Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney 19 JAN 1969 Purposes of portraiture PORTRAITURE is different from other who don't take any interest in art are portraiture. It's the only category, I think, which often gets put into a special museum of its own, a National Por- trait Gallery. Is a National Portrait Gallery an art -ghetto? Does the separate existence of National Portrait Gal- leries alongside art gal- leries mean that portraits are not art? Well, of course, many portraits are also great works of art. But a portrait that is a bad work of art is stilt interesting. A work of art makes its artist immortal. A portrait, on the other hand Is a claim for immortality by a non -artist, that Is, by the client who commissions the portrait of himself. Before photography came into use (just over 100 years ago) there were thou- sands of minor portrait painters. The few that worked in Australia have not been studied. But at lust a re- search project is under way: if anybody has any- thing to contribute on Aus- tralian colonial portraiture, please inform Miss Eve Buscombe, Department of History, School of General Studies, Australian National University, Can- berra. They have not been studied much in Europe either, for there's plenty better stuff to demand attention. However. in colonial America there was noth- ing much else painted ex- cept portraits - a few excellent, but usually very poor - and it must be the most carefully studied body of minor painting. Several curious points have emerged. Tnese mostly untrained folk -art portrait painters weren't, quite thought of as artists. A different word was used; they were called "limners" instead. Second, quite unlike other kinds of art, the painter's identity was un- important. He seldom sign- ed the work, and mostly his name is unknown. Only the subject's identity was important. Third, even likeness was not very important. Port - traits would be painted from the clothes of some- one recently dead, and no doubt from a verbal des- cription. More like witchcraft A reliable likeness is the chief concern of a National Portrait Gallery, but the primitive unconcern for likeness takes us to the basic purpose of portrait - making, which is magical, and more like witchcraft than science. A portrait is only sec- ondarily a visual record' primarily It Is an attempt to gain eternal life. An approximate likeness, cor- rectly clothed and cor- rectly named. Is all one needs for such totemic purposes. Indeed, there is fear of too good a likeness, of of too strong a characterisa- tion. I think anthropologists can produce accounts of tribal or primitive societies forbidding photographs. It is believed that he who takes a likeness takes possession of the subject, has some power over him. ,,,Commercially successful often prefers to Size fashionable / postureand 'hair. ih,leave the face rela- categories of art. Those often very interested in ART with Daniel Thomas t.,:vely undefined (though currently fashionable, for there are fashions in faces as much as in clothes, so that the sitter, and the nearest and dearest can project their own prefer- ences into the portrait). The extrew.c public dis- taste for Dobell's Archibald Prize portrait of Joshua Smith, 25 years ago, was an expression of fear. Among the usual un- specific, comfortable fash- ionable Images, so highly specific and so strongly characterised a likeness must have, been disturbing and alarming. Perhaps it was felt that such portraits reveal too much of the sitter's inner life are too much an In- vasion of privacy. Mostly, however, the re- sentment of Dobell's por- trait was expressed in dls- elusion of his distortion of human features. It was not so much invasion of privacy as a fear of being the artist's own inscrutable purposes. They could see he was up to something, didn't know what. Perhaps he'd be sticking pins Into wax effigies next. In fact, they were simply looking at a work of art, which must always be a private object, made for the artist's own private purposes. Such an object is always unfamiliar in an exhibition which, like all portrait exhibitions, inevit- ably contains compromises between artist and client- pictures made for social, not private purposes. SNOOPING The urge to snoop on other people, to pry into their lives and characters, is no doubt a more com- Mon one than the urge to indulge one's senses by contemplating objects such RS works of art. This is perhaps why a portrait exhibition will get more popular atten- tion than Other art exhi- bitions. But, as I have sit .51- ed, a portrait pa nt g will usually disappoint th snooper. If it's acceptable to the sitter it will usually be because It conceals him, leaving only the neutral mask of rank and pro- fession. If it's a good work of art. it will probably tell you more about the artist than the sitter. There are better ways to snoop than to look at por- traits, You can look at the houses, furniture, and clothes that people wrap themselves In. Any visit to a strange house reveals the character of its oc- cupant better than a portrait. House museums exist for this purpose as well as ler the more usual parade° of demonstrating the architecture and de- corative arts of a parti- cular period. Unlike period houses, the personal house museums aren't necessari- ly filled with object; -Of beauty or excellence. Mostly, of course, tbey have been preserved be= cause someone famous lived there, like Lenin, or Theodore Roosevelt, or George Bernard Shaw, To visit such a house pre- servtd exactly as its owner* left it is snooping on the highest level. Such a house is the most moving and the best kind of portraiture. I don't think there are any in Australia, though there are reconstructions I cr La Trobe's cottage in N:elbourne. Nearly all our hr use museums are the op- posite kind, concerned with a period, not a person. It's time we had some. Starting with a few Prime Ministers. CLOTHES This week Time magazine has a piece on Picasao's tailor. But it is Cedric Flower who has best point- ed out how people express and reveal themselves in their clothes, furniture and buildings. His new book "Duck and Cabbage Tree-A Pictorial History of Clothes in Aug. trails 1788 1914" (Angus and Robe s m, $10.50) la a ddelight-wail-designed, fulli. of funny pictures, econom, cal but informative with' text. Who is to dispute his dis- coveries In this first book'of its kind? There is, it seems, little. or no time-lag in fashion; able dress between Europe; and Australia. The best parts are on non-fashion, on the occupational dress' of convicts, Aborigines, settlers, miners, children, swimmers, typists, and on the eccentric dress 01 1850s "toffs" and 1890s "larti- kins." If ever Australia gets.a' National Portrait Gallery, why not forget paintings? Just get a lot of clothes - hangers and suspend a Menzies double-breasted, a Holt wetsuit and flippers, a Sidney Nolan butcher li apron. Cedric Flower to be cura- tor. ARCHIBALD PRIZE This year only the win- ning pictures are on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Selections from the other entries will be on view at various places in Sydney. first being the Telegraph Home Centre Park Street. Hours, 9.30-4.30 each day 4 WHAT'S ON' Art Gallery of New! South Wales. - Archl- ' bald, Wynne. etc., prizewinners only. Telegraph Home Cen- tre, Park Street.--Selec- ted entries for Archi- bald, Wynne. Sulman, etc. David Jones. - Fine and Decorative arts. Macquarie. - Gordon Rintoul (Wednesday). AladdIns.-Pot tory, Stern.-Mixed show. Komon.-Mixed show von Bertouch, New- castle.-Mixed show. Newcastle City Art Gallery. - Permanent IVY 4, 41.