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

hey a e s sold an advance copy of the ill addition, gerlgt houses built claiming that they would have no time to months. book another hall if the church decided against Pe, of ,the them, the Twelfth Night homes nave leaders didn't wait for the did, compared answer; they switched the rented - a play to another theatre. has been com- ersed in less One (probably inevitable) gars. result was a spate of publicity beyond the until vary ac- Imaginings of any groU a series of of amateur players. drawn up by ssion In differ- But by no means all th The averages comments were favorable, O agreements even from some of those L3 2/2 to t4 if/ who admitted they had gone along only because sons for I - ner - purch "Amateurs" ster avallabilit but they al Meanwhile, the Board of emu:nisei° a Trustees of the Queens. Increase t. e land Art Gallery has corn reigns for under fire from one of th d to get awe , city's leading art dealer from the reg and private gallery owners. appearance o ommission area:. the He declares rs that most o couldn' FuneralIf recognise a piece of creative art from a seed people hay. catalogue . . , one-thir trig that life I of the 11 trustees wer of the arts is no "amateurs the rest wer with an appall- ing knowledge of art.'' e past week or The reason for this blast sauce, two -third by private gallery director rtees of Queens Mr. Brian Johnstone was t, Gallery has the trustees' rejection of bbed "amateurs two paintings by Brisbane ,ppalling know- artist Miss Margaret 011ey. r t." Ichmen who own he city's best - bile halls decided the suitability of of a play to b ere by a leadin dramatic society ny was Patric the Ham Fune ci. to be produce Twelfth Nigh iroup in Bris Bert Hall. (Last week, Miss 011ey et a new record for an ustralian woman artist, by selling 38 paintings for £3,000). Trustees of the Queens- land Gallery include a Supreme Court iudge, two university pro MOM a sculptor -artist, two medi- cal men, three lawyers, and two publics servants. The chairman - de- scribed by Mr. Johnstone e hall II own as being one of the ethodist Chords trustees' wise men - has en the eh declined to comment. REACTIONS to the Richards Prize paintings now showing in the Art Gallery range from won- der to bewilder- ment. Some people cannot look at many of them without a feeling of great elation. Others feel that some sort of a trick is being played on them. At any rate, nobody who sees them remains Mater - eta. Why should works of art affect people so variously? Is there no common stan- dard which enables us to say whether strange new crea- tions not seen before are good or bad? Why should paintings which do not faithfully re- produce a landscape or a nude model but, instead, like music, transmute thoughts, feelings, and visual impres- sions into pure colour or de- scriptive symbols move some people to hostility? When Sir Alfred Munuinga was President of the Royal Academy he described all modern art as "violent blows at nothing." He told this story: A kick 11 1 1 II r .11,1.1,1.11 "It Isn't so long ago that Mr. Churchill and I were walking together. Mr. Chur- chill said to me, 'Alfred, if we saw Picasso coming down the street towards us, would you join me in kicking hard a certain part of him?' I replied, 'By Clod, Winston, I would'." A kick answers no question and solved no argument. But let us admit that there is an amount of strong feeling against modern artists. And It seems to be vaguely slimmed up in Mun- nings' charge that they "cannot paint a tree to look like a tree." But obviously this is not the whole trouble. There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who knows Picasso's pencil draw- ings or the figures of his early days that he is very g Richards Prize paintings - g paintings. Others have : a a Thomas) including winning entry, criticised them. Many corn- a a "Journey into the 'You : a plain they cannot "under. : ei the sesalliomn Recut' Country No. 2"-on a : stand" them and pose the si g pointers. show at the Art Gallery. a question: Is this Art? g says . - . a momNommE 1111111111111111111111111111100 111111 MUST A T LOOK LIKE REED well able to paint a tree to look like a tree. The trouble is surely that, being able, he does not, BUT MUST HE? Is the artist simply a kind of super recording instru- ment faithfully portraying. with the talent he has, the common vleion? What of, for example, the sense of wonder Which, looking some- times at a tree, we feel but cannot express? We are all familiar with those magnificent state- ments-we call them meta- phors-which poets make When they want to convey this sense of wonder, or when they want to describe something which is beyond the reach of purely literal deccription. Poetry P1111111r111 Something is somehow added to our understanding when a poet says things like "a woman is a foreign land" or "Hope is a morning in spring." We call a man a poet Just because he can make ordinary language convey something more than it seemed capable of. And so with painters. Some kinds of painting, like Picasso's, are In a sense like metaphors. It would be wrong to accuse artists of failing to paint a tree to look like a tree when they had no such limited intention. One trouble is that there is certainly no common standard. But the belief that there must be can tie you into knots which make appreciation Impossible. If you had been brought up to value only, say, the extreme simplicity of Chi- nese drawings, you might easily find Michelangelo's florid painting of The Last Judgment utterly distaste- ful. They can both be valued, but for different reasons. There are. in fact, hun- dreds of standards which we apply to different works of art and the only thing which you might say they have in common is quality. But how do you judge that ? Only by knowledge. There is no easy way. The critics bin, Many of the most vocal critics of contemporary art are the people who know nothing or very little of the alt of ally period at all. There is no such thing as instinctive judgment, only instinctive opinions. When It comes to saying whether this or that is good or bad, an opinion is not worth tuppence. It is merely tan- tamount to saying, f like beer and you like lemon- ade. People's private testes are their own affair. What people have hanging In their own houses is entirely their affair. But don't imagine for a moment, that,prlynte taste is a judgment about I the artistic or objective value of a work of art. If artists today are work- ing in a way eliferent from that of earlier artists, here and elsewhere, it Is cer- t Rinly not because they can't draw in the art -school sense. A byzentine head of Christ, with its features de- liberately distorted to con- vey spirituality, might fool some Into believing that the artist Mst couldn't draw. The fact that living painters charm to work In the way they dos because they have something vastly 1,1.1 1.1 1.1 llllllllllll llllll I. By LAURIE THOMAS, director of the Queensland Art gallery. .11. I , , ,.1 1.1 , ,., 11 lllllll 1 1 1.1 1 1 1 1 llllll 1d1 different to express from -orthodox and modern --so what onlest,have, done. that "conventional" painters They are interested, for would have a fair go. example, in trying to cots- This misses the point' vey the million and limit- completely. less possibilities of the Conventional paintings mind's dreams, the explo- were not pushed out by nive world about them, the modern ones. It was simply explosive world within them, that the better paintings In the heart's emotions, the any style pushed out the essence rather than the poorer ones. mere appearance of the In the Richards exhibl- whole subtle world of lion, many "conventional" mystery, imagination, and paintings - such as thong fact which impinges upon by Lloyd Rees, Cariniton them. Smith, Ray Crooke, son Above all, they are mak- Herman, Charles Metre, eta. ing-trying to make works -are hanging alongside of art which are entirely more "modern' work. beautiful, fascinating, or arresting for their own sake-little worlds of their own, unlike any other world; and to do it with that joy of discovery which Colum- bus felt in coming upon a new found land. How do you tell whether the results are any good? Only by recognising whether they've done it well or ill. Victor Hugo once said that there are no good or bad subjects, only good or bad poets. It doesn't mat- ter what an artist's subject is or what his intention is. What matters is whether lie has done it with technical skill, power, intensity, wholeness and great feeling. People sometimes find these strange worlds "meaningless." But perhaps they're looking for the wrong thing. What is the "meaning," for instance, of a sunset, or Greek vase? Paintings, like all works of art, are made to be loved, not to convey messages- though they may do so, Cheap So many of the facile and popular pictures of the land- scape which some admire are hardly more than cheap little forgeries from nature without any song at the centre and no inner beauty of their own. But art of the best kind la never banal in this sense. One thing which some may feel, is a lack of a sense of humanity in what they may regard as cold abstractions unwanned by recognisable features or emotions. Yet often the most spiritual emotlotsa can be conveyed only in the most ethereal way, as in Beet- hoven's last quartets. An abstract painting may throb with a new and deep feel- ing impossible to achieve in any other way. Some have complained I hat, "orthodox" painting is being pusiusd Into the back- ground by "modern" paint- ing. One critic of the Richards Prize has actually suggested that the competition should be divided into two sections If paintings were rejected it was not because they were old or new, but only be- cause they were not up to the standard of the ones hung. The best And if the Richards Prize is mainly of modern work that is because most of the best painters working today live in their own time and work In a "modern" way, It is true, perhaps, that many people who have been brought up to admire mainly the paintings produced In the Western world since the Renaissance can't for the life of them see why no" - representational art Is en- titled to be called art at all. It is unlike anything they have learned to call art. They should semember that all great artists have been modern artists in their own day-and nearly always rejected, at first, by the public for making paintings outrageously unlike what had gone before. If artists painted only for popular taste there would, never be any forward mare- ment-only repetition. But you can look in vain throughout history to find single great work of art that has ever been painted by public opinion. The good thing about the Richards Prize exhibition is that it represents some of the very best work being done now by some of the very best painters in Aus- tralia or, indeed, anywhere. You :mightn't like it. But that's not the point. The point is that this in fact is what the artists who actually produce the work are doing now and no Canute of pdb- lic opinion call stop them. It is, I believe. one of the duties of a public art gallery to show what ncttialiy Is being done by Its country's best artists and not to try to tell artists how or what they should paint. And if what Is being done is original, would we have it commonplace? FOOTNOTE: Mr. Thomas will give a public lecture on the R. C. Richards prize entriee in the gallery at 8 0.m. on December 7.