Arthur Boyd works

Press, 13 September 1988, Page 33

Arthur Boyd works

“Arthur Boyd, Paintings and pastels 1963-1973” at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery until November 13. Reviewed by Pat Unger.

Arthur BOyd is undeniably an Australian artist. His name, alone with that of Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan and Clifton Pugh, have become synonymous with the legend of the great Australian outback. Their imagination outlines what the writer Robert Hughes called the “heroic desolation,” the “romantic fantasy” of that country’s myth-laden desert paintings.

Several of these artists have been at various times associated with protest. or support groups whose general aims were to defend Australian realist and figurative painting against “abstractionists and their camp followers (who) threaten and benumb the intellect and wit of art with their bland and pretentious mysteries.”

Interestingly “Paintings and Pastels” at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery show that, as is so often

the case, Boyd has moved significantly towards what he rejected strongly in the past. These works, while backgrounding things identifiably Australia, approach abstraction in their treatment of the figure and of dimension and they have an international appeal. He writes, “I like to feel with any painting of mine that meaning is self-con-tained ... If you look at 'my pictures and wonder what they are about, they are mostly about animals and people. When you see a half-man-half-dog, butterfly or cat, they really have little to say unless the person looking at them is able to make up a story about them.” Crudely executed, these moving works wilfully reject established conventions. Paint quality is sometimes slimy as in “Nebuchadnezzar in a dark landscape.” It often has the hasty look of an undercoat.

Scribbles, tubed squiggles, afterthoughts, scratchings and finger daubs create pictures of virtuosity and power. Boyd’s land grows lean

vegetation. It is populated with ragged animals and humans made mad with denial. In their miragelike strangeness they pursue non-essential activity, such as painting, as if life and salvation depends on it.

The pre-Christian visionary, Nebuchadnezzar, appears to come from the soil and return to the soil. He is absorbed by the land, he is cannibalised by the land, he becomes the land. His legs flow into the ground; vegetation grows from his back and he eats fish with such wildness that it becomes an act of miraculous trans figuration before our eyes.

Creation and destruction, innocence and delusion are played out on baked white land under monotonously blue sky. They are works that tell us more about surreal lyricism than they do Australian realism.

This is a splendid exhibition. It reflects an authenticity and boldness of spirit that if New Zealanders cannot emulate, they can at least enjoy.