Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

') r - C 7 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas FEAST FOR THE TAKING THERE'S quite a feast for Easter visitors to Sydney. Among the current exhibition: Good mistimes of old and NM talents at the Show - ground competitions and at the Macquarie Galleries; three one-man shows by pjroperly grown-up pain- ters from three States; and at Newman's, beautiful Siamese and Tibetan sculptures going bark a thousand years. The grown - ups arc Rapotec from Sydney at the Hungry Horse, Grey - Smith from Perth at Farmers, and Molvig front Brisbane at the Komon Gallery. These 40 and 50 - year -olds have a welcome air of authority among so many force-fed young one- man shows; they have an all-important sense of their own identity, they know what they are doing. Guy Grey -Smith pro- duces an 1Jnmedfate volup- tuous r..sporthe with his room full of gorgeously colored warm landscapes plus a few still-lifes and sporting subjects, in the semi -abstract manner of De Stool. No parsimony here; the slabs of pure color are thick and succu- lent as butter. At times his newish slab- bed technique makes it dif- ficult for him to round a curve safely; at times the space is troubling (what one takes to be trees in front of a mountain range burn deep indigo holes into their crimson background); at times there are just too ninny colors. But there are very few colorists in Australian painting. and one can only revel in the heavily sump- tuous "Ranges" and the clear singing "Rock." The artist also shows a few red earthenware pots decorated in blue-black and white slip at 2-8 guineas; and his wife shows attractive hand printed fabrics (at £1 to three guineas a yard). The Paintings are 25 to 175 guineas. Molvig Molvig is a colorist, too, but so naturally gifted a one that he can throw most of it away and still work miracles as in his exhibition of 12 recent nudes. He is also one of Aus- tralia's best draughtsmen, and it is good to see his hand at work In the actual image here, for those palest pink figures (shot with green or blue light) are virtually large oil draw- ings, all on a thinly paint- ed pearly white ground. (His previous one-man show had him painting round the image In black, making geometric win- dows, and thus denying all his vital linearlsm), There is immense physi- cal gaiety in these nudes. Sonic jump for Joy. One beauty lies and kicks her legs likewise. Some bring flowers, or sit beside them, and one wonders whether In a city as fond of Black- man as Brisbane, these were meant to demonsorate the unreality of Black - man's flower-girls, for most of Molvig's lack heads. inhibitedey n byeoing to be sty thinking; they are all in- stinct, all body. A happy sensuality is celebrated in these figures. It may be years before Motels again gives us such weighty masterpieces as the 1055 "Lovers." (Each artist his own work rhythms). Meanwhile tie, lighter fear d'esprr .1, re- vert to the subject of women, about whom no- body has said so much in setting aside the ques- tion of whether it is ad- visable to prop up styles declining into commercial- ism, or. to demand subject matter in which artists currently are not very In terested, there is still much to enjoy. The rural modern sec- tion of course has the most, simply because most good artists of the young- ish age group that cares to enter competitions paint abstracts that can honestly be accepted as landscapes. Frank Charvat won, Wide variety in exhibitions Australian painting since Norman Lindsay. Molvig also shows 15 drawings at 25gns to 35gns. Rapotec The third of this week's men of experience Is Stanislaus Rapotec. Like Molvig his art seems very masculine, not of course through any preoccupation with the female nude, for his painting is completely non-figurative, but through the large expansive scale of the sweepingly muscular_m,fliand gestures he paints 'on to' board. It must be very hard to prevent such abstract ges- tures from turning into something in the outside world. They are intended to evoke inner experiences which took place at WU- canine, or West of Bourke, or at Kikiarnah in a storm (as tile titles indicate), the temptation must exist for them to become landscapes. Perhaps the repeated verticals are not trees, or otl.er vegetation, but merely a way of stressing the picture plane (as they are when only a few ver- ticals are loosely linked in a couple of interesting smaller pictures). But when a horizontal band lies across the bottom one can hardly read it other- wise than as a landscape horizon, and the gestures above It as some definite object. Somehow this diminishes his art and makes it too accessible. If his only purpose is to an- chor his images more securely to the picture ed.,. and to the pic- ture plane the solutions in "Experience in Newcastle," It seems better to avoid the drift to figuration and to preserve the Integrity of abstract expressionism. In any case this is an exciting show to visit. Its variety .s much greater than previously; various constructions besides the old heavy loops. various symbolic colors besides black. All of it is power- ful and confident, and hy its certainties bestowing reassurance and comfort Showground Six valuable art prizes at the Easter Show, four at 2500, two at £250, are given by two banks, the Rural and the New South Wales, two department stores, David Jones and Farmers, by a brewery, Millers, and an individual, Mr. Wanvick.lealrfax. vastly improved, with an elegant assemblage of small bolts and screws on- to a dusty country -town brown ground. But I might have preferred El- wyn Lynn's well unified bit of wrinkled earth, Rod Milgate's "Hymn to the Soil', an all-over picture of, maybe. germination, or Hessing's large "screaming Landscape", mottled bruises with red wound opening in the middle, or Reddington'a hot and heaving "New Summer." ~ What's on .SU TODAY AND NEXT WISP dleskidani Moody) An Gallery el INI1TI.1 Simon shibition iarrant Acqi.isvone.- lining 0.day. Pelf.11.1111 1011041). of cantemprary. wientet nd PO... AM MONDAY AND TUESDAY ONLY An, .41 Crafts Pavillon, SSIDAY Ohesitesedt Cuter snow Competitions. TVINWARDS aemeni Jon Moirld. Peietines and dramintIL Heavy Nam, Sterlidwi Repotac. paint.eap Partaer's Sloshed GOMM 040 and Heise Gtel.Staitit. pottery. dent- ing% 1.5,1.,. Terry Camel Site Alyea. venweelors. Jones Wales Irons Wood, Pee. paint Nemeteast 311 Colleneek ann. 10 Centuries of Eastern littepture Yee IlerNecis. Nieriatillet Mann Loiters. amntings. Hatton.. Mind 1150. awry Stem LA. 0.04(3..S.Ve ilejnanal,Patr.11. Demlelent estualian palming before 1900. OPEN Crane, Well I YvonneING Fretwer WEDNESDAY An. Shimming, Farrows. The ViKo,I OPENING FRIDAY Ihnowth, Nersaillet Yew'. Par!. r.iniers. 4NMIMPOONOWWW~~~~. Modern Ineustrial was included some amateu bared between Gilliland and Emmanuel Rail, the atter seeming to attack the effects of industry on humanity, not celebrate hem, in an excellent oil and collage (his first major prize). Plate also had a good one, and this section had the best of the first three Eric Smiths to be seen since his return from the Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship. A compact tower of flames it wed not too like the pure Miro of his human image en- try; although he has Eastern found a new set of forms one is still grateful for his consistent colorism. The Human Image was won by Rodney Milgate with a row of pale heeds, vibrating each In multiple Image. Sall Herman who had a good row of Mt. Ian Mines here. won another section, Traditional Indus- trial, with a less successful view of the mine itself. But trod industrial on the whole was a field for com- mercial illustrators. Trad rural, D. Schlunke. allowed many more entries to be hung than the other sections and work. As usual Lance Solomon was the one sen sitive painter In this sec lion, but I suppose he can' be given the prize every year. However this section has a second prize which he received, and a third which went to Douglas Pratt. Sculpture was won by Michael Nicholson's "Chad - stone Columns" carved and assembled in wood. Other- wise local sculpture has swung almost entirely to welded steel. Hardly any seems to go beyond archi- tectural decoration. Newman's has an exhibi- t Lion, not to be missed, of Siamese. Tibetan and a few Chinese sculptures. The Siamese are the loveliest; all are Buddhas. mostly heads plus a few seated or standing figures; mostly in bronze, one or two in stone, and the liveliest. least im- personal (and least Siamese) are those few in stucco from the earliest periods. However one stucco (looking very like Henry Salkauakas) is from their classic Sukotal period and of great beauty.