ARTS
Exhibitions
Angry Penguins and Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s; Master Paintings from the Phillips Collection, Washington (Hayward Gallery, till 14 August)
Spleenish Spheniscidae
Giles Auty
Those ignorant of publications devoted to Australian poetry and new writing dur- ing the war years may be more than a touch mystified by the title given to one of a brace of new exhibitions at the Hayward. Angry Penguins is the title of a literary journal founded by Max Harris in South Australia and came to be applied as a generic — and latterly derisive — name for artists loosely associated with that maga- zine. If I had been the founder of a new writing journal in Australia, of all places, I feel I might have recognised that such a silly title would have put all associated with it, if not in the position of sitting ducks, then at least in that of sedentary seabirds. Judging by Mr Harris's prolix and almost unreadable introduction to the exhibition catalogue, it is easy enough to imagine his magazine as the butt of down-to-earth humour or even complex practical jokes. Indeed, Angry Penguins published in full the poems of Em Malley, the name given by a pair of disgruntled academic poets to a fictitious surrealist scribe.
The penguin faction is represented in the Hayward show by such notable Australian painters as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval, while their contemporary realist counterparts in- clude Bergner, O'Connor and Counihan. Little love was lost between these opposed factions in what passed for the intellectual life of war-time Australia. Further cata- logue essays by Janine Burke and Charles Merewether do little to allay one's apprehensions about the possibly unre- warding nature of their internecine debates but luckily the liveliness of the visual fare compensates for much of the inanity of the written. Explanatory captions accompany- ing the paintings vie with the catalogue in the infliction of puerile analyses on the unfortunate reader: 'For the artists associ-
Albert Tucker's 'Spring in Fitzroy', from his series Images of Modern Evil ated with Angry Penguins military service was a disaster. Tucker and Boyd were discharged as medically or psychologically unfit, while Nolan deserted. The army was a combination of oppression, tension and boredom, with meaningless authoritarian discipline and unsympathetic colleagues. Notwithstanding left-wing sympathies and opposition to Fascism, these artists could see no place for themselves in the armed forces; they were too young and far too radical to be appointed official war artists.'
Given that this is the year of Australia's bicentenary, the exhibition proved espe- cially difficult to mount and its presence here says much for the determination of the organisers. Those unfamiliar so far with Nolan's Ned Kelly series get the chance to understand the impact these paintings made when first exhibited. These and other works have a forthrightness and awkward vigour which many like to think of as typically Australian. Historically, the joint questions of national identity and relationship to international modernism have troubled Australian artists far too much. Yet both issues are peripheral to the basic artistic need for an honest and truly personal vision. Tucker's extended series of paintings Images of Modern Evil has an authenticity of feeling which is hard to question. The suite of works is set recog- nisably in the bayside suburb of St Kilda where, following the impact of American servicemen on Melbourne, 'teenage girls could be bought for a few shillings'. These bitter images are true to their time and place of origin.
As the other part of this summer's double bill, the Hayward offers us 92 paintings selected from the Phillips Collec- tion in Washington. This, too, is a thor- oughly interesting show which begins with paintings by El Greco, Chardin and Goya and ends with a recent rendering by Sean Scully which is either hung or reproduced upside down — I have not got the heart to inquire which. In between such divergent cultural poles we are treated to magnificent works by painters who include Courbet. Daumier, Renoir, Vuillard, Monet, Bon- nard, Dufy and Matisse. When the Phillips Collection was first opened to the public in 1921, it constituted the first museum of modern art in the United States. Nearly all the works bought for the collection are good or excellent examples of the chosen artist's work and the show assumes addi- tional bite from the inclusion of powerful works by a number of late 19th- and early 20th-century American artists. 'The Wake of the Ferry II' by John Sloan and William Merritt Chase's 'Hide and Seek' co-exist, without obvious discomfort, in the com- pany of the highly distinguished Euro- peans. There are also evocative works of a later vintage by Milton Avery, Richard Diebenkorn and Edward Hopper. The last-named still fails to feature in any British collection of modern art. Unfortu- nately, the powers-that-be in art in Britain didn't find him modern enough.
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