Canberra, when visited, involves a journey to the National Art Gallery. On this occasion we had our own guide - a very close friend. John Brack's "Third Daughter" provided a personal recollection with accompanying smile. A remembrance to be shared.
Anselm Kiefer's "Twilight of the West" and Jannis Kounellis' Tryptich both called for pause, step back, ponder, be disturbed. The latter caused a problem. Can I use a word beyond tryptich to describe this work or does "naming" the work preclude another from naming it? Naming of course enables a person to take some control and even box in what the artist intended. Jocelyn, Laurel - our friend and I all gave a different word to describe the work. Mind you, as long as we acknowledge that all we were saying was to express our response I suppose it was ok. However, too often the first to name sets the boundaries of the responses.
The middle, and focus piece was a T cross - no person, an overcoat draped over the cross bar. The left piece - three posts II I with trousers over II and a shoe on top of I: The right piece with - two horizontal bars. Coat hanging on one end, a hat on the other.
Suggestive of Christ's crucifixion BUT no person. Jannis Kounellis, a Greek Communist who went to live in Italy had no place for Christ nor a christ figure. Far too desolate for that. Loss, despair come to mind.
Then came the confrontation. James Gleason - "The Citadel" ( see above) produced in 1945 while lecturing in Sydney Teachers' College; 'too aggressive', they said, to hang in London's leading surrealist gallery in 1949.
Gleeson writes - "The human citadel of hope smashed and mutilated ... shattered ... bones have grown into thorns in some places. It is a human landscape with many cave-like forms.
I have substituted for war-torn brick and stone [ destroyed cities too readily become a business opportunity for the likes of Dick Chaney's Halliburton] a symbolic pattern of human flesh, bone, teeth and brains. [Who can restore these?] These are the horrors of concentration camp and battlefield seen through the eyes of a surrealist.
This painting demands to be hanging in the offices of all involved in the decision to go to war.
Gleeson's work is worth viewing ... no more than view, that can become voyeuristic . They are confronting. "Images of Spring disguised in lethal attitudes of Duty", "A Cloud of Witnesses" and "We Inhabit the Corrosive Litoral of Habit" are three other paintings that demanded my attention.
