Trevor Cook 1 Is Emily Kngwarreye’s work abstract expressionism? Akira Tatehata Director The National Museum of Art in Osaka. Tatehata has long been a fan of Kngwarreye and makes some large claims for her work. For instance, Tatehata says that the National Gallery of Victoria's "Big Yam Dreaming" (1995), is one of the greatest paintings of the twentieth century. Moreover, Tatehata and the National Museum of Australia (NMA) see the Japanese exhibition as an opportunity to promote Kngwarreye's best work as the equivalent of some of the great New York school of abstract expressionists, including Introduction Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Jackson On February this year, an exhibition: Pollock and Willem de Kooning. "Utopia: the genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye" opened in Osaka. In May it "While her work is deeply rooted in the will open in Tokyo for another two-month ancient traditions of her culture, it reaches showing. the heights of the best contemporary abstraction in the world," NMA curator According to Craddock Morton, director of Margo Neale told the media earlier this the National Museum of Australia which is year. working with the Osaka Gallery, it “is a benchmark exhibition.” "For the whole of her life she was outside of the Western fine arts tradition," Tatehata Morton told the Australian media in March says. "She didn't see exhibitions or picture this year that the Japanese venture was books and yet her work shows such a “the first major exhibition by an Australian perfect modernity, it looks like a miracle. artist to travel internationally. It's not an The images, size, all-over construction and indigenous show. It's a show of a major colourist talent is quite different and Australian contemporary artist, with extraordinary." indigenous explanation provided." There seems to be no precedent for these A driving force behind the exhibition is claims. Indigenous art, and artists, have been a source of inspiration for Trevor Cook 2 modernists, like Picasso, but none have Although coming late to acrylic painting, been given the status Tatehata proposes Kngwarreye, nevertheless, painted on for Kngwarreye. women’s bodies and drew in sand all her life. She was also prominent in the earlier How can we reconcile Kngwarreye’s status batik movement at Utopia. as a traditional indigenous artist with the idea that she is also a master of modernist She came to acrylic paining very late in art, the equal of some of the great icons of her life but she came to it steeped in the 20th century painting? techniques she required to tell the stories of her country and of her yam and emu An equal not just in mastery of technique dreamings. but also in her aesthetic project or purpose. Kngwarreye’s painting received almost immediate interest and acclaim from critics Or as Tatehata puts it1: “How did this and buyers. modern space suddenly appear in her? I can't find the reason. But anyway, an art Partly, this was because Kngwarreye’s work that could be the peak of the abstract emergence was at a propitious time and painting in the 20th century appeared was received by a Western audience before us in perfect form. I'm in shock. But schooled both in abstraction (including at the same time, I'm deeply attracted to expressionist and minimalist styles) and in it.” the new desert art style of the Papunya school. Emily Kngwarreye’s career2 Kngwarreye created her own artistic style Kngwarreye was born in 1910 into the and changed that style several times Anmatyerre language group at Alhalkere in during her career. the Utopia community, about 200 km north east of Alice Springs where she lived until This first style, in her paintings between passing away in 1996. 1989 and 1991, had many dots, sometimes lying on top of each other, of During the last 8 years of her life she varying sizes and colours. painted about 3,000 works, around one per day, in several styles and ranging from In 1992, the dots began joining into lines magnificent masterworks to lesser quality with parallel horizontal and vertical stripes, canvases produced quickly to meet the representing rivers and the contours of the demands of dealers and their customers. land, in many different colours. She began using larger brushes than previously, her paintings now consist of much larger dots 1 In several media interviews earlier this year 2 This summary has been edited and adapted from a number of sources principally wikipedia. Trevor Cook 3 than the finer, more intricate work which she did when she started. In 1993 she began painting patches of colour and along with many dots which were like rings that were clear in the middle. The next year she began painting with plain stripes that crossed the canvas. These were at first thick stripes which often represented the lines of yam tracks as in Yam Dreaming (1994, see opposite column), according to Tatehata, one of the best paintings of the 20th century. Later in 1995 her paintings start to include many thinner lines that criss-crossed the canvas. Several weeks before her death she painted many canvases over a 3 day period in 1996, using a very thick brush such as in Body Paint (1996). Kngwarreye’s capacity to change styles with confidence and aesthetic success is a pointer to the reality that she was doing much more than replicating traditional designs. Kngwarreye clearly demonstrates an original aesthetic vision. Modernism and Australian aboriginal art The idea that artistic work by Kngwarreye (and many other contemporary aboriginal artists) can be both traditional and modernist at the same time is a real problem for many commentators and critics. Trevor Cook 4 These critics argue that modernity comes it but it is almost impossible to define. at the price of tradition. For instance, Dr McLean quotes Eric Michaels3: “Only if Gay does, however, point to just two Western Desert painting - and perhaps all principles that seem to apply universally to contemporary canvases labeled Aboriginal everything we know as modernism: heresy - are separated, wrenched from their and self-scrutiny (as a reaction to the ethnographic context ...do I believe it can falsity of bourgeois art and ideology). achieve the legitimacy it is due in the postmodern debate no less than the Neither of these principles can be seen to contemporary market.” apply to what Kngwarreye saw as her project. Yet, they are perhaps apt in McLean also cites another critic, Walter understanding our own interpretation of Benjamin, “Either the paintings are her art. traditional and not modern, or modern and not traditional.” They can’t, in his view, be The art looks heretical to us (but not to both. her) because it is different to what we had previously thought of as ‘aboriginal art’, it These critics believe that a choice has to is genuinely original and it is recognisably be made and a price paid. similar to western modernist painters. Yet, Kngwarreye herself described her We can think of this in different ways. The paintings as having lots of meaning to do similarity could be pure coincidence, it with all the aspects of her community's life, might reflect the influence of primitivist art she said her paintings mean: “Whole lot, on modernism or it could be that that's all, whole lot, awelye, arlatyeye, Kngwarreye arrived at a similar point to ankerrthe, ntange, dingo, ankerre, intekwe, Pollock, Rothko and others by a very anthwerle and kame. That's what I paint: different route. whole lot.” However, the more important point is the Kngwarreye, then, as an active participant way we think about the principle of self- in the world’s longest surviving culture, scrutiny. does not seem to have felt the awful choice, perceived by many critics, between What really impresses us about modernism and tradition. Kngwarreye’s work is not its stylistic similarity to some of the ‘heresies’ of In his 2007 book on modernism4, Peter modern western painting but the intense Gay makes the point that modernism is something we all recognise when we see 3 Dr Ian McLean, Senior Lecturer, University of Western Australia, “The modernity of tradition: interpreting acrylic desert paintings” 4 Peter Gay, “Modernism: the lure of heresy”, 2007, London, p4 ff. Trevor Cook 5 honesty of her vision of her relationship just stunned. I stood there absent minded with her country and her community. in front of the painting but suddenly it was An obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald a joy. It was such a strong feeling and it said that Kngwarreye “painted the was strange even to me, but tears started spiritual forces which imbue the country falling. I didn't know why I was crying. with contours of the landscape, cycles of Perhaps I was so moved because I came seasons, the flow of flooding waters and in touch with something so beautiful.”6 the patterns of seeds and the shape of plants” (emphasis added). Kngwarreye and abstract expressionism It is Kngwarreye’s capacity to convey (or Kngwarreye’s painting techniques may express) these ‘spiritual forces’ through also resemble those of Jackson Pollock, colour, dots and lines that is, I think, what with whom she is most often compared. strikes us as particularly modern. Pollock sought to capture a sense of Kngwarreye is not involved in trying to be spontaneous, automatic or subconscious fully honest by rejecting the compromises creation. Pollock said: “On the floor I am of bourgeois art but she achieves the more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of same result through an incredibly pure the painting ...literally in the painting.