Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

'UNCHARACTERISTICALLY UN-AMBIGUOUS' James Gleeson S tructu ra l emblems o f a frie nd (se lf p o rtra it) Michael Beckmann Facing page and detail James Gleeson Australia b.1915 Structural emblems of a friend (self portrait) 1941 Oil on canvas board 46x3 5.6cm Purchased 1984 with the assistance of the John Darnell Bequest Queensland Art Gallery hen James Gleeson's v surrealist painting Structural emblems of afriend (self portrait) (Queensland Art Gallery) was first exhibited at the Contemporary Art Society Sydney in 1941, its collection of pictorial contradictions would surely have put the viewers mind on edge. The effect has mellowed over fifty years — like a magician approaching retirement, its tricks now appear quaint and transparent. It is difficult to appreciate the power to astound and mystify that this small painting once possessed. Its role in todays art world is largely ceremonial — confined to influencing the present semiotic wisdom that every image or thing is consciously or unconsciously a sign. The painting no longer threatens reality because it has become, through familiarity, an everyday reality. To sense this, is to perceive the once radical style of Gleeson's painting as a poetic aura, as a sign of the past. Structural emblems marked a point of transition within Gleeson's early work. Between 1937 and 1940 the artist painted with an alloyed surrealist style, an amalgam of imported techniques which commonly used Salvador Dali's metaphoric 'dream photograph' as the base component. Art historian Bernard Smith described the paintings of this initial period of Gleeson's work as 'highly imaginative plastic expressions, intellectually conceived, of various aspects of surrealist theory'; suggesting they were not so much surrealist paintings as paintings of surrealist ideology. However, from 1941 Gleeson's 'emphasis moves from predominantly psychological problems to socio-psychological problems'.1 Structural emblems introduced this new phase — retaining some of the earlier Dali-isms while experimenting with personal meaning and individual creativity. The pivotal position of Structural emblems is evident when compared with works that Gleeson painted shortly before and after. We inhabit the corrosive littoral of habit 1940 (National Gallery of Victoria) contains a number of characteristics in common with the self-portrait — a shattered face, a turbulent sky (influenced by El Greco's views of Toledo), a surface peeled away to reveal bricks. Yet in this earlier work the influence of Dali is obtrusive. Of particular note is the landscape — it bears an uncanny resemblance to Dali's beloved Catalonian coastline, which perhaps appeared to Gleeson as Surrealism's conventional or metaphysical terrain, eclipsing the coastal scenery near Gosford where he was bom. Apainting of 1942, Coagulations on the maintenance of identity (private collection), reproduced on the cover of the literary magazine Angry Penguins the following year, also possesses some characteristics in common with the self-portrait. However, in this later painting the influence of Dali is only an inflection, as Gleeson vigorously explores the formal division of the picture plane and a range of expressive brushstrokes — both aspects which become features of his mature work. Gleeson's paintings from this early period employ a vast assortment of symbolic and illusionary devices, some adapted from the work of other artists and some invented. The broadest class of these devices includes the ways in which his 174 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965