Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

n kint1964 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, APRIL 26, 1964 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W 87 The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas ROME was the centre of w:stern art for several centuries after the Renaissance. Paris took over in the nineteenth century. But since the mid -20th century, although Paris still has much to offer (Jean Dubuffet In parti- cular), the centre of Intel- lectual gravity in painting has shifted to New York. The exhibition now at the Art Gallery of N.S.W. is our first sight ever of the New American Paint- ing. It is consequently the most important exhibition seen here for a decade, that is since the much larger exhibition of French painting held in 1953. Although this American exhibition will be enor- mously be.eficial to our arils's, one cannot expect it to be the popular suc- cess with the general pub- lic that 'the French one was. That had the advan- tage of a century of French cultural prestige, and It included many liv- ing old masters with repu- tations already two gener- ations old, like. Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Utrillo, Leger, Villon, Derain, Vla- minck, Chagall and Miro. American painting simply has no great artists of that generation. But when It comes to those of a gen- eration comparable will) the present American one, who after only ten years remembers A rnould or Aujame, Brayer or Cap- ron, Lagrange or Lapou- Jade, and all the other meek followers of the art- iste in my previous list? Andre Marchand a n d Mane:eller, competent late- generation School of Paris painters. caused the most excitement among Syd- ney artists and critics. Spillages and da Silva had some fruitful influence on the young Olsen and his circle, Hartung and De Steel were there but no- body noticed them. Even these more important con- tributors have diminished in stature over the past decade. (In an exhibition launched with all the weight of French cultural officialdom bets i n d it Dubuffet, one genuine innovator, was conspici- ' ously absent.) I It was R sort of swan- , song for Paris, where the Americans in fact learnt much of what they know. NO GOVT. HELP The current American exhibition has'had no help from American official- dom, for their government does not share France's be- lief in cultural propaganda. It came to us through the good offices of a museum director with friends In Australia; and the Adelaide Festival acted as the cata- lyst to get It here. It all comes from one small art museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and it was further limited by the size of aeroplane freight hatches, a serious limita- tion, for on the whole the new American painting is best when biggest. So although the absence Of Gorky. De Kooning. Pol- lock, Rothko. Still and Newman can be regretted, we are lucky to have any- thing. And although half r the 40 -picture exhibition is no great shakes there is quitenockout enough of to nour- ishk our painters for a decade. They can throw away their international art magazines for a while and look at the real thing, then when the exhibition memory fades, they will be able to use the magazines more intelligently. With more space avail- able than in Adelaide it. has been possible to separ- ate the sheep from the goats; the sheep have the main entrance gallery with (0141.4.111.1.041.4 11.04110.0410041.0.11 WHAT'S ON TODAY AND NEAT WREN Are WNW], et N.S.W.--Spalal ahlatienz Catornatan/ Aaalta Pmnt.ne from IS. JUNG A. Warta Foundation; complete etalPile a VOA Ostade. ALL PItIXT woes Rudy Kenton.-Judy Casa, patting., Tarry Clunc mad-Donald ', sculptural ACHY Lea Womn, Pantinal Malearte.-Elstne Haan, pant,ngs and &mama. Rua State.--111rIen Papa. mama; Parma Snort R. trona. fleTatelenj.rri-rtd7rAaillenPoiltren t.41.10. Clateertens.-P.' Crattelset 1954.1904.. Walt aa/. Hecaby.-Wilmotto Woo lirns, Celle P 5.1, nn Tanner. CLOSING THURSDAY Hendry Hereemallatert Orion, pahmno, emercolors. OPENING TUESDAY Crane, Welleetwar.-5...n Petters. OPENING WEDNESDAY Dame Jones.-Austrella Art Sala, A11/111111 EnniatIon. V.,,OPINING FRIDAY 1.1.0.SIN, TOM Gle9M13r4. ge.41.1 ;,413 the benefit of some natu- clalisatlon among such ral light, the goats are efficient and serious pain - banished to the lower gal- MI. Unlike Joan Mitchell lery with artificial light Franz Kline's abstract ex - only. presslonism has eliminated The goats include a few all color, and is concerned specimens of figure paint- only with construction, ing cooked up no doubt to with tension and thrust, supply a constant demand the way black girder -like by those who cannot other- forms can be braced out wise sense humanity in art: against the pietine edge. giant heads scratched in Or Ellsworth Kelly, a thick olive green paint by typical "hard-edge" pain. Lester Johnson, giant slug- ter, investigates pure shape, like ghosts of Pompeian the way a shape relates to girls by Marsicano, both its ground, or can generate very empty; or an eight- immense visual activity foot fragment of naked where it approaches a flank, lightly tufted with boundary. body hair, and with an But more common In the elbow nudging out of the post -abstract expressionist canvas, very queer, by Har. category is a specialisation old Stevenson. Ben Shahn's in pure color in optical full-length figure illustra- effects. Maybe this is a Hon and Karl Knaths' protest against the de - cubist interior are the only valuation of art by repro- iictures in a pre-war duction, for these pictures diom, and do much more simply cannot be repro - credit to representational duced satisfactorily either art. in black and white or colour; one must make the ABSTRACTS effort of seeing the original. Morris Louis and Ken- neth Noland provide the examples here (and show up the dead, decorative nature of Kaiser's hnita- Hoes at the Macquarie re- cently). These absolutely impersonal stripes operate as color only, not as traces of some sensitive human as does, abstract ex- pressionism. The colors vibrate, pulsate, rotate; the pictures are not dead at all but highly active, they attack and engulf the spectator. Ortman's g e o metrical colorism has some refer- ence to a pinball machine teacher, shares this sump- and thus approaches pop tuousness and this am- iemicism, but not the at- tractiveness, while Alfred Jensen's theories lead him to an obsessive mathema- tics and visual insensibil- ity. There reihaln the four- teen stud sheep. Fourteen stunningly handsome thor- oughbred paintings. 131s fact that human beings created such exhilarating beauty should make this kind of art more truly humanist than the disre- spectful representations of the human figure down- stairs. How do the favored ones differ from the others? For one thing they are simpler. They look easier, but of course they are not, no more than the appar- ently easy performance of a good athlete which can- not happen without rigor- ous training, no more than aristocratic good manner; and nonchalance. One senses a tremendous seri- ousness, tremendous hard Work behind all teas aim- plifloatiOn clarity and ease. To eliminate inessentials and mannerisms, to con- centrate, is the way to true art, for a work of art is by definition a focus of heightened experience, of passion. The comparison between these paintings and Ana tralia's own messy ones it appalling. The abstract ex- pressionism of Joan Mit- chell is marvellously %eon- taneous, and yet a very clear solid harm is omit up by the slashes of paint, quite unlike the flimsy strugtures made in Sydney. Then come a few easily forgettable modishly near - abstract landscapes by the unknown William Palmer and Sam reischer; an astonishingly banal goat, a real one, by a fallen Morris Grave; and decora- tor's filigree by Jimmy Ernst and Walter Barker. Immense competence, great attractiveness, lots of art school lessons in how to paint, come in quiet examples by Vicente. Pace and Cavallon; in rich, bright and noisy examples by Grillo, Calcagno and Kyle Morris, Hans Hof- mann, a highly respected Rivers' civil war soldier nor Dine's '"Four Coats," both very handsome works, fully register as pop art. Rivers' use of what must be standard schoolbook illustration is no doubt a transmutation of widely familiar imagery, but this seems a secondary con- sideration to the virtuoso draughtsmanship and patntwork. And Dines' coats are not celebrated as coats. They are Just a neu- tral part of his everyday life turned into art, like Braque or Cezanne would with a still life of apples. And he may be teasing those who ask the question "but what Is it?" by pro- viding an instant answer (the "coats" are four tall canvases folded, and but- toned with real buttons right down the middle, and printed various dirty blues), but such an obvi- ously unsatisfactory one that the spectator is forced straight on to the impor- tant questions, "Is it alt?", "good or bad?" Finally, one notes in Guston and Frankenthaler that standard abstract- expressionism begins to generate strange surrealist images. black menacing polyps with crimson claws, ill tempered children. Frankcnthaler's way is net in fact so different from Olsen's, though It Is a more efficient and a nastier world she creates. Maybe I shouldn't have scolded Rapoteo for the impurity of his style, if those lines want to turn Into trees let ArirrIptetkon.f.ser,asaNtiit.; ..