Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

sleazy dance halls and hotel bars to cater for these spendthrift, homesick and carefree clients. When the war in the Pacific ended in August 1945 and American forces began to withdraw from their overseas bases, they left behind in Brisbane an oversupply of night-life haunts. Many of these establishments survived well into the 1950s. Molvig's first stay in Brisbane between 1955 and 1957 provided him with subject matter to sharpen his pictorial style on. He was drawn to the ebb and flow of people in search of diversion, who washed through the hotel bars and brothels, where every night there was the threat of violence and the possibility of seduction or intrigue. The tawdry shoddiness of the brothels and their habitués became the inspiration for many of the paintings dating from the mid-1950s. In contrast with the disreputable night­ life, middle-class society in Brisbane continued to cling steadfastly to British mores and manners; hats and gloves were still de rigueur, and the Saturday brides turned weddings into complicated and prescribed social rituals. For Molvig, all were grist to the mill, and all fell victim to his sardonic 'take' on the life of his adopted city. Indeed, he established his artistic credentials with pictures such as The lovers 1955, Bride and Groom 1956 (The Art Gallery of New South Wales), The bridesmaids 1956 (private collection), Primordia 1956-57(National Gallery of Australia), The lunatic 1957 (NGA) and A twilight of women 1957. The first experimental painting in this series of works, The lovers 1955, was unacceptably big and raw for Brisbane's taste at that time. Paintings in the 1950s were, for the most part, domestic in scale, so this unusually large picture (213.4 x 121.9cm) was too tall to be shown in Brian Johnstone's small gallery in the basement of the Brisbane Arcade, and therefore was not included in Molvig's solo exhibition of 1955, nor for that matter was it ever exhibited in Brisbane. It was first shown in Melbourne at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in 1957, and in the following year at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of Molvig's Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship exhibit. Right Jon Molvig Self portrait 1956 Oil on composition board 142.3x114.3cm Gift of the National Gallery Society of Queensland 1958 Queensland Art Gallery With this painting Molvig temporarily cast off the blocky frontality of earlier work (including an ink drawing of the same title in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection). Interestingly, this solidity would surface again the next year when he painted his own image for the 1956 Archibald Prize — Self portrait (QAG) is as solid and immobile as a rock. The naked paramours in The lovers, however, are expressivelywelded together, and the man clutches at the woman's body with a huge, loving hand. During 1957 there was another change of tempo in Molvig's paintings. The lessons learned from American abstract expressionist painting in general, and Willem de Kooning's 'Women' paintings of 1950-53 in particular, resulted in a more formal structuring, with Molvig's characteristically long, looping brushstrokes pulling tautly across the surface of the painting from edge to edge. This is the style apparent in the Queensland Art Gallery's A twilight o f women 1957. This work betrays Molvig's complex mixture of fascination for and dread of predatory woman — an absorption he shared with de Kooning. There is a passionate involvement with the subject of A twilight o f women; the emphatic verve of the figures, closely tied to the formal concerns of the picture, shows an artist with an urgent message to impart; we seem to be witnessing Jon Molvig's vituperative revenge on women in general, or on certain viragos in particular. It is a nightmarish picture. An image of panic. The subject is a coven of witches, where the forces of evil have been concentrated in an anthropomorphic black cat with blazing red eyes. The demonic woman on the left has one leg flung wide to the left- hand edge of the picture, her spike-heeled shoe pressing into the bottom left-hand corner. She parts crimson lips (which rhyme with the crimson eyes of the cat) to reveal a row of dangerous-looking teeth; her eyes have the sightless stare of a lunatic. Molvig has used a loose, swinging brushstroke which rakes up and across the composition, leaving no chink for escape — the viewer is trapped in a web of frenetic brushstrokes. In spite of the freedom of gesture and the apparent speed of execution, the artist has controlled the surface with consummate skill. The cat has been painted at the forefront of the picture, and the two dark angels at their twilight revels form a single field of energy which slots shallowly behind. The flabby body shapes looping from side to side of the composition have been dovetailed together in such a way that the melon­ shaped breasts, the jutting necks and angled shoulders of both women appear to merge together as a single shape that is stretched tightly across the picture. Whereas a stylised spoked sun dominated many of Molvig's compositions in the previous year, 1957 is mied by the moon, with deep violets, blacks, dark greens and pearly greys predominating. The subject matter of late 1957 tends towards the theme of madness, and the malevolent influence of the moon. Unlike A twilight o f women, the zombies in the 'Lunatic' series are all male. The emasculated figure of The lunatic depicts an intense state of anxiety and fear, and bears some relation to the demented figure in Edvard Munch's The scream 1893. Munch uses The scream to personify a general experience of anguish, and, in a similar way, Molvig uses The lunatic to personify the living death of the dispossessed. These compositions of 1957 pushed subjectivity to an unprecedented level in Molvig's work, and towards the end of the year the extraordinary energy of these inward and claustrophobic pictures seemed to ebb. When he vacated his studio at Kangaroo Point in December 1957, Molvig intended never to return to Brisbane. He headed for Melbourne, where he stayed for some months with Charles and Barbara Blackman, but he soon found Melbourne not to his liking. It was on an extended tour north, through the centre of Australia, that he found his new direction — the paintings of 1958 are inspired by the Central Desert and its people. Elizabeth Churcher was Director, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1990-97, and is now Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra. 264 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965