Yesterday afternoon I went and saw the new John Brack exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre. John Brack (self portrait, right) was an Australian artist - intrinsically a Melbourne artist - who in a career spanning 40 years (from the early 1950's to his death in 1999) produced a succession of fascinating art works. He was an iconic painter though without the name of some of his peers. He is best known for Collins St, 5pm:
This is the painting most people know even if they don't know Brack. Painted in the mid-fifties it illustrates the drone like conformity as people pour out of their place of work and head home. Much of his early work is similar, ironic in tone, earthy, occasionally washed out colours, and spare, angular, lantern jawed people representative of different gradations of urban and suburban existence. In later years he came to disavow much of this work, but to me it is very powerful. His is a distinctive, almost unique style, less interested in the individual than in the collective meaning of everyday life.
Look at the painting to the left, Man in pub, look at the chiselled planes of his face, his eyes closed to enjoy the cold beer, hat perched on his head. Look at his knobbled, knuckly hand and the warmth of the colour, reds and browns and pale washed out yellows. It is an evocative but simple painting that has some of the quality of a stained glass window. There is something classic and timeless in the composition.
After the fifties his style developed while his themes became more sophisticated. Walking around the gallery yesterday amid school students on excursion taking notes on the variety of paintings I was struck by the range of his work - portraits, nudes, sketches, still life's abstract representations of life, and how striking and interesting almost all his work is, whether it be intriguing or provocative, or in the bold use of colour.
The Old Time, depicted to the right, is one of a series of paintings showing a dance competition. All are vividly coloured and sharply drawn, in a variety of poses. In each of these it is as if a particular mood and time is captured in an artistic aspic, in much the same way he earlier painted commuters going home or closing time at the pub.
Walking amongst these artworks I stopped often to look more closely at different paintings. On a purely aesthetic plane I found most of them to be compelling. Looking more deeply they gave me pause to ponder what I saw, what was represented, what was intended. Without being any sort of art expert it seemed to me that the paintings of Brack were informed by an intellectual rigour that guided subject matter and how he represented it.
As I wandered through the gallery I would stop to read the little notes tacked to the wall. Amongst a collection of portraits I read that while the paintings were widely admired most of the sitters did not at first like them - though often, after a period, the sitters would come to appreciate and understand them. I could understand that in some ways. Few were conventional portraits. In composition or background there was always something a little odd. Perspective might have been skewed a little, or proportions altered. Or perhaps there was a prop that seemed out of sync with the sitter. These things drew the eye, made you stop and consider further.
If you look at the portrait of Fred Williams it is hardly a conventional portrait at all. It is more like a photo of a man who did know he was being watched, seemingly uncomfortable in his jacket and tie and leaning forward in his chair as if impatiently waiting for something. There is this distracted, absorbed air, caught up in oneself whilst poised to act. It is the portrait of a man looking to do things, and used to acting, moving forward.
There were also a wide variety of nudes, none of which could be described as erotic, and few with any sensuality to them. This was no accident. He depicted these naked women plainly, unadorned by any artifice. Some are almost banal, but powerfully so. Others are cool, not just in composition but in colour - yellows, greens, and the like.
In his later years his compositions became more abstract. People were replaced by objects - most often pencils - as a symbolic representation of their individuality.
Many of these paintings were larger than his earlier work. From a distance they often seemed striking in their colours and in the strange mix of imagery. Up close they had a mixed impact on me. Whilst I understood the theme I thought at times it was overdone. These were the works he came to regard best, but for mine the lack of anything human in them made some of the pieces inaccessible. There were others though which I thought were great.
Overall I have tosay I was very glad to have taken the time to have checked this out. I think he is a great painter and a very interesting one. There are few things I wouldn't give to be an accomplished artist.
See this if you can.
