Connecting
210509 / 3 COMMENTS
Does your artwork connect with the viewer? Is this important? Ten years after his death, John Brack is still being talked about, not because of his painstaking attention to detail or because of his inarguable skill with a brush, but because of his connection, or failure to connect, with the viewer.
Its Mother’s Day. I’ve coerced my son into a few hours of cultural awareness and he can’t argue on this one day of the year! I’m at the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square along with hundreds of other people (there must be other coercive mothers I suspect). I’m squeezed into the corner, straining my neck and bobbing and weaving through the crowds to glimpse what the fuss is all about.
Curiously, one room in particular is ridiculously full of people – you guessed it, the room with Collins Street 5p.m., that iconic oil painting which may have put Melbourne on the map. Even the most ignorant of us know this image. To avoid the crowd we slip into another room further into the exhibition, the one with all the pens, pencils and toys marching across huge canvases. Strangely we can view these works with ease and even sit to look at the works from a distance. My son mutters – “No brownie points for effort!” I press him into explaining more. He believes that an artist can be as painstaking as they like, but if it doesn’t connect, it doesn’t connect. He hasn’t even read the hype but he can’t connect with John Brack.
I’ve got a little secret. I look at the viewers of art nearly as much as the artworks. Okay, sometimes more. We gallery goers are an eclectic bunch. Just nearby is a man with bright orange striped bloomers and braces, and of course, a beret and wild hair. He demands to be looked at as he wafts through the gallery. Someone once told me that you can tell the artists visiting an exhibition, and not necessarily by their clothes! They are the ones right up close to the paintings, peering into the brush strokes to understand the mechanism - the “how?” Non-artists just stand back and feed briefly on connecting - the “why?”.
Later we attempt again to push back through the room with Brack’s barmaid grinning at us and the drones on the pavement and the race goers. This exhibition has been laid out chronologically and thematically (for a pleasant change). The student years, then the people period (when Brack still hoped to connect using human beings in his art) and then the post war period where Brack clearly drops the idea of humans and becomes animately inanimate.
Somewhere in the middle of the gallery, a woman comes to stand near me and beams with happiness at a rather plain bouquet of yellow flowers. Her pleasure radiates out. I turn around. On the opposite wall is a plump almost grotesque baby. I’m standing looking at it when suddenly the man next to me smiles at it warmly and knowingly. What’s going on here? Are these fairly mediocre and unsensationalized artworks connecting to the viewers? How bizarre. I’m seeing no such response to the other works filling the gallery – just furrowed brows and long sighs.
My limited maternal coercive ability has timed out, so we leave John Brack but a sudden spurt of enthusiasm makes my son urge a quick visit to the VCE Top Arts display in the gallery opposite. I’m braced to be depressed as usual. Sixteen and seventeen year olds are brimming with talent although it is striking the amount of deep darkness in many of their productions. We are both blown away with the talent here. There is no talk of connecting in this exhibition. It is obvious that the brief our current art students are given is to “connect with yourself”. In the end, is that what Brack did too? As always, food for thought.
Exhibition Review - John Brack (24 Apr to 9 Aug 09), NGV Victoria and VCE Top Arts Exhibition (25 Mar to 14 Jun 09)
3 Responses to “Connecting”
Hi Sue,
What an amazing web site! You are very talented, not only at art but also writing. Best wishes, Mandy
" When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is a fault."..S. Dali.
Steve
220509 @ 600AM
I'm glad i could help! I think with exhibitions that 'not loving' them can be as much fun as 'loving' them...