Ian Britain

Fairweather by Murray Bail

June 2009, no. 312

‘A large part of the beauty of a picture,’ Matisse famously decreed, ‘arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium.’ Struggle is the dominant motif in Murray Bail’s study of Scottish-born painter Ian Fairweather, first essayed in 1981, now refashioned, updated, and handsomely repackaged.

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Not Quite Straight: A memoir by Jeffrey Smart

by Ian Britain •

June 2008, no. 302

Ian Britain reviews 'Not Quite Straight: A memoir' by Jeffrey Smart

It is an eerie measure of a movie’s power when you come out at the end of it and sense, however fleetingly, that you’re still a part of its world, or that its world is all but indistinguishable from the everyday one you’ve just re-entered. German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was grand master of this trick. His compatriot Pina Bau ...

Arthur Boyd: A life by Darleen Bungey

by Ian Britain •

February 2008, no. 298

Ian Britain reviews 'Arthur Boyd: A life' by Darleen Bungey

‘More difficult to do a thing than to talk scintillating dialogue of 1890, ‘The Critic as Artist’. To hold to such a belief, Gilbert declares, is ‘a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.’

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Meanjin vol. 66, no. 2 edited by Ian Britain & Griffith Review 17 edited by Julianne Schultz

by Lyn McCredden •

October 2007, no. 295

They were once called literary magazines, or journals, though dailiness was never aimed for. Monthliness is popular now, or, in the case of Meanjin and Griffith Review, quarterliness. But what kind of currency do these two magazines aim for? ‘New writing in Australia’ proclaims the subtitle of Meanjin’s latest volume; along with the banner title ‘Globalisation and Postcolonial Culture’, and the subheading ‘Before and After’. ‘New Stories’ and ‘New Poems’ are also listed on the cover, along with a serious frontal portrait of novelist Amit Chaudhuri, on ‘The Fate of the Novel’. There’s quite a bit of semiotic activity going on here, not to mention marketing. Currency – newness, fingers on the pulse, predictive ability – is on the agenda.

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The Talented Mr Conrad

by Ian Britain •

April 2001, no. 229

As mouths go, it must be one of the most fabled of the century past. The lips, as widely parted as they could be, suggest the contours of a distended heart. There is an upper gallery of teeth, slightly imperfect, and glazed by spittle mingling with the crystal darts and droplets of a powerful jet of water issuing relentlessly from above the face. A mottled tongue is ...

Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes edited by Ian Britain

by Philippa Hawker •

December 1997–January 1998, no. 197

Philippa Hawker reviews 'Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes'

What do the fab four of this book have in common? Not simply that they are Australian and expatriate, that they are writers who have achieved a degree of celebrity and performers who have made skilful use of television.

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