Abstraction and figuration

Gallery 12, QAG

The postwar period

This room alludes to the great divide in cultural debates of the postwar period: the distinction between abstraction – in all its varieties – and figurative imagery. Australian artists felt the impact of the new abstract art and tried to come to terms with it: Ian Fairweather commented that painting was a tightrope between representation and ‘the other thing – whatever that is’. Forceful, emotional and immediate gestural forms in abstract painting dominated in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

There were several sources for the new abstraction: Europe, with many leading Australian artists of the day being immigrants of European origin; the great postwar cultural force of the United States, especially the abstract expressionism of De Kooning and Pollock; and calligraphic traditions based on Japanese Zen Buddhism, often transmitted to Australia through North American art. However, Australian ceramic artists of the time learned directly from their Japanese colleagues.

Abstraction of any sort was constantly challenged. In 1959, critic Bernard Smith wrote The Antipodean Manifesto specifically to denounce abstract art, and to iterate the importance of figurative painters such as Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerson for Australia. However, only a few years later, Australian art had changed beyond recognition. The abstraction–figuration debate was soon overtaken by more complex issues and a wider range of cultural references.

Through travel, Australian artists and audiences came into more regular contact with art from many countries, and in subsequent decades, rapidly engaged first hand with ‘international’ forms of art as diverse as Pop art, Minimalism, colour-field painting and conceptual art. Yet cultural independence continued to be a major issue for Australian artists throughout the 1970s, and the question of how to develop independent artistic forms remains a major preoccupation today.

Arnhem Land bark painting

Bark painting has evolved from ancient rock art, and from paintings on wet-weather bark shelters, on hollow-log burial poles and on the body. Since anthropologist Baldwin Spencer commissioned the first bark painting from artists in western Arnhem Land in 1912, significant changes in style, technique, scale and iconography have resulted from paintings entering public institutions, and the appreciation of their aesthetic significance. By the 1970s, a strong market had developed: bark painting was recognised as contemporary art and continues to evolve. Recent barks are cut into geometric shapes with complex and refined surface patterning.

These bark paintings from eastern Arnhem Land are characterised by figurative elements and repeated geometric patterns, with intricate crosshatching (rarrk) that creates shimmering surfaces. The narratives tell of heroic ancestral journeys and creative acts that formed both land and culture.

Yalangbara is a rare collaborative bark painting by six senior artists from coastal Yirrkala in north-eastern Arnhem Land. This monumental work was created in response to the proposed excision of land from the Arnhem Land reserve for bauxite mining. The artists painted their country and history in a bid to stop the desecration of their sacred lands, and to ensure the health and safety of future generations of Yolngu.

The bark used for Arnhem Land paintings, canoes and bush shelters is invariably from the versatile stringybark tree (Eucalyptus tetrodonta). Its wood is used for ceremonial objects, tools, didgeridoos, drums and hollow-log coffins. Taken from the tree in large sheets, after seasonal rains have caused the sap to rise, the bark is then cleansed by fire, flattened, seasoned and smoothed, providing an inviting painting surface. The artists mine for and prepare ochres and pigments, fix them with glue and apply them with small brushes, working with the bark laid on the ground.

Ian Fairweather

Ian Fairweather is one of Australia’s most eminent artists. His paintings are highly individual statements within the broader context of modern Australian art. Born in Scotland in 1891, Fairweather travelled extensively through northern Europe and Asia for much of his adult life, absorbing diverse cultural influences that were woven into his paintings. He visited Australia for the first time in 1933, settling permanently in 1953 on Bribie Island, north of Brisbane. Fairweather found the island’s environment conducive to his work, and the last two decades of his life are generally recognised as his most productive and successful.

From the late 1940s onwards, Fairweather grappled with the tensions between representation and abstraction. Since conquering the human figure in the 1920s as a student of Henry Tonks at the Slade School, London, it had remained constant in his painting. Most works in this display, however, date from the 1950s and 1960s, and indicate his progression towards complete abstraction around 1960 and subsequent return to figuration. Fairweather described this tension on behalf of many artists of his time when he said that, ‘It’s between representation and the other thing, whatever that is, and it’s difficult to keep one’s balance’.

The Gallery holds an extensive group of works by Fairweather and mounts changing displays that allow detailed consideration of his work, from the early figurative paintings to the renowned abstract works. This display acknowledges Fairweather’s significance in Australian art, and recognises the close connection he shared with Queensland – the place where he created his great late works.

Mrs Fraser

In July 1947, Sidney Nolan left Melbourne for Queensland. Among John and Sunday Reed’s circle at Heide he had met the young Brisbane poet Barrett Reid, who suggested he would find new inspiration for his painting up north in the mining sites, small towns, deserts and tropical rainforests. Reid’s prophecy was accurate: the trip to Queensland seems to have been a turning point in Nolan’s career.

At Brisbane’s John Oxley Library, he read accounts of the story of Eliza Fraser, a woman shipwrecked on Fraser Island in 1836, after whom it was subsequently renamed. Nolan was fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser’s survival, her time spent with the Indigenous people (variously described as captivity or salvation) and her rescue by the convict Bracefell. Nolan spent time on the island, which resulted in an exhibition of Fraser Island paintings at Brisbane’s Moreton Galleries in February 1948.

In 1957, after emigrating to Britain, Nolan began a new Mrs Fraser series with a palette that merged the colours of the muddy reaches of the Thames at Putney, where he now lived, with memories of the Queensland rainforests. The new painting medium of polyvinyl acetate allowed him to emphasise a heavy, psychologically-charged atmosphere, where the figures of Eliza Fraser and Bracefell hover in a dark world of swampy and anthropomorphic vegetation.

The continuing presence of Eliza Fraser in Nolan’s work, almost twenty years after he first explored it, suggests that the episode had a strong impact on his work and was instrumental in his development as an artist.