Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

cry "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W '14 Nf'1_,JAL GERMAN PRINTS Original prints are inclined to emphasise craftsmanship, neatness, and skill, nose expres- ) mon of powerful emotions. / The greatest print ' makers have nearly al - `ways been great painters as well, like / Rembrandt, Goya and I Picasso. I But In Germany .early this century printmaking deliber- ately opposed the polite . world of meticulous etching; usually with ,roughly -chopped wood- p cuts or spontaneously , drawn lithographs. "German Prints at Today." a travelling. exhibition now at the Art Gallery of N.S.W., has some of the old ex- pressionist drama, but on the whole. in this age of Common Market Germany has joined Europe. Of course Italy has fascinated Ger- many for centuries, and here are the expected souvenirs of Rome. But the radiant float- ing clouds of E. W. Nay's lithographs, or the nervous feathery parallels of Hartuti.t's etchings to name two t of the most beautiful, (have both the crafts- , manship and the . language of Paris. Grieshaber, a more specialist printmaker, emphasises the very ic il qualityneon of baret sefflie paper or of the black- ness of wood in play- ful mythology scenes on the River Neckar. Wunderlich shows how sinisterly ink can drift over a litho- ; fsraplilf surface.h.BUtipi-t I parently not a painter, who shows how the specialist printmaker can transcend manship as usual by treating the materials roughly. Bits of scrap metal seem to have been heaped onto his copperplate and the paper submitted to cruelly savage printing , to produce an ern- Pbos.sed etching in fan- ' tastic high relief. Here I is expressiveness about I space and color, as 'powerful as in any k painting. r The whole exhibition ,is of very high stand- , ard, some prints go , back at least 14 years ,(one was seen nine , years ago in our pre- vious exhibition of German prints) most ' are new. It was pre- ! CrAdar 1:zty thei Museum, ,Cologne. BALDESSIN George Baldessin i (Rudy Komon). First . one-man show in Syd- ,ney of a young (26) , Melbourne sculptor of ,extraordinary promise. He must be almost the only local sculptor not working in a tired :cubist or constructionist mode. He does not, thank goodness, respect his materials much and it is neutral fibreglass anyway, painted; and it is used for his own very personal vision of the horrors of the flesh. In fact his vision is at this stage more in- teresting than his actual objects. His acro- bats and dancers must be a convenient vehicle for his appalled insight about the random de- viations that are pos- sible in the human figure. The work is not about the theatre, but about contortion into some other human person- age, or ageing (belly and buttocks pendulous) into something else again, or the possibility of a third limb, though those "private pipelines" look like a brilliant making -over of some- thing that TM at first Just a prop to hold up a sculpture when it got too big. For Baldessin mutation is a process constantly with us. The large drawings perhaps succeed best; the etchings are superbly imagined (and sometimes place the polyp -figures in the un- attainable security of a geometrical space) but rather meanly inked; the sculptures likewise, but the faces chopped and sliced into the fibreglass are slightly out of key with lump- ishness elsewhere, while the figures nearly opt for the single viewpoint but not quite, and fall to maintain a satisfac- tory multi -directional form. These are details The week in / rt By Daniel Thomas when the vision Is so serious and authentic. CARL PLATE Carl Plate (Hungry Horse). Twenty - three oils, done on his visit to Paris this year; not dif- ferent from before, ex- cept for a few with clear torn -collage forma, but better. His color and pointerllness are all at their most attractive again. His sense of space, bogged in one or two ton-landscapy pictures, is however, very real. He is someone who uses Braque's colors to make loose forms, but clearly articulated, and inhabit- ing a deep space. The look 13 sometimes sur- real for the major in- terest, apparently artic- ulation, or jointing, makes the elements look like bones, or dead .111. branches. Prices 36 to 275 guineas. My favor- ites: "Prom Here to There" and "Only the Appearance Changes." CHRISTMAS Farmers "EIS and under" for Christmas, is as usual filled with bar- gains contributed by generous artists. Try Bissietta for horse draw- ings, Gilliland for dusky breathing char coals, Lymburner for dancers, Lynn for hieratic col- lages; Rates for an im- mensely charming wood- cut Bird, Grace Cossing- ton Smith for little masterly oils, and so on. Nearby, Collector's Rendezvous has 18th/ 190. century English watercolors at similarly low prices; and at the Dominion William Spencerhas neo-Early English drawings at low prices. That is they are tiny. often sketchbook draw- ings (some re -worked recently, but mostly done 20 years ago) which draw Tasmanian Countryside as if by De Wint or Cox, Victorian Gothic architecture as if by Corot. They are not topographical, for buildings come together from different places, but they do understand the parts of a building very well, and Spencer would be much better than most of the sorry draughtsmen who con- stantly publish sketch- books or Old SydneDowy. Peter Laverty (l- ing Gallery) has Christ- mas -priced monotypea, freshly and delicately seashores, ready landscapes, trees, flowers and nests, in spindly hatchings. And the Walters Gallery has four very young paint- ers for consideration at very low prices. Geof- frey Proud, the only one previously unexhtbited, and very promising. paints on glass, with the dashing styleless- ness of Nolan, but rather more bizarre in imagery; the hatted woman transmutes to horned cow when No- lan would find the hat Itself enough. What's on in Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Special exhibitions: German Prints of To- day; Kenneth Armitage sculptures; N.S.W. Ar- chitecture Awards; G. W. Lambert drawings. Newcastle City Art Gallery: Mediaeval Eng- lish Pottery, Rudy Romeo: George Haldessin, sculpture. drawings, etchings, Hungry Horse: Carl Plate, paintings. Gallery A: Michael Brown, paintings etc. Barry Stern: Lesley Pockley. paintings. Dowling: Peter Las- ert&Ireoxtes. Four Young Painters, Native Art Centre, Victoria Street: New Guinea Art. Kelmseott: Mixed In- augrglinisohno:w. William Spencer, watercolors. Collectors Rendez- vous: Early English watercolors. Farmers: £15 and un- der. Macquarie: Ray Crooke, stations of the Cross. Little Gallery: Mixed show, Sydney migrant artists. Wales House: Thome Mallen, Memorial. Education Derwri- ment: Portia (leach Portrait Prize. Workshop Arts Cen- tre, Willoughby: Sculp- ture and Jewellery. The Stables, Pymble: Kenneth Green, paint-, art Inge. Ryde Civic Centre: Rtde Art Award. Barefoot, Avalon: Joe Szabo, paintings. Manly Art Gallery: Roy Fluke. OPENING MONDAY Clone: French art, paintings, sculptures, lithographs. David Jones': Leon- ard French. Canberra Gallery A: Large paintings for public spaces. OPENING TUESDAY Darlinghurst: David Strachan, paintings. OPENING THURSDAY Newcastle City Art Gallery: Abstract Wat- ercolors by 14 Ameri- cans. Darlinghurst Annex: Heather Dorrough, wall hangings. OPENING FRIDAY Underwood: Bernard Healing, enamels. Von Bertouch, New- castle: Mixed show. Cecina, Wollongong: 10 potters. TUESDAY LECTURE Contemporary A r t Society, Adyar Hall, 8 p in. "An English Crit- ic's View of Australian Art" by Nicholas Water - low. WEDNESDAY LECTURE University of Sydney Stephen Roberta Th' acre, 8.15 p.m. "Err vations at Bray Professor Can: AMIN archeolng.