Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Photographs in tune with time LLUTHA has withdrawn its proposal for a giant coal -loading pier off Stanwell Park, a south coast beauty spot. The detision come just atter a group of artists opened a protest exhibition at the Arts Council Gallery. It would be dattering but false to link Art Power with the decision to withdraw, The exhibition was only the last of many manifestations of public outrage. extending over a couple of years. In any case public outrage might not have worked alone. Perhaps it needed help from the business downturn in Japan. and the con- aAuent reduced prospects for Clutlia'a coal exports. Although the quality of the pic- tures now at the Arts Council is beside the poir.t - it's the expres- Mon of artists' solidarity that counts - the exhibits are not without in- terest. Tile beat are old photographs, copied from 19th -century prints owned by the Mitchell Library. Did any 19th -century photo- graph ever tall as a work of art., A couple of rows of 19th - century village coalminers. staring gravely at the camera are also star- ing at us, which means they are staring into their future. Nothing earriee across distant thee so well as early portrait photographs. Perhaps It's because early ex- posures were very slow, ar.d people simply had to pose steady, monu- mental and relaxed. Present day /snapshots, on fact film, show too many smiles and other transitory movements. Peo- ple don't prepare themselves for a photograph any longer, They don't mum long enough to cast off ex- ternal irrelevance or to allow their real selves to Inhabit their bodies peacefully. But perhaps also photography was the best medium for the beat ex- pression of 19th -century thought. Since the mid-19th century. Realism and the closely dependent Impres- sionism. had been the most power- ful visual styles. Democracy was the currently fashionable politics; natu- ral sciences like botany, zoology, geology were the currently fashion- able sciences. It was not ll period of fantasy. nas of abstraction, but one of firm belief in the reality and import- ance of what the senses experienced directly. Photography. mole than painting, literature, music, or drama was In tune with the tame, for In photo- giaishy leas intervals between reality and the spectator. Besides these old photographs the anti -Clutha exhibition at the Arts Council has a number of paintings by present-day artists, mostly of the landscape which was under threat. Only one, painted by Douglas Dundas In' 1930, presents the classic slew, looking south from above Star/well Park. It, is a view that has been paitited innumerable times, inevitably be mom bad artists than good, though Conrad Martens did an early ap- pinalmation, and William Lister, a floe early 20th-rentairy painter. - ---- - - art ( by daniel themes --..----..---. did an enormous one which he titled, resoundingly, "The Majesty and Beauty of the Australian Cast." 'The quality of the paintings again doesn't matter. It's the landscape itself which Is oemitifill, a pant- cukur view, from a particular spot, which for generations has been ac- cepted as an outstanding work of nature. There aren't many landscapes in Australia that have become "classics" like this Stanwell Park In Eitrope of course there are many - Naples and Vesuvius from Posillipo. She coast at Killarney near Jublin. The desecration of one of throe European classic views would be unthinkable, and the same should be true for Australia. THE exhibition season hos started irp again art all the galleries are open. RUDY KOMON Sculptures by Ante Dabro, young Yugoslavian now working in Canberra Heavy, 'thirties -style ex- pressionist. cubism, typical of moat public sculptures In Canberra. FARMER'S The Archibald. Wynne and Sul - man Prize competitions tor 1971. the_ frame Rh usual, though James Isteldrum. who got the Sul- num. is a new name on the prize- winning circuit, MACQUARIE Cheerful bright banners by Rae Richards, Tasteful interlude ab- stracts by Margery Edwards. Corn- ing up, paintings by Brian Dun- lop, an excellent realist and ths.s a rarity today. WAITERS A young artist's first show. Ian Howard likes his realism to be the same size as what it "represents." In fact. he mostly makes rubbings. from masonry walls, walls of trucks, sides of ships, and so on. There is a plaster "cast- of a motor -car. There are photographs, the most ambiguous being a life-size woman's head hinted for the photographer with colors to approximately Matisse's "green lisle" portrait paining. BONYTHON New work by Fred Cress. Sur- realist illusionean applied to unreal objects in unreal spaces. Crumpled papers perhaps, or torn holes pierced by soft rods. In the courtyard large patterned dims of open construct- ion. coiled mandalas by John Kanspfner: pleasant sculptural ornaments. Upstairs. screenprints by major European and Americaii artiste, published by the Marl- borough Gallery, London. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W 03 FEb WC. VILLIERS A stock show, including Black- man. Perce,fal, Rees. Next collies Frank Auerbach, an important. English contemporary expressionis . HOLDSWORTH A stock show. Including Bill Rose Joe Szabo and some new names. Also, etchings by Salvador Dan