Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

r L 7.117LEGg11-2s Sydnei: N.S.W. 5 JAN 19b1 1 8 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, PANUAre 157 MT""" Mr. Thomas, Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was also the Sunday Telegraph art reviewer until a year ago, when he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for overseas travel. He studied the collections in the major art museums of the U.S.A., East Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries, not only for their master- pieces, but also for their minor arts and their provincial, or peripheral schools of art. This was done partly as a context for the study of Australian art. He also visited Spain, France and England. 4 MY TRIP /by Daniel\ Thomas It was perveisely gratifying to find some art museums in America that are 'worse than ours in Australia. Richmond. Virginia, Is an extreme case. It has specimens of every stylt and every period in the history of art, BUT hardly any of these specimens are good works of art. The museum knows this. so it plunges them in darkness. dramatises them with spotlights, often colored ones, and bathes the rpoms in muzak. The Weis love it, but it is not a museum of art: it's only a museum of art history - or perhaps a circus, Indeed, art museums in America are often brilliant p ac knees which distract you from their less -than - first -rate possessions The new Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a flasheheap of marble in a licorice - water pond, it has fIrlek carpets, walls vel- vet, a good restaurant and the belt art book- shop in toltn. Tiny tell you what a I .vely museum they have id Los Angeles, but they don't ' tell you about its posses- sions. (In fact the best old masters in Califor- nia are in the small Timken Gallery, San Diego). Show business . Or sometimes museums will turn themselves over to show business filling their space with a succession I of exciting shows, and 'exhibiting little or none 'of their permanent col- 1lections. (It was not easy to see American art in depth, for most smaller museums pre- ferred to show their minor European posses- sions if they were show- ing their permanent col- lections at all.) The showbiz approach Is at its extreme where there are no permanent collections at all, like the Jewish Museum, New York. which currently has better, or more modern, exhibitions than the Guggenheim or the Museum of Modern Art. Packaging and show- biz are important of course, and the curreqt neglect of permanent collections Is perhaps parallel with some cur- rent painting and in- difference to physical survival, or more especi- ally with those visual arts called happenings. In them a kind of per- formance can take place on a stage, but it is to be looked at exactly as if it were a painting - a painting which changes a little during the evening, and ceases to exist at the end of it. However, an attempt to form art collections of permanent excellence, instead of temporary titillation, still seems the noblest function of an art museum: and it is still only the great permanent collections whose reputations seem to spread strongly be- yond their own local communities. In America they are all on the Eastern sea- board, in Boston, New York (the Prick and the Museum of Modern Art as well as the Metro- politan), Philadelphia (the Barnes collection as well as the Philadel- phia Museum) and Washington (the Phil- lips collections as well as the National Gal- lery). Cleveland and Chicago should be con- sidered but no other Museums would be ab- solutely necessary for someone already famil- iar with the European Museums, unless you wished to specialise in medieval, oriental, or primitive art, The special glory of America's museums is not so much the old masters, or the skilled presentation and show- manship. but their col- lections of modern art, from impressionism on- ward. French art of the past hundred years is better shown in America than in Paris. Nowhere is Monet shown better than in New York, The Barnes collection has 300 Renoirs, the beat Matisses outside Lenin- grad. and In thd first room the best Cezanne in the world facing the best Seurat in the world. (Also the kinkiest Courbet.) Young, original Nearly all of Du - champ's work in in Philadelphia. there are, dozens of Brancusis, Picasso is everywhere.' This is the sort of thing; it's necessary to visit America for. It's not the only I thing, however. There is' also contemporary art.; What is being made right now in New York is infinitely !bore, serious, more inventive.' and more beautiful than' the new art -being made anywhere else. What is good In Paris; is being made by old' men like Miro, Dubufret; or Vasarely. What is, good in London is be-, Ing made by young men( who commute to New' York. like Richard Smith, Caro, or King. In New York, however.' there are a dozen or' more names, all young.; all original, and unlike; the English group, there, is more than one direr.- lion. polarized around a very purist art -as -art' and an equally impure, art -as -life. The painting of No- land and the sculpture of Robert Morris at- tempt (0 essentlalise the problems of the paint on canvas, or of volume in apace. The walk-In tableaus with life-size figures by Kienholz or Segal olqttie of 'tibe everyd poetic ariay activities like eating or driving, The result, of course. is always on the side of life. The most ab- stract kinetic sculp- ture teaches one to experience the 'interior of the New York Stock Exchange as a giant kinetic art-work. The grey boxes of Robert Morris tell one wiiat it's like to be a rock tormented by gravitational forces. Or in reverse the broken glass in the streets of Watts the morning after a race riot made the Watts Towers by Simon Rodia (a 103ft. backyard fan- tasy of ruagic pinnacles encrusted with broken glass, and the most beautiful thing in Los Angeles) into a state- ment about integration and tolerance. Much more than one usually remembers in the presence of Aus- tralian art (which doesn't look very brave in a world context. though it's better than the art of ' similar - sized populations, for example Portugal). -art is best when closest to morals, politics his- tory, science or love. It must Involve you. It cannot remain separate from experi- ence. If it does then it is only decoration. Helen Sweeney is on holidays. Her column will reappear on her, return.