Stephen Bush

By Katia Zavistovski

The Australian painter Stephen Bush may be best known for having made 27 copies of his The Lure of Paris, a black-and-white work in which Babar the elephant king, cast as colonial explorer, studies the view from a craggy seaside cliff. This survey of Bush's work since 2000, with a selection of earlier pieces, tracks a shift from that beautifully executed but cynical take on history painting towards a more surrealistic, Leipzig-esque style in vibrant, clashing colors. Hermetic, introverted figures and man-made structures--a beekeeper at his nests--are paired with dramatic scenery in an apocalyptic palette of hot pink, coral, lavender and kelly green. As Artforum has noted, Bush turns the landscape genre "inside out. Rather than a mind calmed by the natural environment, these paintings record the external manifestation of psychological trauma."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976449250
• ISBN13: 9780976449256
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Site Santa Fe
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.5" x 9.2"