#nolan.sidney

I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis (44)

All I know is that the hours are long, under these conditions, and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which—how shall I say—which may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. You may say it is to prevent our reason from foundering. No doubt. But has it not long been straying in the night without end of the abyssal depths? That's what I sometimes wonder. You follow my reasoning? (80)

Notes

>> on a gallery wall, it takes you outside that space > could be called ‘the visible universe’ > allusion to sight is important // gradations could be on the side > don't need to be labeled, given the specificity of the text and the fixing of the canvas to the wall / gradations could actually be on the front  as a series of straight lines // would handwritten text detract from the exactitude of the statement? the geometry of the lines could offset this, possibly // maybe it could be two canvases > black and a white one? whatever, the colour is important // typographic text with bruised surrounds radiating out to a flat colour > text as the centre of the universe, its big bang 

Lawrence Weiner, Statements

One standard dye marker thrown into the sea

One aerosol can of enamel sprayed to conclusion directly upon the floor”

A 2" wide 1" deep trench cut across a standard one car driveway

One quart exterior green industrial enamel thrown on a brick wall

Ambiguity within these "as to whether one was nominating as art what was referred to by the text, or offering the text itself as some sort of art in itself" (25)

Universe paintings

Pearce suggests that Ern Malley affair ("Fact and fiction, history and lies could be happy bedmates in the current modernist climate." — p. 31) was a leading factor to the Ned Kelly series << that super-duper excites me.

"Nolan told Brian Adams's that during the Ern Malley affair he was taunted by someone who said, 'I suppose the next thing you'll do is paint Ned Kelly'" 

Nolan links the black square of Kelly's mask to Malevich, Max Ernst (but uses it principally as a formal device) p 32. Pearce then links it to Moholy-Nagy, the curved heads of Albert Tucker, and Joy Hester.

To think on:

“[Nolan] introduced the human drama into the hitherto unpopulated but defining image of the Australian landscape. Much as he used the Australian landscape as the setting for explorations and excursions into the human condition, it was not that natural landscape but the human landscape that drove and sustained his curiosity and imagination.” — p. 11

“Five minutes in the making, five years in the thinking” — p. 12

“There is a similar echo [the ‘ultimate transiences of all things which left, inevitably, the void of melancholy in its wake”] in the often inauspicious landscapes conjured Caspar David Friedrich.” — p. 13

“…Few artists have achieved such personality in the physical texture of their work as Nolan. The subtle, perhaps on occasions not so subtle, allure of this painting lies in the intimacy and felicity of his touch that produced those inviting even sensual surfaces that were so skilfully and speedily produced. Those surfaces excite.” —p. 15

Barry Pearce, 'Nolan’s Parallel Universe’ in Sidney Nolan

Nolan was an artistic and philosophic autodidact, though admired Picasso and Cezanne and was inspired by Rimbaud and Kierkegaard ('truth through subjectiveness; "man should be objective about himself, and subjective about all others" — p. 27). Early paintings were small-scale abstractions inspired by Paul Klee.  

"His style was an intelligent mixture of faux naif, Cezanne, Van Gogh, chaotic scale, objects devoid of gravity, and the exaggerated shadows of surrealism, pulled together by the replicated magic of a child's view of the world." — p. 28

Re: Boy and the moon — p. 23

"basis for exploration of how shape alone and the way it sits in the picture frame can mysteriously carry the presence of a human psyche"

"Chatting with John Sinclair on a park bench in St Kilda one evening, he become intrigued by a big yellow moon swallowing the shape of Sinclair's head: 'I wanted to try, instead of accepting the kind of pure abstract basis that I had up till then ... to try and feed into this image, this disc, some emotional content that was a kind of specific problem that afternoon ... If I can do a flat line and at the same time make the shape appear as if it's round, or if it's a head or a moon, anyway as long as it's got some emotional kick'.

Other Notes:

To research further: 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition; Bernard Smith’s Antipodean Manifesto as a counterclaim against abstraction.

 "Strong trait of painting en serie" — p. 22 

REVIEW: Sidney Nolan, Mrs Fraser and Convict, 1962-4

Physical description

oil and enamel on composition board

151x121cm within a front-loading frame

depicts a woman and man, Mrs Fraser and the convict, standing naked on a beach before a heavy grey sky, with a strip of ocean visible at the horizon

the man is stood straight but askew, with yellow stripes across his body, and appears to be supporting the woman, who is appears limp

Formal analysis 

relatively few compositional elements set within a relatively flat image with an indeterminate pictorial depth

figures are located in the left-hand side of the foreground, not quite life-sized but scaled such that they occupy nearly the full-height of the image; the right-hand side of the image is largely vacant of detail, bisected only by an imprecise horizon occurring at a slight diagonal across the centre of the image via a narrow blue strip of ocean demarcated by the bright white of board

overall cool mid-keyed palette applied over a plain white ground 

figures depicted in a really dilute burnt sienna with a loose and subtractive type of mark; light cad yellow stripes across the male figure

ground plane has discrete areas of semi-transparent colour applied with broad and loose brushstrokes around the figures, shifting, left to right, from predominantly greens and green-grays to include pinks, purples and off-whites

the light cad yellow striping the figure is reprised in the right of the foreground, and, similarly, the stripes ‘rhyme’ with the horizontality of the ground plane and horizon

the sky is an opaque and smooth blue-gray enamel, with limited trace of the Nolan’s hand; its treatment contrasts with the looseness of the figures and ground plane

Phenomenological and Iconographic analysis

the weight of the stormy sky is the dominant aspect of the work, communicating a sense of threat and foreboding; in a marked contrast, the thin depiction of the figures suggests an frailty and ephemerality relative to the the permanence of the landscape; this is emphasised by the near-human scaling and the awkward postures of the figures

their appearance of exhaustion might suggest a close escape

the markings on the male suggest possibility a convict outfit or indigenous tribal markings, introducing an ambiguity as to whether he is the capturer or liberator

story relates to Eliza Fraser but the figures have an archetypal quality which permits a broader allegorical reading of Adam and Eve

Historical analysis

Sidney Nolan was an Australian modernist particular who regularly sought to depict mythology within the Australian landscape, utilising historical events such as the reign of the Kelly Gang, the shipwreck of Eliza Fraser, and the fatal trek of Burke and Wills; he’s best known, however, for his Ned Kelly series of the mid-1940s

Mrs Fraser and Convict was painted in 1962-4 for the cover of Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves which was based on the shipwreck of Eliza Fraser off Fraser Island

It was Nolan’s third exploration of this story (having painted others between 1947-8, 1957-8 and then again in 1971-7)

Eliza Fraser was aboard the Stirling Castle which wrecked on a reef off Fraser Island. She claimed to later have been captured by the Badtjala people and subsequently rescued by John Graham, an escaped convict. There are other versions of the story, including that to which Nolan aligned himself, of another escaped convict, David Bracewell, who, seeking pardon in exchange for assistance, was threatened by Fraser with betrayal for his taking advantage of her 

The Mrs Fraser paintings are thus often linked to his relationship with Sunday Reed, with Mrs Fraser being a icon of his perceived betrayal by Reed after she rejected his proposal of marriage

Comparative analysis 

thematically relates to the other Mrs Fraser paintings completed by Nolan

has technical similarities to Nolan’s thin treatment of the figures and landscapes within the Burke and Wills series, and, similarly, engages with mythology

Interested in: mythology of Ned Kelly in Australian art and literature; the helmet as something which conceals identity but has become something upon which an identity (or mythology) is projected; tension tension between public and private, evinced through the slot in the helmet and its varied depiction of a hollow interior to the helmet or of Kelly’s eyes; and the blurring of biography and autobiography.