Wieneke Archive Book 4d : Artists - Australian & Other Presscuttings

8-TNE AUSTRALIAN Friday September 15 1978 r toN. :44- Arts Australian F' 'TY is a watershed, 1 'barks Blackman's new exhibition i Rudy Komori, Sydney) which opened today shows he went over the barrier like an Olympic pole-vaulter. It is the strongest, most provocative and psychologically arrest- ing performance of his career. Blackman deals with three themes - two of which, not surprisingly, have literary the.nes. Tae largest work, at four metres, is titled Marcel Proust and Claude Debussy. Blackman shows three people sitting on a lung green couch - the composer, the writer and an anonymous woman. On a piano is a sheet of music on which is painted not notes, but a cloud acne. A second woman, wearing a large hat, walks past the group with her back to the viewer. "I didn't choose Proust and Debussy," explains Blackman his usual crisp manner. "They chose me. It's as Colette said, 'You don't choose cats - they dloose ycu'." Blackman says this new series had its genesis started during his recent tenure in Perth. He took along with him a huge stack of Debussy tapes which he played all day while he stared out over the bay. 'After that goes on," he says, looking se.ne - what morose, "you ,cave to paint the picture. It was like un- ravelling psychic knitting. Any- way, music plays a large role in my life -- It floods the mind, but leaves it free." Why, the layman must often ask, does one artist latch on to one Image, and utiother artist drive into something quite different? What more often than not is the case is that the theme or idea has come from a direct emotional or personal ex- perience, or an interweaving of several experiences. Bathing Take, for example, the series of canvases in the Blackman exhibition w it I c h portray a creamy blonde nude wctnan spreadeugled beneath the figure of a horse. How did this image come to his mind? Three experiences eventually led to these works. The first oc- curred in 1973 at Blackman's farm at St Albans. 30km outside Sydney. One morning he went for a swim in the river crossing the property and saw a lady neighbor, naked, bathing her white horse in the river. "I think she actually had bra and pants on, but to me she looked naked," he recalls. Several months later, when he was Ili Parts, Blackman begun doing a few gouaches based on a woman washing a white horse. But at the same time he ran across a reproduction of Henry Fuseli's famous romantic horror picture, The Nightmare (1782), which also shows a woman and horse. "The Nightmare got to me.' remarks Blackman. "I was de- termined to express my feelings about this picture. I've always loved the !taunted moment . . . and the way the woman dreams about her lover." One more catalyst was needed (or so It seems in retrospect) to bring the pictures into existence. This presented Itself in the per- son of the actress Kate Fitz- patrick. Blackman tells the story: "I was sitting in a restaurant having lunch with George Mora and I had these ideas III my head. Kate Fitzpatrick was at z - triot/4/./A7,44, NW/Ow/WO ilfhtio* Blackman's watershed Charles Blackman's new exhibition shows a chonge in direction, says SANDRA McGRATH the restaurant, but I didn't know her. George did. "As George and I were leaving she came up to say goodbye to him On being intro- duced Kate and I had an in- stant response to each other, and I said, 'You are the Beauty In the Nightmare, would you let me paint you?' She came along to the studio and I did a char- coal portrait of her. Then I didn't need her any longer - I could do it myself." And that's how one image took flight and ended up on canvas. The second-largest painting in the show, titled The Room Of Edgar Allan Poe, has somewhat more enigmatic beginnings. "I had an idea to do paintings of rooms - I've always done women, women with bouquets In rooms," says Blackman, "but I only ended up with the one of Poe." The room, one of Blackman's most complex works composi- tionally, and probably his mast- er work In recent times, shows a tiger under a table on which sit a severed hand and a butcher's knife. To the left, a nude woman is seated in a yellow chair, and to the right the figure of a man with a book in his lap. Sur- rounding the man and woman is a gathering of animals - a horse, a cat, an orang-outang, a monkey and a tiger. Poe, a great favorite of the Frenli poets, is considered by some the "fattier 01 surrealism." W.lile Blackman has never re- son.:d to any overt surrealism, there have often been elements of it in his work. Certainly this work in its formal and psychic tensions is as difficult as any- thing he has achieved. ft .s the human figure, not landscape, omit has always at- tradted Blackman - f,gures Iran literature and the figure of Ms wife Barbara, whose blindness he has portrayed In many sensitive pidtures. When asked why he has always Coil- Celitrated 011 the figure, Black- man launches Into an anecdotal tale, which hat samewhat obadure ramifications. Innocence "To answer that question," he says, "I have to tell you this story. I was sitting with ii,dney Nolan and Iran Robertson in Millwood Castle in Essex, where K. Clark (art historian Sir Ken- neth Clark) Ilves, and we were having lunch. I said, 'I've Just been to Scan and seen Las Meninas (the Velasquez portrait of the little Infanta Maigreta Teresa with her retinue of ladies and dwells). "'Ohl' said Clark, 'that's one of the world's great trompe-l'oell paintings,' I said, '1 thought it WAS 11---1 'Imre was a great clatter of chopping of kith's and then dead faience. After about five seconds, Clark said, 'I understand what you are saying, but you must go to Italy and have a look at the Behan pri- mitives like Moth. They paint- ed the human figure with innocence.', "I asked why. Clark replied, 'Australis) artists also have an I n :toren ce because they didn't experience the Renaissance' Later, after I had found myself as an artist and knew what I wanted to do, I went back and saw the paint- ing and, of course, Clark was right." In this Instance, Blackman Uses the word "compression" to mean simplification - and to contrast the complexity of the Renaissance portrayal of the figure with the more reduced form of a painter such as Giot- to. Blackman's aim as an artist. is essentially to transfix his own feelings in time. "1 was thinking about Cezanne this morning," Blackman says, looking as if he has been thinking a lot lately, "and the way he caressed that hillside with those square brush strokes. I guess his fix in time was Mont St Victolre." Blackman, who loves poetry, moves words around 4 times in a lyric manner. He riot only likes metaphor - he uses it in speech. "The painter," he says, searching for the root Plate, "Is a lepidopterist (someone who collects butterflies). For Percevul it is the Dash of a kingfisher's wing; for Olsen, the half - glimpsed flying frog, for Arthur Boyd, the eagle's unblinking stare; for Whiteley, the line, ',spine off the page; for Fred- die Williams, the metaphorical swirl, and for me the forgotten moment:' With Vie rain heating down, the mood has become somewhat morose, somehow a bit sad. "I guess," rentarks Blackman, "painting is about psychic change." What these changes are in an artist are often too difficult or too personal to express. Certain- ly the two major works in this show reflect in their grand brooding quality and sombre in- tensity, the fact that this artist has made a major change in di- rection. Qld has an post offices answer L-. to computer 'should act5 holocaust I'FIE Queensland Government f or Mediba. ilk will propose a four-point plan an the computer holocaust to ' the Commonwealth -State minis- By JOE SCAVC) serial conference in Melbourne en November 24 THE Hovertinient Would Invalid ,eil ,,;,1,,,.. 1,,, _The r Re abLolittt,dis Miii,n.:, -: :;::\-. ,Itilliniq, .A dollar , . 1 ,,,,u Politicians °,0f-ridering' FM radio Th A POOR! and ill-ba tilde bill, tom inujot comp Australian saved at Theatre, M0 its artists -1 Marilyn Joni ias choreograph first appearati nor from th, saved the 511.1 b..coming a di, It is almos say anything II 'tonal classic I pas de deux, tt aged the Imp, ranged a sm. series of dancei Ulla a most with, remarki.: moment. One ii sinus Out It device was tun by mailers of in Her dancers help her, thou,: ed the pas w. Strrtton wa strength and ,, It. KirkeIdle In Mam'aelle solutely twaii lyrical !matte( particularly are did not have t Tk WARRE " King Leal Sydney, to Centre, from One is bourn: Mitchell's Le, director Alan or the Quee'1 Company's Le . one of those di role's the thin, . Warren Mii.1 enough for all In draw pool: theatre, arid Australia, h. theatre in the, are the news reality, the slim His name as a British televli big drawcard think niftily IP. drawn to the S what Mitchell larking about respectable thr isn" their A comedian dot: 11 comedians year high tragedian Unfortunately AC Red scribers pieces womb,. In the Syd House Con( Wednesday best playing could not ref about the I themselves. The program like a meal v.: course. Richard Spake Zarathlis flabby and over Piano Concerto Is dazzling moving; and Pr phony No 3 in is sound and 1',1 quite makes it:. Nevertheless, dant of playing ney Symphony exciting perfonii young Italian o Campanella, a: and sense of un, all three pieces Australian coma THE AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT CORPORA 'TAR Deputy header of the Aus- tralian Democrats, Benutor Mason, yesterday warned high- ranking politicians and their not to hinder the development of Fm each,' CORPORATE FINANCE EXEC