NGV – ‘The Field Revisited’

Ian Potter Centre (NGV-Australia), Federation Square

 27^th April – 26^th August 2018

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 figurative tradition remained too vital, abstraction relatively cautious. 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 figuration. The comic strip or commercial design needed an atmosphere of severe formal scrutiny in which to be properly recognised as radical 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.