Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Misty Moderns, Australian Tonalists 1915, 1950
Misty Moderns, Australian Tonalists 1915, 1950
The Misty Moderns is an exhibition that I first visited at the National Gallery in Canberra a year ago, the version of the exhibition at the Newcastle Regional Gallery is missing person affects but has a much superior viewing space.
Tonalism in Australia was a movement that resulted from the theoretical consideration of what forms the essence of a painting, by Max Meldrum an influential personality and art teacher. The early works following the precepts of Tonalism now appear as flat, limited palette works that could be said to appear as painting by numbers exercises. This perception however simplifies the approach taken by the artists in placing down areas of tone in the order in which they impressed the artist. Breaking down what the artist was looking at in this way appears to have limited their capacity to represent volume and strong lighting. That is perhaps why the exhibition is entitled Misty Moderns, as a defocussed look is present in the early works.
This exhibit of over 80 paintings presented the viewer with the opportunity for the first time to see works that show not only the process of the artists slowly assimilating the concepts but also the wonderful later works that brought the movement to an effective end. This completeness of story is supported by the wall mounted information sheets but is best gathered from observation of the paintings and pulling the visual changes together.
William Fraters work of the early 1920s that applied Tonalism but allowed brush work as a means of compensating for the lack of emotion that can result from an unskilled use of tonalist concepts. Fraters later works of the 1930s seem to have moved towards a garish use of tube colours and are reminiscent of Cezanne in their inability to look other than disordered and unemotional.
Clarice Beckett on the other hand was able to use a limited tonal palette to good effect, making each painting look as though painted with cotton wool balls but still being enticing to look at over again. Her Tranquility of 1933 is particularly effective.
A D Colquhon is represented by two good works that have hedged around the restrictions of Tonalism by using transparent glazes to infer volume and resort to chirasco to suggest deep areas of little light. His Alma Figuerola of 1922 to my mind is the best figurative piece of Tonalism at this exhibition.
Max Meldrum is represented by only a few works, his Interior Passage being a nice work, including some none finito and a good collection of cracks from poor paint preparation. A later still life is quite exceptional as a colour exercise, deserving of more acclaim as a successful execution of his original idea.
Tucked away at the end of the exhibition and almost blending into the "Colourist Exhibition" that is also running at the Newcastle Gallery, are 1940s works by Polly Hurry and Colin Colahan. These works show the advantage of coming at the end of a process of adapting and working with a conception over a long period. These works unlike the early Tonalist works, show no fear of colour and introduce innovative approaches to rendering crisp detail. Both Hurry and Colahan are worthy of further study..... I'm off to track down more of their works.author: Neil Miley