Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas Our addiction to competitions THE six art competitions at the Royal Easter Show have prizemoney totalling £2700. This must be Australia's richest exhibition. Australia now has at least sixty com- petitions a year. Other count ries are less addicted to them. Since last year two extra competitions have been added to the Easter Show, the Fairfax "Human Im- age" for painting or sculpture and Farmer and Co.'s sculpture prize. The previously existing painting prizes were for a rural subject in a mod- ern style from Wool- worths, and in a tradi- tional style from the Rural Bank; and for an industrial subject in a modern style from David Jones, and in a tradi- tional style from James N. Kirby Ltd. It is a question whether the subdivision into these various categories is a good thing. One com- pletely open competition with six prizes might see the big money going to better works of art. Although in principle it is desirable to encourage sculpture, the result the exhibition is only harmful; on seeing it most people would wisely conclude that if this is sculpture then they'd rather not have it, and that they will stick to paintings. SURELY a better way to encourage sculpture would be to buy, and put in some public place, a sculpture by an artist of recognised merit. There are only half a dozen or so in Australia. and most of them (like many of the best painters), do not like entering com- petitions at all. One result of competi- tions then is that they can be bad for art in the lar((e sense of setting standards for lasting enjoyment, while at the same time they are welcomed by many practitioners of painting and sculpture as an opportunity to exhibit or to make money. But this is so mostly on the commercial and the hobby levels. The one arresting work In the sculpture section is Frank Elliott's "Crucifix," previously seen in his show at Barry Stern's. It provides another argu- ment for doing away with the fixed categories, since it is not easily classified as a sculpture at all. It is a framed assemblage of old boards, a work of art cer- tainly, but, like much new art, neither painting or sculpture. Lyle, Ingh ro, Collings, Owen Shaw (pleasant aca- demic modelling), deserve notice, but the Gothic grotto -work of 0. J. Von - wilier seems an eccentric choice for the prize. HE "Human Im- age" competition was awarded by William Dobell to his fellow -townsman, Mary Beeston, for a large, over - scaled orange head called "Woman in the Sun." Another Newcastle en- trant, Lillian Sutherland, had a less eye -latching but better painting, while Robert Dickerson's "Jour- nalists" inevitably had the strongest human pre- sence. Herman, Salmon, and a new name, Elaine Fasten - berg, offered good profes- sional pictures without much human force; while two large and poorly painted entries had curios- ity value, and a note of ambition, One was an old- fashioned surrealist piece by James David of helmet heads marching through a gloomy city; the other, "Baihmight," by Richard tarter, was in the newest of fashions. Pop Art. It had written messages to the viewer, and a favorite nude repeated in various compartments, all carried out in laborious thin trickles of paint. Equally curious was Clif- ton Pugh's (prophetic?) vision of the painter Frank Hodgkinson as an ageing Dorian Gray lurking amongst the tropical Pitt - water undergrowth. With the two "tradition- al" prizes it is less a mat- ter of encouraging neglect- ed art forms than of prop- ping up those that are dying a natural death. Art styles become obsolete, un- suited to the times, Just like anything else. Traditional is an unhelp- WHAT'S ON TODAY AND NEXT WEEK. AN Galle1y err N.S.W.- rt rrlanenl f08,1 At.8rf.,8n a.i Of all period.. modern lora'on painunof .".10,re. Cr 1.,,.1 Art, Aboriginal Art NOTE: Winter clovng Cow, 4.38 0.f8. .. Near wank. - WOWS rounds, Art. and Crafts heeling and suit. tare competition*. Terry Clone, 59 MwItay Street -Elwyn Lynn, palming'. Hungry Hem. 47 Windsor 511911, Paddington -John Firth Smith and Ivan van WlerIngen, paintings and 11101,111,13. P rances Jones !WM., 7 James Strom. Woollahre.-Pranele Lyre - burner, painting. and &mines. DPolhlah. 18.7 Castleraph Slrael -Avanl.oard Chinese mint. Mg. Yen emieuds, 50 Leman Street. Newtas14 CLOSING WEDNESDAY. Anthony 61 Antlnue Dealer's Fel, OPENING WEDNESDAY. An Gallery of N.S.W.-All works of art acquiled In 1962. Mt, bars, ...Milne, 8. 15 p.m. Macquarie. 19 ENO Street.-Easter Show. Roman, 124 Jamey Noad, Woollahra -e,ott WhIteleY. P reeninns, 310 ,' pep. Street -Molly Johnson. palnifev. David Joner.-Conternporacy llillan Paintings. Starry Stern, 55 Glenmare Need, Paddmoton.-.Mervyn Moriarty. ful term anyway; in this year's exhibitions it is taken to mean representa- tional, or figurative. In past years figurative painters in 20th century styles, like Sall Herman, would have been in the "modern" sec- tions, but now these sec- tions are left to the com- pletely abstract painters. So this year the trad prizes have gone to post- impressionist work by Jeannette Stedman and Charles Bush, when they previously were kept for impressionism only. Her- man, Hall and Salmon show work with more feel- ing than the majority of the trad exhibits, which are either slick or amateur- ish. Only Lance Solomon shines out with the proper lyric poetry of impression- ism. The trad sections could well give back some of the extra space stolen this year from the preserves and the plum cakes. The modem sections, with only 10 to 20 per cent of their entries selected for hanging, give a far better account of themselves. Indeed it would seem that any open exhibition that exhibits more than 10 or 20 per cent of its en- tries become less an art exhibition than a com- placemercial shop windowobby or a for to get theirh thrills.painters Neither of these func- tions of an exhibition is to be condemned. Small municipal competitions are an entirely appropriate place for them, but not the big prestige shows where the aim is to encourage art itself. VEN without the rigorous selec- tion, it is only to be expected that the modern sections would have the high- est standard. The merit of these paint- ings can be taken for granted; the issue that the separate prize categories raise here is whether the paint- ings should be asked to offer industrial or rural subject matter. Industry is a routine af- fair for most people today. It stirred a few painters over 100 years ago, but now It is the insides of atoms or the outermost limits of space which stir them. William Roes and Carl Plate had abstracts which could validly be called in- dustrial. Rapotec's "Ex- perience in the Foundry" has his familiar forms in unfamiliar colors, scarlet and black, while Robert Hughes' aiming picture, a awellingly romantic ab- stract landscape, has two small squares painted on, to make it into "Mine - shafts." Landscape, however, has always been a real pre- occupation of Australian art, and the modern rural section is far more con- vincing. Rapotec won with especially praised in last year's Rubinstein. Robert Grieve's quiet spring land- scape Is more spontaneous than usual, Frank Elliott has a nice black and white Fairweather and Elwyn Lynn's "Riverine Dusk" could be his best picture ever. Elwyn Lynn Lynn used to change his style quite often; for four years now he has been our most dedicated texture painter, with the Spanish artist Tapies as his major influence. His is a European art, the painting is a thing in itself, an object of import- ance, to be flattered with all the artifice that new techniques can offer. The personality of the artist behind the picture is irrelevant, while in the other important post-war school, the American, it is the direct expression of the artist's struggles that one is asked to admire, not an object. Lynn's paintings do not represent a single, in- tensely experienced mo- ment in time. Instead their aim is timelessness. They might be stones en- graved by the elements, ancient wrinkled land- scapes furrowed by the Hand of God (Australia from an aeroplane), age- old trees gradually shedd- ing a patch of bark, wounded earth slowly heal- ing. They are not action paintings, but very still ones. The current exhibition, easily Lynn's best, has little collage, and that more often wood than paper or cloth. There is mostly thick, hard plastic paint on canvas. Some- times it is caked, but at its best It has a skin appar- ently of paint -soaked cloth, which is then pushed around, cut into squares or bands, or stabbed. This impersonal remote - control technique is more successful than his obvi- ously hand-painted bits like the blue dots in "Less is More." Even to choose a curved outline for one of his icons is too personal an activity for such an art, and I much prefer the all-over pictures where this problem does not arise, the small "Garden Stone." or the picture at the Showground. With prices from 15 to 200 guineas, Lynn must be the only major artist whose work is still quite cheap. Lymburner At the Frances Jones Studio are new paintings by Francis Lymburner, with some old ones un- catalogued. A relatively unsuccessful expatriate of ten years or so in London, he still paints the theatre and Bohemia, but the soft, rose-colored romanticism is now replaced by a harsh, almost expressionist mood. It Is rather more, interest- ing than his last show in 195a at the Macquarie.