Article of the day for November 26, 2016
The Article of the day for November 26, 2016 is Warlugulong.
Warlugulong (1977) is an acrylic painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. In 2007 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million, a record auction price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work. The painting illustrates eight dreamings of traditional locations the artist had knowledge of, and depicts the story of an ancestral creature called Lungkata or the Blue-Tongue Lizard Man, who created bushfire. The painting portrays the aftermath of a fire caused by Lungkata to punish his two sons who had not shared a kangaroo with him that they had caught. The sons' skeletons are on the right-hand side of the image, shown against a background representing smoke and ashes. The painting exemplifies a distinctive style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, blending representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".
Warlugulong (1977) is an acrylic painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. In 2007 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million, a record auction price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work. The painting illustrates eight dreamings of traditional locations the artist had knowledge of, and depicts the story of an ancestral creature called Lungkata or the Blue-Tongue Lizard Man, who created bushfire. The painting portrays the aftermath of a fire caused by Lungkata to punish his two sons who had not shared a kangaroo with him that they had caught. The sons' skeletons are on the right-hand side of the image, shown against a background representing smoke and ashes. The painting exemplifies a distinctive style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, blending representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".
