Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. O P ee i in Art by Daniel Thomas SYDNEY has a way of distorting the meaning of accepted art terms. For instance the "European Fine Arts" on view at David Jones are not fine arts at all. They are Decorative Arta, or, to use a more old - fashioned term, Applied Arts. Furniture, however beau - Glint in its own way, can hardly be a vehicle ''or the expression of the human spirit, of poetry or passion. as can painting and sculp- ture. The decorative a r t should never be treated as being fundamentally im- portant: when they are allowed to dominate atten- tion there is only sterility. They are strictly for the background of life, and in- deed, good furniture and household objects can subtly Influence the users into a state of civilisation, of good manners, decency and taste. But, they :cannot provide basic nourishment for the soul like the fine arts of painting and sculpture, or like music or literature. Having' objected to Its name, there is of course nothing but praise for the exhibition itself. It is. In fact, arranged with full awareness of the use of fine objects. There been such a perfectly arranged room in Sydney as the gallery at David Jones. All the objects are dis- played as if for use. not for - the ic:-..;:eol ,,notation at arm's length which they can seldom live up to. On entering the room, quite perceptibly one's de- portment improves, one feels almost distinguished by virtue of being within this grand environment. There are two or three pieces of silver, some handsome glassware, fat and bulbous as blown glass should be. and some splen- did peasant pottery jars and jugs from Spain in rich honey glazes. The furniture is the most exciting, for much of it Is 17 -century Italian or Spanish. They are 19th - century English pieces. too, but the robust ele- gance of the earlier cen- tury made the familiar late Georgian styles seem anaemic and boring. Not a single Victorian object was present and the "'rig' toe Is to have freshened exhibition's greatest vir- Newbury tip our visual responses: the bulk of. the Sydney Al the Barry Stern Gal- lery. David ewbury, a antique trade's goods are young painter from Mel - Victorian, bourne, has a one-man By a fortunate colnel- show of abstract land- Aence Anthony Hordern's news, very like the sort have an Antique Dealers' of thing we were familiar Fair on this week. too. where Victorian is rather more numerous than Geor- gian. All who wish to train their eye for such things should take the oppor- tunity of visiting both ex- hibitions. The sculptures al David Jones' are mostly 17111-yen- tory wood carvings, but there is also some Gothic, though pleasant enough, one Mannerist period figure especially In the little of Moses, some curious gems, It begins to look a Spanish baroque from bit mechanical. SOME 17th century wooden pieces on show at David Jones: an Italian carved candlestick, a Spanish crucifix, and a walnut chest from Tus- cany with two Flemish wood -carvings on it. Manila where only the faces Cake on an Oriental cast, and a splendid anci- ent Roman marble head from Epstein's former col- lection. Bronzes by Epstein himself and by hourdelle, Emilio Greco and Rodin, represent the 20th century well. There are 20th -century paintings, too. mostly by French and Italian pres- ent-day manufacturers of goods for those whose taste stops short in the 19th century, that is with French impressionism, or, at most, its fauvist swan - with a few years ago in Sydney from Tom Glee- Rose has very few ab- horn, or Charles Saxton In sintcts this time, except in an earlier phase. his silkscreen prints, which Splkey growths are built are, as usual, among the up with the painting most assured in Australia. knife; the color Is pearlier than the stridencies Chinese mon in the local brand, new in Melbourne, but It may seem fresh and vantfgarde The Dominion Galleries ave us the week's second xhiblllon of non-Aus- trona!) work. Eight Chinese are much snore worth artists from Formosa. all buying than most round under 40, show how well town. David Rose David Hose at the Mac- quarie uses an unusual technique of carving his masonite panels in shallow relief and then painting them. The intention is appar- ently a reference to Re- naissance relief sculpture or even that of classical antiquity, an uncommon enough aim these days. In some of them. "Stone Head" for instance, he achieves an illusion of grey carved slate, a feeling of timeless calm. Many of the pictures are compositions of headless human torsos, and it is worth mentioning that an Internationally known torso painter, Leon Golub (Amer- ican) will have gouaches from his Colossi series at 'Gallery A in Melbourne next week. international romantic ab- straction can be syn- thesised with traditional Chinese sensibilities. Some of thesis. It is true, are no more than slick magazine illustrators. but the youngest, Han Hslung- fling, aged 23, demon- strates the synthesis of East and West remark- ably well. Fong Chung-Ray retains almost traditional Chinese landscape forms, but in glowing stains of oil paint on canvas makes a much more satisfactory extension of the tradition than does another artist who keep; to the traditional tech- niques of ink on paper hanging scrolls w Ii I I e abandoning all reference to nature in his imagery. The more commercial artists and the Oriental pin-ups are what you see on entering the gallery: go straight to the end of tire room and look back and then a quite different ex- hibition, and a worthwhile one, will be seen. Gutsies At the Hungry Horse two 19 -year -olds. Ian van Wieringen and John Firth Smith, are holding their second joint exhibition. Now that the Olsen exhibi- tion is closed this is where you oorne for happy kicks. fer pictures that might make you sing and dance. Van Wieringen's favorite words are Wieling and gut- siness. It may therefore be a little unfair to say that his huge, rapidly stirred up oils do resemble vis- ceral heaps of entrails (now find that one is titled "Outs of Wyagdon"I), in thudding oxblood a n d orange. By far his best is "For the Gods," where the tonne are larger and clearer spatially, and the colors - pink emerald, Peacock - do have some counterpoint. Think of Karel Appel for some idea of his work; for Firth -Smith's think of Alan Davie or William Scott. Smith's are also big and quite different in their large simple geometrical shapes - descendants of those cubist interiors with flattened table - tops, and perhaps a window, where vitality comes from the tense relationship of the forms. Sometimes too there is an Invasion from the edge; the large plain areas also have (except in some of the black ones) more than sufficient vitality in their own paintwork. Vitality therefore la not necessarily to be equated with gesture but it must be that his mate per- suaded hint otherwise, for he has flecked his panels with an irrelevant rain of, fine dribbles, and under -I lined it all with titles like "Ding a Ding Day" and "Dribble Drabble." One Is quite disarmed. And Indeed the pictures