#17th century english landscape artists

[galleryofart]

Little Red Riding Hood

Artist: Isabel Oakley Naftel (British, 1832–1912)

Date Created: 1862

Medium: Watercolor and Gouache on Paper

Isabel Naftel (1832-1912) was an English painter of principally portraits and landscapes. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and the New Watercolour Society. She was married to the artist Paul Jacob Naftel.

Little Red Riding Hood is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf; it's origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The story has been changed considerably in various retellings and subjected to numerous modern adaptations and readings.

[scotianostra]

17th August 1871 saw the death in London of the Scottish landscape painter Patrick Naysmith.

Patrick was the eldest son of the more well known Alexander Naysmith, known as ‘the father of landscape painting in Scotland’. Patrick was named after his father’s friend Patrick Miller of Dalswinton. He was taught the rudiments of drawing and painting by his father before moving to London in 1807. He suffered from poor health and an accident to his right hand when he was young meant that he had to learn to draw left-handed.

He studied under his father, and travelled to London in 1807. Nasmyth was a landscape painter and although his subject matter was usually found in the countryside around London, his style was modelled on the Dutch seventeenth century artists, especially Meindert Hobbema, he was wrongly given the nickname “the English Hobbema, having said that from what I can gather he spent most of his life down south.

His landscapes are described as “pleasing and conventional” and achieved considerable success in their day, I’m not an expert, but enjoy some art, to me his work seemed boring and all the sameish, unlike others Scottish artist like Allan Ramsay Jnr, David Roberts or, in my opinion, the best of them all Henry Raeburn.

Naysmith exhibited at the Royal Academy, Suffolk Street and the British Institute and was one of the founder members of the Royal Society of British Artists. Many of his brothers and sisters were also painters, which led to much confusion about the family and their work he was one of eleven children, of whom Patrick was the eldest. Of the other ten Jane (b.1788), Anne (b.1798) and Charlotte (b.1804) were all landscape painters.

His studio sale was held at Christie’s 18th June 1831. Titles exhibited at the Royal Academy include “View of Windsor Castle”, “A View in the New Forest” and “A Windmill on the River Don, Yorkshire”. His works can be found in museums in: Cape Town; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Hamburg; Liverpool; London, National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum; Montreal; New York and Sheffield.

Pics are of the artist, Valley of the Tweed and Edinburgh from Craigleith

You can find a more detailed bio and more pics on him here http://www.thefamousartists.com/patrick-nasmyth

[venicepearl]

Ludlow Castle is a ruined medieval fortification in the town of the same name in the English county of Shropshire, standing on a promontory overlooking the River Teme. The castle was probably founded by Walter de Lacy after the Norman Conquest and was one of the first stone castles to be built in England. During the civil war of the 12th century the castle changed hands several times between the de Lacys and rival claimants, and was further fortified with a Great Tower and a large outer bailey. In the mid-13th century, Ludlow was passed on to Geoffrey de Geneville, who rebuilt part of the inner bailey, and the castle played a part in the Second Barons' War. Roger Mortimer acquired the castle in 1301, further extending the internal complex of buildings. Richard, Duke of York, inherited the castle in 1425, and it became an important symbol of Yorkist authority during the Wars of the Roses. When Richard's son, Edward IV, seized the throne in 1461 it passed into the ownership of the Crown. Ludlow Castle was chosen as the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, effectively acting as the capital of Wales, and it was extensively renovated throughout the 16th century. By the 17th century the castle was luxuriously appointed, hosting cultural events such as the first performance of John Milton's masque Comus. Ludlow Castle was held by the Royalists during the English Civil War of the 1640s, until it was besieged and taken by a Parliamentarian army in 1646. The contents of the castle were sold off and a garrison was retained there for much of the interregnum.

With the Restoration of 1660, the council was reestablished and the castle repaired, but Ludlow never recovered from the civil war years and when the council was finally abolished in 1689 it fell into neglect. Henry, 1st Earl of Powis, leased the property from the Crown in 1772, extensively landscaping the ruins, while his brother-in-law, Edward, 1st Earl of Powis (by the third creation of the Earldom of Powis), bought the castle outright in 1811. A mansion was constructed in the outer bailey but the remainder of the castle was left largely untouched, attracting an increasing number of visitors and becoming a popular location for artists. After 1900, Ludlow Castle was cleared of vegetation and over the course of the century it was extensively repaired by the Powis Estate and government bodies. In the 21st century it is still owned by the Earl of Powis and operated as a tourist attraction.

[pigs-in-art]

Karsten, Ludvig (1876-1926) - 1924 Pork (Private Collection) by Milton Sonn Via Flickr: Oil on canvas. Ludvig Karsten was a Norwegian painter. He was a neo-impressionist influenced by Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse and the contemporary French painting. He first participated at the Autumn exhibition in Kristiania in 1901, and had his first separate exhibition in 1904. He is represented at museums in many Scandinavian cities, and with several paintings at the National Gallery of Norway. Karsten was known for his bohemian lifestyle and pending temper. Karsten grew up in a wealthy home in Christiania. He started taking drawing lessons 13 years old. In 1893 he made a study tour to Telemark, where he made landscape sketches and portraits, and also joined painter Halfdan Egedius. After graduating from secondary school in 1895, he travelled to Rome, and later to Firenze and Munich. In 1896 he travelled in Spain, and settled for a while in Madrid. He left Spain in 1898, and was enrolled in the military services at Gardermoen for some months. He then travelled to Munich, where he painted En mann og en kvinne, also called Adam and Eve, which has later been located at the Stenersen Museum. He visited Paris in autumn 1900, where he trained on models. In 1901 he was in Åsgårdstrand, where he painted Two Men and Three Boys, which were both shown at his first appearance at the Autumn exhibition in Kristiania in 1901. Karsten returned to Paris, where he spent several years. He was known for his boozing and temperament. After a fight with the poet Nils Collett Vogt he was temporarily expelled from the circle of Norwegian artists residing in Paris. He visited the museum Louvre, where he paraphrased Ribera's painting of the burial of Christ. The painting was bought by Frits Thaulow, and came to be Karsten's the first important sale. It was resold to the National Gallery in Oslo in 1909, after Thaulow's death. Karsten's first separate exhibition, at Blomqvist in Kristiania in September and October 1904, received mixed critic in the newspapers. In 1905 he visited Edvard Munch at Åsgårdstrand, where Munch made a large portrait of him. After a night of heavy drinking, possibly on Midsummer Eve, it came to quarrel which led to a violent fight between Munch and Karsten. Munch later made an etching of his version of the incident. From 1910 Karsten lived mostly in Copenhagen, where he married in 1913. He bought a house in Skagen in 1920. Karsten is represented at the National Gallery of Norway with several paintings, including Kristi gravleggelse from 1904, Vårkveld i Ula from 1905, Tæring from 1907, Det blå kjøkken (English: The blue Kitchen) from 1913, Det røde kjøkken (English: The red Kitchen) from 1913, and Flukten fra Egypt from 1922. He is represented at the Bergen Museum (with Søsken, and Batseba), at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (with the painting Den lyse og mørke akt), at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (with Golgata from 1923), and at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo (with the paintings Adam og Eva and Gobelin). Karsten was also well known for his paraphrases of works by elder painters, including 16th century artist Jacopo Bassano and 17th century artists Jusepe de Ribera and Rembrandt. His last painting was a portrait of his daughter Alise, when she visited him in Paris in 1926. He died in Paris in 1926, after having fallen down a steep staircase.

[wikipedia-the-non-official]

What's Austrailia (i want to bring up the wikipedia article for it)

Australia. , officially the Commonwealth of Australia,[19] is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands.[20] Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest,[21] flattest,[22] and driest inhabited continent,[23][24] with the least fertile soils.[25][26] It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period.[27][28][29] They settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world.[30] Australia's written history commenced with European maritime exploration. The Dutch were the first known Europeans to reach Australia, in 1606. British colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales. By the mid-19th century, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and five additional self-governing British colonies were established, each gaining responsible government by 1890. The colonies federated in 1901, forming the Commonwealth of Australia.[31] This continued a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Acts of 1986.[31]

Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states and ten territories: the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia; the major mainland Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory; and other minor or external territories. Its population of nearly 27 million[13] is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard.[32] Canberra is the nation's capital, while its most populous cities are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, which each possess a population of at least one million inhabitants.[33] Australian governments have promoted multiculturalism since the 1970s.[34] Australia is culturally diverse and has one of the highest foreign-born populations in the world.[35][36] Its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial to the country's economy, which generates its income from various sources: predominantly services (including banking, real estate and international education) as well as mining, manufacturing and agriculture.[37][38] It ranks highly for quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights.[39]

Australia has a highly developed market economy and one of the highest per capita incomes globally.[40][41][42] It is a middle power, and has the world's thirteenth-highest military expenditure.[43][44] It is a member of international groups including the United Nations; the G20; the OECD; the World Trade Organization; Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation; the Pacific Islands Forum; the Pacific Community; the Commonwealth of Nations; and the defence and security organisations ANZUS, AUKUS, and the Five Eyes. It is also a major non-NATO ally of the United States.[45]

The name Australia (pronounced /əˈstreɪliə/ in Australian English[46]) is derived from the Latin Terra Australis ("southern land"), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.[47] Several 16th-century cartographers used the word Australia on maps, but not to identify modern Australia.[48] When Europeans began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.[N 5]

Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as New Holland, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts.[N 6] The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the Earth".[54] The first time that Australia appears to have been officially used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst.[55] In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[56] In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name.[57] The first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office.[58]

Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz", "Straya" and "Down Under".[59] Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country".[60]

Indigenous Australians comprise two broad groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland (and surrounding islands including Tasmania), and the Torres Strait Islanders, who are a distinct Melanesian people. Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun 50,000 to 65,000 years ago,[27][61][62][28] with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia.[63] It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians.[64][65] The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is possibly the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia.[66][67] The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.[68][69]

Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth.[30][70][71][72] At the time of first European contact, Aboriginal Australians were complex hunter-gatherers with diverse economies and societies, and spread across at least 250 different language groups.[73][74] Estimates of the Aboriginal population before British settlement range from 300,000 to one million.[75][76] Aboriginal Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.[77] Certain groups engaged in fire-stick farming,[78][79] fish farming,[80][81] and built semi-permanent shelters.[82][83] The extent to which some groups engaged in agriculture is controversial.[84][85][86]

The Torres Strait Islander people first settled their islands around 4,000 years ago.[87] Culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Aboriginal peoples, they were seafarers and obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas.[88] Agriculture also developed on some islands and villages appeared by the 1300s.[89]

By the mid-18th century in northern Australia, contact, trade and cross-cultural engagement had been established between local Aboriginal groups and Makassan trepangers, visiting from present-day Indonesia.[90][91][92]

European exploration and colonisation

The Dutch are the first Europeans that recorded sighting and making landfall on the Australian mainland.[93] The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken, captained by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon.[94] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[95] Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through and navigated the Torres Strait Islands.[96] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, and although no attempt at settlement was made,[95] a number of shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the continent.[97] In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named "New South Wales" and claimed for Great Britain.[98]

Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union Flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[99][100] a date which later became Australia's national day.

Most early settlers were convicts, transported for petty crimes and assigned as labourers or servants to "free settlers" (willing immigrants). Once emancipated, convicts tended to integrate into colonial society. Martial law was declared to suppress convict rebellions and uprisings,[101] and lasted for two years following the 1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia.[102] Over the next two decades, social and economic reforms, together with the establishment of a Legislative Council and Supreme Court, saw New South Wales transition from a penal colony to a civil society.[103][104][105][page needed]

The indigenous population declined for 150 years following European settlement, mainly due to infectious disease.[106][107] British colonial authorities did not sign any treaties with Aboriginal groups.[107][108] As settlement expanded, thousands of Indigenous people died in frontier conflicts while others were dispossessed of their traditional lands.[109]

In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania),[110] and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement.[111] The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany).[112] The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western Australia.[113] In accordance with population growth, separate colonies were carved from New South Wales: Tasmania in 1825, South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1841, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859.[114] South Australia was founded as a free colony—it never accepted transported convicts.[115] Growing opposition to the convict system culminated in its abolition in the eastern colonies by the 1850s. Initially a free colony, Western Australia practised penal transportation from 1850 to 1868.[116]

The six colonies individually gained responsible government between 1855 and 1890, thus becoming elective democracies managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire.[117] The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs.[118]

In the mid-19th century, explorers such as Burke and Wills charted Australia's interior.[119] A series of gold rushes beginning in the early 1850s led to an influx of new migrants from China, North America and continental Europe,[120] as well as outbreaks of bushranging and civil unrest; the latter peaked in 1854 when Ballarat miners launched the Eureka Rebellion against gold license fees.[121] The 1860s saw a surge in blackbirding, where Pacific Islanders were forced into indentured labour, mainly in Queensland.[122][123]

From 1886, Australian colonial governments began introducing policies resulting in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities.[124] The Second Boer War (1899–1902) marked the largest overseas deployment of Australia's colonial

Federation to the World Wars

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, constitutional conventions and referendums, resulting in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia as a nation under the new Australian Constitution.[127]

After the 1907 Imperial Conference, Australia and several other self-governing British settler colonies were given the status of self-governing dominions within the British Empire.[128] Australia was one of the founding members of the League of Nations in 1920,[129] and subsequently of the United Nations in 1945.[130] The Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended the ability of the UK to pass laws with effect at the Commonwealth level in Australia without the country's consent. Australia adopted it in 1942, but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed by the Australian Parliament during World War II.[131][132][133]

The Australian Capital Territory was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra.[134] While it was being constructed, Melbourne served as the temporary capital from 1901 to 1927.[135] The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to the federal parliament in 1911.[136] Australia became the colonial ruler of the Territory of Papua (which had initially been annexed by Queensland in 1883) in 1902 and of the Territory of New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea) in 1920.[137][138] The two were unified as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in 1949 and gained independence from Australia in 1975.[137][139]

In 1914, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the First World War, and took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front.[140] Of about 416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded.[141] Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Gallipoli in 1915 as the "baptism of fire" that forged the new nation's identity.[142][143][144] The beginning of the campaign is commemorated annually on Anzac Day, a date which rivals Australia Day as the nation's most important.[145][146]

From 1939 to 1945, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the Second World War. Australia's armed forces fought in the Pacific, European and Mediterranean and Middle East theatres.[147][148] The shock of Britain's defeat in Singapore in 1942, followed soon after by the bombing of Darwin and other Japanese attacks on Australian soil, led to a widespread belief in Australia that a Japanese invasion was imminent, and a shift from the United Kingdom to the United States as Australia's principal ally and security partner.[149] Since 1951, Australia has been allied with the United States under the ANZUS treaty.[150]

Post-war and contemporary eras

In the decades following World War II, Australia enjoyed significant increases in living standards, leisure time and suburban development.[151][152] Using the slogan "populate or perish", the nation encouraged a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with such immigrants referred to as "New Australians".[153]

A member of the Western Bloc during the Cold War, Australia participated in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency during the 1950s and the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1972.[154] During this time, tensions over communist influence in society led to unsuccessful attempts by the Menzies Government to ban the Communist Party of Australia,[155] and a bitter split in the Labor Party in 1955.[156]

As a result of a 1967 referendum, the federal government gained the power to legislate with regard to Indigenous Australians, and Indigenous Australians were fully included in the census.[157] Pre-colonial land interests (referred to as native title in Australia) was recognised in law for the first time when the High Court of Australia held in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that Australia was neither terra nullius ("land belonging to no one") or "desert and uncultivated land" at the time of European settlement.[158][159]

Following the abolition of the last vestiges of the White Australia policy in 1973,[160] Australia's demography and culture transformed as a result of a large and ongoing wave of non-European immigration, mostly from Asia.[161][162] The late 20th century also saw an increasing focus on foreign policy ties with other Pacific Rim nations.[163] The Australia Acts severed the remaining constitutional ties between Australia and the United Kingdom while maintaining the monarch in her independent capacity as Queen of Australia.[164][165] In a 1999 constitutional referendum, 55% of voters rejected abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic.[166]

Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, Australia joined the United States in fighting the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2021 and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2009.[167] The nation's trade relations also became increasingly oriented towards East Asia in the 21st century, with China becoming the nation's largest trading partner by a large margin.[168]

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several of Australia's largest cities were locked down for extended periods and free movement across the national and state borders was restricted in an attempt to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.[169]

Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans,[N 7] Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas, with the Coral Sea lying off the Queensland coast, and the Tasman Sea lying between Australia and New Zealand. The world's smallest continent[171] and sixth-largest country by total area,[172] Australia—owing to its size and isolation—is often dubbed the "island continent"[173] and is sometimes considered the world's largest island.[174] Australia has 34,218 km (21,262 mi) of coastline (excluding all offshore islands),[175] and claims an extensive exclusive economic zone of 8,148,250 square kilometres (3,146,060 sq mi). This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory.[176]

Mainland Australia lies between latitudes 9° and 44° South, and longitudes 112° and 154° East.[177] Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and desert in the centre.[178] The desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land.[179] Australia is the driest inhabited continent; its annual rainfall averaged over continental area is less than 500 mm.[180] The population density is 3.4 inhabitants per square kilometre, although the large majority of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline. The population density exceeds 19,500 inhabitants per square kilometre in central Melbourne.[181] In 2021 Australia had 10% of the global permanent meadows and pastureland.[182]

The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef,[183] lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 2,000 km (1,200 mi). Mount Augustus, claimed to be the world's largest monolith,[184] is located in Western Australia. At 2,228 m (7,310 ft), Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. Even taller are Mawson Peak (at 2,745 m (9,006 ft)), on the remote Australian external territory of Heard Island, and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Mount McClintock and Mount Menzies, at 3,492 m (11,457 ft) and 3,355 m (11,007 ft) respectively.[185]

Eastern Australia is marked by the Great Dividing Range, which runs parallel to the coast of Queensland, New South Wales and much of Victoria. The name is not strictly accurate, because parts of the range consist of low hills, and the highlands are typically no more than 1,600 m (5,200 ft) in height.[186] The coastal uplands and a belt of Brigalow grasslands lie between the coast and the mountains, while inland of the dividing range are large areas of grassland and shrubland.[186][187] These include the western plains of New South Wales, and the Mitchell Grass Downs and Mulga Lands of inland Queensland.[188][189][190][191] The northernmost point of the mainland is the tropical Cape York Peninsula.[177]

The landscapes of the Top End and the Gulf Country—with their tropical climate—include forest, woodland, wetland, grassland, rainforest and desert.[192][193][194] At the north-west corner of the continent are the sandstone cliffs and gorges of The Kimberley, and below that the Pilbara. The Victoria Plains tropical savanna lies south of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land savannas, forming a transition between the coastal savannas and the interior deserts.[195][196][197] At the heart of the country are the uplands of central Australia. Prominent features of the centre and south include Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock), the famous sandstone monolith, and the inland Simpson, Tirari and Sturt Stony, Gibson, Great Sandy, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts, with the famous Nullarbor Plain on the southern coast.[198][199][200][201] The Western Australian mulga shrublands lie between the interior deserts and Mediterranean-climate Southwest Australia.[200][202]

Lying on the Indo-Australian Plate, the mainland of Australia is the lowest and most primordial landmass on Earth with a relatively stable geological history.[203][204] The landmass includes virtually all known rock types and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the Earth's history. The Pilbara Craton is one of only two pristine Archaean 3.6–2.7 Ga (billion years ago) crusts identified on the Earth.[205]

Having been part of all major supercontinents, the Australian continent began to form after the breakup of Gondwana in the Permian, with the separation of the continental landmass from the African continent and Indian subcontinent. It separated from Antarctica over a prolonged period beginning in the Permian and continuing through to the Cretaceous.[206] When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait, separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the mainland of Australia.[207] The Australian continent is moving toward Eurasia at the rate of 6 to 7 centimetres a year.[208]

The Australian mainland's continental crust, excluding the thinned margins, has an average thickness of 38 km, with a range in thickness from 24 km to 59 km.[209] Australia's geology can be divided into several main sections, showcasing that the continent grew from west to east: the Archaean cratonic shields found mostly in the west, Proterozoic fold belts in the centre and Phanerozoic sedimentary basins, metamorphic and igneous rocks in the east.[210]

The Australian mainland and Tasmania are situated in the middle of the tectonic plate and have no active volcanoes,[211] but due to passing over the East Australia hotspot, recent volcanism has occurred during the Holocene, in the Newer Volcanics Province of western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia. Volcanism also occurs in the island of New Guinea (considered geologically as part of the Australian continent), and in the Australian external territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands.[212] Seismic activity in the Australian mainland and Tasmania is also low, with the greatest number of fatalities having occurred in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.

The climate of Australia is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low-pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia.[215][216] These factors cause rainfall to vary markedly from year to year. Much of the northern part of the country has a tropical, predominantly summer-rainfall (monsoon).[180] The south-west corner of the country has a Mediterranean climate.[217] The south-east ranges from oceanic (Tasmania and coastal Victoria) to humid subtropical (upper half of New South Wales), with the highlands featuring alpine and subpolar oceanic climates. The interior is arid to semi-arid.[180]

Driven by climate change, average temperatures have risen more than 1°C since 1960. Associated changes in rainfall patterns and climate extremes exacerbate existing issues such as drought and bushfires. 2019 was Australia's warmest recorded year,[218] and the 2019–2020 bushfire season was the country's worst on record.[219] Australia's greenhouse gas emissions per capita are among the highest in the world.[220]

Water restrictions are frequently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages due to urban population increases and localised drought.[221][222] Throughout much of the continent, major flooding regularly follows extended periods of drought, flushing out inland river systems, overflowing dams and inundating large inland flood plains, as occurred throughout Eastern Australia in the early 2010s after the 2000s Australian drought.[223]

Biodiversity

Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, the continent includes a diverse range of habitats from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests. Fungi typify that diversity—an estimated 250,000 species—of which only 5% have been described—occur in Australia.[224] Because of the continent's great age, extremely variable weather patterns, and long-term geographic isolation, much of Australia's biota is unique. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds, and 89% of in-shore, temperate-zone fish are endemic.[225] Australia has at least 755 species of reptile, more than any other country in the world.[226] Besides Antarctica, Australia is the only continent that developed without feline species. Feral cats may have been introduced in the 17th century by Dutch shipwrecks, and later in the 18th century by European settlers. They are now considered a major factor in the decline and extinction of many vulnerable and endangered native species.[227] Seafaring immigrants from Asia are believed to have brought the dingo to Australia sometime after the end of the last ice age—perhaps 4000 years ago—and Aboriginal people helped disperse them across the continent as pets, contributing to the demise of thylacines on the mainland.[228][page needed] Australia is also one of 17 megadiverse countries.[229]

Australian forests are mostly made up of evergreen species, particularly eucalyptus trees in the less arid regions; wattles replace them as the dominant species in drier regions and deserts.[230] Among well-known Australian animals are the monotremes (the platypus and echidna); a host of marsupials, including the kangaroo, koala, and wombat, and birds such as the emu and the kookaburra.[230] Australia is home to many dangerous animals including some of the most venomous snakes in the world.[231] The dingo was introduced by Austronesian people who traded with Indigenous Australians around 3000 BCE.[232] Many animal and plant species became extinct soon after first human settlement,[233] including the Australian megafauna; others have disappeared since European settlement, among them the thylacine.[234][235]

Many of Australia's ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced animal, chromistan, fungal and plant species.[236] All these factors have led to Australia's having the highest mammal extinction rate of any country in the world.[237] The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the legal framework for the protection of threatened species.[238] Numerous protected areas have been created under the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity to protect and preserve unique ecosystems;[239][240] 65 wetlands are listed under the Ramsar Convention,[241] and 16 natural World Heritage Sites have been established.[242] Australia was ranked 21st out of 178 countries in the world on the 2018 Environmental Performance Index.[243] There are more than 1,800 animals and plants on Australia's threatened species list, including more than 500 animals.[244]

Paleontologists discovered a fossil site of a prehistoric rainforest in McGraths Flat, in South Australia, that presents evidence that this now arid desert and dry shrubland/grassland was once home to an abundance of life.[245][246]

Australia is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy and a federation.[247] The country has maintained its mostly unchanged constitution alongside a stable liberal democratic political system since Federation in 1901. It is one of the world's oldest federations, in which power is divided between the federal and state and territory governments. The Australian system of government combines elements derived from the political systems of the United Kingdom (a fused executive, constitutional monarchy and strong party discipline) and the United States (federalism, a written constitution and strong bicameralism with an elected upper house), resulting in a distinct hybrid.[248][249]

Government power is partially separated between three branches:[250]

Legislature: the bicameral Parliament, comprising the monarch, the Senate, and the House of Representatives

Executive: the Cabinet, led by the prime minister (the leader of the party or Coalition with a majority in the House of Representatives) and other ministers they have chosen; formally appointed by the governor-general[251]

Judiciary: the High Court and other federal courts

Charles III reigns as King of Australia and is represented in Australia by the governor-general at the federal level and by the governors at the state level, who by section 63 of the Constitution and convention act on the advice of their ministers.[252][253] Thus, in practice the governor-general acts as a legal figurehead for the actions of the prime minister and the Cabinet. The governor-general may in some situations exercise powers in the absence or contrary to ministerial advice using reserve powers. When these powers may be exercised is governed by convention and their precise scope is unclear. The most notable exercise of these powers was the dismissal of the Whitlam government in the constitutional crisis of 1975.[254]

In the Senate (the upper house), there are 76 senators: twelve each from the states and two each from the mainland territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory).[255] The House of Representatives (the lower house) has 151 members elected from single-member electoral divisions, commonly known as "electorates" or "seats", allocated to states on the basis of population, with each of the current states guaranteed a minimum of five seats.[256] The lower house has a maximum term of three years, but this is not fixed and governments usually dissolve the house early for an election at some point in the 6 months before the maximum.[257] Elections for both chambers are generally held simultaneously with senators having overlapping six-year terms except for those from the territories, whose terms are not fixed but are tied to the electoral cycle for the lower house. Thus only 40 of the 76 places in the Senate are put to each election unless the cycle is interrupted by a double dissolution.[255]

Australia's electoral system uses preferential voting for the House of Representatives and all state and territory lower house elections (with the exception of Tasmania and the ACT which use the Hare-Clark system). The Senate and most state upper houses use the "proportional system" which combines preferential voting with proportional representation for each state. Voting and enrolment is compulsory for all enrolled citizens 18 years and over in every jurisdiction.[258][259][260] The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister. In cases where no party has majority support, the governor-general has the constitutional power to appoint the prime minister and, if necessary, dismiss one that has lost the confidence of Parliament.[261] Due to the relatively unique position of Australia operating as a Westminster parliamentary democracy with a powerful and elected upper house, the system has sometimes been referred to as having a "Washminster mutation",[262] or as a semi-parliamentary system.[263]

There are two major political groups that usually form government, federally and in the states: the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition, which is a formal grouping of the Liberal Party and its minor partner, the National Party.[264][265] The Liberal National Party and the Country Liberal Party are merged state branches in Queensland and the Northern Territory that function as separate parties at a federal level.[266] Within Australian political culture, the Coalition is considered centre-right and the Labor Party is considered centre-left.[267] Independent members and several minor parties have achieved representation in Australian parliaments, mostly in upper houses. The Australian Greens are often considered the "third force" in politics, being the third largest party by both vote and membership.[268][269]

The most recent federal election was held on 21 May 2022 and resulted in the Australian Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, being elected to government.[270]

Australia has six states—New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (Vic), Queensland (Qld), Western Australia (WA), South Australia (SA) and Tasmania (Tas)—and two mainland self-governing territories—the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT).[271]

The states have the general power to make laws except in the few areas where the constitution grants the Commonwealth exclusive powers.[272][273] The Commonwealth can only make laws on topics listed in the constitution but its laws prevail over those of the states to the extent of any inconsistency.[274][275] Since Federation, the Commonwealth's power relative to the states has significantly increased due to the increasingly wide interpretation given to listed Commonwealth powers and because of the states' heavy financial reliance on Commonwealth grants.[276][277]

Each state and major mainland territory has its own parliament—unicameral in the Northern Territory, the ACT and Queensland, and bicameral in the other states. The lower houses are known as the Legislative Assembly (the House of Assembly in South Australia and Tasmania); the upper houses are known as the Legislative Council. The head of the government in each state is the Premier and in each territory the Chief Minister. The King is represented in each state by a governor. At the Commonwealth level, the King's representative is the governor-general.[278]

The Commonwealth government directly administers the internal Jervis Bay Territory and the other external territories: the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the Indian Ocean territories (Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands), Norfolk Island,[281] and the Australian Antarctic Territory.[282][283][251] The remote Macquarie Island and Lord Howe Island are part of Tasmania and New South Wales respectively.[284][285]

Foreign relations

Australia is a middle power,[43] whose foreign relations has three core bi-partisan pillars: commitment to the US alliance, engagement with the Indo-Pacific and support for international institutions, rules and co-operation.[286][287][288] Through the ANZUS pact and its status as a major non-NATO ally, Australia maintains a close relationship with the US, which encompasses strong defence, security and trade ties.[289][290] In the Indo-Pacific, the country seeks to increase its trade ties through the open flow of trade and capital, whilst managing the rise of Chinese power by supporting the existing rules based order.[287] Regionally, the country is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community, the ASEAN+6 mechanism and the East Asia Summit. Internationally, the country is a member of the United Nations (of which it was a founding member), the Commonwealth of Nations, the OECD and the G20. This reflects the country's generally strong commitment to multilateralism.[291][292]

Australia is a member of several defence, intelligence and security groupings including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand; the ANZUS alliance with the United States and New Zealand; the AUKUS security treaty with the United States and United Kingdom; the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the United States, India and Japan; the Five Power Defence Arrangements with New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore; and the Reciprocal Access defence and security agreement with Japan.

Australia has pursued the cause of international trade liberalisation.[293] It led the formation of the Cairns Group and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation,[294][295] and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).[296][297] Beginning in the 2000s, Australia has entered into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership multilateral free trade agreements as well as bilateral free trade agreements with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, with the most recent deal with UK signed in 2023.[298]

Australia maintains a deeply integrated relationship with neighbouring New Zealand, with free mobility of citizens between the two countries under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement and free trade under the Closer Economic Relations agreement.[299] The most favourably viewed countries by the Australian people in 2021 include New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and South Korea.[300] It also maintains an international aid program under which some 75 countries receive assistance.[301] Australia ranked fourth in the Center for Global Development's 2021 Commitment to Development Index.[302]

The power over foreign policy is highly concentrated in the prime minister and the national security committee, with major decision such as joining the 2003 invasion of Iraq made with without prior Cabinet approval.[303][304] Similarly, the Parliament does not play a formal role in foreign policy and the power to declare war lies solely with the executive government.[305] The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supports the executive in its policy decisions.

Military

The two main institutions involved in the management of Australia's armed forces are the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Department of Defence, together known as "Defence".[306] The Australian Defence Force is the military wing, headed by the chief of the defence force, and contains three branches: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force. In 2021, it had 84,865 currently serving personnel (including 60,286 regulars and 24,581 reservists).[307] The Department of Defence is the civilian wing and is headed by the secretary of defence. These two leaders collective manage Defence as a diarchy, with shared and joint responsibilities.[308] The titular role of commander-in-chief is held by the governor-general, however actual command is vested in the chief of the Defence Force.[309] The executive branch of the Commonwealth government has overall control of the military through the minister of defence, who is subject to the decisions of Cabinet and its National Security Committee.[310]

In 2022, defence spending was 1.9% of GDP, representing the world's 13th largest defence budget.[311] In 2024, the ADF had active operations in the Middle-East and the Indo-Pacific (including security and aid provisions), was contributing to UN forces in relation to South Sudan, Syria-Israel and North Korea, and domestically was assisting to prevent asylum-seekers enter the country and with natural disaster relief.[312]

Major Australian intelligence agencies include the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (foreign intelligence), the Australian Signals Directorate (signals intelligence) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (domestic security).

Human rights

Legal and social rights in Australia are regarded as among the most developed in the world.[39] Attitudes towards LGBT people are generally positive within Australia, and same-sex marriage has been legal in the nation since 2017 (LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!) .[313][314] Australia has had anti-discrimination laws regarding disability since 1992.[315] However, international organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concerns in areas including asylum-seeker policy, indigenous deaths in custody, the lack of entrenched rights protection and laws restricting protesting.[316][317]

Economy

Australia's high-income mixed-market economy is rich in natural resources.[318] It is the world's fourteenth-largest by nominal terms, and the 18th-largest by PPP. As of 2021, it has the second-highest amount of wealth per adult, after Luxembourg,[319] and has the thirteenth-highest financial assets per capita.[320] Australia has a labour force of some 13.5 million, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% as of June 2022.[321] According to the Australian Council of Social Service, the poverty rate of Australia exceeds 13.6% of the population, encompassing 3.2 million. It also estimated that there were 774,000 (17.7%) children under the age of 15 living in relative poverty.[322][323] The Australian dollar is the national currency, which is also used by three island states in the Pacific: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu.[324]

Australian government debt, about $963 billion in June 2022, exceeds 45.1% of the country's total GDP, and is the world's eighth-highest.[325] Australia had the second-highest level of household debt in the world in 2020, after Switzerland.[326] Its house prices are among the highest in the world, especially in the large urban areas.[327] The large service sector accounts for about 71.2% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (25.3%), while its agriculture sector is by far the smallest, making up only 3.6% of total GDP.[328] Australia is the world's 21st-largest exporter and 24th-largest importer.[329][330] China is Australia's largest trading partner by a wide margin, accounting for roughly 40% of the country's exports and 17.6% of its imports.[331] Other major export markets include Japan, the United States, and South Korea.[332]

Australia has high levels of competitiveness and economic freedom, and was ranked fifth in the Human Development Index in 2021.[333] As of 2022, it is ranked twelfth in the Index of Economic Freedom and nineteenth in the Global Competitiveness Report.[334][335] It attracted 9.5 million international tourists in 2019,[336] and was ranked thirteenth among the countries of Asia-Pacific in 2019 for inbound tourism.[337] The 2021 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Australia seventh-highest in the world out of 117 countries.[338] Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $45.7 billion.[337]

Energy

In 2021–22, Australia's generation of electricity was sourced from black coal (37.2%), brown coal (12%), natural gas (18.8%), hydro (6.5%), wind (11.1%), solar (13.3%), bio-energy (1.2%) and others (1.7%).[339][340] Total consumption of energy in this period was sourced from coal (28.4%), oil (37.3%), gas (27.4%) and renewables (7%).[341] From 2012 to 2022, the energy sourced from renewables has increased 5.7%, whilst energy sourced from coal has decreased 2.6%. The use of gas also increased by 1.5% and the use of oil stayed relatively stable with a reduction of only 0.2%.[342]

In 2020, Australia produced 27.7% of its electricity from renewable sources, exceeding the target set by the Commonwealth government in 2009 of 20% renewable energy by 2020.[343][344] A new target of 82% percent renewable energy by 2030 was set in 2022[345] and a target for net zero emissions by 2050 was set in 2021.[346]

Science and technology

In 2019, Australia spent $35.6 billion on research and development, allocating about 1.79% of GDP.[347] A recent study by Accenture for the Tech Council shows that the Australian tech sector combined contributes $167 billion a year to the economy and employs 861,000 people.[348] In addition, recent startup ecosystems in Sydney and Melbourne are already valued at $34 billion combined.[349] Australia ranked 24th in the Global Innovation Index 2023.[350]

With only 0.3% of the world's population, Australia contributed 4.1% of the world's published research in 2020, making it one of the top 10 research contributors in the world.[351][352] CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, contributes 10% of all research in the country, while the rest is carried out by universities.[352] Its most notable contributions include the invention of atomic absorption spectroscopy,[353] the essential components of Wi-Fi technology,[354] and the development of the first commercially successful polymer banknote.[355]

Australia is a key player in supporting space exploration. Facilities such as the Square Kilometre Array and Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescopes, telescopes such as the Siding Spring Observatory, and ground stations such as the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex are of great assistance in deep space exploration missions, primarily by NASA.[356]

Demographics

Australia has an average population density of 3.4 persons per square kilometre of total land area, which makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The population is heavily concentrated on the east coast, and in particular in the south-eastern region between South East Queensland to the north-east and Adelaide to the south-west.[357]

Australia is also highly urbanised, with 67% of the population living in the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (metropolitan areas of the state and mainland territorial capital cities) in 2018.[358] Metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.[359]

In common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age. In 2021 the average age of the population was 39 years.[360] In 2015, 2.15% of the Australian population lived overseas, one of the lowest proportions worldwide.[361]

Ancestry and immigration

Between 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. Following Federation in 1901, a strengthening of the white Australia policy restricted further migration from these areas. However, in the decades immediately following the Second World War, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with many more immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. All overt racial discrimination ended in 1973, with multiculturalism becoming official policy.[363] Subsequently, there has been a large and continuing wave of immigration from across the world, with Asia being the largest source of immigrants in the 21st century.[364]

Today, Australia has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30% of the population, the highest proportion among major Western nations.[365][366] In 2022–23, 212,789 permanent migrants were admitted to Australia, with a net migration population gain of 518,000 people inclusive of non-permanent residents.[367][368] Most entered on skilled visas,[364] however the immigration program also offers visas for family members and refugees.[369]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics asks each Australian resident to nominate up to two ancestries each census and the responses are classified into broad ancestry groups.[370][371] At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups as a proportion of the total population were:[372] 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European), 33.8% Oceanian,[N 8] 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian, 6.4% North-East Asian, and 4.5% South-East Asian), 3.2% North African and Middle Eastern, 1.4% Peoples of the Americas, and 1.3% Sub-Saharan African. At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated individual ancestries as a proportion of the total population were:[N 9][4]

English (33%)

Australian (29.9%)[N 10]

Irish (9.5%)

Scottish (8.6%)

Chinese (5.5%)

Italian (4.4%)

German (4%)

Indian (3.1%)

Aboriginal (2.9%)[N 11]

Greek (1.7%)

Filipino (1.6%)

Dutch (1.5%)

Vietnamese (1.3%)

Lebanese (1%)

At the 2021 census, 3.8% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous—Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.[N 12][375]

Language

Although English is not the official language of Australia in law, it is the de facto official and national language.[376][377] Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon,[378] and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling.[379] General Australian serves as the standard dialect.[380]

At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%).[381]

Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact.[382] The National Indigenous Languages Survey (NILS) for 2018–19 found that more than 120 Indigenous language varieties were in use or being revived, although 70 of those in use were endangered.[383] The 2021 census found that 167 Indigenous languages were spoken at home by 76,978 Indigenous Australians — Yumplatok (Torres Strait Creole), Djambarrpuyngu (a Yolŋu language) and Pitjantjatjara (a Western Desert language) were among the most widely spoken.[384] NILS and the Australian Bureau of Statistics use different classifications for Indigenous Australian languages.[385]

The Australian sign language known as Auslan was used at home by 16,242 people at the time of the 2021 census.[386]

Religion

Australia has no state religion; section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the Australian government from making any law to establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion.[387] However, the states still retain the power to pass religiously discriminatory laws.[388]

At the 2021 census, 38.9% of the population identified as having "no religion",[4] up from 15.5% in 2001.[389] The largest religion is Christianity (43.9% of the population).[4] The largest Christian denominations are the Roman Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Non-British immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, the largest of which are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%).[390][4]

In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions.[4] In Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.[391]

Health

Australia's life expectancy of 83 years (81 years for males and 85 years for females),[392] is the fifth-highest in the world. It has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world,[393] while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%.[394][395] Australia ranked 35th in the world in 2012 for its proportion of obese women[396] and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults;[397] 63% of its adult population is either overweight or obese.[398]

Australia spent around 9.91% of its total GDP to health care in 2021.[399] It introduced a national insurance scheme in 1975.[400] Following a period in which access to the scheme was restricted, the scheme became universal once more in 1981 under the name of Medicare.[401] The program is nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, currently at 2%.[402] The states manage hospitals and attached outpatient services, while the Commonwealth funds the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (subsidising the costs of medicines) and general practice.[400]

Education

School attendance, or registration for home schooling,[403] is compulsory throughout Australia. Education is primarily the responsibility of the individual states and territories, however the Commonwealth has significant influence through funding agreements.[404] Since 2014, a national curriculum developed by the Commonwealth has been implemented by the states and territories.[405] Attendance rules vary between states, but in general children are required to attend school from the age of about 5 until about 16.[406][407] In some states (Western Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales), children aged 16–17 are required to either attend school or participate in vocational training, such as an apprenticeship.[408][409][410][411]

Australia has an adult literacy rate that was estimated to be 99% in 2003.[412] However, a 2011–2012 report for the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 44% of the population does not have high literary and numeracy competence levels, interpreted by others as suggesting that they do not have the "skills needed for everyday life".[413][414][415]

Australia has 37 government-funded universities and three private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level.[416] The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university.[417] There is a state-based system of vocational training, known as TAFE, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople.[418] About 58% of Australians aged from 25 to 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications[419] and the tertiary graduation rate of 49% is the highest among OECD countries. 30.9% of Australia's population has attained a higher education qualification, which is among the highest percentages in the world.[420][421][422]

Australia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin, with 812,000 international students enrolled in the nation's universities and vocational institutions in 2019.[423][424] Accordingly, in 2019, international students represented on average 26.7% of the student bodies of Australian universities. International education therefore represents one of the country's largest exports and has a pronounced influence on the country's demographics, with a significant proportion of international students remaining in Australia after graduation on various skill and employment visas.[425] Education is Australia's third-largest export, after iron ore and coal, and contributed over $28 billion to the economy in 2016–17.[352]

Culture

Contemporary Australian culture reflects the country's Indigenous traditions, Anglo-Celtic heritage, and post 1970s history of multicultural immigration.[427][428][429] The culture of the United States has also been influential.[430] The evolution of Australian culture since British colonisation has given rise to distinctive cultural traits.[431][432]

Many Australians identify egalitarianism, mateship, irreverence and a lack of formality as part of their national identity.[433][434][435] These find expression in Australian slang, as well as Australian humour, which is often characterised as dry, irreverent and ironic.[436][437] New citizens and visa holders are required to commit to "Australian values", which are identified by the Department of Home Affairs as including: a respect for the freedom of the individual; recognition of the rule of law; opposition to racial, gender and religious discrimination; and an understanding of the "fair go", which is said to encompass the equality of opportunity for all and compassion for those in need.[438] What these values mean, and whether or not Australians uphold them, has been debated since before Federation.[439][440][441][442]

Arts

Australia has over 100,000 Aboriginal rock art sites,[444] and traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, "the last great art movement of the 20th century" according to critic Robert Hughes;[445] its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye.[446] Early colonial artists showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land.[447] The impressionistic works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and other members of the 19th-century Heidelberg School—the first "distinctively Australian" movement in Western art—gave expression to nationalist sentiments in the lead-up to Federation.[447] While the school remained influential into the 1900s, modernists such as Margaret Preston and Clarice Beckett, and, later, Sidney Nolan, explored new artistic trends.[447] The landscape remained central to the work of Aboriginal watercolourist Albert Namatjira,[448] as well as Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and other post-war artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract.[447][449]

Australian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older.[450] In the 19th century, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson captured the experience of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary.[451] Their works are still popular; Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem.[452] Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded annually to the best novel about Australian life.[453] Its first recipient, Patrick White, went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.[454] Australian Booker Prize winners include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan.[455] Australian public intellectuals have also written seminal works in their respective fields, including feminist Germaine Greer and philosopher Peter Singer.[456]

In the performing arts, Aboriginal peoples have traditions of religious and secular song, dance and rhythmic music often performed in corroborees.[457] At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers,[458] and later popular music acts such as the Bee Gees, AC/DC, INXS and Kylie Minogue achieved international recognition.[459] Many of Australia's performing arts companies receive funding through the Australian government's Australia Council.[460] There is a symphony orchestra in each state,[461] and a national opera company, Opera Australia,[462] well known for its famous soprano Joan Sutherland.[463] Ballet and dance are represented by The Australian Ballet and various state companies. Each state has a publicly funded theatre company.[464]

Media

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film, spurred a boom in Australian cinema during the silent film era.[465] After World War I, Hollywood monopolised the industry,[466] and by the 1960s Australian film production had effectively ceased.[467] With the benefit of government support, the Australian New Wave of the 1970s brought provocative and successful films, many exploring themes of national identity, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wake in Fright and Gallipoli,[468] while Crocodile Dundee and the Ozploitation movement's Mad Max series became international blockbusters.[469] In a film market flooded with foreign content, Australian films delivered a 7.7% share of the local box office in 2015.[470] The AACTAs are Australia's premier film and television awards, and notable Academy Award winners from Australia include Geoffrey Rush, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger.[471]

Australia has two public broadcasters (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service), three commercial television networks, several pay-TV services,[472] and numerous public, non-profit television and radio stations. Each major city has at least one daily newspaper,[472] and there are two national daily newspapers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review.[472] In 2020, Reporters Without Borders placed Australia 25th on a list of 180 countries ranked by press freedom, behind New Zealand (8th) but ahead of the United Kingdom (33rd) and United States (44th).[473] This relatively low ranking is primarily because of the limited diversity of commercial media ownership in Australia;[474] most print media are under the control of News Corporation (59%) and Nine Entertainment Co (23%).[475]

Cuisine

Most Indigenous Australian groups subsisted on a hunter-gatherer diet of native fauna and flora, otherwise called bush tucker.[476] It has increased in popularity among non-Indigenous Australians since the 1970s, with examples such as lemon myrtle, the macadamia nut and kangaroo meat now widely available.[477][478]

The first colonists introduced British and Irish cuisine to the continent.[479][480] This influence is seen in dishes such as fish and chips, and in the Australian meat pie, which is related to the British steak pie. Also during the colonial period, Chinese migrants paved the way for a distinctive Australian Chinese cuisine.[481]

Post-war migrants transformed Australian cuisine, bringing with them their culinary traditions and contributing to new fusion dishes.[482] Italians introduced espresso coffee and, along with Greeks, helped develop Australia's café culture, of which the flat white and "smashed avo" on toast are now considered Australian staples.[483][484] Pavlovas, lamingtons, Vegemite and Anzac biscuits are also often called iconic Australian foods.[485]

Australia is a leading exporter and consumer of wine.[486] Australian wine is produced mainly in the southern, cooler parts of the country.[487] The nation also ranks highly in beer consumption,[488] with each state and territory hosting numerous breweries.

Sport and recreation

The most popular sports in Australia by adult participation are: swimming, athletics, cycling, soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, surfing, netball and cricket.[490]

Australia is one of five nations to have participated in every Summer Olympics of the modern era,[491] and has hosted the Games twice: 1956 in Melbourne and 2000 in Sydney.[492] It is also set to host the 2032 Games in Brisbane.[493] Australia has also participated in every Commonwealth Games,[494] hosting the event in 1938, 1962, 1982, 2006 and 2018.[495]

Cricket is a major national sport.[496] The Australian national cricket team competed against England in the first Test match (1877) and the first One Day International (1971), and against New Zealand in the first Twenty20 International (2004), winning all three games.[497] It has also won the men's Cricket World Cup a record six times.[498]

Australia has professional leagues for four football codes, whose relative popularity is divided geographically.[499] Originating in Melbourne in the 1850s, Australian rules football attracts the most television viewers in all states except New South Wales and Queensland, where rugby league holds sway, followed by rugby union.[500] Soccer, while ranked fourth in television viewers and resources, has the highest overall participation rates.[501]

The surf lifesaving movement originated in Australia, and the volunteer lifesaver is one of the country's icons.[502]

Why did i do this-

[nettchan01]

photography artists

Some of the artists from this project have yet to do so. I really know where, or I just need to recognise it. John Berger is a familiar artist. In my college years, I studied his ways of seeing things. So, it's like a different perspective as an artist, photographer, painter or sculptor artist. So, these last three and two weeks, I have researched all of these artists using the images I had Photoshopped. I just searched for some on Wikipedia because some have extended bibliographies. Cindy Sherman, I researched from the library archive.Interestingly, the library archives had many images collected digitally from these artists' photography work. Unfortunately, I asked for a library in the university material room, but I need to have it recommended that I look up the library archives. So it touched it out, and many artists' works have been posted without any text or history, like Vivian Maier and Francesca Woodman. Francesco Woodman doesn't really have too much information because of her work.

Published by her husband because she passed away in her early 20s and couldn't publish her work. Also, only a few people wanted to be there when she lived there. Publishing or exhibiting her photographs, unfortunately, In Myers. She's more like an experimental lady who likes to be explored outside. She went to be a nanny and worked as a nanny for children, and whenever she went outside to travel around, she studied people around countries and places and photographed there. I also inspired John Burgers and Susan Santage, who are John Broker. Like I mentioned in my notes like, he's more reflecting on painting and photography, like how to compare with each other and how much time they battle between them, and also mentioning the Renaissance times about like that time, they just started to be experimenting the 17th and the 15th century. So it's interesting. I only remember a little. That's the only thing I memorised from John Burger's book about oil paintings and photography's revelations and similarities. Susan Sontag also had a similar expression. But Susan Santiago, I couldn't research her that much of her book because I could only listen to her audiobooks and didn't see any images or pictures of her works. So, explaining her works and meanings took a lot of work. So I will be.

Looked back at the audio guides. About her work, it was hard to find on the library arch, and I will check later. Um, in the library. I least checked Wikipedia and the interview with John Burger. And they are likely to show sympathy for others when they see something from the images. It's more like a sympathetic conversation about the pictures, as it seemed to me the first time. But I plan to look back and understand what they would try to explain. One of the videos I had been checking was like speaking in French, so I didn't realise what was happening.

I checked out the subtitles, but there is no chance of having the English titles on. They also just had similarities. Uh, deviant. Um. Work. So photography. Photography of people. Photography of outside. It seems more like expression, and molecular expressionism was more like impressionism at the time. Realism is also compared with these images. And also the moments.

It was Hasam's serialism bar. In my notes, I'm mentioning John Schizag. I did a little research on John's image, the type of photographer who created photographs of celebrity posters or single people who got like photographs. They cut their faces out, put the landscapes in, and make a serial image. So, it was complex and challenging to explain. What exactly were they presented with? John Schizax was his one. He is one of the photographers who inspired me when I was in college or studying art.

It would be fun and inspiring to look at these two landscape images. So, combining images like the female and male images of the celebrity pictures that were so inspiring in college, I did the same thing I combined mine. Faces with the with my. grandmother's face in the old photographs from when I was in college. So it was fun to try out this kind of. This kind of image.

[ecoledetheatreparis]

Exploring the Theatre Schools of Paris

Paris, the cultural heart of France, has long been a beacon for aspiring artists, particularly in the realm of theatre. The city boasts a rich tradition of theatrical excellence, with numerous schools dedicated to nurturing talent and pushing the boundaries of performance arts. These institutions blend rigorous training with a deep appreciation for both classical and contemporary theatre, making Paris an ideal destination for anyone serious about a career on the stage. Consultez leur site pour en savoir plus ecole de theatre paris.

Historical Context

Theatre in Paris has roots that extend back to the Middle Ages, with the city's first permanent theatres established in the 16th and 17th centuries. This historical context provides a fertile ground for theatre education, as students are immersed in a tradition that includes iconic figures such as Molière and Racine. The blend of historical influence and modern innovation creates a unique educational environment.

Notable Institutions

Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD)

One of the most prestigious theatre schools in Paris is the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD). Founded in 1784, CNSAD has a storied history of producing some of France's most notable actors. The conservatoire offers a comprehensive curriculum that includes acting, voice training, movement, and stage combat, as well as classes on theatre history and dramaturgy. Admission is highly competitive, with auditions that test not only technical skill but also artistic vision and emotional depth.

École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq

Another cornerstone of Parisian theatre education is the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Known for its emphasis on physical theatre, this school focuses on the body's expressive potential. Founded by Jacques Lecoq in 1956, the school teaches techniques based on mime, mask work, and improvisation. Lecoq’s pedagogy encourages creativity and innovation, helping students develop their unique artistic voices. The school's influence can be seen in the work of numerous successful theatre companies and actors worldwide.

Cours Florent

Cours Florent is renowned for its practical approach to acting. Established in 1967, it offers an array of programs in French and English, making it accessible to international students. The school is known for its dynamic training methods and emphasis on contemporary theatre. Cours Florent alumni include notable actors such as Audrey Tautou and Diane Kruger. The curriculum includes acting classes, workshops, and opportunities to perform in student productions, providing a well-rounded education in the performing arts.

Unique Pedagogical Approaches

Parisian theatre schools are distinguished by their diverse pedagogical approaches. CNSAD offers a classical conservatory experience, emphasizing a rigorous and comprehensive study of acting. In contrast, the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq emphasizes a physical and improvisational approach, encouraging students to explore and expand the boundaries of traditional theatre.

Moreover, many schools incorporate a strong element of practical experience. Students at institutions like Cours Florent and Studio Magenia (specializing in physical and gestural theatre) are frequently involved in public performances, giving them a taste of professional theatre life and allowing them to build their résumés.

Cultural Immersion

Studying theatre in Paris also means immersion in a vibrant cultural landscape. The city is home to numerous theatres, from the historic Comédie-Française to contemporary venues like Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de la Ville. This allows students to regularly attend performances, participate in festivals, and engage with a dynamic community of artists.

Conclusion

Parisian theatre schools offer a unique blend of historical tradition and modern innovation, making them ideal for aspiring actors and theatre professionals. Institutions like CNSAD, École Jacques Lecoq, and Cours Florent provide rigorous training while fostering creativity and individuality. The rich cultural environment of Paris enhances this education, offering students countless opportunities to grow as artists and performers. For those passionate about theatre, studying in Paris is not just an education; it's an experience that shapes and defines their artistic journey.

[dutch-and-flemish-painters]

Jacob Marrel (1613/1614 – 11 November 1681) was a German still life painter active in Utrecht during the Dutch Golden Age.

A still life (pl.: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).

With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. One advantage of the still-life artform is that it allows an artist much freedom to experiment with the arrangement of elements within a composition of a painting. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted.

Still life occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy of genres, but has been extremely popular with buyers. As well as the independent still-life subject, still-life painting encompasses other types of painting with prominent still-life elements, usually symbolic, and "images that rely on a multitude of still-life elements ostensibly to reproduce a 'slice of life'". The trompe-l'œil painting, which intends to deceive the viewer into thinking the scene is real, is a specialized type of still life, usually showing inanimate and relatively flat objects.

A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value.

In literature, the epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by Samuel Johnson in his Life of John Milton: "By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions." Below that came lyric poetry, and comic poetry, with a similar ranking for drama. The novel took a long time to establish a firm place in the hierarchy, doing so only as belief in any systematic hierarchy of forms expired in the 19th century.

In music, settings of words were accorded a higher status than merely instrumental works, at least until the Baroque period, and opera retained a superior status for much longer. The status of works also varies with the number of players and singers involved, with those written for large forces, which are certainly more difficult to write and more expensive to perform, given higher status. Any element of comedy reduced the status of a work, though, as in other art forms, often increased its popularity.

The hierarchies in figurative art are those initially formulated for painting in 16th-century Italy, which held sway with little alteration until the early 19th century. These were formalized and promoted by the academies in Europe between the 17th century and the modern era, of which the most influential became the French Académie de peinture et de sculpture, which held a central role in Academic art. The fully developed hierarchy distinguished between:

History painting, including historically important, religious, mythological, or allegorical subjects

Portrait painting

Genre painting or scenes of everyday life

Landscape and cityscape art (landscapists were called "common footmen in the Army of Art" by the Dutch theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten)

Animal painting

Still life

The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to "render visible the universal essence of things" (imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" (ritrarre). Idealism was privileged over realism in line with Renaissance Neo-Platonist philosophy.

Still Life with a Vase of Flowers and a Dead Frog

Jacob Marrel, 1634

[duxiaomin-blog]

The Fusion and Innovation of Eastern Aesthetics in European Art

The Fusion and Innovation of Eastern Aesthetics in European Art

In the long history of European art, Eastern aesthetics serves as an undeniable thread, weaving together the mystery and splendor of the East with the artistic traditions of the West, thus creating a uniquely captivating artistic landscape. From ancient times to the present, Eastern culture and aesthetic principles have played a significant role in European art. The integration of Eastern aesthetics represents not only a cultural exchange but also a collision of ideas and a renewal of artistic forms. From the introduction of exotic treasures from the East to Europe, to the inspiration of Eastern painting styles on Western art, and further to the influence of Eastern decorative arts on European architecture and design, all demonstrate the profound impact of Eastern aesthetics on European art. This fusion is not merely about imitation or borrowing, but rather about the creation of new artistic forms and styles through mutual learning and absorption.

In 18th century England, China was perceived as a mysterious and distant land. Despite increasing trade between the two nations during the 17th and 18th centuries, access to China was still restricted, leaving people with very limited first-hand experiences of the country. It was within this context that Chinese-inspired decoration began to fully capitalize on these exotic and mysterious preconceptions. Various items featured fantastical landscapes such as pavilions and pagodas, distinctive Chinese-style roof shapes, elaborate birds, and figures dressed in traditional Chinese attire.

Thomas Chippendale's "The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director"

During this period, publications such as William Halfpenny's "New Designs for Chinese Temples" (1750) and Thomas Chippendale's "The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director" (1754) helped drive the production of Chinese-style furniture. "The Director" showcased a complete range of available furniture designs in the 18th century, along with the popular stylistic spectrum. Chippendale pioneered a distinctive Rococo style, blending Chinese and Gothic elements, where Chinese pavilions and pagodas were abstracted into delicate frameworks, combined with Rococo floral motifs, laying the groundwork for the "English" Rococo style.

Chinoiserie lacquer cabinet, housed in the V&A Museum

Starting from the 1670s, an increasing number of lacquerware items were imported from Asia to Europe. Merchants of the British East India Company worked diligently to ensure that Chinoiserie lacquer furniture could meet the demands of the domestic market. At this time in continental Europe, the prevailing artistic style was still Baroque. Inspired by Chinese lacquerware, artists and craftsmen created classic pieces that fused the local Baroque style with Chinoiserie influences.

Among the Chinoiserie furniture collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum in Britain, there is a cabinet made in 1688. It features a Chinese-style lacquered body and Baroque-style gilded table legs. This piece embodies both the extravagant decoration and mysterious aura of the East, as well as the weightiness and dynamic movement characteristic of Baroque art. Chinese motifs such as those found on hinges, floral and bird motifs, and landscapes with figures collide with Western motifs such as acanthus leaves and angels, creating a tension between the reserved and the flamboyant, as well as between the two- and three-dimensional representations of Eastern and Western beauty.

In the realm of jewelry, the fusion of exquisite Italian craftsmanship with Chinoiserie, represented by ChuCui Palace, stands out as a prime example. Chinoiserie, a European style influenced by Chinese art, began to emerge in the late 13th century and reached its peak in the mid-18th century. ChuCui Palace delves deeply into the essence of classic Eastern aesthetics within Chinoiserie and merges it with traditional Chinese fine brushwork and freehand painting, creating timeless masterpieces imbued with contemporary significance that lead the way in the modern Chinoiserie style.

ChuCui Palace "Dancing in Clouds" necklace

The necklace "Dancing in Clouds" by ChuCui Palace exemplifies the fusion of freehand painting from traditional Chinese art with Chinoiserie. Inspired by the classic Chinese cultural element of the crane, the piece emphasizes the sinuous lines inherited from the Rococo style within Chinoiserie, creating a strong sense of movement. The crane's neck and tail feathers are abstracted into simplified and delicate curves, outlining the magnificent decorative colors reminiscent of the East. These curves, delicate and graceful, interpret the abstract techniques of Chinese freehand painting while also portraying the ethereal grace of cranes in subjective imagery. The piece emulates the pure and elegant aesthetics of Chinese ink painting, primarily using diamond white and ink colors. The slender neck and plump tail feathers are juxtaposed, creating a tension between abstraction and realism, simplicity and complexity, and depicting the crane's demeanor as it tidies its feathers. Overall, the incorporation of movement, the use of curves, and the juxtaposition of abstraction and ink aesthetics from Chinese freehand painting within Chinoiserie create a classic masterpiece rich in historical significance while also capable of leading contemporary trends.

Chinoiserie sketches by the French painter Jean-Baptiste Pillement

In addition to furniture and jewelry, European artists also knew how to adapt traditional Chinese patterns into classic French Rococo decorative motifs. This print is the title page of "Nouveau Livre de Chinoiseries" (1755), by the French painter and designer Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808), marking the first pattern book dedicated to Chinese-inspired designs. The artwork showcases Pillement's ladder composed of curvilinear leaves, resembling the typical shapes of the French Rococo style, such as the letter 'C'. The piece is filled with fantastical colors and strong decorative elements, influenced by Eastern aesthetics. This Chinoiserie style, compared to the Baroque, demonstrates a better understanding of negative space, featuring delicate and lightweight foliage decorations, and achieving visual balance through asymmetrical compositions influenced by Eastern aesthetics.

The fusion and innovation of Eastern aesthetics in European art represent a transcendent artistic dialogue and integration across time and space. From ancient times to the present, the mystique and splendor of the East have continuously captivated the attention of European artists, inspiring them to create uniquely enchanting works. Whether in the fields of furniture, jewelry, or painting, Eastern aesthetics have injected new vitality and inspiration into European art. Through deep exploration and study of the essence of Eastern aesthetics, European artists have not only created new artistic forms and styles but also enriched the diversity and charm of European art. In future artistic endeavors, the cross-cultural exchange and integration of Eastern aesthetics with Western art will continue to be a challenging and innovative field, bringing forth more surprises and revelations to the art world.

[egoschwank]

al things considered — when i post my masterpiece #1251

first posted in facebook december 23, 2023

guido reni -- "adoration of the shepherds" (ca. 1640)

"what had alerted me […] to guido reni was some current research being done by professor semir zeki, chair of neuroaesthetics at university college, london. ordinary, non-artistic folks have been hooked up to brain sensors and shown a bunch of paintings by a variety of historical artists. the probes were set to access blood flow in those parts of the brain that register the kind of pleasure you get when you’re looking at the love of your life. out of all the art flashed at these folks, the painters whose work got the hottest reactions were the english landscape painter john constable, the french neoclassicist j.a. dominique ingres, and, yep, the 17th century italian high-baroque painter guido reni" … lifted from "the painter's keys"

"and you light up my life you give me hope to carry on you light up my days and fill my nights with song" … joseph brooks

"and what is it, you might ask, that caused those pleasure synapses to light up in the brains of ordinary folks? we can’t put it down to lust for the human body — constable’s landscapes were often unpeopled. and ingres’ folks were often prim and proper. but i think i know. it’s good drawing and a sense of form. in italian, modelled form in light and shade is called 'chiaroscuro.' guido reni had lots of it" … lifted from "the painter's keys"

"oh darkness and light will be married tonight in chiaroscuro your body on mine—two colors combine in chiaroscuro" … paula cole

"so mary and joseph, HOW DID YOU get your kid to light up the room for us like this? … al janik (speaking on behalf of the shepherds … who shortly afterward, left their sheep to form commonwealth edison)

[themakeupbrush]

From Vogues article about the dress code:

To understand the 2024 Met Gala Dress code—announced today as “The Garden of Time”—requires, first, an understanding of this year’s exhibition concept.

On Monday, May 6, Met Gala co-chairs Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, and Vogue’s Anna Wintour will welcome guests to the museum for an exhibition entitled “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”

The forthcoming show has not to do with the Brothers Grimm or Disney, but rather the celebration of clothing and fashion so fragile that it can’t ever be worn again—and are thus sleeping beauties in the scrupulous archives of the Costume Institute. (In this analogy, we can consider the curator in charge of The Costume Institute, Andrew Bolton, the Prince for rousing these fashions for a show.)

Per the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we’re to expect a range of fashion on display, which dates back to a 17th-century English Elizabethan-era bodice, that embodies the beauty of the natural world—its fragility and its inevitable decay. More modern, less delicate pieces imbued with the same spirit as the spotlit fashions will be showcased alongside them, and broken up into three sub-themes: Land, Sea, and Sky

The second part of understanding this year’s dress code of “The Garden of Time,” is to know a bit about its inspiration: a short story of the same title written by J.G. Ballard in 1962. (The author is perhaps most known for his novel The Empire of the Sun, which was adapted into film by Steven Spielberg.)

The story tells of a Count Axel and his wife, the Countess, in their utopia of leisure, art, and beauty; they live in a villa with a terrace that overlooks a garden of crystalline flowers with translucent leaves, gleaming glass-like stems, and crystals at the heart of every bloom. Though, as in all of Ballard’s work (“Ballardian,” per contemporary dictionaries, has come to represent “dystopian modernity, bleak artificial landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social, or environmental developments”), there is a dystopian element to their paradise; holding onto it is like trying to keep every grain of a fistful of sand intact in your palm.

Beyond the walls of Count Axel’s villa, an encroaching and chaotic mob draws nearer every hour. To restore tranquility, the Count must pluck a time-reversing flower from his garden until there are none left. The story ends with the unthinking mob descending onto the villa, now a derelict property with a neglected garden, in which a statue of the Count and his Countess stand entangled in thorny belladonna plants.

But to borrow from TikTok, a sponsor of the gala: “Ok, but what are we wearing?” Let’s break down the many ways to interpret the theme. Boiled down, the dress code, as well as the exhibition, is about fleeting beauty. The most obvious interpretation would be to embrace the “garden” part of “The Garden of Time.” Think melancholic florals (as moody florals aren’t moody enough).

Among the pieces we know are in the exhibition is a black evening coat by Charles Frederick Worth from 1889, cut from a jacquard textile woven with parrot tulips that, per the Met, have an “aggressive dynamic quality” to them.

Something from Dries Van Noten’s Spring 2014 collection, which features parrot tulip embroideries seemingly plucked from Worth’s cape, would be a smart choice. So, too, would something from his Spring 2017 collection, where models walked down a runway flanked by exquisite flowers frozen in blocks of ice by avant-garde floral artist Azuma Makoto; the crystalline floral reference would be a lovely wink to Ballard.

More for those embracing the floral theme: There were a handful of unapologetically floribunda-laden fashions from last month’s couture collections. Consider a look from Simone Rocha’s couture debut via Jean Paul Gaultier, where models walked with silver-dipped roses in their hands as if Rocha knew this theme was coming. Or look 36 from Giambattista Valli would do well with its melodramatic impressionistic sequined florals.

Beyond these most recent couture collections, there’s Karl Lagerfeld’s flower-embellished pieces at Chanel’s Spring 2015 Couture collection, which was set in a garden that mechanically bloomed—very Ballardian. We’d even encourage looks with real-life flowers, rotting preferably; essentially, you’ll want to look like a walking memento mori as you ascend the Met Gala red carpet steps.

One could look to non-floral clues in Ballard’s text, too. Though destruction looms, the Countess plays Mozart and Bach on her harpsichord. How fitting is the music note look from Valentino Spring 2014? And for those who want to follow the text faithfully, Count Axel is described as wearing black velvet and a silk cravat.

Time—the reversal of it and our powerlessness over it—is another theme to explore. Someone could wear Cartier’s Salvador Dalí-inspired Crash timepiece on their wrist. Or, for a camp take (and a wink to a previous Met Gala theme), consider Moschino’s grandfather clock gown from Fall 2022.

Alternatively, gala-goers can put Ballard’s tale aside and dive into the exhibition itself, which celebrates nature in fashion. We know that Loewe’s blurry floral dresses from Fall 2023 are included in the exhibition—any one would be lovely. We also know that there are several Alexander McQueen looks in the show, as he was a master of cabinet-of-curiosity-couture. His gown from Spring 2001, adroitly constructed almost entirely from razor clam shells the designer collected from the beaches of Norfolk, is featured; as is Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen’s monarch butterfly winged mini dress. This tells us to go beyond blooms—look at the lesser-used incarnations of flora and fauna in the fashion. If we consider the Land, Sea, and Sky subthemes, we might put forth fashion inspired by the grain of wood (perhaps a lovely silk moiré?), the pattern of fish scales, and the iridescence of a dragonfly’s wing. Nature gives us so much more than flowers to fawn over.

Finally, there’s the broader concept of the exhibition itself: bygone fashion worth our attention. Natalie Portman has already worn a recreation of Dior’s Junon (which features in the exhibition), so perhaps someone attending with Dior will turn up in Dior’s Venus gown from

TLDR: Modern takes on delicate pieces, florals/garden, Garden of Time (music/character inspired look), nature, bygone fashion

Regarding the honorary chairs: the met gala always has corporate sponsors, and notable people from those sponsors are often honorary chairs. You can see a list of themes + sponsors here

Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, and Anna Wintour will serve as this year's official co-chairs for the 2024 Met Gala.

Honorary chairs are Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.

The dress code is "The Garden of Time."

[mishinashen]

Italiens d’Albano by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1834

In the early years of the 19th century there were two approaches to landscape taken in French art. The classical tradition, modeled after the great Italian landscapists Annibale Carracci and Salvator Rosa and the French painters Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet, was experiencing a renaissance, fueled by the theories of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. These artists maintained the idealized historical landscape while at the same time renewing it with a more realistic depiction of nature. The artists who embraced this ideology all traveled to Italy, were inspired by the great French and Italian masters of the 17th century, and were all painters of historical landscapes, humanistic in approach and recomposed in the studio. During his early years, and under the tutelage of Achille-Etna Michallon, the young Camille Corot was introduced to this school of artistic thought.

In contrast to this imaginary, idealized landscape of the Neoclassicists, another approach to painting was realistic, intimate and faithful to the topography of the actual sites, drawing more on the example of Dutch and Flemish painters of the 17th and 18th centuries. These two tendencies should not be viewed as opposites and the ease with which the French painters of the early 19th century assimilated aspects of both theories cannot be ignored. Admiration for Poussin was compatible with enthusiasm for Ruisdael, while embracing the work of Claude did not discount the contributions of Hobbema.

At this time, French artists also discovered the realism of the late 18th century English landscape artists, particularly that of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. These English artists set forth a new vision with an emphasis on realism and expressiveness which would also influence Corot throughout his long career.

Corot entered the studio of Michallon in 1822 where he threw himself into landscape painting. Michallon died shortly thereafter, but he exerted a profound influence on the young Corot who wrote: ‘I made my first landscape from nature at Arceuil under the eye of this painter, whose only advice was to render with the greatest scrupulousness everything I saw before me. The lesson worked; since then I have always treasured precision’ (T. Silvestre, Histoire des artistes vivant, français et étrangers: Études après nature, Paris, 1853, p. 75).

Michallon passed on to Corot his feelings for the Classical landscape tradition and through his first teacher, Corot developed the foundation of his own art, finding a balance between the realism of plein-air painting and the application of memory and imagination to works composed in the studio.

The young artist made his first trip to Italy in 1825 and remained there until 1828. While there he made numerous landscape and figure studies, architectural studies and spent a great deal of time studying the effects of light created by moving or still water and worked to master the play of light in space. Once back in France, Corot took great satisfaction in his Italian stay. He had amassed numerous studies which now embellished the walls of his studio, he had developed an excellent and unique technique for capturing nature and he had grappled with and succeeded at composing a large studio landscape which had been accepted by the Salon.

For Corot at this time, the study was an essential element that preceded the studio landscape. When working in the studio itself, the artist could dispense with the study, and instead rely on his memory and impressions. Italy had nourished his visual memories, and it was in this moment that Corot developed his passion for creating the souvenirs which would so dominate his later artistic career. The views he painted entirely or partially from nature on his return from Italy are regarded as among his most beautiful and accomplished. The artist demonstrated a complete mastery of perspective, light and construction that would pervade his life’s work and serve to inspire a generation of artists that would follow him.

In the years immediately following his return from his first trip to Italy, Corot exhibited frequently and regularly at the Salon. In 1831, he exhibited four paintings, in 1833, he exhibited one painting, and then in 1834, he showed three paintings, probably including the present lot under the title Site d’Italie. During this period, the paintings that he showed at the Salon had essentially two themes: views based upon his studies and memories of his trip to Italy, and views of the forest of Fontainebleau.

Italiens d’Albano was composed in Corot’s studio in 1834, most likely just before his second trip to Italy which lasted only six months. The work incorporates the artist’s memories of this picturesque area just outside Rome where he spent a significant amount of time during his first excursion abroad. The classical influence of his formative years under the tutelage of Michallon and his second teacher Jean-Victor Bertin is clearly demonstrated in Italiens d’Albano; however, all of the elements that contributed to the successes of his later career and earned him the title ‘Poet of the Landscape’ are evident in this charming painting.

The artist has adroitly mastered the aerial perspective, leading the eye of the viewer from a point above the landscape itself, down the winding path, through the light green meadow and to the shores of Lake Albano. The artist’s penchant for dividing the landscape into distinct fore, middle and background is accomplished with the addition of figural groups; the caped figure walking the path by the two seated women, the man in the red vest walking up the hill, the shoreline of Lake Albano and the architectural element in the far background all work together seamlessly to take the viewer on a walk through a landscape. The effects of light and shadow on the landscape itself, from the darkened rocky outcroppings that dominate the right side of the painting, to the sunlight illuminating the middle ground, to the shimmering water under the clear Italian sky in the near background, demonstrate the burgeoning abilities of an artist who would ultimately become the spiritual link between Poussin and Sisley, Claude Lorrain and Monet.

[lostprofile]

THE GUINEA PIG IN ART

The guinea pig does not exist in the wild. Caviae tschudii were domesticated by the pre-Incan Andeans. They were used as housepets, as honorific gifts, and in religious healing rituals through Meso-America for centuries. They were also commonly represented in stone and ceramic sculpture. Despite the name, guineas pigs are not found in Guinea, nor are they related to pigs. The French name cochin d'Inde reflects the use of the generic term "Indies" to refer to the New World.

Guinea pigs were imported, along with gold and other commodities, into Europe in the mid-16th century, where they were kept as exotic pets by the wealthy. The first guinea pig depicted in western art appears in a portrait by an unknown Flemish artist of three English children, dated 1580.

In the 17th century, guineas pigs are often among the animals inhabiting paradise in paintings nominally depicting the Fall of Man or in images of the animals on Noah's ark. Such taxonomic pictures were often displayed in the curiosity cabinets of patrons with natural science interests. Guinea pigs could also be disguised symbols in mythological pictures, as seen above in the work by Rubens, where a pair eat fig leaves at the feet of Venus and Mars. Eccentric artists like Faustino Bocchi put them to ridiculous Boschian uses.

In the later 18th century, they are are one a several cute animals favored by painters of sentimental genre scenes.

George Morland, Guinea Pigs, 1792; Jan Brueghel the Elder, Animals Entering Noah's Ark, 1613; Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Venus Disarming Mars, 1612; David de Coninck, Ducks, Guinea Pigs and a Rabbit in a Wooded Landscape, after 1701; George Stevens, The Favourite, c. 1810; Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1615; Jakob Bogdani, Capuchin squirrel monkey, two guinea pigs, a blue tit and an Amazon St. Vincent parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears, c. 1700; Faustino Bocchi, Allegory of Marriage, c. 1700; Andean Ceramic Guinea Pig, c. AD 700; Unknown Netherlandish, Three Children with Guinea Pig, c. 1580.

[scotianostra]

17th August 1871 saw the death in London of  the Scottish landscape painter Patrick Naysmith.

Patrick was the eldest son of the more well known Alexander Naysmith,  known as ‘the father of landscape painting in Scotland’. Patrick was named after his father’s friend Patrick Miller of Dalswinton. He was taught the rudiments of drawing and painting by his father before moving to London in 1807. He suffered from poor health and an accident to his right hand when he was young meant that he had to learn to draw left-handed.

He studied under his father, and travelled to London in 1807. Nasmyth was a landscape painter and although his subject matter was usually found in the countryside around London, his style was modelled on the Dutch seventeenth century artists, especially Meindert Hobbema, he was wrongly given the nickname “the English Hobbema, having said that from what I can gather he spent most of his life down south.

His landscapes are described as “pleasing and conventional” and achieved considerable success in their day, I’m not an expert, but enjoy some art, to me his work seemed boring and all the sameish, unlike others Scottish artist like Allan Ramsay Jnr, David Roberts or, in my opinion, the best of them all Henry Raeburn.

Naysmith exhibited at the Royal Academy, Suffolk Street and the British Institute and was one of the founder members of the Royal Society of British Artists. Many of his brothers and sisters were also painters, which led to much confusion about the family and their work he was one of eleven children, of whom Patrick was the eldest. Of the other ten Jane (b.1788), Anne (b.1798) and Charlotte (b.1804) were all landscape painters. 

His studio sale was held at Christie’s 18th June 1831. Titles exhibited at the Royal Academy include “View of Windsor Castle”, “A View in the New Forest” and “A Windmill on the River Don, Yorkshire”. His works can be found in museums in: Cape Town; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Hamburg; Liverpool; London, National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum; Montreal; New York and Sheffield.

You can find a more detailed bio and more pics on him here http://www.thefamousartists.com/patrick-nasmyth

[theolddalatribune]

Realism by Paolo Dala

[L] Whistler’s Mother  James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1871) [R] Game of Bezique Gustave Caillebotte (1880) Louvre (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

When photography was invented, some people thought painting would inevitably die.  Why, after all, would we continue to painstakingly reproduce the world as we see it by repeatedly daubing small bits of pigment suspended in liquid on to a piece of fabric using a stick with short little hairs attached when a camera could do so incredibly effectively and much, much faster?  We all know that painting persisted and not just the impressionism and abstraction and pop art and what have you that took paintings in directions other than the pursuit of realistic optical effects.  Artists still attempt to recreate what we see in approximately the way we humans see it.  But why?  What's with this tireless obsession, and why is it worth our time to look at it when the world itself is all around us in pure form?  This is the case for realism.

So there's an actual art historical movement called realism and it came about in Western Europe in the mid-19th century, right around, come to think of it, when photography was emerging and getting its fingers into every aspect of our lives.  The French art critic Champfleury used the term realism to describe what Gustave Courbet was doing in the 1840s, which was rejecting the stronghold of academic teaching, the dictated subjects be mythological or historical.  Courbet wanted to paint what he saw around him instead, everyday people and places of his own time, more gritty and less idealized than say, Jean-Francois Millet, who painted contemporary rural life, but let's face it, in a sentimental way. So realism the movement was about depicting the world as we find it rather than as we want it to be, but it wasn't about painting  in a photographically realistic way.  Naturalism was the term for that, although the two approaches were often paired as in the work of John Constable, whose landscape paintings show us the English countryside of the early 1800s and in a manner closer to the way we see it.  

Neither realism nor naturalism were anything new.  Nothing ever is. Courbet had been influenced by Velazquez and the painters of the Spanish golden age, who represented their time with astonishingly realistic effects. Courbet was also wowed by the work of 17th century Dutch painters like Rembrandt and Frans Hans, whose work people of the time claimed looked like life itself.  The Flemish painter Brueghel was a painter of everyday life before that.  Miniature painting of the Mughal Empire drew from many traditions and dazzles with moments of incredible naturalism, as does 18th century Chinese scroll painting, and don't even get me started with the Italian Renaissance.  

Yes, the development and use of linear perspective helped tremendously in crafting the appearance of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface, but artists like Leonardo Da Vinci also pioneered painting techniques that yielded faces and figures that are startlingly true to life and Caravaggio's dramatically lit scenes brought well-known Biblical stories into the present day with shocking immediacy and impact, and of course, those artists were looking back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who for sure represented ideal figures but also during the Hellenistic period portrayed old age, peasant life, and physical anomalies. This reminds us that realism, naturalism, or whatever you want to call this desire to depict life itself has long played out in three dimensions...

Realist art has a trace relationship to the objects and people and places it describes, but an indirect one.  The realness to which it strives isn't necessary the realness of lived experience but the realness of a physical photograph.  In the process, these artists have constructed a new reality, one we must remember is not a window but an intricate web we can explore of images and moments and acts of translation...

Realism reminds us that we don't see in two dimensions and challenges us to distinguish real from virtual in increasingly advanced environments.

Even when it's really good, realism prompts us to remember that there's no way to perfectly recreate any moment, person, place, or thing, and yet we still derive pleasure in this attempt to fix some bit of our world in time as artists and appreciators.  We look closely.  We think in layers, of the opacity and translucency and adaptability of images and of vision.  Realism asks each of us how we process reality, how we organize it, and perhaps most importantly, how we share our reality with others.  

Sarah Urist Green

The  Case for Realism

[dutch-and-flemish-painters]

Alexander Keirincx (1600-1652) - Falkland Palace and the Howe of Fife - ca 1639

Height: 45.6 cm (17.9 in) Edit this at Wikidata; Width: 68.6 cm (27 in)

National Galleries of Scotland

Falkland Palace, in Falkland, Fife, Scotland, is a royal palace of the Scottish Kings. Today it is under the stewardship of Ninian Stuart, who delegates most of his duties to The National Trust for Scotland. It is well known as the beloved residence of the Stewart dynasty. It was one of Mary, Queen of Scots' favorite places as it provided an escape from the political and religious turmoil during her reign.

Alexander Keirincx (Antwerp, 23 January 1600 – Amsterdam, 1652) was a Flemish landscape painter who is known for his wooded landscapes with figures as well as his 'portraits' of English castles and country houses. After training in his native Antwerp, he worked in Utrecht and ultimately to Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic. During a period of sojourn in England in the late 1630s he worked on commissions for the English king. He was a regular collaborator of Cornelis van Poelenburch.

Keirincx was a specialist landscape painter who is known for his wooded landscapes with figures and portrayals of English castles and country houses. His career and contributions to art history and especially to the development of painting in Britain have long been obscured by mistaken identity, lack of documentation and variant name spellings. In particular, he has erroneously been identified with the English painter Jacob or Johann Carings or Cierings (c. 1590-1646).

Like his presumed master Abraham Govaerts Keirincx initially specialized in small cabinet-sized forest landscapes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Gillis van Coninxloo. Also like Govaerts, Keirincx's early works typically show history, mythological or biblical subjects within a Mannerist three-color, schematic landscape bracketed by repoussoir trees. However, during the 1620s and 1630s his landscapes become increasingly naturalistic, influenced by Dutch tonalism in the manner of Pieter de Molyn, Jan van Goyen and others.

A key event in Keirincx's career was his sojourn in England during which he received a commission of King Charles I of ten landscape paintings. These depicted mainly views of the king's castles and houses in Northern England and Scotland produced between May 1639 and mid-1640. Charles' commission was likely politically motivated, originally intended to celebrate his campaign and victory over the Scots during the first of the Bishops' Wars and when that didn't materialize, a face-saving measure upon the return of his properties by the Scots. One example, Distant View of York at Tate Britain, shows an important site in the campaign of the First Bishops' War. The importance of this series and its impact on later painting in Britain is hard to overstate, as Keirincx combined the aesthetic landscape tradition with that of the taste for detailed, topographical views, firmly grounded in Caroline court culture. His are the first "house portraits" which became a well-established trend in painting in Britain by the later 17th century as practiced for example by Jan Siberechts and Jan Griffier the Elder.

Seventeenth-century artistic practice often relied on collaborations between specialist painters. Keirincx was the most frequent collaborator of the Dutch painter Cornelis van Poelenburgh. While the two artists lived near each other in Utrecht during the period between 1632 and 1636 and in London from 1637 to 1641, their collaboration was not limited to those years. In their collaborations Keirincx usually painted the landscape to which Poelenburgh added the figures. However, in one instance it was Poelenburgh who painted the landscape and figures to which Keirincx added a tree. Fifteen paintings have survived on which they have collaborated, but the artists likely collaborated on more works. Two of the collaborations are signed by both artists, one by Van Poelenburgh only, and most of the others by Keirincx alone. The paintings signed by both artists are the Arcadian landscape with dancing figures (1633, Kunsthalle Bremen) and the Landscape with Callisto (1629, Musée Fabre). Infrared reflectography revealed that in the Forest landscape with figures, van Poelenburgh made some adjustments to the landscape painted first by Keirincx, likely to integrate his figures better into the landscape.