Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

2 r, AUG 1963 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas A MAN LIKE MATISSE PHILIP SUTTON'S exhibition is a sleek and gorgeous descent by a young English bird-of-passage on his way to tropical paradise in Fiji. The ten largish can- he provides a quattrocento vases (not Masonite pan- surrealism in his views of elE; and well stretched too) at David Jones' Fine Arts Gallery make most local painting look scruffy. But maybe because we Australians live in such a scruffy, not to say squalid. visual environment, these paintings, lovely as they are, do not seem very relev- ant or important to us. Maybe again, if a local school of clean, hard-edge painting should arise, the reverse might happen, our art might induce a revul- sion against the environ- ment. and help remove the mess. If Sutton's forms and techniques are too nice for us, his content is not. It is a universally communic- able sense of glowing phys- ical wellbeing, All the pictures are as expected from the numer- ous illustrations we have seen in the English maga- zines. figures in interiors, and all women. They are either his delicious daugh- ters in fancy dress, or they are nudes. The interiors are bright and sunny, their vivid pin- ups on the studio walls and their patterned hangings only increasing the paral- lels with Matisse. But it is brighter than Matisse, and this is partly due to Sutton's extra thin paint. Thin stains are in New American abstractionists, Noland, Olitski. etc., who put the most intense color to work. They eliminate the per- sonal distraction of brush marks in order to concen- Aate attention on the age, and to remove at- tention from the artist who made it, In their work the color, and its symbolism, may be the whole subject matter. In Sutton's case, I cannot agree with James Oleeson that this is entirely so. The sense of physical In- volvenlent with his domes- tic world, his house and his family is very strong; they. as well as the color, are important to him. The artist's hand is not denied either, any more than it would In the water- colors which these oils on whitest canvas so much re- semble. To prevent things be- coming too washy, the colors are occasionally kicked along with a good rich black. This happens in my fav- orite. "Katie Nude," where she nestles In a capacious black sofa, as wicked as all sofas in English art have looked since Francis Bacon. Prices 250 to 360 guineas. Jeff Smart Jeffrey Smart's one-man Show of 19 oils and seven gouache studies at the Macquarie is much the same as usual. Pe, haps the most anti- abstrac of all our painters Sydney. Quattrocento because of the precise classical draw- ing, the sometimes Jewel- led color, and because the contemporary near -naked boys who garnish a num- ber of the pictures wear swimming trunks identical with those worn in the early Italian Renaissance by Antonellola and Pol- laiuolo's models for saints and martyrs. Surrealist because of the deliberate ambiguities: the end wall of gymnasium is a painted landscape with a basketball goal hovering In it; a little girl leans unsupported against the air, but it is only a huge grassy landscape poster on a street wall; how many people own those arms gesturing behind a forest of columns? And the man in the middle of the ex- pressway really has no arm in that limp sleeve. Surrealist, too, because he discovers weirdness in very ordinary things like metal scaffolds on vacant land, or our odder Victor- ian buildings, or in the In- vasion of the environment by abstract art, that is by striped pedestrian cross- ings, geometric traffic signs and so on. He points out that art and nature, abstraction and reality are not so easily compartmentalised. It is all genuinely dis- turbing. And his reminder that the lamp standards on the Cahill Expressway are the world's ugliest is a necessary service; we must on no account get used to them. This silent, uneasy world does not offer solutions for our problems; it is enough that it shocks us into recognition of them from a state of dullness formed by habit. One distraction: the clarity of outline, and of design on the surface. is not always matched by clarity in space. Occasion- ally backgrounds do not stay in the right position; a band of upright kerbing. for example, will subside into flatness. In such delib- erately realistic work this is a real fault. Prices 25 to 250 guineas. Printmakers Three year, ago Mr Laurie Thomas formed the Sydney Printmakers' So- ciety in order to bring to public notice the neg- lected art fern of the original print, that is etch- ings, engravings, litho- grahs, woodcuts, sk- screpens (or serigraphs), eiltc When he left for Bris- bane he bequeathed the a, residency to roe, for no better reason than a shared surname. A non - practising president was supposed to be better at bullying the artists into regular exhibitions. Thera is no doubt that the third annual exhIbi. don now at Farmers shows a confident and flourish- SUND r CANTE JONDO, a lithograph by Tom Gleghorn in the Sydney Printmakers' exhibition at Farmers. tog school of printmakers. Artists like Backen and Salkauskas. major artists who lust happen to ex- press themselves best in etching and linocut, now have a public that would have recognised them less easily if their work was always shown with paint- ings. Other exhibitors who work extensively at print- making, and with whom we are now familiar are Sue Buckley, James Sharp, Tom Green, Vacloras Ra- tes, Eva Kubbas, Eve Keky, Elizabeth Rooney. Ursula Laverty, A. Simku- nas and David Rose. All seem better every exhibi- tion. There are also those whose painting is as im- portant to them as their printmaking, like Strom Gould and Weaver Haw- kins. but one can often prefer the intimacy of their prints. Its any case occasional prints by painters are a most desirable activity, for they can bring originals into the price range of buyers who could never afford a painting by the same artist. Tom Cleghorn's brill! antly executed lithographs are a case in point. Done - in London this year, they are his first exhibits since his return from abroad on the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholar- ship. Reddington, another im- portant painter, also offers lithographs at a fraction of the price of his paint- ings. He and an etcher. Jennifer Marshall. exhibit for the first time. having recently are tram Ade- laide. and Sydney artists who have b.'en inspired for the first ti.ae to make prints are Jean Appleton. Joyce Allen, Brian Dunlop and Dorothy Peake. THE SURFERS, BONDI, by Jeffrey Smart, at Mocguariel WHAT'S ON '67-Art.?"4..,°1t1g, rad TODAY AND NEXT WEEK by Mr. C Gheysent, -The AustrIler. Iwo WWW taer T,,. Rutsa.i) and "The VPIAtIllott 'nfl,,rnra- (Lambert. Ramsay, Mrldt,oul boll, on conjunction troth -urrent ry ser,es A. Loretto Gallery. Artarmon. t van ocin of Auttal an COI0^ 11111,0,0not. 'II Marten, Cnneler, Sttretcon ere -944., rill Solcircley to a rm turfil, f noittodtor ALL NEXT WEEK Farmers- Sydney Pcontinoto HI Ar ',tut Ertiotoltion Macquarie Jeff. ry Sma.t Rudy Kamen rr.., Upward Doyle Janes Fine Arls Gallery, rtilackH St Slew pno ',- Terry Clone Eder- rlottnee and Gerold Veelloc,no Hungry Horse. Mr ornnion Art Walk Gallery. tt000nsby. Molly Jnkrtson and Harry CH,. Louts Grob.). IS reiChhafdt St., Dationgnurst. Inetfin, H E. r Sint, rnd Anger. Morris. Von 1101outh. llItY/(Mlle. Desmond 0,SIFY Gordan Council Chambers: Prints toy 5.r droner Llndsar Studiso IS). Efgeeliffduet Cori OPENING TUESDAY CH minion: Austral..., tandscaor OPENING WEDNESDAY Nary Stern: Frt., ruules MONDAY TV LECTURE au. int Jenne 4