Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. FRED THE Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship, now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has reached its sixth year. It has become the most important annual event In Australian painting. For one thing the art- ists really care about it- to be invited at all is a distinction; and being able to show a group of five paintings permits them, as no single-pi-'-ur exhibition can, to sea' their statements fully comprehensible. They do not treat it. as if it were a lottery; most awards, they feel, are won not by merit but. by luck -a sympathetic judge, or. more often, the absence of any real competition. And of course It also gives the winner more money than he can get from any other award in Australia. Since the artists have always given their very best, and since the artists are srlected, irrespective of age, for "their creative or forward-looking talent" the exhibition has become in effect the best annual round -up of contemporary trends. Quality was not high In its first year, In spite of superb Molvigs and Boyds, the overall quality was not high, with a curi- ous tail consisting of a student, Hazel Hughes, a but backward-look- ing4 tonallst, Orseme In - son, and the slickness of Kotkowski. Succeeding years gradu- ally had higher quality, but to retain this level of quality much the same artists had to be invited each time (Hessing for one has scarcely exhibited anywhere except, the Rubinstein). The constant but non - winning competitors sure- ly need a rest from the an- nual hysteria. And in any case the emphasis on quality meant that the public was no longer be- ing shown the latest trends. This year there was al- most a clean sweep. Only one competitor. the win- ner, Fred Williams, had been in it previously. It is a young and fresh exhibition, much more in- teresting than last year's, though not of course so good. Emphasis on youth Four artists are still In their twenties, six in their thirties (including the winner), and one, Frank Charvat, is 52, though since his work has only been known here for two or three years even he may be young as a painter. Charvat's black and sil- ver walls. textured end etched by time. are clear statements of one post- war trend, naturalistic illusionism with a super- ficial appearance of ab- straction. He works in Goulburn and it Ls interesting to note that another provin- cial city, Newcastle. also contributes for the first time. Charles Lewis and Peter Sparks live there; Frank by Daniel Thomas r- WILLIAMS WINS BIG SCHOLARSHIP YOU -YANG LANDSCAPE, one of the pictures with which FRED WIL- LIAMS won the 1963 Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship. Chicken, too, must have Newcastle contacts Judg- ing by the titles of his pic- tures. These three, how- ever, contribute the least. All are students, only too obedient, of John ;Pass - more, a painter who won the Rubinstein (aged 55) some years ago, and whose presence on the selection committee this year per- haps accounts for the de- cision not to invite older artists, and certainly accounts for the invitation of his former pupils. An air of studenthood One prefers to interpret it as an admirable loyalty to his followers, rather than as contempt for his fellow -selectors. Of the three Chicken is very young and may liber- ate himself, but there is an air of perpetual stu- denthood about the group. Much more interesting than the school of Pass - more Is the school of Leonard French, whose influence is strongly felt in two Melbourne exhib- itors, George Johnson and Jan Senbergs. Johnson's panels, vir- tually black on white. all use interlocking cogged shapes as emblems of the rigid structural order, the elements and molecules, contained in the most organic plant life. They seem bigger than they need to be. Senberg, at 24, the youngest present.has city crowds, darkly melancholy, but shot through with some hectic neon colors. and built of crisply shuff- ling flat cubist forms that French would surely ap- prove. He is well worth watching. School of Fred Williams, the Melbourne painter who won, rather surpris- ingly characterises Robert Grieve now that one sees them together. Grieves abstract land- scapes (some based on Japanese scenery, some on Australian) are, like Wil- liams'. ultimately depen- dent, one supposes, on late Cezanne. But although his pale color and delicate forms strike a rare note in Aus- tralian painting, there are less formal courage and less intensity of vision than in Williams' purified landscape essences. I have written about. Williams often enough in recent months. One of his entries here is the same You Yang landscape that earned him second prize in the Georges com- petition in Melbourne: all are his gumtree land- scapes, either close-up ver- ticals of sapling forest, or a birds' -eye view of scat- tered trees in open country. Will travel be useful? This new vision, ex- pressed with such clarity, of Australian landscape is experienced so truly, and communicated so convinc- ingly, that one wonders whether his art at this stage could benefit by travel to any place more remote than Mount Ele- phant, or Colac, or Dim - boots. In his case the scholar- ship may be less a stimu- lus than a reward, and a fully deserved one. Reddtngton and Lance - ley could also have been considered for the scholar- ship. Reddington's ample. generous songs of praise for fruitfulness, more ab- stract landscape than ab- street woman, but partak- ing of both, show us main- stream abstract. expression- ism. The term has been much misapplied in Sydney. but these are classical ex- amples, American style, glowing, confident and sen- suous. Dick Watkins reveals a newer American influence -Rauschenberg perhaps- in his collages of paper or wood. He is the one pure aes- thete in the exhibition, of- fering no message about life or love or landscape. Like a modern Whistler (whose portrait of his mother was only "An Ar- rangement in Grey and Black") his old boards do not speak of neglect, or of a wasteful society, but are merely subtle colors and textures to be set off by the accompanying paint - work. His magazine advertise- ments-though allowed to be witty, and about art more than life-are pri- marily color notes. Design, color, handling. and placement are his con- cern. Conn Lancelot's enor- mous, glittering assemb- lages of Junk are quite dif- ferent. They have a message about the fundamental weirdness of almost every- thing in ordinary urban life: deliberate obsolence, plastic , " nightclubs desirables" (The AviJary?)unior. They also look better than ever before. Instead of a uniformly muddy morass he now swings con- fidently from areas of paintwork to new sparkling goodies, to richly rusted debris. In "Ethos" (8 by 12 feet) the mounds of circular rusty lids achieve a splen- did pulence. Lanceley's sum ealist brand of "pop art" has never been better shown. Although his attituder can be related back to Olsen's this is the best of the newest: It gives the exhibition its biggest kick. Carl Plate's exhibition (good) at the Hungry Home and the five women paint- ers (mildly Interesting' al Terry Clune's will be dis- cussed next week! r WHAT'S ON TO n V NM) Nr. r NNE' rt, AN Gallery of N , Rubinstein Trawl. , petOtonent col. A r WEEK 1,no Art Se lect,on Aut, Rudy Semen Ferman. Brtsbane Ste eel. WEDNESDAY Sydney . :/tber, David Joney ; Lecarlment. Old enaetier d.winot and at.o.re tarr. Von IleNouch, Nernaidle: Elwyn Lynn OPENING TUESDAY Dominion: Anearartery artlab.tinn OPENING WEDNESDAY Wale. Home. Pill and 0 Conneli Si, lo,buir ir The/. Proctor. Macquarie: Pd. pottery and Wel,. at Barry Stern: Fry. Yount, Karel,. OPIENIP 0 FRIDAY Von lIerlouth, Nevremile Glom r Shv, major painlart Mitchell Library: hallo. Art B .rho TUESDa.Y LECTURES Conlempary Art Society, P 1,11. Shull St. ...lapanom Paint ,no led,,' try Robert GrPPVt. pal SKEW, Ontrersily, Stroh. Ruhr., Thoalee "South Itain Arch. o,rgy by Prole., Trendnii, P 10 r: THURSDAY LECTURE Mary While Sthooi, 7I1 Nett Sell:,:, ad led . Edit. MT "Faith In Art." b p n,