Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

4snikti*-4./.7 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. -4 JUN 197? What happened to Happenings THERE were no new exhibitions in Sydney this week and once when the same thing happened five years ago I reviewed a dinner party It was oalled "The Silver Dinner," and, although there was real food and the company was very agree- able, it was in tact intended as a work of art. It was a Happening, an art form common enough in Europe and America in the early 'sLsties, though I don't think they reached Australia till 1966. Nobody does Happenings any mare, they're called Events instead. Evtnta are more minimal, more concise, than Happenings, which were bold and complex, as was appropriate in the age of Abstract - Expressionism. Happenings used people and objects as a kind of theatre - collage, and they were sufficient unto themselves; they cared about looked,how they they mainly concerned with their effect on the spectator as are events and conceptual pieces. "The Silver Dinner" was by Brian Thomson, then one of the bright young architecture drop -outs who did so much for underground cul- ture. Landmark His disootheque-envirorunent at 9 Cunningham Street was another landmark of the late 'sixties, and nobody lived a Pop Art life-style so generously as he. Just over a year ago he sur- faced from the underground with designs for Jim Sharman's pro- duction of "As You Like It,' at the Old Tote. Now, he is big-time, having designed Sydney's "Jesus Christ SuPerstar," and a Jim Sharman Alm "Shirley Thompson Among the liens." Which will be premiered at the Current Sydney Film Festival. I suppose he is in his mid - twenties. I have thought of him this week because his favorite period is the 1950s (it's the period of the Shirley Thompson film) and I think there must be an inexorable law about period revivals; namely, The most interesting period Is always the one just before you were born, or the period of your infancy. It's the most interesting period because it's totally unknown - it's no in the art -history books, you don't get taught about it at school. so you can have the pleasure of exploring it entirely for yourself. There are other examples. Thea Proctor, a Sydney taste - maker between the wars, was born in the 1870s. and tile 18705 was her favorite period. She studied it in ,great detail. Roy Lichtenstein was born in the 1920s, Dick Watkins in the 1930s, and both have investigated the Art Deco style In their own paintings. I think it was in his 1967 one- man show at Central Street Gallery that Dick Watkins had a painting called "Homage to Busby Berkeley.' I'd never heard of Busby Berkeley, nor had the gallery manager. We thought he might be a jazz musician. In fact, Berkeley was (or is - for he's still alive) an original genius who used , the song,_,and dente numbers in black -and -white movie musicals of the 1930s as a com- pletely new and highly abstract form of visual art. His dancers don't dance inter- estingly (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are the magical dancers of the time). His actors can't act or sing (Ruby Keeler must be the dull- est star that ever hit Hollywood). No doubt only such nonentities would submit to the impersonal manipulation Busby Berkeley needed for his extraordinarily abstract kaleidoscopes made of real live people, massed in hundreds, and filmed from angles never previouSly used. Busby Berkeley's dance numbers on film are the most likely can- didates for major art In the Art Deco style. Otherwise the style, like most decorative styles-Rococo, or Art Nouveau-is best studied in the minor arts of porcelain, metalwork, jewellery, furniture, architectural ornament, or costume, Right now there's an Art Deco revival under way. Books analysing the style are being published in England and America. I've written articles on the Aztec/Anzac sun worship' aspects of Art Deco in Aus- tralia. But the artists like Lichtenstein and Watkins were way ahead of everyone. I count architects as nd ws i at young tsa, rctohoi- , a fromBEurope, first began telling me how good ydney's 1930s architects Emil Sodersteen and Bruce Dellit were, with the Anzac Memorial and the City Mutual office building. Already there are Art Deco Revival buildings completed in Sydney. one on the main road into Pyrmont from Balmain, one in Elizabeth Bay Road. So an Art Deco party I went to last weekend was not so up-to-the- minute as the antique trade and the beautiful people might have thought. Painters and architects were on to it first, as artists always are. Even so, the party, given by Anne Schofield and Grant Roberts to launch their exhibition of Art Deco and Kitsch objects at Kaleidoscope, was one of the great parties of all time. Floorshow Everybody had made a big effort to look extra beautiful: only black and white was worn (or silver); only black velvet was drunk: there was a brief fioorshow with tap - dancers and a gorgeous Ginger Rogers transvestite; there were brief Alm clips from the Busby Berkeley musicals; and there was dancing. Whatever became of dancing? It's a long time since people have darced at parties, but here were foxtrots and rhumbas to call up memories of those old schoolday dancing lessons. The party was, In its way, a work of art, as memorable as Brian Thomson's "Silver Dinner." EXHIBITIONS New exhibitions opening this weekend are John Firth-Smith's new paintings at Gallery A Fbur young Melbourne printmakers at Rudy Komon, all students at Royal Melbourne Institute of Tech- nOlogy, are Rod Albury, Neil Malone, Greg_ Moncrieff and John Neeson . . Brenda Humble's paintings and ppems are at 24 Milton Avenue, Woollahra ...Mitzi Finey's "Musical raphlos" at the Workshop Arts ntre . . and Gauguin woodcuts a theNewcastle City Art Gallery.