Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

35 Max Dupain , Anzac Square (detail) c.1940–45, printed 1992 Gwendolyn Grant , Waiting for the convoy 1943 1940 s In Queensland, the early 1940s were marked by the social upheaval that accompanied World War Two, particularly after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941, prompting the United States to run their own campaign in the south-west Pacific from Australia, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. 12 Brisbane’s City Hall served as ‘a hub for civil defence activities’ and the capital became host to upwards of 80,000 United States servicemen, while north Queensland became, in the words of official war artist Robert Emerson Curtis, ‘the frontier state in the Pacific War most vulnerable to attack and invasion’. 13 Allusions to the war appeared in paintings such as Gwendolyn Grant’s Waiting for the convoy 1943 (University of Queensland) and her enigmatic Fantasy c.1943 (private collection) but were not prevalent in exhibitions at the RQAS, causing younger artists such as Laurence Collinson of the Miya Studio to rail that: ‘While literally millions of starving and tortured people in Europe are breathing their last, what do we see on the walls of our local galleries? Vases of flowers.’ 14 The paucity of war-related artworks in this context may have been as much a consequence of artists wishing to provide relief from the realities of the conflict, rather than a denial of its existence. Moreover, when the RQAS had held an exhibition of war art in 1943, it was poorly received, with the critic for Brisbane’s Telegraph describing it as ‘singularly disappointing’ and remarking that it ‘neglected the rich field of subject matter offered by a nation at war and concentrated on the trite and the obvious’. 15 The war did, however, create opportunities for artists, many of whom were employed to design camouflage for airfields and service vehicles. Photographer Max Dupain undertook research for the Department of Home Security as a camouflage officer with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in Australia and New Guinea, spending a brief period in Garbutt, at Townsville’s RAAF Base, and taking memorable, modernist photographs, such as Anzac Square c.1940–45, printed 1992, while transiting through Brisbane. Toowoomba-born, Sydney-based artist Douglas Annand accepted a role as a camouflage officer with the Department of the Interior and, after being posted to military zones in north Queensland and the Torres Strait, was appointed to the RAAF. Prior to his service, Annand worked primarily as a designer; however, his two years of service afforded him occasions to draw and paint. As curator Anne McDonald has noted, ‘isolated from the commercial art world and unimpeded by client specifications, he could draw at whim subjects of his own choosing’. 16 One example of this is Annand’s lyrical watercolour Thursday Island pub 1943 (pp.214–15), which he exhibited in his 1945 solo exhibition at Brisbane’s Canberra Hotel, where the artwork was purchased for the state collection.