John Olsen - "Mundoo"

The contemporary art piece that I chose to look at was a piece done by John Olsen in 1987. The title of the piece is “Mundoo”. The reason that I chose this piece of art was because for me it stuck out as somewhat different than the rest of his pieces. I think one of the main reasons for this was because their was far less of a variation of color

All of his pieces of art are extremely appealing to the eye and are incredible with their layout and design. As I look at a majority of his other pieces of art I can actually vaugely see what he is attempting to portray in a somewhat abstract sense, for instance with his piece entitled “Startled Emus” from 1928:

However, when I look at his work with “Mundoo” I have absolutely no idea what he is attempting to portray or any sort of emotion, vision, or communication of what he has displayed. I really do enjoy this piece of art, I think that I simply find it somewhat confusing in the respect that I have absolutely no idea what is going on within the painting. If I were to initially guess what this painting were portraying without any background information I would guess that it was a simply design of curved lines with various widths that the artist just simply started with and just kind of went with resulting in “Mundoo”.

After researching about John Olsen, I found that he is infact an Australian artist who really started getting involved into the nature aspect within his paintings throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. This was mainly accomplished by his travels all across Australia and included but was not limited to lanscapes, plants, birds and animals. After further research I found that John Olsen painted the lanscape of “Mundoo Island” which is a location in Australia. Given this information and further analysis of the painting I think that this information definitely brings light to the painting. Looking at this painting now I can kind of make out some muddy or merky waters and rivers with several tributaries which make up for a landscape picture which was absolutely unclear to me before.

In conclusion I think that having some information about certain works of art is not necisarily imperitive but hepful nontheless. I think with such information as where the artist was from and what their interests are and small facts such as these can definitely make for a better understanding of these works of art. A better understanding can also lead to a greater appreciation for the artist, their work, and what they are trying to display or communicate through their masterpiece.