Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S. Our reputation could be better LAST year when the distinguished New York art critic Clement Greenberg was in Australia someone naively asked how stood the reputation of Australian art in America. The answer, of course, %vas nowhere, Reputation Is quite a different question from merit. We are, rightly, Very proud of our own artists, very attached to their work, properly involved with it. Very few countries as small is Australia have art anywhere near as good, and our healthy, encourag- ing affection for our own family of artists is, in turn, a partial explanation for their level of excellence. .11,owever, it would be a060.4 to expect outsiders to love them in the same way, or to claim that AlLi- trallAn art is on the top- most level of excellence. Ev.m so the reputation of Australian art could be easily and considerably Im- pro e. d. First we should give up any attempt to promote Australian art as a whole. Instead, it is the work of Individual artists that should be brought to the attention of the outside world. The people who make reputations in art don't care whether art is Aus- tralian or African or American or any kind of nationality. They care only whether it's good. They have learnt to stay away from the national exhibitions, the exhibitions of their local art put together by dozens of coun- tries and sent hopefully round the world in recent years. National exhibitions can indeed be successful politi- cally. They can help satisfy the curiosity about Australia in countries which are interested in us already, countries which are neighbors, allies or trading partners, such as Japan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia. But these are not t3ie places where international reputations in art are made, and a political suc- cess need not be an artis- tic success. Reputations are made in Europe and America, in a very few cities, and by a very few people. The problem is to get Australian art to those cities, and once it's there it's even more difficult to get it seen by those who count. A few exhibitions of Australian art have been sent to Europe and America, and they haven't made much impression. In 196J and 1969 there were exhibitions in Lon- don, at two museums that are taken very seriously indeed, the Whltechapel Art Gallery and the Tate Gallery. The first was, In fact, much talked about, but looking back it seems to have been a success with journalists and newswriters rather than with the art world. Its director, Mr. Bryan Robertson, is good at pub- licity and presentation; his installations are much ad- mired, and he ruthlessly omitted many paintings that figured in the exhibi- n catalogue in order to prove the appearance of t show. Cho 1963 exhibition at 6 Tate Gallery was a Is tor y of Australian ting; it fell rather fiat, d the colonial period was ed best. Outside London Austra- lian art hasn't even made it to a museum that gets visited. There was an exhi- bition which toured some ohe-ofNheh-waan dc,i tieItaly Denmark. It was shown in Parts, admittedly. but in a cel- ery: that is scarcely on ART with Daniel . Thomas everyone's beaten track. It was scarcely noticed. In America there have been a few scattered show- ings, but none in a place with much prestige. The best was the Mertz Col- lection's appearance at the Corcoran Gallery in Wash- ington, a museum which puts on an endless suc- cession of national shows- from Yugoslavia, Norway, Venezuela, you name it - as a kind of service to the diplomatic pressures that occur in that city. Nobody would bother coming from New York specially for a national show at the Corcoran and I can't think of an Austra- lian show in New York since 1941. If one wishes to raise the reputation of Austra- lian art the mammoth sur- veys of "Australian art to- day" are no way to do it. The solution is simple. Instead of trundling na- tional shows round the world that nobody much will visit - except expatri- ate Australians-we should participate in the inter- national surveys. There aren't many of them and they come at regular intervals of one to four years. The oldest established are the Venice Blennale and the Carnegie Inter- national at Pittsburgh. Others are at Sao Paulo, Brazil, and at Tokyo. In New York there is the Guggenheim International. And the best Just now is the Documenta at Cassel in Germany. There are also specialist internationals for "young artists" in Paris, making in Ljub ana, Yugoslavia, for w cuts in Geneva. Brooklyn, New York might still have one for watercolors. People at the centre of the art world pretend the internationals are a bore, but they always visit them just the same. After all, everyone wants to check how their own country stands up. The internationals are the world's best showcase, and Australia should par- ticipate in all of them. Sometimes' it's simply a matter of responding offi- cially to an official invita- tion,and we've not been doing it lately. It's ten years since we sent any- thing to Venice. There have been a couple of en- tries in Sao Paulo and Paris. Even when we do partici- pate we have often, as usual, sent too much, Once a dozen or more artists were represented in Paris, disastrously by compari- son with the previous occa- sion when only three were sent - and were noticed. One artist. judiciously chosen, is quite enough to represent a country, in an International. Two is all right. Three Is about the limit. If the quota of space is given to one artist he can sometimes be presented in a mini -retrospective, cert- ainly in sufficient depth for his real qualities to be- come visible. Sometimes, Wit% the specialist interns one's, anybody at all can enter at their own risk, in addi- tion to the mew recom- mendaUonS. This is the case at Ljubljana, and a showing in this Yugoslavian city produced a commission in New York for the etcher Earle Backen. The best internationals are usually selectsd per- sonally by the museum v.. here they are held. In this case it is up to us to plot, scheme, or at least bring likely candidates to the notice of the organisers. This means depositing photographs with them, giving them books and magazines. For example, "Art and Australia" should be given by the Australian Government to a couple of dozen key tastemakers around the world, Just to remind them once a qua stsa nd taas artAsuts raiv la ing there. I myself have planted dossiers in the Guggen- heim Museum, and it has sometimes worked. Better than any Inter- national would be inclusion. in the kind of exhibition that people really enjoy, hibitions that define a movement or a direction, such as the New York Museum surveys of surrealism, or Op art, or magic realism. For inclusion in them the scheming would be more difficult but not impossible. Better again would be a museum one-man show, and I wonder If Sidney Nolan might bo the first to make it in New York. He and Arthur Boyd have already made it In London, with shows at the White - chapel Art Gallery. Some museums of course have no prestige. A show In London at the Commonwealth Institute counts for very little, or in New York at the Riverside museum. Nor does praise from a critic necessarily add a ny- thing to reputation: his writing might give pleasure to millions, but still be poor as judgment. Nor does winning a prize, nor being accepted for a museum collection, nor being given a show by a dealer. It's got to be the right museum, the right critic, the right prize, the right dealer. It's Just as difficult and necessary to judge reputa- tions as to judge works of art, and it's the artists themselves who know best how to do it. After all, it's they, and nobody else, who make the reputations In the first place. The word gets passed out by the artists to those few dozen critics, dealers, and curators who can process it into a worthwhile reputation, It's time Australian art was given a chance of test- ing itself. And again no- body would enjoy the test more than the artists themselves. ....WHAT'S ON Art Gallery of New South Wales: Archi- bald, Wynne, Sidman, etc., prizewinners only (Wednesday); Gaudier Brzeska. Newcastle City Art Gallery: Eric Thake (closes today); per- manent collection. David Jones: Fine and decorative arts. Aladdlas: Pottery. Sterns Mixed show. Roman: Mixed show. Von Berteuch: New- castle: Mixed show. 1 ' 4 ask