Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

ff From "MORNING HERALD" Syd ley, N.S.W. 17 MAY 1973 Pleasures of a treasure/ Lyrical abstraction probably won't go away. Criticism isn't very in- terested in it; there isn't much to say about it: it isn't intellectual, though at its best it is highly in- telligent about painting, cave of beauty Polonka is the more fantastic; he paints re- alistic ruins and towers and clouds and mountains. Serelis doesn't paint crumbly things, he keeps his smooth style for smooth, hard subjects, like as is the best of any art walls and windows and movement-for example operate in the samel 1"n' Impressionism, a non- intellectual movement of a century ago. I have a feeling that lyr- ical abstraction is at least settling in for a spell as the current period style for cultivated taste, just as Derain's decent neo-clas- sicism ran right through the 1920s rand 1930s, little noticed by criticism but much admired and much bought by the more culti- vated wing of fashionable society. Right now Gallery A, the Australian headquar- ters of lyrical abstraction, is showing a group of its artists, and the paintings are pretty. Its' an innocent pleasure to visit such a treasure - cave of beauty. I don't . think beauty will ever real- ly go out of style. At Gallery A are the quite important Americans John Serry. Philip Woff- ord, Helen Valentine, Natvar Bhaysar and the Australians Andrew Nott, Paul Partos, Leonard Hes- sing, Richard Dunn. Janet Dawson, Ralph Batson. Prices: S750 to S7,000. The gallery also in- troduces a young sculptor, Franz La Grange, who likes the way things sand- wich together and slide apart. David Rankin, at Wat- ters, is also a lyrical ab- strationist. Large fields of canvas flicker with pale dancing ovals. One or two exhibits even specifically refer to grasses and leaves. But he is rigid in his uniform pat- terning. not wayward like John Seery. Prices: $175 to $1,250. Frank Hodgkinson. at Rudy Komon's, belongs to another less subtle age of nature worship. For one thing he repre- sents natural forms instead of making his own form general way as natural It's a central European forms. For another, he tradition, fairly alien to us. specifies patriotically Maybe it's only the exotic Australian forms: a 6ft unfamiliarity of the super- banksia monster confronts realism, but I think they you at the entrance. And are pretty good. Prices: instead of the real variety $120 to $1.250. of nature's colours he New Zealand paintings: limits himself to the sym- From the South Island, at bolically Australian Holdsworth Galleries, colours of warm dark! seem as alien as the Ade- earths. ]aide can go too They olarese. all cool, blue, far. and the art symbol for Australia of red brown deserts seems a tired and artificial one by now. Per- haps it's even wrong; isn't Australia really a light blond landscape anyway? IVIIllam Peascod, Mac- quarie Galleries, looks like a cool, grey and white, Japanese Turner. He is a one-time texture painter from Wollongon who has lately been livin and we never see blue paintings in Sydney. There are fine, personal, surreal- ist figure etchings, dull abstract - expressionist paintings, quaint toy-town cityscapes, and most mov- ing are some infinitely tranquil neo-impressionist landscapes of mountains reflected in still waters. Also at Holdsworth are ceramic mural plaques by Hatton and Lucy Beck, in Japan, and inevitably_membe Es of the Boyd tribe his work has become so of artists, and photographs subtle, it's hardly there. of Israel by David Perl- All right if you want to mutter. retreat into a quiet room The Bonython Art Gal - and be triggered off into _ tery has a bit of every - contemplation of the dis- thing. Decorative Victor- tinction between substance ian Persian kitsch paint - and dream. Prices: $90 to $1,000. KIm Polonka and Vytas Serena, Arts Council Gal- lery, call themselves "Two Adelads." It means they are young Slays now living in Adelaide. They are Polish and Lithuanian in origin. They are fantastic re- alists, which certainly makes a change from all the local abstraction (though the straight re- alism of Dunlop and Westwood can look creepy). trigs by Greg Irvine Jew- ellery by Tony White. Drawings and prints from Hal Missingham's collection evoke a world of decent craftsmanlike study in London in the 1930s, but it is his own work which is most to be cov- eted. And paintings by four respectable artists. Gil Jamieson: tiny three-part panoramas of bush and coast in thick paint, so ugly they're probably just how it is. Geoff De Groen: blue figu, almost invis- ible in windows, a tricky effect which disguises the commonplace figure draw- ing. Bill Brown: some love- ly lyrical abstractions. Robert Boynes: the most interesting, figure draw- ings in an airbrush -realism style, set into carpentered, upholstered and mirrored constructions. Save Victoria Street. A worthy cause, of course, and perhaps, somehow, if you buy drawings by kik sell Drysdale for $1,200, Charles Blackman $450, Alan Oldlleld $100, or small paintings by Sidney Ball for $250, John Firth - Smith $210 and so on, It will help. Maybe you would just like to buy some art at bargain prices. Behind 109 Victoria Street, all hours, until Sun- day. Rah Fhelle, a pioneer modernist of the 1930s, has a retrospective exhi- bition at the Manly Art Gallery, the work provided by his widow. It shows much more of his art than did the Bat- son, Crowley, Fizelle, Hin- der exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1966: Academic watercolour landscapes from the 1920s, the excit- ed discovery of both the old masters and modern formalism in Italy and France 1927.31, the paint- ings and drawings which show the semi -cubist style he and Grace Crowley launched when in 1932 they started Sydney's most important school for modern art, some sculp- tures and watercolours from the 1940s and 1950s. Nearly all the works for sale - SIN to $1,200. a_