Australian painting - the value of tradition

Australian paintings

The value of tradition

"I wanted to deal ironically with the cliché of the 'dead heart'; I wanted to know the true nature of the 'otherness' I had been born into. It was not a European thing. I wanted to paint the great purity and implacability of the landscape. I wanted a visual form of the 'otherness' of the thing not seen. "(Sidney Nolan-Painter)

Australia's painting history perhaps begins 40-60,000 years ago. In northerern Australia, a unique form of art known as the Bradshaws was created in about 100 000 sites spread over 50 000 sq. km. Although the art's pigment can't be dated, a fossilised wasp nest covering one of the paintings has been dated at 17,000 + years old. This makes the art at least four times older than the pyramids of Egypt.

Like Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, as well as ancient Chinese script, the art has elements of iconography. As opposed to hunter gatherer art, the Bradshaws art is extremely detailed, very refined in line construction and seems to use iconographic symbols.

The iconographic features of the Bradshaw art suggests that they were created by a settled people. Although the modern environment of Australia makes this seem impossible, when humans arrived 60,000 years ago the environment was more similar to South America. Rainforests covered much of Australia and, just as they did in South America, the humans may have started cities relatively soon after arriving.

It is purely speculation as to what happened to the Bradshaw people. The geological record shows that between 40 and 60,000 years ago, large scale burning of the bush altered the flora enough to decrease the exchange of water vapour between the biosphere and atmosphere. Clouds stopped forming, the land became drier, and the annual monsoon failed. A vicious cycle was created as a drier climate in turn led to less plant growth, and an even drier climate. The forests that had covered central Australia were replaced with deserts, and deep water lakes became salt pans. If cities were forming, they would have fallen into ruins. Some people may have then migrated to other parts of the globe, while those that remained in Australia would have returned to a hunter gathering lifestyle.

If the Bradshaw people were indeed a settled people, their story has parrallels with the story of Atlantis. They may have been an advanced people that got too smart for their own good. They tried to gain too much mastery over nature, but fell into ruins as nature got mastery of them.

The hunter gatherers that supplanted the Bradshaw people, or were the remants of the civilisation's breakdown, used art for a very differerent purpose. Their art was more ceremonial and religious. The most common art form is known as a Wandjina, which like the Bradshaw, is in human form. The arc around Wandjina's heads represents lightning and the little short lines represent falling rain. In a nutshell, the Wandjinas are like deities based on the monsoonal wet season.

In other hunter gatherer tribes around Australia, art was likewise chiefly concerned with ceremony and religion. Much of it was painted on the human body and therefore fleeting.

Nicholas Chevalier
Buffaloe Range from the West.

When European artists arrived in the 18th century, they brought with them the traditions of the "old" world. The likes of Eugéne von Guérard and Nicholas Chevalier tended to paint what they saw and the value of the work was principally in its aesthetics qualities. Like most artists, they strove for a sense of uniqueness and they tried to find it by painting the Australian land.

Despite being technically skilled, most of their early paintings neither captured the look nor the feeling of the Australian landscape. The Australian land is messy and random. The trees are twisted with the chaotic look of an old lady's broken fingers. The bark hangs like a poor child wearing the well-used hand-me-downs of an older sibling. The earth is littered with leaves and old branches. As the topsoil is thin, it reveals the immense history of the earth; its faults, its fossils, its bones and its sediment. The colours are dull and contrast is slight; however, with this dullness, comes great complexity of colour. These characteristics are not conveyed in the European's paintings. Instead, the paintings looked and felt more like the French Alps or the rolling hills of Ireland. The Europeans used deep colours of monotone green that made Australia seem new and fertile. They used deep blues in conjunction with white to create feelings of contrast. Some artists even tried to further emphasise the uniqueness with a few naked Aborigines include for token value. Unfortunately, they made Aborigines look more like black Romans who forgot to put on their tunics.

W.B Gould
The Landlord

One artist who did manage to attain a sense of regional definition was Convict artist W.B Gould. However, Gould found his uniqueness not from the land, but from the people. His painting "The landlord" offers an insight into the origins of Australia's larrikin personality. It depicts a suited man with a toothless grin. Strict convention amongst noble man of the time was a deadpan expression; especially if one's teeth were missing. Without doubt, Gould had painted an ex-convict whose desire to conform to social prestige had been surpassed by a self-effacing personality.

Arthur Streeton
Fires On

Towards the beginnings of the 20th century, a cultural tradition was developing and led to the creation of the Heidleburg School. Together, a group of painters dealt with a common subject matter, learnt from each other, yet produced completely individualistic results. The likes of Tom Roberts, and Arthur Streeton captured the chaos and complexity of the land and wove into it the prevailing themes of nationalism and independence. Their paintings convey optimism with hill top gazes filled with vibrant blues and subtle yellows. Their subject matter included the pioneers whom were pushing the bush frontiers and who at the time were Australia's quintessential heroes.

Frederick McCubbin
Down on His Luck

Also painting the pioneers was Frederick McCubbin; however, unlike Roberts and Streeton, McCubbin's themes tended to be melancholic. McCubbin painted thick bushland where light was dim and the environment seemed somewhat lonely and dark. Into the scene he would introduce a pioneer but rather than optimistically showing the pioneer conquering nature, McCubbin showed them being conquered themselves or using the bush as their refuge.

Russell Drysdale
The Ruins

Russell Drysdale
Man Reading a Paper

Russell Drysdale
Emus in the Landscape

In the 1950's, Russell Drysdale went searching in the farthest frontier of them all; the outback. Drysdale's work is interesting to contrast to the optimism of previous pioneering artists. His paintings depict towns that had been the pioneering dream but were now laying desolate as the frontier shrank back into nothingness. They depict dilapidated iron structures that seem so fleeting in comparison to the eternity of the landscape and the native animals that have inhabited it since time immemorial. If appreciated in a historical context, Drysdale's works are not mere depictions of the outback; they record Australians changing their attitude towards their identity. Rather than depicting the bush as the place of opportunity, Drysdale's works are a record of a time when Australians began seeing the bush as a place of broken dreams and hence, began to look elsewhere for their heroes.

Albert Tucker
Apocalyptic Horse

Albert Tucker
The Metamorhphosis of Ned Kelly

Another movement that explored the broken dreams was the Angry Penguins society. It included the likes of Albert Tucker, who painted decaying carcasses of animals killed in a drought. Yet even in death the animals do not find peace; they loom large at the beholder as if they are the mutant remains of the apocalyse. The Angry Penguins also included Arthur Boyd who explored the difficult marriage of Aboriginal and non-aboriginal ideas.

Sidney Nolan
The Trial

Sidney Nolan was another that tried to marry Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ideas. Nolan described his works as "a confused mix of landscape, animals, and Aboriginal culture, with a kind of Bible overtone." Indeed Nolan's works were a mix of landscape, animals and had some biblical elements, but the Aboriginal culture, or cultures, that he was referring to were never very clear in his paintings. Perhaps he was just meant he wanted something uniquely Australian and appreciated how an association with Aborigines could achieve that.

In the tradition of Picasso and Goya, Nolan became obsessed with myths; the most notable being the legendary bushranger Ned Kelly. Nolan painted Ned as a comic book character, a magician, a leader and a martyr. He blended into Ned images of the landscape and even titled the paintings with newspaper commentary. Where Kelly was a good man or bad was always ambigous, and therefore contributed to the intrigue in his work.

Pro Hart
Dunnies

Pro Hart
Grasshopper

The post-war period also saw the emergence of Pro Hart, Australia's most commericially successful artist. In some ways, Hart's work was a throwback to an earlier era because instead of depicting the outback as a wasteland, Hart depicted it as a place of environmental and cultural beauty. Hart painted miners who were not dependant upon farming for their survival and who had therefore been spared the destructive influence of droughts. As Hart did not see the outback as a place of broken dreams, he was able to convey the beauty of blue skies, parched land and gum trees. He painted people happily walking their dogs, and egalitarian bars open to the outback air and all those who wanted to join.

In addition to taking a positive view to the landscape and culture around him, Hart was differentiated by his paintings of insects. Few artists ever paint insects as they tend to be intimidating and ugly creatures. Hart, on the other hand, saw insects as objects as beauty. Hart's interest in insects is best explained by the fact that he was a miner for 18 years. After toiling underground all day, the little aspects of nature probably seemed extra beautiful to him when he returned to the surface.

Despite having a unique style and painting about unique subject matters, Hart was rejected by the arts establishment of Australia. Neither the National Gallery of Australia nor the Art Gallery of NSW (Hart's home state) ever bought his works. According to Barry Pearce, head curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, comparing Hart with the artists who normally hang in the gallery was "rather like Slim Dusty being compared to Mozart."

The problem for Hart was that the art establishment just didn't want to see the outback in a positive way. As Australia changed its identity from being a bush society to a urban society, art institutions in the city were desperate for art that depicted the Australian outback as a barren womb. They wanted to see Drysdale's ruins, Tucker's apocalyptic horses, and Nolan's conflict. The art institutions didn't want to see Hart redeeming the outback with positive scenes. They didn't want to see Hart showing outback miners enjoying themselves playing cards. They didn't want to see Hart championing the bush ethos of egalitarianism with a "members" bar open to everyone. Most of all, they didn't to see a white community that had struck a balance with the natural environment around it, or white people from the bush showing an appreciation for nature.

Clifford Possum
Bushfire Dreaming

While Pro Hart was rejected, the art institutions readily embraced Aboriginal art as it affirmed their prejudice that the outback was a barren womb for whites and a place where only blacks should roam. The institutions favoured art that showed Aborigines being victimised, or at the very least, depictions of Aborigines enjoying themselves before colonists came along and destroyed their lifestyle. The institutions liked to see paintings showing Aboriginal angst at being incarcerated, having their babies stolen, or having their harmony with nature disrupted by colonists.

Eventually the art market got to the stage where it really didn't matter what the painting was about, or how generic the style, if it was Aboriginal then it was worth buying. As a consequence, the Australian art market was flooded with Aboriginal art that had little variance in style, and lacking the individuality that is usually sought in the art world.

Although there remains tremendous good will towards Aboriginal artists, failure to make discerning judgements about the merits of individuals has in turn made it very difficult for Aboriginal icons to emerge. Specifically, by not placing emphasis on individuals to create a unique style, one Aborigine has been able to copy another and likewise share in the benefits of a market willing to buy Aboriginal art. While this has a positive side, the proliferation of copying has decreased the recognisability of the pioneer of the subject and style. Ironically, as Aboriginal cultures tend to be communal focussed, this outcome is consistent with communal culture. That said, the culture of the art's market is individualistic. The more recognisable and the more unique that art is, the more potential it has for resale.

Jeffrey Smart
Wastelands

As 84 per cent of Australians live in a coastal catchment, it is not unsurprising that there would be a movement to define the outback as Australia's barren womb instead of its beating heart. Within its specific subculture, the movement has successfully deconstructed the outback as an icon. As yet; however, it has not been very successful in proving alternatives. Jeffrey Smart is one landscape artists who has built his name painting urban settings. In addition to these urban settings, he has also not been averse to tossing the dogs a bone, and his Wasteland paintings once again reinforce the idea that the outback is nothing but a place of ruin for white people.

Brett Whiteley
Balcony 2

Brett Whiteley was another artists that used the urban landscape as his muse. In addition to the urban environment influencing his art, Whiteley was heavily influenced by heroin, and his art shows the beauty as well as warped perspectives that heroin provides.

Nicholas Chevalier
Buffaloe Range from the West.

W.B Gould
The Landlord

Arthur Streeton
Fires On

Frederick McCubbin
Down on His Luck

Russell Drysdale
The Ruins

Russell Drysdale
Man Reading a Paper

Russell Drysdale
Emus in the Landscape

Albert Tucker
Apocalyptic Horse

Albert Tucker
The Metamorhphosis of Ned Kelly

Sidney Nolan
The Trial

Pro Hart
Dunnies

Pro Hart
Grasshopper

Clifford Possum
Bushfire Dreaming

Jeffrey Smart
Wastelands

Brett Whiteley
Balcony 2

Nicholas Chevalier Buffaloe Range from the West.

W.B Gould The Landlord

Arthur Streeton Fires On

Frederick McCubbin Down on His Luck

Russell Drysdale The Ruins

Russell Drysdale Man Reading a Paper

Russell Drysdale Emus in the Landscape

Albert Tucker Apocalyptic Horse

Albert Tucker The Metamorhphosis of Ned Kelly

Sidney Nolan The Trial

Pro Hart Dunnies

Pro Hart Grasshopper

Clifford Possum Bushfire Dreaming

Jeffrey Smart Wastelands

Brett Whiteley Balcony 2