NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
... ted the harbour theme from Passmore. Olsen blends an interest in form and in the process of painting with a strong and non-traditional leaning towards landscape; landscape for Olsen is a course in itself. The urban response consisted of Robert Dickerson, Clifton Pugh and John Brack. Bracks dry, acerbic view of the world stands in marketed contrast to the dreamy melancholy of Charles Blackman. Bracks satirical view of everyday Australian life finds a parallel in the biting humour of Barry Humphries.
As both of their Australias are middle-class urban, small-minded and riddled with absurdities. The classic subjects of the bush and the outback are not for them; equally the artists rely on the known, on every day actions. In 1959 a collection of artists that went by the name the Antipodeans shaped in Melbourne (Dickerson, Pugh and Brack were members of this), the assembly argued against abstract art. They released a manifesto warning that abstraction reduced art to merely a decorative state and this would lead to the death of art. Stating that Australian artists need to convey the unique Australian experience in their work and they rejected what they saw as young Australian artists obsession with overseas styles. The proposal was a pointer displaying the extensive array of persuasions on Australian painting in the latter half 50 s.
The art of 1960 s reflected the deviation and contrary movements mirrored this clash. Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd made use of a narrative of history, myths and legends and religious subjects. The place of humans in the landscape and folklore was evident in both their works. Taught by his family, Boyd exemplified the actualities of western Melbourne in his work. In 1943 / 44 he demonstrated the individual imagery of living in the depression. Numerous subjects show life and death, death and regeneration.
Lovers and beasts triumphed. The bible pictures in his works were subjective from his grandmothers Old Testament bible that contained pictures. Boyd revisited the old masters like Rembrandt and Breughel. His biblical scenes were set in landscape in a Breughel manner.
Sidney Nolan did an audacious narration of a part of Australian history with his Ned Kelly series. Nolan's work exposes a curiosity in poetry (eg Rimbaud, Blake and French symbolists) and ease of form, which is influenced by Duly, Rousseau and Picasso. Throughout the 1940 s Nolan spent time with John and Sunday Reed, who aided his intellectual growth as an artist. His early landscapes still showed the influence of plein-air tradition. Tuckers article Art, Myths and Society encouraged a concern in the authentic national vision pushing him toward folklore, with which he chose a folk hero, Ned Kelly. During the 1950 s Nolan became one of the best-known painters at work in England.
Russel Drysdale helped change the way Australian people viewed themselves and their country. He gained inspiration when he studied in France and London. WWII presented his work with a slightly surreal overturns in slightly real paintings, it intensified his disposition and concerned him in the peoples response to the unfriendly surroundings. He would produce paintings of gaunt, elongated figures, in front of a vast, barren outback landscape. He reflected the landscape in a different way, going further than the Heidelberg school. One of the worst droughts of the century affected his personal style; he started revealing facets of the Australian outback intimidating to man, suggesting solitude.
Presenting the truth and gradually destroying the over glamorized icon of the idealistic Australian bush, showing sheets of iron distorted by fire, warped by wind they became signs of ineffectuality of human achievement. Thinking that the Aborigines had a noble dignity about them, he later made use of an exceedingly practical way of dealing with facade and appearance in depicting the Aboriginals set in abstracted landscapes. In 1945 the neo-romantics formed the Sydney Group which soon incorporated Drysdale, Nolan, Boyd and Passmore, it represented an increasing strength of abstract and non-figurative art. The artists were the most vital part of art in Australia in this delicate time; they shaped Australian art, as it is known today. Australian Aboriginal art refers to art done by Australian Aborigines, covering art that pre-dates European colonisation as well as contemporary art by Aborigines based on traditional culture. It is not restricted to merely paintings, but includes a wide variety of mediums including woodcarving, sculpture and ceremonial clothing.
To an extent, Aboriginal art also includes artistic embellishments found on weaponry and tools. Art was one of the key elements of Aboriginal culture. Artwork was used to mark territory, record history, and tell stories. Rare ochre's for paints were traded throughout northern Australia. There are a wide variety of styles of Aboriginal art. Three common types are X-ray art, in which the skeletons and viscera of the animals and humans portrayed are drawn inside the outline, as if by cross-section; dot painting where intricate patterns, totems and / or stories are created using dots; and stencil art, particular using the motif of a hand print.
Margaret Preston got her name in 1919 married the wealthy businessman William Preston, and settled in the Sydney Harbour-side suburb of Mosman. In the late 1920 s her prints became barren and arithmetic, travel to Japan and South East Asia amplified the facets of unbalanced design and close surveillance of nature in her work. Her transfer from Sydney to the minute society at Berowra on the Hawkesbury River (1932 - 39) also proved to be an important force on her later work. She became involved in Aboriginal issues and design.
Preston thought that Aboriginal art offered the answer to creating a nationwide art that mirrored the proper life of Australia. In her work Flying over the Shoalhaven river (1942) (seen below) Preston takes in Australian aboriginal art into her own contemporary logic of flying which allows her to interpret the smooth togetherness of scenery. She explores nature in eggs, dead onions and rabbits and demonstrates a careful wisdom of draughtsmanship. She used primitive, innate forms and declared Aboriginal art represents but never duplicates. The majority put in the picture their own tale with no point of view.
Flying over the river is seen with the same straightforwardness as Aboriginal art. The pointed uniformity is seen as unyielding light, getting rid of distracting elements. Biblical themes show compassion for Aboriginal way of life. Her sensitivity for the Aborigines coalesces with the present European aesthetics in her paintings. Aboriginal art came to be used as an aesthetic force, the artists that played, as vehicles for this progression in Australian art were Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Russel Drysdale.
All were (at some stage) affiliated with the Angry Penguins; therefore they were all accustomed to one another's painting styles and as a result of this could draw inspiration from each other. Accompanied by others during the early stages of the war they helped to increase the magnitude of the lean towards expressionism, this was influential in the acceptance of abstract expressionism in Australia, and shows they were all on the same wave length when it came to their work. When the neo-romantics (in 1945) formed the Sydney Group they were all included and functioned with significant roles. Russel Drysdale was one of the more prominent painters of the time, he was the first Australian artist of his generation (which included Nolan and Boyd) to receive international attention and acclaim. In his work he strived to show that desolation and loneliness is a part of outback life.
He did this by adopting a highly realistic treatment of pose and expression in rendering the Aboriginals set in abstracted landscapes. After travelling to the Cape York Peninsula (returning to Australia in 1951) he spawned a passionate curiosity in Aboriginal people, as a subject for painting. This appeal (for him) was his belief that they represented a more complete integration between humans and the environment, which he had always respected and depicted in his art. Drysdale came from a wealthy land-owning family, felt great sympathy for the Aboriginal natives he met on his travels.
Shopping day depicts the Aboriginal people of a north Queensland town in a totally deadening way. They stand, as if posing for a photo, in a spacious, bare street; a war memorial supervises the picture. Nolan and Boyd were indeed of elevated importance in Australian art; Boyds work has been compared to Drysdale's in its aridity. Both artists were largely interested in painting landscapes.
Nolan however received major acclaim for his Ned Kelly series. Boyds skill in capturing a characteristic aspect of the Australian landscape is seen in a majority of his paintings, Aborigines do not feature so regularly in his work, however the desolateness of the environment they inhabit that he portrays takes care of this and somewhat equalized it. Together with some others, Nolan and Boyd were interested in the irrational; surrealism enthused their eagerness for Aboriginal art. Harsh light and stark contrasts are evident in both their Australian landscapes and this illustrates the artists trying to convey their message, that being the real aspects of Australia. Aboriginal art was used in certain ways to direct Australian art as whole in to unexplored territory. To achieve new ways of paintings and completely different subject matter and to show not only Australia, but also the world, the real sun drenched open spaces they knew as Australia.
The overseas influences and inspirations were of immense importance in the makeup of the delicate web known as Australian art, the art from Europe were brought to Australia by exhibitions, reproductions, and migrants, the impacts of this are seen in the work of Australian artists. The effect of social and political unrest in Europe encouraged the Australians to examine exactly what was occurring in their surroundings. Freud, Surrealism and Expressionism were evident in ideologies, subject matter, and works of Australian artists. The centre of Freudian ideas in this time period was Koornong; it also was the centre of theories of creativity and childrens art. Angry Penguin Daily Vassilieff, a migrant from Russia arriving in Melbourne in 1937 taught art at Koornong, this progressive school made up the third centre; Vassilieff was a model of self-reliance and spontaneity.
Fighting on the losing side of the Russian revolution (anti-Bolshevik) his experience of politics brought him to the realisation that art should be apolitical and his grasping of contemporary art in London persuaded him to think that art should also be free of all literary, social and political relations. He thought art was a means of spiritual regeneration; this was founded on the concept of the individual rising above the everyday in the course of the pure passion of his expression. The significant achievement of his exhibitions at London and Melbourne backed his ideology. He had a major influence during the war when the majority of the population thought pro-Russian sympathies were in order, he was against Lenin and the Bolsheviks due to how inexperienced they were. English radical liberal, Herbert Read, presented an artistic and political case for individualism, he did this through his writings that were highly regarded far and wide, were centred on individual understanding and liberty. His book Art Now was the go-between of surrealism and of what he coined super realism a skewed and representational derivative of surrealism embodied by Klee and Picasso.
Trailed back to findings of Freud and Jung, super realism is explained diversely as a poetic revolution, fantasy-thinking and creating a new mythology. This was related to the most intellectual of the Angry Penguins and can be found at the rear of their nearly concurrent launch of personal symbols i. e. Nolan's Ned Kelly series and Tuckers Images of Modern Evil. Nolan was also familiar with Freudian psychology and was able to familiarise himself to concepts and interact at the level of unconscious. Inspiration from all over the world was evident in the works that Boyd produced toward the end of the war.
Enthused by Nazi atrocities (involving the ruthless suppression of Jews in concentration camps) and the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Boyd resorted to convention, firstly the customary religious themes, and then to the Old Masters. Definitely the greatest event of importance in the period was World War II, this effected more or less every artist, whether it be an immense effect on their work, or something as simple as a change in tone, it was without a doubt evident. The change may have come through subject matter, landscape, technique and even attitude, as there was a feeling of angst evident in intellectual artists that they strived to express in their work. Migration during the post-war years made its effects felt in art appreciation and history as well as an introduction to an assortment of procedures and approaches. For example in 1959 Charles R eddington journeyed from the United States he was very important in the favourable reception of abstract expressionism in Australia, this emerged in the work of Dell, Drysdale, Tucker, Nolan and Boyd. To the extent where, in 1960 figurative expressionism was no longer an avante-garde approach in Australia.
The Angry Penguins shared a vast spread of influences. Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series was influenced by suprematism and Mullovichs deconstruction of 3 dimensional forms. This was conveyed by the flat black box that was symbolic of Kellys protective headgear. Suprematism was an offshoot of cubism, it involves reducing a cube to a square, and this is displayed in the majority of Nolan's paintings in the period probably the best in The Death of Constable Scanlon, Mullovich was another European influence. Arthur Boyds literary approach to landscape was abstraction influenced by expressionism, the emotive imagery, strong colour and free flowing line all comes through in his work to present a direct influence from expressionism. One of the more independent of the Angry Penguins, Russel Drysdale, was influenced by 18 th century European art before making a lean towards abstraction with praying mantis like figures, This is represented best in The cricketers which is perhaps Drysdale's most famous painting, and one of the most regularly reproduced images in twentieth-century Australian art.
The subject matter of three gaunt figures set in the middle of the bleak walls of shops in a uninhabited town, submersed in a not natural light, is a memorable and tremendously unique understanding of a well-known sporting game. With Stalin in power up until 1941, there was still a large amount of Red Terror (a Communist force that persecuted anti-Bolsheviks) in Germany in the 1930 s. Hitlers holocaust of the Jews all over Germany and other parts of Europe were culminating in the early 1940 s. With reparation payments being abolished to England and France there was a political discontent in those countries.
However all these were not apparent in the 1950 s and 1960 s, other problems were occurring, but not the enormity of the discontent that was faced all over Europe in the 1930 s and 1940 s far out-weighed that of the latter period. So the inspirations on Australian art from Europe were far more apparent in the early stages. Overseas influences have been vast over the period studied. Seeing as Australia was still a culturally weak nation struggling to find what was its own national identity, all these political social and economic aspects coming in from abroad were confusing to what Australians should be, however they were what had a major involvement in what became of Australian art and made it so diverse, and so accepting.
Free research essays on topics related to: subject matter, early stages, social and political, wide variety, abstract expressionism
Research essay sample on Australian Art 1930 1960
