The Beats are Back! Some books that made a difference.

 

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Harry Wedge (H J Wedge), Wiradjuri Artist, "You don't know nothing about us"

Harry Wedge, of the Wiradjuri nation, is one of the most popular and challenging contemporary Aboriginal artists (or he was when I was living in Australia).

This painting, one of a pair I purchased at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, focuses on Aboriginal culture and creativity; the other one explored some of the negative perceptions that exist in Australia concerning aspects of the Aboriginal lifestyle. "You don't know nothing about us" is the title of the two paintings.

There's an interesting blog posting on Harry's work.

There is also an excellent book about Harry Wedge: "Wiradjuri Spirit Man", with an introduction by Brenda Croft and an essay by Judith Ryan (Craftsman House).

Update, 2013

Franchesca Cubillo gave me the sad news in London in September 2013 that Harry Wedge died in 2012.

Harry Wedge remembered

Photo: Harry Wedge with Cedric Talbot

The Art Life

 H J Wedge (Art Gallery of NSW)

"Captain Cook Con Man" (pdf see page 48)

Mithinari Gurruwiwi (1929-1976)

Have you ever been to Arnhem Land ?

I can't tell an ancestral file snake

From a Rainbow Serpent or sacred olive python.

Is that bäpi or the wititj totem ?

I've never been to Garrimala

In Galpu Country, to which this bark

Alludes, according to my catalogue.

Can anyone enlighten me? Howard Morphy, in his excellent "Aboriginal Art" (Phaidon), writes of Mithinari Gurruwiwi's characteristic development of  "themes from Galpu clan mythology", and of how the artist "expresses them in an individualistic way with great fluency and boldness of design. His works exemplify certain features of Eastern Arnhem Land that resonated strongly with modernist aesthetics- the boldness of the geometric shapes, the balance and vbrancy of the colours".

Judith Ryan's "Spirit in Land, Bark Paintings from Arnhem Land" (National Gallery of Victoria) devotes two full pages to bark paintings of Mithinari, including a very similar work, "Ancestral File Snake". (1964) . In her note on the artist and the painting (p. 109), she writes that Mithinari Gurruwiwi was of the Galpu clan, Dhuwa moiety, Yirrkala, north-eastern Arnhem Land. "The snake...comes out of the water to greet wolma, the pre-wet thunder clouds. Like the wititj python, the file snake makes rain by spitting into the sky."

I must be missing Australia, probably as a result of seeing Australian friends in the last few days.

We talked a lot about Aboriginal art, about Queenie McKenzie, Rover Thomas, and about Sidney Nolan, Garry Shead and other admired Australian painters.

The outback calls! So do Sydney Harbour and the Eastern Suburbs!

Australia: The Wandjina Image

The use of the Wandjina image (the Aboriginal Rain Spirit or Cloud Being found in many rock shelter and cave art sites in the Kimberley region, Western Australia) is becoming increasingly controversial.

This is a detail from a bark painting by a well-known artist (RK, deceased, c.1927-2008). She painted many bark Wandjinas and certainly had the right to use the image, as did other members of her family.

Here is a poem about the Wandjina Rain Spirit:


Mamadai and Wanalirri
Where wandjina shelter.
The god-like face on rock and cave,
Mouthless image of creator.
Round eyes on bark, on canvas, slate:-
Make the rains come soon, come late.


I. M. Crawford, in "The Art of the Wandjina" (OUP, Melbourne, 1968), wrote:

"These Wandjina spirits have considerable powers and the Aborigines are careful to observe a certain amount of protocol when they approach the paintings, fearing that if they do not, the spirits might take their revenge...Should the Wandjinas be offended, the Aborigines believe that they will take their revenge by calling up the lightning to strike the offender dead, or the rain to flood the land and drown the people, or the cyclone with its gales which devastate the country".

It is not as if people hadn't been warned.

Cacoyannis in Conversation

Michael Cacoyannis (born June 11, 1922), one of the world's great film-makers, talked to me at length back in 1978, when my 8 page interview with him was published. This is the original illustrated interview, "A Sense of Belonging", as conducted and published in 1978. The text-only version appears in my book "Corfu Blues". Cacoyannis' masterpieces include Stella, Electra , Zorba the Greek and A Girl in Black.

See information about the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.
See also a recent article about a new biography of Cacoyannis.

Walter Lassally talking about the filming of Zorba

Ingmar Bergman, Summer with Monika

Ingmar Bergman and Harriet Andersson (photo above and below, copyright Jim Potts).

Ingmar Bergman on Harriet, Laterna Magica, 1987

One of my favourite Swedish films by Ingmar Bergman is "Summer with Monika".

Did "Summer with Monika" really come out in 1953?

It still brings back memories of visits to the islands in the Stockholm archipelago.

If you want to practise your Swedish, here's Ingmar Bergman talking about "Winter Light".

Even better, an interview with Ingmar on Fårö, his favourite island

It's where I took the photograph above.

Here's a scene from Wild Strawberries.