Exhibitions
Christchurch
T .L. RODNEY WILSON
GRAHAME SYDNEY AT THE McDOUGALL
Howard Hibbard, discussing Italian art of the early seventeenth century, especially that of Bernini, observed that, 'a return to"nature" and to "realism" are classic symptoms of artistic rebirth after years of stagnant formulae'. Certainly one does not need to search far to find evidence to support that observation. Period styles such as Gothic, Mannerism and Rococo, each artifical and consciously 'stylish' in their own way, have made way for a return to nature and forms of realist imagery.
One of the few real highlights in Christchurch's 1976 exhibition programme was the Grahame Sydney show at the McDougall Gallery between November 17 and January 5. With the exception of one or two works it contained the sum total of Sydney's output from his return to New Zealand in May 1974 until the time of the exhibition: paintings, a selection of drawings, and etchings. It was not only a remarkably consistent exhibition of very high quality, but it was also popular and successful.
Yet popularity and success at the hands of a large public seem to have become almost synonymous with failure as the wedge widening the schism separating artist and public is incessantly driven further and further home. We are all familiar with 'successful' painting. But how does Sydney fit into the scheme of things? If his painting was trite in its handling, was carried out with facility, or concerned itself with cliched imagery as so much bad painting that is widely, and wrongly, thought of as 'realistic' does, then he would cause us no problems, raise no questions. But Sydney clearly isn't of that ilk. His painting, although we might find examples which we feel are less successful and less perfectly resolved than others, is so obviously superior, so obviously the product of a fine sensibility and an intelligent mind.
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| GRAHAME SYDNEY Mantlepiece Study 1976 egg tempera, 33 x 743 cm. (collection of Mr RD Fraser, Cromwell) |
Sydney gains acceptance and respect from both sides of the artistic fence - he appeals to the layman for his clarity, his control and the perfection of his rendering of nature; he appeals to a more knowledgable public for his organisation of his imagery, for the stillness which prickles with mystery and for the austerity with which he avoids banality and sentiment. He has a gift for taking the commonplace and raising and ennobling it. Some may admire the means, others the result, but all agree Sydney is important.
Indeed Sydney is one of a very tiny handful of present New Zealand painters of quality, and the only realist to quicken one's pulse. The Pop-artish, so-called realism of Ian Scott was a cul-de-sac. Scott soon discovered that it still drew too heavily upon the resources of Painting - made too little reference outside itself. Sydney, with obvious debts to Wyeth, goes far beyond that. Indeed, in those works which abandon the picturesque clutter of man's discarded products and the low Wyethian view of an elevated motif, he exceeds much of the work of his exemplar.
His real strength lies in the formal works where his pictorial means have been reduced to a minimum and where he reaps from them, through poise and counterpoise, subtle shifts of tone and colour, patterns of line and volumes, the richest results. I think of Volunteer Hall Central Otago, Julie's Room, Railway Red, Three Blind Eyes; and those still life groups, Mantlepiece Study, Childhood Companion, Weathered Shoe, in which found objects, ancient shoes and so on, exist in a quiet twilight space of gentle light and long shadows. They become objects of mystery as time transmutes them, almost disguising from us their original functions.
On the one hand Sydney has the command of design, of drawing, colour and tone which would allow us to think of him as a classicist; on the other he has the innate sensitivity to the soul of his objects shaped by time and use which is the gift of the romantic sensibility. Perhaps he is like Ingres in a sense, a vehicle in which classicist and romanticist states can happily coexist.
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| LAURENCE ABERHART Domestic Architecture, Christchurch black / white photograph from the exhibition New Zealand Landscape, Snaps Gallery, Auckland |
Certainly Sydney and his brand of realism are going to be important for New Zealand painting. In two years he has achieved more than many working ten times as long. When sense and sensibility are to be found in one individual to the extent that they are in this painter then we may, with justification, expect much.
Originally published in Art New Zealand 4 Febraury/March 1977