Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

no Paul Nash' — so it was hardly surprising that Wakelin's paintings remained incomprehensible to the majority of his audience. However, by the late 1920s, Modernism began to gain more popular support. Several artists who had studied in overseas ateliers (for example, Dorrit Black) had now returned to Sydney, bringing with them their knowledge of new styles and techniques. Even the conservative art publisher Sydney Ure Smith began to reproduce 'modern' art in his magazine The Home and, eventually, in Art in Australia 18In December 1928 Wakelin published an article in Art in Australia on Cézanne and modem painting which, like Margaret Preston's earlier article 'From Eggs to Electrolux', was one of the first of its kind to attempt an explanation of Modernism for an Australian audience.19 This article gives an insight into the direction that Wakelin was then taking — a sense of rhythm and colour being his two primary requirements for a successful painting. The concentration on realistic representation, wrote Wakelin, which had until then been the dominant art practice, resulted in a destruction of the 'rhythmic flow of line — that concentric feeling' in a work. This view, promulgated by Clive Bell in England, emphasized what was called 'significant form', and it had some currency in art circles in both Sydney and Melbourne. Bell declared Cézanne to be the 'Christopher Columbus of a new continent of form'.20'We have ceased to ask, "What does this picture represent?" ', Bell wrote, 'and ask instead, "What does it make us feel?". We expect a work of plastic art to have more in common with a piece of music than with a coloured photograph'.21 The Bridge under construction 1928 (QAG) admirably demonstrates the sensationist principles of Bell and Fry, while still utilising the fundamentals of Synchromism. Using Cézannist hatching, Wakelin builds colour in a manner that would seem to echo his earlier use of colour-music theories, with blue-violet being the dominant tone. Orange-yellow is used as the secondary colour, with patches of blue and green 'filling in' areas in between. The similarities with Morgan Russell's painting Synchromy in deep blue- violet are striking. In Russell's 'Harmonic Analysis' of this painting he wrote that the support or base was a violet-blue, blue-violet was the dominant tone, and orange-red the underdominant.22 Wakelin has followed this recipe quite carefully, while also utilising the spiral, a movement sought by Russell and Macdonald-Wright, the effect of which, as Russell noted, was to place the viewer in the middle of a 'whirlwind'.23 Acknowledging the accelerating pace of modern life with imagery that suggested the vortex was something of a commonplace in visual culture at this time. In the December 1928 issue of Art in Australia (which included Wakelin's paean to Cézanne), an advertisement for the Commonwealth Bank entitled 'The Kaleidoscope of Life' marries the image of a man trapped in swirling tones of black and white with explanatory text: 'Modem life, especially in the great cities, is a confusing thing, a rushing, a scrambling thing of vivid color, but faint impressions'.24 The notion of the 'modern' as something that had to be manufactured and experienced was very influential, both for those who wholeheartedly endorsed it and those who feared it. Such concerns certainly enlivened public debate about the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was being built during the early years of the Depression. Even self-proclaimed progressives like Margaret Preston (who also painted the Bridge) expressed reservations about the 'great towering stmcture that sends everything around it out of perspective'.25According to the timeline for construction reported exhaustively in the contemporary press, as well as works by many other artists who chronicled its completion, it is unlikely that the Bridge itselfwas at the stage of progress suggested by Wakelin's August 1928 depictions — with the southern span looming towards the north shore. The paintings were therefore based on his projection of how the Bridge would appear, and effected by the language of colossal and sometimes anxious overstatement which surrounded construction right from the beginning. Left Jessie Traill Australia 1881-1967 The Red Light, Harbour Bridge, June 1931 1932 Aquatint, hand- coloured on yellowed Oriental paper 32.9 X 24.8cm Queensland Art Gallery Above Commonwealth Savings Bank of Australia advertisement, illustration by Vernon Lorimer, Art in Australia, December 1928, unpag. A suggestion of this tension is captured in The Bridge under construction, where Wakelin uses large blocks of colour in the foreground to emphasise the sweep of the street down the hill; the arch of the bridge itself picks this up and completes the spiral, pushing the eye to the end point on which a crane is perched. Detail is minimised — the futuristic-looking trams operate without untidy overhead wires and the architecture is monumentalised into large planes. Everything is dwarfed by the enormous span of steel. Here Wakelin has succeeded in combining colour and form with a dominant, penetrating rhythm. The painting vibrates with colour and light. Wakelin maintained his interest in colour for the rest of his career, though he used it with increasing realism as time passed, to the point where his output returned once more to a safer, less confronting naturalism. His later views of the harbour are, in contrast with his earlier works, quite prosaic. Increasingly, he turned to interiors, to quiet studies of his family and friends, as subject matter. As his style modified, his popularity grew, so that he eventually created a respectable and comfortable position for himself in the Sydney art scene. However, he never again painted a symphony. Dr Candice Bruce is the former Curator, Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery 1993-95 and Is now an Independent curator and consultant. P A IN T IN G A S Y M P H O N Y 137