Art and Architecture, mainly

Harold Freedman (1915–99) was born in Melbourne and educated at Melbourne Technical Col­lege. Starting his long career in 1936, he worked in all public arts: port­raits, war propaganda, polit­ic­al car­toons, graphic design, ad­vertising, ill...

For the 2017 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, the National Gallery of Victoria/NGV put on a fine exhibition called Van Gogh and the Seas­ons. This exhibition featured works lent by intern­ational museums, and attracted a huge number of Australian vis...

When a large parliamentary building was required in Berlin, the Reichstag building was proposed and debated. The fights bet­ween Otto von Bis­marck and Reichstag mem­bers delayed construction so an architectural contest was held. The winner, Frank...

China’s old cities were thriving commercial centres, especially in silk production. In the later C13th, during the rule of Kublai Khan, China’s silk industry reached a great level of soph­is­tication. The guilds had established meticulous pay s...

During the Third Reich, of the five complexes planned for the bene­fit of the German working classes under the auspices of the Streng­th Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) leisure movement, only one was ever started. Stretching for 4.8 ks alon...

A fine show, The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet & Architecture, is running until late July 2018 at the National Gallery London. Until now, most people thought of Claude Monet as a paint­er of landscape, sea and later, gard­ens. But not of...

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was born in Florence and spent his childhood travelling across Europe with his wealthy ex-pat American par­en­ts who followed the changing social seasons. Young Sargent was enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti i...