John Olsen
Lyndall Crisp
Summer 2007
CWK salutes a grand old master from a generation of painters who taught us how to read the country.
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John Olsen - Australia's Wandering Minstral
Channel 9 Sunday Program
This wonderful documentary produced by Catherine Hunter and presented by Max Cullen investigates John's enduring passion for the Australian landscape. John revisits Lake Eyre after many years with artist and friend Tim Storrier and discusses his deep love for the desert. Cullen examines other environments that have shaped John's artmaking, including the years spent in Spain in the 1960s; Clarendon, SA and Sydney Harbour, Kings Cross and Hill End, NSW. Fascinating insights are provided by Edmund Capon and Barry Pearce, Art Gallery of NSW.
Archival footage of John teaching drawing at the Julian Ashton Art School and painting in the landscape.
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John Olsen - A Salute to Sydney
John Olsen's exhibition 'Salute to Sydney: Olsen at Eighty' opened to
tremendous acclaim in November 2007 and signalled the official opening
of the new Tim Olsen Gallery on Jersey Rd. Tim hosted a red carpet gala
event that was attended by many Olsen devotees together with notable
artists, actors, writers and television personalities.
John Olsen's exhibition 'Salute to Sydney: Olsen at Eighty' opened to tremendous acclaim in November 2007 and signalled the official opening of the new Tim Olsen Gallery on Jersey Rd. Tim hosted a red carpet gala event that was attended by many Olsen devotees together with notable artists, actors, writers and television personalities.
Long time friend and director of the Art Gallery of NSW Edmund Capon opened the exhibition that marks an important shift in Olsen's paintings from the vast dry interior to Sydney's harbour and beaches. In the excerpt of the evenings events John Olsen also reflects on his childhood spent on Sydney's shores that provides the central motivation for this beautiful collection of paintings.
Filmed and edited by Noah Hutchison of artcine.com.au
Related exhibition
John Olsen A Salute to Sydney 2007
John McDonald
December 1-2, 2007
The fireworks arrive early as John Olsen celebrates his birthday with a swashbuckling assault on Sydney.
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Louise Schwartzkoff
Wednesday 14 November 2007
Ahead of his 80th birthday, John Olsen is revisiting his boyhood seaside haunts on canvas, writes Louise Schwartzkoff.
Susan Westwood
September/October '07
Artist John Olsen turns his attention from the outback to the beach in his latest works.
On the eve of his 80th birthday, John Olsen sparkles with excitement as he
reveals he has been realising some new paintings. “I’m in love again,” he says, referring to two vast canvases he’s been working on in his studio over the last three months. They evoke, he says, “memories of being brought up at Bondi and around the harbour. There is such a kind of myth
in Australia of being born under the sun.”
Lyndall Crisp
19 October 2007
The record-setting John Olsen is still painting with the excitement of a child in awe of Sydney Harbour, writes Lyndall Crisp.
An American collector who'd never heard of John Olsen and had seen only
an image of his work in an email attachment has paid a record price for
a painting sold through an Australian commercial gallery. The prominent Washington art lover, acting on advise from an agent,
paid $750,000 for 'Spring Tide', a 200 x 400cm oil on board by Olsen.
Steve Meacham
14 September 2007
The idea came from Barry Pearce, head curator of Australian art, who has prepared the gallery's big summer exhibition, Sidney Nolan: A New Retrospective, which opens on November 2. Pearce's starting point was Nolan's fascination with the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
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John McDonald
2007
John Olsen is used to being treated like a star, but even he was surprised at the reaction when he won the 2005 Archibald prize with his Self-portrait, Janus faced. "I felt impaled by it," he says. "For three months it was impossible to walk the streets of Sydney or Bowral without being congratulated by very nice people. I was always being asked for interviews.
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Katrina Strickland
19th October 2006
Melbourne property developers Lustig & Moar appear intent on paying record prices for the paintings they want in their new contemporary art collection. After paying $2.04 million last month for Brett Whiteley’s Frangipani and Hummingbird: Japanese Summer, setting a new record for the sale of a Whiteley at auction
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Katrina Strickland
16 October 2006
A new record for a work by a living Australian artist was set in Tasmania yesterday when John Olsen's Love in the Kitchen sold for $1.093 million (including buyer's premium) to a private Melbourne collector.
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Janet Hawley
September 2, 2006
'You cannot paint true beauty, true happiness, unless you also understand the depths of despair and sorrow.'
John Olsen, grand old man of Australian art, talks to Janet Hawley
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2005
John Olsen has won the 2005 Archibald Prize for his painting Self Portrait Janus Faced.
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Jane Bardon
29 April 2005
Veteran Australian painter John Olsen has won Australia's most prestigious art competition, the 2005 Archibald Prize for his painting Self Portrait Janus Faced. Olsen was today announced as the winner of the prestigious $35,000 portrait prize by the NSW Art Gallery Trust.
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Steve Meacham
13 October 2004
After a delicious pea risotto which he has cooked himself, John Olsen is back in the studio on his Southern Highlands property. It's a beautiful afternoon and the 76-year-old often described as Australia's greatest living painter can afford to relax. He has just delivered 14 oil paintings and water colours to his gallery-owning son, Tim, for framing. Next week, they will go on show in Paddington, his first exhibition of new works for two years.
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Clive James
For all Australians, the name of John Olsen is part of the furniture of the Sydney Opera House, because his exultant painting “Five Bells” – based on the poem by Kenneth Slessor – was hanging in the foyer when the building set sail into the world. But John Olsen’s story is bigger and more complicated than a single impact,
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Sasha Grishin
Why do so many Australian visual artists keep journals? Do these journals constitute a specific genre which would distinguish them from autobiographical diaries, sketchbooks and artist's books? What are the implications of these journals for their private audiences
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