QAG-2015-21

LURE of THE SUN : Charles Blackman in Queensland LURE of THE SUN: Charles Blackman in Queensland page 33. page 32. Barjai: A Meeting Place for Youth, nos. 20 and 21 1946 Journal, 1943–47 / Published by Barjai Publishing Service, Brisbane / Collection: QAGOMA Research Library / Images courtesy: State Library of Queensland ENDNOTES 1 Pamela Seeman, ‘Activities of Miya Studio during 1947’, Minutes, 28 February 1947, Miya Studio, Pamela Crawford Papers, held at Fryer Library, The University of Queensland, p.12. 2 Barrett Reid, interview with the author, Melbourne, 5 July 1986; Laurence Hope, interview with Robert Walker [transcript], May 1974, Oral History Program, National Library of Australia, TRC 273, Tape 1, Side 1, pp.5–6. 3 Charles Blackman, in Thomas Shapcott, Focus on Charles Blackman , University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1967, p.11. 4 Reid recalled that Hope met Blackman and his Sydney friends ‘at a Greek steak and chip “joint” across the street from where Hope was living in Spring Hill, Brisbane’. Walter Granek, The Art of Laurence Hope [exhibition catalogue], The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2002, p.104 [footnote 121]. 5 ‘Brisbane notes’, Barjai , no.22, 1946, p.40. 6 Pamela Seeman became Pamela Crawford when she married playwright James (Jim) Crawford in December 1949; Cecel Knopke was later known as Edward Segmund. 7 Laurence Collinson, ‘Foreword’, in Miya Studio 2nd Annual Exhibition of Paintings andDrawings [exhibition catalogue], Miya Studio, Brisbane, 1946, p.6. 8 Barbara Blackman, ‘Brisbane in the forties: My Barjai days’, Meanjin , vol.54, no.3, 1995, p.535. 9 Barbara Blackman, p.537. 10 The Ballad Bookshop was initially located above the Workers Education Association in Albert House. Charles Osborne, letter to the author, 4 August 1986; Osborne later enjoyed a distinguished career in literature and the arts in Great Britain. 11 The Carnegie Art Reference Library was established by Daphne Mayo and the Queensland Art Fund in 1936. By 1945, it was reported to have holdings of some 400 books on art and architecture — including books on modern art — as well as reproductions of artworks. EBF Lewcock, ‘European Art Show’ [letter], Courier Mail , 17 August 1945, p.2. 12 Blackman was born 12 August 1928; Hope, 9 March 1927. Both Blackman and Hope attended Seaforth Primary School in New South Wales and were taught art by artist Rah Fizelle; Blackman and Hope did not recall each other from this time. Laurence Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Clapham, South London, 17 January 1986, Oral History Program, National Library of Australia, Tape 1, Side 1. 13 Blackman, quoted in Shapcott, p.12; Shapcott notes that Blackman was reading ‘the works of Rimbaud and Verlaine’ at this time. 14 From Reid’s account, as a result of a dispute, Hope was locked out of the Studio. Barrett Reid, correspondence with the author, 22 March 1987. 15 Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 2; Barrett Reid, correspondence; The book Gaudier-Brzeska Drawings (Horace Brodzky, ed., Faber & Faber, London, 1946) was acquired for the Carnegie Art Reference Library in 1946. ‘Purchases made for the Art Library during 1946’ [undated typescript], Queensland Art Fund, Art Library Records, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Box 5. 16 Shapcott, p.10; Blackman recalls that the poet Lois Hunter would talk ‘to us about Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Rimbaud and Verlaine’. Charles Blackman, interview with James Gleeson [transcript], 26 April 1979, The James Gleeson Oral History Collection, National Gallery of Australia, http://nga.gov . au/Research/Gleeson/pdf/Blackman.pdf, viewed 11 June 2015; Blackman’s association with SORA did not appear to carry with it any socialist convictions. 17 ‘Harriet finally withdraws after 176 years’, Sydney Morning Herald , 24 June 2006, http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ harriet-finally-withdraws-after-176- years/2006/06/23/1150845381649.html; Peter McCutcheon, ‘Harriet has another claim to fame’, The 7.30 Report , ABC TV, 7 November 2005, http://www.abc.net . au/7.30/content/2005/s1499815.htm, both viewed 11 June 2015. 18 Winston Cuthbert, ‘Percy Savage: Doyen of fashion PR’ [obituary], The Independent , 15 August 2008, http://www.independent . co.uk/news/obituaries/percy-savage-doyen-of- fashion-pr-897506.html, viewed 11 June 2015. 19 Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 2.. 20 Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 2; Charles Blackman, interview with James Gleeson [transcript], 26 April 1979. 21 Shapcott, p.11. 22 In Melbourne, they also met Arthur Boyd and John Perceval at Murrumbeena. Reid recalled that they stayed in Nolan’s loft in Parkville. Barrett Reid, interview with the author; Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 1. 23 Barrett Reid, ‘Nolan in Queensland: Some biographical notes on the 1947–48 paintings’, Art and Australia , vol. 5, no. 2, September 1967, p.447. 24 Reid, pp.446–52; Barbara Blackman, ‘Brisbane in the forties: My Barjai days’, p.541. The most recent account is Nancy Underhill, Sidney Nolan: A Life , NewSouthBooks, Sydney, 2015. 25 Charles Osborne, Giving it Away: The Memoirs of an Uncivil Servant , Secker & Warburg, London, 1986, p.40. 26 ECW (Elizabeth Webb), ‘“Shock tactics” shock’, Courier Mail , 18 February 1948, p.2. 27 Listing of ‘Miya Studio Exhibitions, Paintings, etc.’ [typescript], 1987, Pamela Crawford Papers, p.5; a review commented on Laurie Hope’s ‘dim, dark horrors’, while describing Nolan’s ‘enamels’ as the ‘most provocative of the modern group’. ‘New trends in art show’, Courier Mail , 24 August 1948, p.2. 28 The date of this exhibition is unknown; Barrett Reid, correspondence with the author, 22 March 1987. 29 Shapcott, p.11. 30 Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 2. Barbara Blackman, in ‘Brisbane in the forties: My Barjai days’, refers to the ‘General Hospital’, which could refer to the Royal Brisbane Hospital, p.540. 31 Laurence Hope, correspondence with the author, 9 March 1987. 32 Hope also met Boyd and Perceval, but it is not clear if Blackman was with him. Granek, p.51. 33 Hope, interview with Barbara Blackman, Tape 2, Side 2. 34 Granek, pp.51–2. 35 Hope, interview with Robert Walker, p.6; Barbara Blackman, ‘Brisbane in the forties: My Barjai days’, p.540. Nolan’s subsequent visit to Queensland in late 1947 has been well documented: with his Brisbane friends, he climbed Mount Warning, visited poet Judith Wright and philosopher Jack McKinney on Mount Tamborine, travelled to Fraser Island with Barrie Reid, and to Cairns with Miya Studio artist Joy Roggenkamp. 24 According to Osborne, he ‘made our Ballad Bookshop his headquarters’. 25 Blackman, in his friendship with Hope, Reid and Osborne, was associating with ardent admirers of Nolan’s avant-garde paintings. While we do not know the precise dates Blackman was in Brisbane in 1948, he did have several opportunities to see Nolan’s work in Brisbane exhibitions, aside from any paintings Nolan had produced during his stay. In February 1948, Nolan’s paintings of Eliza Fraser were exhibited at the Moreton Galleries, described as ‘monstrous daubings’ by ECW (Elizabeth Webb) in the Courier Mail . 26 Three paintings by Nolan were later included in Miya Studio’s Fourth Annual Exhibition held at Finney’s Gallery in August 1948, including ‘two Central Australian Landscapes’. 27 Reid also recalled that paintings by Nolan were exhibited at the South Brisbane Library, where Vida Smith worked. 28 Another significant figure for Blackman in Brisbane was Hope. Blackman was again in Brisbane at the time of Hope’s 1949 solo exhibition at the Moreton Galleries. Writing on Blackman in the late 1960s, Thomas Shapcott noted that Hope ‘made an impact [on Blackman] with works of vigorous visual documentation, the expressionistic side of realism’, suggestive of the ‘poetic realism’ that would be central to Blackman’s later work. 29 Hope’s paintings from the mid 1940s were often on small scraps of paper. By 1948, Hope was painting brooding pictures of sleeping or embracing figures, people in bed, in parks or on park benches. His images of isolated, alienated, reflective figures and lovers pre-empt themes that Blackman later pursued. When Blackman returned to Brisbane in 1949, he and Hope shared a rooming house in Spring Hill, and both found work at the hospital. 30 Late that year, the two friends travelled south to go fruit-picking in Shepparton. 31 Visiting Melbourne, they met up with artist John Yule, and were moved by the William Blake exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. 32 For a few nights they stayed at Gordon House, remembered by Hope as a nightmarish scene of ‘long rows of iron beds [and] coughing individuals’ frequented by ‘winos’ and ‘down-and-outs’. 33 As Nolan was by then living in Sydney, they appeared not to visit Heide. They had hitchhiked back to Sydney by November 1949. 34 Charles Blackman would meet one more significant figure in Brisbane: his future wife, Barbara Patterson, a psychology honours student at the University of Queensland. Like Reid and Osborne, she had been a student at Brisbane State High School, though she was slightly younger. She contributed poetry to Barjai and, by its final issues, was part of its executive. They first met at the Ballad Bookshop, Charles collecting or returning the key to the Art Reference Library — Hope claiming he introduced them. 35 Their relationship developed later in Sydney, and on moving to Melbourne in 1951 they married. By then Barbara was legally blind. Brisbane would continue to lure them back over future decades, long after the majority of those associated with Barjai and Miya Studio had departed for Sydney, Melbourne or London.