Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. J ART with Daniel Thomas nOROTHEA MACKELLAR, a Sydney writer who w died recently, collected what must have been an attractive houseful of pictures. They were auctioned repetitive standard line, this week and seeing them but her Leon Bakst cos - brought a period to life. tome study was as good as She stopped collecting he gets, and her Utrillo in the 1940s and began in street scene quite excep- the 1920s, when a kind of tionally strong for this hard-edge style was dom- very uneven artist. Meat. It wasn't like the These three are all minor abstract hard-edge of the artists, of course, but they, 1960s. of course, but the like all good decorative forms were generally fiat art, maintain their prices and firmly outlined, the steadily in a way that colors clear and unmodu- ambitious art does not. lated. (Ambitous art is not In short. it was a dec- safe; it either flops, or else 'native style, meaning it eventually far outstrips the decorated a flat surface art.) of safety decorative well; it respected a wall, of furniture, or a So it's interesting to ob- 000k cover, or a fabric, serve how knowledgeable In Australian art it the local art iiio_set is at meant collecting lots of buying foreign art: Marie rhea Proctor watercolors, Laurencin, $1050, was Kenneth Macqueen water- about the same as a Lon - colors, and Margaret Pres- don price; the Bakst, $310, ton woodcuts. It meant about one-third; and lit - woodcuts or linocuts by rill°, $9000, about half the lesser -known Australians London price. Ethleen Palmer, Ethel ALUN LEACH - JONES Spov,,ers and Ethel Ste- (waiters). At last this ar- miens. tist has tired of his (All the ladles who "Noumenons," which are now go in for weaving square paintings contain - and went in for pottery mg a large centralised recently, must have been circle bhe circle being fill - doing linocuts in the ed with a swarm of flat - twenties.) tend and chopped -up in - It meant linocuts by terlace, Norbertine Bres.slern- The n e w exhibition Roth, a European artist brings us up to Noumenon who evidently had an ins- 37, of 1970, but there are :Anse following in Aus- also four paintings which Walla from the twenties. are no longer square but Oil paintings in the style rectangular, no longer con - were less common. Besides tabling circles but ovals, Margaret Preston. the im- and in which the chopped portant Australian oils in interlace has enlarged its this collection were un- scale. usually sculptural subjects The post -Noumenons are 'oy Arthur Much and less pulsating, and when Douglas Dundas. I saw the exhibition all One had the pleasant the Noumenons were al - feeling of being in the ready sold, but none of the ones. presence of an absolutely newIs it a matter of the secure taste. Miss Mackel- customer preferring paint- !ar knew exactly what Me liked, didn't bother with ings that are familiar, or other kinds of art, ohose preferringpaintings that excellent examples within throb? In a way, the Noumen- her narrow field, ens are, like Op Art, a Thus, when she ventured respectable sort of psyche - into what were then della. No drugs, no famous foreign names, astrology, just a large, -lie obese good examples loomin , disc with edges too. g "that gaivrr under various Herirl Itiorle', LauMnein '.(iptiftl._rr Asturet; and With Wit tercolor was one of a a filling that heaves organ- MACKELLAR COLLECTION ically and flashes with by Dale Hickey, a kind of color contrasts. wall of broad painterly Leach -Jones has said bricks. that the nearly abstract, CHARLES CA LLINS forms which fill his circ- (Gallery A).-An old man les in fact come from from Brisbane, a naive simple things like trees painter with the usual and bodies. charm, the usual decora- So we are at liberty to tive patterning; but with interpret them as we wish an unusual chalky green/ (more of the spectator's blue palette, and an un- contribution that we heard usual way of making the about in the annual Power sea's horizon heave and Lecture). climb, like hills. pull ' artists rd - mire A. t'i. work of So I suppose the pic- tures operate for most spectators as a kind of ra- 'no' '- diant life-long nature sYm- In I - ..s 1,, - , bol in a mechanistic world* of se a circular breeding grounc l ; , J be of natural blomorphic. rimr .) t , 'Al' forms in a strictly artificial square. ,..ti I've often felt the circles smilt114 Uu ;, 1- were interesting enough to con - become paintings In their own right, with no square and warm. Very decent surrounding them, but Frey'101111 I suppose the artist wants W.1,1141111/ (Holds - them to fight each other won!' ), who used to square and to signify the usual upti ship f with ontliin re - circle versus square bust- la ness of life versus death Rain, !aitrcomspumIryt, ignoiere..; t rectangle. Conse- or nature versus art. qi.,ntly his atzttract Arne - The word noumenon, my tt res are now readily in - dictionary tells me, was in - Kant Wrpreted as iLustrations of vented in 1798 __by things I'm sure the artist (the favorite Pfillosollher nmer intended Ulm of today's influential art beetles, b rds, hands, Don critic, Clement Greenberg) Quixote, a Louis XIV bal- in contrast to the word let dance., figures riding a phenomenon. A noumenon is an object gun of purely intellectual in- The look of a lMoon- tuition; a phenomenon is craft, or a iarbarella immediately perceived. So science-fiction landscape, by usin the name nou- may be intentional, for it menon the artist must be g is a look that is relevant telling the spectator there's to his space constructions. more in his pictures than But I can't see that ref - meets the eye. erences to baroque illus- CENTRAL STREET -A tration or to a famous re- mixed show of gallery ar- cent advertising image, can tists: Schlicht, McGillick, be anything but acciden- Christmann, Paramor, Old- tat field, etc., plus Christo Nevertheless - the ew collages. New name: Floyd curves, the surrealist Co Carter, a shiny metal bination of organi& scut Lure. First sight of meohine elements, If. s 1 IdelhOttpqmabsttestion, in a uncertain, are a very long- *fillet red ithbresside. ' *resting snow, oubjeet for dignified "Black Painting" the artist. 4 Ti