Double Lives : Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira

Double Lives Double Lives : Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira Martin Edmond Thesis for a Doctorate of Creative Arts The University of Western Sydney July 26, 2013 Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree in this or any other institution. signed: ……………………………………… Acknowledgments I would like to thank Nigel Roberts for the generous gift of his archive of research materials; Ivor Indyk for wise supervision; Nick Jose for intelligent readings; Gayle Quarmby for the conversations; Stephen Williamson at the Araluen Centre and Nic Brown at Flinders University Art Musuem for showing me the works; all those at Ngarrutjuta / Many Hands; Maggie Hall for her constant support. Abstract This thesis consists of a creative component which is a dual biography of the two water colour painters, Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira, whose relationship was to have a decisive impact on Australian art; and an exegesis which describes the process of the making of that biography in such a way as to illuminate the issues, contentious or otherwise, that may arise during the progress of a biographical inquiry. The dual biography is focussed upon the public lives of the two men, one white Australian, the other Indigenous Australian of the Arrernte people, and especially upon their professional activities as painters. It is not an exercise in psychological inquiry nor an attempt to disclose the private selves of the two artists; rather, my interest is in describing the means by which each man found his calling as an artist; the relationship, life-long, which developed between them; the times in which they lived and how this affected the courses of their lives; and the results of their work in the public sphere. By ‘work’ I mean both the artefacts they made and the traditions they inherited, transformed and passed on to succeeding generations. It is a narrative which covers the years 1893-1973—Rex Battarbee’s lifetime. Albert Namatjira’s life—1902-1959—folds neatly within these eighty years. An introduction details the cultural backgrounds to their association under three headings, acknowledging three of the most important formative influences: the Arrernte; the Lutherans; the Anthropologists. It is followed by ten chapters of approximately equal length that describe the double lives chronologically. The narrative is constructed from a variety of primary and secondary sources and also from a close examination of the works of art the two men made. I wanted to retell a famous story as far as possible without preconceptions and by including the lesser known of the two, Rex Battarbee, as a full and equal partner in the events of the time. The dual biography is thus also an account of the practicalities of making art in a remote area in the middle years of the twentieth century including, apart from the actual painting, the framing, transporting, exhibiting, promoting and selling of the work: activities that were an indispensible part of the enterprise and which were undertaken almost exclusively by Rex Battarbee. The exegesis, in five parts, begins with an annotated bibliography of my reading during the research period; then describes the two field trips I made, with an account of the writing of the first draft of the dual biography in between these periods of research. The last part concludes my report on the writing process with a brief description of how the work changed between its first and final drafts. As an experienced writer of biographical and historical works, I hope to lay bare the means by which such works are constructed and, at the same time, inquire into the issues and difficulties—the tension between disclosure and concealment, the need both to admit and to elide gaps in knowledge, the always equivocal nature of character retrospectively reconstructed—that make the biographical form what it is. In this respect the exegesis might be seen to stand in relation to the dual biography as a frame does to a painting. Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira 1 Contents A note on the use of sources 4 1. Creative Component 5 Introduction 7 I The Revenant 31 II Initiation 55 III Taos or the Alice 85 IIII Achieving Luminosity 115 V Blind Man / New Man 147 VI The Offerings of War 175 VII High National Policy 201 VIII Tmara Mara 231 IX Painting from Memory 261 X Papunya & After 287 2. Exegesis 317 Introduction 318 I Reading 321 II Searching 348 III Writing 362 IIII Researching 374 V Rewriting 405 Appendix : A Guide to Further Reading 408 Bibliography 425 2 Illustrations Albert Namatjira, Illara Creek, Western James Range (1945) Cover Rex Battarbee & Albert Namatjira 1 Wilmot Abraham 42 Namatjirritja aka Jonathon Namatjira 80 Albert & Rubina 108 Rex Battarbee’s camp, 1930s 138 Albert & camels 145 Battarbee painting 153 Namatjira painting 173 Albert Namatjira’s house 196 Namatjira, Poignant, Battarbee 202 Namatjira family, 1940s 221 Rex Battarbee, 1950s 239 Jonathon Namatjira 269 Namatjira outside Government House, Sydney 273 Namatjira, late 1950s 292 Rubina at Albert’s funeral 300 Rex Battarbee at Tmara Mara 307 Rex Battarbee, Ghost Gum (1941) 315 3 A note on the use of sources In the creative component of this thesis, quotations from other writers and researchers are italicised in the text and their authors identified by name or by context. I have presented them in this way in order to maintain the continuity and narrative flow of the double biography without the distraction of footnotes or quotation marks. Many of the quotations are from two major unpublished sources, that is, the Diaries Rex Battarbee kept from 1928 until the mid-1950s, and the 70-page Chronology prepared in the 1990s by Nigel Roberts for a documentary film that was never made. All of the sources are detailed in the bibliography at the end of the thesis, so I have not listed them separately in a ‘Bibliographical Note’ at the end of the creative component—as I would do if it were to be published independently in book form. In the exegesis, by contrast, quotation marks are used to distinguish words drawn from other writers; these too are identified by author or title, and the full details listed in the bibliography. 4 1. Creative Component 5 The landscape is a social map whose legend you must learn. The human body and the body of the land share a common language. Person and place coalesce. Whatever happens to one, happens to the other. Michael Jackson It would be better for us if all the pictures in the world perished, than that the birds should cease to build nests. John Ruskin The money belongs to the ancestors. Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri 6 Introduction 1 In the beginning the land was a dark level featureless plain: no hills or mountains, rivers or streams. No trees, birds or animals; perhaps no sky. Then, from beneath the crust of the earth, giant beings emerged, convulsing the ground, shaking the dirt from their gargantuan forms. They had the shapes of creatures but the habits of men and women; like the people they became, they were wanderers and in the paths of their wanderings made the landscape what it is today. They established the sacred sites, created the ceremonies that would be performed there and left their essence behind at the places where they came from, or went back into, the earth. This essence, tjurunga, persisted; which word can also mean song as well as ritual, drama or painted design; might refer to an actual object, usually an inscribed stone or piece of wood; and carries a sense of naming along with qualities that might be called trust and belief. The time of the beginning is the alcheringa (there are many alternate forms of transliteration), usually translated as the Dreaming; another version is Everywhen. The ancestors who brought the world into being are as multitudinous as the things of the world. Among those of the Arrernte are the two Euro brothers who invented the spear and the spear thrower and taught the art of cooking on hot coals; the Lakabara, cannibalistic hawk-men who came from the north and pioneered the rite of circumcision; the Tjilpa or native cat-men who came from the south and introduced the rite of sub-incision. There are kangaroo, wallaby, dingo, opossum, echidna; emu, eaglehawk, duck, crow, white bat; carpet snake, goanna, lizard, frog; honey ant, flying ant, green caterpillar, green cicada, witchetty grub; bush onion, hakea flower, rain and wind, fire and water, sun and twin ancestors; an ancestor for every plant or animal or element or attribute that was of significance in the daily life of the people. And for every ancestor there was a story. 7 Before 1900 the Arrernte were one of the largest aboriginal groups in central Australia; there were probably several thousand of them, divided later into Northern, Eastern, Central, Western, and Southern groups, with the Southern section possibly distinct and perhaps also to be subdivided into upper and lower moieties. The term Arrernte (Aranda; Arrente; Arunda; Arunta), like these geographical divisions, is a European innovation and refers essentially to a language cluster, of which the divisions are dialect groups. Linguists classify Arandic in the Pama-Nyungan phyla, which includes most if not all of the indigenous languages spoken outside of the Top End and the North West of the Australian continent The land of the Arrernte stretches from Charlotte Waters in the south to Conners Well in the north; from Haasts Bluff in the west to Loves Creek in the east.

Load more