Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 1 : Presscuttings, 1959-1962

MI11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111H111111111111111111111111111 Felicity went to the art gallery to see . . Good, bad, and how they come, all the paintings are on display at the Art Gallery just now. Grouped chronologically, some of them have more historic than artistic interest . . . . THERE'S nothing much to do in town at this time of the year - but one of the best entertainments for a long while is a tram ride away. The Art Gallery has emptied out its back rooms and dusted its corners. The result of this momentoius spring cleaning is ar credible exhibition of all the paintings it possesses. P a 1 e Victorian maidens, modestly draped or discreetly reclining on couches look wistfully across at less modest nymphs frolicking among painted trees. Picasso's La Belle Hollandaise stares with incredulous eyes at a collection of lush golden - skinned overweights framed by garlands of flowers. A dreadful landscape, paint peeling from the canvas, stands as a monument to maternal devotion. It was presen- ted to (he gallery "by the artist's mother." STORY Tremendous country scene s, overpowering battles, and huge sea- scapes fight for space with examples of "every picture tells a story" - and all of them tell an- other story, of long-ago spaciousness, I a r ger- tlmn-life emotions. And there are the ef- forts of artists, English by birth or affection, struggling to paint Aus- trails in English terms- long after others had solved the problem by painting in Australian terms. Murky, ugly little landscapes of hideous browns and greens-the sort that thirty years ago would hang in dark suburban sitting rooms between the beading curtain over the doorway and the tall urn painted with flowery pastoral scenes. Time marches round the gallery to pre-war landscapes - g e n t e e 1, pallid watercolors that look as it they may have come from the brushes of colorless gentlewomen dlling in an infinity of boring afternoons. The annex could easily be missed. Don't miss it. It will give you a chill equal to any in the chamber of horrors. Presumptuous copies of Old Masters rub should- ers with an uncompvm- !sing full-length Queen Viet iris. Then turn around slowly. An indescribable violence of color screams from the back wall. Reds, yellows, purples assault you in a terrify- ing mixture of bad painting and bad taste. It's one of the fun- niest exhIbtions I've seen -and one of the proud- est. Because there ARE good paintings. A sur- prisingly large number of them, side -by-side with the mediocre and the shocking. Enough good ones to be proud of our State collection. Though we'll have snore reason for pride when the spring- cleaning is over if the impossible are weeded out and more space is given to those worth having and holding. Art show attracts The Queensland Art Gallery's strelitaking dis- play of paintings wos Brisbane's best tourist attraction yesterday. Fight loitoIrrn prey h tacked the to re the enllection durhis t he sfternnon "It 011 imprrirr. dented attendance for a Sunday, even ilies(.111 it 'wit art.' ,111(1 Mr. 0^or:e I-ted. herd attendant RE the gallrrY. "We hope to keep thr show open fn, two months