How a three-decade of remaking the city revived the buzz of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’
Kim Dovey, Rob Adams and Ronald Jones
In the gallery of Australian art at Federation Square hangs John Brack’s iconic portrait of Melbourne in the 1950s — Collins Street, 5pm. This painting of the ritual march home from work to the suburbs depicts a city full of people and buildings, yet monochromatic and flat. It has become iconic not only because it captured a mid-20th-century conformity, but also because it stood for the loss of an intensive urbanity that had flourished in the “Marvellous Melbourne” of the late 19th century…