Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. - JAN 1971 THE UNBEATABLES -THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'S MAL UP THE OUTSIDE WORLD PASSED US BY IN 1970 I7 was a very inward -looking year for art in Sydney. No foreign exhibitions of contemporary art visited us, for the Art was out of business and no other exhibition space is available free. Normal commercial rates for exhibition space are so high that the shows don't come to us. One of the exhibitions which circulated elsewhere in Australia was "Air Art" organised by James Hari- thas for Phillip Morris. It was a sad loss. Its giant inflatables, whispering walls, heat and moisture responsive constructions were right up to the minute, for the exhibition was beginning its world tour in Australia. It was art for the age of ecology, and since a world-wide awareness of environmental crisis and of pollution was 1970's most important develop- ment, it couldn't have been more timely. Touch an object with a warm hand and watch it swell. Breathe moistly on another and watch it dissolve. Program another to respond to human heartbeats. Keep the cycles going to and fro, even if it's a matter of moulds decaying, and fer- tilisers. "Air Art" would have been a good 1970 sequel for Christo's 'Packed Coast" of 1909. There was a work of art that had everything! At the time it might have seemed the ultimate in romantic landscape paint- ing (or in landscape sculp- ture), the ultimate in par- ticipation art. But now it seems to have been ecology -art, too: preserve our threatened coastline, treat it as if it were precious, wrap it carefully. Gift-wrap it into the spec- tator's consciousness, Or Lt healing bandages ittle Bay is handy to a hospital). And as a by- product there was the literal ecological benefit of ART with Daniel Thomas the rat -infested garbage dump on the lovely cliff - top finally being cleaned up. The more one thinks of it, Christo's Little Bay was the most important art event anywhere in the world in 1969-and it hap- pened right here in Syd- ney. Foreign art in Sydney in 1970 was left to the Power Bequest's exhibition at Watters. (It's high time the University of Sydney pro- vided permanent exhibition space for its imporant art collection.) And its land- scape sculpture of lift-off clouds and seacoasts, by Sam Richardson, the oat - standing piece in that ex- hibition was, in its way, ecology -art, too. Two other foreign art events were, in their way, a step forward. Two one-man shows of contemporary paintings im- ported by dealers were, for once, worth having. In the past, when dealers have imported contemporary foreign work, it's never been very up to date, and it has usually been slight gouaches by nobody you've ever heard of. Prints are a different matter. Excellent litho- graphs and etchings by worthwhile artists, from Patrick Heron to Picasso, have been imported regu- larly in recent years. This year Central Street and Gallery A each import- ed glamorous major paint- ings by James Doolin and Natvar Bhaysar respec- tively. Doolin works in Los Angeles, and he's part - Australian, anyway. At least he lived for two years in Melbourne, and his work was sumptuously pretty. Bhaysar works in New York, and his painting was a perfect example of the 1970 New York season's principal art - fashion. "lyrical abstraction." (I 'won't dignify It by calling it an art -movement.) Neither Doolin nor Bhav- sar are world-shaking, but they were well worth see- ing, and we saw them at the right time, not two or three years too late. Perhaps it was appropri- ate that in Sydney 'd ygar of Captain Cook, of the Queen and the Pope, thit for once our foreign art exhibitions included an uncommonly large amount of old art Ind establish- ment art. If we missed out on the present we did see some- thing of the real past. This was good, for Syd- ney never seems to live either in the present or in the past, but in some limbo, call it the recent jiatt, though there's a lot 19th in it, and Sydney unthinkingly takes VMS to be the present. 'rom the "real past" it was the Classical Antiqui- ties at David Jones that were really unusual. Thkugh they sheltie also hay reminded us that t are some pretty good an hnities permanently in HYdney, at the Nicholson Museum, but seldom visited. Da: id Jones, as It has in the past, also showed oriental "antiquities, Thai and IChrher sculptures, qhinese ceramics, Japan - w screens and lacquers. It',S a which I hope m es money, but which c lily also oper- ated a valuable public service. What was totally new for Australia was an exhi- bitiOii of Etziopean old master paintings - not PPi4rY, or stattfettes, or woettwork, by anonymous craftsmen, but the real thing, art by artists whose names you've always known, like Gainsborough. BoliCher, Tintoretto, no less. -Nave we suddenly becomr. richer? Or is the art market in London in the dolgliifins and a sortie to AMtrEllitt by Agnews a It disean't matter, Aus- triiiia is now greatly en- riphed by a good number paintings from that exhibition, from Bano di Pietro and Garofalo to Cotes and Reynolds, and above all the Boucher. Next week: the focal shows and New Faces of 19A.