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Lot Essay
Charles Blackmans double images are a kind of cornerstone in his oeuvre, at once a summary of the fifties, whilst at the same time a threshold to the wider resonance of art, especially his more emotional use of colour in the sixties. Painted during his first year in London for his one-man exhibition at Matthiesen Gallery, these works seem to consolidate the expressive content of his imagery of single large girls with flowers, (as seen in the Antipodeans exhibition) with groups of figures (often in separate compartments) in his series of Suites. It was these large paintings that won him the 1960 Helena Rubenstein Travelling Art Scholarship and were represented in 1961 in Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Gallery. For the present painting, Blackman also repeats the title of a 1958 painting as though consciously adapting his vision to his changed circumstances and new awareness of European art.
Ray Mathew, a friend of the Blackmans and author of the 1965 monograph, wrote of the 1961 works The real theme of these pictures is love, affection and desire together, and specifically the fear that walks in love. The woman trembles or is still; she dreams or waits. She is vulnerable, passive, ready for acceptance or denial, hurt or strength. The hand she holds out, the touch she feels . . . (R Mathew, Charles Blackman, Melbourne, 1965, p.9)
When the Blackmans arrived in London they stayed briefly with Arthur and Yvonne Boyd on Highgate Hill before moving into a furnished house at 27a Jacksons Lane Highgate, where Blackman converted a mezzanine room into a studio. Living close to one another, Blackman and Boyd regularly went to galleries together and pooled their growing technical expertise. For both of them, London was a doorway to real hand-made works of art, to contemporary literature and theatre, and to the richness of the European tradition.
The deeper resonance of Blackmans paintings for his Matthiesen Gallery exhibition reflects his growing appreciation of the Old Masters, a connection that was encouraged by Sir Kenneth Clark who was impressed with Blackmans paintings in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition. Over lunch at Saltwood Castle, Sir Kenneth told Blackman that he was a painter for whom the Renaissance need not have happened and that his awkward humanism had a pre-Renaissance quality because it felt, rather than described, the shape of people. His advice led Blackman to the Byzantine artists, such as Duccio, Cimabue and Giotto. One senses that the compressed shape of the head in The Gift is a memory of the Virgin in pre-Renaissance art. Yet the two figures who grace the picture plane are cut-off by the picture edge and sensitive to the viewers gaze. Whereas in Byzantine art the image is an icon and the source of power, Blackman here (and in other pivotal paintings of 1961) reverses the process. Firstly, he splits the single image into a double image. Secondly, he transfers the power from the figural image to the negative spaces around (and within) the image and makes these the receptacles of intense painterly gestures - hatchings, scorings, draggings and brushings that express emotion directly.
In this way he also communicates a sense of loss to the generalised, reticent figures. Similarly, the flower within a moonbeam the gift that links the figures at the centre of the painting - is knowingly mysterious.
And for good measure Blackman spreads the heavenly blueness of the surface in the manner of modern poetry - the dreaminess of W.B.Yeats for instance in 'He wishes for the cloths of Heaven Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,/Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet:' (W B Yeats, THe Collected Works of WB Yeats, Vol. 1, New York, 1996, p.73).
Thus Blackman transfers the expressive power of Byzantine art to the controlled means of painting itself - colour, line, tonal contrast, shape and weight and his own humanist imagery, an imagery that expresses the reality of his experience of contemporary life.
As one of the paintings purchased from Blackmans major exhibition in 1961 at Matthiesen Gallery, The Gift is available on the market for the first time.
Ee are grateful for Felicity St John Moore for this catalogue entry
Ray Mathew, a friend of the Blackmans and author of the 1965 monograph, wrote of the 1961 works The real theme of these pictures is love, affection and desire together, and specifically the fear that walks in love. The woman trembles or is still; she dreams or waits. She is vulnerable, passive, ready for acceptance or denial, hurt or strength. The hand she holds out, the touch she feels . . . (R Mathew, Charles Blackman, Melbourne, 1965, p.9)
When the Blackmans arrived in London they stayed briefly with Arthur and Yvonne Boyd on Highgate Hill before moving into a furnished house at 27a Jacksons Lane Highgate, where Blackman converted a mezzanine room into a studio. Living close to one another, Blackman and Boyd regularly went to galleries together and pooled their growing technical expertise. For both of them, London was a doorway to real hand-made works of art, to contemporary literature and theatre, and to the richness of the European tradition.
The deeper resonance of Blackmans paintings for his Matthiesen Gallery exhibition reflects his growing appreciation of the Old Masters, a connection that was encouraged by Sir Kenneth Clark who was impressed with Blackmans paintings in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition. Over lunch at Saltwood Castle, Sir Kenneth told Blackman that he was a painter for whom the Renaissance need not have happened and that his awkward humanism had a pre-Renaissance quality because it felt, rather than described, the shape of people. His advice led Blackman to the Byzantine artists, such as Duccio, Cimabue and Giotto. One senses that the compressed shape of the head in The Gift is a memory of the Virgin in pre-Renaissance art. Yet the two figures who grace the picture plane are cut-off by the picture edge and sensitive to the viewers gaze. Whereas in Byzantine art the image is an icon and the source of power, Blackman here (and in other pivotal paintings of 1961) reverses the process. Firstly, he splits the single image into a double image. Secondly, he transfers the power from the figural image to the negative spaces around (and within) the image and makes these the receptacles of intense painterly gestures - hatchings, scorings, draggings and brushings that express emotion directly.
In this way he also communicates a sense of loss to the generalised, reticent figures. Similarly, the flower within a moonbeam the gift that links the figures at the centre of the painting - is knowingly mysterious.
And for good measure Blackman spreads the heavenly blueness of the surface in the manner of modern poetry - the dreaminess of W.B.Yeats for instance in 'He wishes for the cloths of Heaven Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,/Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet:' (W B Yeats, THe Collected Works of WB Yeats, Vol. 1, New York, 1996, p.73).
Thus Blackman transfers the expressive power of Byzantine art to the controlled means of painting itself - colour, line, tonal contrast, shape and weight and his own humanist imagery, an imagery that expresses the reality of his experience of contemporary life.
As one of the paintings purchased from Blackmans major exhibition in 1961 at Matthiesen Gallery, The Gift is available on the market for the first time.
Ee are grateful for Felicity St John Moore for this catalogue entry