Fairweather

Ian Fairweather (1891-1974) is widely acknowledged as one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century and his art is the subject of fresh interpretation in this series of essays edited by Murray Bail. Fairweather travelled extensively throughout Asia and his sojourns in China, the Philippines and Bali were the source of inspiration for many of his paintings. His particular form of figurative abstraction owes much to his fascination with Chinese calligraphy, which he studied in Shanghai and Beijing during the 1930s. Joanna Capon follows in Fairweather's footsteps through China and Pierre Ryckmans applies an ethical model of traditional Chinese painting to explain the artist's obsession with the act of painting.