JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF on DANILA VASSILIEFF 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Elizabeth, we‖ve got a great deal to talk about.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Indeed.
JAMES GLEESON: When I look at the vast amount of work of Danila‖s. But I thought we might take as a single unit first of all, the group of sculptures that we‖ve got in the collection, and start off with the first one chronologically. That‖s one called the Hanged man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, that was made from Lilydale rock.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Marble.
JAMES GLEESON: Or marble. It was exhibited in an exhibition at the Tye‖s Gallery, April 5th to the 22nd 1949.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Good.
JAMES GLEESON: So it was done prior to that exhibition.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: You showed me some photographs of Danila working in the quarry.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Indeed. Well, he wasn‖t doing his carving in the quarry.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was doing his selecting.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Tell me about Lilydale rock. You told me that it had certain qualities; that it was very hard but very brittle.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, there are limestone beds at Lilydale millions of years old, fossil remains of corals and shellfish and tilted up to their present position under tremendous pressure. This, incidentally, was founded in 1878 by the father of Dame Nellie Melba, which is why it is called the Mitchell Quarries. 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And still called the Mitchell Quarries.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In her day, all rich people had bathrooms lined with glorious polished slabs of multi-coloured marble from this quarry.
JAMES GLEESON: Isn‖t that interesting?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It is remarkable for its variety of colour and graining.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Everything from the darkest, richest blacks and greys and yellows and pinks, and everything in between and mixtures of the same.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But the great problem as a stone—and it was also used by stonemasons for tombstones. They had to give up using it they told us when Danila and I sought advice on how to deal with it for sculpture, because it was so hard and so brittle that it was uneconomic to use it for those purposes.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: If it was smartly tapped, it was so brittle that it would open up a seam and fall apart. Then again, the other chief advantage was its hardness. To get a polish on it—and I may say that marble is the name for any limestone that takes a polish.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: To get a polish on it, they had to use tools, abrasive tools, which wore out seven times faster than if they were doing it on granite.
JAMES GLEESON: Good gracious.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So it cost them a lot of money to get the surface value of the stone. As well as the fact that it might fall apart because of its hardness and brittleness.
JAMES GLEESON: A wrong tap at the wrong place.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: A wrong tap at the wrong place. So they stopped using it for those purposes. By the time we found it, looked at it for sculpture, it was being used for nothing but crushing up for road metal.
2 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Good heavens.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: By the tons and tons and tons.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: For commercial uses at least a ton of waste would be handed just to get to—oh well, no, no, no. I would say, you know, umpteen tons just to get one ton of usable metal.
JAMES GLEESON: Is that so?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Of course, they‖re huge faces and men get up there, giants of men with tremendous drills and they bring down enormous and they blast enormous falls. Amongst the rocks that fall there are pieces of handable, manageable size.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Anything from little pieces a foot square to something, well, more than you and I could lift.
JAMES GLEESON: Go on.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Of course, because they have natural seams, they tend to fall into interesting shapes. Normally this heap of interesting shapes is just crushed up by mechanical means and used as road metal. That‖s its main use. Well, for a lot of reasons which I won‖t go into, personal reasons mainly, Danila was depressed because he couldn‖t sell his paintings.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was mad on stone as a material. We were building our own beautiful stone house out of Warrandyte stone on the very land we lived on.
JAMES GLEESON: This is Stoneygrad.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Stoneygrad, because we didn‖t have enough money to buy anything else. I said, ―Well, why don‖t you do some sculpture? Let‖s go and get some stone‖.
JAMES GLEESON: What year was that?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That would be in 1949.
JAMES GLEESON: So his sculpture really began then?
3 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: We were married in 1947, and for two years he painted like mad, but he couldn‖t sell it. He couldn‖t live on it. He got very depressed about that. So I bought an old Ford utility truck and we went over with this thing and we asked the manager could we please buy some stone. He said, ―Buy it?‖. He said, ―You can cart it away, as much as you can carry‖.
JAMES GLEESON: JAMES GLEESON: Good lord.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: When we told him we wanted to make sculptures, he thought we were rather dotty.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He said, ―Well, I‖d very interested to see the results‖, and he always was interested. But we never could persuade him to buy any, because he didn‖t expect the kind of sculptures that Danila did. But, anyway, Danila battled on.
JAMES GLEESON: In this Hanged man, the early ones were all done with hammer and chisel?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: The old method of—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s the only tools he had.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This particular Hanged man was a gigantic stone. We had to get several enormous workmen to help us get it on the utility, and several enormous other people to roll it down the hill when we got home. But it was a challenge. He always looked at the shape of the stone first, and somehow saw within it something he could evoke from it. So the stone itself created the idea, and the idea was always something already in his head from his own past life. The image was already half formed in his head. So he then got to work with a hammer and chisel, tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping. I won‖t say that this was the very first one.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This was the first big one and successful one. Because he did a lot of little ones where he learned that it falls apart, you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But in this one he could see a figure, an image of a man‖s head, a suffering man, a moustachioed man, who was in fact a hanged
4 8 & 15 November 1979 man that his image had remained with him in wartime. I think this man had been a Russian partisan. But, anyway, he typified all the many suffering humans that he had seen in the war as an officer.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. This became a real theme for him.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Absolutely.
JAMES GLEESON: Because it comes out in the Stenka Razin and the Unknown political prisoner.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes. They were not only victims of war, but they very often–almost always–had a Russian cast to their features or their fashions.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Because that was his imagery.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This particular character had a moustache, which was apparently a very usual sort of moustache for officers and Russians in general at this time. Well now, we had to have a lot of experience with the difficulty of the hammer and chisel. It was obvious he needed a tool which would be an abrasive style of thing rather than a tap, tap hammer thing, so that the material wouldn‖t be liable to shatter. So I went and bought him, with his direction, what he wanted, because I was the only wage earner. I was working at the university as a tutor, adult education. He had no income whatsoever from any source and no patrons whatsoever. So it was hard for us to buy this thing. Anyway, we went and got I forget how many horsepower or parts of a horsepower the machine was, with a long flexible cable and an end to which we attached circular abrasive wheels.
JAMES GLEESON: So you ground out the form?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Carborundums. Carborundums.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: We then had to find a cheap way to get hold of carborundums, because it‖s not just a matter of getting one. You have to start with a coarse one and then work down through the finer and finer grades.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So, to our great delight, we found a foundry owner named Vassilieff, a Russian born gentleman, with a business in some part of St Kilda area. Danila approached him simply on the basis of having the same name
5 8 & 15 November 1979 and owning a foundry and told him what he wanted. This gentleman said, ―Oh certainly, we‖re using these all the time. Come and help yourself to what‖s left. At a certain point we abandon them‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: ―When we buy them they may be 12 inches diameter, but by the time we throw them away they may be four or five inches diameter. So anything you find in our thrown away box, you may have with pleasure‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Wasn‖t that good luck?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So, we did. So in this case, with this head, Danila got the muscular forms of the man‖s up-dragged arms. He was either hanged or crucified.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There‖s a sense in which you could regard it as Danila‖s version of a crucifixion.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a suffering human at the mercy of other humans. The muscular suggestion of the irregular surfaces of the round and the throat, the poor swollen throat of the man, was what he wanted. But to get the features of the eyes, the round bulging eyes, and the moustache and the nose, he used the machine.
JAMES GLEESON: Was this the first time, the first work he had used it on?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was the first work he used the machine, so it is a combination of two methods of production.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And he could have gone on using a machine. He could have smoothed off these lumpy looking arms, but he didn‖t want to because emotionally this had the same feeling to him as the figure of the slave emerging from the marble of Michelangelo.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes, yes. I know exactly.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The awakening slave whose—
JAMES GLEESON: Half in the rock.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Half in the rock and half awakening, still tired.
6 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was what he wanted and that‖s what he got.
JAMES GLEESON: It came up brilliantly.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: It‖s interesting, it shows the old method of working directly into the stone.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Directly.
JAMES GLEESON: Plus the application of this new instrument that you have.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. That‖s right. Then, of course, there‖s a further stage with every one of these sculptures.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Which was always my worry.
JAMES GLEESON: Polish.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, polish, yes. Because when they‖re carved, well, it doesn‖t matter which method, they‖re quite matt and you don‖t see the colour, you don‖t see the graining. It‖s just matt stone. Any old looking piece of stone. You don‖t know that it‖s beautiful marble with a lot of colour and graining under it. The only way we could tell what it was going to look like was to throw a bucket of water over it. When you wet it you see how beautiful the colour is. We were always throwing buckets of water around and then we‖d know what colour we were going to end up with and, you know, work accordingly.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was my task to
JAMES GLEESON: Put the surface on.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: To put the surface on. Well, there was not a single sculpture that didn‖t take three or four months of hand work for me to put the polish on.
JAMES GLEESON: You worked on all of these?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Every one, without exception.
JAMES GLEESON: So it‖s really a joint effort?
7 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, only in that sense, yes. I was the slave at the end of the process, the willing slave. I have here, if you‖d like to shut off for a moment—
JAMES GLEESON: You were going to tell me how you put the polish on the sculptures.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, we had a lot of trouble finding out how to do it. The only people we could find who could help us were professional stonemasons who had in the past made gravestones. There were very few very old gentlemen left who knew about this. I‖ve got a few names on my list and I know they had to do with this. One is Charles Culeson. Another one is a Mr Tyrrel. Another place— oh, this is the suppliers of the stuff, of the chemical.
JAMES GLEESON: It was a chemical?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, it appears that this was how it was. We were told to mix together six or more ounces of tin oxide with oxalic acid. Five to six ounces, say, of oxalic acid and tin oxide. The important element was the tin oxide. The oxalic acid was additional but not basic. If you didn‖t have it, you could still get some sort of a result. You added a dash of salts of sorrel powder, S-O-R- R-E-L. That‖s a lemon colour. It‖s like a yellow power. That also was optional.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: If you could find it sort of thing. The whole thing was that you applied with a felt pad, just damp enough to pick up the powder, and rub the surface like mad till it was hot. This changed the chemical composition of the surface of the stone.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: One of these chemicals sort of sealed it. The other one polished it, got the shine on it.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, the important thing, apart from these chemicals, was that the surface should be prepared previously to absolute smoothness with pumice or snakestone, as they call it, or emery powder from a fineness from 240 down to 300 or 400 points. That‖s the way they estimate the fineness of these snakestones and emery powders. The snakestone is what you sharpen a razor on.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, yes, yes.
8 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So you might as well resign yourself to a tremendous—and in those days I had no machine to assist me to rub with until I got heat.
JAMES GLEESON: Arm power. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But I did it with my, you know, hand and arm. The emery paper is 2/40 and it goes down to 300 or 400 in fineness. Now, there‖s no way you can short cut this process. Having used a carborundum stone on the machine down to the finest fine they‖ve got, you‖ve got to then do it by hand because there‖s nothing finer available on a stone, you see. There‖s no way you can leave out one stage by jumping from a coarser to a very fine.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: All the scratches are left, all the in between scratches. In other words, scratches have to be eliminated systematically and, when they are, you‖ve got this.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, a high polish.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This high polish. That, of course, even that you don‖t have till you put the chemicals on. But with or without the chemicals you won‖t get that surface unless you‖ve eliminated the scratches in a systematic manner.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, you told me that once when you were away, you buried one of yours in the earth to protect it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh yes, this is true. My beautiful one, which is called the Unknown political prisoner. A reclining double figure. It‖s a man on one side and a woman on the other giving a raised arm salute. Done for a competition on the theme of unknown political prisoners. A man and a woman lying down but still holding the arm up in the old defiant salute.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, I was going away in a hurry and I didn‖t know what to do. I thought, ―Well, if anybody breaks in I don‖t care what they take, they can take my stereo or my anything, but I don‖t want them to take my sculpture‖. So I dashed out quickly under the house and found a little entrance under the house where my doggy, my Airedale doggy, normally went. I just shoved it in the earth and covered it up. I thought, ―Well, if anybody finds it there, just good luck to them‖. But when I came home–and it wasn‖t very long, it was only a few weeks–and I unburied it, sure enough it was there but the polish was not there. Now, it‖s still got its perfect smooth surface, and I yet have to restore the polish by putting the chemicals on again. So if ever anybody has this little problem, you know how to do it.
9 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: We‖ve now got the recipe.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But you‖ve got more than that now, you‖ve got machines which you can put felt pads on which will give you this high temperature.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a chemical change of the surface of the stone takes place at high temperature, by friction.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, we used to have to generate it by friction.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, Elizabeth, after Hanged man the next one in the sequence is Hollywood star. This is one of Danila‖s more satiric works.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. It is a completely, wholly satiric work, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: This dates from around 1950 and was shown at the second exhibition at which he showed sculpture, and his last exhibition of all. Is that right?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was both. It was his very last exhibition of everything, paintings, and his second and last exhibition of sculpture.
JAMES GLEESON: That was at the Stanley—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was Stanley Coe Gallery in Bourke Street from Tuesday May 1st to Thursday May 10th 1951. He showed 22 sculptures and 12 paintings.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And you have some of both.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, good.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Do you want to talk now only of the sculptures?
JAMES GLEESON: Well, at the moment, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, we might as well, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: I think we‖ll continue with the sculpture. Hollywood star is obviously a satiric feature. It‖s got three breasts.
10 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. Indeed, that‖s precisely why it‖s called that. Because the fashion in 1951 had become so grotesque for women‖s bras to stick out miles and that he just thought it was ridiculous, you know. This time it‖s vertical. Instead of a big round form, it‖s a vertical piece of stone, with a nice big circular base, well balanced on its base. I would say balanced on four points. One is a grotesque behind and the other are two legs.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Then there‖s this figure, this tall torso with three bosoms going round it. The position of the arms are being, oh, rather theatrical and the very theatrical expression of the face, you know, pseudo drama.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And an absurd stiff ridgey looking waved hairdo, which was the thing then. It was quite simply a satire of the female image form divine of that time.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, it‖s very interesting, I think.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It has no other significance, you know, except as sculpture.
JAMES GLEESON: But it seems to me that in just those two sculptures you move in two extremes of Danila‖s concern.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, indeed.
JAMES GLEESON: From the deep concern for humanity and the suffering of humanity, to a sense of the ridiculous of human beings.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. Indeed. You are so right. This is what makes his work. The whole breadth of scope of his interests was just too much for most critics of the time, who couldn‖t understand that anyone could be so light-hearted, for example, in stone.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This happened again and again with sculptures that he did for fun, and would stand back and literally roar with laughter.
JAMES GLEESON: I imagine Hollywood star would be one of those.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, that was one of them, yes. I can, you know, suggest others. I suppose I‖m not allowed to mention—
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, anything.
11 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: One of the ones that gave him the greatest fun is owned by the Melbourne National Gallery now, and he gave it the name of Petit bourgeois.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was a lady at the squat, enormously grossly fat tum, in an absurdly pretentious posture of social superiority, with a hand, fist, with a hole bored in, grasping an implement of some kind which got lost. Nobody to this day except me knows what that was. The thing that got lost was a pair of silver lunettes, spectacles. We found these lunettes at Ma Dalley‖s junk yard. Ma Dalley was a famous character in Melbourne, you know, a millionaire woman who was herself an eccentric and a character. He once painted her in one of her favourite funny flower hats. A beautiful painting of Ma Dalley surrounded with all the wheels and bits and things that she sold. She loved the painting of herself but she hated all the wheels, what she called, ―Them wheels and things‖. She bought the painting and destroyed it.
JAMES GLEESON: Good lord.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Because she couldn‖t bear all them wheels and things. But anyway, to go back, we found the lunettes, and because he had these lunettes and he was painting this colossal, gross, socialising type of female with no clothes on and a gigantic tummy—it was the posture that was so satirical–that he put these silver lunettes in the hand.
JAMES GLEESON: What a pity they were lost.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, they were lost.
JAMES GLEESON: It would have given the whole point to it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Indeed, indeed. But, to my astonishment, I have subsequently seen this photograph, this sculpture photographed and exhibited under a very aesthetically pretentious title of Female form. You know, abstract sort of thing, which was the last thing he ever did in his life.
JAMES GLEESON: Its real title is Petit bourgeois.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Its real title is Petit bourgeois, and there it is No. 22 on the catalogue of that exhibition in 1951.
JAMES GLEESON: The Stanley Coe Gallery exhibition.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: So that tidies that up, and it‖s one of his satirical ones.
12 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, indeed, yes. So is this one, Bloke pointing, which isn‖t one of yours.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I have seen this reproduced in an art magazine.
JAMES GLEESON: I know the one you mean because you showed it to me before.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Dear me, it‖s hard to—there, this one.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, these were exhibited in 1951.
JAMES GLEESON: That was his last exhibition.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was his last exhibition.
JAMES GLEESON: Both Bloke pointing—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Bloke pointing and the other. In this ‖51 exhibition, here it is on the thing, Item No. 10.
JAMES GLEESON: Bloke pointing.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Bloke pointing.
JAMES GLEESON: And that one?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And that one, Item No. 6, the name is Yankee Cesar. Now, this is indeed a satire of a very disgruntled General Macarthur.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t like American policies. He didn‖t like the war in Korea. He didn‖t like Macarthur‖s Godly attitude and he was very pleased when the then president pulled him into line.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. This was a satirical comment?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This was a satirical Yankee Cesar looking very, very miserable. Sitting down, no clothes on, very, very limp penis, his arms round himself to comfort himself, and an expression on his face, you know, the same long nose, the same high forehead that Macarthur had, and an expression of utter amazement on his face. This was pure political satire.
13 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The other was social satire, the woman, but this was political.
JAMES GLEESON: Political satire. So it extends his range again of that expression.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, indeed, yes, yes. The Bloke pointing which is a very simple form, very beautiful in its curves.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, very elegant form. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He gave it the simple name Bloke pointing and that‖s what it was, no more and no less, apart from being a sculpture in its own right. Now, I have seen both of those paintings.
JAMES GLEESON: Sculptures.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Sculptures, sorry. Reproduced in a quarterly review called Australian Letters in 1962, accompanied by the most pretentious commentary on them, pointing out that they both represented the deep inner tragedy of Vassilieff‖s soul. His self-pity, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I never knew a man in my life who was less capable of self-pity.
JAMES GLEESON: Really? Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He used to get depressed and angry and miserable, but never self-pitiful, you know. The kind of deep emotional traumas that were attributed to him were the wrong kind. If he did have traumas they were not those sort of traumas.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Really, you know, titles have been invented and stories and explanations and interpretations invented for something. Now, if I tell you what he meant with this Bloke pointing, apart from it being a bloke pointing as a piece of sculpture. What made him happy was if he could achieve an object in the round which was interesting from all angles, which concave surfaces and convex surfaces contrasted and contradicted if necessary, in which holes in interesting sizes and shapes were put in. Little bits of interesting line work. You often find little lines because this is important as in a painting to have little lines. His aesthetic principles were the same in sculpture as in painting, except that the painting only had to be flat and the sculpture was three dimensional.
14 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, the test of amateurism—and he condemned a lot of his own sculpture, early things, as being amateuristic. And some of mine, because he had me woodcarving and some stone carving. The test was that it must not have four sides of the original block. It must not be a thing which has a front and a back and two sides. It must be something which you cannot conceive. That‖s why, when you photograph some of these sculptures, you don‖t know you‖re looking at the same piece.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Because it hasn‖t got a side, hasn‖t got a front or back, and they‖re hard to photograph for this reason.
JAMES GLEESON: Exactly, yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Unless we can get some new kind of photography which is sort of sensor round, it‖s rather difficult. Well, this was his idea of sculpture. It was stone he loved, it was the material he loved. To him, the things that moderns called sculpture that are bits of string and rope and metal stuck together, he would not have called sculpture at all. He would have called that engineering or that is tradesmanship. He would have given it a quite—
JAMES GLEESON: Different?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: A pleasant name, but not sculpture. He would have thought that this man that goes around wrapping up the landscape—
JAMES GLEESON: Christo.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Was just a fake. That it was a gimmick and it was very expensive, extravagant, ill-conceived. You‖re resource wasting and a thoroughly inexcusable lot of rubbish. That‖s what he would have thought of that. But, however, that‖s ancient history, isn‖t it?
JAMES GLEESON: Elizabeth, now we come to works that were not exhibited in Danila‖s lifetime.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: His last show was in ‖51.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: But he went on doing sculpture, I take it, right up until the time of his death.
15 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no, he didn‖t. Because in 1954, between ‖53 and ‖54, at the end of ‖54, he went to live and teach in the Murray Valley.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: After that he did nothing but watercolours, his favourite medium.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. So all the sculptures after his show would be done before he went up to the Murray.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: All these. This is it. Yes, yes, yes. There was no sculpture after that.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Because he didn‖t have the stone, he didn‖t have the machine, he‖d left that, you know, behind. He didn‖t have the facilities. In order, incidentally, to use this machine, you had to have a constant drip of running water, with the result that our living room in Stoneygrad had a hose from the ceiling constantly dropping on the sculpture on the floor.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness me.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But it was a stone floor so it was all right, you know. But you could not do this without a proper workshop.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no, of course not.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You are very fortunate because I think you‖ve got the pick of them. You have really got the very finest work. There were not many sculptures done.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t live long enough. He only sculpted between these few years ‖49 to ‖52. Fifty-two really, let us say. Then he became intensely depressed and his health deteriorated with what was then some doctors called low, or a tendency to sudden drops in blood pressure. Not high blood pressure. He personally associated it with the climate. He loathed Melbourne and Warrandyte climate. Many times he begged me to go and live over the divide, and I was only too glad to contemplate this but he could never decide where to go.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Once upon a time when we were early in our marriage, it would be round about 1940–after the second exhibition in ‖49 when
16 8 & 15 November 1979 he didn‖t sell anything–he said, ―Let‖s go and live in Sydney. Let‖s go and look for something‖. So we jumped in my old car, the old bomb, and we drove to Sydney. He said, ―We‖ll build a stone house‖. I said, ―Well, I don‖t know where we‖re going to, but still we‖ll find something‖. A young architect had written to me, who had just arrived in Australia, because he had heard something from me from Harry Roskolenko.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: An American poet who lived here a long time. This young architect had never met anyone, had never had a building built, had never had any business. He had come to Australia because he found America impossible. He was trained by the Bauhaus school of thinking. He‖d worked with Gropius and he thought that we were the kind of people that might know somebody that might, you know, appreciate his interests. So we said, ―Well, let‖s go and see this young man in Sydney, this young architect‖. And when we did, we found a two-acre block of land in Hunter‖s Hill on the waterfront for 2,000 pounds, which I could have found by borrowing from my mother. We then went to see the architect and his name was Harry Seidler.
JAMES GLEESON: Seidler. I thought you were going to say Harry Seidler.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was amazed that two unknown people had walked into his office and said, ―We want you to build us a house‖. When we said, Danila said, ―Got to have a lot of stone, must be stone‖. Stone mad, you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I said, ―You know Danila, this man doesn‖t deal in organic. He‖s not Frank Lloyd Wright. It‖s a different thing‖. But Harry said, ―Oh we can use stone all right as well‖, you know, we‖d conveyed the idea. Then we went back and looked, all three of us looked at this two acre block of land, and we went back to Seidler. He said ―Yes‖, you know, ―Let me think about it. We could do something good there‖. Then suddenly Danila got to hate Sydney. We were staying in a little boarding house, very pleasant boarding house in Elizabeth Bay. Suddenly he said to me one day, ―I hate Sydney. Let‖s go home‖.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: ―Let‖s go home to Stoneygrad‖. So we went home. And there was I ready to borrow money from my mother, buy two acres of waterfront for 2,000 pounds, have Seidler build a house, his first ever. All was arranged, but Danila changed his mind. Well, he was so spontaneous, you know, so volatile.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
17 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s what made him a very hard man for people to live with very long. I think I was the only one that survived 11 years.
JAMES GLEESON: Elizabeth, the next sculpture we have is a double reclining figure.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s a theme that comes into Danila‖s sculpture. You have one of these, the one you buried as a matter of fact.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, that‖s right, that‖s right. I‖ll have to now find the—here we are. In 1952 an international sculpture competition was announced on the theme of the unknown political prisoner–$11,500 prize money and many others, you know, $1,000, $3,500, $4,000 and so on.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The terms were the unknown political prisoner, chosen as one of universal interest today because it is deemed necessary to have a theme as a focal point. This subject, however, is selected without any intention of limiting in any way the type or style of work which may be submitted. All forms of expression in sculpture where the realistic symbolic expressionist or abstract will be judged on their own merits.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, that he liked. Now, the jury he liked even more. This was (inaudible) Anand of Asia, in Bombay.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, to put it in short, nine of them; one British, one Commonwealth, one Asiatic, one French, one German, one Italian, one North American, one South American and one Russian.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Britain was Herbert Read, and of all people for the British Commonwealth, Mrs Richard Casey, the wife of the Australian Minister for External Affairs. Now, Maie Casey was not only our great personal friend but loved his work and bought it.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: George Sarle for France, Groman for Italy, Giulio Argan for Italy, Groman for Germany. Somebody named James Sweeney from North America.
JAMES GLEESON: America. Oh yes, Johnson Sweeney, yes.
18 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: George Romero Brest for South America, Vladimir Kiminoff for Russia.
JAMES GLEESON: A very distinguished group.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, it couldn‖t be more so, you know. So he thought, ―Well, this is right up my alley‖, you know, the freedom, the subject.
JAMES GLEESON: The concern.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The concern, the type of judge. He was very critical about most quality of judging. He used to think it was idiotic for artists of any calibre to submit to be judged by people who weren‖t artists at all or had nothing to recommend them in this field, you know. So he was happy to and he did a lot of work making maquettes.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was using white Italian marble because it was soft and easy. He used to say, ―This white marble‖s rubbish. You can carve it with a penknife. No wonder Michelangelo did what he did‖. He really literally said—
JAMES GLEESON: (inaudible) Lilydale marble
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Literally he said, ―This is rubbish. You can cut it with a penknife‖. But he did a lot of maquettes and some of them were photographed in local newspapers. Finally he achieved one, which was a beauty, which satisfied him. He sent it off to the Institute of Contemporary Arts and I have the receipt, acknowledging receipt of this, and the name and address of the receiving centre for your maquette from Dover Street, London, signed by Cloughman the Chairman of the competition. So off it went and it was never heard of again. The maquette vanished. But in the meanwhile he had not only made these other maquettes in white marble, but he‖d then translated the theme into Lilydale marble, and that‖s the one I‖ve got.
JAMES GLEESON: And the one we‖ve got too, I imagine.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I imagine it would be. You haven‖t got a photograph there, so I can‖t be sure.
JAMES GLEESON: No, but it is Lilydale limestone. They call it limestone.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Limestone.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, if it is it‖s probably almost certainly that theme.
19 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I mean, that‖s the only time he ever did a reclining figure that you could call double, that is say a man and a woman.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: One on each side.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The general idea was it‖s a person reclining in a cell. They‖re in prison. The one arm is upraised giving the defiant no give-in sign, you know. That is the theme. Now, this particular one, we‖re looking at the photograph here, this white maquette that didn‖t come back.
JAMES GLEESON: The maquette, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He painted a watercolour of that which was exhibited by Joseph Brown a couple of years ago. That‖s it.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s it. But it was not sold by Joseph Brown. It was returned to me and I exhibited the same one in Macquarie Galleries in 1977.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: So that‖s where we acquired it. Seventy-six.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You acquired it, that‖s right, ‖76.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You acquired that and that is the study for the work that actually he sent away, the final one.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. Oh, it‖s nice to have that.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. I may say that there is another photograph of the white marble, another maquette which he didn‖t send away, in Joseph Brown‖s exhibition, which I will show you. This was sold to one of his buyers. Now, you see, this is your—
JAMES GLEESON: Watercolour drawing for maquettes, yes.
20 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, here we have one of the white marble, Italian marble maquettes. You know, it‖s the man and the woman reclining with the hand in the air.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But it is a quite different pattern from this, as you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This has got two legs making two loops, one above the other, and the hand straight up. That didn‖t satisfy him. I it was too ordinary, it was too (inaudible). That was one of the ones which he would have considered four sided.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He finally found it when he got that.
JAMES GLEESON: That, the drawing.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That is the painting of the maquette he sent away and I never got back.
JAMES GLEESON: What happened to this one?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This was sold to one of Mr Joseph Brown‖s clients, and I do not know who.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I suppose I could find out, but it was sold.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh well, never mind.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was one of the first ones sold too.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Most people being spellbound that time by the white marble, rather than the much more exciting Italian marble.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, that‖s ‖52, 1952. We‖ve dated that correctly.
21 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, the fourth one in our sequence we have listed as Figure sculpture, but you told me that it has a much more interesting background of a horseman (inaudible).
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Have you got that note you made about that?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I sure have. It‖s a sort of central key to his thinking about these sculptural forms. It relates to this in a way.
JAMES GLEESON: To?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: To this first one.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, to the Hanged man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Are we on?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, I mentioned that the image of the Hanged man’s head was one of his war time images.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: As a soldier. And he had many such. Now, I‖ll tell you first what I recall of this specifically and then generalise about it a bit in relation to the others.
JAMES GLEESON: Good, good. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a very splendid sculpture of his last and best year, I think. I know this very well indeed because I polished its surface with many weary hours of labour with my own hands, in the way I‖ve told you.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, the generic theme of this is horseman. He did a lot of paintings on horsemen because he was a cavalryman.
JAMES GLEESON: Of course, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In the Cossack Army.
JAMES GLEESON: It‖s in his blood.
22 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: A Cossack, I ask you.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was in Denikin‖s 8th Army in the end, in a particular—at the moment I can‖t remember the name of his regiment but I could easily check it. But, anyway, first and foremost it‖s a horseman, a Cossack. Secondly, it is a warrior horseman, which he knew. They all were.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, of course.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Particularly in wartime. Now, the specific genesis of this image would be from several sources in his memory. First of all, the bearded Cossacks or cavalrymen whom he commanded during the war from the age when he was a Lieutenant at 17.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness me.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And a Lieutenant-Colonel at 22, because he went on fighting until he was 22. He commanded a heap of Cossacks whom he used to call ―my men, my horsemen, my cavalrymen‖. ―My Cossacks‖ was his way of expressing it. This image of these bearded horsemen would be fused always with the timeless Cossack rebel hero, Stenka Razin.
JAMES GLEESON: So it‖s related very closely to another one we‖ve got?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Indeed it is.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He couldn‖t separate. He even did Stenka Razin over our fireplace as a mural in Stoneygrad.
JAMES GLEESON: You‖ve shown me photographs of that, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Also, he had by this time the image of the Australian bearded horseman rebel, Ned Kelly, in his head. At this time he was painting a lot of watercolours in which he did a Ned Kelly in his armour with his head gear.
JAMES GLEESON: Long before Sid Nolan?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, long before Nolan did it. So here‖s a wild man on a horse and he is a warrior, he‖s got a beard, he‖s a Cossack, he‖s Stenka Razin. It‖s important to know what Stenka Razin did in Cossack history, why he is a hero, if you can be bothered listening to a bit of history.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
23 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This is how Danila explained it to me. He said, ―We Cossacks were not Russians, we‖re not an ethnic group. We happen to be a cultural group living in a certain area along the banks of the Don. We were rich farmers because we had 40 feet of black earth under us. Everything was owned communally by the whole tribe and we could never be subdued. The Tsars over the centuries had managed to make serfs of everybody else in all their empires, but not the Cossacks‖. He said, ―The Cossacks consisted not only of escaped serfs, of whom there were many, but Chinese and Negros and all kinds of people, so long as they accepted the Cossack ethic‖, which was simply do we give one man, the utter man, three years absolute power. And if we don‖t like him we kick him out at the end of three years.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Absolute equality for women. In fact, they were in fear of their women, most of the Cossacks, they were so ferocious.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness me.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He said we kept our freedom by our having horses, by our refusal to submit to the Tsars attempts to subdue us. Instead of waiting to be subdued, Stenka Razin raised a Cossack army of two million men. They built enormous war boats that looked like Viking boats, very similar in shape, and he painted them over our fireplace in Stoneygrad.
JAMES GLEESON: I saw in the photograph. Is that still there, that painting?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes, still there, still there. Or at least was until I left, and I‖m sure if the present owner loves it as much as he says it will still be there. Anyway, Stenka Razin raised this huge army and they built these gigantic war boats on this enormous river, the Don and the Volga. And they raided, they raced up and down with these gigantic war boats and they didn‖t wait to be taken over. They raided the Tsars lands, they took his wealth, they took his produce and his stock and whatnot, and they gave him no peace, until the Tsar sued for terms. The terms were on equality and equal sovereignty. I forget which of the Tsars signed the agreement, probably 16th century. I wouldn‖t be sure. But the arrangement was that the Cossacks would raise the horses for the Tsar‖s armies.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And that they would send one son from every Cossack family to be a soldier in the Tsar‖s armies, on condition, the absolute condition, that they had their own military academy, that they had their own officers and their own regiments. They would not serve under Russians. They were still independent but they were still under the Tsar‖s army. So these terms prevailed for the next couple of hundred years. I forget which was the Tsar and how long this went on. It so happened that Danila was the youngest son. He was
24 8 & 15 November 1979 the 12th and youngest son. He was the brightest one. He was the pet of the family. Because he was a bright boy he was sent to the academy at the age of 12, passed the examinations.
JAMES GLEESON: Where was this academy?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In St Petersburg.
JAMES GLEESON: St Petersburg.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He lived there and became an officer, a commissioned lieutenant, when he was 17. He had a lovely time, he loved it. He adored it. He had a happy time. He had always told me he had a wonderful childhood and a young manhood.
JAMES GLEESON: Not interested in painting at that time?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no. Well, he would have been, but not to do it personally. I do not doubt that he probably went to exhibitions held by some radical young Russians in Petersburg at that time. You know, following the Parisian trend.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He would have gone because he was the fashionable heel-clicking handsome, romantic young man who kissed all the ladies hands. You know, a real young officer cadet type who was in everything.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I wouldn‖t doubt that he saw a lot of works of art. He was greatly influenced by Rubloff, the wonderful icon painter.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Who was his great hero forever, you know, of Russian art.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He couldn‖t stand Italian icons. After Russian icons they seemed wishy-washy, you know. You know, I didn‖t know a thing then and over the years and having studied it since, I see exactly why. I see, you know, how right he was in his aesthetics, which is just inborn.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
25 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In his own little town on the Don they used to paint icons. When he left Russia eventually—it‖s a long story, I don‖t want to take up your time telling you how that came about.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, I think that‖s all in that monograph you gave me.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s in that monograph, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He then became a buyer of Persian rugs for a Russian merchant in Bokhara and he learnt a lot about rug designing. So that Asian and Orients and Russian Slavonic style art is in him, you know, in the blood.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was very conscious of it. Now, what led me off on that (inaudible), can you remember?
JAMES GLEESON: Stenka Razin.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Stenka Razin.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, he was such a hero because he kept them free.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He caused the Tsars to make this agreement and to acknowledge their freedom. But the curious thing was that they were so imbued with their own democratic values that when the time of the revolution came there was no one stood between the Tsar and his effete system and the Cossacks. Because they saw with their own eyes how bad everything was and how wrong everything was and how desperately necessary and inevitable that revolution was, that they would not act against the people of St Petersburg and Moscow. As you know, 10 days that shook the world in Petersburg.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was only a short time after Danila‖s time, you know. He was still in the field fighting the blooming Germans when all this was going on at home.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
26 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The Cossacks would not act against—you know how they did it? When the people were storming the Winter Palace, unsuccessfully as it happened this particular first time, but when they were storming the palace they told their horses to stand stock still and they wouldn‖t move, and the people dove under the horses and over the horses and around the horses.
JAMES GLEESON: Good lord.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And the Cossack would not draw a weapon. So the Cossack gave the people their freedom because they themselves saw the evil of the whole set up, you know. So he was not political.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: His lot, he‖d never known anything else but fighting from the age of 17. Automatically what was left of the Red Armies welded together, and what was left of the Cossacks all came together under Denikin‖s 8th Army. I‖ve forgotten the number of Danila‖s regiment. This I could look up too. So he was stuck together with all the rest in this white army, until the remnants of this army were captured by the Red Army and imprisoned at Baku, from whence he escaped by a lot of exciting adventures, which is a whole new chapter.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But Stenka Razin is important in that sense.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. I can see how he relates to this horseman warrior. Should we call it that instead of Figure sculpture?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Of course.
JAMES GLEESON: I don‖t think Figure sculpture does anything to it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no. Look, I should say now that Danila never issued a work with a purely abstract aesthetic title.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He despised that sort of thing.
JAMES GLEESON: So this was never exhibited in his life.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no. It was not ever intended to be anything but Cossack horseman. In fact, you know, we could call it—
JAMES GLEESON: Warrior horseman?
27 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Cossack warrior horseman, and it was a Ned Kelly too. It was a warrior horseman.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, shall we call it Warrior horseman?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Warrior horseman.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Look, he wouldn‖t even mind if you called it Stenka and Ned. You know, that was the way he would have thought about it.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, in our catalogue we can make that comparison which you‖ve given us, but for the title I think Warrior horseman certainly is the appropriate one.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, that is what it is. That is what it is. Now, by the same token, aesthetically—you can get this if you like, the interpretive thing.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The same aesthetic principles apply to this as to the Bloke pointing.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And that.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And the three breasted lady.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The same aesthetic approach—and this nameless carving (inaudible). That he was aiming at a form in the round. You see, again the point is important–was to him that the thing must be a form in the round. All these holes and curves and lines are directed to movement.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Concave and convex and grooves and holes but not on a four sided symmetrical scale.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Organic–that‖s the word I‖ve been hunting for. Organic forms but made by the artist‖s invention.
28 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s like being God. God evolved a lot of organic creatures in weird forms and he‖s evolving his own, because he even used to say that to his pupils. ―Never forget that when you are painting you are God for that time‖. There is nothing between your head and that paper that can stop you.
JAMES GLEESON: Elizabeth, your mentioning of organic form—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This applies to this.
JAMES GLEESON: In the Mechanical man you‖ve got a combination of both.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: You‖ve got organic form and a fusion of mechanical.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, in both cases we‖ve got the sculpture done by means of the machine, rather than the hammer and chisel.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That might be bought into play here and there for a detail but it would not be the main instrument. This was the machine, and he loved to show what the machine could do.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was his idea of what the machine could do at its best. Now, here he‖s also showing what the machine can do.
JAMES GLEESON: This is Mechanical man?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. He‖s also showing that man himself is becoming a machine.
JAMES GLEESON: So there‖s a symbolic thing.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The head has gone, the face, the brain, you know, there‖s a hole right through the middle.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: What was in the Hollywood star a hairdo with rigid waves which were fashionable, which he was satirising, here becomes like parts of a—
JAMES GLEESON: Grooves of wheel, a machine.
29 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Grooves of a—what do you call it? Cogs.
JAMES GLEESON: Cogs.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Cogs. We still have the human organic legs and base and neck and a head, and we still have this contrast of geometrical lines and forms and organic forms. But here it‖s not just an aesthetic contrast, it‖s also a message.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Man is becoming a machine. Look at this glorious graining in this stone. Isn‖t it beautiful?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, beautiful.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Marvellous.
JAMES GLEESON: So that again is another extension of Danila‖s concern. His, you know, social political criticism.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Totally concerned.
JAMES GLEESON: Satire, deep compassion and then awareness of what is happening to—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, and a whole field of art which we haven‖t talked about yet, lyricism.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Another field which is in the watercolours.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But this is the medium. He even did some lyrical little sculptures which I could show you.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Oh, I know, I know, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I mean, I could show you some delightful little lyrical—but we‖re only talking about your collection now.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, at the moment. Yes. But I do know. Your point is well taken that he did express this lyrical quality in some of his small pieces of sculpture very beautifully.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, it‖s particularly in the big torso of myself.
30 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, the one that‖s in the Adelaide Gallery.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, I should tell you that that is the very first sculpture he ever did.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, that is important, yes. Is that Lilydale marble?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s Lilydale marble, and there is no machine work whatsoever. It is all hammer and chisel.
JAMES GLEESON: How big is it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: As big as I am.
JAMES GLEESON: Life size.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The torso is life size.
JAMES GLEESON: Life size. That‖s the one now in the Adelaide Gallery.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Adelaide Gallery. Laurie Thomas used to like it the best of all.
JAMES GLEESON: It is a beautiful one judging by the photograph.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Laurie used to say, ―That‖s it. That‖s the one I want‖, you know. Oh, goodness me, I‖ve got so many I can‖t—you know, just to lay your hands on them.
JAMES GLEESON: I know. But there again, if I remember, he used this contrast of fairly straight sharp lines and curves.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. But that straight sharp line was on the original stone.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, was it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s where he used the face of the stone as it came out of the quarry.
JAMES GLEESON: Really, is that so?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: His overall philosophy was do your best with what you‖ve got.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
31 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He would make a work of art out of anything. If he only had two colours left in his paint box–and he once did this to show me–he had nothing but black and a teeny weeny little bit of red and yellow, and he did a marvellous nocturne.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Black and white. He used to say, ―It doesn‖t matter what you‖ve got. All this nonsense about you‖ve got to have this palette, that palette. You do your best with what you‖ve got. If you use your brains and your skill and your hand and think and feel and let it flow, you are doing your best, and no one can do more than that. And that‖s what art‖s all about‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Exactly.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But I can‖t find that. Oh yes, we‖ll get to that one.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, Stenka Razin is perhaps his most famous one. Certainly the best known, don‖t you think?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, I don‖t know whether it‖s known or not, because none of these have been—
JAMES GLEESON: Now, Elizabeth, that‖s—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s your Hanged man.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s the Hanged man and it‖s across the page from the torso we‖ve just been talking about, which was Danila‖s first one.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: They were both shown in Joseph Brown‖s spring exhibition of 1973?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The first exhibition was on our first catalogue of 1949.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Which is here somewhere. Torso.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. So it was shown first in Tye‖s Gallery.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: April 5th to 22nd, 1949.
32 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: April 5th to 22nd 1949, and it‖s number one on the list. He showed seven larger works and then he showed 12 little carvings which he called Sculpture to pick up. ―You are invited‖, he said, ―Too handle these carvings, to look at the stones and the arrangement‖. Now, I still have quite a few of those dear little sculptures.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, we‖ll have a talk about those in a moment.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Another time.
JAMES GLEESON: But, first of all, let‖s finish—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Torso, or not.
JAMES GLEESON: Torso, yes, by all means because that‖s the beginning.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, but you don‖t want to finish off about Stenka Razin.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, let‖s finish Stenka Razin first.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I wonder if Frank could play back where we were. Could you play us back? Is that too difficult?
JAMES GLEESON: Now, Elizabeth, you‖ve told us the story of Stenka Razin and how he became a hero. So you‖ve finished with that one, you feel now?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. I think we haven‖t spoken of your last version of Stenka Razin.
JAMES GLEESON: No. The earlier one is this Warrior horseman.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Horseman, that‖s right. Followed by a similar figure called Mechanical man, because he‖s still on four legs like a horseman, organically.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And he‖s still in an upright, capable, dominating stance. But his head suggests that he‖s become mechanised in the head.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I think that what in the earlier thing of the Hollywood star was ridged hair from fashionable waves, has now become the—
JAMES GLEESON: Cog wheel.
33 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Cog wheel meshes.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Whatever the word is mechanically to describe that. And his head is a series of holes in the head.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, this is what I wanted to emphasise, that the aesthetic intention of both carvings—
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, Warrior horseman and Mechanical man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Is still to produce a stone work in the round.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: An object which doesn‖t have a front and a back and two sides, but which is an entity which is organically integrated. You can‖t disintegrate it without smashing it all up. So that we‖ve got the same theme treated in another manner. But the Warrior horseman, the bearded Cossack has become a questionable entity.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: A man with a hole in the head and a lot of cogwheels and things for his hair. Now, we still go back now to your other Stenka Razin, your last one, which you call—
JAMES GLEESON: Stenka Razin.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, perhaps you better ask me questions about that.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, this one we call Stenka Razin. I don‖t know where we got that title from. Was it from you?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, well, that would have been from the person who purchased it, Sweeney Reed.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: As an agent selling them. He would have known from Danila that it was Stenka Razin. He knew that Danila‖s attachment to Stenka Razin and he knew by the whiskers.
34 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: I see. So this is about 1950? Would that be the right date for it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, I would say later than that, because his last exhibition was 1951, and this was never exhibited because it was done after his last exhibition, as also was the Mechanical man and this one.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, we‖ve got—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You have three beautiful sculptures.
JAMES GLEESON: Late ‖51 I‖ve put on that one.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That would be right. That would be right.
JAMES GLEESON: And Mechanical man later than ‖51?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Certainly. All of these three must be.
JAMES GLEESON: After 1950.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. They must be after 1951.
JAMES GLEESON: Fifty-one.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And indeed they were. I can recall them being made.
JAMES GLEESON: Nineteen fifty-two, do you think that—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Fifty-two.
JAMES GLEESON: And the Stenka Razin?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And this too.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, of course they would have been exhibited in his show if they‖d been done by 1950.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Naturally, naturally. But I also know that he was working on these while I was taking a trip abroad to see his relatives in the Soviet Union.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, really.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I met his nephew, who was older than myself.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
35 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He thought it was fantastic that he had an aunt from Australia who was younger than he was.
JAMES GLEESON: Now. this seems to show Stenka in a victorious position with his arms raised up.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: You know, the hero, rather than the suffering man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s like a winning wrestler, isn‖t it?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Raising his hands, shaking one wrist and saying, ―Well, I‖ve won‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There‖s a great feeling of dragging up of the muscles. It wasn‖t easy. It wasn‖t easy to get your hands up there, you know. There was a big fight somewhere behind that. It‖s the same gesture of the upraised, defiant arm and there‖s a sense in which all these dints and bends in the arms suggests struggle and suffering.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. Well, they surge upwards, don‖t they?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: They surge up but they suggest having been perhaps damaged.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Having been injured. They can also suggest a kind of another crucifixion image.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He liked enigma.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He never liked enigma. And he liked his paintings and carvings to be interpreted the way people wanted to. He used to often say, ―I wanted to make people think‖. And if you said, ―Well, what is he doing? Is he smiling or crying?‖, he would say, ―How do I know? That‖s up to you‖. He would really mean it: how do I know (inaudible). It was the human kind, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
36 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This is the victorious man in later life but with much suffering.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Much suffering.
JAMES GLEESON: I find it very interesting that he‖s done something quite paradoxical in making one eye very protuberant, convex, and the other hollow that goes right through, so that you get the same effect of an eye, but through two totally different means.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. Well, that was part of his thing when he taught me painting was no people have two identical eyes. They were always different in size, shape and colour and even in level. And you will have a very boring face if you have identical eyes. So it doesn't matter what—and to have one open, but also one convex.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: One–what is it?–convex, and the other concave, was part of his aesthetics anyway. To have one bulging eye is like the man who was hanged.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And here is the man who‖s not dead, his spirit‖s alive.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, alive. Light comes through the hole.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a kind of life and death in one. It‖s a very powerful, spiritual concept.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, it is.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He believed that life and death were so closely related, and that suffering was the price of life, and that the ongoing life force was God and it was in everybody. The paradox of humanity was it was forever defeated and forever winning.
JAMES GLEESON: It has all that but also, I think, from my point of view, is one of the most satisfying aesthetically works.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, of course.
37 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: The forms that he used, the contrast between flowing, rhythmic forms and sharp straight forms, jagged, flowing, all come through in that very beautifully.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And there‖s still this sense of humour with the smile.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The smile. So what is it all about, you know? Let us think. In this, I think, you have his finest sculpture.
JAMES GLEESON: I think it is.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Although there are, as I say people, like Laurie Thomas, the late great Laurie Thomas, who loved this torso.
JAMES GLEESON: The first one? Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The first one. Here‖s his last; there‖s his first.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, they‖re both great.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So whatever you gave him, tools, he produced something beautiful and interesting and provocative, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, Elizabeth, we‖ve covered now—oh, one point I wanted to make. I did ask you if he‖d known the sculpture of Clive Stevens?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, indeed. I don‖t think he met him personally in my time. We were married for the last 11 years of his life. But I do know that he knew of his work and that he had seen photographs of it and that he had a high regard for the man and his work.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And the regard was very specially related to the fact that he had the gumption to work in stone.
JAMES GLEESON: Not many were doing it at that time.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Nobody was doing it, and still are not doing it.
JAMES GLEESON: Very few. No, no, no, you‖re right.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Not hard tough stone at that, you see. He loved Clive Stevens‖ work. Whether he ever met him personally—
JAMES GLEESON: No.
38 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I think he only saw photographs of it, and he wished to meet him. He would have liked to meet him, but it just didn‖t happen to happen.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, Elizabeth, now we‖ve covered all the things that we own in our national collection at the moment. But there are a lot of others here we‖ve got on this contact sheet which I recognise around the room as we‖re sitting here. I wonder if we could talk briefly about those and fit them into the picture. The first group, we‖ve got several photographs of it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Could we perhaps separate the ones done in Lilydale marble and the ones done in sandstone?
JAMES GLEESON: All right, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s Warrandyte sandstone, which is a different stone. It doesn‖t have a polish.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see. Well, what ones are they?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s all Warrandyte except for that one, Camel bars or bust.
JAMES GLEESON: Camel bars or bust, No. 22 on our card. There it is.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, well, that is yellow limestone from Mitchell Quarry, yellow marble.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And that is No. 17 on Catalogue of 1951.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. That‖s the only one on that range there that is marble, and all the rest are sandstone.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The rest are sandstone. Well, he called it Warrandyte stone.
JAMES GLEESON: Is that from the same area, from the same quarry?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No quarry at all. It was where our house was built out of.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, I see. Really?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Our house was a quarry.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
39 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, of course. Every stone in the place is like that.
JAMES GLEESON: That first one is very beautiful with its contrast.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Isn‖t it glorious? Yes, tops and bottom.
JAMES GLEESON: And there‖s the drawing.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s called Lovers and that‖s the painting of it.
JAMES GLEESON: Painting of it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a figure of a man and a woman making love.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Now, I don‖t think we have a photograph of that, do we? There it is, 28.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, well, on this–
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s No. 28 Lovers, that‖s right.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. That was shown in Joseph Brown‖s exhibition. Where the hell is this catalogue? You can edit it out. You can bleep out these words. No, not that one. The catalogue of his exhibition of my stuff. No, no, no, no, no. His exhibition of Danila‖s things only.
JAMES GLEESON: It doesn‖t seem to be in that first—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. No. Well, here it is. You see there were other works that were not exhibited in his lifetime that I exhibited with Joseph Brown and there they are.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. All these were shown with Joseph Brown.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: What date was that?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, some of them were exhibited. This was 1974.
JAMES GLEESON: November 1974.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Nineteen seventy-four. And the Lovers—
JAMES GLEESON: The Lovers one, is that it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, and there was two of them. Lovers I was sold. I‖ve got a photograph of that here. Or maybe that‖s Lovers II. I‖ll have to check
40 8 & 15 November 1979 up. Damned artists, they don‖t know what trouble they cause people, do they? That‖s that one.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, and that is what, Lovers I or Lovers II?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, that‖s the other one. Well, this is the taller of the two, so we can tell by the height.
JAMES GLEESON: Thirty-six. It must be Lovers II.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, this would be Lovers II and that would be the one he preferred.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In other words, the theme of the embracing man and woman he was struggling with here, and he‖s done it there. But obviously he wanted to get his holes in, you know, the separations.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And he did it again. That one was sold, and I was jolly thankful it wasn‖t the other one.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes. Because the best one you‖ve still got.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I‖ve got the best one, yes. That‖s it. That‖s Lovers II. Now, there is a painting of it.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. That‖s interesting to see the two together, I think.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But even more interesting is the fact that when he finished that sculpture someone had been asking him, ―How many drawings do you do?‖. You know, ―How do you draw like Michelangelo before you produce a carving?‖. He said, ―I don‖t do any drawings at all. I just carve‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: When that person had gone away he said, ―Oh, blow them, if they want paintings of sculptures I‖ll give them one‖, and he painted (inaudible).
JAMES GLEESON: Afterwards.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Afterwards.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
41 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t make any pretence about it.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He doesn‖t call that a painting for sculpture. It‖s a painting of a sculpture.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. But occasionally he did paintings.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, often he did paintings with ideas for forms.
JAMES GLEESON: For sculpture.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Because we seem to have three of them.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, I‖ve got hundreds of them hanging out there, as you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, the next two on the same stand, are they together? Are they intended to be—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: They‖re not related, no, no. They‖re just there because they fit on that stand. The first one is called General Franco. Fat little squat man.
JAMES GLEESON: Let me identify him on our card. General Franco is No. 19 on our card. Ah, yes, yes, here.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Well, now General Franco is one of the ones which was not exhibited in his lifetime but which I exhibited with Joseph Brown.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. No. 76 in the catalogue.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. 76.
JAMES GLEESON: This is one of his political satires.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Satires.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was also because it suited the stone.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
42 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The stone would suggest the theme. The theme would reflect in the stone and so on. This man was such a fat little man who had his bottom always stuck out like that, you know. He was so self-important. The eye was right and the hat was right. That was one of the ones he just sat back and roared with laughter about.
JAMES GLEESON: I can see why.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Then he painted it up there. That‖s the figure.
JAMES GLEESON: Of course it is, with a stick, holding a stick.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes, that‖s right. He put in the blonde just for the hell of it. He called that painting General Franco and blonde. That is in one of the exhibitions somewhere.
JAMES GLEESON: Perhaps the same exhibition.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, he didn‖t exhibit it, you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh no, of course.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But he would have exhibited the watercolours at a later date. Anyway, he called it General Franco and blonde, that was his name for it.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, the next one, the other little one on that same—it‖s No. 20.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s Whistler mother.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, isn‖t it delightful? You don‖t have to ask why it‖s called that.
JAMES GLEESON: No. It‖s certainly a seated figure, isn‖t it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Have they called it seated figure?
JAMES GLEESON: No, no. They‖ve called it Whistler’s mother.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, to hear it was Whistler’s mother, another scream of laughter, you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
43 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Because we‖d blast a few stones to build the house, and up comes a thing that looks like that and he just has a chip away at it. But these have delightful details on them. You do have to look, and look here.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, that‖s what he called line work.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, as you see, you see the seams.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, one tap too many and that would all be gone. You know, one tap too many and your sculpture‖s had it.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. It‖s a delightful piece.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But isn‖t it sweet? Whistler’s mother. Oh dear, oh dear.
JAMES GLEESON: The next one?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Where‖s the one he calls Head and shoulders or Arabesque arching? And the reason being that if you turn it up in different ways it looks different.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, what one is that on our—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I can only suggest—
JAMES GLEESON: No, don‖t move it, don‖t move it.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, well, you can move it as much as you like. In fact, you need to move it to see it.
JAMES GLEESON: Head and shoulders arabesque arching.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s No. 3 and 4.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, you try with your own hands putting that in different positions. See, this is what he meant by a sculpture which can be put anywhere.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes, I realise that.
44 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Put any way up.
JAMES GLEESON: Any angle, any side up.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, and you can see what you want to see. It‖s an organic form, an idea, a thought, and you can find it if you look for it. Now, you try it for yourself.
JAMES GLEESON: From every angle. It‖s working from all positions. We‖re still talking now about Head and shoulders arabesque arching.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Here‖s its head and shoulders.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Now, the next two, Elizabeth, one are two birds.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, that‖s a pair of lovebirds done in Warrandyte stone. Very simple.
JAMES GLEESON: No. 11 on our chart.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Well, that was probably one of the sculptures to pick up.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah yes, of course it would be.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In the very first exhibition. You know, the dear little spot on it‖s tail, isn‖t it beautiful?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And see the little line work on the side here, and the line work here.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This was an early use of the machine.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: On a small scale.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Very sensitive.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Still that poetic bird feeling, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, exactly.
45 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In this one he was interested in–well, as always–the stone first.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, the colour and the texture.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The colour, the texture, the shape, the form, the lot. What the mind can draw out of this, you know. It has such wonderful graining from cream, beige, down to black and in between. Here we‖ve got a quite clear profile of a head.
JAMES GLEESON: Is this the one called Head mountain?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, it‖s called Head mountain.
JAMES GLEESON: No. 25.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But if we look at it this way we see—you saw those beautiful Chinese paintings and photographs of mountains.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Precipitous mountains.
JAMES GLEESON: Exactly.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s one of those. Or any other thing you choose, if you want to turn it up that way, or that way.
JAMES GLEESON: They‖re meant to be seen from every angle.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Meant to be seen from every angle. It‖s meant to be handled.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This would be the maximum size that would expect to be handled with any safety.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. Now, that‖s the last of the sandstone.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, Betty, you‖ve had second thoughts about a work that appeared in Danila‖s first sculpture exhibition called Head. It was catalogue No. 2 and you originally thought that was Hanged man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
46 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Which is now in our collection. But you‖ve thought about it since our last recording and now you feel it isn‖t the Hanged man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. The reason I‖m clear about this now is that whereas Torso was the first work he did ever, and it was totally done by hammer and chisel, the Head was the second work totally done by hammer and chisel. It was a life size head, a rather larger than life size head of a man, shaven headed. He explained it to me afterwards as being the head of a general of the Cossack Army that he remembered from his wartime years. He said, ―This is really what I call to myself the one-eyed general‖. He had only one ordinary eye and he had a slit where the eye should have been. I said, ―What did you mean by the one-eyed general?‖. He said, ―He was one-eyed in every sense of the word‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He had been blinded, like our famous Kutuzov who fought Napoleon, had only one eye. He was heroic. What‖s the word for couldn‖t be defeated?
JAMES GLEESON: Indefatible? No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He wouldn‖t give in.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But he said he was totally one-eyed politically.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In every sense, the man was a one-eyed man. He was that sort of character. I remember now. I‖m clear about it because this explanation then made sense to me.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, Elizabeth, after that interruption you were talking about the Head.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The Head. Yes. Well, Danila said that this was a one- eyed general in every sense. He was politically one-eyed and he was exactly the kind of man, such as the famous General Denikin, who headed the 8th Cossack Army, who fought till 1922 bringing all the remaining Cossacks together to fight the Red Army. He said he had no idea that that one-eyed general, what he was fighting about any more than he Danila did himself.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He had been trained from 12 years of age to fight and he just did and went on. He said, ―We just went on fighting till we had no bullets left‖. And that was the one-eyed general.
47 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: That theme of one-eye and one slit comes through in the Stenka Razin too, doesn‖t it, because that has one quite prominent eye and one slit?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no. There‖s a difference.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Stenka Razin has one normal eye, a prominent eye, a bulgy sort of eye, a suffering sort of eye, but the other eye is not a slit, it‖s a hole through which light comes.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s right.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s a glint. It‖s the life, it‖s the suggestion of life. Whereas the one-eyed General wasn‖t a hole, it was just a slit. It was an empty space.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, I see, a socket. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: An empty socket. The man had only one eye. He could not see any other way. Whereas in all the other characters who have different eyes, one eye very often suggests that glint of life that is hopeful.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. I see. Betty, do you remember what became of that Head? Anyone buy it?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, I do indeed. No, I gave it away. And the reason was quite simply that No. 4 on that same group, out of seven larger sculptures, No. 4 was the only one that anybody bought. That was called Election speaker. This was a satire on the type of politician who stands up on a rostrum and puts on very pretentious airs, and has a particularly bumptious and cheeky bottom, which he sticks out and waggles about and makes important. That one was, to our surprise–the one we didn‖t expect anybody would buy–the very one that was bought by a purchaser, who we were so astounded would buy anything at all, let alone this one, that I made her a gift of the Head. Much later, much later after Danila‖s death.
JAMES GLEESON: But the Hanged man then was never exhibited.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no.
JAMES GLEESON: Until it went to Joe Brown.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Exactly. The Hanged man was so big, so massive, that it sat in the garden of Stoneygrad by our little tiny dam under our willow tree, together with the figure of the Seated Solomon, it sat there until it was moved, because I had to leave Stoneygrad after Danila‖s death. I couldn‖t cope with it
48 8 & 15 November 1979 any more. I decided to come to Sydney and I didn‖t know what to do with it. I asked Melbourne Gallery would they be so kind as to store it for me, if they couldn‖t buy it.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I was told that they could not store it, they had no space. They were crowded already for storage space. Moreover, I was told privately, that whoever was the individual responsible did not like Vassilieff‖s work anyway.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, their loss is our gain.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: This one I do remember you telling me was the first one—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, that‖s the Hanged man.
JAMES GLEESON: In which he used a combination of the hammer and chisel and the mechanical tool.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The machine, yes, the grinding machine. Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, good.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, the seated figure, this one—
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Seated Solomon.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, just a minute.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s No. 5.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I have to sort out myself whether that is that or this is.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, the one that‖s in Joseph Brown‖s catalogue for Autumn 1978 as 109 Danila Vassilieff Reclining man.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Well now, in the first place Reclining man is a title could only have been invented by somebody else.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. It‖s not Danila‖s.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It‖s impossible for Danila to call a thing by a conventional title—you know, reclining figure, seated figure. It was a specific, organic, particular thing that he named it. I am fairly confident that this Reclining
49 8 & 15 November 1979 man would have been–what is called Reclining man–the Seated figure of this first exhibition.
JAMES GLEESON: No. 5 in that catalogue.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. 5.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, Important person, which you see over there in my other room—
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, there‖s a lot I could tell you about that. What would you specially like to know?
JAMES GLEESON: Important person, 34, 35, 36. This one, 34, 35 and 36.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This is him.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes, on our contact sheet. That was shown as No. 6.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was shown at the Joseph Brown exhibition. Oh, yes, it was show first at this original exhibition.
JAMES GLEESON: As catalogue No. 6.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Catalogue No. 6 at Ties Gallery in 1949. It was, of course, direct social satire and a piece of fun. Danila laughed like mad, he thoroughly enjoyed it, doing it and looking at it. To some extent he‖s inspired, as always, by the stone itself.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The colouration, figuration. It has a speckly sort of base and then a dull, fawn middle part, and a brownish top.
JAMES GLEESON: It‖s not marble?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, this is. This is one of the strange pieces of Lilydale marble that has more than one character. It‖s partly limestone and partly—well, less lime.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was quite fascinated and he used here the hammer and chisel on the base of the neck and he used the natural shape of the
50 8 & 15 November 1979 top to suggest a lord mayor‖s hat. In between he carved the features of an important person who had a very pompous hat but who had no chin at all.
JAMES GLEESON: So it‖s one of his social satires.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was quite, quite, a fact that at that time we did indeed have a lord mayor who had no chin at all and a moustache.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was really instantly recognised by everyone who saw it as what it was, just a piece of fun, a piece of fun.
JAMES GLEESON: Owl from that first show, No 7.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, Owl is one I find it hard to remember without seeing photographs. I doubt whether you have one.
JAMES GLEESON: I don‖t think. We don‖t have a photograph of it on this contact sheet.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. Well, that‖s one we‖ll have to look for.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Sort out elsewhere. Well, perhaps you better start telling me what you want or what you‖ve got.
JAMES GLEESON: All right. Now, we‖ve spoken about the Unknown political prisoner, haven‖t we?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, yes. That‖s a major work. I‖m just referring still to this very first show where there were a number of 12 small sculptures called Sculpture To Pick Up—you are invited to handle these carvings, to look at the tones and their arrangement.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, now, I‖ll read out ones we‖ve got here and see if they tally with any there. Head and shoulders arabesque arching. No. Head and shoulders?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: We‖ve got a head and shoulders but it wouldn‖t have been that one.
JAMES GLEESON: Is it three, four, that one? Yes, it is, isn‖t it? No. 3 and 4.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, it could be indeed. Yes, it is, it is, it is. So there you are, it goes back to there. Now, he was there not using Lilydale marble. That would be our own Warrandyte stone.
51 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Which didn‖t take a polish, didn‖t have enough lime in it to take a polish.
JAMES GLEESON: Now seven, eight and nine on our sheet—no, not seven. Eight and nine are Little birds.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There they are.
JAMES GLEESON: They‖re there.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There‖s two little birds.
JAMES GLEESON: Are they Two birds, you call them there? No. 6 on the catalogue.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, and that is the one that I have in my hall here. That‖s a pair of birds, as you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s the other side of the same carving. But there isn‖t—there, that‖s the Two birds.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, No. 11 is the Two birds.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. That is marble. See that? You can see it that way as one bird with its wings outspread, or you can see it this way as two birds.
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, yes, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: See, one here and another underneath.
JAMES GLEESON: It‖s a beautiful grey stone.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Isn‖t it beautiful marble?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And see the darling little detail line work that he loved to put in just as he did on his paintings.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It doesn‖t matter which way up we put this.
52 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: No. Well, these were part of the ones designed to be touched.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, designed to be picked up and handled. Usually you could stand them in many different positions.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: See?
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes. So that‖s No. 11 on our contact sheet and it corresponds to No. 6 on the first catalogue.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. 6 on the first catalogue.
JAMES GLEESON: Fine.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Nobody wanted to buy it for 10 guineas.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, there‖s one number—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But you see how it goes, the way I usually stand it, although you see how beautiful all these shapes are.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. It takes on a different character.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I put it on this way because this was what made him give it the name he finally decided. Usually it was a choice of names. Sometimes he‖d think of the name after it was done, or he‖d give it alternative names. But in this case he saw it as mating birds, you know, the male bird jumping on top of the submissive female bird.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And there they are. But you can look at it any other way you like. He often said this to people, ―You are entitled to give it any other name you want to‖. He even put that in the next catalogue.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Moreover, in the next catalogue of sculptures–this is one of his little bits of satire–he had got thoroughly fed up with people who said, ―Why did you polish it? Why don‖t you leave all the chisel marks intact? I like to see the authentic marks of the tools‖, you know. It was in fashion at this time. It was a great thing for everybody to be making pottery.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
53 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And everybody making clumsy pottery used to drive him nuts. Every housewife making a saucer was a genius, you see, and the clumsier it was the better. He hated this idea that to be authentic you had to be clumsy, and to be attractive you had to have a matt, you mustn‖t have a polish.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Any kind of purism of this kind, aesthetic purism, got on his nerves, you know, and he would do something deliberately to—
JAMES GLEESON: Break that.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: To break that. That‖s why in his next exhibition they were all beautifully polished marble and he had a little sign, ―Sculptures will be unpolished on request for an additional fee‖. He also put a lot of little rhinestone eyes into little animals and birds.
JAMES GLEESON: Really?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Some of the most delightful—I‖ve got two children there with rhinestone eyes, one with blue eyes and one with green eyes. But he did little foxes, a little bunch of foxes, and he‖d gouge out rhinestones from my fashion jewellery, you know. and dug little holes and glued it in. Anything but purism, you see.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: His idea was that you do what you want to do if it will bring it to life.
JAMES GLEESON: Inventive, creative. Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: If it will give vitality, if it will give spontaneity, if it will give life to it. All this garbage about theories of authenticity and stuff was meaningless to him.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. Now, Elizabeth, in the Joseph Brown Spring Catalogue of 1977 there are two works illustrated. One called Moving figure, it‖s No. 67 in the catalogue, and one 68 called Abstract form. You feel that those are the incorrect titles?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. I think that the one here called Moving figure is in fact No. 4 on the Sculptures To Pick Up, the little sculptures.
JAMES GLEESON: From the first exhibition.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: From the first sculpture exhibition called Hooded face.
54 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: A small smooth little piece.
JAMES GLEESON: So we identify that one with—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, I‖m sure that that is Hooded face. The other one, called Abstract form on the same page of the catalogue, is another completely untypical title for a Vassilieff work. I have no doubt that, could I see this photograph from other angles, I would almost certainly identify it as another one of his Cossack warrior horsemen.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t ever call a work something like ―Abstract form‖ or ―Moving figure‖ or ―Reclining‖ or ―Seated‖. He always gave a specific and organic title. There‖s one instance in which he himself gave a vague name, and that is the beautiful carving which recently was acquired from my exhibition–I think it was through Macquarie Galleries–he called Nameless carving.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That was his name for it. He would never have said ―Abstract form‖, ―Moving figure‖. It was Nameless carving. It is just carving.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was just carving. That particular one, which was one of his 100 per cent machine tooled works, together with the early Torso which was 100 percent hammer and chisel work, those two works were not only his own favourites but they were my favourites. They were also the favourites, without his knowing that they were our favourites, of Laurie Thomas.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Who was the most wonderful art critic we‖ve ever had after the generation of Basil Burdett and Clive Turnbull and Clive Bell and Adrian Lawler, people of that ilk. Laurie had the great gift of—see, I‖m getting off the track, I‖m talking about critics. But in a long lifetime of dealing, you know, with art and critics, we get to know the difference.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There are some really truly great critics. The ones that we dealt with in Melbourne were people who regarded themselves as mediators, not pontificators. All without exception were people of in-built humility. By this I don‖t mean that they were grovelling. I mean that they had an in-built closeness to the earth, to reality, which enabled them to recognise what came
55 8 & 15 November 1979 out of the earth. It‖s like if you‖re a little earthworm you see the little shoots pop up and you know what kind of a shoot it is. If you‖re humble enough you can identify the shoot immediately, you know, as an earthworm. This is a strange image but humility of this kind marks all the great critics. I regard some that others turn their noses up, such as the wonderful man who did the television series, Sir—
JAMES GLEESON: Kenneth Clark.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Kenneth Clark, as one of this category. He had the misfortune to be born into the elite, the silver spoon people. He could have easily gone wrong, but he has still the humility to see that his function is to—as did the great H.G. Wells for example, and other great popularisers. There are great people whose function is to popularise, and I regard the best art critics as those who do just that. I don‖t mean by that who make a fashion, make a trend, you know, saying, ―So and so‖s fashions are the latest trendy thing. You must be in it‖. No. But the critics who actually can discriminate, then discrimination is the operative word between something new, something real, something valuable, something intrinsically human, humanly important in the whole history of the race, so to speak. Who can discriminate when it‖s there.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And simply say, ―Well, it‖s there. It‖s in that person. I don‖t know what form it‖s going to take, or has taken, or will take. That‖s him, he‖s the creator, he‖s going to do it‖. But the humility to be able to see what is there.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. Well, I agree with that absolutely.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This has marked a whole generation, in my earlier years, of critics who I regarded as wonderful, wonderful people–just as important as the painter, if not more so. But not because they pontificated, but because they showed us in all the different directions we could look.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: They just said, ―Look at this, look at that, look at the other. We don‖t know how the future will go. We don‖t know how it ought to go. We‖re not God‖.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: ―Therefore we just direct your attention to the fact that this is here, you know, this is worth going out of your way to see. What you will find here is in our opinion, in my opinion, such and such characteristics‖. Now, Danila was the great believer that anybody could find whatever characteristic suited them, and he loved that idea.
56 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: That art should be open.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That art is open, completely open. Not only did he say on that second catalogue of sculpture that people could have things unpolished on request, but he also said, ―You are welcome to give them any alternative titles you like‖.
JAMES GLEESON: So he didn‖t put any fixed sort of label.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no fixture on it.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He just said, ―I have made this thing. Please accept it as my gift‖. And it is a gift. In my opinion all art is a gift. All human creativity is a gift. Well, I‖m going far beyond the confines of what we‖re supposed to be talking about now, but I believe it‖s a gift from God. My peculiar own idea of God is of the great Creator and a little bit of which is in all of us. ―That of God in every man‖, as the old George Fox of the Quakers said 300 years ago, is in every man. I believe it‖s in every child, and teaching children I found it to be there. The critic and the artist today should be looking for that of God in every man. So I will now thereupon shut up.
JAMES GLEESON: No, don‖t shut up, tell me about the horse or Flying horse, which I think is one of the most beautiful ones and which is outside in the hall.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, isn‖t it gorgeous? Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Now, that was a late work?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, yes, yes. It‖s on the next catalogue.
JAMES GLEESON: It was shown in his second and last sculpture—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Second and last sculpture, only ever had two sculpture exhibitions. You‖re not eating the sandwiches.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, Elizabeth, we‖ve found the catalogue now in which Flying horse was first exhibited.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I hope so. No, it wasn‖t. Flying horse was never exhibited.
JAMES GLEESON: It never was?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Never was, until I exhibited it with Joseph Brown.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
57 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was done after all these others.
JAMES GLEESON: I see. Well, I notice Tango was exhibited, and that‖s in the hall outside. That‖s No. 7 in that last catalogue.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. That‖s right, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s a very beautiful stone ranging from sort of pinkish stone, coloured down through to a cool grey.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Grey, yellow, pink, black, everything–always in that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful limestone from the Mitchell Quarries.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. It‖s based on the idea of two interlocking figures or dancing the tango.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: It has rhythms that suggest perhaps a dance movement.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right. It was done expressly for my birthday present, because he never ever had a farthing to buy me a present. The only present he ever bought me was a hair ribbon, and that was before we were married. That was to induce me to marry him, and it is there in that painting.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah, I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s called Liza with my hair ribbon.
JAMES GLEESON: And Tango was done as a birthday gift?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Tango was a birthday present, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Horse was never shown until after—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. Until I showed it with a lot of carvings–all that I had remaining–at Joseph Brown‖s. I don‖t even recall whether I showed it at Joseph Brown‖s or just at Macquarie‖s. I‖d have to check those catalogues. Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Flying horse No. 89.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, No. 89.
JAMES GLEESON: Good.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was shown.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
58 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was shown as No. 89 on Joseph Brown‖s catalogue of November 1974.
JAMES GLEESON: That on the cover must surely be that seated figure.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, called Solomon.
JAMES GLEESON: Solomon.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That‖s right.
JAMES GLEESON: Good.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But not the same seated figure that was in the first exhibition.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: This is much more advanced, much more controlled. Well, much more controlled knowledge of the whole thing, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Good.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You may notice that the point about Solomon here is that he‖s scratching his head.
JAMES GLEESON: Perplexing problem.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He doesn‖t know. I mean, he really isn‖t Solomon. He‖s just a human being. He‖s not the embodiment of perfect wisdom. His mouth and his hands and his two different eyes, all suggest perplexment. He‖s doing his best.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s fascinating.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So that is all anyone can do.
JAMES GLEESON: So Danila always seemed to search for the human quality.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
JAMES GLEESON: Even in these—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Even in the most conventional subjects, he saw them in terms of his personal experience of an individual.
JAMES GLEESON: Even the grand people like Solomon.
59 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Even the grand people. Solomon.
JAMES GLEESON: Lord mayors.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He thought, ―Well, Solomon must have scratched his head and wondered what am I going to do‖, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: So that this search for humanity, the human element is always there.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The human element is everything. Always there, always there.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s fascinating.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, it was the thing he knew. The only thing he knew for sure.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But here is a point I must say. In all his portraiture, he said, ―It is absurd to try to suggest that the artist is God, that I know what is the character of my subject. I know nothing. I know that the human being is an enigma, and I portray the enigma that I see‖.
JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: That is the truth I see. The enigma can be kind, gentle, beautiful, tender, or can be beastly and cruel.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Mechanical, harsh.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And mechanical. But all I see is the enigma of life. I know nothing. He was the most humble, philosophical man.
JAMES GLEESON: Betty, the other thing, the other characteristic that seems to emerge from the way we‖ve been looking through his sculpture, is his ability to identify with other creatures.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Like animals, horses, birds. This is a very strong element in Danila‖s work.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He loved all creatures. He regarded them all as being on an equal par with himself. He was not anthropocentric in the biblical sense that you could exploit everybody and everything. But he was also not sentimental. I can remember when I first went to Stoneygrad, one side of the
60 8 & 15 November 1979 creek was his side he said, where he chopped down trees and planted what he liked, built houses. He said, ―The other side is God‖s side and that‖s where I‖ll leave the trees, the birds, everything. That‖s my side, there‖s God‖s side‖. He literally meant it and he literally behaved like that. Now, he loved the birds and I had to tolerate–I say advisedly the word tolerate–a lot of well intentioned people such as Max Harris coming to visit and saying very sentimental things, such as, ―Oh, isn‖t beautiful to see Danila‖s relation with the birds‖. I was the one who worked and did all the work for the birds. I was the one who actually, you know, really worried about whether they lived or died. But he had the charming attitude towards them. But that very day he had decided to shoot a Kookaburra which was dive bombing our windows. You know, Kookaburras from time to time get a bee in their bonnet that they‖re going to dive bomb for some reason your particular bit of glass. He had not the slightest hesitation in deciding to shoot that Kookaburra. So he hadn‖t got a gun but, being an ex soldier, guns were nothing to him, and he knew that a friend of ours up the road, Len Scott, did have a gun. He said, ―I‖m going up to Len to get the gun‖. This very day, up a steep hill, ―I‖m going up to get Len‖s gun‖. I knew that this Kookaburra would stop this dive bombing as soon as the nesting was over.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So I raced up the hill. I nearly had a heart attack getting there before he did. I said to Len and his very lovely wife who was writing articles for Woman’s Day at that time, I said, ―Len, have you got a gun?‖. ―Yes‖. ―Well, hide it, put it away quick. Don‖t give it to Danila. He‖s coming to get your gun‖, you know. He looked at me like I was a lunatic. He said, ―What the hell is going on?‖. I said, ―He wants to shoot the Kookaburra, and he intends to shoot the Kookaburra‖, because he‖d been putting up with this Kookaburra for quite a while. Len said, ―All right‖, you know. Wynn, his wife, Wynn Scott said, ―Oh, I‖ll see that (inaudible)‖. She‖d had it whipped out of sight already. So that by the time Danny got there, no, they didn‖t have a gun. They‖d lent it to somebody else, you see. Practically this same day, within 24 hours at any rate, I‖m back in my home at Stoneygrad and I‖m visited by sentimental arty people like Max Harris saying, ―Isn‖t Danila‖s relationship with the birds beautiful? You don‖t understand his relationship with the birds, you know, Betty‖.
JAMES GLEESON: And you‖ve just saved the life of one of them.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I know. I nearly killed myself to do so, you see. He didn‖t understand that his relationship was very realistic. It is the realism of a farmer, of the old Cossack generation who lived in harmony with nature, and who didn‖t fight nature or destroy nature indiscriminately.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But when they had to they did.
61 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Without any sentiment, you see. But he was a great observer of the forms of the creatures, you know, and the birds and the bees and all the rest of it. You know, in our garden we had ducks and geese, we had a lovely little dam. We had a particular duck, Donald–naturally we called him. We bought him five lady geese. Lady ducks, sorry.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He turned out to be an absolute brute, this Donald. He absolutely was a brutal duck. He had a favourite wife and he persecuted all the other wives. Well, he gave some of them a sort of middle of the road deal. But there was one wife he was determined to kill. I got so upset about always having to rush out and stop this Donald from thrashing this duck that I rang up the Department of Agriculture. I was always ringing up the Department of Agriculture. I was, you know, one of their best known telephone correspondents. I rang them up and said, ―What am I going to do about this duck that keeps trying to kill one of his wives?‖. The answer I got back in the most formal and correct— I‖ve still got it, you know. The letter said, ―All we can suggest to you is that you knock Donald off. He is a very destructive duck‖. I learned that ducks, male ducks, are destructive of their young, and that a healthy normal female will always hide the babies from the father. The instinct of a father is so jealous that he will kill every little duckling if he can. That‖s why they march them for miles, you know, when they have ducklings. They march them for miles to hide them from their dirty old dads who want to kill them. Well, then we had other situations with geese, which are beautiful animals. They are truly animals like in the same sort of advanced sense that doggies are. Danila loved geese because they‖re traditional amongst Cossacks and Russians. So we started. We went to Victoria Markets and we bought one gander and four geese, females. They bred and they bred and they bred, and feeding them became a major operation, you know, carrying bags of wheat. They had a lovely dam but they pulled every piece of greenery out of it and we had to supplement their food with wheat. That was marvellous. They were lovely and they were so intelligent that they were like dogs, really.
JAMES GLEESON: Go on.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Really. Then when it came to nesting time, the great excitement, the four females laid eggs. So we had to get 44-gallon drums, one for each duck, one for each goose, put on the edge of the dam. So each goose had its own little nest, sat on its thing, and the male swam up and down in a lordly fashion. The thing about geese we found—I found, because I was at the receiving end of all this. To Danila it was nothing, you know, just get them, shove them on the dam, they live or die or else. But I‖m the one who‖s struggling and battling whether they do live or die. It turns out that whereas little baby ducks are easy to get born, their mothers hatch them well, and once they‖re born they have
62 8 & 15 November 1979 a low survival rate if they get wet, a lot of them die. A lot get born. Their mothers sit on them. But if they get drenched with water and they don‖t get shelter, they die of pneumonia. Well, the opposite with geese. The mothers do not sit well. If there‖s four mothers and one hears that there‖s a cheep going on in the next door thing, she‖s up there to get that duckling. You‖ve got to keep pushing the mother geese back on the eggs. The father‖s going up and down the bloody dam like this all the time protecting them. When you get these geese to the point of actually having several ducklings–I mean several goslings out–well, the first one to get several becomes the queen of the may, you know. They all cluster around and they leave their own eggs, half hatched with little beaks pushing out, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Good lord.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: It was my job to go around and pick up these poor little devils, poor little eggs, with little beaks trying to get out, whose mothers were all clustering jealously round the one that had the ducklings out, the goslings out. Then I would take them all in and put them by the fireplace. You‖ve seen photographs of our fireplace. The hatching would take place by fire.
JAMES GLEESON: Good lord!
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: By the heat of the fire. Once this happens you are stuck with them forever. They are your children. They became my little followers, you see. Whatever‖s the first big moving creature that they know becomes their mother. I had a house full of geese, baby geese. Once you can get baby geese hatched they‖re pretty tough and you can put them out and they can survive, you know. But their mother won‖t speak to them again. No, never, she‖ll hiss because she doesn‖t smell them any more, you know. And you know what? The father takes over. The father goose will take over the babies. Well, all these things were going on. This was part of our life, Danila‖s beautiful relationship with the birds. Oh, God, I‖ll never forget.
JAMES GLEESON: Elizabeth, there‖s still a few works to be talked about of sculpture before we turn to the watercolours. From the last exhibition you were mentioning a connection between Superman and Petit bourgeois.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. The first and the last; No. 1 and No. 22. Well, Petit bourgeois, was the very fat lady.
JAMES GLEESON: That was the one with the lunettes. Yes, I remember you talking about that.
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ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Very fat lady in a very affected posture, holding lunettes originally which got lost.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And Superman was her counterpart. He was a very fat man. That is really what that carving was about.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. We‖ve spoken about Hollywood star and Cesar.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, Cesar, Tango.
JAMES GLEESON: Dilapidated lion, now, you‖ve mentioned.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Well, this is particularly interesting to me because I am still trying to remember the carving. No doubt if I see even the smallest photograph I will remember the carving. But I remember that it led to a painting.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, which is up there on the wall.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Which is up there on the wall now, called Dilapidated lion. The Dilapidated lion was the great British lion who had one great paw down and, you know, all the other paws were kind of, well, dilapidating.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was being surveyed by small people from all directions. Now, Danila was referring to the British lion and it was not because he wanted it to happen. He loved his British citizenship. He loved British law. He gave me long lectures on British law, how superior it was to everything else he‖d ever known. But he just was pointing out that it was dilapidating, the Empire, the Empire was dilapidating. To him it was simply not a matter of argument, it was a fact.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. You said he wasn‖t really a political animal.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Not at all.
JAMES GLEESON: That he wasn‖t interested in politics.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no, not at all.
JAMES GLEESON: You said something rather interesting about the White Russian Army and Red Russia and you said he‖d said he‖d backed the wrong horse.
64 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, he was put at the age of 12 years old to a military academy in St Petersburg to train officers for a unit which was only to be governed by—
JAMES GLEESON: Cossacks.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Cossacks, that‖s right. Now, as the war went on, they did their duty. These Cossack units were the most unconquerable units because of their spirit.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: They had contracted to fight for the Tsar, if he left them alone, so they did fight for the Tsar. But when the revolution was imminent, those fighting in the field did not know what was happening in the cities, in the capitals. He did not know, as he often said to me, and he doubted whether it would have made any difference that in the city of Leningrad, or Stalingrad–I‖m sorry, St Petersburg, St Petersburg, as it was then called—where his own military academy was, the great revolution was taking place. He did know that his fellow officers and fellow fighters, fellow Cossacks–he used to always call them my men. Absolute equality you know, my men. My Cossacks, my Cossacks. My Cossacks were just like saying my mates, exactly the same.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He said when he heard of the upheavals in Leningrad—I‖m sorry.
JAMES GLEESON: St Petersburg.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: St Petersburg, yes. Well, he just took it with a grain of salt. Everything that they heard in wartime was mad anyway, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Nobody believed anything anyway.
JAMES GLEESON: This was in 1917.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: In 1917, when the war was made when Lenin came to power and said to the people, ―We must have peace. Peace, land and bread for the people‖. Danila said to me, ―If I had known that that was what they wanted, I would have stopped fighting that minute. Peace, land and bread‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: ―But I knew nothing except as a professional soldier and I just went on fighting‖.
65 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, I think his whole life was ―Went on fighting‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Betty, there was one point you mentioned to me, and it‖s an interesting one. You said, he wasn‖t political.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, he was not.
JAMES GLEESON: But he had this keen sense of social criticism.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Oh, tremendous.
JAMES GLEESON: Because one thing we‖ve got wrong in our program, Christ entering Jerusalem, is not that at all.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Oh, no, no.
JAMES GLEESON: Its real title is Uncle Sam entering Jerusalem.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes. Indeed. Yes indeed.
JAMES GLEESON: It‖s a political satire really?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Absolutely, absolutely. Now, Danila was not a religious man. He was a spiritual man.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I don‖t think I have to explain the difference.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no, no, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He was aware of spiritual values. He often said to me, ―My spirit of my Cossacks, my spirit was our spirit‖, but it was nothing to do with religion.
JAMES GLEESON: Conventional religion.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: With the organised churches, no.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, let‖s return. What was the question?
JAMES GLEESON: Oh, I was just interested—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, let‖s return to questions.
66 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: That he wasn‖t deeply interested in politics as such.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, no.
JAMES GLEESON: And was in fact quite critical of different social setups and organisations.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No. He loved life. He loved life. He just simply loved life. He did not care a hoot about who political governors were. You know, it wasn‖t worth fighting about. If anyone had told him that was what he was fighting about, he wouldn‖t have gone on fighting.
JAMES GLEESON: No, no.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: But he was a non-political man. The war with Germany, he was on that front. When that came to an end, then apparently–my knowledge of Russian history is so imperfect, I don‖t know how it happened– Denikin, General Denikin, formed what was known as Denikin‖s 3rd Army, or 8th Army sorry, Denikin‖s 8th Army. The remnants of his Cossack regiments were included in Denikin‖s 8th Army.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, he did not know enough about anything to know it‖s political. He hadn‖t the faintest idea of what it was about.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He told me later, much later, many, many, many things that they later understood. But at that time they did not object to the fighting.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: The fighting. He said, ―We were trained to fight. We were born to fight‖. And he said, ―We went on fighting till our last bullet was gone‖, and that really literally was his words.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: ―Went on fighting till our last bullet was gone‖. And we didn‖t know why.
JAMES GLEESON: This often happens in war. You don‖t get the whole truth, you just get a perspective.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, indeed. This is what he later told me that he, you know, learned from this. Anyhow, he just went on fighting till the last bullet
67 8 & 15 November 1979 was gone and he was a prisoner of the Red Army in Baku. The remnants of his Red Army—I don‖t know how you call them, regiments or what is the correct name to give to these groups. But, anyway, the remnants of them all were rounded up in Baku, and he was there. Because he had some education and he also had some little cunning, which he was not unashamed to admit, he became the librarian. The librarian, if you please. The Red Army gave their enemies a librarian.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: So he became the librarian. Because he was a librarian he had special privileges. He was able to come and go, come and go. He had more freedom, more freedom than most others. By this time he was a Lieutenant General. No, I‖m sorry, I must be exalting him. He was a Lieutenant Colonel, which was by any standards a very respectable level of military achievement.
JAMES GLEESON: How old would he have been at that time?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Twenty-two.
JAMES GLEESON: Goodness me.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Twenty-two. Twenty-two. He had been nothing but a soldier from 12 years old.
JAMES GLEESON: That‖s 10 years of his life.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And he was 22. So he became the man who just— then his natural instinct was to escape from prison.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. I think he‖s written about it very brilliantly in that monograph that was (inaudible). You wrote it, did you?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, let me say this: that I asked him to try to write down a description of his life.
JAMES GLEESON: I didn‖t tell him where to start or where to finish. I said, ―You have had such a colourful life, please write it down‖.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He started at that point. He started at that point where they escaped from the Red Prison camp.
JAMES GLEESON: At Baku.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: At Baku, and then from there on.
68 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t continue this writing very long because he hated writing, you know. It was too difficult.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He didn‖t ever learn English. His English was phonetic.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I may say, to this day, that I have a mass of letters from him, which I defy anybody else on earth to decipher except me.
JAMES GLEESON: Really? Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He loved this (break in recording) but just where am I?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Well, most of from then on is in the typescript which we have a copy of.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: So I think that really does complete—
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Actually, should I interrupt once more?
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: What is in the typescript that I‖ve given you is just simply I tried to get him to write the story of his life. I thought what a marvellous story this would be, you know. Get him to write it down. But he couldn‖t, and he started. But the important thing was that he started at that point.
JAMES GLEESON: At that point of escape.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: At the point of escape. I was free. I was free. I learnt what life was. I was nearly dead. I had been fighting and now I‖m alive. That was what he chose to start with.
JAMES GLEESON: Very significant, I think.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Very significant.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
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ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He lost interest after this because the whole thing became a rather repetitive story. Well, not only repetitive but beyond his ability to record, in many senses of the word. I mean, it became so emotionally involved, you can say geographically involved. His whole life became such a great drama that he couldn‖t record it. He couldn‖t record it. And he didn‖t try, didn‖t try.
JAMES GLEESON: So a lot of the material there you‖ve put down from things he‖s told you?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: No, nothing I have put down from things—everything I have ―recorded‖, in inverted commas, is his own.
JAMES GLEESON: I see.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Everything else is from what he has told me. But there‖s a great deal in between that I can interpret. I don‖t think anyone can interpret. You‖ve got to know both sides, you know, his story and my story–but not my personal story–to come to a sort of central truth.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: To me it is a duty as well as a labour of love to record what I know, what I can. But it‖s very difficult, very difficult, because the knowledge of this man‖s past, his life, is part and parcel of his present in Australia.
JAMES GLEESON: And of his heart.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: And of his heart. Few, if anybody, has any real knowledge of it.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, that‖s it. That‖s why it‖s so important.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I had 11 years knowledge of it, that‖s all I can say. I‖m willing and happy to supply what I know, particularly because I have in my latter years learned, to my discomfort, that there are people who invent what they don‖t know.
JAMES GLEESON: Of course, yes, this happens.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: There are so many inventions, so many, and such strange inventions. Otherwise I wouldn‖t want to say anything at all. I mean, I would be happy to live and die anonymously as a person who had a happy life with, you know, nothing particular to say. But since other people have found it important, so important that they hounded me for the last four years to supply them with information to write theses to get MA degrees for, that I don‖t know. I don‖t know. I don‖t want to talk to anybody.
70 8 & 15 November 1979
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I don‖t really care whether I talk to anybody. I sometimes wonder whether it matters a hoot whether I talk to anybody.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, it is important I think to get the truth down.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, I don‖t know. Who‖s truth? Anyway, I can only give my truth.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes, exactly.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: My truth has never been that of anybody else‖s, you know.
JAMES GLEESON: No.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: I can only say that I‖m tired of being misrepresented by, oh, I don‖t know, not well meaning people, aspiring graduates to degrees in the arts, the industry of art making–whatever they are called. Degree making.
JAMES GLEESON: Yes.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Now, no one has ever approached me as you have. You, Mr Gleeson, and Mr O‖Keefe, are the first people that have ever approached me with what I would call true disinterest.
JAMES GLEESON: Well, this is really information for the national archive. This is really what we do.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Well, this is why I believe you, and this is why I‖m happy, most happy, to cooperate with you. I have much to tell you, much more to tell you about Danila as a human being and myself as a human being and our relationship together, personal people. I have much more tell you if you are trustworthy people. But I am not prepared to invade personal privacy just for somebody to make a degree out of it.
JAMES GLEESON: I know, I know. I quite agree. Well, Elizabeth, can we turn now to a large section of Danila‖s work, the watercolours? Now, you told me that his was a medium that he loved very much.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, best of all.
JAMES GLEESON: Best of all.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Best of all.
JAMES GLEESON: He did an enormous amount of work in this area.
71 8 & 15 November 1979
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: He did this after our marriage mainly.
JAMES GLEESON: Really? Before that it was mainly oils?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Before that he did oil because that was the only thing people would buy. After our marriage he did watercolours because that‖s what he wanted.
JAMES GLEESON: Ah. Well, that‖s interesting. I didn‖t know that. What year were you married?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Nineteen forty-seven.
JAMES GLEESON: Forty-seven. So most of the watercolours date from after ‖47?
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: I know one thing about Danila‖s work, well, in painting and watercolour, is that he often developed a theme, you know.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: Took a theme which interested him, caught his imagination, stirred him up, and developed it over a quite a series.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes.
JAMES GLEESON: We‖ve got a number of those series in the national collection.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: Yes, you have.
JAMES GLEESON: One of them is the famous Peter and The Wolf series of which there were three done, I believe, and we have two sets.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You‖re lucky.
JAMES GLEESON: I know. Well, I think they‖re among the most marvellous things of Danila‖s.
ELIZABETH VASSILIEFF: You‖ve got the best.
JAMES GLEESON: What attracted Danila to the theme of the Peter and The Wolf?
72