Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" I i1CFSydney, N.S.W NAIVE, SIMPLE AND PLAIN NATIVE painting, of which there are three current exhibit tions, is painting by the untrained, the innocent. Naive painters, typically, whimsical fun of priests are old; they take It up as and nuns and other people. a hobby in retirement, or Cheap at f25 to £45. when the family has been raised. The American "Grandma" Mose, ass the BYZANTIUM best known in recent Justin O'Brien (Mac - limes. The word "prim t lye" quariel gets a simple, not a has often been used for naive pleasure from paint - this kind of art, but should am. I mean that he likes be discouraged, for ppenal_Picture-making, and keeps flue art more usually a sense of wonder about means the tribal art of the processes. He chooses New Guinea or tile Abo- religious subjects because rigines. colors need not be realistic; Just about every Atistra. he loves distancing the Ilan naive painter of any subject -matter from any merit has been collected Primary level of reality, for Sydney to see; and one and plays an innocent Polynesian, Mrs. Tibbo la game 0;greatutip.ling with at Aladdins, All naives levels particularise. they adore Though after a trip to precision and detail. When Greece and fresh contact they attempt to generalise with his favorite Byzantine their lack of technique landscapes the fantasy, of shows cruelly. The passion the sprouting rocks is a for detail, the direct car- little subdued, the colors talnty about what is more mellowed. Not that meaningful to them, is they are realistic, for they what gives their pictures take on the soft fawns of a marvellous conviction. mid - nineteenth century lithographic views. Similarly his subject - pictures always reminded Often It's their own dis- tant past they will itemise. Mrs. Tibbo's was in Page Pago, apparently at a mis- sion school; "Jacob's Well" has a grave conversation between Use well -head and an armchair: there is a cricket match, Her char- acteristic a n d excellent colors; cocoa and green lime. The Australians, Mr. Byrne and Mr. Homer, whom we know already, remember their early lives in Broken Hill or the Hunter Valley. Mrs. Pres- sing's life was in Austria and is full of old Jewish folklore. Occasionally gentle naughtiness over- takes her; "Lady in the Bath" is nude, in a gold- fish bowl, in a room of Persian gorgeousness. The week in rt. Gy Daniel Thomas one of Ikons, of other pic- tures, before one consider- ed the event depicted. His Two other more awk- portraits now resemble the wardly indiscreet ones are ancient Roman portraits with Wicket Look" and trompe I'oeil of a ragged from FaYum. even to the Mr. Jeerers, with "Nude Mr. Hughes with "Idyll," a panel edge, and this makes flock of nudes out to grass, them pictures of portraits, In readymade neo-classical not portraits. poses. Elsewhere Ise proceeds Mrs. Lister, who lived from a table still-life, to next door to Friend and an interior, to semi -exterior Drysdale at Hill End in space under a pergola, to the 1940s and who died wide landscape, all in Use last month used to.plus- same picture. The open trate local history, but her ppleasure he Bets from deal - religious inventions, or ob. ng with sese pictorial served life are as good, problems is certainly dis- arming. My favorites: Mr. Schism comes from "Dormition of the Virgin," the same parts (Bathurst), "Greek Head I," "Interior and celebrates the unique- with Still-Life," and the ness of botanical aped- softer flower pieces. Thirty- mens with great, orderly two paintings, 50 to 350 accumulations of what guineas. seem like a thousand banIcsias or waratahs. OUTBACKERY These are splendid. The remainder also ob- serve, rather than re- minisce, or dream, They paint what is in front of them, the landscape that they know. If we only had the professionals to go by we'd think most of Austra- lia looked much the same. But Mrs. Chick shows us exactly what Wangaratta Js like. Mrs. Luders defines the poetry of light and shade in the grassy hills of the Tumut valley. Mr. Max Watters sees a Patrick 'White morbidity In aging buildings on the marginal farms around Muswell- brook. Mr. Bastin, whose gouaches are much his I beet, roams the semi -desert from Meekatharra to Cooper's Creek for ring - barked trees and rocky outcrops. And the four of them are utterly different. These eleven Australians are all to be seen at Gallery A, and the last three in ggtreaattes ratirt, t welt All naive paintings are, and should be inexpensive, from 20 to 100 guineas. Except that Mr. Schlpp is so en- amoured of his war:it:Ms to value them at Itie Henze Mistimed (Domin- ion) has sent 25 small and semi -naive paintings front Rome, where he makes Lawrence Dews (Komon) is plain rather than simple. It is an intelligent. cal- culated simplicity, like the calculated simplicity of really smart clothes. Ills pictures are usually of empty Australian deserts, each with a single menac- ing symbol hanging in the ky-a target, a spotted snake, a skeleton, or sonl thing like a lollop() Dubuffet cow. A More re Haile and looser touch ii one or two landscapes an figures is new; the res is remarkably like S Fulibrook. Dow's dese bring forth precious sten -there are mines out th -and the colors are ofte those of such gems amethyst or ruby. 'Th Green Sapphire" if outstanding pletur Twenty - three paintin and four gouaches polite over magazine Illustr tons. There have been lot of artists doing this kin of abstract -looking ou backery, and no one d It better, or with less fu than Daws, MONTMARTRE George Lawrence (Da linghurst) la of an old impressionist generatlo Different subjects seem produce different styles, maybe it's Just that tackles subjects that o artists have made the own. Thus his Paris cann help look like Chill°, e cept where it looks 11 Bernard Buffet in th black outlined, lemon an snow colored "Winte Montmartre." His Mediter- ranean hill landscapes loo like some that Lloyd Reel has done; some pale Alit - trailers grasslands look like middle -period Arthur Boy There's no harm in thl and the exhibition as whole is stronger and more forceful than the usual Lawrence; "Mama" is 6 quite dramatic bit of deep blue sea and coast aflame with coral trees. But he's most uneven. Spaces can go wrong when he moves from foreground to background (Roman Forum), or when he takes you diagonally up a street or down the harbor. single -plane, frontal pi tures arc more usually sit cessful. Nineteen Australian Butt? jects, 14 European, 45 to 500 guineas. MIXED SHOWS The Hungry Horse Gal- lery has a very good mixed show of its artists. Plate, Coburn and Stockdale are much as usual; the otheril are all really pressing ort, Bill Rose's diagonal blue constructions begin to in: - habit a spherical space, hinted at aqueously, Rolf ert Griene for the firsit time really makes an o (with lots of small collage squares) keeps the admirs able delicacy of his water, colors, and for the first time makes a big picture whose forms are not stretched out. Salkauskas' very beautiful large water- color has two velvet blaci curtains opening on to throbbing rosy flush. 0.1.1. NINO. 41.04.04.44114.. What's on in art Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special exhibitions: Ian Fairweather retrospec- tive; Young Australian Artists shown in Japan (might open this week, depending on shipping movements. Must close next Sunday). Hungry Horse: Eight painters. DarlInghurst: George Lawrence, paintings, Oune: John Bell, paintings and drawings. Dominion: R onto Matteucci, paintings from Italy. Little Gallery: Mixed anniversary show. Komon: Lawrence Dews, paintings. Gallery A: Eleven naive painters. Walters: Three naive painters. Aladdins: Polynesian naive painter, 'reverie Tibbo. Von Bertouch, New- castle: Norma Allen, paintings. OPENING TUESDAY Clune: The Boys of Granville High School. Canberra Macquarie: Four landscape paint- ers, OPENING WEDNESDAY Macquarie: Desmond Dishy, paintings. Stern: Robert Owen, paintings, 0 Adelaide jewellers, David Jones: W. D. and H. 0. Wills Act Prize,