Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Audette's art was being pulled in two directions during 1957-58. This is evident in the many gouaches and pen-and-ink studies she produced at the time, in which she seemed to waver between filling up the picture with a thick forest of marks, and emptying it out until just a few gestures remained. The unstructured White movement 1958 (private collection), for example, consists of a lyrical mass of supple strokes of vivid colour, including candy orange, lime green, scarlet and yellow. There are some touches of black ink, but the joyous poetry of the piece is mainly evoked by an overlay of floating white lines. White movement is typical of her finest work on paper of the late 1950s. In contrast, Study for oil painting with calligraphy 1957 (private collection) is more sombre. It seems comparatively empty, being assembled from a layer of white body-colour and a few activated ink lines over an olive green wash. Instead of crowded marks pressing towards us, we encounter a dark framework circumscribing space of a sort. It may be less appealing to the eye, but it seems more introspective and expressive. The work is airy; it contains room to move and breathe. Audette's paintings of the late 1950s seem to have more in common with the latter quite meditative study than with the former excursion into unleashed energy. In the case of Allegro Serata — which approximately translates as 'Joyful Evening' — a loose scatter of rectangles and calligraphic strokes jive across a cool grey expanse in a restrained linear dance. The artist has used her studio implements primarily to draw the short rods of colour and brushy dark lines that tilt and wobble over the surface. This stress on the graphic nature of the work is emphasised by the brown-grey colour scheme, and also by the composition's deliberate flatness; oscillating between the surface and an indeterminate shallow space, the eye follows the passage of the strokes upon the picture plane. Each of these surface marks is individual. There are no repetitions, a quality stressed not just through variations in colouring, but in their width, trajectory and apparent speed. Needless to say, the overriding stress throughout is on the shifting thoughts and emotions of the artist who has managed to orchestrate such seemingly diverse notes into an intelligible unity — conscientia me fecit, they seem to declare, an active consciousness made me. In visual terms, Allegro Serata is assembled from two distinct layers: there are activated marks that travel across the picture plane, and a more subdued screen of gently trowelled paint behind. Audette made the latter by working from dark to light, adding increasingly paler overlays of semi-translucent grey upon a dark base coat. This is apparent near the edges of the composition — especially the top right section — where early layers of pigment have not been fully covered. Inspecting these areas closely, one realises that the surface has almost been knitted with oil paint, the uppermost deft horizontal strokes weaving through and across firm vertical scrapes beneath. The finished piece may seem soft and transparent, yet it is not random and chaotic; 'always there was an underlying structure, almost invisible, but always there ...', the artist explains.5 While it is not finished with rough textures or a crust of thick paint, Allegro Serata is quite tactile. This is probably due to the substantiality of the paint. One is so aware of how the pigment lies on the picture. It has been treated neither as pictorial fill nor as insubstantial colour. Everything about the paintwork, from its smooth texture to its restrained sheen, testifies to its being a physical thing that has been laboured and shaped. Audette had by now supplemented her flat square-head brushes with palette knives, producing filmy surfaces by scraping down thin layers of oil pigment, adding a final configuration of brushed marks over the top. As a consequence, the paint appears to have been ponderously, almost serenely applied. The artist was still working on masonite, partly because she enjoyed the resistance of the surface and the way it increases one's awareness of the physicality of artistic media, and partly out of homage to the murals she enjoyed on the walls of numerous Tuscan churches. 'Every stroke', she recalls of Allegro Serata, 'was to end up with its own place and in proportion to the whole. I wanted to combine the experience of action painting and the deliberate control over the structure of the work'.6This is why the arrangement of individual painted marks was less programmatic and delicate, although there is still a finesse to the positioning of lines, the handling of the brush being more confident and muscular. The outcome, as in most of Audette's paintings of 1957-62, appears to be the expression of a relentless pursuit after a Zen-like nothingness. Instead of being assembled into a firm visual scaffold, her oblongs and ciphers subtly withdraw from the picture's centre to suggest a calm emptiness. As the leading Italian critic Garibaldo Marussi subsequently observed, the artist has animated silence itself.7 Allegro Serata was one of a cycle of works that Audette exhibited at Gallerie Numero in Florence during 1958. The show, which marked the start of the artist's successful exhibiting career, was applauded by critics, artists and art enthusiasts. Over the following sevenyears she held nine major solo shows in Florence, Rome, Milan, Paris and London, carving out her own space in the expanding European abstract expressionist movement. Yet if Audette was leading an expatriate life, she still managed to contribute to the progression ofAustralian art. Through her continuous correspondence she exerted a direct and powerful influence over some of the most prominent non- objectivists on the Sydney scene. In particular, the artist's palette, her distinctive method of composition, even the way she applied paint with scrapers, were quickly adopted by John Passmore, the stylistic leader of the linear abstract movement. Yvonne Audette made another visit to Sydney in 1961-62, and after further travels through Europe she returned permanently to Australia in 1966. After spending over a decade living and working at the busy metropolitan hubs of contemporary culture, she turned her back on city life and withdrew to a solitary bush studio. Eier art has continued to change and evolve since then, becoming more engagingly subtle and meditative with each exhibition. Dr Christopher Heathcote isthe author of A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art 1946-1968. THE LYRICAL EXPRESSIONISM OF YVONNE AUDETTE 261