Andrew McNamara and Wiebke Gronemeyer that the idea for the dark rectangular shape found in many of his abstract of the mid-1960s came from watching a sheet drying on a clothes line in the intense Australian sunlight. Whether quotidian or highly Udo charged, these vivid references seem to overwhelm and predetermine any assessment of his oeuvre. Yet there is also something elusive in Sellbach’s art. One Sellbach: result of this push and pull reception is that Sellbach’s abstract paintings are often interpreted figuratively, whereas the seemingly figurative, largely graphic work, often appear to verge on the abstract. Seeing it, Born in Cologne on 9 July 1927, was just a teenager when in 1944 Hitler ordered more than half a million German youths to the Still Russian front. It was a mere nine months before the unconditional surrender. The war was already long lost.1 The mass conscription of young boys—many taken straight from school—was a forlorn act to prevent the Russian advance into eastern Germany. Sellbach was conscripted in late February 1945—just three months before the end of World War II when the Russian forces were already rapidly advancing on the German capital. After weeks of ferocious fighting Sellbach was captured, but rather fortuitously escaped execution. He fled on foot and eventually made his way home through a shattered country only to find his home city largely abandoned.2 Cologne had suffered severe bombing since 1942. By May 1945, it was a wasteland of rubble, ‘an endless panorama of ruins’ like so many European cities at that time, a mere shadow of the city once renowned for its cultural richness and its easy-going Rhinish nature (rheinische Frohnatur).3 Sellbach reflected on these experiences in several works, most poignantly in the collection of etchings and aquatints, The Target is Man (1965); the print series the Night Watch (1990), a cycle of thirty etchings; and finally, And Still I See It (1995), a beautifully produced book of prints based on the ominous theme of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the first part of his epic poem Divine Comedy, focusing particularly on Canto XXVIII. In each case, however, Sellbach mixed references to his own formative experiences with subsequent events, such as the perennial conflicts of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, Udo Sellbach, Eye for an Eye Tooth, for a Tooth, 1967, acrylic on linen, 130 × 101 cm, photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, the Arab–Israeli (or Six Day) War of 1967, the sight of the shadow images left by victims in the wake of the Hiroshima atomic blasts, or the uprisings of The spectre of traumatic events dominates the May 1968. None of this is ever rendered explicit, reception of Udo Sellbach’s art practice. His work is although it often seems inescapable. It is as if Sellbach usually directly related to his wartime experiences due sought to universalise his own experience by offering to the proliferation of images suggestive of wholesale a generalised image of the common threat posed by destruction, charred landscapes, mutilated bodies, violence, war and annihilation in various different forms. as well as the psychic toll of these experiences on The Target is Man series responds primarily survivors. Sometimes these grim reflections are to the Vietnam war. It acquires its edge from the fact tempered by more whimsical musings on everyday that still had conscription at the time and domestic life. Sellbach once explained, for instance, the conscripts being sent to the Vietnam war offered

93 popularised ‘target’ paintings, yet the American’s is that Smith praised Sellbach for having achieved a approach lent the motif ‘a visual frisson’ because similarly forthright and challenging form of art years the ‘brilliant concentric coloured circles … contract before Bell, but in the sphere of white cultural-political and dilate as we stare.’ In contrast, Smith notes that expression. Years later, in a catalogue essay for a Sellbach eliminates colour (as did ‘Goya and Picasso 1993 exhibition of aquatint etchings, called Nightwatch, in similar situations’).6 The resulting black and white Smith singled out Sellbach’s aesthetic—and this print images often juxtapose the target motif with that cycle in particular—as presenting ‘a bleak vision of of the human body. Even the surfaces of the works the human condition rarely encountered in white appear to bear the burden of the subject matter Australian art.’8 depicted for they are scratched, worn or speckled. In Sellbach’s target works, his uniquely powerful The result is stark. Sellbach zeroes in on a ‘moral ‘bleak vision’ derives from combining the abstract disgust’, according to Smith, disgust at the way motif of the target with depictions of torn or mutilated humans become a target—‘a target to use, persecute, figures. The body is explored as a battleground, as humble, chain, exhibit, scorn, sacrifice, execute, dump, Sasha Grishin once suggested, thereby a subject of ignore and forget.’ All of which, as Smith reminds us, distortion, destruction, and also of depression.9 As are the titles of Sellbach’s works in this series.7 aforementioned, And Still I See It takes Dante’s Inferno as inspiration and derives its title from lines 118–129 of Canto XXVIII, which is translated in Sellbach’s publication as:

I saw it in all certainty—and still I see it— A headless body advancing Moving with the sad crowd 10

It easy to imagine Sellbach responding to this particular line as a constant, haunting refrain: and still I see it; and still, … I see it. Dante’s Divine Comedy— Inferno in particular—reflects upon the perils of human

Udo Sellbach, (Untitled 29) (from Night Watch, a print cycle of thirty etchings portfolio), divisiveness. The perpetrators of blind intolerance, 1990, etching and aquatint on Arches paper, 22.5 × 19.5 cm (plate), 40 × 30.8 cm excessive sectarianism or opportunistic power politics (sheet). Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane. Purchased 1991 through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, photograph: Natasha are found condemned to eternal damnation, brutally Harth, QAGOMA, courtesy of the Estate of Udo Sellbach wounded and tortured due to their fractiousness. Their torment is as much psychological as they face eternity an uncomfortable parallel to Sellbach’s own youthful confronting the brutal consequences of their actions experience. In her short statement for The Target is in life with its countless victims. Tackling Dante’s Man exhibition catalogue, makes the art- theme allowed Sellbach to consider his own early historical connection between Sellbach’s project and life experiences in a wider, more universal context of Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War (1810–1820) human history with its constant struggle to mitigate (a link most critics at the time tended to follow). Hoff violence and intolerance in human association, while insisted, however, that the works were not ‘literal accepting difference. records’ of the Vietnam War, but ‘meditations on the The figures in Sellbach’s And Still I See It theme of annihilation.’4 Whether the generation of are often drawn with a frail, quivering line. Humans pre-World War II emigres and exiles, such as Hoff, the inhabit these scenes, but they barely inhabit the Viennese Franz Philipp, and Gertrude Langer, or post- worlds they find themselves in. They are desperate, Udo Sellbach, To persecute (from The Target is Man portfolio), 1965, etching and war emigres such as Sellbach or Polish-born Stan aquatint, 25.2 × 20 cm (plate), 44.2 × 34.6 (sheet). National Gallery of Victoria, clinging, half-buried, lost. Another predominant Ostoja-Kotkowski, this threat of annihilation was not a . Purchased 1966. Courtesy of the Estate of Udo Sellbach stylistic feature is the depiction of figures wrought by matter of distant aesthetic reflection but one that had heavy cross-hatching. This effect makes the figures come perilously close to reality, leaving an indelible It is interesting that Bernard Smith singled out look heavy, fractured and riven, both physically and mark over their lives. Sellbach for registering the political significance of the psychologically, whether victim or perpetrator. Nearly Sellbach’s use of the target in The Target is Man target image in visual art because years later in 2007 all are maimed or disfigured. While the scenes closely may have referenced Goya, but it equally draws upon Richard Bell would use the theme of the target to Udo Sellbach, To persecute (from The Target is Man portfolio), 1965, etching and follow Dante’s epic work, Sellbach also includes aquatint, 25.2 × 20 cm (plate), 44.2 × 34.6 (sheet). National Gallery of Victoria, contemporary developments in art, such as colour- highlight how Indigenous Australians were a target of Melbourne. Purchased 1966. Courtesy of the Estate of Udo Sellbach images that evoke the ‘inferno’ of the twentieth field —in particular the ‘target’ paintings of the federal government’s policy Intervention. The idea century from which he—as a German citizen of his American abstract painter, Kenneth Noland. While of an Intervention was rhetorically aimed at supporting generation and also as a child-soldier in Hitler’s praising Sellbach for his portrayal of ordinary people the Indigenous population, while once again rendering regime—cannot avoid when contemplating such a as sacrificial victims of war, Bernard Smith made this them a target of cumbersome paternalistic policy and theme, the Holocaust. At one point, And Still I See link in a 1966 review.5 Smith asserted that Noland thus of discrimination. The reason for mentioning this It contains a graphic image of a vast pile of human

94 95 bones. Yet another image depicts striped figures, who look as though they are wearing clothes resembling the uniforms of concentration camp victims, if not the Sonderkommando uniform (allocated to those victims forced to participate in the killing). In Sellbach’s rendition, two barefooted, uniformed figures stagger together, entangled, against a desolate dull, grey monochromatic backdrop with rubble underfoot. The figure in front appears to be supporting the figure behind. Equally wretched, the striped pattern of their uniforms extends to their faces, so that they look like they are swathed in bandages from head to ankle. They are the proverbial walking wounded. Sellbach’s compulsion to confront his memories—what he cannot help but keep on seeing—does not necessarily mean that his is a relentlessly bleak or macabre aesthetic. To confront the worst is to explore ways of making living in common bearable. It means confronting the unbearable as a reality and as a possibility—and the experience of the unbearable can be frighteningly random and inexplicable. Sellbach’s rumination in And Still I See It is testimony to this horrible folly and a reminder that it is always possible. The abstract paintings of the mid-1960s more or less follow from The Target is Man series of 1965–66. They tend to feature irregular patterns Udo Sellbach, The Myth of the Machine, 1968, acrylic on linen, 152 × 121 cm, with idiosyncratic shapes, such as jagged black photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, solids or thinner, equally jagged zips. Unlike the softly Brisbane modulated zips that divide the larger fields of colour in Barnett Newman’s abstract paintings, the zip-like mentions the fact that Sellbach drew inspiration for pattern in Sellbach’s works, like The Double Journey the dominant black shape in the abstract paintings (1967), are serrated with boldly defined edges that from his impression of seeing the shadows of a intersect a monochrome canvas. Contained within sheet drying in the sun on a Hills hoist while living in the sharp, vertical intrusion of the strip are milder Melbourne, thus adding a whimsical counterpart to colours and undulating forms. The resulting effect is the impression of an unremittingly ‘bleak vision’.12 to contrast a fluid interior spine with aggressive outer Sellbach drew upon the fact that the bleaching effect edges. It is as if we are looking at the backbone of of the intense Antipodean light could make a white some strange cyborg creature. object appear like its opposite when staring directly Despite their resolutely abstract appearance, into the sunlight. as mentioned above even these works of Sellbach’s Even though thoroughly researched, the caption are predominantly associated with his earlier for Sellbach’s abstract painting places the viewer experiences of war. The blackness is said to evoke in an odd situation. They are asked to infer these charred landscapes viewed from above, as if scorched sometimes tragic events from a large black shape of scenes from the perspective of aerial bombers.11 In the irregular size or otherwise from a thin, lookragged National Gallery of Victoria’s 2018 recreation of the zip that intersects the middle of a canvas. The whole seminal exhibition of Australian abstract art, The Field process seems a little far-fetched. It speaks to the (1968), the caption for Sellbach’s inclusion in the show, nature of museum captions, which aim to be as The Myth of the Machine (1968), refers the viewer to highly informative as possible, even if the information his experience in the closing stages of World War II. can only partly be discerned from the picture itself. The artist is said to have processed his experiences Offering such concrete information saves the viewer by means of abstract shapes that can be read from uncertainty or from having to deal with ambiguity. topographically. This means that the black shapes are Of course, our information-driven world urges easily interpreted as invoking endless, bombed landscapes accessible explanations for every representation no and thus they serve as a cipher for the life-shattering matter how obdurate. Yet the same imperative to be experience of aerial bombardment, destroyed cities, informative renders its goal elusive. The aim of the and perhaps even his perilous journey home from museum caption is to entice the viewer to the work, the Russian front. By way of contrast, the text also but it can also curtail the engagement. It promises Udo Sellbach, The Double Journey, 1967, acrylic on linen, 152 × 121 cm, photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

96 97 that one never has to dwell too long in the absence of monochromatic shape and the slim threads of colour— concrete information and therefore that the museum are unequal, and completely unbalanced within the experience has not been wasted, but is instead composition. This is what creates its visual dyna­mism, worthwhile and digestible. even though the ragged-edged, black mono­chromatic Good art should slow us down. It should be shape at first appears to dominate the canvas in a beguiling—even bleakly beguiling—by suggesting that relatively direct way. Perhaps it is Sellbach’s singular not everything is so readily disposable, and this is achievement to contrive impres­sions on paper or true for certain experiences in life. Sellbach’s abstract canvas that entice a desire for reference, while retain- paintings are actually quite complicated. Look again at ing some degree of uncertainty or ambiguity within The Myth of the Machine. It is a painting in which a the viewing process. These impressions are left like geometric black form pivots uncomfortably across a an imprint on the mind, much like Sellbach impressed white canvas at an irregular angle. On closer inspec­ forms on canvas, paper, or Perspex. tion, the right-hand side of the painting contains a vivid Sellbach exhibited many similar paintings in his array of jagged green-red-yellow abstract forms that 1968 exhibition at Gallery A in Melbourne, the same appear to erupt from the side of the imposing black year as The Field. Sellbach’s abstract paintings of monochromatic shape that dominates the canvas. this period often contrast domineering, sometimes These colours flow from the central shape as if from cumbersome shapes against fine lines of delicately a wound. The left side of the black shape, by contrast, traced colour. The central form is always jagged, as is bordered by finely drafted, alternating yellow-brown, if torn or frayed at the edges. There are a number green, blue and creamy white ribbons of colour. The of works from 1967–68 that feature a large black exhibition didactic does not refer to these coloured monochromatic form, though more rooted to a sections at all. They pose an intriguing contrast to symmetrical alignment in the centre of the canvas. rather inert central black shape and set up a subtle These works include, City in Flames, City Night, dynamic within the work as if one is viewing some kind Country Day and Middle East (all from 1967), as well of after-image—or again an effect similar to a sun halo as Achilles (1968). The mythical figure Achilles had a that Sellbach eluded to when watching the sheet dry weakness in the heel, whereas Sellbach’s Achilles has in the sun. For a start, the large, dark shape displaces a fine yellow seam that intersects the black painting the smaller patches of colour fields by its mass. just below the centre of the work. All of these works Observing these fine ribbons of colour on the left contain the similar device of a horizontal incision more closely, however, it is possible to see that some across their opaque black fields. Each incision is sections of the delicate border ribbons are composed delicate, not too intrusive, and they suggest a crack or of almost the same colour as the mono­chromatic fissure. At the edges, there are more rips or tears.City creamy-white background colour against which the in Flames suggests flames around the perimeter of implacable black entity is juxtaposed. Do these fine its black shape whereas Middle East hints at middle- ribbons of colour hint at a visual fraying through which eastern or Islamic architecture in its green-yellow, one can see the lighter coloured background piercing duck-rabbit puzzle-like perimeter. The often torn through the ominous shape on top, thus presenting appearance of these perimeters is further accentuated an illusion of depth? Or are the creamy-white ribbons in Untitled (April–May) of 1968. The black void-like part of the predominately black shape that hovers shape tilts on an angle from the upper left corner above the background? While understated, this across to the lower right side. The outline of the black play of forms is intentionally ambiguous. It confuses shape is far more dynamic as each ‘side’ is composed the figure-ground relation so that a viewer is left to of diverse, highly lacerated edges with large incisions decide between two contradictory possibilities: a torn at the bottom and at the right edge. It gives the vague edge through which one sees the monochromatic impression of an inverted canine head or perhaps background, or much the same colour reappearing as that of a wolf. It works to convey a fierce tone to an part of the larger, different form that floats on top of otherwise abstract image. Viewed together, the works the creamy-white background. suggest a type of political or contested abstraction. While at first the painting looks straightforward Sellbach has the fine touch of a meticulous enough, these thin dynamic edges complicate the over- printmaker. It is evident in the fine, frail lines he uses all composition. Formally, it does not appear settled. to portray the wandering sufferers inAnd Still I See It On the one hand, the striking black shape can be un- and it is also apparent in the subtle formal dynamics derstood as a lid—or an inert mass—that overlaps and he establishes in his abstract paintings. This is why covers these coloured shapes. On the other hand, it the distinction Bernard Smith draws (in reference to can be viewed as a deep hole into which the seem­ingly The Target is Man) between ‘a visual frisson’ (found in feeble strands of colour might be disappearing. This colour field painting and Kenneth Noland) and ‘a moral is also left to the viewer to decide. The only thing that disgust’ (paramount in Sellbach’s art) is difficult to

Udo Sellbach, Middle East, 1967, acrylic on linen, 130 × 101 cm, photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, Brisbane seems clear is that the contrasting forms—the black sustain as a strict opposition. Sellbach’s paintings of

98 99 as exploring the possibilities of the visual, challenging the expectations of the viewer. An example is the awkwardly titled Lookenspiel (1967–68), a title caught halfway between English and German. This was a conceptual-visual device consisting of fifteen sheets of coloured plastic, which could be combined in any order, although they were limited by five coloured backing boards that determined the end. The different coloured silkscreen printed sheets of varying abstract shapes could be arranged in innumerable different arrangements by anyone, including the viewer of the piece. The art education that Sellbach received immediately after the war spoke of this explorative mindset, although it was equally linked to the acquisition of technical dexterity. From 1947 to 1953 after his wartime conscription, Sellbach studied painting and printmaking at the Cologne Academy of Fine and Applied Arts (Kölner Werkschulen). Prior to World War II, it was one of the schools epitomising a new type of art educational institution, which assumed a central role for the artist in society and promoted Udo Sellbach, CAPTION TO BE COMPLETED, 1968, acrylic on linen, 152 × 121 cm, photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, art as a vehicle of cultural and social regeneration. Brisbane In the early 1920s, Konrad Adenauer—then mayor of Cologne, later post-war West German Chancellor— the mid-1960s do not explicitly represent the tensions was instrumental in establishing the Academy along of the time as much as they convey tensions within the lines of what he understood to be a Bauhaus the works themselves. Sellbach’s art contains a critical model.16 The Kölner Werkschulen was the result of dimension, if not a sense of moral outrage, but his a composite model, conjoining thinking and doing, best work also contains a subtle visual dynamic that theory and practice. The Kölner Werkschulen was is best described as eliciting ‘a visual frisson’. In a specifically aimed at forging a close relationship brief review of Sellbach’s work, Donald Brook grasped between art and crafts, more specifically between the this dynamic tension. Brook observes that the matte artist and the material, which led to an early focus on black shapes are ‘fretted around the profile like a industrial design and incorporating technology into town planner’s diagram or a SF identity key pregnant teaching, especially in printmaking. Towards the end with information.’13 He continues, the viewer’s ‘eye of his education at the Kölner Werkschulen, Sellbach follows a staccato around the boundaries of broad trained with Alfred Will and was involved in running the stable regions of paint.’14 It is as if two rival scales print workshop Kölner Presse, which produced prints were made simultaneously available, or as Brook puts and catalogues for local art galleries, such as Galerie it two eyepieces of a microscope are set to different der Spiegel, and for museum exhibitions (including for magnifications. One feels the conflicting tug of a famous artists, such as Matisse). new sort of visual ambiguity, the staccato and the After emigrating to Australia with fellow artist stable, the microscopic and macroscopic, added to and partner Karin Schepers in 1955, Sellbach began the standard contrasts of figure-ground, projection- a long and influential career as a teacher in art recession, solid-void and so forth. schools introducing the craft of printmaking as an At the time of Sellbach’s 1968 exhibition, art form. Many writers have suggested that without Udo Sellbach, Untitled (April–May), 1967, acrylic on linen, 173 × 168 cm, photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, Brisbane the artist and critic expressed his knowledge and proficiency in techniques of uncertainty about what the paintings and prints were printmaking, the medium would mean little more than divides art into different categories and capabilities. the School of Art from 1977 to 1985 as his suggesting. Their ambiguity related to the level of ‘reproduction’ to Australians.17 Together with Ursula ‘Craft is the discipline of hand, heart and mind,’ he ‘most successful achievement’, which is remarkable restraint displayed by Sellbach, so that the works did Hoff and he co-founded the Print continues, ‘the conjunction of human capabilities considering he never ceased to produce his own not appear to readily express feeling. For Gleeson, Council of Australia in 1965, in order to promote the into one activity under one name.’18 This statement artwork.19 In a 1977 statement for the Accreditation this was a problem. Viewed in its historical context, art of printmaking across Australia. In a statement on reiterates many of the key themes that shaped the Submission for the Canberra School of Art, whose Gleeson mourned the loss of an identifiable avant- the meaning of craft for art education, Sellbach points reform education movements, including his alma directorship he took up that same year, he articulated garde art in the wake of trends such as Minimal Art or to the necessity for thinking about art education mater in Cologne (Kölner Werkschulen) as well as his vision of art education as process of learning to Op Art that were popular in the late 1960s.15 Yet, it is as an endeavour that unifies the individual and the other prominent representatives such as the earlier practice art in various ways, including expression of precisely the characteristic of avant-garde art to seek communal, the personal and the social, which he Bauhaus or to a lesser extent the later HFG Ulm. societal issues and concerns. For Sellbach, this facility to explore the limits of what art is, or can be, as well added can put an end to disciplinary thinking that Sellbach regarded his foundational directorship of is best learned from artists themselves:

100 101 The study of art should never lose touch with the practice of art as it exists outside the art school. Structure, programming and other formal arrangements in art school education must therefore be open to the changing issues which prevail in art and the multitude of divergent views which constitute the field of artistic expression in time. The true indicators of quality in art programmes or courses are the people who teach and interpret the substance of their own experiences to students around them. The validity or otherwise of course descriptions is therefore bound to the quality and authenticity of the teaching staff itself.20

If the formative experience of Sellbach could rightly be explained as being lost in a lost world, then his artistic practice could be viewed as an attempt to reclaim a way of escaping loss and of inhabiting, or accessing, humanity again. Even though Sellbach’s paintings differ aesthetically from his etchings, they share a common concern with treating forms, surfaces, or the body, Udo Sellbach, CAPTION TO BE COMPLETED, 1968, acrylic on linen, 152 × 121 cm, as torn, ripped, ragged, scarred or wounded. The photograph: Charlie Hillhouse, courtesy the Estate of Udo Sellbach and Milani Gallery, paintings, on the other hand, only seldom explicitly Brisbane portray the figure, an entire body, or even body parts, 1 „Der Volkssturm“ (‘The People’s is Man (1965–66). For the full list of such as a head, for example, though they are similarly Storm’), Lexikon der Wehrmacht, titles, see Udo Sellbach, ‘The Target accessed 28 August 2018, http://www. is Man’, (Melbourne: Leveson Street filled with tension. With the paintings, the canvas is lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Soldat/ Gallery, 1966). The only title Smith omits like a surface that is layered, structured, sectioned. Volkssturm.htm. is number 7, ‘To Destine’. See Smith, 2 Michael Agnostino, ‘Interview ‘German artist’. Different categories of form and movement assume with Udo Sellbach, 30 January 2006’, 8 Bernard Smith, ‘An Appre­ The Australian National University School ciation’, in Udo Sellbach, Nightwatch shape through colours or abstract entities. Less of Art: A History of the First 65 Years (Nachtwache) a print cycle of thirty allegorical, the paintings represent not so much the (Canberra: ANU eView, 2010), 26. etchings portfolio, 1990, no pagination. 3 The first heavy or ‘saturation’ 9 Sasha Grishin, ‘And Still I See perspective of the body, as the process of scarring bombing of Cologne began in May 1942. It’, in Udo Sellbach, [or], and Still I See or tearing itself, so that the abstraction in Sellbach’s By March 1945, seven out of ten apart­ It, ed. Udo Sellbach and Margaret Plant ments were destroyed in Cologne and (Canberra: CSA Artists‘ Book Studio, oeuvre is read as embodied, or as fields of torment or the population counted a mere 40,000 1995), 9. people in comparison to the 768,000 10 The translation is provided by challenge. that had lived there before the war. The Margaret Plant; see ibid. Waste tends to play a large role in the following year, 1946, the Swedish writer, 11 Anna Sellbach, interview with Stig Dagerman described the situation Andrew McNamara, 13 March 2017. thoughts of Sellbach’s generation and even an of German youth, who were confronted Sellbach’s family discovered he had read by a view of ‘an endless panorama of W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of earlier generation of emigres and refugees. If there ruins’ from their school­yards; ruins which Destruction (1999/2004) and had marked is ‘beauty’, then, it is beauty that lies in the face serve (‘in the worst cases’) as school pages where the author describes the lavatories. ‘Every day the teachers im­pression of Germany viewed from of destruction, after its destruction, when new preach about the immorality of the black the air. market, but when those youngsters 12 Smith, ‘An Appreciation’. possibilities of meaning open up. The works do not go home they are forced by their own 13 Donald Brook, ‘Faults, but Pots always detail politics and current affairs directly; they hunger and by their parents’ hunger are Memorable’, Sydney Morning Herald, to take to the streets to find something 27 June 1968. are political because they do not strive to replicate to eat.’ „Die verlassene Stadt“ 14 ibid. the political. In Sellbach’s art, references to bodily or (‘The Abandoned City’), Spiegel Online, 15 James Gleeson, ‘Music in His accessed 28 August 2018, http://www. Lines of Paint’, The Sunday Herald, 23 organic states are abstracted, and somehow the inert spiegel.de/einestages/2-weltkrieg- June 1968, 91. in-koeln-20-000-tote-durch- 16 The Werkbund and an abstracted form is embodied. Yet, the body is distorted luftangriffe-a-1025906.html; Stig influential exhibition held in Cologne was and the distorted is embodied. His oeuvre contains Dagerman, German Autumn, trans. likely an equal influence in this thinking Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: about the new institution. landscapes of refuse, junk or rubbish, abstract University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 63. 17 Elizabeth Cross, ‘Udo 4 Ursula Hoff, in Udo Sellbach, Sellbach’, Imprint 17, no. 1 (March 1982): mounds of forms, waste lands and eerie places where ‘The Target is Man’, Grahame King 6–7; Paul Jolly, ‘Udo Sellbach: Etchings’, so much is buried underneath. The ultimate fascination and Udo Sellbach, (North Melbourne: Imprint 24, no. 2 (October 1989): 1–3. Leveson Street Gallery, 1966). 18 Udo Sellbach, ‘Craft, March 9, with Sellbach’s best work is that it throws up knots 5 Bernard Smith, ‘The Sellbach 1979’, Sellbach Family Archive, Tasmania. Etchings’, Overland 34 (1966): 24; 19 Udo Sellbach, ‘Summary of of apprehension. One seeks to secure reference, to Bernard Smith, ‘Anti-conscription Personal Data and Information’, Sellbach reach something tangible, to acquire it from the most Angle of German Artist’, The Age, Family Archive, Tasmania. 30 March 1966. 20 Canberra School of Art, obscure means. One thinks one apprehends the 6 Smith, ‘German Artist’. ‘Accreditation Submission 1977’, cited impression and the visual experience, but really one 7 These are the titles of the in Agostino, The Australian National twelve etchings comprising, The Target University School of Art, 27–28. needs to grasp what journey the eye is being led upon. It asks us to see again, and again.

102