Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

17 Refer Max Dupain's Australia, p.19. Dupain frequently acknowledged his teacher at the Sydney Art School, Henry Gibbons, as the source of his own understanding of simplicity, form and movement as the keys to pictorial art. Gibbons also stressed the role of the foreground. 18 Dupain, 'Some notes about photography', in Dupain, Max Dupain Photographs, p.12. A PAINTER'S SILENT PROTEST Peter Purves Smith The Nazis, Nuremberg pp.148-151 1 Maisie Drysdale, interview with the author, 1981. Maisie Newbold was married to Peter Purves Smith until his early death in 1949. She married Russell Drysdale in 1964. 2 Times, London, 10 March 1938, p.14. 3 'I haven't spoken since I left England ... & out of this misery came the accompanying masterpiece. I don't like it here.' Peter Purves Smith, letter to Maisie [after 29 April, before 24 May 1938], in the possession of Lady Drysdale. 4 Three exhibitions Peter Purves Smith would have seen in London were works by German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian refugees, including Oskar Kokoschka and Max Ernst (organised by the Free German League of Culture in England) at the Wertheim Gallery, London, in June 1939; and reciprocal exhibitions of mainly nineteenth-century caricatures held in Paris and London in 1938 and March 1939 respectively. 5 Cliff Rowe interview, quoted in Lynda Morris & Robert Radford, The Story of the Artists' International Association, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1983, p.9. 6 Times, 22 March 1938, p.15. 7 Times, 15 March 1938, p.18. 8 Sydney Ure Smith, Australian Present Day Art, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1943, p.109. 9 Maisie Purves Smith, letter to Robert Smith, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 21 June 1961, copy in the possession of Lady Drysdale. 10 I am indebted to Jane Peek of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, for information about the Nuremberg rallies, and about German uniforms. 11 Maisie Purves Smith, letter to Robert Smith. 12 The Times, 4 August 1938, p.9, announced that these buildings were to be demolished before the rally. Maisie Purves Smith described the buildings in The Nazis, Nuremberg as ruins: 'The ruins of course were prophecy at that stage', she wrote in her letter to Robert Smith. THE LANGUAGES OF MODERN ART Eric Wilson The violin and Stove theme pp.152-157 1 Vauvrecy (pseudonym for Amédée Ozenfant), L’Esprit nouveau, no.13,1921, pp.1492-3. See also Le Corbusier &Amédée Ozenfant, 'Purism', in Robert L. Herbert (ed.), Modern Artists on Art: Ten Unabridged Essays, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1964, pp.58-73. 2 Eric Wilson diary, 27 October 1937, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 3 Andrew Sayers, Eric Wilson [exhibition catalogue], Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle (NSW), 1983, p.9. See also Douglas Dundas, 'Eric Wilson', Art and Australia, July-September 1974, pp.48-56. 4 Wilson diary, 27 October 1937. 5 Wilson diary, 8 December 1937. 6 Wilson diary notes for 1938. 7 John Golding, Ozenfant, Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, 1973, p.9. 8 See Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-1928, Yale University Press, New Haven (Conn.), 1987. 9 Golding, p.10. 10 Wilson diary, 8 August 1939. An earlier notation was made on the reverse of a small black and white photograph of the drawing of the violin which reads, 'drawing made at Ozenfants 1940 (s/c)'. See diary, p.42. 11 Wilson diary, 9 August I939. It is unclear from the diary whether 'the Japanese students trial' Wilson refers to was something he had read about, or experienced first hand. 12 Wilson diary, 13 September 1939. 13 Wilson diary, 7 October 1939. 14 See Golding. 15 'There is a new spirit abroad: it is a spirit of construction and synthesis, moved by a clear conception of things. Whatever one may think of it, this spirit animates the greater part of human activity today', L'Esprit nouveau, no.1, October 1920, p.3. 16 Amédée Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art, trans. John Rodker, Dover Publications, New York, 1952, p.330; first published in 1931. 17 Green, p.89. 18 As a conscientious objector, Wilson was made to work at the hospital. 19 Eric Wilson, letter to Municipality of Wagga Wagga, 6 October 1944, quoted in Sayers, pp.12 & 52. Wilson was obviously pleased with his achievements in this genre. He presented a stylistically similar work, Abstract — The Kitchen Stove (The Art Gallery of New South Wales) to the Travelling Scholarship Committee in 1940 as evidence of his successful studies abroad. 20 There are two distinct series — the first in 1941-43, in which the streets are wet, and 1944-45, in which they are snow-covered. 21 Eric Wilson, quoted in 'Eric Wilson', Monthly Feature, no.16, Western Australian Art Gallery, Perth, n.d. TWO VIEWS OF DOBELL Dobell and Modern Mannerism William Dobell The Cypriot pp.158-160 Timothy Morrell is indebted to Damian Kelly for the preliminary research he completed on Dobell's series of works featuring Gabrielides. Substance and Spirit William Dobell The Cypriot pp.161-163 John Hook wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Jacqueline MacNaughton in the final shaping of this essay. HIRSCHFELD MACK'S HUMANISM Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Isle of Man pp.164-167 1 Janis Wilton (ed.), Internment: The Diaries ofFlarry Seidler, May 1940 - October 1941, trans. Judith Winternitz, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986. See also Benzion Patkin, The Dunera Internees, Cassell Australia, Stanmore (NSW), 1979, and Paul Bartrop & Gabrielle Eisen (eds), The Dunera Affair: A Documentary Resource Book, Schwartz & Wilkinson and the Jewish Museum of Australia, South Yarra (Vic.), 1990. The experience of artist internees at Australian camps has been recently dealt with in an in-depth study by Magdalene Keaney, 'Images of displacement: Art from the internment camps', in The Europeans: Emigre Artists in Australia, 1930-1960, ed. Roger Butler, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, pp.85-101. 2 Jeanne Klovdahl, 'Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack: Australia's Bauhaus Master', Imprint, vol.23, no.4, December 1988, p.4. 3 '(a) Objects and abstract designs intermingled with symbolic and metaphysical tendencies; (b) pictures in two dimensions, space suggestions eliminated; (c) pictures in three dimensions, pure pattern and colour, containing space suggestions; (d) Australian landscapes (representative) and (e) symbolic pictures, of which "Resurrection" and "Total War" are examples.' Geelong Advertiser, 25 March 1946. 4 Hirschfeld Mack described his innovation in 1924: 'Yellow, red, green, blue, in glowing intensity, move about on the dark background of a transparent linen screen — up, down, sideways — in varying tempi. They appear now as angular forms — triangles, squares, polygons — and again incurved forms — circles, arcs and wave-like patterns. They join, and overlappings and colour-blendings result'. Reprinted in Herbert Bayer and others (eds), Bauhaus, 1919-1928, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1938; reprinted 1972. 5 Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, 'Creative activity and the study of materials', in Bernard Smith (ed.), Education through Art in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Vic.), 1958. 6 Walter Gropius, 'The theory and organisation of the Bauhaus', in Bayer and others (eds), pp.28-9. 7 On the background of an experiment circulated amongst the Weimar community and its basis in Kandinsky's colour experiments, see John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, Thames & Hudson, London, 1993, pp.261-2. 8 On dualities in Hirschfeld Mack's thinking see his experiments with black and white, in Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, The Bauhaus: An Introductory Survey, Longmans Green, Croydon (Vic.), 1963, pp.21-2. 9 Geelong Advertiser, 25 March 1946. 10 There are earlier prototypes for these fundamentally optimistic works such as his 1920 woodcut Volkerbund. Hirschfeld Mack's Quaker background is relevant here; the works also parallel the famous 1919 proclamation by Walter Gropius concerning the development of a new faith rising towards the heavens 'from the hands of a million workers' (quoted in Hirschfeld Mack, The Bauhaus, p.1). READING NAMATJIRA The Art of Albert Namatjira pp.168-173 I thank Elizabeth Bates, Education Officer, Queensland Art Gallery, for her initial suggestions and insightful comments on the first draft of this essay. 1 Three of those watercolours form the basis for the present discussion — Central Australian Gorge (listed as Centralian Gorge), cat. no. 2; Western MacDonnells, cat. no. 29, and Mt Flermannsburg, cat. no. 33; see Albert Namatjira [exhibition catalogue], Araluen Arts and Cultural Trust, Alice Springs (NT), 1984, unpag. 2 Thus Lynn writes that what Namatjira recorded 'was familiar to him not only as something of sublime beauty but as the repository of beliefs, laws and legends'. Significantly, Lynn reasons that with 'all his skill in adapting western techniques, he did not approach the depiction of his land with the help (or, maybe, the burden) of western orthodoxies' (Elwyn Lynn, Foreword, in Albert Namatjira [exhibition catalogue], 1984). 3 Daniel Thomas, 'Albert Namatjira and the worlds of art: A re-evaluation', in Nadine Amadio (ed.), Albert Namatjira: The Life and Work of an Australian Painter, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1986, p.26. This book was based on Namatjira's 1984 retrospective exhibition. 4 John Morton, 'Country, people, art: The Western Aranda 1870-1990', in The Fleritage of Namatjira: The Watercolourists of Central Australia, eds Jane Hardy, J. V. S. Megaw & M. Ruth Megaw, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1992, p.61. 5 Sylvia Kleinert, 'The critical reaction to the Hermannsburg School', in Hardy and others (eds), p.223. 6 Paintings by Australian Artists Including Albert Namatjira Arunta Native [exhibition catalogue], Centennial Galleries, Brisbane, April 1946, unpag.; Albert Namatjira: Watercolours of Central Australia [exhibition catalogue], Commercial Bank Chambers, Brisbane, November 1947; Exhibition of Paintings by the Arunta Group [exhibition catalogue], collected by O. A. Wallent and sponsored by the Brisbane Telegraph [c.1949], 7 Courier-Mail, Brisbane, c.5 November 1947, p.2. 8 Joyce D. Batty, Namatjira: Wanderer between Two Worlds, Hodder & Stoughton, Melbourne, 1963, p.50. ENDNOTES 309