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------ THIS SPLENDID AUSTRALIA Wanted-an artist to paint it! by CHIT TURNBULL WHAT'S the matter with Australian art ? Where's the impetus of the war years gone ? Painting has slipped into the doldrums. Why ore Australian painters so often afraid of Australian life, Australian colour, Australian sentiment ? After looking at some looks like the work of X and Y in Australia. But these are the upper number of bad ones abroad, reaches. The majority of the I returned to read a signifi- stuff on show in Europe and cant and distressing para- here is the product of people graph in an article in the with nothing whatever to say, Bulletin of the National Gal- and various degrees of facility lery of South Australia: in saying it in other people's idioms. Cleverness is not enough: intense feeling, intensely realised, is the key to art, as opposed to picture -making. That is why, for instance, I would consider Gerard Dillon, the Irish painter, with "On Such a Night," or "Lost Boy," works saturated in thR, spirit and colour of Ireland, to be worth a hundred of the essayists in second-hand styles. That is why I should think the average foreigner would inevitably be disappointed with the current official ex- hibition of "Twelve Austra- lian Artists" in Britain, be- cause the greater part of it appears to owe nothing to Australia at all, and, if judged on international standards, could scarely be considered more than run -of the -mill. Not the dead good pictures, and a great "Cezanne and Pierre Bonn- ard," it read, "appear to be major influences in the Syd- ney art world at the present time. The re -discovery of Cezanne is due to John Pass - more, while Wallace Thornton is credited with the leadership of the Bonnard group." Cezanne was born in 1839 and died in 1906: Bonnard was born in 1867. Nobody' doubts the genius of Cezanne, or the capacity of Bonnard: but the statement is very much akin to saying "Lord Kelvin ' (1824-1907a, and Santos -Dumont (1873-19321 appear to be the major in- fluences in Australian tech- nology to -day." Same story in Europe IN Australia, we took a long time to get around . to Cezanne, hut the old gentleman's influence should surely have been assimilated and transformed long ago. As for a Bonnard cult in Australia, it's very nice, no doubt, I, ,r those who like it, but we can hardly contend that it is significant. All over Western Europe to- day the same sort of thing is going on. The galleries arc stacked with works of re - discoverers of Cezanne and Picassos in miniature, deriva- tives of derivatives, so that you can scarcely tell one from the other, whether the exhibi- tion is in Paris or Dualin, London or Edinburgh. .4 common artistic. held. Inge. a similar tray of re. - acting to things in anr tittle. ma,. troll ricentint the fart that some of the work of Ruch French con- temporaries ns Henry de Warm, tam nmonft the elders. or Ednuard Gorrtg., Australia DRYSDALE is the only major Australian painter at the moment who seems to be wholly con- tent to be an Australian painter. It is difficult to see precisely where Nolan is heading. Arthur Boyd, as yet. lacks the technique to say adequately what he has to say. Among lesser -known people, Arthur Evan Read, painting around Imitated, seems to me to be making a real attempt to capture the essential spirit of the country. No doubt there are a number of others, nut where is the real living. Inning, and strag- gling Australia in paint, not the dead Australia of shark trees. dead bullocks, tumble -damn tenements? This splendid . Australia MR. Clive Turnbull's article, "This splendid Australia, wanted - an artist to paint it" (C -M, 23/2/54) is timely and so right. If we reflect and think of Lambert as a young man painting a canvas like "Cross- ing and Black Soil Plains," or Tom Roberts painting, "Bailed Up," we visualise excellent examples of fine art and pride in craftsmanship. These men were Influenced by im- pressionism admittedly, but they had the training and good sense to know that though art is an international language, it also must pos- sess a local accent. That indefinable spirit, en - ,devour, vitality. strength, and noble beauty of man in assn - builder, and the transport worker. The study this calls for will be never-ending, and the stu- dent will not get it from books. He has to learn to be a figure and animal man, able to paint his subjects at rest and in action. Indeed, too, he will have to paint the bulldozer and the tractor, and it's very much more difficult to attempt such subjects than paint dead trees and desola- tion and label it Australia.- James Wleneke, Moreton Gal- leries, Brisbane. Are there Australian painters with feeling for their own people in their own en- vironment? And by people I don't mean dummies sitting for the Archibald Prize, or stylised workmen with cylind- rical legs and cubie heeds holding pneumatic drills. By people, I mean ordinary people, bad, good, handsome, ugly, the general average of Australian life, the sort of people who interested Rem- brandt and Van Gogh, or, if you like to come home, Tom Roberts, and, in a leas degree, Ramsay and Lambert? For years we had nothing but gum trees and blue hills in our paintings. Now, may- be we shall have nothing but derivations of defunct Frenchmen. Isn't there anyone who wants to t et hold of the vital, growulg, masculine, splendid Australia, and slam it down in paint.?