These are wild images from the Australian artist Arthur Boyd which I believe were painted at the end of his life. I will let interested parties google him if their interest is piqued by these things. John MacDonald, the critic for the Sydney Morning Herald who has an astute eye and a rich cultured mind wrote a recent piece about him, also for the curious-minded.
I like very much the image above while I find everything else fascinating but maybe less engaging, personally speaking.
I've always found that Australian artists back in the early part of the 20th century were on the whole, a determined lot of eccentric and original artists, and Boyd was no exception.
In this wild continent so far removed from Europe they found themselves out of the loop and on their own. This was a good thing I believe, because it protected them from the conventional conformity of 'Modern Art' that raged through the capitals of Europe and America. There was a kind of proud defiance, a renegade streak, among many of these Australian artists.
Now, of course, in Australia, like most other countries around this shrinking cultural globe, Post-Modernist theory has infected all the art schools. This has sadly created an environment of pretty universally bland and conventional art despite possessing that kind of sizzle that appeals to Contemporary galleries and cool curators who themselves are also artists. This has created it own 'closed loop' of a system. Whoa!.... But,... tut tut, I'm being severe!... yet maybe you get my point.
So one could say that there have been two kinds of art in Australia since the Europeans arrived. One, authentically rooted in the ancestral coding of the land. The other (and newer one) was imported by the British settlers.
The former is a large network of indigenous artists from all over this gigantic continent. I don't want to simplify a complicated idea, but their work, like all indigenous cultures around the world, spring up from their authentic experiences of living from this earth.
But the second art of Australia was a white art, not less valid, just foreign, and imported, its roots are colonial nonetheless. Again this is a subject I'm less equipped to pontificate upon, at least now anyway. As we say in the Bronx, "it's complicated".
Gradually, this early European tradition of painting evolved, and after a few centuries, it joined the global rush towards an 'expression of originality'.
But despite catching up with the arty trends of the rest of the world (and its mother ship Britain), Australian art of the 20th century maintained its own wild and rebellious defiance.
I think it came into its own when it finally accepted Britain's snobbery towards Australia by owning it's reputation a bit like Queer became a defiantly proud slogan of the LGBQ community. Australian artists embrace their unique identity in their unique land Down-Under. They said to Britain; Yes, OK, we're the smelly black sheep, and we're proud of it,,, so 'Sod Off' Pommies!
Of course, all this is quite fanciful on my part but there might be a sliver of truth to it nonetheless.
After all, Australia had been conceived as a penitentiary and established to receive its previous black sheep, the Irish, and the rest of poor unfortunates that Britain had wished to dispose of without having to execute them all. Australia would always be considered to the poor relation.
But that was then, and now is now. These Australian artists of the 20th century have forged diverse paths as if slashing their way through the rough landscape of this rugged country with a machete.
So, Arthur Boyd began like a European, but ended up as a wildly original visionary. Nice!
