Brack, reduced
June 01
In the Australian on Saturday there was a long article on the work of John Brack, whose work is on exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne until August 9 and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide from October 2.
The author of the piece, Christopher Allen, takes Brack to task for his ‘unsympathetic’ approach to his subject: ‘a fundamental want of human feeling mars even his most memorable compositions . . .It is worth looking more closely at The Bar, especially as it has just been acquired by the NGV and is, in a sense, the star of the exhibition. . . The drinkers in the background are an anonymous frieze of dour and hopeless figures, humourlessly drinking and smoking as much as they can before the bar closes at 6pm. The barmaid stares at or past them with hard, impervious features, a fixed grin and unsmiling eyes. Her right hand rests on a cloth with which one imagines she is about to wipe up beer stains on the bar, as though by a kind of reflex. There is no sexual connection [italics mine] between men and women in this world’.
To my mind the lack of what Allen calls sexual connection is part of the social critique the painting makes. The bar is not a place for sexual engagement for most barmaids. It’s a job – a job where yes, women are expected to engage socially,and possibly flirtatiously with men. It is a kind of performance of heterosexual relations. As Allen himself goes on to say, ‘engagement between the worlds of the two sexes seems inconceivable. Man works, then drinks; woman watches, waits and cleans.’ It is precisely that quality that makes the painting powerful, I think.
This analysis of Brack’s work is preceded by reference to Albert Tucker’s influence on Brack. Allen's analysis of Tucker, too, I find perturbing in its refusal to engage in a meaningful way with what – I believe - that Tucker is trying to do. ‘Another motif that derives from Tucker is the upturned nose, revealing the open nostrils that for Tucker epitomise disgust and self-loathing, and recall, in his wartime pictures of Diggers on leave, the snouts of pigs’.
Now while I would agree that this is an ugly way to portray soldiers on leave, when I look at the paintings that use this motif I assume that Tucker is indicating his disgust at war and what it makes men do. And also, perhaps, discomfort with the working classes.
In seems contradictory to me that Allen should write at length about the restrictions of abstraction and the way in which Brack’s tendency towards that mode dehumanizes his work, at the same time as refusing to give credance the social critique that is clearly at work in the paintings. His reading of Brack desaturates the paintings of one of the qualities that makes them powerful: a political sensibility.
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Comments
01 Jun 09 at 15:11
Yes! Very good points, and very well made.
I often feel annoyed at assertions that Brack disliked people, or certain types of people, in the way he portrayed them. I suspect he cared about people, deeply, and disliked what how they had to live.
And that is part of the political sensibility in his work.
These concerns were, of course, not new. The Bar is inspired by Manet's painting of a similar scene, and there is a strong similarity in the blank, dour, or just plain work-exhausted expression on the barmaid's eyes and face.
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01 Jun 09 at 15:18
Allen does actually talk about the Manet painting as inspiration for The Bar - he believes the quality of expression between the two women is quite different. I'd have to spend more time on Manet to have a view on that but I'm interested that you, in fact, think Brack is quite close to the Manet interpretation in terms of its expressive effect.
...01 Jun 09 at 15:27
I wonder if Allen has ever been in an old-fashioned pub. There's not so many left in Melbourne now, but you still see in them in the country. They aren't as formally segregated now, but the weary female bartender surrounded by serious drinking men is still a part of Australian life.
And the only people who expect a sexual connection with the barstaff when they walk into a bar are the ones who have to be escorted out by security after drink six or so.
...01 Jun 09 at 15:57
I didn't read the Oz article but it's just bizarre to complain that the painting shows a world without sexual connection. As you say,that's the whole point of the painting.
...01 Jun 09 at 21:40
Yes I agree -- good points. I'm not at all familiar with Christopher Allen's writing but his comments here seem to resonate with a strain of anti-modernism that regards modernism as an elitist enterprise cut off from ordinary experience etc. Brack might suffer in comparison to Manet but to criticise for lacking "moments of hope, glimpses of aspiration to something better" seems like misunderstanding. I'm reminded of what James Ley wrote about Samuel Beckett in ABR recently:
"Beckett is sometimes characterised as a nihilist, but this is not quite the case. Though his writing rejects false hope, rejects any kind of theological frogwash that might justify the purposeless fact of human suffering, its systematic negation gestures toward the recognition of a fundamental reality. He negates in order to arrive at a truth, however discomfiting that truth might turn out to be." http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Current/june09leyreview
...02 Jun 09 at 12:32
Funnily enough, I've always thought of this barmaid as a warm character. To me she looks tired, but content, capable and in control. As if she's going to kick them all out at 6pm and put her feet up.
She and her flowers are luminous. There is no such bright spot, for instance, in 'Collins Street, 5pm'.
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