Areas of Expertise

History of Ideas, Philosophical Aesthetics, 20th Century Art & Literature

Publications/ Research Projects

doctoral dissertation on the oeuvre of Emmanuel Berl (1892-1976); papers for the Society of Aesthetics and Literature, monthly column in The Sydney Review, 1987-96; contributor to Art Monthly Australia (since 1987) and other publications

Recent Publications

Essays on the central role of attentiveness in Simone Weil’s moral philosophy and a critique of George Bataille’s theory of excess".

Areas of Expertise

Australian, French and Italian Art; Art Theory and the History of Art Theory; History of Drawing; History of Landscape; Iconography (Classical and Biblical); the Seventeenth Century; Classical Civilization, Literature and Mythology.

Publications/ Research Projects

Books (selected):
Art in Australia from Colonization to Post-Modernism, London, Thames and Hudson, 1997; French Painting in The Golden Age, London, Thames and Hudson, 2003 (French translation by the author, Paris 2004); Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy, De Arte Graphica (critical and annotated edition), Geneva, Droz, 2005 (with Frances Muecke and Yasmin Haskell); Jeffrey Smart: Unpublished Paintings 1942-2007 (forthcoming April 2008). 

Academic essays (selected and recent):
“After Les Passions de l’âme: Poussin, Le Brun and Expression in Painting” in Stephen Gaukroger, ed., The Soft Underbelly of Reason, London, Routledge, 1998; "Ovid and Art", in Philip Hardie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge University Press, 2002; “Caravaggio’s Complexion: The Humoral Characterization of Artists in the Early Modern Period”, in Yasmin Haskell, ed., Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Period, London, Routledge (forthcoming).

Art criticism:
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1988-91; The Australian Financial Review (since 2005); The Sydney Review, 1987-96; Art Monthly Australia, Art and Australia and other publications.

Areas of Expertise

Renaissance and Baroque, Architecture, Sculpture, Art Theory, Modern and Contemporary

Publications

Articles since 1998 include: "Cardinal Dying: Bernini's Bust of Scipione Borghese", Australian Journal of Art, vol. 14, 1998, pp. 9-24 (winner of the 1998-99 award for Best Article in the History and Criticism of Art, Art Association of Australia/Power Institute); "Decorum in Architectural Theory", Architectural Research Quarterly vol. 5, no. 1, 2001, pp. 63-77 (with P. Kohane); "Cardinal Scipione Borghese and the Restoration of S. Crisogono, 1618-28", Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, (December, 2001), 432-49; "The Informality, the Smile, and the Letter in Baciccio's Portrait of Cardinal Giulio Spinola (1668)", in "The Italians" in Australia. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art. D. Marshall, ed., Florence: Centro Di, 2004; “Reform and Display in Cardinal Borghese’s restoration of S. Sebastiano fuori le mura, 1607-14”, Fabrications: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, December, 2005. Currently preparing a book on the history of doors and windows (with P. Kohane)

Areas of Expertise

Renaissance Art and Baroque, French Impressionism, Gender Studies

Areas of Expertise

Medieval Art and Architecture; Russian Art, Modern and Contemporary Art.

Publications/ Research Projects

research in medieval architectural history, Lambeth Palace, London, UK; Archivist, Council for the Care of Churches, London, UK

Areas of Expertise

19th century Art, French Romanticism, Contemporary Australian Art

Areas of Expertise

Indigenous Art, Sociology of Art, Critical Theory