Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

- "TELEGRAPH" kl 9 DEC Sydney, N.S.W 1971 Importance of not being too original Dick WATK I NS used la worry about being original. Now is not very important. In any case his new show, at 38 Hargrave Street, is much the same as his last show, which was early this year. His work is still very good and it is still very like Jackson Pollock. At various times Iv has done paintings like Sickert. Rauschen- berg, Pasmore, Nolan, Malevich, Matisse. He has done fauvism, con- structivlsm, art -deco. neo-impres- sionism, action -painting, pop art, the lot. He has probably felt guilty about getting a bigger kick from other works of art than from "Nature," if nature has to mean landscape or else the artificial landscape of architecture and city. Here of course is the solution: for a painter other paintings them- selves are "nature":_ the works of the masters are daily, everyday parts of an artist's life, just as much as in a sofa in the room, or a tree in a landscape. In fact they can h? more real. Art can be made out of anything. In art the end always justifies the means. It doesn't matter if you use found objects. readymade fornis, or readvmade styles. Ii the result is beautiful, who cares what the ingredients are. Moreover. I don't think art has any chance at all of being great unless the artist is very consciously challenging his greatest pro - don .s.sors. - A few generations ago artists were constantly challenging Velas- (Inez and Rembrandt and Dela- crnix. Another generation took on Cezanne and Ingres. Recently it has been Matisse and Pollock. No- thing but the absolute greatest gets challenged this way: why waste time on anything else? Good Australian artists like Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams feed greedily on Goya and Daumier and Mondrian and a host of other Masters. Dick Watkins is doing exactly the same, but more openly. And et one easily recognises a palatal by Watkins. The black spattere canvases have their own - airy grace. different from Pollock's. The thickly loaded color paintings have their own range of color, uni- que to Watkins. Watkins is ambitious and brave and worried and although he has doubted it himself, he is indivi- dual. He is totally uncorrupted, and he presses on. He is already good. and he is the kind of artist that could be great. SCULPTURE GARDEN "pENELOPE'S Sculpture Garden" a had its opening on Wednesday, but it will never be very open. It can be visited by appointment only; phone 32-5486. Mrs. Penelope Lane Brown has placed sculptures in her large and leafy Woollahra garden. It will operate partly as an exten- sion of the Watters Gallery, as a superior sculpture store, where bulky objects can be viewed in a spacious and attractive setting, The announcement was issued jointly by Mrs. Lane Brown and art by daniel thomas I think he knows that originality Mr. Watters, and several of the artists have shown at the Wattera Gallery, Others have shown at Bonython, !Conlon. Holdsworth and Gallery A. Mrs. Lane Brown will operate chiefly in her own right as an independent consultant for sculpture. For some years she has been the most perceptive collector of Con- temporary painting in Sydney. She has often been quick to choose the best work in a good exhibition. Now that she has gone commercial (or semi-commercial o, we wish her well. It's by no means unusual for a good collector to turn into a dealer. Kyrn Bonython did it, Joseph Brown did it, and at the same time maintained a separate integrity for their private collections. It's a bet- ter way to go than Jo become like some one-time collectors, an ama- teur artist. Both collecting and dealing are active forms of art patronage. Amateur artists, on the other hand, often become uninter- ested in any art except their own. The sculptors with work in the garden are Robert Brown, Tony Coleing, Noel Hutchison. Robert Klippel, Nigel Lendon, Ron Robertson -Swann, Ian Mackay. Paul Selwood and Richard Stankiewicz. It is a list of Sydney's best 'sculp- tors, plus one Internationally famous American, Stankiewicz, who visited Sydney briefly and did some work here. The sculptures are mostly not In- tended for such a leafy setting. Paved and walled spaces, which means either courtyards, foyers, or even comfortable drawing -rooms, are what most artists have at the back of their minds when they make sculptures - nut the wild formlessness of nature. But in fact pieces in rusted steel look good in all the greenery, and so do those in Industrial gloss paint and unsophisticated colors, like agricultural red. Robert Klippel has come up with a lot of new pieces, both large and small; he is continually and amaz- ingly inventive. CHRISTMAS PARTY AT the Contemporary Art Soci- ety's annual Christmas party there were no paintings or sculp- tures in the gallery. Guests were meant to scribble their own graffiti on the walls. Most were dirty; which is the tradition. For example (and for the local art -history record): "Ian minis& is Barry Stern in a plastic raincoat." SUMMER EXHIBITIONS 11EMEMBER that most galleries will close at Christmas, an.l re- main closed until February. Watters has closed already. This week at Angus and Robert- son's new bookshop premises, 2is.a. Pitt Street, besides Farmer's, there's an exhibition of mixed contempor- aries from Bonython, Gallery A, Winters and Chandler Coventry; on the same floor as the books on art. This week Rudy Komon's anni- versary exhibition is still on. and is especially worth visiting for a few very famous paintings which are not often seen: Dobell's "Cockney Mother." French's "The Burial" 1960, Drysdale's "Native Dogger at Mt. Olga" Nolan's "Explorer Wills," Fairweather's "Monastery." They don't all seem quite as good as they seemed ten years ago. Or have they changed, have the colors darkened? Or has the spectator changed? Probably both. Ten years is a perilous journey for an object, and for an observer.