Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. A I/ T with Daniel Thomas THE FORTIES REVIVED THE Australian Irresistibles at Bonython are not quite what the name of the exhibition implies. I took it to be a promise of glamor and beauty -50 or 60 paintings and sculptures, perhaps, the best that the chosen artists had made, and maybe their biggest. Instead, we have mainly a study -collection, of small pictures and drawings - a history lesson in "the mod- ern period of Australian art, 1930 to 1970." Even the history is a bit out. If "modern' art be- gins with pasty impression- ism, as it usually does, then it begins in Australia about 1915, not 1930, and although ell the other names are present. Roland Wakelin is missing. For the 1930s Grace Crowley should have join- ed Fizelle and Hinder. But these are minor points. It is an almost complete list of names from Australian art history in the 1930s and 1940s. All sorts of interesting footnotes appear, especially unfamiliar Melbourne art- ists. Howard Matthews. re- membered by Sidney Nolan as a Stimulating com- panion, turns out to be a fairly routine George Bell pupil. Sam Atyeo, a bright dilettante, did the earliest abstract paintings in Mel- bourne, and a much re- produced example from John Reed s collection is to be seen in the original, The George Bell formal- ists the Antiporiv.ans, the social realists O'Connor Connihan, Bergner), the surrealists (OR 1.e e s o n, Thakel, and the Charm School are all pretty com- plete ("The Charm School" is what the late 1950s decided to call Syd- ney's 1940s). It falls apart, as history, with the abstract -expres- sionists of the late 1950s- no Olsen, Klippel or Mich- ael Taylor. And the sixties get only haphazard cover- age - no Mike Brown, no Watkins for the early years. very few Field ab- stractionists. It seems frivolous to in- clude a young student of Robertson -Swan - but not Swan himself. As for irresistible glam- or, as opposed to history, there is some, of course. Charles Doutney's very best painting is here. Among the footnote artists Atyeo and Bergner are probably at their best. There's an outstanding Drysdale, and large and beautiful paintings by Fairweather and Belson, and a splendid Meadmore sculpture. The Fullbrook, the Tucker, the Bellette and the ,small Leonard French are excellent examples of these artists' work. Among the well repre- sented contemporaries are Reinhard, Sydney Ball and John Peart (uncatalogued, like a number of impor- ant artists, including Arn- old Shore and Margaret Preston). And the first Mike Kit- ening sculpture to be shown in a couple of years is quietly impressive. And that's about all for glamor. What's interesting be- sides the comprehensive history lesson in the thir- ties and forties is the new prices being asked for work of this period. Wolf- gang Cardamatis, a small drawing with holes in it, $10001 PATRICK HERON litho- graphs (Komon): A whole room full of glamor and gorgeous color, $100 each. KEVIN CONNOR'S one- man show (Macquarie) is mostly a homage to Goya, some of the paint- ings being based on the Spanish master's "Disasters of War" etchings i Connor was n Spain 1985-1966, that is before his Harkness fellowship in New York, and it did more for his art than America. The new colors, hot and presumably "Spanish," are much Thor& attmctitreettlan previously - deep Ochres, browns, purples and yel- lows, flushed with violets, orange, pink. But Goya was a great master of placement, of subdividing a rectangular area. His figures become poignant by virtue of their exact position in his schemes. Connor, and many other contemporary figurative artists, work on the specta- tor by what I often feel is a subterfuge; instead of exactness and precision, like Goya, they use vague- ness, ' Uncertain outlines, undefined position, un- specific features, a sug- gestion of confinement in a pictorial prison, and then leave it to the specta- tor to project drama, pas- sion and poignancy into these vague images-to finish the picture, in fact. Connor's better pictures continue I think to be his figures in interiors; then the figures have an inter- nal dialogue with the architecture and the space, instead of making an appeal to the spectator alone. VARMERS 10th Annual -1- Survey (of new tenden- cies in Sydney art) has only five artists this year and looks much more in- teresting than usual, Stuart Maxwell is the oldest, and makes wavy sheet and box sculptures, shiny and colorful. The otheri were all born 1945 to 1950. David Mc- Innes's paintings cross gaps between separated canvases. John Kenneth Drews likes rich, cushioned swel- lings, either spray -painted Illusion, or literal, inflated plastic, Tim Johnson's single - color tall canvases, and single -color perspex sheets on aluminium frames, and wall -washing light pieces, are multiplying rapidly, and becoming presences, or participants in a room's space in a way that seems far more dignified than the emotional demands of Kevin Connor's figures. Johnson's objects quietly assert their presence as objects with values of their own (as works of art that is); they don't pretend to be people, They have a rather rad- iant. fresh innocence, which I suppose comes front the simplicity . of their delight in a single color, or a single well handled material, and from their almost always being high-keyed. Ian Milliss's piece was unidentified when I visit- ed the gallery, but we've seen a fair bit of his work lately and I recognised his , style immediately: two of the gallery's benches were placed in a corridor, one along a wall, the other projecting at right angles from it. Photographs of the set-up will be avail- able, in an edition of five. The placement of these objects in a real site was done as elegantly as Goya's placement of forms on a canvas: and both Goya and Milliss in their very different ways very much want you to see plainly, what's there outside your- self, AUSTRALIAN Water - ' color Institute: The annual exhibition at the Education Department, as usual has the pleasure of showing us some excellent, retiring artists who never seem to have one-man shows (Enid Cambridge, Hector Gilliland, Weaver Hawkins, Margaret Coen r. plus a few who are ex - exactness and precision, watercolor (Cavington Smith, Kubbos, Salkaus- kas). But in its 47th year It also seems increasingly invaded by a sort of com- mercial look.