Art Gallery Visit

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.

How do we see?

Bishop Tom Wright concludes his book “The Challenge of Jesus” with an anecdote about a visit to the Louvre in Paris ... to view the ‘Mona Lisa’ ... among other paintings. Their expectation was to see the painting. However, because of damage and the need to protect the painting with a glass casing what they saw were reflections of themselves, of others. ...... Even though the painting was there ...... Post modernism says that all that one can see is mere reflection of ourselves. The bishop challenges -
There is such a thing as a love, a knowing, a hermeneutic of trust rather than suspicion, which is what we most surely need in the twenty-first century:
A Paris newcomer, I’d never been
Followed by those dark eyes, bewitched by that
Half-smile, Meaning, like beauty, teases, dancing
In the soft spaces between portrait, artist,
And the beholder’s eye. But now, twice shy,
She hides behind a veil of wood and glass:
Suspicion, fear, mistrust - projections of
Our own anxieties. Is all our knowing
Only reflection? let me trust, and see,
And let love’s eyes pursue, and set me free.

A Prayer

When happiness is upon you
reflect it to the other
When sadness is upon you
comfort each other
When anger is upon you
Step back to pause
When confusion is upon you
retrace your steps
When success is upon you
together rejoice

In a Gaelic voice to my niece Heather on her wedding day 16th June 2007