Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

THE LANGUAGES OF MODERN ART Eric Wilson The violin and Stove theme Candice Bruce Facing page Eric Wilson Australia 1911-46 The violin 1939 Oil on canvas 96.8X 53.3cm Gift of the Godfrey Rivers Trust 1948 Queensland Art Gallery Below Eric Wilson Still life 1934 Oil on canvas on composition board 34.9 X 45.2cm Purchased 1968 Mignon Beatrice McKelvey Bequest Queensland Art Gallery ^ ric Wilson came to maturity as a painter at an interesting moment ^ « in Australian art history, when it was at an aesthetic crossroads between representation and abstraction. His studies in Australia under Julian Ashton and later, Adelaide Perry, set him on a path to realism from which he never totally departed, though, once introduced to Cubism, he moved freely from one style to the other. Wilsons brand of Cubism always remained somewhat conservative, never entirely deviating from the object. Nevertheless, his forays into abstraction distinguished him from his peers. With the exception of Jean Appleton, Wilsons wife from 1943 until his premature death three years later, few of his Australian contemporaries took up the cubist challenge. During his apprenticeship in Sydney in the early 1930s, Wilson completed many works such as Still life 1934 (Queensland Art Gallery) which, though competent exercises in academic realism, give little hint of what was to come. The artist won a scholarship to Europe in 1937 and made good use of his subsequent two-year residency in London studying, travelling and absorbing an aesthetic cocktail of rich and rare ingredients. As a consequence, his work has sometimes been seen as a not-always-coherent mixture of styles — sometimes cubist, sometimes academic, sometimes expressionist landscape. Wilson was technically adept at all of these, demonstrating a level of conception and realisation matched by few other Australian artists of the time. He used these disparate styles as if they were a language, a manner of negotiating his way between different aesthetics, which may in fact have been suggested to him by one of his teachers in England, Amédée Ozenfant. In 1921 Ozenfant had asked: Can ... people not understand that Cubism and figurative painting are two different languages, and that a painter is free to choose either of them as he may judge it better suited to what he has to say?... Some things, for instance, are better expressed in algebraic than in geometrical terms, as the latter may conform more neatly to this or that mode of thought... Do we deny the value of algebra when we practice geometry?1 Wilson encountered Ozenfant in 1939 in London but had previously been introduced to Cubism by his teachers at the Westminster School soon after his arrival in England in July 1937. In August that year Wilson moved into his friend William Dobell's studio at Pimlico and their work during this period shares many qualities. Both used a technique of moulding figures by means of hatching with small brushstrokes, both used restricted palettes of cool creams and pale browns, and both introduced an almost surreal stillness into their work, especially the street scenes. In October 1937 Wilson began studying at the Royal Academy under Walter Russell and Raymond Jackson during the day, while also commencing night classes with Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler at the Westminster School. His painting underwent an instant transformation. On the evening of 27 October, in his first class with Gertler, Wilson commenced Westminster girl 1939 (QAG), which he described in his diary in deceptively simple terms as the 'head of a girl, dressed in a red-striped dress'.2With her rolled fringe hairdo (later called a 'Victory Roll'), she seems decidedly vampish in a sultry, Veronica Lake way. Her red painted lips and slightly haughty pose declare her to be the epitome of the modern woman. However, it was Wilson's minimisation of detail, especially the girl's facial features, which marked a change of direction. In this, as Andrew Sayers has noted, Wilson was influenced by the work of Modigliani whose portraits were well studied in Gertler's classes.3'Gertler still at me for my habit of accenting unimportant parts', Wilson noted in his diary. 'I try to eliminate but occasionally there is a lapse, and Gertler comes down like a ton of bricks on me for it.'4'Gertler urged me to work more untidily and to attack my neat polished manner', Wilson wrote in December 1937, and although he complained in his diary, in reality he seemed to like the hectoring, shortly afterwards leaving the Royal Academy in favour of the Westminster5 In January 1938 Wilson began studies in abstract design at the Westminster School 152 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965