Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

L -3 NOV 1988 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, NOVEMBER 3, 196i1 51 DECORATION AND Co. "THE FIELD," which is a survey exhibition of a new direction in Australian painting and sculpture, does wonders for the interior of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Leonard French's one- man show of paintings does the same for the Rudy Komon Gallery. They are other things besides, but both exhibitions are superb decoration. Decoration is a term that is sometimes misused. For example, very small paintings with no other virtues are often claimed, as a last resort, at least to be "decorative." But it is hardly passible that they could be. Small spots on a wall will dis- rupt it visually, when In fact a decorative painting has to acknowledge and confirm the surface on which it Is placed. Decoration can only be small if it is painted on to furniture or other house- hold goods. If it is for a wall it has to be big. It has to fill most of the wall's area both in height and width, before it Is truly decorative. It can be a mural painted on the wall, but mostly today we get large canvases operating as portable murals. Acknowledgement of the surface to be decorated also requires that the picture's forms be relatively flat, that it be not too different In tone from the wall (otherwise it becomes a window), modestly fram- ed or preferably unframed (otherwise the frame sep- arates It too much from the wall), and relatively symmetrical, or better still, filled with relatively small, allover, repeating forms. When the large size of "The Field's" abstract paintings is referred to as "environmental scale" it is perhaps only a way to say they are aware of arch- itectural decoration when the word "decorative" has become compromised. Environment for what? Human beings of course. When an abstract picture becomes as big as a human being, or bigger, it becomes humanised. It is no longer separate from life, as a painted comment or Illustration of life Is when hung framed on a wall. It literally con- fronts the spectator, par- ticipates physically in his activities, shares the room with him. To work this way a pic- ture must hang close to the floor. If it is lifted high, above a dado, it be- comes too separated from spectator th to share the sp him. Apart from life Thus the only room at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that can take this kind of art success- fully Is the entrance room; all the others have high dodos, being built 70 Years ago. when art evi- dently had to be kept separate from life, or when public collections were not allowed the intimacy usual in private collections. This entrance room re- cently became the only one in the gallery to have had an architect near it in 70 years (it was the New South %Vales Government Architect) and it is a very well-proportioned room indeed. It is filled with the paintings that are too high for the ceilings in the other exhibition rooms and it has never looked better than with paintings from "The Field' by Swann, Schlicht, McOillick, Wight, John- son, Watkins, Peart and Treweeke. ART with Daniel Thomas Only one of Treweeke's pictures hes defeated the building,' intended as a diamond it is exhibited as a square, for otherwise it wouldn't fit under the 12 - foot ceilings Lenoard French's paint- ings are much smaller, and probably look better in the Komon Gallery (architect Neville Gruzman) than they would in the larger rooms of a museum. One wonders whether the painters of "The Field" unconsciously have museum -sized spaces in mind for their work. They are mostly young, still visit museums and care for museum art. Older artists, whose work is more saleable, because it has had time to become familiar, may more often have in mind the spaces to be found in a rich col- lector's private house. One at least of the painters. Schlicht, is an architect and surely very aware of the spaces his work might inhabit. So is the sculptor Noel Dunn, Another sculptor, Tony Coleing, has worked at theatre decor. Besides large size, the next most noticeable fea- ture of "The Field" is color, Mostly it is high-keyed, clear, radiant. Sometimes it implies, by association with the colors of Packag- ing, poster advertisements and other commercial art, something of the brash vitality of Pop Art. There are abstract Pop features in Doolin, Schlicht (1930s decor), Dawson (domestic furnishings), Hitching, Hickey (decorative wall- boards). Sometimes it simply marks out fields and flows of energy, as in Swann, Aspden or Jordan, and then it can be either dark or light. Or it can be only a monochrome or a neutral to fill an eccentric shape, like Ramsden's long hori- zontal black plank, or Wight's tall grey panel with a constricted waist. Then the shape itself carries the whole eulogy. ;WHAT'S ON Arl Gallery of New South Wales: The Field, European master draw- ings, eight Sidney Nolan.v David Jamas Indian, Thal art Farmers: Contempor- ary Art Society, Kolo- tex Prize (Wednesday). Macquarie: Keith Looby. Central Street: Dick Watkins. Wailers: Stephen Earle. Stern: Mixed Show. Gallery A: Michael Johnson. Bonython: Transfleld Prize. Mouton: Leonard French. 44041414,0444 Or the color can have associations which give the iainting some of its mean- ng. Peart's graded green squares associate with or- ganic things like buds un- folding, moulds growing, or with art nouveau tiles, or with water, Partos's dark blue and red slab mosaics associate with the hot flush of fur- nace metal, of stressed machine parts. These, and others, disembody them- selves from their canvases, induce the presence of colors that have not been painted in. They would like to make the work of art a presence in its own right, a kind of totemic object. This is why they have all at least avoided evidence of hand- work, have painted their surfaces impersonally fiat. They are very aware of the effects that objects of certain sizes, colors and forms can have on human beings, and see no need to distract you with extra reminders that one par- ticular individual made the object (it's always evident enough). Group of fraormeuts In Compositionally, there la in this kind of art a pref- erence for serial, repetitive arrangements of equal sized forms, not for bler- achical relations of large and small. This turns each object into a fragment from something that might ex- tend on from it, and it makes the work more able to act on the spectator, less self-contained, less framed separately away from the world. This openendedness is a rather new visual sensibility, though it has its ancestry back to Monet, and not all flat-surface paintings subscribe to it, some like Watkins' still keep a degree of tradition- al cubist containment, The exhibition is extra- ordinarly Interesting. It makes clear the direction of Australian art in the past three years. It introduces one or two artists scarcely known pre- viously, Coleing, RamsderY, Burn, but mostly it's stint k we'd seen scattered around for some time (and well before the American ex- hibition seen here last year), It the detractors of young artists like to s that that exhibition of neratd tis exhi, ge of 1968,e it only showsib weren't visiting exhibition much in 1965 or 1966. It is interesting (to' know what's going on), and beautiful (to look at, now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Is it good? That is, will any of it last? No doubt the usual small proportion will that survives from any period t or movement. The artists I might nominate for survival In- clude Partos, Dawson Coleing, Johnson, Pea,' Meadmore, Doolin. are individual works by Aspden, Jordan a. many others that might, survive. Hitching could be better represented. ("a - bum's absence is,_sy-p, is- ing. the National For the exhibitio. thank len/ of Victoria,- win prepared it to Inaugurate their new building in August. .04