Australian Paintings At Whitechapel Gallery

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 8

Australian Paintings At Whitechapel Gallery

Commenting in the BJB.C. General Overseas Service programme, “Critic At on great success of an exhibition of Australian mtinttag at the Whitechapel Galley In London, the direc--01 ♦ h ® «aUwy. Bryan Robertson, suggested that one of the qualities that made a particularly strong appeal to a public somewhat starved of imagery was that the painting as a whole was “full of betief, excitement and conviction.” It was "passionate painting with very sharply and roundly realised images.” : For a young artist in Europe. Mr Robertson said, the landscape was heavy with the gnxe of four or five centuries of image-makers. In Australia, young artiste were living in a country where, although there was a certain poetry in the air—climatically and mentally—the landscape itself had not yet been humanised. It was still waiting for something to be made of it

“The painting of this riroMa, remote and ancient SS? S-&. Ai way to give it its vitality,” he said. “For example, whether abstract or realistic, the painters' work always contains, to my mind, a v«rj tough, bristling, pagriOnete sort of image; but this grim, fierce image ia realised In very loving, tender and rather sweet terms-”

He thmurnt that this curious frixtiea, together with a spontaneous feeling for the sensuous qualities of paint, was characteristic of Australian painting. than anything in European painting, which he felt eame the surfaces of natural form U> th* Aaionf the r&ilista end i VP’™’ w Jill tile.,.-H-ohcTtmi

said, Sidney Nolan and his contemporary, Bert Tucker, were much concerned with the playing out and building UP of myth* and legends of £ u * t L all £. n landscapes an g events. They were concerned, for example, with such characters as the bushranger, Ned Kelly, or Mrs Fraser and her strange journey through the trmncal rain forests of Queensland in the 1880’s. Arthur Boyd, “a man with a v«y poetic sense and also a strong social conscience,” was also working along these

On the other hand, Australia had a group of very vigorous abstract painters, Mr Robertson said. Although their problem* were the problems of painters everywhere, “at the same time their work has this Australian flavour at strong, highpitched colour, and a very elaborate, rich and bold handling at paint? In this group were Brett Whitely—at 22 the youngest exhibitor —whose large abstract land*®Pe» ‘ fuil °* human implication*, « kind of buried human imagery going on inside the landscape”; Tony Underhill, and the veteran abstract painter, Godfrey Miller, who though more of a universal artist formally speaking, also showed in his work the *harp light of Australia.

Some of the painters represented jn the exhibition had been working in London tor same years, Mr Robmtetm said; but whether they returned to their own country impossible for the strong.