Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

muunnmunuunuuw What's on in art David Jones: Jannis Spyropoulos, Greek painter. Farmers: Hans Erni, paintings, drawing a, prints, from Switzerland. Macquarie: Rodney Want e, paintings. Darlingburst: Godfrey Miller, paintings. Clime: Stuart Devlin, sculpture, Little Gallery: Beat- rice Kelly, paintings. Frances Jones: Mixed exhibition. Workshop Arts Cen- tre, Willoughby: Roy Fluke. Quixote, Avalon: Mix- ed inaugural exhibition. Von &switch, New- castle: Francis Lerm- burner, drawings. OPENING TUESDAY. Hungry Horse: John Coburn. paintings. 1111111. OPENING WEDNES- DAY. Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Acquisitions for 1964. Walters: Ann Thom- son, paintings. Stern: Ilse Tauber, paintings, Eileen Brooker, Boz Kokor, pottery. OPENING TIIURS- DAY. Gallery A: Colin Lanceley, assemblages and lithographs. Crana, Wollongong: Frank Charvat. TUESDAY ART FILMS. Contemporary Art Society: Adyar Hall, Bligh St., 8 p.m.: Kand- insky. Kollwitz, Francis Bacon. etc. OPENING FRIDAY. Von Bertonch, New- castle: Ken Reinhard. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 1 1 rl."1" SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, MARCH 14, 1965 57 This show made me feel sad Irs international veek in Sydney. Surely there have never before been simultacnous one-man shows here by two painters who arc internationally known, if not exactly world-famous. Farmers has Hans Erni, a Swiss; David Jones has Jannis Spyropoulos, a Greek. They are both much the same age, but Erni looks like a period - piece, of 1920s neo- classicism, while Spyro- poulos is a strictly post- war informal abstrac- tionist. Erni's job Is appar- ently an official Swiss cultural P.R. job, which has been touring Aus- tralia for some time. One can tee how it ap- peals to official taste, if official equals conserva- tive, as It usually does; and how the virtues of his excellent posters give a superficial, and brief, effectiveness to the paintings, drawings and -lithographs. But there is an Im- portant distinction be- tween art for casual viewing by passers-by h. public places - one would guess his murals were good-and art for private contemplation and permanent satis- faction. These large - scaled fluent drawings (even the largest paintings are still drawings, with some arbitrary color washed across them, or some shading to fill in the anatomy) impress by their heroic well-fed roundness; the curves are drawn as surely as if with a compass. Happy memories of other people's art rise up - of Michelangelo and Picasso - but this Is no fault, for every artist resembles other artists. The fault seems to be the reliance on drawing alone, when It Is only one of the many resources of art. Erni has held about 100 one-man shows In the past 20 years; five a year. Does he never stop? Never spend more than a few hours on each picture? He must be possessed of an unkind demon. This exhibition makes me feel sad. Seventy - three pic- tures, 14 to 2520 gui- neas. THE SPYROPOU- LOS exhibition is not sad, It does not carry this sense of indignity with It. But then it The week in By Daniel Thomas doesn't risk Indignity; though after Erni It Is very welcome to And an artist with an exact awareness of his range and, perhaps, limita- tions-anyway someone whose pictures are self- sufficient struct u r e s, reserved and aloof In- stead of importunate- ly demanding atten- tion, or praise, or blame. The pictures are here not for any official reason, but simply be- cause one man of taste liked them (Mr. Haines of the las 7'1 Jones' Gal- lery), an. this la a much better reason. Of course, one's first reaction la to relate these black tonaltat ab- stracts, with their dis- creet waxy patinae, to Mr. Haines' other favorite painters, also black and tons list: Sickest and Meldrum, - or to his Rodin bronzes, or to his beau- tifully polished furni- ture. They all fit pre- cisely. No color, no spikey linearism, for good taste cannot be so easily guaranteed with them. There are alight touches of color em- bedded In the floating torn - collage forms :sometimes real col- lage, someti m e s trompe-l'oeil), and in the suffused whiteness of a Greek interior they might be even more telling; but they are only a garnish. The spatial dance of the hovering shapes is In no way affected by the color and he remains a pure tonalist, though not a fluffy one, for all the pictures are slung on a firm rectilinear ar- chitecture, Twenty-eight pictures, 230 to 900 g Mmes. ROD, M 'LOAM (Macquarie) a Sydney painter, aged 30. Is holding his fourth one- man show and points Out that he Is not Is monotonous as soiffe people have thought, by including a few older pictures with several kinds of new ones. The two-year -old ones were painted with paint, allover, caked, and thick. Some new ones are "painted" in the natural brown of the masonite panel, scratch- ed, rubbed, and stained into a sort of leopard akin. The old snatched a small part of a univer- sal continuum which carried on endlessly be- yond the picture edge; the new have frames painted round them. they are windows into Milgate's spiritual world, not the naked experi- ence itself. He has be- come defensive. He has also become much more overtly fig- urative, and not always too happily. "The Expatriates" shows two aborigines, not unlike Elizabeth Durack's, brooding at a window: "Orchard with Figures" is perhaps a family group under a tree, windswept. These are banal. "Burlesque" is six standing nudes in compartments as if in coffins, This is funny. "Abraham and Moses" each stand In a com- partment. This is close to a chic Christmas card, with a bit of wood- cut -style angularity. But there are other compartmented couples, very promising: "Trans- figuration" and "Daniel and Isaiah" in which his familiar cursive Iln- earism unwinds Into long attenuated art nouveau loops. Perhaps the older kind of painting Is more uniformly successful and "Ear of the Poet" the best: though "Portrait of a Saint' of the new framed kind but un- spoilt by any recogIlle- able figure, Is rather grand. Twenty-six paintings, 00 to 250 guineas.