Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 11 APR 1971 Display of nudes JOHN BRACK has been around for about twenty years, and I think he looks better now, an isolated figure painter in a world of abstract art. At Rudy Komon's he is showing a couple of dozen nudes. In 1957 he aso .showed nudes. He has always produced exhibitions on a theme; last year it was ballroom dancers, another It was medical things in windows, or suburban wedding - rituals. Themes and series for an exhibition are an Intelligent strategy, for the show always looks better. But we still don't really know what he's up to, and this makes him interest- ing. Once he was thought a satirist. But now the "satire" looks like sharp but affectionate observa- tion Obviotiely he likes toying with real versus artificial, He has been very interest- ed in false legs false hair, tailors' dummies, forced expressions, reflection.s., All this is a reminder that any picture is Itself artificial, too. In the new nudes he re- minds us that we are look- ing at paintings, not people, by high viewpoints, up - tilted floors, angled carpet rectangles, all referring to cubist structure. For the same reason he gives the modus unnat- ural flesh color, pink, mauve, green. There Is a further re- minder that the .iude- model - sitting -in -a -studio is A highly artificial SILUR- tiali. A soft warm girl with droopy breasts shouldn't just be sitting there, an object to be painted; she should be making love. So Brack underlines the clinical situation by a lot of puritan bare boards, empty walls, plain timber chairs, and just one Mamie rug as a token of luxury to keep the girl company. Besides the tension be- tween real and artificial, I now think there's a per- manent tension between puritanism and luxury In his work. Spare puritan torus al- ways, luxurious subject - matter mostly, or if the subject is non -luxurious, then, remember that a painting itself Is a luxury object.. He is an excellent painter and I admire his work very much. OBJECTS Watters Gallery. Two fresh young artists from Adelaide. Not that they are innocent, it's just that we've seen nothing like it in Sydney. Margaret Dodd's ceramic motor cars (Hoidens) met- amorphose floppily into tiger skins, or parcels or 'clouds or faces, or all aorta tot irreverent things for these travelling shrines. She has in fact return- ed I. om several years in California where she was part of the Funk Art scene, and her exhibition is funny, and skilful and imaginative, and just what we need after a surfeit of pretentious uptight pot- tery. There's an American form of praise whose meaning I don't really know yet, "He lets It fill hang out,' but I presume it means unbuttoned, relaxA, open. I'm sure it applies to Miss Dodd. She deserves a rousing welcome. Tony Bishop, whose ex- cellent sculptures we know, has produced an exhibition of what he calls "Common Object" paintings. There was a time when Pop Art was thought to be a celebration of "common objects," like the plain taps, kettles, scissors, tele- phones, matchboxes which Bishop paints. Yet now it seems more to have been a connoisseur- ship of "common pictures," and common printing tech- niques, like posters, adver- tisements, labels and photo- graphs. Bishop however, like a good sculptor, really does stress the object quality of his pictures; the paint is painterly the canvas 1. round is raw and un- }Timed, and reminds you of the sugarbags that are found in kitchens along with the hardware which he portrays. Good common prices 8300 each. David Jones. As usual in the annual show of "Fine and Decorative Arts," it is the wonderful bits of old wood that are a unique pleasure. Nobody is such a con- noisseur of wood as Mr. Haines. Plain, polished, caressed, these tables, ART by daniel thomas chests and cupboards from 17th and 18th century Italy know their own value. They don't disguise their material under ornamental paintwork, carving, or in- lay; they don't falsify their structure undem the de- mands of fashionable style change. They are pest timeless planks, with lean, muscu- lar mouldings at the neces- sary junctions. Beside wood there is glass, lacquer and ceramios: a sculpture of two, and a romantic Regency portrait by Thomas Lawrence. COLOR Gunther Christenann, at 38 Hargrave Street, Pad- dington, occasionally tries to ring changes on his speckled squares - well they're not really squares, but subtle near -squares 66 by 60 inches. He might try a horizon- tal divider. It's true he was once a dedicated subdivider of areas, but I think his color-surfaces of flecked (stint have plenty of inter- est yet. They are set breathing by usually making the top- most layer of paint -flecks coloristically recessive and there are endless dis- coveries to be made about breathing surfaces. FRIENDS Martin Sharp, at 59 Mac- leay Street, now renamed The Ginger Meggs Mem- orial School of Arta shows old friends. That is, all the paint- ings and collages fr.in his exhibition at the same place a year ago have been shrunk into color photo- graphs, each in two sizes, the smaller being postage- i stamp size. 1