Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W 2 6 It 1964 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, JULY 26, 1964 73 The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas AT David Janes' Gallery Robert Haines shows how to make an art com petition into an exhibition that is a pleasure to visit instead of an endurance trial. He has selected only 23 works, that is only about 21 per cent of the entries in the W D & II 0 Wills 500 gns. art prize. It looks easily the best prize exhibition In years, but it la possible that even the Archibald and Wynne would look as good if the same percentage acre hung. Another critic has prais- ed several artists for the improvement shown here, when in fact the very same paintings had been seen in other less flattering sur- roundings only a little while ago. All the same the paint- ings do merit this flattery, and they cover an interest- ing wide range. At one extreme is the impressionist Sydney Har- bor landscape of George Lawrence. Then come the landscape of Fred Wil- liams (transparent, very beautiful, with some of his watercolor characteristics carried into oil). and the figures of Molvig and Kemp. Then a large group of landscape abstractions like Robert Grieve's and Guy Warren's. Then pure abstraction with Plate al- most alone in upholding the romantic abstract - expressionist attitudes, and very handsomely too. The dark texture painters are more numerous: Lynn, Mc- Donald, Obarvat. These also are pure abstraction- ists. Even if like Gieghorn's white, blue and black calm horizontal bands (his first painting shown since re- turning from Europe) they are metaphors for land- scaPe, or states of the soul, they arc self-sufficient, they do not derive directly from any object. With Coburn and French we come bark a little way from such pure abstrac- tion, for with completely abstract elements they create a new object: there is a mysterious "thing" represented in the picture. instead of the picture It- self being the thing. This makes them more intellig- ible within traditional European visual habits, and It is a way of insisting that the intentions are more than decorative. French. who won the prize with his "Cruciform over a Landscape." sets a flopting totem of circles and' squares, bright enamelled and burnished gold, within a dark arched shrine. The simple but in- ventive shapes are, in such a setting, enough to signify the power of religion. A little further back again from pure abstrac- tion Is the surrealism of Ref t Hessing, where an un- easy awareness of the human body is always present in the at first sight abstract forms. Leonard Hissing, who might well have been considered for the prize, had another of those large winged -eagle shapes imposed upon an elaboration of little hill- ocks and tufty crevices. They have been obsessing him for some time and cannot fail to recall Freud's famous interpre- tation-sexual of course- of the eagle imposed upon one of Leonardo da Vinces paintings. Finally, with Hen Rein- hard's and Michael Shaw's pop art we have come right through abstraction and back to realism, only here the elements from every- day life are treated as high-handedly and as vig- orously as if they were abstract elements. There is no denying the refreshing quality of this art tespeci- idly In Shaw. who is a very 00-1040411.11.0 .11140-101404114.014140-411, WHAT'S ON TODAY_ AND NEAT A" °AnA'Y N.Ii.W.111111'1' " 'NO 11" Pe:." 1.110. 10001400. lawman Le IOW r nt 1 . 000 - 140 01 011 -000-4115. Newcastle Car Art Gallery, SystIel weibitleni Contemporary A,,..,,..,, Pnnling ( tellectiar, Repel Art Seciety -F,purat,te pa,MInG Walk Gallery. Herneby.-Ammal Droning.. pottery. ALL NEST WICK D avid Jones.-W. D. and H. 0. Wale Art Prim. 1747aleCel."17G7iijdoohnn Snow So" Henry Pt .... , metal riti Gels. P t..... Jenes.-Reno Vermende. Cr..., Well Ml.ld Ann,,ensi, Shop, OPENING WEDNESDAY PA le .-Col Levy, pottery. Rudy Ittrinen.-Britliane Smelters. G arry flow.-Cluist,ne Hamm, mintiest; Luciano Zmaii, awry. Hungry Nana-Wined shoe. OPENING FRIDAY Von Bertotock. Netwastle.-Peut Sperm FRIDAY LECTURE Pellets Society el N.5 W., COI Bloch Theatre, Ian 5,..y Tegg. P.M. --Pots and Potters In Japan," Sy L., capable painter), Its noisy itality and its embrace of a public amid, instead of the quiet reticence, and the extreme privacy of much that has preceded it. Rudy Kamen has also had a mixed show of 23 M tures. His was called "Lealer's Choice," and in - dialed his usual artists, plus early Drysdale (about 1053). and Arthur Boyd (1057), plus Reddington and Lanceley and Fleming and Senbergs. Most inter- esting was an excellent new Sibley. performing as a fine German expressionist, two warped figures, bale- ful, smouldering blue and green. Barry Stern's mixed show of 15 works had the very special treat of an enor- mous painting by Brett Whiteley. the moat success- ful of all the young Aus- tralians now in London. One of his new bathtub pictures, flat casual :orms cluttering looptly into mime parte, complete emptiness elsewhere: and the pretty colors of expensive toilet soaps, peach, lavender, honey. The relaxed and torpid pleasures of the tub are beautifully evoked. Jacqueline Hick's one- man show the Macquarie was all red-brown outback- rey, aborigines at the 01 - gas, Nolanly scumbled. Everybody in Adelaide seemed busy at the out- back last Festival, and Miss Hick's figure subjects are certainly far more skilful than any of her fellows. But applied here to the exotic or the elevated, her sill approaches slick- ness, not observable in the portraits already known. Maybe the real, the every- day is a better starting point for this artist. John Monteliore (Clune Gallery), age 2/1, winner o this year's N.S.W. Govern- ment Travelling art schol arship, has a one-man show of mostly figure sub jecta, Crucifixions, Resur rections and one or two landscapes. They ail swirl unendingly. This indicates some powerful obsession, swooning orgasm very likely; perhaps the rhythms of the universe front tiny electron to distant galaxy. Trees swirl too, and clouds, whose vapours stream to heaving earth. It is all disarmingly high- minded,ro a and if at 311"ebt.jecti as if it were a pen drawing (e.g. the St. George and the Dragon like a Gustave Dore) this could be loosened up by the scholar- ship, and the small "Vale of Unknowing" has already done so most successfully. Dobell. A footnote. A second edition of the ex- hibition catalogue will be eaUable in a few weeks. In it a few minor errors will be corrected - mostly in Measurements of the pic- tures and their inscriptions. James Gleeson, since put- ting his book on Dobell .to press acme time ago, had discovered a few errors which he generously al- lowed to be corrected In the exhibition catalogue (these are in the first edition,. So where picture titles and biographical data differ. the catalogue is the better authority. Al the points are of slight importance, except perhaps the time of Dobell's arrival in Sydney which was riot 1925 but 1923. Even so to have begun his studies at the age of 2° la still a handicap, !.e; eventual triumpll no less remarkable. "NUDE IN BATH" by Brett Whiteley.