Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

25 OCT 10. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. An artist in words PATRICK WHITE'S new novel :is about an artist living in Sydney. It's enthralling. 1 . can't really tell whether I was en - (bruited by the central theme or by the ince, cleutals. When your own inunediate world Ls con- verted Into major art It's hard to separate the immense pleasures of recognising that world from adminition of the work of art In Its own, independent right. And I don't think it matters at all if you en- joy works of art for the "wrong" reasons, or for incidental reason a. Sometimes I suspect the side issues are more ttuly the content of the work than is the artist's consciously intended subject matter. So why not revel in the glimpsni of Sydney which Patrick White mirrors? Moreirn Bay flgtrees, for example one of the world's noblest trees, a tree that, startles all foreign visitors into re- ART with Daniel Thomas spect,' but which we sometimes ignore. They loom up here and there In this bock. Or squashy wetness In general. Sydney is a rainy city: it's not always the hot. dry -oven that Christina Stead's novels have sometimes described. and the frequent warm dampness here is authentic Sydney, lantaha shrubbery seems just right for one neety episode. perhaps. becalm. of its' rank smell. - And smells often seern for Patrick White what the taste of little cakes was for ProuSt: 'Rot he notices rank smells as well as sweet: leaf - mould, armpits, back- yard dimities, an old man's utiftesstained trousers. There's a great deal el this sort of observation. Now although the novel, which is called The Vivisector, is about the life of a painter named Hurtle Duffield, whose work cuts deep into the lives of other people. I think' It's .Pat- rick White -the writer who has always been a kind of vivisector. His observation - 16 'Scalpel sharp. Observa- tion not only of the visual things, Ind the emotional, '" eittratiOns which his painter character observes, but also an impaling - and appalled - clarity in noticing smells and sounds, and every- thing. So there's much more than Sydney flgtreee, and climate. Or the realisation that. Ate Courtney's house high have been In Roslyn Gardens, or the puzzle of just whereabouts In Paddington is the artist's Chubby Lane house. There is a long talk scene at the end of the book where the path .. now very old, sties' the opening of his reLt- respective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I think I know the very indi- viduals that could haste spoken some of the words of chatter given by Patrick White, Other languages pa, heard in other elder:I' ot, The language of small - shopkeepers. of World War I ser/47k of foreigners living' In Sydney Obviously, as for any good writer, there le a. great relish of words for i their own sake a virtu- , osity in using them, and highlysoafnduspinc: staectito, using them. (Whites way is personal way. For a painter similar things happen. He rel- ishes certain forms, shapes and coltsn that, are personal t in,. And instead of us. ais technical skill:, to embody some impeetent visual or emotional experience, a painter will sometimes doijutt the opposite - hear/sill search for a subject that fits those forma, shapes and colors which he is compulsively obliged to use. Thus Fred Willillins Ls cettainly concertle with the- lands looks at and we.l a pli something th losk into his painti But he also is a maker of beautiful blobs and mounds of color, wil)i13' trees In a lancesrepe didn't offer a pretext Ic' these blobs hit &lair have iound anotheasprat7 text. Sides of beef hap:. or cratered 'branch faces. . Similarly, George Bat= desSin's recentriida tion showed an artist, compulsively ripple -flows, trig around for sober that could use .411 forms. It is this sort of mat canpulsion not made much _o character (thougtl' 1 Patrick White's Obi think it's very present in White's own use of words ) There is indeed color compulsion, digo, add the Lae in the bcok, as th let . dies, Ls ggoddd." I can't think of - one who has ma di go a hero-cojot be .- Itfite has' it brig traedi-L Lion of ideal, god - goodness. Violet ultra -violet, has a cent drug -culture ditties of seething the eltithete blithe. 1001 indigo Ls at least at the, right end- of the epees* tram;