Time Travels - Artistic Forces

For December, I will do something fun and frivolous to close out the year. 
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In Artistic Forces, leaders thought to leave an impression through Art.  Art has had a huge impact on history.  The first-time travel goes back to the 1940s and to a woman who challenges the status crow. Her name was Nora Heisman and was the first woman to win a prize for art in Australia.  This caused a huge furor in Australia.  The men hated that a woman had won an award.  Nora became the first female war artist.  She was first posted to Melbourne and would paint portraits of the women in charge of the nursing effort.  Eventually, she started painting the men and would pant the nurses dancing with soldiers.  She found ways around the army system to capture war.  Nora was sent back because she had a skin condition and here, she would sketch the doctors working on curing skin diseases.  Her work would not be appreciated until the late 1980s.

Tony then goes back to the 1930s to explore an artist who desired anonymity.  At the height of the Great Depression, everyone was fighting to survive.  That would change with one simple word: Eternity.  This word was showing up on the sidewalks around Sydney.  Who was the artist?  IT would take twenty-three years to solve the mystery.  The man who wrote eternity all over Sydney was Arthur Stace.  He was a man down on his luck and a chance encounter in the church lead him to write eternity on the sidewalks in Australia.  He could not even spell eternity and continued to write out eternity for twenty-three years.  He was eventually caught and at the time he had written it out over half a million times.  This was a piece of art that could make a person think.

Tony goes back further in time to explore a piece of art that caused society to question its conventions.  It is the 1880’s and the population of Melbourne had doubled.  The majority of society clung to their Victorian values.  However, there was a growing progressive population in Melbourne that was willing to put aside their values.  The International Expedition came to town and a prize art exhibition was part of it.  A local doctor purchased one of the paintings and donated it to the local art museum.  The problem was a painting of a naked lady and it was known as Chloe.  The problem came when the museum started opening on Sunday and would be exposed to the working-class people.  The working class could not be allowed to see this painting.  The painting was taken off the wall and hidden.  It remerged in 1901 and was hung on the wall in a pub where it had hung ever since.

Canberra is Tony’s next destination and the year is 1973.  The government started building the National Gallery of Australia and started filling the space with art.  Here Tony looks at the artwork of Jackson Pollock and then gets distracted by a group of school children.  The children will recreate the art that was put up in the Australian gallery.  This piece of work caused a bit of trouble because the price was high and Pollock was criticized.  Jackson Pollock’s piece was a good investment for the museum as many people come to see it.  Canberra became a destination for art because of the fighting.

Where does Tony go last in his Time Travel?  Who does he meet up with to explore this last piece of art?  Continue to watch this episode to find out.

This would be an excellent episode to show in an art history class and could lead to some good discussion about art and its impact on history.