Collection highlights tour

By the time he painted this faceless female figure, Picasso was a towering legend of modern art. Yet to say she is faceless is not entirely accurate: across her torso, breasts, belly and pudenda the painter has inscribed the disconcerting semblance of his own features. Her nipples are the tell-tale black pupils of his eyes, her serrated vagina is his equally aggressive mouth. Having thus invaded her body, his own erupts in the manner of a physiological mutation. It is not an easy image, but it is wholly truthful to Picasso's deepest intuitions and experience. Anger belies the innocuousness of the subject matter. Fear underscores the anger. It is only very marginally a work of art about appearances. Instead, Picasso enacts a form of black magic, an exorcising ritual of bodily destruction and psychic derangement that plays fast and loose with reality - all within the conventions of the seated portrait. That he did this through the agency of his last great love, Jacqueline Rogue, setting her violated form in th

James Angus’s sculptures usually find their subject in things that already exist in the world. His works can be divided into two main spheres, natural creatures and man-made, often architectural structures or manufactured forms. Living things are realised in versions that emphasise their sculptural nature, and inanimate objects are shifted through a series of propositions about physics, gravity and geometry. In ‘Manta Ray’ 2002, the horizontal mass and undulating curves of the creature are eerily still and perfectly hydrodynamic. In ‘Seagram Building’ 2000, a slightly arching version of the modernist icon lies displaced on the floor. Its curving profile is a subtle distortion that is mathematically correct, but physically improbable and visually disorienting. For ‘Bugatti Type 35’ Angus has taken one of the most iconic racing cars of the 20th century, replicated it, but also distorted it through a gravitational shift 30 degrees to the right. While Angus’s art is not minimal, it shares minimalism’s interest i

Guilio Paolini came to international note as a leading member of the arte povera group in Italy in 1967. Like the others, he uses found materials and often introduces historical and literary references into his imagery. Works such as this have a poetic quality that is common with arte povera and yet there is a strong conceptual and critical streak that is not normally associated with the group. Many of his installations directly critique assumptions about art history and play with the rules of perspective to disclose their paradoxical illusionism. ‘L’altra figura’ (the other figure) is a deceptively simple play on the classical theme. The two heads raised on plinths to the height of a modestly sized viewer are identical plaster casts of a Roman copy of an earlier Hellenistic bust. The busts show the heads slightly at an angle to the body, their faces turned to reflect each other precisely. This slightly sideways glance lends a degree of animation to what would otherwise be a static mirroring. It is as if the

As one of the founding artists of 'Die Brücke' group in 1905, Kirchner is essential to the history of German expressionism, a movement he virtually personifies. Trained in Munich and Dresden, he was attracted to neo-impressionism, van Gogh and tribal artefacts, combining influences from all three in his searingly emotional paintings, drawings and prints. His woodcuts and woodcarvings combine traditional German folk forms with more primitive instincts. His oil paintings, ranging from ambitiously large to intimate in scale, equally show the effects of ethnographic research. The nudes in 'Three bathers' resemble the artist's painted carvings, echoing in turn the sculpted Eves of medieval art as well as African and Pacific statuary. Wearing lipstick and a look of enervation, these Berlin day-trippers huddle defensively in the Baltic waves. Uncannily presaging the coming blitzkrieg, the figures also predict the artist's own deteriorating health. Conscripted in 1915, Kirchner was discharged six months later with tu

'Three studies from the Temeraire' is an oil on canvas triptych, painted between 1998-99. The history is of special interest, unusual yet evolutionary. In 1998 Twombly was working on three related but at the time independent canvases on three adjacent walls of his Gaeta studio. The theme was these ancient vessels and all the senses of myth and history they inferred - there was originally neither particular thought of Turner, an artist who he had always especially admired, nor of the three panels as a single work. Gradually they coalesced into a single epic event and were shown in the National Gallery in London in the exhibition "Encounters: new art from old" in the year 2000 alongside Turner's famed 'The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838', which was painted in 1839. The theme of this exhibition was 'great artists of our time converse with the greatest artists of all time'... and of course Twombly's pictures assumed their role as contemporary evocations of Turner's 'The Fighting

Bill Henson's first solo exhibition, held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975 when he was 19 years old, heralded the beginnings of a unique photographic vision of the Australian landscape. Known for his brooding imagery and exacting artistic process, Henson alludes to the darkness of Caravaggio, the lightness of Purcell and the drama of Wagner. The intensity and intimacy of his images broach the boundary of the painterly and the cinematic, combining both surface and depth to reflect a space between the mystical and the real. Like Francesco Clemente, his photographs may begin with a fleeting vision or impression, a piece of music or line of writing, that echoes subconsciously before manifesting in his work. Henson's 'Untitled 1994/95' shows naked youths, cars and the darkened landscape that constantly fluctuates between space and time. It is a layered work, interspersed and fragmented by jagged reversed photographic paper that is pinned almost savagely to the surface. The glaring voids are not only te

'Von den Verlorenen gerührt, die der Glaube nicht trug, erwachen die Trommeln im Fluss' is the title of each of two works, one painting and one floor installation. It is not uncommon for Kiefer to use the same titles again and again. This is because of his sustained commitment to certain themes that he pursues over many years. These two works represent two such themes in Kiefer's development and although they look very different as objects they are two sides of one key idea in his mature work. The horizon in Kiefer's work is always more than a landscape feature, it is highly charged symbolically. 'Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe' 1984-86 in the Gallery's collection includes a propeller which has the potential to fly over the horizon transcending the boundary between heaven and earth. In many of Kiefer's paintings and sculptures there are ladders, wings, rockets, Ziggurats, snakes and rainbows that all in some way suggest the idea of transcendence. The broken stairs in this work correspond to the broken propeller sugg

Purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation in 1994, 'Woman of Venice VII' is the first sculpture by Alberto Giacometti to enter a public art collection in Australia. It is one of nine bronze figures that were created as 'states' of a single figure modelled in clay on a single armature over a period of about three weeks and cast in plaster by the artist's brother, Diego. The hands held at the side of the figure's broad body emphasise the corporeality of the figure and recall Giacometti's early experiments with female spoon-like forms. As in other works in this series the tension created between the heavy wedge-shaped pedestal and the figure's tiny head endows the piece with a sense of the visionary that the artist favoured. The heavily textured quality of this work and original patination make this one of Giacometti's most distinctive and successful female figures. This work perfectly embodies Giacometti's ambivalent attitude towards women whom he idolised but whom he also found suffocating and

This finely crafted regal figure of the Buddha is depicted in a strong frontal stance wearing long, flowing monastic robes, scalloped at the hems and gathered in front with a jewelled girdle. While the smooth and naturalistic modelling of the torso gives the appearance of a bare upper body, the Buddha's robes are in fact draped over both shoulders where an elaborate necklace or collar disguises the neckline of the garment. In addition, the Buddha is depicted wearing elaborate jewellery: heavy earrings, armbands and a distinctive conical crown, the practice of depicting the Buddha as adorned with a crown having developed in Pala India where the crown represented the complete attainment of Buddhahood. Nevertheless, dressed in the regalia of a king, this majestic figure of the Buddha embodies the concept of the Devaraja (literally god-king), as an incarnation of the Divine on earth and as the means by which the Khmer kings legitimised their sovereignty. In an interesting variation, the hands of this Buddha are

This monumental stone image of the seated Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of the West, sits with his hands held in the meditation gesture (in Sanskrit known as 'dhyana mudra'), his feet in the 'vajrasana' position of both soles upwards, and wearing the thin diaphanous robe of a monk. Deeply immersed in meditation, the Buddha emanates the serenity, wisdom and spirituality expected of the central icon of Buddhism. It is likely that originally this Buddha was part of a specific grouping. For example, Amitabha, together with Shakyamuni, the Historical Buddha, and Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, constitutes the powerful triumvirate of Past, Present and Future Buddhas. As well, Amitabha as the Buddha of the West, appears in mandalas on the western quarter. The concept of the mandala, a diagrammatic representation of the invisible forces that govern the cosmos, was brought to Indonesia with Vajrayana Buddhism. Vajrayana mandalas commonly have five Buddhas: the Buddhas of the Four Directions, presided over by Vairoc

In a seeming contradiction of its substance as an object, this unusual jar carries inscriptions from a Buddhist text on nothingness. The potter, a Buddhist who lives in the mountains of Kwangju, believes that dedication and painstaking effort are an essential part of the creative process. His work is praised for its individuality and for its imaginative embrace of antiquity, particularly the austere but beautiful aesthetic of the uniquely Korean 'punch'ong' (literally 'powder green') ceramics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this engaging object the artist has employed the 'sgraffito' technique in which the vessel, made in this case by the coiling method, is then beaten and its surface scoured in an instant 'maturing' process before being covered with a white slip. The characters have then been scratched through the thin slip. This rich combination of contemporary individuality with a spirit of antiquity expresses the ideals of purity, honesty and humble sparseness so admired by the connoisseurs a

The 'golden age' of Japanese screen painting occurred in the 1600s in Kyoto, when these brilliantly realised screens were painted by Kano Eino, third generation head of the Kyoto Kano school. The style had emerged in the confidently flamboyant Momoyama period (1568-1615) as the brash and newly emergent samurai elite sought an ostentatious display of their own power and wealth. It was their patronage that created for the first time lavish screens of gold background decorated with symbols of power such as bamboo and cypress. The new style, expressed most beautifully by artists of the Kano school in the late 1500s and 1600s, was an intuitive distillation of the dialectic that has driven Japanese culture: its accepting/rejecting relationship with China. The dialectic (which the Japanese call 'wakan', 'China/Japan') was based on a series of opposites: monochrome/colour, emotion/restraint, abstraction/nationalism. The dialectic is epitomised in these screens: the bold, vigorous and rich brushstrokes of Chinese pai

Noh robes are the ultimate statement in quality, luxury and skilful weaving. This one is an 'atsuita', a robe used as an outer robe primarily for male roles. It is boldly decorated with alternating squares of eddy or whirlpool ('uzumoyo') motifs, and dragon roundels. In addition the backgrounds within the squares are enriched with trellis and 'Bishamon' diaper pattern; and the ikat dyed warps are arranged to form blocks of colour. The result is a superbly vibrant and impressive design. Asian Art Department, AGNSW, August 2006.

The technical and artistic excellence of Ming dynasty porcelain is without parallel. Although a tremendous variety of wares was produced, the great tradition of blue and white porcelains most confidently expresses the imperial style. The Yongle period at the beginning of the fifteenth century was one of the most glorious and productive eras in the history of Chinese art. Under the inspired patronage of the Yongle emperor all the arts flourished; none more so than the ceramic arts centred on the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. There the characteristics of the local clay had been mastered in the production of translucent high-fired white-bodied porcelain. The technique of painting on the body of the ceramic vessel with cobalt blue had been introduced to China during the preceding Yuan dynasty, probably from Persia. By the late Yuan dynasty (in the second half of the fourteenth century), blue and white porcelain was the hallmark product of Chinese kilns, paving the way for massive expansion and

Benign but fearsome, this pair of unusually large and meticulously detailed figures exemplifies ceramic technique in Tang China. The facial features and elaborate costumes of these tomb guardians are realised with a convincing naturalism combined with iconographic stylisation. Their dynamic and dramatic poses are characteristic of figures that were placed in the four corners of the tomb to ward off evil spirits. Guardian figures such as these, termed 'lokapalas' or guardian kings, became assimilated into the popular concept of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism, or 'tian wang'. The demonic appearance of this pair is heightened by their flamboyant armour with its flaring epaulettes and prominent breastplates. Also typical is their heroic pose: by standing on or trampling a demon or animal the guardians demonstrate their power over natural elements and evil forces. Art Gallery Handbook, 1999. pg. 250.

This painting by Jeffrey Smart, perhaps the finest masterpiece of his later years, is a perfect example of his habit of finding motifs delivered without warning. For, given the calculation and precision typifying his long career as an artist, Smart has never quite known what is in store to appeal to his compositional interests driving around the industrial estates of Arezzo, or walking through a flea market in Rome, or a back street in Sydney. His process has a curious connection with a 19th-century method inculcated by French artist Lecoq de Boisbaudran as a kind of competition with the seduction of photography. Students were encouraged to look at a motif for a few seconds, turn their backs on it, commit it to memory, and let imagination go to work. Whistler adopted this practice in France and England; and in Australia half a century later Nolan developed his own instinctive version of it to spectacular effect. Smart differed from those two however in his slow, deliberate construction of a scaffolding to ho

"I repaint other people's paintings. See that there? That's 'Bailed up'. You know, Tom Roberts. I've just taken the figures out and repainted the background." - Fred Williams 1969 One of Williams' greatest works, 'My garden' was painted in direct response to Tom Roberts' 'Bailed up', underlining Williams' strong allegiance to the Heidelberg School and especially to Tom Roberts, the Australian painter he loved most of all. In a singularly profound homage from one artist to another, Williams transmuted the golden glare of a relatively gentle New England landscape into his own painterly expression of the hot red heart of the continent; acting out his long-held declaration that 'Bailed up' was the most important landscape painting in this country. Australian Art Department, AGNSW, 2000

Five bells was my first commission to paint in situ to cover a wall … I didn’t hesitate. I brushed a line around the core theme, the seed-burst, the life-burst, the sea-harbour, the source of life. Inside and around this core, I painted images drawn from metaphors and similes in [Kenneth] Slessor’s poem of our harbour city, and from my own emotional and physical involvement with the harbour, and with my young family in Watsons Bay … I wanted to show the Harbour as a movement, a sea suck, and the sound of the water as though I am part of the sea ... The painting says directly what I wanted to say: ‘I am in the sea-harbour, and the sea-harbour is in me’. John Olsen, 1999