Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

(pochades) for her to copy. It was through these that Crowley first understood the practice of sinking one form or plane into another. Similarly Lhotes notion of passage, in which a composition was integrated by passing one form over another, produced the impression of colours floating into one another.7 The partnership with Fizelle lasted six years before Crowley formed a connection with Ralph Balsón. Balsón, who had worked as a house painter from the age of 12, was mostly self-educated. He was an avid reader, not just of art books, but of poetry, music, novels and scientific theory. Crowley soon found that there was little she could tell him about overseas artistic trends.8In about 1934 Crowley, Frank Hinder, Balsón and Fizelle engaged a model and painted together on Saturday mornings at a studio at 215 George Street, Sydney. It was during this period that the friendship of the two artists strengthened.9 Crowley was impressed by Balson's ability to grasp the essentials of constructive art without ever having studied abroad. He had, she commented, a natural instinct which made her sometimes feel that her own work was vastly inferior. Balsón, said Crowley, would ponder on what to paint all week, realising it only on the weekends. His work as a house painter thus not only afforded him much time for thinking, it also accustomed him to handle large areas of paint with dexterity and ease'. He did not make preliminary sketches but memorised what he sawand then recorded it as quickly as he could on arriving at the studio.10Crowley felt that the pupil had become the teacher. Throughout the 1930s Crowleys school maintained a radically avant-garde approach, based on Lhotes teachings, which was well beyond the scope of most of its students. While it was a dynamic time — the Grosvenor Gallery strongly supporting the new trends expounded by Crowley, Fizelle, Balsón and Frank and Margel Hinder — the majority of art practice and teaching, not to mention the art market, was conservative.1 Sydney, on the whole, favoured a modified form of Modernism derived from the English, rather than the French, tradition. This could be seen in the work of Roland Wakelin who, along with others with a similar style, showed at John Young's Macquarie Galleries. Dorrit Black, Crowley and their circle felt that this 'Anglified' Modernism lacked the authentic 'significant form' of the French-inspired version, which was based instead on a deep understanding of both geometry and rhythm. Though Crowley was already familiar with the theory of dynamic symmetry through André Lhote, it was once again put on the artistic agenda by Frank and Margel Hinder after their arrival in Australia in 1934. As Renée Free has noted, Frank Hinder read widely in the area of rhythmic form in art and possessed a large library of books which were no doubt circulated amongst his friends.12Originally devised by the American mathematician Jay Hambidge, dynamic symmetry was a complex theory of the application of geometrical analysis to art. Drawn from the Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, Hambidge s theories were first published in the monthly magazine Diagonal, as a series of articles written by Hambidge in the winter of 1919-20. These were published later in 1920 as The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry.'3 Dynamic symmetry, wrote Hambidge, was obtained from the organic world and the 'five geometrical solids'.14It was based on notions of transition and movement, which can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians and which distinguished it from static symmetry. Hambidge also argued that artistic instinct and feeling must be tempered by intellect and knowledge, otherwise 'incoherence' would follow, and it is with this last point in particular that similarities with 1920s Classicism arose.15 While the theory was of most significance to the art of the Hinders, it certainly had an impact on Crowley, if not on Balsón. Both Crowley and Balsón were experimenting with pure abstraction and moving even further away from the Gleizes-influenced facetting, by using solid blocks of colour, a technique drawn from Henri Matisse. However, Crowley's abstracts were freer and consciously asymmetrical. Balson's works, on the other hand, were more static and relied on the balancing of horizontals and verticals. In 1939 Crowley, Balsón, Fizelle and Frank and Margel Hinder, along with Eleonore Lange, Frank Medworth and Gerald Lewers, came together to show their work at 'Exhibition T held at David Jones' Exhibition Galleries. Though their intention was to create 'a new realm of visual existence',16critics and the public responded coolly to their work. André Lhote France 1885-1962 Femme à la cuisine (Woman in the kitchen) Oil on canvas 36.5 X45.7cm Purchased 1997 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 'BUILT ON EACH OTHER' 227