Australian Etchings and Engravings 1880s to 1930s is an exhibition to show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 5 May to 22 July.


It will be open once the abomination of Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga has shut.

Artists in the new exhibition include Norman Lindsay, who is the man responsible for my koala. Naked women were his forte, as you can see in the above picture. In all possible poses and against all concievable backgrounds, Lindsay portrayed an ideal of femininity that may not have much in common with the feminist ideal but was one he pursued for decades. In 1982, Robert Hughes told the ABC:

When they're massed together like enormous gladioli, as here in the old man's house at Springwood, the effect is quite overpowering. But what overpowers you is not so much their sexual content as their unique combination of vulgarity and innocence.

His nudes are fearsomely maternal. Every buttock that Lindsay painted was, in a sense, the first buttock, and every breast, the first breast.