Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

SUNDAY TELEGRAM.- JULY 8, 1962, The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas AYEAR ago Farmers' Illaxland Gallery's Su "'CV I exhibition was subtitled "Sydney Avan t Garde Painting." This year, Survey II is more cautiously called "Recent Sydney Painting." However satisfactory they may be as surveys, these exhibitions are an admirable venture for a commercial gallery. One might expect the galleries in department stores to make such special efforts more often, for they pre- sumably exist as much for prestige as for profit. Why else Indeed should Farmer's put Its gallery in charge of a one-time Keeper of Art in a State Gallery? His presence would explain the proper catalogue, valuable for its biographies of several artists -et documented elsewhere. Mr. De Feriae's com- plete choice cannot, of course, ever reacn his walls. Last year a group. formed by the artists themselves, was simultane- ously planning the "Sydney 0" exhibition which shortly afterwards admirably de- fined certain aspects of the avant garde. This year a number of previous exhibi- tors have commitments and Hessln.c, Plate, Olsen. :ewers, Hill, Rose, Hodg- kin.son, Dickerson and others who could reason- ably be expected. are ab- sent Promising A very promising but ;ery young artist like Emmanuel Raft la evl- Sently being saved for next year. Nevertheless, it is a use- ful forerunner to next month's Helena Rubinstein Scholarship at the Art Gallery of NB.W. The an- nual Rubinstein exhibi- tions have given excellent surveys af Australian painting. Farmer's Surveys are confined to Sydney. but both are by invitation only, and both allow more than the one or two works that can ee embedded and overlooked in the big com- petitions or the exhibiting societies' shows. The 12 artists demon- strate that Sydney has a very respectable and wide- spread school of modern painting. It Is. I think, most unlikely that Mel- bourne in similar circum- stances could find so many artists of equal profes- sional achievement. If unifying characteris- tics in this survey are sought, they are, (or it start, all abstract, except Wilbert Hughes. It is a middling sort of abstrac don, although precise geo- metric work is absent, yet the more impulsive kind of abstract expressionism has scarcely caught on in Sydney. Only Rapotec ex- hibits it here, one of his pictures also having care- lessly acquired a new title in its Journey across town from Terry Chine's. Few of the paintings are tompletely non-figurative; most of them are in fact abstract landscapes and specifically Australia n landscapes at that. Most of them, besides, are de- liberately , and carefully constructed. not left to chance., , Judy . Cassab's are examples (and, as al- e/ are more personal more successful as than her por- MD; so are Robert Curtis' and Eric Smith's. These three reveal as well a quality that has long been present in Sydney painting, a skilful color - 4m seldom found in Mel- bourne. A purer abstraction la found in two artists who do not quite fit the title "Recent Sydney Painting" -Henry Salkauskas with linocuts and watercolor drawings, Clement Mead - more with steel sculptures. "Art equals painting" is an irritating assumption which crops up far too often. It is true that there is a boom In architectural sculpture. and Meadmore's Reserve Bank Competition entry, illustrated here, shows how well suited for It abstract sculpture can be. but domestic sculpture is surprisingly little used In Australia In spite of Its prevalence In America. Salkauskas' watercolors are large In conception and wonderfully sure in execution, the rich velvet blackness a technical de- light. He and Meadinore show no marked changes in the,- work, nor need one wiisn for any at pres- ent, since they have both found a style over which they have considerable control, but which is too rigorous for 9tP'0.1,,sa .0 intervene Improve:neat Other artists show devel- opments and changes. Ebeli's being too sudden and extreme to be taken very seriously. Hughes is much improved, his bulls now being transformed into humplsh landscapes with a nice feeling for the organic growth of hills. John Og- burn's series of "Bunyip Country" pictures are per- haps spiritually close to John Olsen's "You Beaut Country," but they, too, seem to show an advance. The most interesting change is in John Coburn's work. Instead of his flat, clearly outlined shapes on grounds of pulsating color, there is now a sudden free- dom of handling, and in consequence an added spatial complexity. The color is still lovely, and hat's TODAY, 2-4.30. ART GALLERY OF N.S.W. Special Exhi- bitions: Russian Graphic Art, Final Day. Ancient Chinese Rub- bings, Antique English Silver. ALL NEXT WEEK. Farmer's: Survey 2 ol recent Syoney Art. Macquarie: Key I n "WITHOUT RESERVATION" - Clement Mead - more (Farmer's). French artLits, the style depends. Frank Hodgkinson, it he had exhibited here, would have given some further idea of the new style; Douglas Watson shows a rather tinselly version of it. It remains, to be seen whether this sophisticated European movement will have even as much effect here as the athletic Ameri- can abstract expressionism. First show At the Macquarie Gal- leries, Kevin Connor, a youngish painter, is having his first one-man show. Unlike most new artists his work is figurative, not on: Connor, paintings. Wales House: Brack- enreg collection. Komen: Jon Molvig, Adam & Eve. OPENING WEDNES- DAY, Chine: Vnn Wierin- gen & Firth -Smith, paintings. Barry Stern: Bob Dickerson, drawings. "Daybreak," which has no trace of the previous kind of imagery except a sun disk. apparenty indicates a most promising new direc- tion for this artist. Elwyn Lynn's work, de- veloping steadily over the past three years, indicates a direction in which more than one or two artists may be going. It La completely non- figurative, c on c erned neither with Australian landscape, nor with the records of hurian activity left, by raisin expressive btu/dun:irks, nor even very ,Much with spatial ferni, ft is a highly aesthetic art concerned most of all with investigating the properties of paint itself, its density and its texture& A rather dubious theory of Spanish landscape and temperament has been erected around Taphis, a Spanish painter immensely Influential in recent years, on whom, with some abstract. Gore Hill Ceme- tery has a `ascination for him, anti It, contains as well as the expected in- habitants, Bible figures, female nudes, and even it seems, in the long grass. explorers wearing schem- atic hats. The figures have a ten- dency towards cuteness: but all the pictures have a simple effectiveness-they register well from a dis- tance, or in a crowd. One would guess that this painter Is emerging front commercial art, His , urban landscape. 'St. Mary's from Wool- loomooloo, is a well or- ganised linear composition, and all the better for hav- ing no figures in it. He will be worth watching, for there Is room for a painter of his kind. Max Meldrum "On Lips of Living Men" OW) prints half a dozen radio biographies prepared by John Thomp- son for the A.B.C. from taped interviews with friends and enemies of the famous deed One of them is the M lbmirne painter, Max Meldrum, whose teaching became very in- fluential around World War I. Although one cannot expect recollections of events always to be re- liable, the general Impres- sion would surely be true and the book makes a use- ful addition to biography. Lionel Lindsay remem- bers how gay Meldrum was in the 'nineties, how lugu- brious when he returned from Europe. "He was a Hroe ppwas a het. H mad Mull w Mas a ah Ma. hell. " William Prater remem- bers teasing him, Percy Leeson never heard him praise the work of any student. Amalie Col- quhoun found him the only person who put any sense into painting, and so on. Lionel Lindsay and Percy Leeson have died since their interviews were recorded. It is a pity that other important artists like Tom Roberts were not dealt with before it was too late. On the map "Everyman's Dictionary of Pictorial Art" (83/), edited by William Gaunt, shows that Australian painting's existence Is now recognised internationally. There Is an entry for Aus- tralian art, very brief but surprisingly sound, even mentioning an artist as young as Olsen. A Conrad Martens watercolor and Russell Drysdale's "Walls of China" are illustrated end *Wan gets a separate entry and illustration of his own. It would be interesting to know who wrote the Australian article. Every- man have done a better Job than McGraw-Hill, whose luxurious "Encyclo- pedia of World Art" has a scandalously inaccurate Australian entry.