John Peter Russell 1858-1930

Australian engineer John Peter Russell pioneered modern art with friend Vincent Van Gogh and colleague Claude Monet. Russell's colour palette went on to inspire Matisse. In 1887 Russell painted a portrait of his friend Maloney who was visiting Paris from Australia. Russell included Japanese calligraphy, probably from a scroll hanging behind Maloney in Russell's room. Like his friend Van Gogh, Russell transitioned from mostly dark canvases to an exploration of vibrant colours about this time. He introduced Japanese print-style flowering landscape patterns (like this French daffodil field) into the Western dresses of his Italian wife and model.

Love EW 1887 Paris after Russell

Van Gogh after Hiroshige

Hiroshige carved block print 1857

Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890

Arthur Streeton

Famous for his classic Australian impressionist landscapes... Arthur Streeton also painted some Eastern-influenced 'scrolls' - this one with plum blossom. But Streeton's 'scroll' is an oil painting on a large wood panel. It includes an inner scroll of an impressionist seascape. His 'Eastern' elements combine with 'Western' academic style nudes. MODERN ART ... The exploration of East and West, North and South, mind and society.

Arthur Streeton 1867-1943

College Sunbeams after Fairweather 1962

English officer Ian Fairweather survived a 1914 battlefield saturation-bombing massacre, to become a prisoner of war. He studied art (under a white man's code of chivalry) in a German POW camp for officers. With peace in 1918, Fairweather somewhat escaped the madness of Western militarism, eventually moving to European-occupied China. In Shanghai, he developed interests in calligraphy, Chinese language, Buddhism, and avant garde painting. But when the Japanese bombed his Shanghai home town in 1932, Fairweather escaped to Australia. His subsequent Asian, especially Balinese, travels were re-created in his paintings. Art became the whole of his life living in a hermit's beach hut in Queensland.

Ian Fairweather 1891-1974

Tone '61 after Upward

Peter Upward studied Zen Buddhism: Zen's sudden release of the painter's brush stroke as insight... Zen's sudden wisdom through the clash of mystical poetic contradictions... Zen's simple minimalist asethetics... and Zen's rejection of dogma for an exploratory life of existential experiences. Peter Upward's explorations took him to Indonesia and Bali too.

Peter Upward 1932-1983

Love Alice after Whiteley 1976

Brett Whiteley explored the human form in landscapes and interiors. He continued Australian Art's tradition of weaving Asia with Europe. During the 1960s US invasion of Asia, Whiteley painted his vast 'Guernica' mural American Dream which includes Zen calligraphy for 'lightness of being.'

Brett Whiteley 1939-1992

Aaqus retinue 2026 after Brook Andrews 1996

For centuries, some Aboriginal cultures have delicately intermixed with some Asian cultures to the north. This cultural exchange grew exponentially in the decades around 2000. In 1996, indigenous artist Brook Andrews reworked a circa 1905 portrait photograph, where both the photographer and sitter are anonymous. The antique photo shows a Djabugay man in ceremonial paint and garb. Along with modern indigenous interpretations, Brook Andrews has an interest in Chinese underground comic books or films. He took the Chinese calligraphy and the English title of a Hong Kong crime comics-and-film franchise, GANGSTER GIRLS: Sexy and Dangerous, and he added both the calligraphy and the English words into his 1996 collage, Sexy and Dangerous. retinue is the interpretation of Sexy and Dangerous by Aaqus . Right - Aboriginal colourist painter Steven Jupurrurla Nelson.

Steven Jupurrurla Nelson

Paintings

Artist Aaqus. Around 1987 'New York School'-trained Aaqus introduced East Asian caligraphy and 'Indonesian batik'-masking into his Australian landscape style.

Artist

Print by Hiroshige 1857. All other works are by Aaqus, after the artists in the 'Pioneer' series (c) RSWatson all rights reserved 2021 to 2026.