VISA2401- Sculpture. Sem.1. 2012

Essay- The Works of Bert Flugelman

Rebekah Martin.

SI: 2094136

Bert Flugelman is one of ’s most prominent Public Space Sculptors. He was born in1923 in Austria and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1938 to avoid persecution by the German’s at the start of World War Two. In 1948 he attended the National Art School and then travelled overseas to develop his art practise, which remained eclectic in style and media for many years. In 1951 he contracted polio whilst overseas and became partially paralysed. In 1956 Flugelman returned to and began an art teaching career that has spanned his artistic career and various moves around Australia. He has major sculptural works, mostly in stainless steel, displayed across the nation, with many in , Woolongong and Sydney and surrounding areas, all places where he has lived for extensive periods of time across his lifetime.

In 1968 he was heavily influenced by an exhibition of work by Australian formalist colour abstractionists, whose focus was on colour and form with the artists personality deliberately kept distant from the works. Other influences on his developing sculptural practice include Romanian Sculptor Constantin Brancusi and US sculptor David Smith.

In 1968 Flugelman received his first major commission. It is an untitled piece, affectionately known to generations of students at University as ‘the egg-beaters’. This fountain was commissioned whilst the Bruce Hall was under construction so he was able to develop the piece to specifically complement this site’s architecture. This awareness was important to his later public works, which invariably where chosen from maquettes he had

Rebekah Martin VISA 2401- Sculpture Bert Flugelman- Artist Study Page 1 made without a specific site in mind. At this time he was interested in kinetics in sculpture, the spiralling and radiating movements of water and light being integral to the piece.

In the early 1970s Flugelman began working more with construction in sculpture rather than carving, moulding and casting and the influence of formalism begins to show strongly in his works. Tetrahedra (1970) marked a turning point in his career at age 47. The use of highly reflective metal served his interest in optical kinetics and theatricality. The geometric shapes appealed to his sense of paradox and ambiguity. When initially installed in a Hawthorn gallery he hung the walls with brightly coloured striped and bulging canvas awnings that interplayed with the reflective surface as did the viewer’s own reflections. This deliberate desire to impose the personality of the viewer onto the work, through the use of reflection separates Flugelman’s work somewhat from pure formalism. Later the piece was buried near Lake Burley Griffin with the intent that the highly polished aluminium should rust away leaving an archaeological imprint of negative space in the ground. The piece was later re - made in more durable stainless steel and still sits outside the National Gallery of Victoria where it complements the geometric styling of the building.

In 1972 he was offered a position as lecturer at South Australian School of Art and moved to the city. His first Adelaide Commission was Continuum (1974) at Adelaide University. It was commissioned as a gift from Flinders University to celebrate the former institution’s Centenary. The latent energy apparent in this sprung coil sits, quite fittingly, outside the physics building at Adelaide University. Like Knot (1975), Flugelman makes the negative space and the framing of the surrounding environment very important to the piece.

Spheres was a maquette designed in the early seventies that was commissioned for the development at a larger scale in 1977. Flugelman wanted to name it ‘On Further Reflection’ but it never took off and is now known by locals as ‘The Malls Balls’, a primary rendezvous spot in the city. The simplicity of the sculpture means that it is not lost in the jumble of shops and shoppers in the mall. It inverts and subverts people’s reflections in this centre of fashion, image and vanity. Rebekah Martin VISA 2401- Sculpture Bert Flugelman- Artist Study Page 2

Flugelman’s sculptures really seem to engage kids. The sculptor delights in the way children and families engage with them. He states that: ‘Being non- representational people do not feel threatened by them and this may be why they are seldom vandalised.’ He realises that you cannot control the way people will engage with your work. He recalls with humour, sitting back and watching people’s reactions when the balls were first installed and seeing an old lady walk right up close to it, take out a handkerchief and polish a blemish from it. ‘It doesn’t get much better than that’ he says. It is certainly a sign of how much people engage with and make his sculptures their own. Around the same time Cones was commissioned by the Australian National Gallery and sits in the Sculpture garden there. It is his largest piece at 24 metres long. It shows how the reflective stainless steel is well suited to both urban and natural settings.

His works have not been without controversy, such as his chainsaw sculpture of Margaret Thatcher, and the Dobel Memorial 1979, which was originally in Martin Place in Sydney. It stands at 19.5 metres in height. It is another of his pieces that has been renamed by the locals and is known as the ‘Silver Shish-kebab’. Many people at the time felt it was out of sync with the surrounding Victorian style buildings. When martin Place was redeveloped in the 1990s the then Lord mayor insisted it be moved. It was subsequently mishandled and damaged within council depots but eventually found a new home on the corner of Pitt St and Spring Street in 1997, amongst more modern buildings.

Flugelman decided to leave South Australia and settled on a piece of property he had bought in bushland south of Wollongong at Jamberoo. Although now an established artist in his own right, he continued teaching through the . Flugelman maintains that his teaching career has had a reciprocal effect on his own understanding of art and his artistic practice.

Gateway to Mount Kiera started as a painting and maquette in 1975 and was installed in 1985 on the University of Wollongong Campus. Once again, it shows how Flugelman’s linear sculptures act as frames for the surrounding landscapes. The shadows at different times of the Rebekah Martin VISA 2401- Sculpture Bert Flugelman- Artist Study Page 3 day also address the artist concerns with optical effects. This piece is not a highly polished stainless steel and shows him experimenting with different textures by scouring the surface with a grinder. This emphasis of the piece being’ hand- made’ separates Flugelman’s work from the stark visions of the formalists and has seen him described as a Romantic Formalist. His, and the viewer’s, personality is allowed to enter into the work.

By 2000 Flugelman felt his tubular linear sculptures had run their course and he moved into multi-facetted forms. Still working in highly polished stainless steel, pieces like Calligraphy, Blade and the Chisel series can reflect dull grass in one facet and bright sunlight in another at the same time, emphasising the dramatic edges of the pieces. Although his works seem to display a high degree of precision in construction, Flugelman works in a very freehand manner. He generally draws brief sketches of his intended works and this is enough for him to work from for maquettes and they are then translated by assistants into larger works. He also puts a lot of thought into whether a base to a sculpture will be visible or not. The bases are often of starkly different materials like granite, marble or wood and their shapes is an integral part of the whole piece.

In 2002 Bert Flugelman finally decided to move from his Jamberoo property, which had difficult access for a disabled man in his mid-seventies. He and his wife moved to in the southern highlands of NSW. He continues to work from here with an assistant and is cared for by one of his daughters. He still exhibits his maquettes regularly and any of them can be expanded to large scale sculptures. Although he is not commissioned as regularly now, he has had large scale pieces shown in the Bondi Beach Annual ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ exhibition.

His more recent works are heavily influenced by Greek Mythology and also an extinct sea creature called an ammonite. This was an ancient, gigantic, crustacean which ate everything in its path. It has the shape of a Nautilus shell or a ram’s horn and the fossilised remains were revered by the ancient Greeks and used for decorative purposes. His works show a more serpentine and natural approach to the geometry he has used throughout his most famous Rebekah Martin VISA 2401- Sculpture Bert Flugelman- Artist Study Page 4 sculptures. They can all be broken down into geometric equilateral triangular measurements and show the principle of the Fibonacci’s Golden Mean. The works influenced by ammonites form a sequence which shows the development of Flugelman’s vision for these shapings.

Flugelman’s works still show his particular sense of humour about public art works, and people’s engagement with them, but some, like Tetrapus 2005and Medusa Helmet 2005, also have a slightly menacing tone to them. Tetrapus is a word play on octopus, as the sculpture only has four limbs rather than eight. It has a sense of the predatory nature of the ammonites about it and yet is highly decorative, just as the fossilised shells of ammonites are. It’s placement near the sea is very important to the squid like shape it represents.

Bert Flugelman has completed as many public sculptures in Australia as any other artist of his generation. Stainless steel became a versatile medium in his hands. For Flugelman, it has been vital to his works by allowing them to remain open to layers interpretation and speculation. To quote Peter Pinson in his biographical work on Flugelman: ‘The mirrored surfaces of his work explored new ground regarding the relationship between a sculpture and its physical and social environment….’ (2008). The durability of this medium means that, Flugelman’s work will be a part of the Australian landscape, and our lives, for many more generations to come.

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References

Pinson, P. 2008. Bert Flugelman: on further reflection. The Watermark Press, Boorowa, NSW.

Axia Modern Art. (2011) Bert Flugelman. Retrieved from http://www.axiamodernart.com.au/artists/sculpture/artists.php?id=39

BMGArt. (2012) Bert Flugelman Resume. Retrieved from http://www.bmgart.com.au/individual_artists/flugelman_bert/resume/bert_flugelman_resume.htm

Cullen, M. (2002, June 16). Bert Flugelman: City Sculptor. Retrieved from http://sgp1.paddington.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/art_profiles/article_1067.asp?s=1

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