Diebenkorn (July)

Richard Diebenkorn produced a lifetime of abstract paintings that confront us with the fact that landscape is about air. When we visit Emerald in July we understand the Chinese masters who use dense fog to separate higher trees from roadways and then valleys below, the one touch of colour a red maple. Similarly, French masters like Claude Monet come to mind when we find ourselves in January somewhere like Queenscliff, breezy and spacious. Diebenkorn presents us with huge atmospheres. We go looking for details that constitute our landscape expectations: buildings, fauna, flora, pavilions. But landscape does not exist without air.

Picasso (July)

Pablo Picasso, there’s only one way around him and that’s straight ahead. Take this folio, handed randomly to a visiting Australian last July by a great-niece. Was he bonkers? A superlative drawing starts as simple outlines one side, turns into ornate effusions of roofing and foliage the other: Como House. Washes of varying quality approximate Blue Dandenongs. Human figures are always close to hand with Picasso. Lithographs of sporty Greeks become more disjointed as afternoon wears on. Sometimes they throw off their clothes or turn into a bull. Spain boycotted the Melbourne Olympics, which dates this folio to within days.

Miyazaki (July)

Hayao Miyazaki piloted a film set in interwar Melbourne and to that end sourced any available images from the period. The T&G Building is white as ice-cream. Every facet of Manchester Unity picks up a glint of sunlight. Impeccably drawn hooded cars carry mystery passengers. All that survives are a few dozen short scenes and hundreds of sketches. (NGV St. Kilda Road. Starts July 28) Storyline: ten year-old savant Sue-Sue sees magical happenings. Submarines in the bay come and go undetected. Mushrooms burst into flame and cloud. Gallery-goers may listen to the proposed soundtrack, Glockenspiel Mozart, through earplugs in situ.

Newman (July)

Barnett Newman separated the picture plane as neatly as the winter horizon, its decisive line of crimson from south to north, separates sky from the darkened world of homes viewed intermittently from the divided windows of a peak-hour train between Bentleigh and Caulfield. Is any horizon a perfect line? Or is it given to human imperfections of rule, no matter how steady the artist’s hand and eye? There the comparison ends, for by Armadale or Hawksburn the July sky has turned a dreamy black paled by city lights and flecked by distinct  dabs that could be stars, helicopters, or eye-motes.

Hopper (July)

Edward Hopper’s bastardised ‘Nighthawks’ is ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, there on the back wall of a Burwood café. It’s a slow night, or no night, really. The shaven barista working the hours would much rather be home with a movie, or out with his mates. The man at the window is there for warmth, not the meal. He appears to be texting someone. It’s unseasonably cold, even for July. The street is peculiarly lonely. At the other end of the counter a couple sit with their coffees. Are they talking? Just sharing the space? Thinking of a favourite Elvis, Marilyn…?

Piero (July)

Piero della Francesca, or rather Piero del Avatar, his post-millennium copyist, places subjects in profile centrally, before the distanced landscapes they know and move through. Like this portrait of an unnamed woman, discriminating, middle-aged, who carries knowledge not immediately accessible in her expression. July background gives leads: Parkville where she studied, Brunswick where she partied, Carlton where she settled. She has departed, but the landscape is in her mind. She divides critics. Piero’s made a name with installations, even. Visitors, selected by chance, sit sideways before slide shows of Alphington apartments, Brighton beachboxes, Camberwell complexes, &c. For updates visit www.montefeltro.com.au

Limbourg (July)

The Limbourg Brothers’ miniaturisation of lyrebird land around Bulleen in the Winter Quarter, houses of Crab and Lion, is a blue Georgian window into a world before Georges. Early wattle blossom sprinkles as it’s shaken by July rains, remains of which stretch over grasslands in contiguous puddles. Fronds of gold travel down the rising river waters. Fifteenth century Bulleen is not as we see it today. An atypical absence of general human activity tells us snow’s in the air and sensible people are staying out of the weather, up on dry land, under possum skins, enjoying their very rich hours.

Hokusai (July)

Katsushika Hokusai’s ‘Big Wave’ and ‘Red Fuji’ shine behind frames in the Templestowe master bedroom. The hanging world has all the best fittings. He responded to the material at hand. At one window a magnolia begins breaking its bark into flower, some as early as July. Pink and green colours combine. The weather stays on that side of the glass. At the other window: a winter tennis court, a far wall, a ladder, a hillside, potential rain. Over warmed sheets a couple are fully involved in their own beauty, their bodies enacting yin and yang, undressing, unresisting. Hokusai is immaterial.

Motherwell (July)

Robert Motherwell informs us of night. Dark waters of bay bends, dark overlap of sky. Golden arcs of highway intrusion, golden diamonds of shipping. Dark suburbs above hills, dark along conjoining dales. His atmospheric black handiwork prevails. Dark constellations beyond July mist, dark towers where work’s done. All squares disappear into rounded forms. Cold far-flung reminders of Antarctica, cold down in the silent ground. Dark stadiums, dark ovals. His intricate doodles at the edges: “All the time thinking of you.” Dark eyes at long windows, dark houses lost to view. Golden carriages of a late train, golden emptiness of stations.

Krasner (July)

Lee Krasner, certain Pollock or Motherwell, bear resemblance to tail camera views of an Emirates airliner on descent one chilly July night. Lights orange, yellow, white, millions, spread across colour fields of indescribable blackness. Deep black brought on by the artist. Avid observers search for clues in glassy capillaries of streets, courts, and crescents. Is that Plenty Road? Which shopping complex? Skyline? But planes do not act to serve our private interests. That ragged black line through glistening amber is probably the Yarra. Cabin crew, get ready for landing. As hoving into view are perfect ruled dots of runway lights.

Constable (July)

John Constable may have been responsible for this scumbled rising cloudscape over Williamstown. Great piles of white build like mountains that all too soon will fall on mountains and be seen no more. We gaze at these shifting beauties the way some people stare at computer screens. Clouds are more peaceful, continue as they do, slowly altering with the hours. Foreground has blues of the kind we expect from Constable, careful layers of lighter and darker twisting or separating, as though cloud. Moreover, it’s July, when we notice coarser ribbons of dark grey, lower right, sign of an impending change.

Lear (July)

Edward Lear went south in search of warmth, but wound up unexpectedly in Sassafras, in July, the bleak midwinter. Great fanning ferntrees hold together amidst fog finally lifting above gullies. Perhaps he lost his way on purpose. It’s a long way from his classical landscapes. Or maybe not. Foreground figures tramp muddy tracks as if stumbling upon Arcady. He composed upon the occasion: “There is a man of Sassafras / Whose every second word’s ‘Alas!’ / One more fit / And he will quit / That fitful man of Sassafras.” It takes up the entire picture wall of Humpty House.

Hockney (July)

 David Hockney’s ‘Tullamarine Terminal’ proves he did little else during his July stopover than take polaroids. Waiting for a plane, he plays with planes: it’s one of his bigger joiners. Snaps of kingsize duty-free alcohol segue into wheelie luggage, both feet on the ground. Cubism goes rampant with corridor marble. Gate signs multiply to five dimensions, as if we go through time barriers. Barriers themselves are thicket mazes of Border Force, one photograph turning the word by trick angle to Farce. Time stands still when we notice in a glossy wee frame far corner, the luminous nose of an airbus.

Whistler (July)

James Whistler’s applications of dark-blue supply a night vision where sky is only slightly blacker than the marina waters. Thin streaks of white are lights reflected in water. When our eyes adjust some of those emergent shapes must be boats at dock. The single indistinct dot of red, we realise in time, is the light atop a Bolte Bridge pillar. That row of what could be dull little pearls must be cars on its long trajectory. Japanese influence is strong during this period. There’s a sense of everything hanging in space, even the new multi-storeys, ghostly in the July night.

Canaletto (July)

Giovanni Antonio Canal, while celebrated for his ‘vedute’ of grandiose cityscapes and wealthy interiors, is a dedicated realist. For every extensive view of proud achievements Canaletto gives us a dry dock or stonemason’s yard to remind us how show-off came about: ‘Inner-City Carpark’, for example. Backsides of old houses have been part-demolished and blanked over in greys and whites. Zig-zag brickwork meets concrete slab in collages of architecture pushed aside for extra little spaces to accommodate the latest motorised vehicles. Typically, Canaletto plants observers, their presence in the bleak July sunlight reassurance of the human dimension in these oversized vistas.  

Dürer (July)

Albrecht Dürer’s future was assured after selling his ‘End of the World’ for a mint. He settled into self-portraiture and commissions. This picture of apocalyptic water-spouts bucks the trend though, set in moody July, seemingly somewhere between Melbourne and Ballarat. Dreams of heaven and earth transformed by water walls, it speaks to truth. The watercolour’s haste tells of his need. Then there’s his detailed painting of a rabbit, large soft eyes, cute whiskers, intricate combed coat. The destruction to the Western Plains, its fauna and ecosystems, is inestimable. Yet Dürer portrays this animal as the most innocent creature in Creation.

Warhol (July)

Andy Warhol’s rare forays into landscape end in this thing in primary colours. For Warhol, one place was the same as another, unless it was New York, but this is glaringly Toorak. He’d a similar aversion to months, gladly renaming July Month. He wished we were all the same, with the same name, which he prescribed Name. One is either Jacqueline Onassis, or not. If not, why not? Warhol’s silkscreen sold for four million and is on permanent display in Canberra. It’s the PM’s Christmas card, quote: “A good likeness of Double Bay!” Protestors flung soup cans at the opening.

Mondrian (July)

Piet Mondrian is the apartment wall facing Melbourne High School oval. In July mud boys kick and army boys eyes-right all over the oval, but Mondrian looks down. When Birrarung flooded billabongs filled where boys run beneath the steady gaze of Mondrian and his overpriced squares of South Yarra living space. Dark greens and churned blacks of school oval are local palette beneath exotic reds and yellows of the mathematical Dutchman. Towers in greys of surpassing blandness arise and cluster around crenellated Melbourne High, but for the wonderfully white façade of the insuperably serious, implacably quadrilateral, primarily colourful Piet Mondrian.

Vuillard (July)

Edouard Vuillard fills the vision with soft browns and greens that may be Persian brocade design until we see every branch and leaf, if the tree be leaved, is perfectly in place above the unpatterned browns and greens of middle vistas below. Each different tree is distinguishable. It’s one of the small public gardens off Hawthorn or St Kilda streets, lined by Victorian bluestone and gravel paths of undemonstrative white distemper. A family group comes to life in duotone abstracts, faces pinched with July, their attention on some new amusement. A football-shape rests upon green nearby like a recent witticism.

Léger (July)

Fernand Léger came first. Cities run like machines are run by machines. Léger’s squares, tubes, joins, and fittings were the mechanisms cities adopted, transformed by necessity – discs, frames, rivets and capsules – into charms of new environments. Miles of shopfronts with their same cantilevers, signs, locks and displays are summarised prophetically in ‘Milk Bar/Newsagent’. A work that shocked the bourgeoisie now looks like a road-plan for lifestyle. Likewise the high-speed rise of automobiles was unknown to Léger when he painted ‘Jaunty July Jalopy’. Now its stylish background layers resemble high-rise carparks of our consumerist sprawl. Which came first, space or gasoline?

Twombly (July)

Cy Twombly’s Victoriana series shows a fine regard for the graphic encounter of Europe with Australia. Wrought iron work, for example, that standard of the age, exists in fraught symmetry beside the protean asymmetry of the native flora it was pressed into service to imitate and even, at times, surround. Hints of 4th of July intrusion, green oblong freeway signs, add tension. A critic, best unnamed, accuses Twombly of a fine disregard of forms as its suits him, but in Victoriana any littoral between figurative and non-figurative is indiscernible as he renders surely and impartially the fateful encounters of continents.

Sze (July)

Sarah Sze starts with the grid but her work scarcely reminds us of crossings and corners. Buttons on wires curve like a million mobile calls. A stub of old Athenaeum tickets are set in lines: July, July, July. Loyalty cards mark imaginary intersections. Some objects have the now trademark Sze biographical touch: her Venice Biennale program. Typically with ‘Grid’ Sze introduces a material rare to the site, in artificial form. In this case snow in drifts of kapok, rumples of white satin, and samples of carded wool. Elizabeth Street’s a stretch of galvanized guttering with pump set to flood unpredictably.

Lichtenstein (July)

Roy Lichtenstein’s nascent phase emphasises the surfaces and contours of houses, whether the burnt orange Federation of ‘Marshall Street Ivanhoe’ or the heritage suavity of ‘Fitzgibbon Street Parkville’. He finds his path with roll-on impressions, so nothing prepares us for Phase Two, dwellings with words. Cream-brick elegance of ‘Ellesmere Parade Rosanna’ contends with pop-up GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE, SOLD in speckled matt. His transcendent ‘Springvale Road Forest Hill’ (HEY! IT’S OUR JULY SALE!) rightly lives in the NGV. Did his work become decadent? Or simply sentimental, once the market opened up, e.g. the unprincipled ‘Epsom Road Ascot Vale’ (GO BOMBERS!)?

Hundertwasser (July)

Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s skyline is like turning over a book of black-and-white reproductions – their winter outlines, their washed-out appearances – only to come unexpectedly across a colour section at the back. Golden squares at every window reflect evening sun disclosed for one minute from under thunderclouds shifting from Werribee. For one minute sheets of glass facing the bay are topaz, dandelion, primrose, canary, byzantine, flame. When the book closes (Baskerville font, July print-run) the cover is nightfall and no sign yet of where the thunder will come as instead freezing rain threatens Beaconsfield Parade and The Esplanade with a once-in-one-hundred-years hundred-waters deluge.

Rothko (July)

Mark Rothko, if he spent time on July beaches of Mordialloc and Seaford, all those divides from Brighton down to Portsea, didn’t get his feet wet. How far the upper expanses of grey-white are sky and the lower grey-white expanses water is purely academic now. His notebooks are thin on specifics. Are we meant to naturalise these great abstracts into cloud and wave, sky and bay? They might divine different realities for Rothko, back in his studio after a bracing intake of salt air. They may be just what Rothko wished us to see, with or without his glasses on.

Hiroshige (July)

Utagawa Hiroshige’s love of familiar places seen from unfamiliar angles is on show in ‘36 Views of West Gate Bridge’. He catches people in unposed, natural moments. In ‘July Downpour’ walkers and dogs are suddenly caught running for cover. Hiroshige’s rain is distinctive, not quite parallel lines fall top to bottom across the page. Yet the torrent never obscures colourful detail. Tall pink-and-white eucalypts gleam with wetness. Incongruous footpath signs and abandoned playgrounds turn into shadowy other selves. West Gate itself is a few perfect lines from the ukiyo-e brush, over in the far distance, upper left-side of the print.