Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Backward Glance at an Avant Garde When Sydney and "The Hats" ruled Australian art T one time the Charm School, which is, roughly, the painters who were new in Sydney in the 1940s, was the whole of Australian art. It was the avant garde. Unless you lived in Melbourne, and read the art reviews carefully, you prob- ably knew nothing of Nolan, Boyd, Tucker and co. until much later. They were Melbourne's vanguard in the 1940s, but elsewhere the general public probably didn't hear about them till the late 1950s. Melbourne did not look after its own avant-garde painters at all well. Admittedly, they were much more difficult, more genuinely an avant garde than Sydney's. And there were purely accidental reasons. For example, Sydney happened to be the place where art books and magazines were published; and when I was growing up irr the 'forties, in Tasmania, there were quite a few around the house. The magazine was "Art in Australia", which expired in 1942. The three picture books were "Australian Present Day Art" of 1943, 1945 and 1949, and in them Mel- bourne was represented only by Couni- han, joined in the last of the three by 'Constance Stokes and Eric Thake. They should have been called "Sydney Present Day Art", but how was one to know that in Tasmania? There were also books about Dobell and Drysdale and two writ- ten by Donald Friend. Not till later did I come across the two histories of Australian art. Bernard Smith's brilliant bit of pioneering in 1945, or Herbert Badham's pedestrian compi- lation of 1949, but they didn't illustrate Nolan or Boyd either. What I did come ,across was a booklet by Clive Turnbull titled "Art Here", subtitled "Buvelot to Nolan". This is a very alert subtitle indeed for 1947; Drysdale, Nolan and Thake are named as "perhaps Australia's most significant contemporary artists" (Drysdale and'Dobell were the most "ac- complished"). But the pamphlet was pub- lished rather obscurely, and in any case this Melbourne writer said "the pre- eminence of Sydney was indisputable"; two years earlier nearly everybody had said the same when he organised for the Melbourne "Herald" a large survey ex- hibition of Sydney painting in the Mel- bourne Town Hall. Through the 'fifties there were no more books to show the provincials what Australian art was up to until Kym Bony- thon's came out five years ago. Many more have followed, and two years ago a magazine began again, this time called By DANIEL THOMAS "Art and Australia". The Charm School scarcely exists in the new books. But it's still alive, and in a country where it's more usual for painters to get worse as they grow older - Streeton is a conspicuous example - some of them are painting better. Several disappeared for a long time in the 'fifties, Strachan to Paris, Lym- burner to London, Donald Friend to Ceylon, Mitty Lee -Brown to Rome, but a couple of years ago they all seemed to be back. A three-man show by Jessup, 011ey and Strachan at the Dominion Galleries in 1962 was a sort of mani- festo. On the other hand Loudon Saint - hill, who has been an extremely success- ful theatre designer in London for nearly 15 years, seems gone for good, and so do some of their playmates like Wol- fang Cardamatis and Jocelyn Rickards. Among those who do send paintings back to Australia Jean Bellette has lived in Majorca for the past eight years, while Fred Jessup, a second -generation member of the group, is based in France. Historical research WHEN they were away the term Charm School was invented. John Olsen who says it certainly didn't exist when he fret for Europe in 1956 thought Robert Hughes invented it, but when I asked Hughes he said he'd got it from me, and that it first appeared in print in 1962. I first heard it from Tom Gleghorn in 1958 when it certainly signified a specific group of artists. He now remembers that he first heard it in 1957 when it was re- marked that his exhibition of large and lurid abstracts "certainly wasn't charm school". A month later than that ex- hibition I find an article by Elwyn Lynn in his Contemporary Art Society Broad- sheet - probably the first serious attempt in Australia to define abstract expression- ism - where the term charm school is used generally of non -expressionist art but is not attached to any specific group of painters, Australian or foreign. Thus it seems the term emerged among the younger painters who helped make the abstract revolution in the later 1950s, and it was, of course, a term of abuse. All new generations like to accuse their predecessors of triviality; all old generations like to accuse their successors of being unable to paint or draw. By now it is clear that some of the abstractionists can paint very well, and that others of them are just as trivial as the worst of the Charm School. It is time for Charm School to become a neutral , word, usefully defining a moment in art history. After all Gothic, baroque and rococo were only dirty words but are now neutral. Some definitions: The Charm School does not include Dobell. He was immediately admired on his return from abroad: Art Gallery purchase even before he'd exhibited; called "Australia's best artist" in the London "Studio" even before his famous Archibald prize. He was much more conservative than they, though he did show with them in the Contemporary Art Soc;ety's first exhibitions. Drysdale showed with the Contempor- ary Art Society, too, and his work seemed so modern in 1942 that people were as genuinely surprised to find any of it sold (C. F. Viner-Hall was the principal early collector) as they are now with, say, Colin Lanceley. Besides modernity, he shared certain techniques with them - Friend's way of drawing is similar, Bellette once glazed and scumbled as sumptuously as he. But although they are all his close personal friends, he is separate from them all in being a regional painter (except for 4 Cedric Flower and for Donald Friend's occasional Australiana which is satirical though affectionate). Drysdale interprets Australian landscape and national life; they prefer still-life, or the artificial life of the theatre, or their private bohemia. Since Sali Herman was so much a regional interpreter of Australian themes I exclude him, too, though his style is very near to Charm School. Nolan, who was on close terms with them during the five years he spent in Sydney before leaving Australia in 1953, then had a lyric gaiety and lightness which is indeed genuinely charming and often makes them seem leaden -footed. His interest in theatre design was typical of the group. But again his Australian subject matter separates him from them, as does his offhand, styleless spontaneity. The Charm School were stylists to the core. Unlike previous Australian genera- tions they knew their art history and they drew upon it frankly; Poussin and l Piero and Braque are easily recognised. They impose style on raw nature until the painting is more important than the thing pictured. No impressionist sub- mission to observed reality like their predecessors; no expressionist exposure