Or is it the pain Of feeling no pain?
Or is it the pain
Of feeling no pain?
Thom Gunn
Like it or not, the landscape tradition is still the dominant force within Australian art. This is even more so given the rise and rise of Aboriginal art which, at its most qualitative ebb, verges on its own kind of cliché which rivals the crudely repetitive neo-Turnerisms of the failed artists who tried to make it here two centuries ago. The second-raters who came to an inferior land to turn their inferior brushes were met with a much harsher adversary than a lukewarm public: the crude monotony of the Australian bush. While it may be true that after the Blue Mountains were crossed in 1813 the Australian frontier became a mandatory destination for artists in need of sublime crevasses and sprawling valleys, it was the eighteenth century invention of the picturesque that was most congenial to artists in need of prettifying inelegant scenery to make it more palatably European. A picture had to justify itself as worthy of the artist’s effort and the viewer’s attention. Truth to the landscape was not an issue until much later in the nineteenth century. But even then the truth was selective. The Heidelberg artists were adept rural mythmakers, while already at the beginning of the twentieth century Australia was becoming one of the most urbanised countries on earth. In both good and bad times, the country and nature is a staple source of reverie. The city is a place for work. When we look to suburbia, we are left with the gloom that stems from boredom. This is the foundation of Ian North’s anti-picturesque.
North’s photographs of Canberra and Adelaide tell of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline