Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" _ Sydney, N.S.W. 0 SEP 1962' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, SEPTEMBER 30, 1962 91 The Week in Art by *mid Thomas THE portion of Fred Mendei's collection at David Jones' contains many works from the most whl.ly popular of all periods of art - French paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ms portraits 'are inftn- Watercolors by the to see a fear German Expression- 04weAly-.Y. ntely better than his in- phase (1947) gave through a Brueghel in- Perceval, after spading It is also especially ented images. Boyd and up their elaborate imagery 1818, 0[032, Kirchner, for a more visual approch. Dix and Nolde. Perceval indeed la. now a Unlike the French, their painter of landscapes In art is not available in Aus- the open air. trallan co lections, and it However vital their is supper d to have Innis- r ideas, and however enjoy- enced the Melbourne school able the crossword pleas- e! 20 years ago which is urea of playing hunt the now also to be seen in a symbol with these early Sydney exhibition. pictures, they cannot be The Germans are con- admired pictorially as can corned to comment on their later works based society, on human person- aaore closely on visual ex - alines and problems. The Fperience. French have a more °pH- f Nolan, the most famous mistic view of life, and are of them all, never seems more concerned with the to have worried overmuch simpler (but no easier) problem of just making "STILL LIFE WITH TWO PEACHES," by Georges about significant content. beautiful pictures. Braque in the exhibition of the Mendel collection There are a few tiny ab The oils by Sclun street exercises of 1931 Rottluff, Frans Marc and at David Jones Art Gallery. to 1940, some more tiny Feininger are less satisfac- tory In their min -applica- tion of French fauvism and cubism, than the direct, in- cisive watercolors. The animal subject by Marc is little more than a charm- ing nursery decoration. There is however a fine canvas by Max Libermann from the earlier period of German Impressionism. Another section is devot- ed to Canadian art, the earliest and best known being the gentle sub-Vuil- lard paintings of James Morrice. For us there is the interest of comparing the Canadian national landscape school with our own. Theirs was post -im- pressionist, and, surpris- ingly did not emerge until around 1910, ours was im- pressionist and was created by Roberts and Streeton In the 1880S. The Canadians. Jackson. Limner and MacDonald saw their country in jangl- ing, jumping purples, seances_ is blues. A re- lated palesis found to the beautifully unified panoramas by David Milne, from the thirties, and traces of it still linger in the splendid abstract land- scapes by Aileyne from 1901. Though Borduas is miss- ing this Canadian section has great Interest. Its presence is explained by Mr. Mendel's twenty years' residence in that country. The collection as In fart a very personal one. There are souvenirs of an earlier residence in Hungary and of the horses he knew there; his own daughter has four pictures on view; end Mr. Mendel also sends us two little favorite pic- tures of 'iris undressing, artists unknown. We are reminded there- fore that this is not a museum collection, but a private one. There are in- deed far better examples of Pissarro, Vlaminck, Estate and Riopelle permanently visible in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But there is great delight amongst tne French paint- ings nevertheless. For in- stance four by that cham- pion lightweight Raoul Dufy, among tnem an early beach promenade that looks like a Van Dongen (there is an even earlier Van Dongen that looks like no one In particular). Or a recent Max Ernst of red thoughts (dreams?) fluttering past a sleeping green head. Or a polished cubist figure by Marcous- els; or Roulult or Utrillo. Rebels MELBOURNE painting between 1937 and 1947 Was far more ,ebellious than Sydney's for it had much more to rebel against. Here there was a polite reception for near -abstrac- tion as far back as 1919, but the strength of Mel- bourne's conservatism gave an extra sense of urgency to their avant-garde in say 1939. Some members of that avant-garde, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Arthur Boyd, today have reputa- tions in London as well as Australia, and the exhibi- tion "Rebels and Precur- sors" now at the Art Gal- lery of N.S.W. has brought together some of their early paintings, along with three -associates Yost Berg- ner, Dimity. Vassilleff and John Perceval. It is unlikely that these .-pill tarn into old "- masters as those from the pastel sketches of Wim- , mera landscapes in 1942 English art rebellion of (one shows a girl and 1860 have; the Pre- aeroplane in the same Raphaelite exhibition in' situation as Leda and the the same Gallery nextrnwan), and then a lot of week will also be an ex- 1946 panels where his hibition of rebels against, imagination is fulls re- triviality and conaerva-i sealed, tism The whole effect is of gaiety and Irish charm. Nolan's gift Is primarily visual. He sees Australian landscape freshly, puts it impressionism (Tucker's down accurately, and then and Bergner's earliest) the garnishes it with a story. Ned Kelly coming over the mountain Is not men- acing and certainly not a protest about police in- ustice in the 19th cen- Reis part of a story. We want to know the next exciting instalment. Nolan has in several cases put four pictures together In one frame for this exhibi- tion. This is an admis- sion of their slithtness in isolation, of their needing the next picture to explain the first. Moreover this is not only a matter of the story, for there is also a purely pictorial strength- ening by juxtaposition. Like Picasso, Nolan dates his pictures to the day. not the year; thus we see that he is very prolific. Three of the "Bathers" were done In one day and the fourth the day after. There is in this case no story, but we see four ideas for a picture that never really gets completed, and never needs to be. The spectator has enough in- formation to do -it -him- self, in his own imagina- tion, while Nolan rustles Against a background of pastoral Imp ressionism [seen in Boyd's earliest work) or academic Melbourne painters' strongly surrealist expres- sionist style of the early 'forties is undoubtedly shocking. For a while. Tucker, Boyd and Perceval shared a preoccupation v ith urban violence and unhappiness, and their subject matter is as shocking as their style. Tucker especially, in his "Night Images' or "Images of Modern Evil." beginning in 1943, is ob- sessed by war -time prosti- tution and crime, the "Vic- tory Girls" in red, white and blue skirts, their painted mouths becoming an independent image in later paintings. A Hoyts Theatre or a No. 6 tram become pregnant with wickedness. Social protest was more fashionable In the 'thirties than now, and Bergner, who is today an abstract painter working in Israel, may have been an influ- ence on the others In the choice of political subjects -refugees, starving child- ren, war-which preceded Tucker's and Pereevars scenes from city life. Vassilieff's slighter plc- on to the next bright idea. tures of children playing) Clever Nolan; Picasso does in city streets would have this ten. strengthened the urbanism, and the respect for ex- pression of feeling. But Tucker's pictures are unrepentantly ugly, genu- inely ugly in design, paint and color. It may be con- sidered appropriate to the subject, but this is an in- tellectual justification, not a visual one, and Tucker's art succeeds on an intel- lectual level only,