Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, MAY V, T962 Art is upon the town A ItT has been very much in the c-, news in Sydney recently. As In London 80 3 ears ago when James McNeill Whistler com- plained, "Art 'is upon the town! - to be enticed within the gates of the hoLse- holder-to be coaxed into company as a proof of culture and refinement," so in Sydney today art is in fashion. There Ls a great deal of it about. The Sunday Telegraph will now regularly publish art news. This news will not be confined to exhibi- tions of paintings, for sculpture and architec- ture are art forms of equal status with painting, hooks and films on art will also be noticed. Exhibitions, however, have been this week's most important events. At Farmers and at the Art Gallery of N.S.W. two of the best architectural exhibitions in years are showing concurrently with the annual convention of the Architects Institute: For those who find art solemn, and out of touch with life, there is, at Rudy Komons, the first major impact of Pop Art. boister- ous. funny and as close to life as a family picnic, or shopping at Woolworths. Subterranean Imitation Realists Formerly - the An- nandale Imit a t i o n Realists (they no longer live there) these are three young men in their mid - twenties named Cohn Lanceley, Mike Brown and R. Crothall. Their statements In the exhibition catalogue In- dicate that the group title has no special meaning. It only stands for a general sort of subversive exuber- anoe. They share Bt style and an attitude. There a r e even some joint works, of which a few have out-growP assistance from a girl- friend Magda, and one drawing is helped along by three Melbourne artists, John Perceval, Laurence Hope and Mirka Mora. Their first exhibition was in Melbourne a few months ago at John Reed's Museum of Modern Art. It was a riotous success. The Duke of Bedford bought; Arnold Shore, a respected and elderly painter -critic, praised them lavishly. Apparently the interior spaces there allowed a magical display, an Alad- din's Cave where the spec- tator virtually inhabited the works of art (for these are assemblages of junk). The awkward spaces and the unfriendly lighting at the Koenon Gallery have probably reduced the im- p Still. the bigness of the exhibition is overwhelming. It overflows into an up- stairs flat, as far as the bathroom and lavatory. Nearly 200 works are listed In the catalogue but, since printing, several of Lance- ley's have been joined to- gether into a great fes- tooned free-standing "Tower of Babel." Most are meant for the wall, but some are for the floor, table, or ceiling. One is its own easel; one has wheels. The art of assemblage is not so new. It goes back two generations, to t h e Dadaism of World War I, but there has never been much of it in Australia. Barry Humphries, the comic actor, held two Dada Exhibitions in the '50s, and three years ago there was the "Muffled Drums" group in Sydney. The lat- ter attacked both the de- bilitating concept of "good taste," and certain aspects of art politics. The Imitation Realists are more positive. They are not anti -art, and they are also in line with current trends in international art for neo-Dada has only re- cently become widespread. In the past couple of years Pop Art has found official recognition in Eng- land. ansemblage has had a major purvey at, the Museum of Modern Ai% MARY LOU plastic ducks and toys. Mr. Daniel Tho- mas, assistant - director of the Art Gallery of N.S.W. will write about art each week in the Sun- day Telegraph. New York, and indeed the majority of that Museum's recent acquisitions have been not abstract ex- pressionism, b u t as- semblage, or new images of man For what It Is worth, the Imitation Realists are very up-to-date. One of the newest things In the inter- national magazines is ailiches laceres (torn post- ers), and sure enough we have one here, too recent even to be catalogued. They know what's going on. They like art. There is a high serious- ness about art behind the rude tributes to Picasso in "Demoiselles di Kings Cross." or to John Olsen In "The King of the Bicycle Boys Rejoices." Besides art they . like nude women, and food; often in combination. There are several collages of pin-ups drowning in spaghetti or rice. They know which magazis, comic strips, TV stars, ad- vertisements, hit tunes. have the widest popular currency in Australia. Their intention is to ex- tract from this large area of life some sort of poetry, both literary and visual, by using the very same tawdry magazines and the very same glittering or gaudy objects that furnish this world, intellectually and physically. Perhaps this is the By- zantium that occurs In many of their titles. By- zantium today, for us, is Surfers Paradise, or any Woolworths. To some extent they suc- ceed. The slightly porno graphic magazines which they have cut up are dis- piriting time -consumers in arbershojys, but here they are transformed into some- thing cheerful, and funny. Their content is admirable, but not always their form. As works of art, too many of the objects have lost their esthetic clarity. Too many of the compon- ents have been overloaded with paint. "Mary Lou" by Mike Brown has suffered least from painting. Here the plastic ducks and Dinky toys, in mint condition from Coles, make breasts and eyes. The assembled objects retain their orig- inal meaning as well as taking on a new signific- ance. Some differences between the three artists can be discerned eventually'. Brown appears to be especially good at wood sculpture and at drawing -"Anarchists Arriving" is a beauty. Crothall is perhaps the funniest-look at "I Do I Do I Do Do Do." And Lanceley seems the CEDRIC FLOWER , . . loves most painterly. He has been through the full training course at the Na- tional Art School (1 have seen his academic life drawings) and his profes- sional use of color is ap- parent. "Saintly Woman," very like Dubuffet, shows it. and so does "Just Like His Uncle Fred." a baby made of squashed tins painted pink,lue set on a background of b lace. Lanceley can also ach- ieve his effects with sim- plicity. "Loving couple in the bath" Is no more than two white painted du rings, erect in a plastic tub and yet it somehow ach- ieves an effect of eroticism and nakedness. On the whole, tremen- dous fun. Prices ranging from three to 1000 (pounds not guineas) seem a bit steep, Roland Wakelin The Imitation Real- ists are today's Aus- tralian avant garde; ill 1916 it was Roland Wakelin's Post - Im- pressionism and a ret- rospective in the Wales House base- ment, arranged by the Arts Council, makes an instructive com- parison. He no longer looks rev- olutionary, and the same will no doubt be true of the Realists in 45 years. This retrospective covers Wakelin's career better than the small exhibition at the Macquarie two years ago, though a couple of key works seen there are absent. It is not ns big as his exhibition at the Art Gal- lery of N.S.W. 20 years ago. That exhibition indicated a degree of official recog- nition which had taken the form of purchase only in the mid-thirties-it had ROLAND WAKELIN . . no longer looks revolutionary. Sydney's terraces and their cast-iron. at's on? TODAY AND NEXT WEEK: Art Gallery of N.S.W. temporary exhibi- tions: "Visionary Architecture," "Walter Gropius" and other photographic architec- tural exhibits. Herman Miller chairs, antique English silver. MONDAY MORNING ONLY: Macquarie. Cedric Flower "Terrace Houses." ALL NEXT WEEK: Wales House, Pitt and Hunter Streets: Wakelin retrospective. Farmers Blaxland Gallery: Recent N.S.W. architecture. LAST WEEK. Newmans: Mixed show of important Syd- ney painters. Pleasant new gallery. Clune: Elizabeth Durack, paintings. Komon: Subterranean Imitation Realists. OPENING WEDNESDAY: Dr vid Jones: Interior Decorations, Ten Best-%:-essed Rooms. Barry :tern: Seven Wollongong Artists, Macquarie: taken 20 years to reach that stage, and by then of course he was no longer a revolutionary. Such delayed recognition is fortunately impossible today. The early works are the moat interesting, but the more recent ones have become warmer and more romantic. Architecture exhibitions I hope to say more about these next Sun- day, but the exhibi- tion at Farmers, now in its last week, is not to be missed. It shows that present - d a y architecture in New South Wales is be- coming as interesting as our painting. Dr. Rayner Benham, one of the world's leading architectural critics and here to chair the Archi- tects' Convention, said that no city of equal size, cer- tainly not Paris for exam- ple, could produce an ex- hibition of equal merit. Dr, Benham. like his even more famous prede- cessor at a previous con- vention, Walter Groplus, is immensely impressed by Sydney's terraces and their cast-iron. Cedric Flower loves them dearly. too; his Pic- tures of Sydney Terraces close at the Macquarie Galleries tomorrow at 1 p.m. er.