Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

From ktjv,AA,,, ta7y1.,4_1.1... "MORNING HERALD" 7h 'a a 1973 Sydney, N.S.W. The transition from talent to art By DANIEL THOMAS WHEN an artist starts out he usually has nothing much to offer except talent. In the context of an Australian schooling that usually means a talent for drawing, and for accurate observation, usually of people. It is often an illus- trator's talent, even a car- toonist's. Robert Dickerson, 20 years ago, and Garry Shead, 10 years ago, would have both seemed fresh and interesting observers of the life around them, with a gift for depicting significant bodily gestures, and Shead with a gift for tonal harmony as well. At a time when every- body else was interested in abstraction, they were not. They are still resolutely figurative. At present they both have exhibitions in Syd- ney, Dickerson at Hold- sworth, Shead at Watters, and obviously it has been difficult to survive on. graphic talent alone. After discovery of his own talent an artist will later discover the other works of art that already exist in the world, and that painting is very diffe- rent from drawing. It can be shatteringly dis- couraging to discover how terrific Degas, say, or Rem- mbrandt were. Or it can be a fruitful challenge. Or the old masters can be a handy source of ready- made, excellent composi- tions. It's a long time since Dickerson has shown in ' Sydney, and he has very evidently become inter- ested in the compositions of Italian madonna groups, or in the sim- ilarities between Degas' aims and his own, as well as in the things he sees in the streets and parks of Sydney or Brisbane. This means the very large pictures hold together adequately, though more predictably than his often surprising images of the fifties. There is a kind of heroism about this re- appearance of a one-time star, but the pictures near- ly all seem to fail because the human interest of fig- ure and varied gesture is invariably accompanied by an inhuman, repetitive for- mula for the faces. One picture, "The Executive," a paunchy bather standing full-length on yellow sand, is a hack view. There is no mask face to distract attention from the interesting, awk- ward body, and it reminds one of both the German expressionists and Dicker - son's own earlier work. Garry Shead seems less rigidly trapped. Although many of the paintings con- tain failed passages he has taken on sordiffitng very big in his recent attempt to emulate the sheer, simple beauty of Titian or Botticelli or Balthus. Fe will probably suc- ceed. He has already tried intelligent strategies for a realist, like tilm-making, and is probably the most interesting underground film-maker in Australia. In his films, as well as his paintings, a rich imagina- tive world of his own is revealed. His best film is titled "Live Between Evil," and, it's mostly about the torments of young love in the beautiful fairyland which is Australian suburbia. He is deeply aware of ugliness in the midst of beauty, of cruelty in love; lie is aware of good and evil, of dark and light, imprisonment and free- dom. And already he has invented some astonishing and original images, like "Birralee Landscape III," a green froth of vegeta- tion, cleft vertically as if the hush were in erotic convulsion. Edward Hlllyer (Mac- quarie Galleries) is also good with dull green. His bush landscapes might owe something to the sus- pended verticals of Fred Williams and Matisse, but their gently heaving pock- ets of space and energy really work. This pleasant, authentic art is apparently made in some isolation on the north coast of NSW. Andrew Nott's paintings at Gallery A are smaller but not so different from his one-man show of 1970. then a radical change front his systematic. tricky geo- metries, and at the time obviously to he associated with the "Stargate" trip to outer space in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." That film sequence is one of the great trips for heads, and much lyrical abstraction is a similarly formless, rushing gor- geousness, shot with nerve ends. At the Arts Council Gallery is their third exhi- bition this year, and the first of these near -student shows to which a visit is recommended. Mark Kolu- drovic, aged 19, paints the kind of abstract De Koon- ing that was first done when he was an infant. Bill Wright, three years older, paints oddly inter- esting works, like pictures of the back of a stretched and stained canvas whose stretcher cross-bars are diagonal. George Balyck, a gradu- ate from the Arts Council Gallery to an important gallery, namely 38 Har- grave Street, shows very intelligent colour -paintings. They arc square checker- boards, each of five squares by five, and from each horizontal row of squares vertical trickles of enamel paint' descend to the bottom of the canvas, across the colour squares below, and parallel with the cascades that spill front the other squares. Permutations of colour combination in such a neutral structure produce unexpected harmonics and discords; attention is fo- cussed on colour alone. Crafts. At short notice, and for not much more than a week, a survey exhibition of Australian crafts will open at the Art Gallery of NSW on Tues- day. The objects are des- tined for an international exhibition in Canada.