ART
A Salute to Dobell
IN THE FOREFRONT Of the Commonwealth Arts Festival is William Dobell's show at the Qan- tas Gallery, Piccadilly. Mr. Dobell is Australia's most distinguished artist and one of the most con- "siderable portrait painters of the twentieth cen- tury: his exhibition in London is long overdue. For this, London is not entirely to blame, though a Dobell retrospective show was offered to the Whitechapel Gallery some years back, possibly to other institutions, and was not followed through. The reasons for this are quite simple: first, in- terest and good Will were extended towards Australian art following the establishment of a new image of Australia by Nolan, Patrick White, and some younger artists. This good will and open-minded curiosity were wrecked by .a number of indifferent ,shows of work by uninteresting Australian artists. The final death-blow was dealt a little later by an ill-conceived and dully pre- sented official show at the Tate. As I've said else- where,, national qualities in art are inescapable and greatly to be cherished: why deny the Frenchness of Watteau or the Spanishness of Goya—or Mill)? But nationalism is a militant sign of provincial insecurity, and a great bore to us all: at one level it produces war, or at the least complacent chauvinism; at another level, it deeply embarrasses artists everywhere. Except bad ones who exploit it as a useful bandwagon. Mr. Dobell suffered from an enfeebled situation.
He is. magnificently, an artist in his own right and has not used Australiana or the Australian myth except as an honourable and legitimate field for occasional imaginative speculation. It is not necessary to tic an artist of Dobell's calibre to any national platform. But there is, too, an aspect of his work which could at a certain moment have superficial affinities with an old-masterish bravura concept of painting not unlike Augustus John's--superficial, I repeat, but there; and this means that Dobell's work needs careful presenta- tion -and. liming, By a fortunate chance, some of the fog of abstraction-as-the-only-possible-vehicle for a poetic visual response to life and .experience has dispersed, and now is as good a time as any to consider Dobell's art outside its usual context.
Dobell is a mannerist who continually disrupts the mannerisms. His elongated heads and necks should be well known by now: what is less under- stood perhaps, is the range he has covered, stylistically, and the relentless degree of psycho- logical penetration he brings to bear upon his sitters. He is not a comfortable artist for a paternalist society like Australia to countenance and he has had his share of abuse and misunder- standing, not unlike Epstein in England. But.. I am stressing sociology too much: the painting is .what matters. This is lean, economical, without fat or any form of self-indulgence, and spperbly concentrated. Figurative, yes. People, yes. Not abstract—no, unless you • know what you are looking at and then the abstraction is there. Old- fashioned? Mr. Dobell's work could not have happened at any other time but in the twentieth century. He is aware of history, but when one considers the consciousness of a younger genera- tion which only concerns itself with what hap- pened last week Dobell's sense of the past is not only reassuring, and a relief. but immensely liberating in its disclosure of wider perspectives, broader references. He is an isolated figure but this should not make him feel lonely: every, artist of any consequence in this century has been equally isolated, from Mondrian to Brancusi—or Matisse. And Henry Moore has had many apprentices, but no disciples. If the word were not so offensive. I imagine. to Australian susceptibilities, I should say that Dobell is a great gentleman-painter. So is Francis Bacon. That is, the activity is pursued for love. uncom- promisingly, and with a certain grandeur. Given this possibly dubious, or debatable, premise. _Dobell's world is larger than usual in these cases: he is harsh and'tender in turn, knows the sport- ing world and the life of energetic action most intimately: at the same time knows exactly how to handle Mme Rubinstein's indomitable sophisti- cated-peasant (the two qualities usually go hand in hand) visage— and his landscapes have the same absolute identification with place, and
classical compression, as Corot. If Mr. Dobell has any weaknesses they are puny, and beneath discussion. A gift on this scale and its full realisation within the terms of a civilisation which
at once provides many awards for its artists but also smacks them down at many turns of the game—this accomplishment can only be honoured; nnd saluted.
BRYAN ROBERTSON
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