Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"Vr From .'2.(4, C ,..14erincts.1 A/447 "MORNING HERALD" Sydney, N.S.W. Best British modern HE Australian art stablishment has, natu- ally, always been British -orientated. They were born there or they Studied there. That is why our art mu- mums bought, until recent- ly, large quantities of twentieth - century British art by artists that Euro- peans or Americans have never heard of. Most tit it has descended to the store- rooms. N'ictor Pasmore's Wofk of the 1940s, bought extensively for Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, still looks good and is still exhibited The Villiers Gallery has an exhibition of recent work y this no.v senior British artist, born in 1908. t it is very beautiful ldeed. It has the .csaa lease gnature style. It is perhaps 'typically British in its re- finement, discretion and understatement. Love of nature is con- ventionally th .ught to be another typically British miality, and though Pas- more's work has purified itself of love -of -nature it perhaps grows out of it. It was observations of light through mazy twigs, arid light on curling waves, lhat immediately preceded hies pure abstraction, where related forms develop out of each other in a way which is parallel to the way natural forms develop, but not imitative of them. Straight and curved lines, spirals and blobs are his chief painted elements, ' but he also constructs his paintings in three dimen- sions, with painted boards and timbers, and with in- cision. The earlier construe - tions were glossy and geo- metrical with enamel and, labour display of connoisseurship some splendid neolithic perspex, and the projected -earthenware pots with paper. Since Japan lee painting and call'-combed were an important graphy are done on paper,designs in red pigment. and concentric shadows and semi -enclosed part of the work. awareness of minute dis- Prices for sculptures $45 The new constructions 'universal in paper quality is'to $10,000; the pots are all at Villiers are matt white, universal in Japan. But thissold. bei e and brown, and is not his chief concern: he Elizabeth Rooney, Mac - calls the exhibition "One- quarie ipainted with free blobby Galleries, is witty, forms which sometimes iness on paper." amt he has individual and inventing. 'submitted Jogs of work Vertical sheets of painted Hribble off the board on to and sheets of metal to the corrugated iron become the backboard. Sometimes toune process of hacking barred cages where ado they mirror themselves. !bits out of something monkelys lurk. A series Of Besides his superb hand- solid, and then putting identical etchings of city- them back where they iscapes is varied by exam - came from, transformed pies of the new, "beau- nd lltered from stability tified," developers' build- ing -site hoardings, block- ing off most of the city- scape. Paintings of foot - ballets show them tied in muscle -hound cubist knots. Her technique is very di - Id ' , - atotalpersonality-change. - . rect land simple, and ' v. -ill -him- painted object nafity chan d f oesn gey o should include a itch- It might be an image .of the formal [inventiveness. nition of the fact that the razor's edge between At a time when Picasso is fluids. such as -paint. will sanity and madness. in town one realises that 'descend aad dribble down relay between straight and cur- i ved hard and soft, open and closed, flat and solid, o looseness. It must there is an insistence on cue to ponder the pre - the literal verticality of thecurious instability of even painting which is. I think. he most integrated -seem- ing things: just rearrange things a little, don't add, don't subtract, vet there's tongue to Pasmore. , lc scent" to he saying that the orintratv gcnvention of any vertical surface. Out of such splendidly clear literal -mindedness has come much of the !world's best art. Victor Pasmore is more than a good British artist. He is on an international level of quality. Prices $1,600 to $10,000 and screenprints at $150. Jiro Takamatsu, a Miss Rooney, in a smaller way, is also an authentic artist, with a good warm feedback of real life into art, a goodlattack on mat- erials, and no fiddling. Prices for paintings $45 to $400, etchings $35 to $50. * * * The Picasso lithographs, shown by the Art Gallery Society at Barry Stern's, (twelfth century) larger car -young Japanese artist. has vin e s in hard stone domi- nd for sale at $475, are sent 16 smallish collages nateg the exhibition. Their !not made by Picasso him - to 38 Hargraves Street. self, which is why they are Likemuch that.1. smoothly controlled tabu - Thai and Khmer sculp- tures are at David Jones once again. ''hey are Buddiast and Hindu images, Influenced by' In- dian art., The earliest ,Dvaravati period (sixth - eleventh century) offers a few lively terracotta heads, ooking like real, friendly, fat people. From the hmer period (tenth - Fie, they are so refined tar volumes are not spoilt ,and subtle you hardly sculy sionptual arallbsencbye ofthe occa- arms or notice they are there. He heads. It seems inevitable tears a rectangle from the that they were first ad centre of the sheet, tears the rectangle into tiny mired by Western taste in pieces, then puts the pieces the 1920s, the Art Deco hack as a rough mosaic ,period, a time of neo-clas- within a smooth margin, sicism and revived mono - The torn edges show a mentality. They keep good different texture from the company with Maillol and smooth surface of the Leger' sheet. sometimes a diffe- Least familiar in this rent colour, and since each fine exhibition of things sheet is a different colour that David Jones has it finemade' familiar to usare or texture it sa a iso cheap. He would have I ;handed lgouches of raphic 'copy, a.esulte.- beforyethe Bill edition was printed.' o they are lithographic reproductions, authorised by the artist. Call them 'semi -originals. They prob- ably make better interior decoration than original black and white etchings like those in the big show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.