Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

r HE Blake Prize for religious art is the petition which comes nearest to equalling for portraiture, in public interest. 'WHAT'S ON iiiiiiiiiiiiii llllll divine or the human spirit E TODAY AND NEOT WEEK is doubtless most obviously E Art Gallery of .r S W t 11:4n =sti to be expected in these 1 WEEK 'Spectet ditrAw categories. Yet all true ati e si.asaa Presto, "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. 1,3 0 C hitij SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 'OethRER 13, 1963 63 The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas RELIGIOUS ART PRIZE T Art a' revelation of the . It may not be as firmly gnc only. ordered as his best pic- tures. but it is still way Waratah ahead of the majority in this exhibition. thJe oshunb siCoabru nD wcho Moon - festival ris Memorial Prize for a scriptural subject with his Golgotha," is another whose Christian conviction is plain. All his three pictures were in his recent one-maa show, and "Via Creels" la vastly improved by the painting out of a large obtrusive cross. The Waratah open-air competition has made his- Of the other awards the fs10 Livren gmto RsiosItteeg t°gi;t of its 15 L :atonal prizes (oil, watercolor, gra-1 achievement In several phic, cactitlepmtuproer;arty seniorrldItiotlalIjunlor sections recognised and n very young but genuine and ,)unior). the 10 judirl talent. voted the additional 50 grand prize to the seri- graph by Henry Salkauskas or alternatively for a large neo-Noian "Man in Chair" in an outback street in say 1885. Most of the pictures in fact are figurative, quite a number put their people into late Victorian cos- tume. Some decorative still - fifes are perhaps the best. indeed everything is de - 1 corative, in quite a variety of manners: A bit of No- lan, of Whiteley, of Keith Vaughan. Other artists with archi- tectural backgrounds, Hes- ; sing and Hughes, might , have looked like this when ,they began. Certainly Hall has talent, and indeed handles his medium rather well, but at present it still seems close to the adman's art, to the clever pages of annual com- Graph's magazine. the Archibald, Melbourne has its elements of revels- gALL NIXT WW1 prints tion, and all true art is E Commonwealth Savings Bank, Marlin Ptace: Bloke Pries for reliplaut ti religious in the sense that I -Mnpry Horse, Colin Lancelet, assemblage painting'. It evidences man's God- a a,,,, st.... a.. Han, paintings. given creativity. Ei Rudy Kaman: 'studio One (sewn Melbourne arIntmelters1. The Blake, of course, is E Walk Gallery, Letchhardt Street, Darlinghurstt Mixed show. for Christian art by im- E crawl: wo!loang: Gino 5: Y. 'cation; Buddhist or & fIlhalre;ticrp.'Arts Gen13, Yill'oUgliby.t European and Japanese print, =Kt. sculpture. ppp Villtill or Moslem religious 5 Hold, Kirchner, .10. art is presumably not ex- zE OPENING TUESDAY petted. .2 Arllavere, Arlarrnont George Lawrence, pIntines. Open Thursday c Each year one doubts S DantIniarnt Kim. Sinita, Indian painter. the strong Christian Wt. I OPINING WEDNESDAY - pulse behind the majority (A let Noel Counlhan, paintings and linocuti. of the entries, Terry Carnet Drysdale, Nolan, Bay& They might be accept- _ Carnowally Hall, 5t. It... Mimed show. 1 a m.-1 p.m. able as church decoration, -Z. OPINING THURSDAY but they do not fully con- E. David Minim: Stamen, Wilkinson A Rata, Architectural Award.. vince one drat theircon-'e OPENING FRIDAY tent has profound 1111130f- Dtumenowne Town Hall: Drumrnoyne Art Eshiblion. i Lance for the artist. I Von Bartow/I. Neswastlet Pottery Irani live cities. This, after all, is a seri- S TUESDAY LECTOR a 1C am' teat, and :4°'&VI'. 411:,:,sirept..."c°^'''"*"" i century Italian Madonnas.... painters would fail it, too Colurn. Yrencii ind rathich had won the con - Here there are a few Kemp would all look splen-1 temporary graphic section, whose religious conviction did, as well as religious, in , An original print beating' Mary Troy is one, any church. The originalhas never happened i speaks quite clearly. a painting or a sculpture though the delicate reti- slake Prize was to bring Australia before, and I cence of "Consider the exactly this sort of plc- only helps mark 1963 Lilies of the Field" makes Lure into existence, or to ,'print revival year; the yen it more suitable for a public notice, kind it has when the print regained domestic setting than for succeeded admirably. its rightful equal statu a church. Less clearly religious but with painting and sculp- Roger Kemp is another, excellent pictures are tore. and co is his fellow Vie- shown by Emmanuel Raft,) I Better still would be the torian, the winner Leonard Rodney Milgate and Neville -. realisation that no tech - French, whose ' Ancient Matthews (a most Intel- toque has superior status. Fragments" evidently owes eating new name front Bronze does not ennoble something to his expert- Brisbane) ts 'commonplace sculpture, ence of Byzantine art in Louis James' abrtrac . junk steel is not declasaa. Greece earlier this year. shylyavoidingan title A sumptuous image of completeness and atone- ment, its round -arched fragments constantly refer to those perfect forms, the circle and the square. Indeed the picture as a whole is square, quartered equally to leave a sym- metrien1 cross at its centre. A long way ahead As usual in this 1000 -pic- ture free-for-all there were the gamey delights of ama- teur symbolism and naive drama by the acre. And as always one or two achieved poetic quality; T. P. O'Donnell's "Cheetah," Una SmYth's "The Empty ci Waterbag, ' for example. Rudy Komon's show of seven Melbourne print- makers illustrates the ad- \ antage of accessible facili- ties. Sydney could not find as many as seven of equal technical competence, a competence maintained by regular use of the studios at Melbourne Technical College with their o - graphic a n d etching presses. Most Sydney artists have had to keep to the hand- craft techniques of wood and linocut or silkscreen. Grahame King's "Gothic" is a brilliant lithgraph. The etchings of Fred Williams a n d Hertha Kluge-Pott are rich and intimate, and their fine but juicy line suddenly makes any oil painting of so small a size look "wrong." yy If you like tiny pictures here, have been ex ibitedi The Waratah organisers, etchings will look right, but recently elsewhere with' indeed, have recognised the an paintings will usually non -religious titles, and problem of creating a be trivial, should not have been en- Miscellane o u a Technique section, where collages and Barbara Brash has deli- tered. let alone hung. An off -beat item comes w e 1 r d constructions of sate many-layered seri- from New Guinea, on three wool shavings and plaster graphs, while Senbergs use.; the same technique pieces of bark in the Ira- appear. very happily for mechan- ditional Melanesian style. ' The artist's Imagination is the only yardstick, never istic forms. This year, owing to a d the me ium, Janet Dawson's stencil change of management at Mark Foy's, the prize is' The award was also a prints offer a purist art, necessary reminder that rare in Australia, and given Instead by the Com- Salkauskas, though not an neglected when It occurs, monwealth Banking Cor- poration (and increased to MI painter, is nevertheless but no k' a moving in its £500). and held In Its Mar- a major artist, whose wor's lyrical simplicity than the tin Place bank. Is large t. ;onception, ma - powerful expressionist lino- vellously sure in reality- cuts of figures warped by The busy money. dien- (ion, and endowed with a terrible pressure and made distraction, and at east The gold leaf and the ins activities are no iresat wise, radiant innocence. with great elaboration by white enamels are put to Carl Plate won the con -Tate Adams. the service of a much temporary oil section. will. 1 there is natural light and is usual with French higher -keyed tonality than 1 a bIfieVttaat 'S: previouspreviousjnity Warren very close; a Spears, the tradi- t New boy's ttonal oil; Eva Kubbos, the contemporary watercolor; Silver Collings, the scalp- . lure. A pleasant new name was Eunice Hubble, who won the traditional granitic and who had a decorative nude In the contemporary debut At Barry Stern's gallery Ben Hall makes his debit. He Is 27, a lecturer in architecture, and returned a year from some time in England. There are 43 paintings and drawings from 12 guineas to the 85 which Is asked for a large ab- stract "Brighton -le -Sands"