Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

UNITY is just about the most important requirement for a successful wok of art, Most judgments are made in terms of co- herence, does it hold together, does it Work like a mechanism. in the implication), is it out of key, out of tone, Is it a mess, does the style suit the subject, do means justify ends, and so on. For the same reason we Become troubled by a one-man show of paintings if each paint- ing Is in a different style. LIMN& they are rebellious and polemical, artists usually take great care to present easily grasped selections of similar works. It their previous ex- hibition looked very dif- ferent, well. it is only a few - fellow - artists, critic s, historians, friends - who will re- member it, and either condemn or else decide that the more he changes, the more he remains the same. If you like his work you always manage to find something in com- mon between the two shows. From a retrospective, showing several years of an artists' work, we have the same expecta- tions. and a good retro- spective is always the most enjoyable of exhi- bitions to visit. Newcastle City Art Gallery has Just closed a 60 -year retrospective of Desiderius Orban. Central Street Gallery, has, on facing walls, nine -picture retrospec- tives by Dick Watkins and Tony McGillick, covering the years back to 1982. ORBAN Orban's exhibi Lion was at first rather alarming. He has many more styles than we realised. It starts with a juicy, academic still-life. Then a Matisse style with- out Matisse's color, for nude, still-life and landscape. Then a dark green Barbizon land- scape. Then Courbet landscapes. Then an excellent Derain land- scape. Then, after ar- riving in Australia in 1939, near -cubist In- teriors and still-11(es. Then landscapes like Cezanne, then still-life 'pastels like Rouault. Then finally in 1968, in the splendidly glittering "Treasure of Darius,' he takes us back, by way of Hundertwasser, to Art Nouveau Vienna. (These are resemblan- ces, not necessarily in- fluences.) Hastily, we search for unifying qualities. The main one is that he has almost always been a matter -painter, a sensuous manipulator of his medium. The paint is fat and juicy at the beginning, it ceases to be so during the flirtation with Matisse's m o d ernlsm, but through the 1920s and 1930s the richly crumbled palette -knif- ings are a consistent homage to Courbet, who must be the important influence for Orban, the modernists only an experimental duty. The pastels (and who else in Australia is so good a pastellist?) sim- ply continue this relish for crumbly surface. He has painted at lee t once on the unusual crinkled surface of plas- tic leather. And the late 19608 paintings on board and metallleed paper arm *ore a matter of ART with Daniel Thomas touch than sight, with their complex engraved, wriggle - gouged, and carved surfaces. Another unifying quality is his taste for black, for the tonal, and for the monochromatic. Pure colors and the problems of putting them together don't seem to have interested him. Indeed. tiara Is something reductive about his art In form as well as In color. When he puts a number of different forms to- gether, as most art has always tried to do, he seems much less suc- cessful than when he repeats the same form. In the 1940s the repe- titive concentric swirls of an "Industrial City" succeed where th elaborate studio Interior does not. In the 1950s the re- petitive verticals of a gum -tree "Forest" are breathing, fresh -scrub- bed and oddly real, meaning Australian. (The more usual plea- sure with an Orban is to see Australia conver- ted Into Europe, Hob- art into a pinnacled German town). The companion to "Forest," a combination of gabled buildings and branch- ing trees also like the studio interior, has more the look of an exercise - as much might be expected to look in the career of a man as famous for teaching as for his own work. And the best pas- tel, too, "Lines of thought" is completely repetitive. McGILLICK Tony McMillen pic- tures seem more self - aware than Orban's. They don't avoid the issue of color and they keep to regular repeti- tive structures so much that a fauvist) star boxer is both painted and titled as "Sharman Repeat." WHAT Art Gallery of N.S.W.: Permanent collection. Newcastle City Art Gallery: Art of the Space Age. Clune: Paintings of children. David Jones': Chinese Ceramics. Farmer's: "The Mel- bourne Essentialists." Macquarie: Geoff Brown. Bea Maddock. Central Street: Mc - °Mick, Watkins 1962- 67. The Rocks: Charles Rajkovic. Potters: 5th Biennial exhibition. Walters: Stephen Earle, Carole Elvin (Wednesday), Stern: Mixed. Gallery A: Ralph Raison 1961-64. Helen MeEwen; ' mu° IfstheAbri. % ') Actually. MCGilllck see -saws between grap- pling with color and despairingly abandonisg it for black: "Repeat Repeat" is the word Repeat in black aui silver and newsprint collage, repeated regu- larly up and down the picture. Besides the black versus color rhythm in his development, we see the evolution of Ills dancing winged forms. as in "Schukin." into his current modular, shaped canvasses. Having known that his earlier work was like Jasper Johns, and his new was flat and hard-edge. it is surpris- ing to find that the extreme difference In surface is only super- ficial, and that his de- velopment is in fact continuous. WATKINS . Watkins, and Mean - lick too, pointedly give you the r arfo rdmeatvon from other works of art. You don't have to recognise Courbet for yourself as with Orban. The titles tell you that they pay homage to Matisse, they read magazines a n d art books. If the titles don't, the collage paste - ens will be pictures anyway, from conuner- Mal views to old IllaS- ters, there will be bits of "real" nature (tree trunk collage), and bits of real art (splashy brush marks). Watkin's paintings also show frank resemblances to William Scott, Raus- chenberg, HMO. We knew all this be- fore. We didn't know how fresh they'd still look, and how well they'd hang together, being generally high - key, white, rose or pink- ish. This Is simple a personal thing, like his handling of paint. What is more Illu- minating is to see that unlike McGillick, he Is sell I.41C1t11116 the old problem of putting one thing beside another different thing. He is not a repetition artist in any way. His classic statement remains "Moscow," a red square put beside a greenish cross, in the centre of a White field. the red projecting half an inch, the cross pro- jecting a quarter. Everything is different. Things don't flick past, they move around and fight each other, push, magnetise, trample. 'S ON Bonython: S. Ball, Jacqueline Hick. E. Raft sculpture, Sepik art (Tuesday). Komon: Peter Klitsch. Villiers: Mixed. Howell: Original Prints, Workshop Arts Centre: Enid Cam- bridge, Von Bertouch, New- castle: Hermia Boyd, Thursday: Discussion, 8.15 State Office Block. "Future of Q. Victoria Building" (Art Gallery Society). Fridays Lecture. 8 pm.. Workshop Arts Centre, Margaret Tuck- son, "New Guinea Pot- tery." Friday: Concert Hap- pening, 8 p.m., Cell Block Theatre. Cage, ISCIAJ yttig eip THE MORE THEY CHANGE "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 8 JUN 1969 1