Bhudda and Bananas
I would like to say a few words in defence of my own paintings,as i have just imagined a sneering post-modernist critic denouncing them thus: Here we have some pretty little watercolours, presented in a conventionally realistic manner, with an underlying message that life is a lollipop and all you need to do is suck on it.
Sneering indeed. Picassso and his gang used to deride Bonnard because he painted scenes of bourgeois comfort and delight, when everyone knew that the world had gone mad and that delight was no longer a valid response to the situation. A rampaging minotaur had entered the scene and the age of tragedy had begun.
Of course Henri Matisse did not buy that line of thinking. When his own wife and daughter were captured by the Nazis, Henri went on painting his poems of ecstasy - a bowl of glowing oranges on a floral tablecloth. Was that an act of callous indifference, or was it a heroic statement of human possibility in the face of the barbarism that was threatening to engulf the world? I say the latter. When Thanatos, the death urge, takes over the brain as it appears to have done in modern times (witness the endless fantasy t.v. murders served up as nightime viewing fare) then more people need to break out and dance on the edge of the volcano, as recommended by Nikos Kazantzakis, creator of Zorba the Greek.
If Bonnard was capable of going into a state of ecstasy simply by looking at the remains of breakfast on a white table top - isn't there still hope for the human race? Is the poetry of Rumi out of date because he was an ecstatic? Being an ecstatic is a special talent, not everyone can experience life in that way. Bonnard's responses to the visual world are, I believe, an evolutionary advance on the way most people are in the world. T.S. Eliot may have been more in tune with the times with his bleak assessment of the human condition - we are the hollow men we are the stuffed men - but he was a miserable person in his own right anyway. Great poet; miserable person - it does happen.
I believe in the great yea-sayers and modestly place myself in the same lineage: Rumi, Renoir, Whitman, Rabelais, Vermeer, Bonnard, Ginsberg, Henry Miller. Their paintings and writings are ecstasy bombs, waged on the side of Eros. It is the consciousness behind these works that gives them an irresistible vitality, and has nothing to do whether they are modern, post-modern or paleolithic.
Enough, there is something faintly ridiculous about defending yourself against imaginary critics. From now on my paintings will have to fend for themselves.
The Bhudda and Bananas
Friday November 11 - Sunday November 27
11am - 5pm
Opening Saturday November 12 2 -4 pm
All Welcome
56 A Lovel St Katoomba NSW 2780
t: 02 4782 6231
e: gallery@nolanonlovel.com.au
w:nolanonlovelgallery.com.au
Sneering indeed. Picassso and his gang used to deride Bonnard because he painted scenes of bourgeois comfort and delight, when everyone knew that the world had gone mad and that delight was no longer a valid response to the situation. A rampaging minotaur had entered the scene and the age of tragedy had begun.
Of course Henri Matisse did not buy that line of thinking. When his own wife and daughter were captured by the Nazis, Henri went on painting his poems of ecstasy - a bowl of glowing oranges on a floral tablecloth. Was that an act of callous indifference, or was it a heroic statement of human possibility in the face of the barbarism that was threatening to engulf the world? I say the latter. When Thanatos, the death urge, takes over the brain as it appears to have done in modern times (witness the endless fantasy t.v. murders served up as nightime viewing fare) then more people need to break out and dance on the edge of the volcano, as recommended by Nikos Kazantzakis, creator of Zorba the Greek.
If Bonnard was capable of going into a state of ecstasy simply by looking at the remains of breakfast on a white table top - isn't there still hope for the human race? Is the poetry of Rumi out of date because he was an ecstatic? Being an ecstatic is a special talent, not everyone can experience life in that way. Bonnard's responses to the visual world are, I believe, an evolutionary advance on the way most people are in the world. T.S. Eliot may have been more in tune with the times with his bleak assessment of the human condition - we are the hollow men we are the stuffed men - but he was a miserable person in his own right anyway. Great poet; miserable person - it does happen.
I believe in the great yea-sayers and modestly place myself in the same lineage: Rumi, Renoir, Whitman, Rabelais, Vermeer, Bonnard, Ginsberg, Henry Miller. Their paintings and writings are ecstasy bombs, waged on the side of Eros. It is the consciousness behind these works that gives them an irresistible vitality, and has nothing to do whether they are modern, post-modern or paleolithic.
Enough, there is something faintly ridiculous about defending yourself against imaginary critics. From now on my paintings will have to fend for themselves.
The Bhudda and Bananas
Friday November 11 - Sunday November 27
11am - 5pm
Opening Saturday November 12 2 -4 pm
All Welcome
56 A Lovel St Katoomba NSW 2780
t: 02 4782 6231
e: gallery@nolanonlovel.com.au
w:nolanonlovelgallery.com.au
