Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

A $500,000 painting of nothing THERE'S very "liCila good art to see in Syd- ney - and by good I mean really terrific - but I've seen two or three paintings this week. A huge abstract canvas by Morris Louis, an American artist from the recent past, has just been installed in an architect's office in North Sydney. It's from Louis' "un- furled" series and when I saw it I thought it was the best painting to be seen in Australia. Although it is in a pri- vate collection, I have no doubt that those who need to see it will do so. But in the presence of any great artist's work memories of other paint- ings are driven away. When I am in the National Gallery of Vic- toria, in Melbourne, some- times I feel Courbet's "Wave" is the best paint - ins to be seen in Australia, sometimes others of that gallery's possessions. At home in Sydney, the Art Gallery of NSW has only three paintings that can sometimes seem sub- lime, those by Morris Louis, Claude Monet and Pierre Bonnard. So it's a pleasure to find that at David Jones', in an exhibition from Agnew's, the London art dealers, there are two paintings grand enough totally to possess the spectator's at- tention. One is by Rembrandt, the other by Turner. Nothing else in the exhi- bition bears looking at when they are near, not the specimens of art - historical styles and themes suitable for a teaching collection, not the hamlets\ British land- scapes and portraits suit- able for kixury home-furn- even the inter - Aging__ trakesis&ptyli),_ Henry e r w to was mad abort' 'alight, J. , F. Lew ed exotic Orient Rem ents no difficul rtrait of an stares gravely at us across three centuries, straight, un- glamourised, with a face pleasingly like a sheep (not a Merino, a Border Leices- ter). . He wears his best clothes, of course, because he is being painted by a very famous artist. (It is the mid -1640s; Rembrandt has recently been commis- sioned to paint the enormous "Night Watch.") Elaborately pleated white linen collar and cuff arc simple, clean luxuries, mir- acles of filmy oil paint. catching light, reflecting it on to the man's face. His cloak and broad-brimmed hat are dark, and he stands in a dark. round - arched doorway. There is a stately rhythm of smoothly rhyming curves, from archway, to hat and collar, to cuff. But the splendour of paint-handling and com- position are in the service of profound subject matter: a man at peace. stable in his various oyster -like enclosures, totally open, totally can- did. Turner's, on the other hand, is a very difficult painting. It is identified as of the Val d' Aosta. in the Italian Alps, about 1836. but it is apparently of nothir ;. His contemporaries, while clearly recognising his genius, could be angry about much more realistic paintings. Hazlitt wrote: ". . . the ablest landscape painter Low living, whose pictures are, however, too much abstr of aerial perspece repre- sentatio rIv of the obje e as of ey were ,se ey are pictures et Ihtelements of air, earth and3 Miter. The ts 0o back to the first c of the world . 'A without form and . . . They arc pictures of nothing and very like." Turner studied nature avidly. At his death there were 19,1)00 drawings in his studio. But he had no From 1 doubt that art was found- ! ed upon art, not only upon the great masters of the past, but also upon his { own previous work. He loved his own paint - jogs. Lady Eastlake called him "a cynical kind of body, who seems to love his art for 30 other reason than because it is his own. Turner asked how a New York collector liked a picture that had been bought: "He thinks it in- distinct." "You should tell him indistinctness is my forte." Besides "indistinctness," one of Turner's favourite words meaning the same I1 thing, call it mystery or 1, uncertainty, was "doubt," 1 and he praised Rembrandt for the quality: "Rem- ' brandt's bursts of light and darkness ... He threw a mysterious doubt over the meanest piece of common ... Over each form he has h n a veil of matchl that the sacrilege mystic sh seafgh of really spe g o emelt. What he slid say about his own, , es was "Keep th (her." He made a leaving all his pub- lic, knowing that the studio contents to the growth of one painting from the next, the organic process of art, was more important than individual canvases: He was the first artist to know this. Moreover, he delighted in the physical perform- ance of painting. He would deliver nearly bare canvases to the Royal Academy's annual exhi- bition, then spend the ' three days officially per- mitted for varnishing in painting rapt& and brilliantly 'eferh an au- , rdiiiiCT5rhirfelkiiiiii ls 1 He could always make the neighbor! drab not Remb% t. Once s it a e the our in e, was ettires look Pie hung beside Constable'sture was "Opening, ,of;..Aaterloo Bridge" wItekli-!*. med as if painted ;sir liquid gold Cj146.,140)7 4y "MORNING' HERALD" 29 MAR 1973 and silver . . ." Turner at last put a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, and went away with- out saying a word . .. "He has been here." said Con- stable, "and fired a gun." It caused even the vermi- lion and lake of Constable to look weak. Two days later, in the last moments allowed. Turner shaped the scarlet blob into a buoy, He always won. If he loved the process of painting, and its battles, and knew that his late pic- tures should stay together, how did this one get away to Agnew's, and now to David Jones'? It is sur- mised that his house- keeper -mistress tidied it out of sig,I1L. If it seen among his offieg it would be seen., recos- nisahlt. swirling viol( .c,) Sto A nen " '' um'!" ' C s, C o' \ ' cl 'Kt - This imd rc for p names of nature It ;t abno, iirportunt is h.- sense tempera- ture, He belie ed white was he extreme of .:o1,1 ye A. of warmth, and int. pt. 'sive yellow of his w is an image of w .mth, which generates li C. Perhaps water was his chit f subject, as well as his medium - for the late oils derive from his earlier watercolours. He loved water's "liquid melting reflection." He painted "Rain Steam and Speed" after being in a rainstorm. At 66 he lashed himself to a ship's mast for four hours in a snowstorm just to know what it was like to be in it, and painted a masterpiece. He once addressed ' the ocean: "Thou dreadful and tu- multuous home of death!" The painting (of noth- ing) by Turner is pretty terrific and it costs half a million dollars. Sydney, N.S.W.