legends: a retrospective exhibition 1937 - 1987, Sydney, 1987, 33.
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Elwyn Lynn, Sidney Nolan: myth and imagery, London, 1967, 9-10.
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Arthur McIntyre, Contemporary Australian collage and its origins, Roseville, 1990, 19, 30-32.
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Kendrah Morgan, Sidney Nolan: early experiments with Narelle Jubelin: Coda, Bulleen, 2012, 11-12.
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T.G. Rosenthal, Sidney Nolan, London, 2002, 25.
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