Australian paintings

The value of culture

In the 1980s book, The Shock of the New, Australian art critic Robert Hughes wrote that modernism was finished. He wrote that while new styles had emerged from the turn of the century to the end of the war, by the 60s all that was new was old.

Rather than old being new, perhaps the problem was that artists of developed world had turned to individualism in the hope of becoming the next Van Gogh, Picasso, or Kandinsky. Ironically, the European masters had been refined exponents of genres in which thousands of other artists operated in. They were not master of genres containing only themselves. In other words, they admired for being good, not for being different. In the absence of others following their lead, no new styles emerged and it appeared that the 70s, 80s and 90s were cultural wastlelands with very little creativity.

Like most of the developed world, Australian painting in the 20th century was dominated by individualism. Nevertheless, Australia still produced some cultural styles that endured and even prospered in the face of modernist pressure towards individuality.

Dot painting by Aborigines is one of the most internationally famous styles of Australia. It is misunderstood to be a traditional style, when it would be more accurate to say it is an example of cultural fushion, and in many case, cultural appropriation. Outside of the Aboriginal realm, bush landscapes are common subjects as are caricatures.

Dot painting

Clifford Possum

Clifford Possum
Bushfire Dreaming

The 1970s saw the invention of a completely new style of art known as dot painting. The style developed 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 their culture. The new style quickly spread amongst Aborigines in the region. Clifford Possum was one of the most notable of these early exponents. With time, dot painting came to define Aboriginal painting Australia wide. Even in cultures that had no history of painting in dots, market pressure to produce dot painting led to other Aboriginal cultures adopting it as if it were a traditional practice.

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.

Landscape and Identity in Australian painting

The landscape is a common theme in Australian painting. Often the paint is applied in a rough or messy way to mirror the messyness of the landscape. Human figures are often inserted into the landscape to convey ideas that they are products of it. Again, the figures are often messy and somewhat unrefined in stature.

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.

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 view on a world where nothing is certain.