Arthur Boyd and the black sheep of Australia

These are wild images from the Australian artist Arthur Boyd which I believe were painted at the end of his life. I will let interested parties google him if their interest is piqued by these things. John MacDonald, the critic for the Sydney Morning Herald who has an astute eye and a rich cultured mind wrote a recent piece about him, also for the curious-minded.

I like very much the image above while I find everything else fascinating but maybe less engaging, personally speaking. 

I've always found that Australian artists back in the early part of the 20th century were on the whole, a determined lot of eccentric and original artists, and Boyd was no exception. 

In this wild continent so far removed from Europe they found themselves out of the loop and on their own. This was a good thing I believe, because it protected them from the conventional conformity of 'Modern Art' that raged through the capitals of Europe and America. There was a kind of proud defiance, a renegade streak, among many of these Australian artists.

Now, of course, in Australia, like most other countries around this shrinking cultural globe, Post-Modernist theory has infected all the art schools. This has sadly created an environment of pretty universally bland and conventional art despite possessing that kind of sizzle that appeals to Contemporary galleries and cool curators who themselves are also artists. This has created it own 'closed loop' of a system. Whoa!.... But,... tut tut, I'm being severe!... yet maybe you get my point.

So one could say that there have been two kinds of art in Australia since the Europeans arrived. One, authentically rooted in the ancestral coding of the land. The other (and newer one) was imported by the British settlers. 

The former is a large network of indigenous artists from all over this gigantic continent. I don't want to simplify a complicated idea, but their work, like all indigenous cultures around the world, spring up from their authentic experiences of living from this earth.

But the second art of Australia was a white art, not less valid, just foreign, and imported, its roots are colonial nonetheless. Again this is a subject I'm less equipped to pontificate upon, at least now anyway. As we say in the Bronx, "it's complicated".

Gradually, this early European tradition of painting evolved, and after a few centuries, it joined the global rush towards an 'expression of originality'.

But despite catching up with the arty trends of the rest of the world (and its mother ship Britain), Australian art of the 20th century maintained its own wild and rebellious defiance. 

I think it came into its own when it finally accepted Britain's snobbery towards Australia by owning it's reputation a bit like Queer became a defiantly proud slogan of the LGBQ community. Australian artists embrace their unique identity  in their unique land Down-Under. They said to Britain; Yes, OK, we're the smelly black sheep, and we're proud of it,,, so 'Sod Off' Pommies! 

Of course, all this is quite fanciful on my part but there might be a sliver of truth to it nonetheless.  

After all, Australia had been conceived as a penitentiary and established to receive its previous black sheep, the Irish, and the rest of poor unfortunates that Britain had wished to dispose of without having to execute them all. Australia would always be considered to the poor relation.  

But that was then, and now is now. These Australian artists of the 20th century have forged diverse paths as if slashing their way through the rough landscape of this rugged country with a machete. 

So, Arthur Boyd began like a European, but ended up as a wildly original visionary. Nice!

   

 

Disclaimer!

Disclaimer! Once in a blue moon I re-post older things when it suits me so just for fun, here is one from two years ago.

I find it fascinating because isn't always interesting to see another dimension to one's own work?

I confess that I am almost tempted to propose a show of these small intimate images in this vertical state because people might find them more interesting presented in this format. 

It's true, fewer people these days are interested in reality than ever before, and this of course, raises a lot of questions to explore for another time. Enjoy! 

,

09 October 2022

a pot pourri of the painter's psyche.

These Evening Prayers were all painted over the past few months, randomly chosen for their stronger contrasts perhaps, but quite simply, I just wanted to see how these paintings would look vertically, just for fun,,,, why else? It was easily done and they were rotated to the right or left without too much thought. 

They are interesting because quite suddenly, they seem foreign to me, standing up tall like gangly teenagers, while me, the middle-aged parent gawks with surprise.

Except one, are all rotated just one turn, but this image, upside down, feels more like something from an amusement park. 

 

By playing with all these images in this way, I was allowed to experience not only the light differently, but the colour too, notably, the way colours interact with each other so differently in a vertical format.

Also, the gravitational aspect of them pulls the eye a little bit towards one lateral side or the other and makes them feel a bit wonky, and this is also destabilising in a weirdly positive way for me.

This was an experiment solely for pleasure as I said because I wanted to experience these images in a new way and indeed, it seems apparent there are lots of stripes in this painter's psyche.

Gauguin, blue dreams

 

         Blue Trees, 1888, Ordrupgaard Collection, Denmark.

I have had this on my desktop for a while now and it seems to always pull my eyes over to it. I don't really have much to say about it except that I'm just in awe of his sense of colour.  

Remarkably, one might think upon seeing it, that it was from Martinique or Tahiti, but curiously its's from the small time when lived with Vincent in Arles in 1888. 

Unlike Van Gogh who needed a 'motif' in front of him to kick off his vibrant imagination, Gauguin infamously worked almost entirely from his imagination. 

These different ways of painting reveal something about their connection but also their strong differences. They were almost like two opposing sides of an AA battery, one so positive while the other so negative.

Gauguin 'invented' this landscape while painting next Van Gogh in Arles. The small figures near the foreground are Breton. Was it an homage to a place that got him into this 'Painting Racket' in the first place? Or souvenir painted out due to homesickness? Either way, like the Instagram Influencers of today, both painters were motivators for each other's work during this period together. 

Even their colours during this period seemed to accentuate each of their palettes in a similar fashion. Their Chrome Yellows and deep Ultramarines appears to clash like ancient warriors upon their canvas's. And as we know from their correspondence afterward, their particular personalities also crashed into one another almost daily. 

But, in this picture of the 'Blue Trees' above, I personally marvel at the pictorial intelligence in it, of its colour and its drawing and invention. It has mysterious and abstract hold over me as I wander about around its surface. It's an endless lesson for painters of any moment, anytime.  

Art, a wall or a window?

Anyone who reads this Blog would understand that I absolutely despise Graffiti but being human I can also make grand dictums replete with caveats. 

Generally, I will give a pass to Banksy, but a few other artists too,  who have something artistically interesting to express. For me, Art in all its forms, is a window not a wall, something transcendent not myopic.

Most graffiti is self-indulgent and juvenile, narcissist, and basically just a visual nuisance for the rest of us. And most murals are usually pretty dreadful too. Where I live in Australia, I would bet a million dollars that there are more blue jumbo dolphins splashing about on buildings than anywhere else in the world.

Et portent, and yet..., this enormous mural caught my eye and surprised me with great pleasure, even causing me consternation. I wish I could remember who is the  artist and where it is located, my apologies.

It's not that I even like its drawing or colour harmony but there is something in its 'colourful design' that I find so well unified, puzzling and audacious, so much so, that I actually really like it. It has a vaguely figurative aspect to it as if it's maybe channeling Salvador Dali? But as a critical matter, is any good? Does it succeed? 

Because giant wall murals are in a class of their own, I personally don't really have the critical wherewithal to judge them as artwork. That may sound like a lame way of fobbing off the important question, but hey! I'm only human. I can only judge it by the same criteria that I use everywhere else in my peregrinations around the world. 

It is a public work, and ultimately it must also be judged with an acutely critical eye, like for everything else in this realm of aesthetics. And yet I still myself suddenly feeling a little self-conscious in this world. This is the world of the delightful and surprising jumbo-polished steel blob by Anish Kapoor, that occupies an large open space in Chicago. But it's also part of the muscular and (sometimes almost fascist) work of Richerd Serra. Hmmmm. But too, an unlikely hero in the world of Public Art is Jeff Koons, who created several versions of the oversized 'Puppy', made of flora and flowers, a piece that brings universal joy to almost everyone.  

So regarding this ten or twelve story high mural, I have no irrational way to explain why it does bring me such puzzled joy. But hey! We all need lots of joy today, puzzled or otherwise.

But I like to imagine myself stumbling upon this gigantic wall in an open space somewhere downtown somewhere, and I believe it would be as surprising as finding a field of red poppies growing out of one's own bathtub.

For myself, it's a rare thing to be pleasantly surprised in this contemporary life, urban ironic, or otherwise.  

 

something different, a changing guard

It's rare but not uncommon that states in America re-design their flags to update their image, but Maine has done just that. They have selected a new design out of more than 400 submissions.

The winning flag design came from Adam Lemire, an architect from Gardiner, a town of roughly 6,000 residents in Kennebec County. His minimalist design shows an eastern white pine and a blue North Star against an off-white background.

I really love the way older institutions can sometimes re-invent themselves with an artistically appropriate design. Maine had the wherewithal to re-imagine itself as a new and different place. Out the window goes an old, staid, and conventional design, in comes something modern, both clear and striking. Nice!

Now, if each generation could ditch their older  ways of thinking and doing things by up-dating their ideas, it would be an even more perfect world.

                2024
 

                             old as the hills

OLYMPIX 2024, Honour and dishonour

 

         The Spanish Artistic Swimming Team 2024

Being laid up with the flu really stinks but it also had an upside advantage, one that kept me stuck at home with a foggy mind. It was an awful strain of the flu which kept coughing and pinned to the sofa for two weeks straight. But what a fabulous two weeks to be holed up at home! It was the perfect space for my ditzy brain to zoom into the Paris Olympics 2024.

As anyone who saw it will agree, it was wonderful all around, according to an article from Paris. "This changed us, and it's one big party!" said a certain Mme Castelle. "The Parisians who left town will regret it to the end of their days!" her friend Ms Benata, adding, "The key was all the people, not just the French but everyone all mixed up together like a blending", as recounted by a pair of older Parisian women catching their breath on a bench near the Seine.

Well, I don't know, but it looked great on screen as I laid up immobile like The English Patient, though without Juliette Binoche, alas.

 

       'Zee French Space Gals', of course!

Swimming, in every form was a wonderful watch in the new Aquatic Center at Le Bourget, the only new venue built for the Olympics Games. Designed by a hardy Dutchman, Tom Venhoeven, to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It used less concrete and more wood in its design construction to great aesthetic success. With a solar farm on its roof it renders an almost 100% energy efficiency for the building in both summer and winter. The 5000 seats were made from plastic bottle caps collected by school children all over the French Hexagon. Impressive! Zeese French set a high bar for the Games and zey actually pulled it all off with zaire French flair. Formidable!    

In the pool, Diving, Racing and Dancing, all of them were great. And a big shout out to those poor Ukrainian women who had to train in wetsuits these past two winters in Kiev because of a lack of electricity. That Pute, Putin! Un salaud, un fumier! He should be strung up with all the other tyrants who invaded countries: Genghis Khan, Hitler, George Bush, Tony Blair and Netanyahu, to name a few. 

Anyway,,,, I perved in bliss for an entire evening watching the Artistic Swimming competition.  

The Chinese seem to be great at everything, of course. "Attention le monde! Car ils sont déjà la!"

Paris, its river Seine, with all its beauty, was put to full use for this grand event. In fact, I wonder it will ever again be as lovely as it seemed in this year of our lord, 2024. The dystopian panic which most of us live with from morning till night was lifted temporarily as if  by all that French Charm. Who would have thought? Even, it was said, the waiters on the Champs Élysées smiled with an easy joy! Ça alors!!  

While watching, I imagined that for those hardy young lucky families, which came from all over Europe and abroad, to spend two weeks at the Games would have been the greatest gift a parent might offer their young children, who, like the young athletes themselves, will hold in their hearts the most cherished memories for there rest of their lives. Indeed, not a fake Disneyland, but the real deal these Games. And it feels to me like a gift spread around the world at a time of such great uncertainty on our planet.

I couch-surfed all around the games visiting everything, the Equestrians in Versailles, The divers and racers in The New Aquatic Center and the speedy, but patient Wall Climbers at le Bourget, the athletes of every size and shape at Le Stade de France as well as the amazing Fencers in the spectacular Grand Palais. With the exception of the two new structures at Le Bourget, Paris used all its existing infrastructure for the 2024 Games. Felicitaions!

For me, the lover of anything graphic, it was a daring choice of violets and pinks that they chose to use pretty much everywhere, and for all sports. It was chancy but worked so well. Mixing cool lilac next to Naples Yellow, Hot Pinks next deep, deep Lilacs! It was a colourful response to our current gender blending confusion, and I say, "Go for it Man,,, Woman,,, Him,,, her,,, They,,, Whatever works for them!"

Immobile, I watched all this gorgeous activity with divine decadence from my sofa. I was a drifter among foreigners for two weeks time, watching golfers, gymnasts and rowers and scullers, tennis and polo players, volleyballers  and shooters using both bullets and arrows. The marathons were wonderful, all these black and brown coloured athletes making their hilly way around the August heat of Paris. And the Parisians were out in full force, giddy with pride while leaving their uber-cool irony at home.

While the world wages war upon itself in various places around the globe, teams from the poorest countries on earth came to us with their fragile wares. Many ending up in last place like the marathoner from Buthan who had struggled towards the end, walking a long while past the cheering Parisians. She eventually picked herself up and continued and when she came around the last turn towards the finish line the amazing crowd which had not left their seats since the elite runners had crossed 2 hours earlier, erupted with joy. 

In the Stade de France an Afghani women came to run, I forget which length,,,,1500M? She too, came in last. It was an unforgettable finish. 

Yes, Yes,... I know the Olympics are known for being a great waste of money, resources and energy, but somehow, in this special moment, the people of France offered up something new just when the world seemed to need it the most. Mocked by Murdoch's Right Wing Sky News here in Australia, and elsewhere sans doubt, for providing recycled cardboard beds to the athletes, they derided everything about France's efforts at sustainability and inclusion. What can you do? These are horrible, small people who love Trump. Go figure.

What these kinds of people missed is that it was a ray of human hope in a world already so full of inexhaustible darkness. The French, always so unnervingly clever with their moral righteousness, might actually have hit a living mark this time by putting in right action behind where their high ideals have too often just been words engraved in stone. Even if but a temporary reprieve from our uncertain shadows, we were thus offered some light,,,, not bad.

At a cost of about 2 billion Euros to put on the Games, almost nothing came from the Public Purse, they claim. If so, great! Millions were raised from all the usual suspects; The Nikes, The MacDonalds, The Rolexes, The TAG Heuers, The Apples and Microsofts, etc, etc,,, Actually, who cares? They run the world anyway, so let them pay for the Olympics! And who cares if the entire affair looked like Louis Vuitton advertisement? At least there was a bit of class, and it did look good.

France also got a reprieve from the political uncertainty hanging over its head like the sword of Damocles. Autumn will bring stormy weather. But like a great fruit harvest, what do they say in Provence at the end of the melon season? "Toute les bonne choses ont fin!" So be it, but what a melon season! For there were good and we ate well.

And yes, Gazan's are starving and homeless, so are the Yemeni's, but so are so many other parts of Africa, and in New York too, everywhere! There is no escape from the awful injustices that go everyday around the world. It's all so disheartening it makes a sensitive soul want to crawl into bed and roll over against the wall. 

All this, a friend said to me last week about why he would not partake in this 'fake thing', "a complete waste of money, and this is why I don't watch the Olympics!" I disagreed but said little.

Personally, I don't believe that governments are the people, despite the hype to the contrary. I don't blame athletes for being of one nationality or another. Of course, they say that people are the soul of a nation which I can believe, but people don't run their nations despite what they may think. I don't believe that Putin, Trump, Lukashenko, Sinwar or Netanyahu, just a few of the many thugs who really represent their nation's interests. By hook or by crook, these despots run their countries into the ground, and its the citizens who always pay in the end.

A nations's athletes are just athletes, that is all. What they believe, or not, is their own business, just like for every citizen around the world. Keep it simple I say, but call out the horse shit when it stinks.

Many bad things happen to a nation when it strays off course, even just a few degrees at a time, until when years have passed and it suddenly becomes a nation unrecognisable to even its own citizens. 

 

But hey! What I really wanted to say was that despite all the poor and sometimes atrocious human behaviour going on in this world, the youth of the Games is at least a sign of Hope for us all. 

And lastly because colours are such a very important part of the 'equipe, here at L'Air de Rien', it behooves me to announce my pick for the Gold Medal for the very best looking uniform (the Kit) for the Olympics 2024.  

And the winner is Zee Fabulous French! That gorgeous blue against that white, with just a sliver of red! Qui me fait bander!!

À la prochaine!

P.S. Who will ever forget my Aussie compatriot, the breakdancer, Raygunn, about whom no one has yet found the right words.

English patience

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 July 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

I have been listening to the film scores of Gabriel Yared for the past week. I can sometimes get into a composer for a time, then stop and move on. Nothing like Apple Music in this époque. So last night, feeling a little homesick for Europe I saw The English Patient for which Yared composed the score. 

A curious thought came to me while watching the opening titles, wherein a simple figure is being drawn as the credits roll, a small brush draws an almost primitive-looking, sepia-coloured figure which we will soon understand to be a copy of an elongated swimmer reproduced from a wall in an Egyptian cave. So we watch the figure begin to appear out of just a few sensually precise lines that at first resembled a Japanese calligraphic letter. 

I didn't remember this opening scene since watching the film the last time. I had loved the book, and though the film has wonderful bits in it, at times it also felt like a perfume ad but I warmed up to it last night.

So listening to his music for a few weeks now I suddenly felt like a nostalgic voyage back into my past experiences around Siena where often I stayed with an old friend at her place in Sovicille. 

Sadly, she died this past January at home there. We had had a falling out over a lot of silliness which is usually the case for these breaks. I had not seen her since about 1996 in New York. I only found out about her death from her son. I had written her a postcard because I had been thinking of her for months. Alas, she received my card about a month before dying and was too ill to respond according to her son whom I knew as a child. 

Like for the doomed lovers in The English Patient my timing was off, and I was sorry I let so many years go by before finally writing to her.  

But while watching how this 'swimmer' began to appear in the opening sequence last night I began wondering about what it means for a an artist to have a concrete idea in their head when they begin work on a piece. 

One can easily forget the magic of the moment when an image begins to appear on a page, somewhat like an old Polaroid coming slowly into focus over a few minutes.

We don't know what is going to eventually appear but the artist certainly does, either consciously or not. It's a marvellous moment that can take one instantly back in time to the amazement a young child feels in front of any form of verisimilitude. 

There is a slice of a story about a young boy who stumbles upon MichaelAngelo who was at work on a giant stone from which a lion seemed to be coming out of. He simply asked the sculptor who smiled. 

"How did you know that there was a lion in there?"

So then, I thought about my own work and wondered about just what goes on in my own mind at the time of those very first brushstrokes on a canvas board. Do I think?, Intuit?, or just wing it by blindly jumping into a picture?

I think at the start of any painting, my idea is always a pictorial one, one formed by what the sky looks like and the colours I see. So maybe I see a slow-moving but bright-coloured train and I just try to hop aboard for the ride, then who knows where it will go?

Then I tried to imagine the difficulties of working as an American Abstract Expressionist, and what might have gone on in their heads when working. Where did their pictorial ideas come from? Were they even necessary? Somehow it appears that it wasn't relevant to their process of making a painting. Was this to their detriment, or advantage?

Painting what one feels, without a premeditated  thought or idea, can be a wonderful way to work at times, but over the long haul, is one working from a window or a wall?

Anyway, Here are two things from a few nights ago. They didn't knock my socks off,,, but hey! I was happy to get out and throw paint around despite the result.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 July 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

Eyes Wide Open!

 

The New York Times came out with this wonderful article a few days ago that invited their readers to spend ten minutes looking at a painting without any distractions. They even had a digital timer planted within the article at 10 minutes for an easy experience.

Naturally I did it, and I marvelled at the experience. My biggest take away was that paintings, (as in, all figurative landscapes), are conceived and painted through the most obvious sensory portal, the artist's eyes. Consequently, paintings can only be accessed through the use of a viewer's eyes. This is the whole point of Painting though it would be easy to overlook this because so much Painting has turned conceptual. 

But here the NYT have given us an opportunity to let go of ourselves by taking a pause from politics and wars, TikTok and Youtube, Trump and Harris, and everyone should have a go at the NYT web site. It offers a rich window out of ourselves and into the world of Painting.

Just looking at a picture sounds so simple because indeed it really is, but it also takes time and a disciplined mindset. Most of us don't know how to do it in fact, but all we need is a set of eyes and an uncluttered mind. 

It after all, an adventure, a sensory one using just our eyes. After spending ten minutes looking at this small painting I was able to settle into the calm nature of the image as a whole. Suddenly all the of tiniest, seemingly inconsequential details began to hum together in silent choir. The whole picture came together more coherently and in my imagination, it seemed to throb in sync with my own heartbeat to became a single thing of visual unity like in a symphony orchestra. All my smallest perceptions melded into one sensuous entity.

And this fact reminded me of something my teacher Leo Marchutz used to always say. 

"The more the relationships in a work of art, the greater the work" 

My experience at looking at this Whistler entitled 'Nocturne in Blue and Silver', London, 1871, also allowed me to appreciate the surface 

plane of the picture. 

In a strange way, it reminded me of looking at an intricate old Turkish rug from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul when I was there many years ago. It took several years for these craftsmen, women, and children, to complete a large rug, while Whistler painted this (I imagine) in a few hours at the most.

 

It's the unity of light that creates a good painting or any rug design because it's the light that fashions the form of any design. And the better one understands this, the better the artist.

I also became aware of the ghostly nuances of warmth and cool tones that permeate all that broken blue colour everywhere. Indeed, one sees in all that blue just how broken a colour it really is. 

Because I imagine it was done with oil paints gently washed over a coloured board, maybe a red sepia hue that was in vogue in the 19th century. Whistler used it to gently peek through the river water and offer a variation to break the surface plane.   

I came aware of the tiny lights, the more I looked at them the brighter they seemed to shine. 

Then one pulls back slightly to see it from a distance and One realises what a great picture it really is. Whistler was way ahead of his time, and this series done around the river Thames show us where his real interests lay.