Posts made in March, 2015

“Sidney Nolan’s Odyssey”: his life revisited

Posted by on Mar 19, 2015 in Nolan | 1 comment

Sidney Nolan, perhaps this country’s best known painter, was born on 22 April 1917. As his centenary approaches, so are new books making their appearance – beginning in 2014 with Brian Adams’ online Kindle e-book Sidney Nolan’s Odyssey: a life.     Although he was written about in countless monographs, catalogue essays, journals and newspaper articles etc, the first Nolan biography as such was published in 1987 only five years before his...

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with reason, without rhyme: a Max Harris biography

Posted by on Mar 19, 2015 in Comment, Malley | 1 comment

Max Harris was many things to many people: poet, journalist, critic, bookseller, publisher, newspaper columnist, husband, father … and much more. He can be thought of as one of the great catalysts of Australian letters. He sped up the reaction – he made things happen. His footprints are certainly all over the territory covered by this website: Malley, Nolan, Heide and Comment. It was Max to whom Ethel Malley sent her dead brother Ern’s poems; it was Max who in 1945 visited...

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Arise Sir Sidney: Nancy Underhill’s Nolan biography

Posted by on Mar 18, 2015 in Nolan | 0 comments

With the phrase “Arise Sir Sidney,” the Queen presumably bade Sidney Nolan to his feet upon knighting him in 1981 – her words echoing in a sense what his many followers have wondered of him for decades: will the real Sidney Nolan please stand up. For Nolan, maker of myths with his brush, was no less skilled a myth-maker when it came to himself.  Brian Adams, his first biographer (Sidney Nolan: Such is life, a biography, Century Hutchinson, Melbourne, 1987) has recently...

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