Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

r`11 SUNITA a bronze in the Epstein exhibition. f "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. The Week in Art by Daniel: Thomas ONE THE birth this week of a new and lavish magazine, "Art and Aus- tralia," is only a small thing to set against the death in Sydney on Tues- day of Margaret Preston, and the death in Mel- bourne on the previous Wednesday of Arnold Shore. Both artists stand at the centre of the post -impres- sionist movement in Aus- tralian painting. Arnold Shore and his colleague William Prater really introduced post -im- pressionism to Melbourne. This was in the mid-twen- ties, about 10 years after Wakelin and Cossington Smith had performed the same task for Sydney. Prater Is a good Cezanne man; Shore was mare the local Van Gogh. A turbulent Intensity can be seen in the 1932 paint- ing in the Art Gallery of New South Wales Inspired by the first Australian per- formance of Ravel's "Bol- ero." Later he worked erincipally at landscape, 'and only this year in the Wynne competition he showed a marvellously ex- pressive receding country road, painted with the knife in a manner that only a rich experience of art and life can save from banality. It is, in its lesser way. comparable with Van Gogh's last painting of the cornfield. His style was too emo- tional and personal to be easily transmitted, and when George Bell went modern, and they conduct- ed a school together for is while, it was Bell who kept to teaching, and whose more orderly classical ap- proach became so influen- tial. But Shore, it should be BIRTH -AND TWO DEATHS remembered, was a mem- ber of the circle to which Fairweather gravitated a hen he reached Mel- bourne in the thirties. And his art criticism for the Melbourne Age since 1957, though at times irrel- evant. w a s never wrong, and never failed to recog- nise the presence of true quality. He died aged 88. Margaret Preston Marguet Preston was, without any doubt, the best painter working anywhere in Australia between the wars. She died in her eighties, though whether born in 1883 (Sydney Gal- lery records), or 1877 (Ade- laide records). is not cer- tain. Adelaide was her birth- place, and her first Gallery purchase was made by Adelaide in 1907. Before and after this she had vis- ited Paris, been told to look at Japanese woodcuts, and had generally learned the importance of design and the pleasure of color. After World War I she married, and thenceforth lived in Sydney. A good wife, she refused to keep her maiden name of Mar- garet Rose McPherson as her work -name, and built a new reputation as Mrs. Margaret Preston. Her femininity. too. is express- ed in the far from neutral character of her still-lifes. In the Positive domestic Joy of the curtains, the china painted by her friends, the pot that one knows has good coffee id it, the affectionately ar, ranged flowera-phlox, sin- nius or daisies. Soon, however, a con- sciously Australian inten- tion emerged, and the flowers changed to bank- sia, gum blossom or wars- tah. These have been her most popular paintings. -used for the Orient Lines' °rendes, and by the Gov- ernment to represent Aus- tralia In the World Fairs at Paris. New York and the Golden Gate. By the thirties she was seeking "toms" that will suggest Australia. "Austra- lia Is a country that gives the impression of size and neutral color. I find it necessary to elim inate 'dancing' color. I have abandoned the regulation yellow -color sunlight be- cause I feel Australia is not a golden -glow country but a country of harsh, cool light. I am also try- ing to suggest size, and to do this I am eliminating distracting detail." Elements of aboriginal style entered her work around 1940, and she re - males the one artist to have assimilated It suc ceasfully. Moreover, she. more than anybody, pio- neered the aesthetic appre- ciation of aboriginal art and brought it out from the ethnological museums. She energetically visited the remotest sites to find rock paintings (not to mention her longer jour- neys, to Mexico, or Ara- bia). Art and Australia This physical 'Igor and Independence was a natu- ral accompaniment of her mental vigor. She may have been the first Aus- tralian publicly to state that Picasso was the great- est living artist. Her lively mind and her decorative gifts carried her imperceptibly on fro m post -impressionism to a kind of cubism. She can be given a place In Aus- tralian art similar to Braque's in French art. There is amplitude wenn th and a natural ease. There is also the deliberate Australlaness, though this less certainly valuable In the develop- ment of her painting. Most of all, there Is beauty, pure beauty. creak- ed as seemingly effortlessly as a bird creates its song. The new art magazine, "Art and Australia," Is oublished by Ure Smith Ltd.. and aims to carry on the standards set by the late Sydney Ure Smith with his "Art In Austra- lia." which ceased publi- cation In World War II. It will be a quarterly. 30/ for a single copy, or, much cheaper, 15'5/ tar an annual subscription. Luxurious to say the least, it has many more illustrations than, say, one of Georgian House's mono- graphs. Gleeson's articie oil painting since 1540 has excellent illustrations In color of Olsen, Nessing, Hodgkinson. Dobell and Sibley, for examle. A large number of Pairwee- thers are illustrated for the first time anywhere. Len- t= Parr wrote Use most interesting art I de, on sculpture since 1945. There is an immensely useful directory of forth- coming art competitions as well as lists of exhibitions held by dealers, recent ac- quisitions by the State galleries, and addresses of art schools. Hardly a controversial magazine (cc promised), but well worth the money. Epstein exhibition a Only one exhibition this week, but heady stuff. Ten bronzes, two watercolors. and seven drawings by the great Russian - Jewish sculptor. Jacob Epstein, who was born in New York but who worked all his life in London. All the sculptures are bronze heads of women and children, his family or his favorite models. There are none of Ids bronze por- traits of famous men, none of his ambitious allegor- ical groups, none of his stone-carvings. We see him therefore at his most easily accept- able, for since his death in 1959 opinion has re- acted against the forced drama, the theatricality of Ills big set pieces. Even the bronzes at David Jones, these full -breasted women with wild hair, pop- eyed or heavy -lidded. seem to protest their animal vitality overmuch. On the highest level one can say that Epstein tails to achieve greatness; the strength of feeling Is not matched by sufficient formal strength. Too often there is only a single. frontal viewpoint, a side view is neglected, there are untidy edges. aesthetically speaking, when the rela- tion of a shoulder to a torso remains unsatisfac- tory. But the strength of feel- ing, the exotic, expression- ist element of his art, raises It to a level above nearly everything we have a chance of seeing In Syd- ney. Strongly recommend- ed.