Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ART witli Daniel Thomas THE NEW PRETTINESS THIS season's fashion in New York was "lyrical abstraction." After the hard-edge and the minimal art of a few years ago, suddenly there was an outbreak of clouds and tinted vapors. It kept 011tski company, who's been around some time. Prettiness was back. A small survey exhibition of the tendency at one New York Mutun, was titled simply "Beautiful Paint- ings". In Sydney I suppose John Pearl was closest to the sensibility, though Michael Johnson's Vast canvases done just before going changed to New in York h this dir- ection.aL Now we have a full view of the. style. raatvar Bbav- sac, who was actually in the Jewish Museum's "Beautiful Paintings" exhi- bition, has a one-man show at Gallery A. It is the first feedback we have had from that gallery's re- cently opened New York branch. Natvar Bhaysar, is a Moslem Indian, now liv- ing in America. It is the MOslein citilisation; more than any other, which has relished color for tts own sake. So perhaps 'this is why he's willing kb make his canvases more sunm- tuotts, varied, and irides- cent In color than, say, Olitski, or, in Sydney, Gun- ther Christmann. A peacock -feather green and violet canvas, 19 feet wide, is flecked With yellow fire. The rest are mostly 8 feet, and are warm reds and golds, flecked with sooty purples. ' What he dijes talk about, in the gallery handout, is a nett* Indian tradition 01 .ritualistic decorations, done_ on the earth, in dry pigments, aa st Source for his own gritty, sandy sur- faces. It "seems dielikpadictory that'fiction-pidnlings can be With dry- acrylic pigments, but he squirts them as wildly as Pollock poured his enamels. And although he acknowledges Monet and Battik°, I won- der whether Pollock is not his main source. It is marvellous that something as recent and so expansively unlike* local painting Las been brought to Sydney. The' prices are the same as New York, and by Sydney standards they are not high ($)700 and $2200, except for the bigg- est) and $450 for some smaller works on paper. DAVID RANKIN (Wat- ters) is not expansive, the paintings are not very big, they don't give an im- mediate effect of sumptu- ous color. But they are full of subtle color, and airi- ness. As in previceis exhibitions they all consist of rows of dark dots, hovering on pale grounds, highly organised. There is immense variety in an at -first -sight uni- form group of paintings. The dots are varied in size, :aid in shape (from circle to shield,. The cam uses. an improvement on his rnine.s. also vary in size and shape. URIC SMITH (Rudy Ko- mon) seems to have emerged from a trough of portraiture into a fuller, sunnier world. There are Sti'l some portraits (Gor- ton, Powditch, Rembrandt) but in them you enjoy ref- erences to elements of these performers' styles, as much as the faces - and you see the back of Pow - ditch's head. And you no- tice the expert shuffling of broad flat planes. especi- ally borders. almost as if a juicy tachLst slab had dieted and lost its bulki- ness. (ZEORCI JENSEN, the Danish ' silversmiths, show jewellery at David Jones. The cases in which they are displayed are an object lesson for any de- signer of temporary ex- hibitions - minimal glass held together by plastic clips, electric wiring frank- ly exposed. The objects include silver spectacle frames de- signed for Picasso, and, also for Picasso, some mysterious bowls and a scoop whose wilfully ir- regular curved planes meet at steep. sharp, "cu- bist" angles, like the Negro feces in the Demoiselles d'Avignon. Apart from these haun- ting curiosities, the post - art -nouveau floral pieces designed by Jensen him- self (around 1910) are memorable and museum - worthy. The recent designs, mostly by Torun Bulow- Rube, tend to free-form cursiveness w1dch sud- denly (surely this can't be due to seeing the Larsen cylinders and spheres at Gallery A recently?) don't look very contemporary any more. Flowing curves after a period of strictly geometric art, aren't easy to look at today. But there is Plet Hein, the deviser of a most beautiful squared circle which he calls a super -ellipse The design has begn in town planning, fort is roun- dabouts, but do in three dimensions and t's a sil- ver super -egg, perfectly balanced on its end, and a perfect ornament for our time.