Australia: Land and Landscape at the RA (and Barry Humphries; Sunday Times Culture Section)

Today's Sunday Times Culture magazine (22 September):

 

Two and a half pages devoted to Barrie Humphries, two pages devoted to the Australia exhibition at The Royal Academy, reviewed by Waldemar Januszczak. The Australian High Commission will not be amused.

Tanya Gold is very unfair about Barry Humphries' paintings. She says "his paintings are terrible". I can't agree with that judgement, for starters, even though I consider that his poetry has greater merit. She does acknowledge that his sculptural work "anticipated Damien Hirst by 40 years".

Barry Humphries has written about the RA exhibition (in The Spectator):

"Australian landscapes from the colonial period and late 19th century diffuse a feeling of isolation, melancholy and exile, emotions which can still sometimes be felt in the suburban streets of Melbourne on a late Tuesday afternoon in August".

Strange to think Barry found Melbourne so boring in his youth, now that it has been judged, for the third time in a row, the best city in the world for liveability.

To add insult to injury, Waldemar Januszczak suggests that a lot of the art on display in the RA Australia exhibition is "weedy, provincial and all too European"; "lightweight and provincial". "The wrong people became artists". Dorchester's Tom Roberts "manages to make the coast of Mentone look passably like the landscape near Weymouth". "The crassness that characterises these repetitive responses to Australian landscape is also in evidence, alas, in the figure paintings of the times".

He writes scathingly of one "ugly painting" by Albert Tucker, and of "a complete absence of grace or sensitivity" in a particularly powerful Arthur Boyd work:

 He  reserves his most barbed criticism for John Olsen's Sydney Sun.

On Aboriginal paintings: "There are dull canvas approximations, knocked out in reduced dimensions, by a host of repetitive Aborigine artists making a buck...the Australian art world has managed to create what amounts to a market in decorative rugs...spotty meanderings...tourist tat".

Don't be put off by his review or by Adrian Searle's in The Guardian recently. I haven't seen the show yet, but I have seen many of the works on display during the course of seven years living in Australia.

Another controversial review, by Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard.

After we have all had ample time to absorb years of intelligent, critical writing inspired by post-colonial theory, and by "the Empire writing back", it takes one aback to come across fresh evidence of the unreformed prejudices and attitudes redolent of a metropolitan cultural superiority complex, of putting down and disparaging the "Colonials", whether they originated in Europe or were born in Australia.

It's already twenty years since "Aratjara, Art of the First Australians" came to London, to the Hayward Gallery.

List of artworks on display at the RA 'Australia' exhibition (The Australian)

RA promotional video

I can't wait to see "Australia: Land and Landscape" at The Royal Academy. Whether you prefer the landscapes of John Glover or Rover Thomas, the creations of Ian Fairweather or Queenie McKenzie (I love all these artists' work), don't fail to see it before December 8th! Ignore all jealous poms and the "strewth, cobber" jibes. NB I am not Australian. Take care not to rile Ned Kelly.

Earlier posting

Posting with some works illustrated

Update: The Empire IS writing back! (Sydney Morning Herald)

The Australian

Thanks for the links, Jeremy.

See also:

Financial Times, Visual Arts:
September 20, 2013 7:09 pm

‘Australia’ at the Royal Academy: dreamtime meets the incomers
By Jackie Wullschlager

Longing belonging, Hossein Valamanesh, 1997