Burke, Janine 1952-

views updated

Burke, Janine 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born March 2, 1952, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; daughter of Brian Burke and Joyce Kelly. Education: Melbourne University, B.A. (with honors); La Trobe University, M.A.; Deakin University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Bryson Agency, 1/313 Flinders Ln., Melbourne 3000, Australia. E-mail—jcbb@bigpond.com.

CAREER:

Author. Victorian College of the Arts, lecturer in art history, 1977-82; Heide Museum of Modern Art, director, 1997—. Member of programming committee, Melbourne Writers Festival, 1994-97.

MEMBER:

Greenpeace, Amnesty International.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, 1987, for Second Sight; Book of the Year Award shortlist, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), 1989, and Miles Franklin Award shortlist, 1990, both for Company of Images.

WRITINGS:

ADULT FICTION

Speaking, Greenhouse (Richmond, Victoria, Australia), 1984.

Second Sight, Greenhouse (Richmond, Victoria, Australia), 1986.

Company of Images, Greenhouse (Elwood, Victoria, Australia), 1989.

Lullaby, Picador (Chippendale, Sydney, Australia), 1994.

ADULT NONFICTION

Australian Women Artists, 1840-1940, Greenhouse (Collingwood, Victoria, Australia), 1980.

Joy Hester, Greenhouse (Richmond, Victoria, Australia), 1983.

Field of Vision: A Decade of Change: Women's Art in the Seventies, Viking (Ringwood, Victoria, Australia), 1990.

(Editor) Dear Sun: The Letters of Joy Hester and Sunday Reed, William Heinemann Australia (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1995.

The Eye of the Beholder: Albert Tucker's Photographs, Museum of Modern Art at Heide (Bulleen, Victoria, Australia), 1998.

Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker, Knopf (Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia), 2002.

The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide, Knopf (Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia), 2004.

The Sphinx on the Table: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection and the Development of Psychoanalysis, Walker (New York, NY), 2006, published as The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection, Random House Australia (Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia), 2006.

YOUNG ADULT FICTION

Journey to Bright Water, Mammoth (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1994.

The Blue Faraway, Addison Wesley Longman (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1996.

The Doll, illustrated by Shaun Tan, Lothian (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1997.

Our Lady of Apollo Bay, Lothian (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2001.

OTHER

Contributor of book reviews to Australian Book Review and scholarly articles to journals, including Hecate.

SIDELIGHTS:

Janine Burke is an award-winning Australian author who writes fiction for adults and young readers, as well as nonfiction works dealing with art history and criticism. In works such as AustralianGothic: A Life of Albert Tucker and The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide, Burke chronicles the life and work of Australian artists.

Burke's 2006 The Sphinx on the Table: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection and the Development of Psychoanalysis examines the collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities which helped inspire some of the theories of the founder of psychoanalysis. The mythological connections of ancient figures of satyrs and of the Theban, Oedipus, for example, figure strongly in such theories. At the same time, Burke shows, Freud avoided collecting modern art, most of which he disdained. Booklist contributor Bryce Christensen praised this "lucid and persuasive" book as a "valuable contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Freud's genius." Similar praise came from a Kirkus Reviews critic who called The Sphinx on the Table a "rich portrait of Freud's life in Vienna" and an "intriguing excavation." Likewise, a Publishers Weekly writer found the work an "illuminating portrait," and E. James Lieberman, writing in Library Journal, called it a "considerable achievement."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August 1, 2006, Bryce Christensen, review of The Sphinx on the Table: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection and the Development of Psychoanalysis, p. 12.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2006, review of The Sphinx on the Table, p. 708.

Library Journal, August 1, 2006, E. James Lieberman, review of The Sphinx on the Table, p. 108.

Magpies, May, 2001, Alison Gregg, review of Our Lady of Apollo Bay, pp. 37-38.

Meanjin, September, 2002, John Thompson, "Burke's Backyard: or, Just Good Friends," p. 42.

Publishers Weekly, August 7, 2006, review of The Sphinx on the Table, p. 45.