Living With Art

How are we supposed to appreciate art?  It may seem a dumb question, but art historians and critics tend to tie themselves into knots sometimes when answering it.  It is the belief of many commentators that society has got it wrong by focusing on the technical elements of a work of art, or its provenance or its historical context.

Sure, these issues are important, but what we are not encouraged to do is to connect up works of art with the trials and aspirations of our daily lives.  “It is quickly deemed vulgar, even repugnant, to seek personal solace, encouragement, enlightenment or hope from high culture” ALAIN De BOTTON. To put it simply, we are not encouraged to appreciate art as a means of instruction on how to live and die well.

The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon remarked that the paintings of Howard Hodgkin were a rebuttal to the dry academic puritanism of much art criticism these days that can’t relate to a work of art until it’s been reduced to a set of abstract concepts.  I recall having an art teacher at RMIT who was embarrassed by the display of emotion in art.

Elliott Erwitt, His first wife and their child, New York, 1953

Photographer Elliott Erwitt was born to Russian Jewish parents in Paris in 1928, and as the war clouds loomed, his family emigrated to America.  He felt being an émigré helped him in his job – being an outsider looking in.  He is regarded as a humanist and humourist.

Eve Arnold, Divorce In Moscow 1966

Eve Arnold’s photograph could be considered a modern day version of those moralizing images that characterised Christian paintings of the past.  In a secular world and with considerable skill, Arnold brings us face to face with the consequences of letting ourselves and others down.

Jessica Todd Harper, The Agony In The Kitchen 2012

This photo was specifically commissioned for the book Art As Therapy, written by Alain De Botton and John Armstrong.  The rationale of this exercise is that art should start serving our psychological needs as effectively as it served theological and state needs for centuries.  We are asked here to consider what impact viewing this image might have on a couple whose own relationship is going through some difficulties.  They may realise that other people have the same sorrows and troubles as they have.  They may connect with something that is universal and unashamed.  They are not robbed of their dignity but are learning the deepest truths about being human.

Rogier Van Der Weyden, Descent From The Cross, circa 1438

Even in a secular world it is still possible to feel the emotion pouring out of this painting.  It transcends the perhaps narrow Christian context to touch the viewer in ways many other paintings of that era can’t.  It is a technical masterpiece for sure, but its psychological power goes far beyond.

Art After Dark

Night time has been described as the time when reality disappears and imaginings begin.  People somehow seem less sane at night, according to Mark Twain.  Shakespeare described night as the witching time and the night seems to have been a particularly productive time for many artists, particularly those interested in images of drama, mystery and perhaps even madness.

Georges Del La Tour, Magdalen With A Smoking Flame, circa 1640

“If you are trying to image things rather than look at them, to see them with your mind’s eye, then darkness comes into its own, and the night becomes your ally.  The dark brought drama to our divine imaginings and made them feel real.” WALDEMAR jANUSZCZAK

Ippolito Caffi, Serenade In St Marks Place

Italian artist Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) seems to have had a particularly intense relationship with the night. His daytime scenes of Venice are superb but it’s his night time scenes that are relevant here, and he is a difficult artist to find any substantial information on.

Ippolito Caffi, Marketplace in Venice by Moonlight

At an exhibition of his work, held at the Museo Correr in Venice in 2016, (what I would have given to see it) the catalogue describes Caffi as a restless observer of society and a convinced patriot.  “Venice was the city that Caffi loved most, whose freedom he fought for and whose spectacular beauty he translated into painting, employing a capacity for synthesis unequaled during the entire nineteenth century.”

Ippolito Caffi, The Pantheon By Moonlight

His patriotism drove him to become the first painter to record an Italian naval engagement, but his efforts came to nothing.  The Re d' Italia, on which he traveled was destroyed on July 20, 1866, by the Austro-Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lissa, drowning him along with his comrades.

Ippolito Caffi, Solar Eclipse Over Venice 1842

Caffi was also a fine chronicler of unusual events. Here is his depiction of a solar eclipse. One wonders how many of these people lost their sight whilst witnessing this event.

Johann Christian Claussen Dahl, Dresden In The Moonlight, 1839

There’s a gorgeous serenity in Johann Christian Dahl’s moonlit scenes of Dresden.  They take me to another level of consciousness, whereas I suspect a daytime view would not have the same effect.  The candle lit rooms across the river and the flares on the river bank contrast beautifully with the cold light of the moon.

Edward Hopper, The Nighthawks, 1943

Film directors love the paintings of American artist Edward Hopper. There are so many questions being posed here. What is the relationship between the couple on the right? What about the menacing figure of the guy with the powerful shoulders who has his back to us? No one has been able to precisely locate where this scene is, perhaps a deliberate ploy by Hopper to increase the mystery of the scene.

Moonlight Near Roxby Downs, 2014, Oil On Canvas, 101 cm x 142 cm

Roxby Downs is located in outback South Australia and this painting was inspired by a photo I saw of a lightning strike in the area, and I was particularly interested in the sheen on the water created by the lightning fork.  So I decided to turn the scene into a moonlit night time image, partly because of the challenge it presented and partly to highlight the isolation of the scene. And yet, the cold moonlight perhaps gives the scene a softness and harmony that may not be present during the daytime when you could image the appalling heat during the summer months.

The Conundrum That Was Brett Whiteley

In writing about Brett Whiteley, it is tempting to simply present the facts and let the reader draw his/her own conclusions, such are the contradictions. He claims that at the age of about 5 he re-experienced his birth.  He said it was a fearful experience.  He claims he saw 2 words on the wall of his mother’s womb.  Security.  Rebellion.  He had to decide which one he would go towards.

Brett Whiteley, Self Portrait at 16

In an ABC program focussing on his work “Alchemy” he discusses his life in a boarding school at Bathurst. He left the security of his mother and found himself in a boarding school “with these morons who talk like rabbits about tractors and seeds.  You are penned in, you don’t know what the crime is (most horrible).”  So he tried to imagine a world that was more constructive and meaningful.  “There were bus trips to church where you were given stained glass window meaningless talk then be taken back school for lunch.”  There is the oft told story of him finding on the church floor a book about Van Gogh and suddenly he felt there was a meaning to existence.  He knew it was in him and had to find a way to get it out.

So it’s a bleak picture that he is portraying here, and yet it’s documented that he was given paints and brushes and allowed to produce works at the rear of the classroom, and he would often return to Bathurst later in life to recharge the batteries.

In an interview with Barry Pearce many years ago, Whiteley’s widow Wendy described Brett as a driven artist.  “He wanted to create his own world and move away from childhood.  We were curious and obsessive, we wanted to take things apart.  He viewed contentment as a dangerous state, bovine.  He needed to put his hand in the fire.”

Some interesting observations were made about Whiteley by his co-workers at Linton Advertising Agency where he worked in his mid-late teens.  They felt he was going full speed at the world with a sense of seeking compensation.  There was a disquiet about him which he disguised by moving fast.

Whiteley threatened to walk out of school if his mother left for England.  She left anyway and Brett felt abandoned.  However he received encouragement from his father Clem in his desire to become an artist.

Portrait of John Christie

Of the Christie series (works based on the London serial killer John Christie) Wendy said Brett had a lot of pain in his life and so did she.  The death of his father in 1963 raised a lot of questions.  It was recognition that evil and ugliness, good and beauty coexist.  It was about this time he became aware of Francis Bacon and his ability to deal with alienation whilst producing beautiful things.

BW with Francis Bacon

Of the monumental work American Dream, Wendy described New York as floundering in the late 1960’s and Brett pushed himself to the extreme and it took its toll.  American dream was Whiteley’s response to New York and what was going on there.  “The centre panel looks like he vomited all over the canvas which was painted in a drunken state of rage and fear.”

Brett Whiteley - American Dream

“He had this desire to know everything….but not being prepared to accept that there are a lot of things you may never know.  He couldn’t concentrate on one thing at a time and became really overloaded in New York.”

Pearce described American Dream as having trauma and failure written all over it, because Whiteley’s intentions were absurd.  “He aimed at nothing less than to challenge America and change it.”  Pearce thought the painting was less about America and more a portrait of Whiteley himself “whipping up hell and heaven to extend the possibilities of art far beyond what it could achieve.”

American Dream was never exhibited in America, the Marlborough-Gerson gallery refused to take an interest in it, and Whiteley fled to Fiji to recover – without Wendy and daughter Arkie.

Brett Whiteley - Alchemy

In 1972-73 Whitley produced another monumental work “Alchemy”, described by Pearce as another self-portrait but without the fierce political agenda of its predecessor.  Drugs and alcohol took its toll on Whiteley’s health during the production of Alchemy and viewing the ABC program based on this work, his motivations for it seemed incoherent at times.

It was after he and Wendy moved to Lavender Bay in 1974 that heroin began to play a major role in their lives.  Wendy spoke of spending time with some very crummy people and the ”whole tragic thing”.  In spite of his addiction, Whiteley produced some excellent work, but “he was just defeated in the end.”

In a letter to his mother written in the latter part of his life, Whiteley mentions her inability to spawn love, a difficulty that he inherited to some degree and this accounts for their vigorous independence.

Pearce argues that in Whiteley’s hunger for physical intimacy, reflected through the sexual themes of his art, emotional intimacy was not part of the game.  In his last days he finished up with neither.

He died alone from a drug overdose in a hotel in Thirroul south of Sydney in 1992, aged 53.

The Hard Hitting But Entertaining Critic

If you are looking for an art critic who can make art understandable and accessible, then English born Waldemar Januszczak could be your man.  He has an easy, conversational style of presentation that I have always enjoyed.  Often humorous and witty, he is credited with doing for the arts what David Attenborough has done for the natural world.

He began his career as an art critic with the Guardian in the 1980’s before switching to the Sunday Times in 1992.  In 1997 he founded a company called ZCZ Films which has produced over 30 films covering travel, the arts and even dogs.  In his program Puppy Love from 2000, Januszczak takes a swipe at dogs and particularly their owners who he can’t stand.  From the snippet I’ve seen on Youtube, it looks hilarious.

His 2009 series “Baroque! From St Peters to St Pauls” reinvigorated my passion for the arts after a disastrous return to the workforce.  It was dark and brooding in segments, but highly entertaining and informative.  His self-deprecation is something I appreciate yet at the same time his profound knowledge of and passion for art history is clear.

But he has an acerbic tongue, or should that be pen?  His hatred of the Turner Prize is legendary dating all the way back to 1984.  “The British art establishment, having already shown unforgivable ignorance and wickedness in its dealings with Turner's own Bequest to the nation, is now bandying his name about in the hope of giving some spurious historical credibility to a new prize cynically concocted to promote the interest of a small group of dealers, gallery directors and critics.”

One year on and things hadn’t improved, ‘The Turner Prize, like the rot of the Arts Council, the rise of business sponsorship with strings attached, the growing importance of the PR man in art, the mess at the V&A, and the emergence of the ignorant "art consultant" is the direct result of inadequate government support for the arts. Forced out into the business circus, art has had to start clowning around.’  Both quotes are from The Guardian.  Of the 2014 prize Januszczak described it as “yawn-forcingly, heart-crushingly, buttock-clenchingly bad” and urged people not to go.

Unfortunately, Januszczak’s invective has also been directed towards Australian art, in particular the exhibition “Australia” mounted at the Royal Academy in 2013.  The Times seemed impressed with it, describing the exhibition as long overdue.  But over at the Sunday Times, Januszczak disagreed and described it as light weight, provincial and dull.  Yet in his most recent TV series “Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art – Made In The USA” he seemed to be championing exactly that kind of art – at least in the snippet I uncovered on the Net.

John Olsen Sydney Sun

Januszczak describes McCubbin’s famous Pioneers triptych as “poverty porn” (work that one out), Fred Williams desert landscape as “thick cowpats of minimalism”, and most indigenous art as “tourist tat”.  He reserved his most fierce attack for John Olsen’s Sydney Sun describing as “a cascade of diarrhoea”.   Olsen responded by describing the comments as foolish and an attempt to put the colonials in their place.

Januszczak’s website ZCZ Films includes a shop that, strangely, contains very few of his most recent programs.  The ABC informed me they were frozen out of negotiations to screen his 2016 series The Renaissance Unchained by the BBC agreeing to an exclusive rights deal with Foxtel Arts. One assumes this also applies to his other recent films.  The Renaissance Unchained is still not available on the website.  This tends to make one feel very lonely in OZ, unless one can afford pay-tv.

Art In Post Industrial Towns

The town of North Adams Massachusetts was on its knees following the closure of the local electronics industry in 1985.  At its height, the Sprague Electric Company employed over 4000 people in a community of 18000 but cheap imports from Asia killed it.  The factories themselves date back to the late 19th century when it started out as a print works.

The BBC screened a series called Relative Values many years ago and one episode focused on plans to turn the huge factory complex into a contemporary art museum.  I wanted to find out if it had become a reality.

Plans to transform the factory complex date back to the year after Sprague closed, 1986, when staff from the nearby Williams College Museum of Art were inspecting the facility as a suitable venue to exhibit large contemporary art that were not able to be displayed in a more traditional gallery setting.  They realised the buildings had much more potential than as an offshoot gallery.  Several years of fundraising followed and petitioning of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts resulted in an $18.6 million grant.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) opened in 1999 with 19 galleries and 9,300 m2 of exhibition space which has since more than doubled with subsequent expansions. In addition to housing galleries and performance art spaces, it also rents spaces to commercial tenants. Music festivals are also held there.

According to a NPR (National Public Radio) article from 2012, you could pick up a live/work loft space for under $40,000.  Sounds attractive, but Mass MoCA has not been the employment generator that was first envisioned.  Original estimates that the development would create 600 jobs proved off the mark.  The real number is less than 300, although with subsequent expansions this figure may have increased.  There is some skepticism these days that a post-industrial town can turn things around entirely by building art galleries and developing economies based on the so-called creative industries.  It would appear that Mass MoCA is a work in progress.

Part of an installation by Liz Glynn

Dealing With Imperfection

“Always look on the bright side of death…..just before you draw your terminal breath”.  So sang the Monty Python crew in the film Life Of Brian.

A recurrent theme in Alain De Botton’s School of Life is the concept that life cannot be perfected, and the sooner we acclimatize to this the better off we will be.  This is not to say we should be dismissive of the pain of others.  I could get into deep depressions over the state of the arts in Australia, how governments seem to ignore the benefits the arts can bring to a nation in terms of creative thinking, mental health and economic activity.  But is this going to prevent me from painting?  Never.

I only have to visit my father at his nursing home to make me realize that I have to make the most of my remaining years in spite of everything that has happened in my life.  Perhaps there is nothing sadder than to listen to a 90 yo talk about the regrets in his life.  The question I ask is “now what?” 

Vincent Van Gogh knew all about pain yet he was still able to engage with the beauty of nature.  The light of southern France captivated him, as became clear in his many letters to his brother Theo and to Gauguin, who he hounded to join him.  De Botton argues Van Gogh’s paintings of Arles “express a cheerfulness that has taken complete stock of all the reasons for despair”.

Seventeenth century Dutch painter Jacob Van Ruisdael knew that the sun needn’t be shining to make fine art.  “His paintings reveal an accommodation with the flawed but endurable and occasionally beautiful nature of reality.”  He made a case for overcast skies, muddy river banks and infinite gradations of grey where he saw a special kind of beauty.

The wise know that all human beings, themselves included, are prone to folly: they have irrational desires and incompatible aims, fantasies and delusions.   After several cost overruns and an almost complete re-engineering during development, the DeLorean DMC-12 was finally released onto the market in 1981.  The car was made famous in the feature film “Back To the Future” starring Michael J Fox.  But for all the hype, the DMC-12 was sheer folly.  Only 9000 were built and in 1983 the DeLorean Motor Company went bust.

The Bliss Of Solitude 2018 Oil On Canvas

Do we really need a 24 hour news channel?  Do we need a torrent of bad news from around the world (about which we can do little) to assail our ears?  As De Botton asks, what impact would knowledge of an earthquake in Peru have on Australia’s aboriginal people?

When I produce my images of Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens, I’m not running away from reality, I’m seeking some solace within it.  The appreciation I get is that there are places like these where we can regain some sanity in a world seemingly full of tumult.

Oasis In The City

In my exhibition scheduled for June 2020 at Tacit Galleries in Collingwood, I will be exploring the recuperative and consoling powers nature has to offer to all of us. The exhibition will be based around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens which I have visited many times for psychological recovery from the challenges of modern existence, such as losing one’s job, difficulties in relationships or even working one’s way through art school. It’s the responsibility of art to make us appreciate the importance of modest moments in our lives, such as the play of shadows cast by a tree on a path.

Hill Of Contentment Oil On Canvas 102 cm x 102 cm

Modern advertising often specialises in glamourizing the unattainable; that is, places that are rare, remote, costly or famous.  Yet here we have an exotic location right under our noses that we can visit at any time.  And the sun need not be shining to appreciate the mysteries of these gardens.   A visit on a quiet and drizzly day can be an oddly therapeutic experience as you get the feeling that you have the whole gardens to yourself – tearooms and all.  Without the perpetual buzz of sight-seeing aircraft overhead, one can absorb the almost surreal beauty of the gardens, the thought that has gone into the landscaping and the far flung vistas.

Grey Day In The Gardens Oil On Canvas 71 cm x 107 cm

Thanks to the barrage of advertising that constantly assails us, we lose the value of things that are close to hand, such as a quiet secluded area that allows time for contemplation. We become ungrateful for things that are free or don’t cost very much and we lose the value of ideas and feelings.

Casting A Long Shadow Oil On Canvas 102 cm x 76 cm

In this series I have not bothered with depicting precise species of plants as this is not meant to be an exact botanical record.  It’s a mood, a feeling that I’m intending to convey.

Sadness & Depression - The Difference

It’s well documented that depression will afflict almost half of us at some point in our lives. And yet our understanding of the illness is often confused with sadness. The Book Of Life argues that a number of assumptions that are made about sadness have been inappropriately applied to depression, and this can lead to people with depression suffering more than they need to.

The Aftermath 2015 Oil On Canvas

While on the surface, a sad person may present similar characteristics to a depressed one, there is one fundamental difference. The sad person knows what they are sad about, the depressed person doesn’t. Unlike a sad person, a depressed person usually has difficulty articulating what they are sad about. They may simply feel that life has been drained of all meaning.

This can leave them open to unwarranted charges of faking, malingering or exaggerating. Friends may end up feeling frustrated at the lack of progress in their attempts to help. A sad person usually doesn’t feel that life has lost all meaning. A depressed person may totally disintegrate as a result of a minor accident such as breaking a glass.

The Sky Is Beginning to Bruise 2014 Oil On Canvas

For decades now, the idea has been promulgated that depression is a result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, a concept very attractive to pharmaceutical companies who are more than willing to flood the market with their miracle cures. But for many patients, so-called antidepressants have only resulted in weight gain.

Psychotherapy has brought some sufferers some relief because it starts from the premise that the depressed aren’t feeling that way for no reason - there is a reason. “They are very distressed about something but that something is proving extremely difficult to take on board, and has therefore been pushed into the outer zones of consciousness.“ Rather than being able to confront what really distresses them, they remain dead to everything. Often, the depressed aren’t aware that they lack insight into what’s really troubling them.

All Night Through 1984 Evelyn Williams

There is another key difference between been sad and being depressed. The sad my feel grief stricken by something out there in the world, but they are not usually sad about themselves - their self esteem remains unaffected. “Whereas depressed people will characteristically feel wretched about themselves and be full of self-recrimination, guilt, shame and self-loathing.” In extreme cases, this can lead to suicidal thoughts.

The Book Of Life suggests that a sufferer can become self-hating as a defense against the risks of hating someone else , a parent who humiliated them when they were a child for example. Despair can be caused by “undigested, unknown and unresolved trauma”.

Psychotherapy can open the door to greater insight, but this can take time and require courage in the sufferer and patience in the care-giver.

This brings me to the use of psychedelics in the treatment of depression. This is nothing new. In the 1950’s and 60’s much knowledge was gained and progress made in the use of psilocybin found in magic mushrooms on patients whose depression seemed treatment resistant. Unfortunately, the reputation of psychedelics was tarnished by their use (abuse) recreationally; this and the linking of the psychedelic movement with the anti-Vietnam War movement led to the banning of these substances by the end of the 60’s.

But in recent years there has been a renewal in interest in psychedelic treatments in the USA, the UK and many other countries. The benefits of these treatments is far too lengthy a topic to be covered here. It seems the use of psilocybin in conjunction with psychotherapy is bringing benefits to many sufferers. But I recommend Johann Hari’s book “Lost Connections” as a good starting point for anyone interested in the topic. It was quite an eye opener for me.