Podcast appearances and mentions of Grace Cossington Smith

Thank you for listening to this track produced by the Art Gallery of South Australia. This curator talk will take you through highlights of AGSA's permanent collection exploring a variety of works of art, helping you to prepare for a self-guided visit to the Gallery. The themes and works discussed will also provide you with some alternative ideas for teaching portraiture in your classroom. For more information visit agsa.sa.gov.au Image: Grace Cossington Smith, Australia, 1892 - 1984, The artist's sister, 1936, Sydney, oil on paperboard, 49.5 x 41.5 cm; South Australian Government Grant and d'Auvergne Boxall Bequest Fund 1989, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Estate of Grace Cossington Smith.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country's most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia's oral history collection.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country's most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia's oral history collection.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country's most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia's oral history collection.

Introducing Know My Name: interviews with women artists from the ABC archives. In this episode, hear from Grace Cossington Smith. A pioneer of modernism in Australia and one of the country's most influential artists. Here she is interviewed in 1965 by Hazel de Berg for the National Library of Australia's oral history collection.

Disclaimer: Episodul a fost inregistrat si publicat initial in primul sezon al podcastului, pe data de 10 septembrie, 2018. Salut si bine ai venit la HerArt podcast, un proiect pentru iubitoarele si iubitorii de arta, in special arta creata de femei. In acest episod o sa vorbim despre Grace COSSINGTON SMITH - artista care a pus bazele picturii moderniste din Australia. Mie imi spune Nata Andreev si va prezint 7 curiozitati pe care nu le-ati stiut despre cea care a contribuit la introducerea post-impresionismului în țara sa natală. Merci mult ca ai fost alaturi de mine pentru cel de-al saptelea episod al podcastului HerArt - un proiect pentru iubitoarele si iubitorii de arta, in special arta creata de femei. Daca vrei sa urmaresti activitatea noastra online, atunci ne gasesti pe Facebook si Instagram. Ne auzim luna viitoare, unde iti voi povesti despre Grace Albee - prima femeie care a devenit membra a Academiei Nationale de Design, din New York.

Welcome to HerArt podcast, a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. In this episode we will talk about Grace Cossington Smith, an Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting in Australia. My name is Nata Andreev and I am going to tell you seven curious facts that you didn’t know about the artist that was instrumental in introducing Post-Impressionism to her home country.

Amy Mullins returns for another episode of Uncommon Sense with four very interesting interviews. Our regular guest Ben Eltham from New Matilda comes in to chat about the current state of federal politics. Amber Jamieson from the Guardian US calls in to fill us in on US politics this week. The Curator at the Heide Museum of Modern Art Lesley Harding talks with Amy about their Making Modernism exhibition, which brings together the work of American icon Georgia O'Keeffe with modernist masterpieces by pioneering Australian artists Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith. Mark Wakeham, the CEO of Environment Victoria on the State Government's recently announced reforms to the EPA Vic.

Grace Cossington Smith was one of a handful of Australian artists who portrayed life on the home front in Sydney. Her works were radical departures from a tradition of conservative Australian painting.

Radical. Rejected. Recognised. Here’s one of the most remarkable stories in Australian art – how an artist who could not get her work accepted into exhibitions went on to paint one of the greatest celebrations of the modern Australian city. NGV Acting Curator of Australian Art, Elena Taylor

Building Blocks of Colour Colour and light are the key elements in this significant and dynamic painting of the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Grace Cossington Smith (1892 - 1984), The Bridge in building 1929-30. Painting, oil on pulpboard, 75.0 h x 53.0 w cm, framed 88.4 h x 66.2 w x 4.7 d cm. Gift of Ellen Waugh 2005.

Throughout its construction, which was completed in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge inspired many artists to redefine their visions of the city and the harbour by incorporating this new industrial structure. This painting shows the massive frame-work in mid-construction, emerging from the shores of North Sydney. It reveals Grace Cossington Smith’s view of the bridge as a dynamic work-in-progress. In a powerful translation of forms through colour and light, the painting radiates optimism and energy in a celebration of modern engineering and, more broadly, the modern age. The artist made many pencil studies onsite, which she inscribed with notes on colour, took back to her studio and transformed into an iconic expression of Sydney’s most enduring urban monument.

Throughout its construction, which was completed in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge inspired many artists to redefine their visions of the city and the harbour by incorporating this new industrial structure. This painting shows the massive frame-work in mid-construction, emerging from the shores of North Sydney. It reveals Grace Cossington Smith’s view of the bridge as a dynamic work-in-progress. In a powerful translation of forms through colour and light, the painting radiates optimism and energy in a celebration of modern engineering and, more broadly, the modern age. The artist made many pencil studies onsite, which she inscribed with notes on colour, took back to her studio and transformed into an iconic expression of Sydney’s most enduring urban monument.

Throughout its construction, which was completed in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge inspired many artists to redefine their visions of the city and the harbour by incorporating this new industrial structure. This painting shows the massive frame-work in mid-construction, emerging from the shores of North Sydney. It reveals Grace Cossington Smith’s view of the bridge as a dynamic work-in-progress. In a powerful translation of forms through colour and light, the painting radiates optimism and energy in a celebration of modern engineering and, more broadly, the modern age. The artist made many pencil studies onsite, which she inscribed with notes on colour, took back to her studio and transformed into an iconic expression of Sydney’s most enduring urban monument.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Orchestral concert: Dr Sargent conducting in the Sydney Town Hall c.1939, oil,pencil, pen and ink on cardboard on composition board, 45.9 (h) x 41.0 (w) cm. Collection of the National Gallery of Australia

Cossington Smith’s daring painting of Enid Cambridge is a portrait of a long-held friendship. Rather than attempting to depict her friend’s features, she conveys her in flamboyant dress, relaxed in an interior world. At the time of Cambridge’s death in 1976, Cossington Smith wrote: ‘Everyone loved Enid. She is my dearest art friend … A special quality of Enid’s is a devoted religious Faith which shone through all her perplexities and difficulties and never left her … Enid is a shining Personality.’ (National Gallery of Australia research library)

This work, with its sweeping directional movement of the road through the centre of the picture plane, depicts Eastern Road near the artist’s home in Turramurra at a time when it was still a semi-rural suburb. The watercolour was preceded by a detailed sketchbook drawing with precise colour notations. Cossington Smith told Daniel Thomas that when she was doing her initial drawing she was ‘pleased that a figure came onto the road to animate its emptiness’.

Some of Cossington Smith’s most successful portraits are her tender drawings of family members. Her close bond with her family is evident in her drawings of her father Ernest and her sisters Diddy and Madge, depicted in uncontrived, relaxed poses. In Portrait of Diddy her sister appears meditative, wearing the artist’s favourite colour, yellow. As she said: ‘Yellow is the colour of the sun’. This work was in an extremely fragile condition and is being shown for the first time since entering the Gallery’s collection, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Gallery’s conservators.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Still life with banksia 1947, oil on composition board, 59.7 (h) x 44.5 (w) cm, Art Gallery of South Australia South Australian Government Grant 1954

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Poinsettias 1931, oil on pulpboard, 73.7 (h) x 59.7 (w) cm, Art Gallery of South Australia Ivor Francis Bequest Fund 1995

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Still life with red vase 1962, oil on hardboard, 62.5 (h) x 89.8 (w) cm, Private collection, courtesy of Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Boots, Sketchbook of still life and various subjects (1911), Sketchbook, pencil, paper, 22.8 (h) x 28.8 (w) cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Australia

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The Bridge in-curve (1930), empera on cardboard, 83.6 (h) x 111.8 (w) cm, National Gallery of Victoria Presented by the National Gallery Society of Victoria, 1967

Cossington Smith painted church interiors related to theme of the Second World War. They depict St James’ Anglican Church in Turramurra, a place of great significance for Cossington Smith and her family as their regular place of worship since their arrival in the area in 1913. In the painting Church interior there are women, children and older men. Missing are the men who had gone to war, giving an added poignancy to the image.

Cossington Smith said of her painting Interior in yellow: ‘The subject took me very much. It is a room with a wardrobe and a bed and carpet but the chief thing to me was the yellow walls…the whole thing is meant to express an interior with light…the sunlight did not come in in a definite way but the whole room seemed to be full of light, which is what I want to do more than the actual sunlight. I feel that even the shadows are a subdued light and they must have light in them as well as the light parts.’ (Interview with Hazel de Berg, 1965, National Library of Australia)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Self portrait 1948, oil on cardboard 40.0 (h) x 30.0 (w) cm, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2002

While in the bush Cossington Smith often adopted Cézanne’s strategy of meditating on the motif in nature for long periods of time. She said that of all the painters she admired, ‘there aren’t any others that impress me like Cézanne ... I think that he painted what I wanted … that was a help, to see that done’. (Interview with Alan Roberts, 1970)

In Interior with wardrobe mirror the artist recreates her bedroom from multiple perspectives. Two wardrobe doors are open; one revealing a close-up of drawers within the cupboard, the other with a mirror reflecting the garden and sky outside. It is a miraculous, poetic integration of intimate interior space and the exterior sun-filled environment – the parts and the whole illuminated by vibrant colour. As in all of Cossington Smith’s late interiors, we become aware of spaces in which complexity is made to look effortless.

By time she did this painting Cossington Smith had moved beyond her early art training with Dattilo Rubbo. She recalled that while her art teacher was concerned about depth in representing a scene, she had become more interested in depicting radiating, concentric forms in luminous colour. As she said: ‘In those days I saw things as a pattern expressed in colour. It was quite a natural thing. I didn’t force myself to do it … I believe you’ve got to have a feeling about what you want to paint. It’s half unconscious, but you do know what you don’t want to do’. (Interview with Alan Roberts, 1970)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Rushing c.1922, oil on canvas on paperboard, 65.6 (h) x 91.3 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1967 © Art Gallery New South Wales

Centre of a city has a monumental presence: the impressive architectural forms rising up to a luminous blue sky. The painting was preceded by numerous sketchbook drawings. In 1971 the artist told Daniel Thomas: ‘I suddenly liked the subject – the Centre of the City! I liked the going downhill of Moore Street, the feeling that the Post Office at the bottom was the centre of the city … I would stand with this [sketch] book. I was just aware that people would look over my shoulder … they never said anything – that was nice’.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The Lacquer Room 1935-36, oil on paperboard on plywood, 74.0 (h) x 90.8 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1967 © Art Gallery New South Wales

Reinforcements: Troops marching conveys a sense of ritual and occasion. It represents a farewell to the volunteers going off to fight in the First World War. Flags flutter above the buildings and women with their backs to us wave in support. A small child in the foreground breaks free from the crowd and cries in what could be seen as a symbolic loss of innocence. It is an early example of the artist’s work in which vibrant colour, rhythm and pattern are combined with emotive content.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The sock knitter 1915, oil on canvas, 61.6 (h) x 50.7 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1960 © Art Gallery New South Wales

Among Cossington Smith’s most remarkable paintings are those of the South Coast of New South Wales at Thirroul and Bulli. Undertaken after the death of her beloved mother, who had been ill for some time, they convey a mesmerising transcendent dimension. The brushmarks are immensely varied: square, angular, feathery and delicately stippled. These works are about continuity in nature and continuity of the spirit. In the waves of movement radiating outwards and the undercurrents of complex feeling, these works are intensely personal and spiritual.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Dawn landing 1944, oil on pulpboard, 69.5 (h) x 54.3 (w) cm, Sir James and Lady Cruthers Collection, Perth

The panels of this magnificent screen depict subjects from the artist’s garden and surrounding bush landscape. Cossington Smith was especially pleased with the third panel. As she said in an interview with Alan Roberts: ‘There used to be a waterfall along there … called Lovers’ Leap … a lovely proper one … and I did a painting … with the length of the waterfall on the panel … I think it came off rather well; rocks and waterfall and the bush.’ This screen was commissioned by a collector in the United Kingdom who rejected it and acquired The gully instead. At the time the artist was disappointed and vowed never to do another commission. Many years later she was delighted when the work was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Interior with verandah doors 1954, oil on composition board, 76.2 (h) x 91.0 (w) cm, signed and dated l.l., black oil paint "G. Cossington Smith 54".Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Bequest of Lucy Swanton 1982

By 1932 the Sydney moderns were in full swing with the opening of Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre. Encouraged by the mood and pace set by Black and other artists returning from Europe, Cossington Smith showed adventurous works at the Centre inspired by Paul Gauguin and Franz Marc. Her mentor at the time, Ethel Anderson, had long been an admirer of Gauguin’s work. Following the death of her mother, Cossington Smith’s visits to Anderson increased and she began to paint works informed by Gauguin, such as Landscape at Pentecost (road and trees) and Horses.

Grace Cossington Smith’s The Bridge in building is a dynamic image of one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks under construction. One of a number of artists who recorded the development of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Cossington Smith transformed the scene into a synthesis of industry and nature – of modern construction observed through radiating colour and bands of light. In The Bridge in building Cossington Smith has used contrasting colours of purple and orange to depict the angular structures of the bridge and crane. The sky is formed by concentric bands of luminous yellows and blues, with each brushstroke carefully placed on the canvas. Between 1928 and 1930 Cossington Smith made a number of sketches of the bridge from Milson’s Point on the northern side of Sydney Harbour. She created ‘map-like’ drawings, carefully annotated with notes on colour and form. These studies were used to develop paintings of the bridge, such as The Bridge in-curve c.1930 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). Cossington Smith delighted in depicting the structure of the bridge, its formal architecture, and the counterbalance of steel and sandstone. In The Bridge in building she adopted a low viewpoint, accentuating the dramatic scale of the sandstone pylon and the arch of the bridge. She further emphasised the scale of the structure by including a group of workers on the top of the arch, the small figures appearing almost ant-like in contrast to the bridge’s large form. A truly modern artist, Cossington Smith celebrated the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a work-in-progress, documenting what was for many Sydney residents a symbol of energy and hope during the years of the Great Depression. Indeed, The Bridge in building is a celebration of modernity – a modern subject approached in a modern style. 1 Grace Cossington Smith, interview by Hazel de Berg, 16 August 1965, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, transcript, p.1484.