Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

De Kooning may also have started from a similar basis, but he invested art with exciting possibilities by breaking rules. The young Australian was particularly intrigued with the way some of his compositions were partly painted, partly collaged, partly drawn, for de Kooning often halted in mid-painting either to attach pieces of cut-up paintings or drawings to the canvas or to draw straight into the oily pigment with sticks of charcoal. What impressed Audette was the uninhibited freshness of the artists activated paint surfaces, the way he chopped up the figure with no qualms about conforming to observed fact, and his stress on the act of form ing rather than on static form. By 1954 Audette was herself an abstract expressionist. She initially abandoned the figure in a sequence of ink life-drawings where it was difficult to make out the form amidst a scaffold of dark, flattened masses, the human torso having been transformed into a cluster of dense planes and fragmented lines. However, the chief advances occurred in her paintings. There is a sense of experiment about her surviving early works, for the artist was not a copyist; they show her digesting Abstract Expressionism while actively endeavouring to define her own voice. She ejected all recognisable motifs and, using a flat square-head brush upon sheets of masonite, packed the picture plane with stumpy, flat rods of oil paint. Each surface was covered with a dense visual matrix of short rectangular blocks of colour juxtaposed with thin graffiti-like strokes, the prevailing hue often being inclined to prussian blue with a few scattered cadmium red strokes acting as highpoints. Audette's quite moody works may have possessed an unmistakable physicality and immediacy, but they did not seem spontaneous and uncontrolled. The artist was prepared to let the painting dictate its own time; she did not rush or force the piece, working on several compositions at once for as long as they took to reach completion. Art was by now as much concerned with exploring oneself as probing the limits of visual form: 'The act of painting', the artist writes, 'for me is a form of meditation'.2Each painting was the product of many weeks, occasionally months, spent concentrating in the studio, deliberating over the next stage, mixing paint and applying a few strokes, stepping back to assess the results, sometimes wiping off the marks she had just added and trying another solution. Audette remembers that her purpose was to combine several of the diverging concerns that prevailed on the New York scene. The artist wished to make paintings primarily about paint, setting herself certain pictorial problems to solve; but she also wanted the painting to appear an arena of human action, individual brushstrokes registering the passing of her presence; and she aspired to move beyond conventional mythic symbols to make a universal pictorial language. Yvonne Audette visited Sydney in late 1956. She had kept in regular touch with Passmore and her friends, sending them art magazines, clippings of articles and New York reviews, extensive accounts of theories and exhibitions, as well as photographs of her own new work. Through Passmore she was probably the Sydney art scene's main source of information on advanced American and European art in the 1950s. All the same, time seemed to slip an artistic gear when one crossed the Pacific. Her Australian contacts may have devoured her news of American developments, but their own semi-cubist works seemed naggingly backward. Audette remembers the gap in understanding appearing during a meal at Passmore's home, when she outlined American ideas to a circle of fledgling abstractionists. Later in the evening, conversation turned to 'Direction T, a group show that some of them were planning for Macquarie Galleries in December. The exhibitors, who wished to demonstrate the worth of the most advanced local abstract painting and sculpture, were Passmore, Robert Klippel, John Olsen, William Rose and Eric Smith. It seemed a courageous move. The city's taste makers had little respect for non- figurative art, and Passmore predicted that the influential Sydney Morning Herald critic Paul Haefliger would be especially caustic, but the artists were determined to show their work. Most impressed by /'l-i'v Audette's compositions, they extended an invitation to her to exhibit as well; but, as far as she could see, the Sydney scene was just not ready for undiluted Abstract Expressionism, so she declined.3 By February 1957 Audette was on the move again, this time to Europe. She arrived in Italy where, much to her delight, a mature form of non-objective art similar to NewYork Abstract Expressionism was appearing. The young painter felt at ease in the contemporary art scene, and, after visiting several towns and cities, made Florence her base. She sought out a studio and settled into a pattern of steady work. 'Living in that great town', Audette later explained, 'surrounded by the great art of the past produced by knowing hands, taught me that art is wrought out of day-to-day labour, out of constant application, so that the hand becomes the master of the means'.4 Allegro Serata was painted over the following months. Yvonne Audette White movement 1958 Watercolour, gouache, black Ink on paper 17.5x23.5cm Private collection Photograph by McKenzie and assoc., Melbourne Yvonne Audette Study for oil painting with calligraphy 1957 Gouache, black Ink, wash on paper 15.5x23.2 cm Private collection Photograph by McKenzie and assoc., Melbourne 260 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-19G5