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Lot Essay
Related work: Three Seagulls, 1955, oil on canvas, 43 x 91.5 cm, Private collection
For John Brack, 1955 marked a period of intense creativity.
Seagull, painted during this year, was shown in the artist's second solo exhibition at Melbourne's Peter Bray Gallery in 1956: a centrally important exhibition in the history of Australian Modernism. The painting was one of a paradigmatic group of Brack's works, including Collins Street, 5pm; The Car; Self Portrait and The Fish Shop (all in the National Gallery of Victoria collection), and The Sewing Machine (Helen Brack), (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery collection) that were shown at the exhibition.
Brack has painted his seagull at eye level, adopting a technique that he had also used in The Car which allows the bird to take due prominence by closing in on the chief subject and simplifying the background detail. In Seagull, the artist has provided just enough indication of the sandy beach, seaweed and foamy breaks to locate the bird on the shore. The bird's grey and white feathers are outlined with Brack's characteristic fine black line, giving visual expression of the artist's observation of the seagull as a bird "geometrical in its forms, tight and hard yet graceful at the same time" (Ibid, p.53).
In his typically pared-down, synthesised manner, Brack adheres to a restrained palette of khaki, white and black. Whether a procession of sepia-toned office clerks in Collins Street, or a seagull on the foreshore, for Brack, individual characteristics were downplayed, to the benefit of the entire composition. "For him, local colour, the peculiarities of the individual form or details of a specific site are always sacrificed to the overall artistic conception. It is both a deliberate process to depersonalize the subject - in Rilke's terms to remove the artist from his creation - and an attempt to find a suitable artistic form through which to arrive at a general and accessible symbol." (S. Grishin, The Art of John Brack, Melbourne, 1990, p.50)
In Seagull, the accessibility of Brack's subject matter and his crisp, direct style result in an immediately appealing and engaging image. Nevertheless, "the imagery retains an ambiguous and enigmatic quality. Paintings infer hidden meanings: references just beyond the grasp or consciousness of the viewer." (P.McCaughey, "The Complexity of John Brack" in R. Lindsay, John Brack, Melbourne, 1987, p.7).
Brack was never again to paint landscape images, but his vision heralded a new way of painting in Australia, in which the artist placed himself on the same level as his subject. In contrast to the sweeping grandeur of Streeton, or the heroicism and pathos of Roberts, Brack's focus was on the ordinary, the everyday. Nevertheless, the strength of his artistic vision transformed the mundane to the extraordinary through synthesis of form, line and colour.
For John Brack, 1955 marked a period of intense creativity.
Seagull, painted during this year, was shown in the artist's second solo exhibition at Melbourne's Peter Bray Gallery in 1956: a centrally important exhibition in the history of Australian Modernism. The painting was one of a paradigmatic group of Brack's works, including Collins Street, 5pm; The Car; Self Portrait and The Fish Shop (all in the National Gallery of Victoria collection), and The Sewing Machine (Helen Brack), (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery collection) that were shown at the exhibition.
Brack has painted his seagull at eye level, adopting a technique that he had also used in The Car which allows the bird to take due prominence by closing in on the chief subject and simplifying the background detail. In Seagull, the artist has provided just enough indication of the sandy beach, seaweed and foamy breaks to locate the bird on the shore. The bird's grey and white feathers are outlined with Brack's characteristic fine black line, giving visual expression of the artist's observation of the seagull as a bird "geometrical in its forms, tight and hard yet graceful at the same time" (Ibid, p.53).
In his typically pared-down, synthesised manner, Brack adheres to a restrained palette of khaki, white and black. Whether a procession of sepia-toned office clerks in Collins Street, or a seagull on the foreshore, for Brack, individual characteristics were downplayed, to the benefit of the entire composition. "For him, local colour, the peculiarities of the individual form or details of a specific site are always sacrificed to the overall artistic conception. It is both a deliberate process to depersonalize the subject - in Rilke's terms to remove the artist from his creation - and an attempt to find a suitable artistic form through which to arrive at a general and accessible symbol." (S. Grishin, The Art of John Brack, Melbourne, 1990, p.50)
In Seagull, the accessibility of Brack's subject matter and his crisp, direct style result in an immediately appealing and engaging image. Nevertheless, "the imagery retains an ambiguous and enigmatic quality. Paintings infer hidden meanings: references just beyond the grasp or consciousness of the viewer." (P.McCaughey, "The Complexity of John Brack" in R. Lindsay, John Brack, Melbourne, 1987, p.7).
Brack was never again to paint landscape images, but his vision heralded a new way of painting in Australia, in which the artist placed himself on the same level as his subject. In contrast to the sweeping grandeur of Streeton, or the heroicism and pathos of Roberts, Brack's focus was on the ordinary, the everyday. Nevertheless, the strength of his artistic vision transformed the mundane to the extraordinary through synthesis of form, line and colour.