Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Art that doesn't quite look like art is the worrying kind. Ever since Marcel Duchamp 60 years ago in- stalled a porcelain urinal, on its side, on a pedestal, in an art gallery, we have known that if it's in an art gallery, then it must be art. Once it's there the spectator scrutinises it, makes an effort, pester even realty sees what under his nose: the height- ened awareness In tbs spectator proves that it must have been art. But it's not only a museum set- ting which can startle. For some things the street is JUM as unexpected. In Sydney right now Tim Johnson's photo- graphs of people in streets are difficult to accept as art. A suburban art com- petition at Liverpool brief- ly showed a piece called "Disclosure." It was five smudgy photograph; of people in front of the Liverpool Town Hall, a rather mean building in .1950s contemporary style. At first it all looked ordinary; then you saw that there were erotic activities in each photo- graph. First there was a girl lying on her back on the footpath, lifting her skirt. Next, the same girl was walking towards Mei porch, lifting the hack of her skirt. Next, a yom2g man was standing, facing the camera, unzipped and exposing himself. (The photographs, taken hastily, were unclear. I couldn't tell what this one showed until I asked the artist.) Fourth and fifth, there was the same young man and another in the Town Hall porch, both wearing only underpanin, and in the last photograph hold- ing hands. Now, it's probably meant to show that even in a drab outer suburb, like Liverpool, lifein- cludes good things, like love and sex. Yet I found the startling actions of the people made the background archi- tecture more visible, just is; the museum setting and Duchamp's urinal acti- vated each other. And, most interestingly, was reminded of a real non -art event years ago: being driven along a drab but busy street at Parra- matta which is near Liver- pool, I suddenly glimpsed a fat middle -aced woman standing stolidly in her front door. Watching the world r ass her 1w. She was stark naked. In spite of the shock and the quickness of the glimpse from the passing car, it wasn't her body that stuck in my visual memory as mach as the door frame in which she stood. Desiderlus Orhan's new paintings (and drawings), at the Gallery of the Society of Sca'stors and Associates. are all about light and religion. Once he was a painter of gloomy darkness but like other rare artists who have re- mained productive into old age (he is 88) he has come to see the world as a field of radiant, shimmering, tense vibration. When he was a young man in Paris, before World War I, Ce- zanne NInS the art hero. Now more than ever be- fore Orban shares Ce- zanne's vision roof sthe universal, shif tingness - tingnesstsWfp he no mentarilt the rectangle. of a pitAnting. Prices: $160 to $1,200. Harold Abbott shows at. the Arts Council Gallery! his first one-man -FilIF- bition in over 30 years. As a student he won the NSW travelling art scholarship in 1931, went to London, produced good hard-edge academic por- traits (a couple of them in this show), returned to Sydney and eventually be. Come immured in teach- ing. His painting career had a fresh start when he retired front the National Art School. Since 1967 he has been a colourcon- structivist, perhapsillon. acknowledging then Albers, and other abstract painters of his youth. Both Orban and Abbott have remained in the art world in which they first developed. This has prob- ably given their late work an easy strength and con- viction that would have been lost if they had wor- ried about newer move- ments. Harold Abbott's excellent 1930s style abstract colour -planes have a sunniness and light- ness which is no less wel- come now titan it would have been then. Prices: $75 to $1,000. Furniture painting, pro. duced in vast quantities, are seldom reviewed. The galleries that sell them know they ale in, the home -furnishing business. Furniture paintings are not meant to stir the emotions or the i rind, as is art; in- stead they are meant to confirm add reinforce existing habits. Their sub- ject matter must be familiar or non-existent, their size modest, their forms tranquil, tneir colours confined to mo- nochrome - preferably grey or brown - so as not to upset a scheme of interior decoration. The W lialtra Gallery seems to have,changed its policy. Instead of search: mg for promising young artists it has switched tn. the trivial home -furnishing comforts of Les Burcher's grey Whistlerian twilights and Robert Hagan's draw-' ings of outback sheell, mostly around $100. Clem Forbes, at Holds - worth, manufactures out- back souvenirs of Sidney Nolan and Pro Hart at low prices, $240 to $800. (The same gallery also has interesting cubist litho. graphs by Marcel Janos, a one-time Dadaist, now living in Israel.) The Strawberry Hill Gallery, next door to a household equipment centre and usually showing the rock bottom in furn- iture painting, has, for once, a very decent exhi- bition of simple, straight- forward still lifes and fig- ures from $150 to $300. They arc by Evadnc Coch- rane, who is still a student. They. are painted because she is intensely interested in relationships of colour and flat shape, not by cause they will remind 3, customer of expensive work by Sali Herman eit" Sidney Nolan. However. for the bt' value in decorative pal- ing I recommend the f young Chinese art whose contempor scrolls are lit the Ma Chapman Gallery. Price,: $300 to $700, and cra(do manship way above tb. local product. I "MORNING HERALD" Sydney, N.S.W. AeR 1973 A problem settled: if it's in a gallery , it must be art