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Bernard Smith’s Real Choice

Surrealism or Abstraction 1930–1950 

Rex Butler
A.D.S. Donaldson
Eyeline 78/79
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I showed [César Domela] photos of my work and he was disconcerted as he considered it was half Surrealism and half Non Objective.
Robert Klippel to James Gleeson1

This paper is another chapter in an ongoing attempt to write a history of UnAustralian art: a history of Australian art that does not see the final telosof art in this country as the production of a national character. This history would use different criteria from the usual as to what is to be included as Australian: as opposed to nearly all the existing histories, we do not exclude, for example, Australian artists working overseas. This would open up a different perspective onto our art: one not from the inside out but from the outside in. It would not only produce a different, non-national history, but would show how our national histories, such as those by Bernard Smith, have arisen. Our ultimate argument here would be that our national history is only a moment within a wider and longer-running non-national history, and in fact arises as a response to or a rejection of this non-national history. 

We take up here the period 1930–1950, which we say is characterised by the choice for artists between surrealism and abstraction. It is considered both in its own right and as a way of understanding how our national history came to be written. In the classic accounts of our art this period is understood as leading up to the second great moment of nationalism in Australian art. This would be seen not just artistically with the Antipodeans, but in the canonical and still influential histories of Australian art: Bernard Smith’s Place, Taste and Tradition... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Sidney Nolan, Boy and the moon, c. 1939-40.

Sidney Nolan, Boy and the moon, c. 1939-40. Oil on canvas, mounted on composition board, 73.3 x 88.2cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1976. © Sidney Nolan Trust. 

Grace Crowley, Mirmande, 1928

Grace Crowley, Mirmande, 1928. Oil on canvas, 81.0 x 100.5cm. Bequest Grace Crowley 1981, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.