Mossgreen Fine Australian & International Art

mossgreen Fine Australian & International Art Melbourne Tuesday 2 June 2015 Mossgreen continues its push to join Sotheby’s, Menzies and Deutscher and Hackett in conducting regular mixed vendor sales featuring a wide range of material spanning colonial to contemporary. The current sale includes some significant works, the stand-outs being from the collections of Ian Gowrie Smith, Suncorp and an anonymous Perth collector. Unfortunately while their specialists have been able to pull in some good works, the time and attention they can give to each work is very limited. This is particularly noticeable in terms of researching individual works and establishing their exhibition history and provenance – very few details are provided, even for major works. Nor are they interested in essays or other supporting material that adds to our knowledge and to the experience of viewing the works. In addition to the fresh material, there are several lots unsold from the Boxer Collection, which was auctioned late last year. These include as interesting work by Arthur Boyd. Note that I have not been able to view this sale. When I was in Melbourne last weekend it was in Sydney, and vice versa. So I have asked a colleague to view it in Melbourne and report back. I’ve also received condition reports from Mossgreen and will point out in any issues in my notes. JOHN CRUTHERS rococo pop pty ltd 1. CLARICE MARJORIBANKS BECKETT (1887-1935) Still Life with Peonies oil on board 39 x 29 cm Estimate: $12,000 - $18,000 I often recommend the small paintings of Clarice Beckett, usually urban and suburban scenes of bayside Melbourne with a focus on atmospheric effects, painted from about 1920 to her premature death in 1935. After falling out of favour, her work was revived in the early 1970s when her sister took a selection of paintings to a Melbourne art dealer. A trip to a distant country barn followed, which revealed close to 2,000 paintings, many showing the depredations of weather and possum attack. In the end about 700 paintings were saved, and it is these upon which Beckett’s substantial reputation rests. Even though she is best known for atmospheric scenes, she painted a small but significant group of flower paintings – perhaps 30-40 all up. The current work is a charming flowerpiece which shows the influence of her teacher, the tonal painter Max Meldrum – an austere setting, soft focus, strong contrast between light and shade and a very well handled arrangement of peonies in a variety of colours, standing jewel- like against the dark background. Like most of her flowerpieces it is beautiful, but also redolent of human feelings and emotions, subtly expressed. Note that the paint surface has three small losses in the upper right quadrant between two of the peonies. The paint has been lost due to impact from a sharp object, possibly the corner of a frame. These losses can be repaired, although it is a slightly delicate job due to the matte paint surface Beckett favoured. Perhaps becuse of these losses, the work is estimated very low. My sense is that retail the work is worth $20-25,000. Given that the repairs should cost no more than $1,000- 1,200, it would be very good buying to mid estimates. Recommended. 37. RICHARD CHARLES LARTER (1929-2014) Jean # 2 1997 acrylic, collaged fabrics and metallic pieces on canvas 133 x 85 cm Estimate: $5,000 - $8,000 Richard Larter grew up in London during wartime and studied art in the post war period, followed by several years travelling and viewing art in Europe and North Africa. In 1962 he and his artist wife Pat arrived in Australia as migrants. They settled on the outskirts of Sydney and Larter began to paint. He entered prizes and his work was soon noticed by newspaper critics such as Daniel Thomas, leading to his first solo exhibition at Watters Gallery in 1965. Larter stuck with Watters, showing annually, and over the following 50 years produced a stream of paintings that established him as one of Australia’s most distinctive artists. He was the subject of two retrospectives and after his death in 2014 he was widely mourned. Perhaps because he drew on imagery from popular culture for nearly all his work, Larter became known as a pop artist – in fact his obituaries described him as the grandfather of Australian pop art. But what is often overlooked is that as well as figurative art he produced an equal number of abstract paintings, which were heavily patterned and showed his early interest in the work of Gustav Klimt and Islamic art. He also loved to mix the figurative and the abstract, as a way of thumbing his nose at conventional genres and the rule that they should never be mixed. But Larter’s defining subject as an artist was his interest in the life force, and his belief that art should affirm life. For him the major arena through which he could explore this theme was sexuality, and his work is full of nudes – many his wife Pat – and nude couples. The work is never prurient or sleazy. He intends to celebrate sex and the life force, and his women have agency and are equal participants in choosing poses and so on. Jean # 2 1997 is a typical late nude, painted in his studio in Yass from one of his favourite models. A narrow range of colours focuses the painting, while the use of small metallic shapes on the yellow wall on the left, and several strips of patterned fabric down the right edge, lift it into another creative realm, suggesting the relationship between the body and clothes. The painting was included in Larter’s first retrospective, Stripperama – Richard Larter, at Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2002. Retail this painting would be $15-18,000, and would be good buying up to $10,000 hammer. Recommended. 38. RICHARD CHARLES LARTER (BORN 1929-2014) Shitkickers Ball or Turd Wallopers Tango 1975 acrylic on canvas 181 x 82 cm Estimate: $8,000 - $12,000 While the previous painting by Larter is quite benign in its depiction of nudity and sexuality, this work, with its hostile title and images of graphic sexuality, show Larter using sexuality to frame a critique of Australian political life. Note the date – December 1975. For those of you who were around at the time, this was the month in which Governor General John Kerr sacked the elected prime minister Gough Whitlam and replaced him with leader of the opposition Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister. This work features the leading players from the right in this most tumultuous month of Australian politics. John McEwen, Malcolm Fraser (twice) and Sir John Kerr are depicted in images from the newspapers of the time, spliced with images of fellatio from hard core porn magazines, a fearful looking young woman and a grinning skull to represent what awaits the nation. To quote the curator of Stripperama: “Larter highlights the contrast between sexual desire (good, even if not fully endorsed by society) and the desire for political power (accepted by society but detrimental in excess).” Which is the more obscene, he seems to be asking us, the desire for sex or the desire for power? The work is a study for Larter’s major painting Black Friday in Penrith 1975-76, which was included in Stripperama and was first owned by the former director of the National Gallery of Australia, Ron Radford. The current work would not easily find a place in most homes. But for students of politics or those without children at home, it is a fascinating artistic response to the most cataclysmic event in post war Australian political life. Recommended to the top of the estimates. 66. BRIAN BLANCHFLOWER (BORN 1939) Canopy XXIV - one step 1990 oil on hessian 232 x 182.5 cm Estimate: $10,000 - $15,000 Born in 1939 in the UK, Blanchflower grew up on the Sussex Downs. As an art student he walked across south west England, exploring prehistoric sites such as the Bronze Age chalk drawings of human figures and horses made across hill sides. He migrated to Perth in 1972 and has worked there for close to 50 years. In the Australian landscape Blanchflower looked for comparable historical sites or images. One of his first major works was a performance on the summer solstice which involved tipping buckets of honey over a megalithic stone column that had been revealed by excavations for the Mitchell Freeway in Leederville. Blanchflower’s major body of work was the Canopy paintings, begun in 1987. Critic David Bromfield described the genesis of the Canopy series as follows: The idea of the painting as a canopy was suggested by the experience of lying under a hessian canopy erected against the heat of the day during visits to Lake Moore. Light seeped through the material day and night, in the way that paint was to soak into the hessian, jute and canvas of the various Canopies. The more general metaphor of the sky as a canopy for the world only followed at a later date. Bromfield goes on to comment that “the Canopy is still the form in which Blanchflower chooses to embody his most elaborate work”. It is a kind of on-going portrait of the universe, and of man’s place in it as observer and recorder of the elemental forces with which all living things are charged. Note that the Canopies are painted in thick oil with pumice and other additives, onto stiffened hessian supports.

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