cow and established a vegetable garden and helped neighbour s as best she could. Vic was occasionall y able to contribute a few shilli ngs to the family purse by cutting and carrying loads of wood .

Before these events, Vic had worked with his mother after school and at weekends at the Victoria Market and had 'started to get the image of the inner city areas and had a very vivid reaction to them' . In the country, Vic gradually became aware of the local landscape: the way the mountain ranges at sunset seemed to hover across the valley . He found himself developing an enthusiasm for art, and he drew indiscriminately, at first using pen and ink. Next he turned to woodcuts; his father hoarded old cigar boxes and their lids were ideal for this purpose.

Although sympathetic to Vic's artistic inclinations, the family took it for granted he would be articled to his Vic O'Connor gained his artistic and , to be labelled as lawyer brother. But, says Vic, 'I really reputation nearly fifty years ago as a Social Realists, a term which Bernard couldn't stand law, although I did Social Realist painter. Now in his Smith defined as artists involved in 'the enjoy certain aspects of it, such as seventies, he is still painting and recent depiction of ordinary life from a left­ court work and contact with people. heart surgery has brought forth a new wing point of view' . Whilst Vic has I'm afraid that when I was supposed to vigour and an outburst of creative accepted this label, he points out that be studying at the Public Library, I enthusiasm, and led to the completion his work is 'simply a response to would be reading art books. And I was of over forty paintings. ordinary life as I have experienced it, attempting quite seriously to draw.' depicted in a realist form' . However, as he worked all week with These recent works reveal that although his brother and studied at night, art time may have refined the polemical Vic O'Connor was born in was restricted to late evening and sharpness of his earlier works, it has in 1918, the second youngest of five weekends. not dimmed his concern for the children. They were brought up common man and woman. The principally by their mother, Ada, Fascination with books brought him affectionate depiction of people caught whose husband, Bertie, was an invalid into contact with a friend who up in the joys and struggles of ordinary for part of his life. She supported the introduced him to David Strachan, and life show that if anything maturity has family by piece-work, sewing slippers brought encouragement and advice for increased the profound humanity and for shoe firms; later she set up a small his artistic aspirations. Strachan, who sensitivity that characterises his works. factory behind their Thornbury home was impressed by the potential .of Vic's Vic has always painted to express his and ran her own slipper stall at the work, suggested he should take lessons feelings about issues of fairness and Victoria Market. from George Bell, and also enter his justice, although he tries to paint 'not work in the forthcoming first exhibition with a political banner but to tell a During the Depression, Ada's business of the Contemporary Art Society, the story' . As he said recently, 'I prefer to went broke, and she moved with the C.A.S. Right, The FloralBlouse , see myself as a poet-a painter of two youngest children to a block of acrylic with pencil mood, place and pathos' . land with a shack at then rural Mount So Vic joined the Contemporary Art Evelyn. Vic has clear memories of those Society and entered a landscape and a It was the political edge to Vic's hard times, when many families were still life in the 1939 exhibition. 'They paintings-his interest in painting the living in shanties with just a bark roof, were hung, together with pictures downtrodden and disadvantaged-that hessian walls and an earth floor . His submitted by artists such as Sidney caused him, along with Noel Counihan mother, resourceful as ever, bought a Nolan, Noel Counihan, Russell

54 RD I NARY LI F E Drysdale, James Gleeson and Albert Tucker. And they proved to be my entry into the art world .'

Ada managed to find the guinea a term for Vic to attend George Bell's Saturday art classes. But a guinea was a lot of money then and after two or three terms, the money ran out and lessons ceased . In any case, there were ructions in the C.A.S. and Vic found himself unable to support George Bell's viewpoint . Although this is now reported as springing from a political difference, at that stage Vic knew no artists and had no political affiliations, and his response was purely personal.

The C.A.S. comprised most of the younger artists of the period-f igures like Bell, Arnold Shaw, Frater, Drysdale, Dobell and Gleeson, as well as traditional artists. The C.A.S. was founded in July 1938 to 'unite all artists and laymen who are in favour of encouraging the growth of a living art', in opposition to the then-current idea of the creation of an officially sanctioned 'self-constituted Academy' .

For a time the Society flourished, with branches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, but as the threat of an Above, The Mourners, 1991 academy vanished differences arose between the various Above right, Crisis, George Street, groups who had joined the movement. The Bell group was the first to leave as they Fitzroy, acrylic with ink and pencil were oppposed to the part lay people played in the Society . The quarrel developed between Bell and a group around John and Sunday Reed-an avant garde circle which included Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval. The third group comprised those later termed the Social Realists: Noel Counihan, Vic O'Connor and Yosl Bergner .

It was in the early 1940s that Social Realism gained prominence in Australian art, largely due to the Communist Party's stand against fascism and the entry into the war in 1941 of the U.S.S.R. Many of its practitioners had bitter memories of the Depression ; they had also found entry to the art world a stony path indeed, and were sympathetic to socialism and communism. Further, the evolution of Australian society had shifted the main emphasis from the life and appearance of rural to the city .

While Vic says the term Social Realist was usually applied to Counihan, Bergner and himself, to identify them as a group, 'we were, however, each quite different from the other. Bergner's work reflected Jewish hopes and fears at that time . Counihan had a record of achievement as a political cartoonist, and when he

56 began to paint, his work reflected his close association with working-class left­ wing action . I was less sophisticated and had to find my way to my subjects. I was more of an instinctive painter .

'If you look at my pictures, you ' ll see a Cattle, acrylic with ink and pencil, 1993 lot of them have political or social connotations of some kind or other, but my approach tends to be from side on . I don't think pictures up. Images come into my mind pretty well formed with what I want to do. It's always been like that.'

Of the days in the C.A.S ., O 'Connor remembers that despite the differences in the art world, there was still a lot of camaraderie between individuals. 'At one period, there would be a Sunday afternoon get-together when we'd take along whatever we were working on and prop the pictures against the wall, have a bit of grog and the whole place would buzz with lively discussion.'

In 1941, Vic entered a painting, The Acrobats, in the C.A.S . exhibition and shared a fifty pound prize with Donald Friend . In The Acrobats, he tried to convey the brooding feeling of the cityscape : 'I was in the city continually, and in the immediate pre-war era the mood in the streets was often disturbing, with an atmosphere of violence . I used to feel there was an alienation-some degree of alienation between people . It is reflected in drawings I did of the city at that time, and it is what I sought to express in The Acrobats-the isolation, the unsettled atmosphere and the divisions between people .'

His success at the exhibition brought Vic O 'Connor to the attention of his peers. It was then that Noel Counihan and Yosl Bergner introduced themselves and almost immediately a close friendship developed between the three. Vic found that meeting Counihan and Bergner replaced the vague ideas he was feeling and helped him develop a more direct expression of them. 'I could see what they were doing was along the lines of my own response to life and times, and that's why I teamed up so readily with them.'

In that same year, Vic completed his law degree and went into the A rmy; Bergner, who had alien status, was in the Commonwealth Labour Company ; their mutual friend Noel Counihan had only recently recovered from tuberculosis and was medically unacceptable for military service.

In the C.A.S. catalogue for the 1944 exhibition, the three friends stated their The Room, c.1971 desire to work together 'to create a democratic art combining beauty of treatment wi_th a realistic statement of man in his contemporary environment. We three painters believe in a human, democratic art with its root in the life and struggles of ordinary people, devoid of all obscure cliches and mannerism ... an art intelligible eae---57 and popular, expressing the deepest In tune with his forthright political the arts in Australia received any real aspirations of the people'. In 1946 the sensibilities, Vic has often expressed acknowledgement . three had a joint exhibition which outspoken opinions in situations which attracted considerable notice and have offended 'people who count' in the Although Vic has never suffered at the approval. art world. His article, 'Art and Fascism' hands of critics, and reviews of his work [Australian New Writing, No2 1944]­ have been mainly laudatory, he does Vic spent most of the fifties and sixties in ostensibly a refutation of Sir Lionel seem-until recently-to have suffered Sydney, painting and exhibiting there, Lindsay's book Addled Art {1944]­ the same ostracism by silence that stifled but still sending a lot of work to turned into a blistering attack on what the careers of all the Social Realists. Melbourne. He knew Rod Shaw, Roy he saw as the political and artistic Looking back, it is difficult not to agree Dalgarno and James Cant, but conservatism of many of the Lindsay with Patrick McCaughey, who felt that somehow did not get involved with art family . Given the stature of the Lindsays even in his heyday Vic O'Connor was of political groups in Sydney-'possibly in the art world at the time, such an one of Australia's 'most neglected and because I wasn't invited', he admits with action was a brave one, especially as it underestimated painters' . Despite this, a grin. 'I just went on painting on my was bound to have own.' anything but a positive effect on his Although he has always drawn, Vic artistic career. painted almost exclusively in oils until the last few years when he found himself Retrospectively it is increasingly using the medium of acrylic difficult to paints. He started using acrylic washes comprehend the with his drawings because they are so vehemence with quick to use and capable of matching which the the nervous energy of his ideas. traditionalists such as Sir Lionel Lindsay 'You see, while the thought's coming defended 'their you can put it down and almost territory' from all immediately you can go over it to comers from the develop the idea . If you want to put on thirties through the a body colour then it merges. So I am fifties. Some idea of able to work very quickly, and able to the arrogance and suggest more movement. I've never conservatism committed myself to so brief a style of manifest in certain communication of what I'm after as I am quarters can be doing at the present time. In any case, gathered from the there's excitement in a new medium decision by the that's good, and very stimulating.' trustees of the National Gallery in Vic has never made a secret of his 1939 to put on an commitment to communism and his exhibition of work leftist-humanitarian views. In the fifties, executed by he and Counihan were both publicly themselves, instead denounced as 'un-Australian' painters, of a loan exhibition in ludicrous but sinister mimicry of the of 'modern' works­ inquisitorial un-American activities including those by investigations then taking place in Braque, Cezanne, Dufy, Picasso, Roualt Vic's work has always been sought by McCarthyist America. Fortunately the and Utrillo-which they consigned to private buyers. Two-thirds of the works ramifications of such accusations here storage in the gallery basement where displayed at his exhibition last year, at were nowhere near as severe as on the they remained unseen for over five years. the Bridget McDonnell Gallery in the Portraitof Ailsa Donaldson, other side of the Pacific, and Vic is able Melbourne inner suburb of Carlton, had oil on board, 1939, to look back on the absurdity of it all The Social Realists as a group were been sold by the time the doors closed. exhibited C.A.S. 1941 with a smile: 'It was all right then to largely ignored by the conventional art The National Gallery in Canberra paint black squares on a blank canvas, world and it was not until 1988 with the possessesabout sixty of his pictures and but paintings with political subjects were exhibition Angry Penguins and Realist he is represented in most State galleries. very un-Australian.' During the sixties he Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s, drifted away from the party but has which was shown in London at the Tate And the future? Vic has a mental always held to his ideals. Gallery, that their place in the history of schedule of what he intends doing over

~ · ss Study for Coffee, Fitzroy, acrylic with ink and pencil, 1992

the next few years-'for as long as I In over half a century painting, the keep going'. One of his projects is to stark desolation of some of Vic prepare a whole exhibition of works O'Connor's early work has been drawn from literature. In the past he tempered by a more compassionate has painted situations from Dickens, and understanding eye. His subjects and based drawings on the works of have a humanity, an individuality and Singer, Tolstoi-especially the latter's a completeness which transcends the magnificent story, The Death of Ivan customary stereotypes of the llyitch--Gorky, Gogol and other downtrodden. He continues to show humanists. · the same interests and concerns, the same forthrightness and the same To the suggestion that such an warmth and humour that have exhibition would almost certainly elicit characterised him and his work for condescending comments about over fifty years. It is perhaps a cause illustration rather than art (a dubious for mild optimism that these qualities, charge which seems to be levelled with as reflected in his paintings, hold their some frequency}, Vic replied: 'So attraction even in the gloomy and what? I've reached the stage of my life jaded nineties. where what I do doesn't have to be the be-all and end-all. But I cherish very high hopes for it.' Keith Richmond

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