Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Nazis marching in Berlin, 1934 or 1935. Photograph by Peter Purves Smith, courtesy the author Peter Purves Smith The diplomats 1939 Oil on canvas 40.5x50.5 cm Gift of Lady Casey 1979 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra as the site of a Nazi rally, and set himself the task of painting many hundreds of cobbles in convincing light and shade. At the centre of this square — square within square — he produced a ridiculously small handkerchief of mown lawn and divided it from the cobbles by a masonry border in which each stone neatly abuts its neighbours. The paved ground and small lawn, so meticulously painted by the artist, mocked the tradition of Austrian and German industry and precision; whereas the upper image — a sky riven by clouds, shattered outlines of buildings and hurrah­ ing red flags — has the flourishing emotion and polyphonic surge of Wagnerian music. Assembled on the military cobbles are two detachments of German infantry in greatcoats of field-grey, black boots and saucepan helmets. On the left the troops stand to attention — their faces, when you look into them, are unutterably sad; on the right they march in leg-swinging goosestep; and their military patterns are given emphasis by the repeated vertical and slanting lines of their rifles. Literally at the centre of events, between these flanking troops and occupying the privileged lawn and the immediate foreground, are the Nazi Party's own assault troops — the SA troops — in their attention-getting uniform of brown shirts, grey-green trousers and tan knee-high boots. Purves Smith has underlined their Aryan superiority: they overtop as well as outrank the regular army and in the enthusiasm of youthful fanaticism have lifted their right arms almost out of the socket in the Hitler salute. The emphatic repetition of these inordinately long arms is echoed on the left by five cannons projecting from field artillery. The Nazis are being held to ridicule in this painting. At first sight the caricature seems too obvious; on reflection, though, the painting's offsetting grace is the meaningful orchestration of many precise details of fact. Purves Smith's frustration in 1938 may have been almost as much with the Times as with the Nazis — the majestic Times whose columns were written by anonymous journalists in the authoritative tone of imparting information that had been weighed, digested and distilled to the very essence. His angry utterance had none of the deflation of that calm and measured style, yet he took a cue from the newspaper's assemblage of snippets of information and colourful details that it daily put forward as the significant indicators of the political climate in Europe. In The Nazis, Nuremberg, his first major painting after arriving in Europe in 1938, Purves Smith displayed a creative grasp of the rhetorical style of the genre he mocked. In Australia, since boyhood, he had used mimicry as a device in satirical writing and versifying. A no-holds-barred style of caricature was in vogue in the late 1930s. Purves Smith may have seen exhibitions of caricatures and exhibitions of anti-fascist art by Austrian refugees in London and Paris following the Anschluss of 1938.4Left-wing artist Cliff Rowe has described the change that took place during that decade in Great Britain: ... it was realised that the commercial artist was breaking through to a freedom of expression that the fine artists weren't achieving. Everybody began to respect the strip cartoonists and the silk screen people. There was constant discussion over Social Realism ... Those who were against it called themselves 'free' artists and those who said that all art is propaganda called themselves engaged'.5 By the late 1930s the majority of the younger generation of artists, across a wide spectrum of society and regardless of the nature of their political beliefs, elected for styles of social comment. Purves Smith was not unusual in that respect. He was unusual in choosing topical political subjects and treating them so nakedly. The imagery of The Nazis, Nuremberg was inspired reactively by specific items in the press such as, for example, the Times's report of the assembling of Austrian and German troops in Berlin on 21 March 1938: The first battalion of the 15th Vienna Infantry Regiment, which reached Berlin last evening, marched this morning to theWar Memorial on the Unter den Linden, where the commanding officer laid a wreath ... The troops ... lacked the perfect rhythm and almost mechanical precision which is displayed by German soldiers on the march. That they will learn 150 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965