Diploma Lecture Series 2011 Art and ll: European Preludes and Parallels The body as nation: Australian of the 1920s and ’30s

Denise Mimmocchi

16 / 17 March 2011

Lecture summary:

The lecture examines transformations in sculpture in Australia during the interwar period through a study of the work of and his school, and some of the key figures of emerging modernist sculpture practices in the 1930s including Ola Cohn, Margel Hinder and Gerald Lewers.

The lecture will look at how these artists, while using different sculptural languages, were connected in their practices through their figuring of the body via Vitalist principles; that is, through the belief and philosophies that espoused the idea of underlying life forces which were inherent to, and driving all natural life forms.

The lecture will examine how Hoff’s Vitalist aesthetics contributed to the imagery of the body as a national ideal in the interwar decades and the years of post-war reconstruction. It will then study how modernist sculptors of the 1930s looked towards European models of contemporary sculpture which shifted meanings away from the external appearances of the body toward an abstracted rendering of its internal or spiritual forces.

Slide list:

*1. Rayner Hoff, Idyll: love and life , 1923/1926, marble, Art Gallery of

*2. Margel Hinder, Mother and child, 1939, wood (ironbark), Art Gallery of New South Wales

3. Rayner Hoff, relief panels, City Life Assurance building, 1936, bronze, Martin Place,

4. (architect), Rayner Hoff (sculptor) , and Rayner Hoff sculpture Sacrifice bronze 1931-34, Hyde Park, Sydney

5. Rayner Hoff, Holden lion , plaster maquette, 1926-27, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

6. Rayner Hoff, Decorative portrait – Len Lye, marble, 1925, Art Gallery of New South Wales

7. Rayner Hoff, Deluge – stampede of the lower gods, 1927, patinated plaster, National Gallery of Australia

8. Rayner Hoff, Norman Lindsay, 1924, bronze, Art Gallery of New South Wales

9. Rayner Hoff, Faun and nymph, 1924, bronze, Art Gallery of New South Wales

*10. Rayner Hoff, The kiss, 1923, bronze, Art Gallery of South Australia

11. , Lovers ,I 1936-37, bronze (cast 1981), Art Gallery of New South Wales

12. Marjorie Fletcher, Fear ,1936, bronze, Art Gallery of New South Wales 13. Barbara Tribe, Medusa, 1930-31, bronze, golden patina (cast 1991) Art Gallery of New South Wales

14. Barbara Tribe, Spirit of the sea , 1933-35, bronze, private collection

15. Rayner Hoff, Salome, 1924, bronze, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale

16. Rayner Hoff, Australian Venus, c1927, Angaston marble, Art Gallery of New South Wales

17. Barbara Tribe, Fountain of life, 1930-33, plaster, current whereabouts unknown

18. Jean Broome –Norton, Abundance, 1934 (reworked 1987), bronze, Art Gallery of New South Wales

19. Charles Meere, Australian beach pattern, 1938-1940, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales

20. Ola Cohn, Head with hands , c.1930, stone, current whereabouts unknown

21. Henry Moore, Reclining figure, 1929, Horton Stone, Leeds Museum and Galleries

*22. Ola Cohn, Head of a virgin, 1926, bronze, National Gallery of Victoria

23. Ola Cohn, Earth, c1932, stone, current whereabouts unknown

24. Ola Cohn, Mother and child , 1928, bronze, Bendigo Art Gallery

25. Eleanore Lange, Seraph of light (maquette for a proposed memorial to Walter Duffield),1934, plaster, National Gallery of Australia

26. Margel Hinder, Seated figure, 1935, plaster with graphite finish, Ballarat Art Gallery

27. Margel Hinder, Jerry, 1945, wood, Art Gallery of New South Wales

*28. Gerald Lewers, Plough, 1934, limestone, Art Gallery of South Australia

29. Robert Klippel, Harry Boyd, 1946, Hawkesbury Sandstone, National Gallery of Australia

30. Robert Klippel, No. 30,0 1972-74, brazed and welded steel, found objects

Bibliography:

Deborah Edwards ‘This Vital flesh’: the sculpture of Rayner Hoff and his school Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999

Renée Free Frank and Margel Hinder 1930-1980 Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1980

Barbara Lemon (producer) The word in stone: sculptor Ola Cohn ABC ‘Hindsight’ program 28 September 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/ rn/hindsight/stories/2008

Graeme Sturgeon The development of Australian sculpture 1788 – 1975 Thames and Hudson, 1978: chapters 7 ‘Seeds of doubt 1923-37’ and 8 ‘Individuals, groups and great events 1939-61’

Rayner Hoff , Idyll: love and life , 1923/1926, marble, Art Gallery of New South Wales

Margel Hinder, Mother and child , 1939, wood (ironbark), Art Gallery of New South Wales

Rayner Hoff, The kiss , 1923, bronze, Art Gallery of South Australia

Ola Cohn, Head of a virgin , 1926, bronze, National Gallery of Victoria

Gerald Lewers, Plough , 1934, limestone, Art Gallery of South Australia