Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" 1968 Sydney, N.S.W. Matter of taste ON the whole, good than no taste. Though. goodness knows, deliberately offensive bad taste is very agreeable when good taste becomes too prevalent. Since Australia is still mostly a no -taste place we don't yet much need the luxury of international bad taste; we don't yet need to despise good taste. Good taste Is never color- ful. It has to be neutral. Mostly - of course - It is black. There is quite an out- break of It in Sydney this week, but not by local artists. Japanese artists have al- ways been very good at good taste, and the Bony- ' thou Gallery has three. Tadashi Kawal's pots have lovely drab glazes, which, nevertheless, recall Isltmey clayslit; they have 'decoration which recalls outmoded Edwardian pop - plea. This incorporation of some antidote to the good taste is well understood In Japan, Iwao Akiyama does It to his big, rich dark collages, of small torn woodcut-on- newsprint fragments, by giving them violent medi- aeval battle titles and poems, in the accompany- ing catalogue. Mrs. Shuko Ilda's black caligraphies probably need Instant recognition of the Japanese ideograms con- tained in them, not our slow check -back to the catalogue Its poetry is thus drained away for a non -Japanese audience. We respond more easily to the enormous, wild Teshiga- liars calligraphy in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. J a n n I s Spyopoulos (David Jones) is very big back home in Greece, ann 'vie certainly don't have the like of his elegance here. Black again, of course. And with a look of paper collage without much actual use for it. [Is paper automatically a good taste material? Less messy to use than paint, less sweaty than carving stone or welding. Can art - on -paper subconsciously appeal for these associa- tions? And there is surely the association with read- ing [natter, literacy, and literature.] If good -taste art la often black. it's always highly craftsmanlike. It has to be obviously well -made, skil- ful, deft, confident. SATISFIES This is why the audience for good taste is just as happy with a porcelain cup or a peasant's wooden bold as with a painting. It is an audience with a sound and healthy instinct for what satisfies the senses. It is less interested in what stirs the emotions, less interested in what stimulates the Intellect. It doesn't value the profes- sional over the tradesman (a professional has a theoretical basis for his work a tradesman only has traditional lora). For the past 100 years the theory of what a good iainting should have has ncluded a degree of flat- ness, to respect the surface on what it Is painted and the wall ot, which it is rectangularly, tdoe reesp eof the rectangle which might contain it. Spyropoulos Is intelligent enough to know this; and also to know that if you leave plenty of smudged imprecision the audience will complete the pictures for themselves. (Successful portrait painters can make sinudges of such basic fea- tures as mouths, and please the customer more). His pictures can Invoke rn taste is a good ART with Daniel Thomas mild reveries about the night, the city, about welts as message -bearers. The' look luxurious. They win not disturb the decor, nor their owner. They are ab- solutely first-rate trivia, and should survive for ever on the level of first-rate porcelain and furniture. PREJUDICE An American museum director, J. J. Sweeney, has been damned with faint praise by an American cri- tic, Clement Greenberg, for being the best decorator in the art museum profession. Greenberg meant that an exhibit collected and in- stalled by Sweeney always looked good even though the individual woks of art usually were not good on their own, Leaving aside Green - berg's opinion of their merit. Sweeney's taste is Interesting confirmation of the theory that good taste means a taste for black. I have never seen so much black or near -black in his museum, often by sir - WHAT'S ON Art Gallery of New South Wales: Contem- porary Nordic Art, Con- temporary Canadian prints and drawings, Print Council of Aus- tralia prize exhibition; European master draw- ings, Australian pottery and watercolors from the . permanent collec- tion Manly Art (Iallery: Rupert Bunny. Newcastle City Art Gallery: Master draw- ings of the 17th cen- tury. Commonwealth Sav- ings Bank, Martin Place: Blake Prize, Clone: W. B. Gould. Australia Square and Aladdin: Ena de Silva, batiks. . Macquarie: Helen Ogilvie, 'David Rose (Wednesdr,y). David Jones: Janis Spyropc,ulos. Central Street: Wendy Parumor. Wafters: David Ran- kine (Wednesday). Stern: Mixed show. Gallery A: Arts Viet- nam benefit (Thurs- day). Bonython: Shuko IKawida, Iwao Akiyanm, aL Ramon: Clifton Pugh, Frances Jones: Mario Telese (Wednesday). Artarmon: Harold Lane. Workshop Arts Centre: Student print- makers. Pymble Art Studio: Tanaka Ryohel. Von Bertoueh, New- castle: Lloyd Rees (Fri- day). Berrima Court House: District Art Society (Friday), Mensies Library. Can- berra: Gulbenkian Fund purchases for Univer- sity House (Tuesday). Lloyd Rees lecture. "Opposing influences in European art" Femin- ist Club, 77 King Street, Thursday 7.45 p.m. thing. It is better tints you don't expect in black like Rothko. Alech- insky, or Picasso, as well as the expected Souageli and Motherwell. It locked splendid. It is moat unlikely haw - ever that Sweeney collects black just for its decora- tive value. It is rather a question of a natural pre- judice. He obviously has a deep and genuine response to large dark objects. I know someone who has .a special response -to smallish white objects. The late H. V. Evatt, when he was Judge Evatt, was known to fall for every- thing containing a certain red which his artist friends soon named Jevatt Red., I can recognise a preference for jagged angular lines in a certain collector, for bul- bous solids in another. These are the genuine prejudices that are doubt- less inborn In everybody. They run right across such artificial divisions as abstract versus represen- tational, 15th century ver- ails 19th century. One must of course be- lieve people when they say they like only abstract art, or only art of the Victo- rian period. But when they do, I suspect their liking Is not for art itself at all, but only for some minor historical or philo- sophical component of art. Wendy Paramor (Cen- tral Street) seems to be two artists. One is a painter of repetitive flat shapes, subtly inflected; sometimes by no more than one extra coat of the same color. The second is a painter of what looks like projects for blocky, unit- ary sculptures. A tapestry woven by Margaret Graf- ton from a Paramor de- sign has more sensuous appeal as surface and color than any of the paintings. The non-exist- ent sculptures may be the real Paramors, for they promise a noble command of bulk and volume, Ron Lambert (Walters) shows two thick abstract - expressionist paintings and 15 collages of superim- posed rectangles of color- ed papers, yet he Is the same artist in either technique. He is con- cerned to create space by overlapping planes. and to push a climax for- ward to the spectator or laterally to an edge. Superficially, like James Doolln's paintings, these collages are unusual in that one senses very strongly the literalness of the color Manes exist- ing below the topmost sheet of paper. They are pretty good. BLAKE PRIZE It's depressing to see decorators' texturologles masquerading as Resur- rections, and would you believe kinetic Christian- ity in the form of a chrome wheel jerking round a bed of tendrils which project and quiver front a perspex whorl? No less depressing are the doubtless sincere b u t incompetent Illustrations of Bible stories. If it's beautiful, a work of art is a sufficient wit- ness to the existence of God and his mysterious gifts to man, but only a few prove Hie existence here. The regular com- petitors are still the best-Eric Smith, Weaver Hawkins. Roger Kemp (winner), Desiderius Or - ban (whose picture frame has built -In lighting to make his metallized paint glitter). _ -