Australian painting - Clash of Cultures in a Strange Land

Australian paintings

The value of culture

It is difficult to talk about a modern Australian painting culture because that would imply a common style, which simply does not exist outside of the Aboriginal world. Like it is in America and Europe, modern Australian painting tends to be a mosaic of individuality, with appropriation being frowned upon, status given to those who create a style of their own, and appreciation for artists who can provide some kind of “critical” commentary. Painters who assimilate someone else’s style, or paint an emotionally beautiful scene from nature, tend to derided as “lacking creativity.”

In some ways, the emphasis on individuality, unique techniques and critical commentary is a little misguided because the most successful artists in Australia come from the Aboriginal world where there is little of either. Furthermore, the most successful modernist artists of the 20th century, such as Picasso, Pollock, and Matisse, were part of movements that involved groups painting within a common style or philosophy.

Rather than be the enemy of good art, commonality (culture) is the friend of it. By sacrificing some of their individuality, cultural artists are able to learn from their teachers and their peers. Their commonality allows for greater refinement of skill and concept. Furthermore, each exponent of the style is promoting it. Consequently, the success of one improves the chance of other individuals using the style of likewise finding success.

While commonality (culture) in the non-Aboriginal world today is quite rare today, in the past, there was a great deal of commonality and this commonality produced the icons of Australian painting. Arguably, an incorporation of the landscape to explore the Australian identity has been the mainstay of 200 years of Australian gallery art.

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. Furthermore, because 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 unique characteristics were 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 apocalypse. The Angry Penguins also included Arthur Boyd who explored the difficult marriage of Aboriginal and non-aboriginal ideas.

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 ambiguous, and therefore contributed to the intrigue in his work.

The post-war period also saw the emergence of Pro Hart, Australia's most commercially 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. Because 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.

The 1970s saw the invention of a completely new style of art known as dot painting. The style developed in the 1970s when a white school teacher north of Alice Springs, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged Aboriginal children to use acrylics to paint a mural using traditional body and sand painting techniques of the local Aborigines. The new style quickly spread amongst Aborigines in the region. Clifford Possum was one of the most notable of these early exponents.

The use of dots allowed for new forms of expression and new ways of thinking which were quite revolutionary to the world of art galleries. The artists often used uncomplimentary colours to exaggerate effects or convey emotion much like Van Gogh. The symbiotic meaning of the dots also allowed for a different conception of time and place. Each dot could represent a moment in time and a moment in space, or an individual that was seperate and also a part of a whole. Together, a painting could represent a time and place which was instantaneous, or group and individuals which are both separate and one. Previously, such methods of thinking were constricted to the lucid ponderings of Albert Einstein.

Although most Australian art has used the outback as a surce of inspiration, it is an environmental subject matter that most Australians have little familiarity with. 84 per cent of Australians live in a coastal catchment and their only experience with the outback comes via movies or paintings.

Not all Australian artists have used to help an outback to help an Australian audience understand a subject matter they have no experience with. Brett Whiteley is one artists that used the urban landscape as his muse, and his art definately deals with subject matters that coastal residents do have experience with. Influenced by heroin, Whiteley's art seems to give a lucid viw on a world where nothing is certain.

Ken Done is another Sydney artist that used the environmental features of the coast as the chief subject of his art. Done painted in the naïve style of a child, and argued that he was trying to capture how a scene felt, rather than how it looked. In truth, his art captured neither the look nor the feel of the Australian coast. If anything, they were the opposite to how the coast felt and appealed because they were un-Australian. Australia just isn’t a land of bright, loud colours. Admittedly, Sydney has a deep blue ocean and deep green sub-tropical trees, but the people who inhabit Sydney show an aversion to wearing excessively colourful clothing. Furthermore, during summertime, there is a very sedate beach culture that is not vibrant and colourful. It’s relaxed. Bright colours do not adequately capture that overall mellowness of the Sydney beach scenes.

Despite failing to capture the look of feel of the landscape, Done’s sales pitch proved contagious and throughout the 80s and 90s, he became one of Australia’s most commercially successful artists. Not only did he sell artworks, but he also had his art put on pillow covers, towels and T-shirts. His work became very recognisable, and with strategic targeting of the tourism market, recognisably Australian.