NGV – ‘The Field Revisited’
Ian Potter Centre (NGV-Australia), Federation Square
27th April – 26th August 2018
(updated August 2024)
Installation view
It is never entirely clear, either from the NGV’s online pre-publicity
or the exhibition catalogue, whether this reconstruction of the 1968 exhibition
The Field commemorates firstly the
fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the gallery’s imposing premises at 180
St Kilda Road or merely its inaugural temporary exhibition. But given that the
gallery’s collection of Australian art is now housed in the Ian Potter Centre
at Federation Square and that the St Kilda Road headquarters is devoted
entirely to overseas works, any precise reconstruction was always going to be
administratively challenging. Add to this that the St Kilda Road building is
now but a sad shell of architect Roy Grounds’ original vision and that a
significant number of works from the original exhibition have been lost or
destroyed and the gesture of a fiftieth anniversary salute to either looks
somewhat compromised, if not problematic.
Unfortunately, for many, the inaugural exhibition and the Modernist
architecture of St Kilda Road have become synonymous. The show is seen as
characterising a new progressive vision and confidence, the building as
prompting more daring and specialised shows. But this obscures the real advances
of the building and seriously distorts the role and impact of The Field. The
real achievement lay in simply a vastly increased scale and scope for the
institution, within a building boldly designed specifically for its needs. This
is even harder to grasp now that those needs have outgrown its St Kilda Road
facilities, but for those old enough to remember its former address, as an
awkward adjunct to the State Library, 180 St Kilda Road came as a quantum leap
in ambition and means (albeit at a fairly measured pace of construction). It
enabled far greater display of holdings, far more accessible storage and
research. In the December 1968 number of Art
and Australia, the then Assistant Director, Ursula Hoff (1909-2005) boasted
of a prints, drawings and watercolours department already containing around
15,000 items, many of which were now to be accessible to the public via a
‘reading room’ on the first floor (p. 217. Vol. 6, No 3, December 1968).
Extensive holdings in Asian and Classical art also found new and appropriate
exposure while Renaissance and later painting could be shown to far greater
advantage in grand permanent rooms.
All of these furnished a powerful context for the appreciation of
Australian art, for looking to recent, ancient and remote precedents under the
one roof. But inevitably, as collections grew, the necessity for more space
meant the Australian collection sooner or later would benefit from its own
museum. In retrospect, it is really this greater specialisation that is flagged
by The Field. The original curators, Brian Finemore (1925-75) and John Stringer
(1937-2007) concentrated on what was largely Minimalist abstraction in the
local scene. Criticism at the time found the criterion too narrow, too
derivative of overseas trends, too shallow. But beneath competing readings of
the zeitgeist, there was also the nagging suspicion that a museum was
overstepping its brief in actively endorsing factions within what ought to have
remained purely matters of the market for just a little longer. This is a
tendency that has only escalated for museums of modern art – or, even more of
an oxymoron – museums of contemporary art. The quest to remain abreast of
history, if not actually anticipating it, is part of a larger, more troubling
malaise termed historicism. Unquestionably The Field confirmed the reputations
and careers of some of its younger artists. Yet, like most modern movements,
Minimalism proved brief, its impact frankly minimal. Careers at best soon reached
a plateau, none flourished overseas, despite stark appeals to purportedly international
standards. The NGV initially planned to provide regular surveys of current
trends to the local scene but these never eventuated. The subsequent wave of air-brush
Photo-Realists, for instance, never had their day in court, perhaps mercifully.
This lack of continuity has only served to exaggerate the impact of The
Field, particularly among curators. An earlier tribute in 2009 at the Art
Gallery of NSW for example was anticipated in breathless tones by art writer Tracey Clement
as ‘A major blip on the seismic chart of local art history... The Field remains
one of those earth shattering historical moments that anyone with even a
passing interest in Australian art is meant to be familiar with’. Present
co-curator, Beckett Rozentals assures us that its significance ‘cannot be
over-emphasised’ (p. 14 of the new catalogue). A more sober assessment can be
found in Bernard Smith & Terry Smith’s Australian
Painting 1788-1990 where the considered verdict was that The Field
‘forced the pace’ and that ‘local painters were at a disadvantage of being
carriers rather than originators of the style’ and that it was ‘not surprising
therefore that The Field exhibition in the matter of quality, did not meet the
expectations either of the participating artists themselves or the public’ (pp.
443-444, 1991 edition). It was just as well curators loved it really. Curator
Natalie Wilson of the AGNSW tracked the influence of The Field by art prizes
subsequently awarded to participating artists, but beyond this could only
characterise the seventies as ‘anything goes’. As a critical perspective, it is has little to recommend it.
The Age critic Patrick McCaughey (later director of the NGV) rounded out
the same issue of Art and Australia
with a vigorous defence of the show, denying the curatorial direction amounted
to merely a passing movement, insisting that it demonstrated a more profound
engagement with modernism (understood as progressively parsimonious exercises
in pictorial self-reference). Yet the very terms in which he characterised
modernism thus, promptly declared his allegiance to the noted American critics
of the day, Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. If the movement of Minimalism had a direction,
it was unmistakably stateside. Greenberg visited Australia in May 1968 and
judged the Georges Prize in Melbourne, awarding it to Sydney Ball (1933-2017).
He later contributed an essay to The Field catalogue. This frank demonstration
of cultural influence has subsequently come to be viewed with some suspicion following
the disclosure that promotion of American-style abstraction largely originated
with funds from theCIA throughout the fifties and sixties, as a policy of
de-politicised individualism. In hindsight, McCaughey’s declaration that “What
this new convention seeks is a more deliberate alignment of Australian art with
modernist tradition’ (p. 235) sounds uncomfortably like a more cultured version
of Prime Minister Harold Holt’s 1966
slogan “All the way with LBJ”. It is worth noting in passing that Greenberg was
an ardent advocate of the Vietnam War, confirming an altogether dubious ideology.
What gives Australian Minimalism special impact, in as much as it has
any, is really the absence of a convincing engagement with Pop Art, a movement
that arose at roughly the same time as Minimalism and posits an equally radical
view of pictorial form, but appeals instead to common print norms rather than
fundamentals of geometry. Australia never really attains its Roy Lichtenstein
or Andy Warhol because the Expressionist tradition remained too vital, abstraction running in parallel was also dominated by the personal, gestural. A painting of Ginger Meggs or an Aeroplane Jelly packet say,
could never really register as compelling, so long as the local art world gave preference
to Expressionism and looked for myths in wilderness. The comic strip or commercial design needed an atmosphere of
severe formal scrutiny, an impersonal touch, to be properly recognised as radical for painting. It is significant however, that a number of the
more prominent artists in The Field initially looked to Pop Art or alternated
with Minimal projects. Dick Watkins (1937-), Alun Leach-Jones (1937-2017) Alan
Oldfield (1943-2004) Dale Hickey (1937-) and Robert Rooney (1937-2017) all
retain a subtle hint of print standards to their work. Ultrascope 5 (1968) by
Vernon Treweeke (1939-2015) is the figurative exception in The Field (seated
female nudes rotated through four quadrants) – could conceivably belong in a
selection of Pop Art from the time. His inclusion in fact highlights telling uncertainties
in the curator’s criterion.
Vernon Treweeke 'Ultrascope 5' (1968) 386 X 257 cm digital facsimile (2015-8)
But where Australian artists of the sixties could never really be cool
enough for Pop Art, they bring something like an added flippancy or cynicism to
their Minimalism. Their pictures look more like a graphic designer’s idea of
abstraction, at once embracing the norms of layouts or sunshade awnings as well
as the nuances of coloured geometry in an uneasy blend. They are subtly distinct
from American peers. This subversive element is also the reason why so few of
the artists could sustain the Minimalist project throughout their careers. They
frankly couldn’t give a damn. They were, as Herald critic Alan McCullough
rightly accused them, ‘bandwagon jumpers’ but at a time when a bandwagon was
unusually prominent and accommodating, who can blame them? They were the
bandwagon Australian art had to have. It was a period of unaccustomed
prosperity after all, and the Australian art world diversified along promising
international lines. The Field went there in the quest for greener pastures and
it would not be the last such venture in conformity.
While works exude an impersonal, formulaic sense, titles often allow
portentous metaphor, such as Daedalus
(1968) or Knossos II (1968) by Col
Jordan (1935-) Orphea (1968) by Paul
Partos (1943-2002) and Ispahan (1967)
by Sydney Ball. This practice was not confined to Australian Minimalism of
course, but it is even harder now to keep a straight face while trying to
summon some remote analogy between grids, stripes or a shaped canvas and
ancient texts or myth. However, none of these can rival Leach-Jones’ numbered series
titled Noumenon for sheer pretentious
folly. Noumenon is Emmanuel Kant’s term for the idealist’s thing-in-itself,
in contrast with phenomenon, the thing as perceived through the senses. Kant
allows that there can be purely mental apprehension of certain noumena, such as
the concept of infinity, possibly, or the prospect of catching every green light the length of Hoddle Street. But by definition these can have no basis in the sensory
world. They are pure ideals. A noumenon cannot therefore provide
inspiration for paintings since even a metaphor allows sensory extension that
then betrays the terms of a noumenon. In the wall plaque to the present show
the curators attempt to excuse this howler as paradox and one can only
respectfully suggest they consult a definition of paradox. A paradox is a
statement that is seemingly false but turns out to be true. Leach-Jones’ titles
can have no such truth, by definition.
Alun Leach-Jones: Noumenon XX First Light (1967) 163 X 163 cm acrylic on canvas
Earlier generations of abstract painters would simply have appealed to realms of the spiritual or perhaps musical in directing their patterns to metaphoric meaning, but it says much about the sixties and the tenor of Australian Minimalism that Leach-Jones should feel the need for something a bit more technical sounding, a bit more esoteric. Given that the work seemed always on the verge of departing for racy textile design, it is understandable that there may well have been a need for hints of something more substantial. But the vast series of Noumenon, the numerous noumena, lasting from 1966 into the early seventies eventually reduces the word to no more than a brand, might equally find application in a line of men’s toiletries. NOUMENON! – HEAVEN SCENT.
I confess this last remark was prompted
by memories of the artist from the early seventies, a tall man carefully
groomed, always smartly turned out, often in a plain ultramarine jumper, maroon
flares with a white belt and white loafers. It is a vision not easily forgotten,
much less forgiven. I apologise for speaking ill of the recently deceased here,
but it has been fun!
Finally, any assessment of the original exhibition must take into
account the vast changes wrought by fifty years. In 1968 Melbourne’s population
was just under two million; in 2018 it is projected to be around four million.
The sheer size of the metropolis has expanded accordingly. In 1968 the art
critic R. K. Luck proudly listed fifteen art galleries for the city, including
the NGV (A Guide to Modern Australian
Painting p 117). The only trading names that survive from that time are
Tolarno and Australian Galleries. Today, even in what is understood as lean
times, listings offer at least forty commercial galleries as well as municipal
and public spaces such as The Ian Potter Museum, ACCA, Heide, 200 Gertrude
Street and The Potter Gallery at Melbourne University. The kind of critical
controversy that arose over The Field is today more likely to arise in these
lesser institutions, but given the current priorities of the press is unlikely
to register in much more than online publications. In this respect the
significance of The Field actually diminishes with a longer, broader
perspective. Along with this distance has come generations that can only regard
it indulgently, as “Boomer nostalgia”, the heritage of the distant sixties. An
assessment must ultimately decide to whom it is addressed.
