Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

ENCOUNTERING DYNAMIC SYMMETRY Frank Hinder and Margel Hinder Christine France B oth Margel Hinders Diatropic c.1950-62 (Queensland Art Gallery) and Frank Hinders Studio abstract 1954 (QAG) were created in the 1950s, a period that many members of the Sydney art world remember as being punctuated with frequent and often heated debate between the abstract and figurative artists of this decade. Facing page Frank Hinder Australia 1906-92 Studio abstract 1954 Oil on composition board 76.8 X 57.3cm Purchased 1975 Queensland Art Gallery Above Frank and Margel Hinder's studio at Gordon, NSW, 1991. Photograph by Dinah Dysart 'At least', remarked Frank Hinder, 'we had something to fight for — it wasn't just a question of anything goes'.1The Hinders had been fighting for an acceptance of modernist principles against the conservative traditionalism that had dominated much of Sydney art since the 1930s. They were amongst those who passionately believed in an art which sought a reality beyond representation. In keeping with certain philosophical, transcendental and scientific thinking of their time, they believed that art had a prime obligation to seek some inner truth or order. It was this belief that fuelled their lifelong and often quite differently expressed commitment to the visual arts. The free-standing metal sculpture Diatropic and the oil painting Studio abstract are important works in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection as they form a link between the first generation of abstract artists who worked in Sydney in the 1930s and the emergence of the more expressive abstraction that became prominent in the late 1950s and early 1960s. On the other hand, embedded as they are in the vitalist rhythmic theories of the 1920s, they also serve as indicators of the changes in thinking and philosophical attitudes on which the two periods of abstraction were founded. Frank and Margel Hinder were both born in 1906. He was born and educated in Sydney, Australia, while she was born in New York and raised in Buffalo in the United States of America. It was their seriousness about art and their pursuit of the same ideologies that brought them together. On completion of his art course at the East Sydney Technical College in 1927, Frank Hinder travelled to the United States to further his studies in commercial art. He was taught by Emil Bisttram and Howard Giles who alerted him to their former teacher Jay Hambidge's study of dynamic symmetry. Through Giles, whose father was head of the Swedenborg Church in America, Hinder became interested in philosophical issues, in the theosophy movement and in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.2 Sculpture student Margel Harris first met Frank Hinder and became interested in similar systems of thinking when in 1929, having completed her studies at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, she attended a summer school in Moriah, NewYork, run by Emil Bisttram. The principles of dynamic symmetry, theosophy, anthroposophy and the Bergson-influenced philosophical texts that interested the Hinders were all linked by a general belief in the rhythmic unity of life. As Australian art historian Mary Eagle has pointed out, and as other essays in this volume demonstrate, this belief was part of the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) of the 1920s. Public lectures on atomic science, electricity, radio and Einsteins Theory of Relativity suggested that atoms and waves were basic units of life. Popular theories such as those of the music educator Emile- Jacques Dalcroze saweducation as a means of getting in touch with life and nature.3 The study of dynamic symmetry can be seen to fit into this general trend. Broadly speaking, it is a system of organic mathematics. It applies Greek systems of proportion, such as the golden mean (which is based on natural growth), to elucidate a rhythmic order which is thought to animate the universe. The more spiritually based theosophy looked to the universal order of neoplatonic thought combined with the ancient religions of India, Egypt and Greece, while the closely related anthroposophy was based on a belief that society needed to recover a basic consciousness to allow for the spiritual process. For Frank Hinder it was the encounter with dynamic symmetry that revealed the possibilities of abstract art: 234 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965