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Lot Essay
In January 1964, Jeffrey Smart left Australia for Europe. Travelling through France and Italy with fellow artist Justin O'Brien, the pair later settled on the Greek island of Skyros, where they embarked on a period of tremendous artistic productivity. Peter Quartermaine recorded that: "At the time he was worried about spending so long on a small island, feeling that he would lack material, but on the way through Greece they stayed at Athens which proved a revelation ('like Dallas - big, brassy, brash') and provided enough material for the whole of the Skyros period." (P Quartermaine, op.cit, p.20)
Outskirts, Athens contains all of the coded elements that we now recognise as essential in a 'classic' Jeffrey Smart painting. There is the familiar concentration on architecture and perspective; with the ubiquitous apartment block looming and a series of obstacles blocking the view to the horizon line. Other quintessential characteristics include the patterned colours of the fences and the evocation of an unsettled natural environment through the faintly discoloured pall of the sky. All of these disparate elements combine to create an atmosphere in which the seemingly banal becomes loaded with the symbolic; creating a tension and unsettling stillness and, above all, a sense of the strange in the familiar, which in turn is the classic response to a Smart painting.
The watercolour study of the coloured fences and corrugated iron hoarding, which Smart later worked into the composition of Outskirts, Athens, was actually executed in Porta Portese in Rome. The use of a swiftly recorded visual impression which is incorporated into a finished oil painting after a long gestation, is habitual of Smart's working process. The same coloured fences based on the same study re-appear in a painting from 1980 titled Plastic Tube. An awareness of this working method also reveals the danger of interpreting Smart's hyper-realistic works as straightforward representations of urban landscapes, when in fact they are as meticulously constructed artistic landscapes as the man-made environments which inspire them.
Irony is omnipresent in Smart's work and, true to the nature of irony, it is always handled in a restrained and understated manner. In Outskirts, Athens, the diminishing line of telegraph poles portrays a tangible expression of modern communication, a reminder of the human element in this seemingly barren, urban wasteland. Furthermore, the writing which appears on the corrugated iron hoarding is obviously an attempt to inform or communicate, as the neat and clearly blocked lettering suggests not graffiti but rather an advertisement or sign. Smart employs the same visual blocking device that he uses so often on his horizon lines and the low view-point results in a cutting-off and magnification of the words, so that what began as an attempt to communicate is once again gently frustrated. Through these strategies, Smart deliberately denies the viewer the complete information to make sense of the contemporary world depicted. The tension upon which his art rests is the viewer's awareness that it is up to us to engage with, negotiate, and attribute meaning to the visual signs of a world that is simultaneously familiar and strange.
We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Jeffrey Smart's archivist, for his assistance with this catalogue entry
Outskirts, Athens contains all of the coded elements that we now recognise as essential in a 'classic' Jeffrey Smart painting. There is the familiar concentration on architecture and perspective; with the ubiquitous apartment block looming and a series of obstacles blocking the view to the horizon line. Other quintessential characteristics include the patterned colours of the fences and the evocation of an unsettled natural environment through the faintly discoloured pall of the sky. All of these disparate elements combine to create an atmosphere in which the seemingly banal becomes loaded with the symbolic; creating a tension and unsettling stillness and, above all, a sense of the strange in the familiar, which in turn is the classic response to a Smart painting.
The watercolour study of the coloured fences and corrugated iron hoarding, which Smart later worked into the composition of Outskirts, Athens, was actually executed in Porta Portese in Rome. The use of a swiftly recorded visual impression which is incorporated into a finished oil painting after a long gestation, is habitual of Smart's working process. The same coloured fences based on the same study re-appear in a painting from 1980 titled Plastic Tube. An awareness of this working method also reveals the danger of interpreting Smart's hyper-realistic works as straightforward representations of urban landscapes, when in fact they are as meticulously constructed artistic landscapes as the man-made environments which inspire them.
Irony is omnipresent in Smart's work and, true to the nature of irony, it is always handled in a restrained and understated manner. In Outskirts, Athens, the diminishing line of telegraph poles portrays a tangible expression of modern communication, a reminder of the human element in this seemingly barren, urban wasteland. Furthermore, the writing which appears on the corrugated iron hoarding is obviously an attempt to inform or communicate, as the neat and clearly blocked lettering suggests not graffiti but rather an advertisement or sign. Smart employs the same visual blocking device that he uses so often on his horizon lines and the low view-point results in a cutting-off and magnification of the words, so that what began as an attempt to communicate is once again gently frustrated. Through these strategies, Smart deliberately denies the viewer the complete information to make sense of the contemporary world depicted. The tension upon which his art rests is the viewer's awareness that it is up to us to engage with, negotiate, and attribute meaning to the visual signs of a world that is simultaneously familiar and strange.
We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Jeffrey Smart's archivist, for his assistance with this catalogue entry