THE MODERNS - Queensland Art Gallery

THE MODERNS
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY COLLECTION
ROOM BROCHURE

MODERN art and Australia
‘The Moderns: Highlights from the Queensland Art Gallery
Collection’ touring exhibition features many of the Gallery’s
treasured works of Australian art. As Australia swiftly
modernised in the first half of the twentieth century, Australian
artists responded to their changing society, architecture and
cities in different ways. This collective effort to understand
these new circumstances lies at the heart of ‘The Moderns’.
European modernist culture influenced the eclectic art of
Australian artists during the 1920s to the 1940s — at first
through reproductions in books and magazines, and later
through more frequent travel abroad. Though Australians
adopted individual artistic styles, they shared an interest in
various strands of European Modernism, including Surrealism,
which became an inspiration for artists such as James Gleeson
and Peter Purves Smith. Gleeson, regarded as Australia’s leading
surrealist painter, was inspired by TS Eliot’s poetry and by the
paintings of Salvador Dali, first shown in Australia in 1939. 1
Several contending forms of Modernism developed in Australia.
Sydney artists in the 1920s and 1930s were closer to the urbane
Modernism of European design and decor, exemplified in the
Australian publications Art in Australia and The Home. Roland
Wakelin recognised the modernity embodied in the construction
of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in, for example, his major painting
The Bridge under construction 1928. Similarly, Grace Cossington
Smith’s singing colour palette and architectural compositions
convey the dynamism of the period, whereas, by contrast, Godfrey
Miller visualised the spiritual in nature — in Trees in moonlight
1955–57 Miller synthesised trees and a slowly moving moon in
Sydney’s Domain gardens into multi-directional geometric lattice. 2
Grace Crowley, too, was inspired by European Modernism. Her
early study abroad under the French Cubists André Lhote and
Albert Gleizes and the flat geometric planes of experimental
European non-representational art pervaded her works. Crowley,
in turn, influenced her friend and colleague Ralph Balson, who,
James Gleeson Structural emblems of a friend (self portrait) 1941 Grace Crowley Torso, study in volume 1929

Roland Wakelin The Bridge under construction 1928 Hilda Rix Nicholas The fair musterer 1935
in 1941, produced the first exhibition of entirely abstract paintings
in Australia. The Gallery’s magnificent pair of abstracts by
the close friends demonstrate their interest in rhythmic
overlapping planes, like layered coloured tissue paper:
Crowley’s consciously asymmetrical (Abstract) 1951 and
Balson’s more rigidly formal Constructive panting 1947. 3
Eric Wilson, another Sydney-based Modernist, also studied
abroad. He took classes at the Westminster School of Art,
London — an eminent school of modern art — where his
teachers included Mark Gertler and Bernard Meninsky, both
distinguished English Modernists. Influenced by Cubism, Purism
and Surrealism, Wilson used these styles like a language:
changing from one to the other depending on the subject he
was depicting and the mood he was trying to communicate.
The pre-eminence of painting was augmented by new interests
in printmaking and photography among the Modernists. While
Europe remained a major inspiration for artistic developments
in Australia, some artists also began to agitate for locally
inspired sources for their works, such as Margaret Preston,
who captured the pattern and repetition of Australian wildflowers
as modernist designs. Max Dupain documented changing social
spaces and the growing appreciation of beach culture with
the clean lines captured in his black and white photographs.
In Melbourne, modern art took a radically different turn. In the
1940s and 1950s, a group of artists including Arthur Boyd,
Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and John Perceval —
many supported by patrons John and Sunday Reed — became
famous for a raw expressionist idiom that drew its passion from
the turbulence of the war years and later from the struggle
to develop an authentically Australian cultural vision. Despite
the artists’ individual styles, they shared an interest in various
strands of European Modernism, including Surrealism and
German Expressionism. The ‘Angry Penguins’, as the group was
known, took their name from the magazine of the same name
published by Max Harris and John Reed, which championed
art that was vital, spontaneous and anti-establishment. The
paintings made by the group, both during and immediately
after the war years, highlighted the social turmoil and anxiety
accompanying the conflict. In particular, Albert Tucker’s
1940s ‘Images of modern evil’ series dealt with what he saw
as the moral decline in Australia that accompanied World War
Two. A radical artistic and literary group, the Angry Penguins
created their expressionist art against this cultural backdrop.
The influence of the Angry Penguins persisted after the end of
World War Two. Charles Blackman, Sydney-born and several
years younger than his Victorian peers, became interested in
their work after viewing Nolan’s paintings in Brisbane in 1948. 4
There, Blackman met the poet and librarian Barrett Reid, who
introduced him to the Reeds in Melbourne in 1950. Blackman’s
decision to move to Melbourne the following year was prompted
by his desire to work with Nolan and Tucker, though by this time
both artists had left Australia for Europe. The child-like quality and
expressive colour of Blackman’s City lights, painted in Brisbane in
1952, directly links his work to that of his southern counterparts.

During this time, more traditional conceptions of artistic practice
continued to flourish — especially in landscape and portraiture,
which sometimes documented modern subjects, such as William
Dobell’s The Cypriot 1940. Considered one of Dobell’s finest works,
the painting was based on sketches of Aegus Gabrielides, a Greek
waiter from the London cafe that Dobell had frequented before his
return to Australia in 1939. The focus is on the sitter’s nationality,
as indicated by the title. With a Mediterranean character still
unfamiliar to many Australians at the time, The Cypriot is as much
a depiction of cultural difference as a portrait of an individual.
It also portends the post-World War Two migration influx to
Australia, which invigorated the art scene as many migrant artists
brought with them direct experience of international trends.
In this changing Australian art scene and in the development
of modernity, women played an integral role. In 1938, Nora Heysen
was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize with a portrait
of Madame Elink Schuurman, which prompted debate about
whether women could paint as well as men. As a demonstration
of how society had yet to modernise, Adelaide’s The Mail
newspaper asked in a front page article: ‘Can a Woman be
an Artist — and a Wife?’ 5 Nevertheless, a new assertive
feminine sensibility emerged in relation to the masculine
ethos of the bush. Hilda Rix Nicholas in The fair musterer
1935 chose to depict her son’s governess, Nance Edgley,
as a farm worker with an air of self-assurance. 6
Other subjects for the traditional genre of portraiture were
evidence of the changing times in Australian society: William
Dargie’s magisterial portrait of Albert Namatjira as an elder
statesman won the Archibald Prize in 1956 — despite Namatjira
not being considered an Australian citizen. In the intervening
period this portrait has become accepted as the iconic image
of Australia’s most recognised Indigenous artist.
The enduring Australian genre of landscape painting was also
reinvigorated by modernist developments as seen in the sinuous
forms of Russell Drysdale’s Man feeding his dogs 1941 and
by regional inflections, as in Kenneth Macqueen’s watercolours
of rural Queensland. In 1922, Macqueen moved to a property
on the Darling Downs in south-east Queensland, and the region
provided his main subject matter. The artist’s crisp, clear,
coloured washes evoke the distinctive topography of the
Downs, conveying a distinctly modern vision of the land.
Modernist currents in art manifested in many forms throughout
Australian art during this period, some mutually influential and
some quite contradictory: they can be seen as artistic evidence
of a period of great social change and turmoil. Australian artists
have always responded in different ways to changes in society —
in how and where we live — and in so doing, they communicate
a multitude of times and places and artistic interests. This
exhibition exemplifies the climate of contention, and indicates
the importance of multiple artistic idioms in the development
of modern Australian culture in the twentieth century.
Angela Goddard is Curator, Australian Art to 1975 and Michael Hawker is Assistant
Curator, Australian Art to 1975 at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
William Dargie Portrait of Albert Namatjira 1956

DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
The opportunity arose to tour this exhibition of significant
modern paintings from our Collection while ‘Portrait of Spain:
Masterpieces from the Prado’ is presented in our Australian
art collection galleries at the Queensland Art Gallery.
‘The Moderns’ tells several stories of how Australian artists
responded to the rapid modernisation of Australia in the first
half of the twentieth century. The exhibition includes some of the
finest works from our Australian art collection, by leading artists
of the time including Margaret Preston, William Dobell, Russell
Drysdale, Peter Purves Smith, Nora Heysen, Roland Wakelin and
Grace Cossington Smith. Highlights include iconic works such
as Dobell’s The Cypriot 1940 and Roland Wakelin’s The Bridge
under construction 1928, which are rarely off permanent display,
along with important recent acquisitions such as Purves Smith’s
Lucile 1937, acquired in 2011 with funds raised through the
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Appeal.
This exhibition represents our commitment to making the
Collection accessible to all Queenslanders. It will tour to Cairns,
Winton and Rockhampton over the next five months, and we look
forward to sharing these works with new audiences.
Russell Drysdale Man feeding his dogs 1941

Tour venues
Cairns Regional Gallery | 23 June – 5 August 2012
Outback Regional Gallery, Winton | 11 August – 7 September 2012
Rockhampton Art Gallery | 5 October – 18 November 2012
CAPTIONS
CoveR IMAGE: Nora Heysen / Australia 1911–2003 /
Self portrait (detail) 1938 / Oil on canvas laid on board /
39.5 x 29.5cm / Purchased 2011 with funds from Philip Bacon, AM,
through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation /
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Lou Klepac
James Gleeson / Australia 1915–2008 / Structural emblems
of a friend (self portrait) 1941 / Oil on canvas board / 46 x 35.6cm /
Purchased 1984 with the assistance of the John Darnell Bequest /
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © QAG
Grace Crowley / Australia 1890–1979 / Torso, study in volume 1929 / Oil on canvas /
64.9 x 49cm / Bequest of Miss Grace Crowley 1981 / Collection: Queensland Art
Gallery / © QAG
Roland Wakelin / New Zealand/Australia 1887–1971 / The Bridge under construction
1928 / Oil on composition board / 96.5 x 118cm / Purchased 1994. Queensland
Art Gallery Foundation Grant. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary
1895–1995 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Roland Wakelin Estate
Hilda Rix Nicholas / Australia 1884–1961 / The fair musterer 1935 / Oil on canvas /
102.3 x 160.4cm / Purchased 1971 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © QAG
ENDNOTES
1 Salvador Dali’s L’ homme fleur 1932 was included in ‘Exhibition of French
and British Contemporary Art’, Melbourne Town Hall, in October 1939.
See Lou Klepac and Geoffrey Smith, James Gleeson beyond the screen
of sight, http://nga.gov.au/Gleeson/essay.cfm, viewed 25 January 2012.
2 Deborah Edwards, ‘Art and mysticism’, in Brought to Light: Australian Art
1850–1965, Lynne Seear & Julie Ewington (eds), Queensland Art Gallery,
Brisbane, 1998, pp.246–48.
3 Candice Bruce, ‘Built on each other’, in Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850–1965,
Lynne Seear & Julie Ewington (eds), Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1998, p.228.
4 The exhibition was Sidney Nolan, ‘Fraser Island paintings’, Moreton Galleries,
Brisbane, Feb. 1948.
5 ‘Can a Woman be an Artist — and a Wife?’ The Mail (Adelaide), 21 January 1939, p.1.
6 John Pigot, ‘Hilda Rix Nicholas’, in Heritage: The National Women’s Art Book: 500
Works by Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955, Joan Kerr (ed.),
G+B Arts International Limited, Sydney, 1995, p.287.
William Dargie / Australia 1912–2003 / Portrait of Albert Namatjira 1956 / Oil on canvas /
102.1 x 76.4 cm / Purchased 1957 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © QAG
Russell Drysdale / Australia 1912–1981 / Man feeding his dogs 1941 / Oil on canvas /
51.2 x 61.4cm / Gift of C.F. Viner-Hall 1961 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © QAG
Project coordinators: Kate Ravenswood and Caitlin Pijpers
Curator: Angela Goddard
Editor: Kirsty Burow
Designer: Alisha van Kimmenade
PUBLISHER
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane
PO Box 3686, South Brisbane
Queensland 4101 Australia
W: qagoma.qld.gov.au
Published in association with the touring exhibition ‘The Moderns: Highlights from
the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’ organised by the Queensland Art Gallery |
Gallery of Modern Art.
© Queensland Art Gallery, 2012
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