School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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    The formation of an abstract language in the early painting of Roger Kemp
    Forwood, Gillian Frances ( 1985)
    The development of an abstract language in Roger Kemp's early painting reflects the manner in which Kemp assimilated elements of the two main currents of European abstraction. The more intellectual, structural current stemming from Cézanne was strongly developed through his initial training in design. It was strengthened through his experience of George Bell's teaching of Significant Form, and his contact with designers from the Melbourne Technical College. His knowledge of Mondrian's theory of dynamic equilibrium and of Russian Rayonism reinforced his structural edge. Parallel to this line of development ran a more expressive awareness of colour and form. Academic training under Bernard Hall in the Aesthetic tonal tradition, and experience of Symbolist theories of synaesthesia through the art of Rupert Bunny disciplined Kemp's intuitive approach. Ambrose Hallen's Fauvist style and the decorative folk element in Vassilieff’s art also influenced Kemp's expressive power. These two currents, by no means distinct in themselves, intermingled in Kemp's own development. His early work shows the complex interaction of temperament and training through which he expressed his personal vision of dynamic equilibrium.
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    The etched work of Jessie C.A. Traill, 1881-1967
    Lee, Mary Alice ( 1982)
    Jessie C. A. Traill, 1881-1967, a Melbourne-born artist, was, during her heyday, well respected both in her home state and beyond, as a painter and etcher. Today her name is most readily associated with etchings, and it is generally recognised that her contribution to the etching revival in Australia is a major one and that her work in this medium warrants a thorough study in order that her relative place in this context be fully appreciated. Her prints are, moreover, of a high quality technically speaking, and show significant innovations for Australia in both this respect and in their subject matter. They are, as well, delightful and much sought after items for the collector and connoisseur of prints. This paper is the first written study of Traill's etchings, the present generation print lover having been introduced to her work in a retrospective exhibition at the "Important Women Artists" gallery in Melbourne in 1977, and in subsequent exhibitions of Australian etchings where her works have been included. As such, the study will add to a slowly growing body of information on the major Australian etchers, material which is invaluable for an adequate formulation of the history of printmaking in Australia.
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    Uneasy allies: an Englishman in Australia: Henry Vigors Hewitt 1839-1931
    Vafeas, H. V. ( 1985)
    This thesis is an edited selection from, and commentary on, a collection of many hundreds of letters written between 1864 and 1972, diaries written 1860-1864, 1867, 1869-1871 and 1903-1907, and poems. In the first chapter diaries written 1860-1864 by my greatgrandfather Henry Vigors Hewitt are edited. These diaries were written in England, before his emigration to Australia. In following chapters, later diaries written by Henry, and several letters and poems, record his early colonial experience. Henry's second wife Mary Simmons emigrated. to Australia in 1871, and letters written by her in that year are edited in Chapter 6. Subsequent chapters draw on letters written by Henry, Mary and their children, and poems written by Henry and several of the children. Diaries written 1903-1907 by Will Hewitt while on the Coolgardie goldfields are edited in Chapter 15. All of the original letters and diaries were kept, first by Henry, then by Will, my grandfather, and then by my father. Many of the poems appeared in various newspapers; none of the rest of the material has been previously edited or published. My treatment of the material has been chronological, with some overlapping, for instance in chapters concerning the West Australian goldfields and the Boer War. My intention has been to retain the distinctive voice of each writer, while providing an historical and literary framework. For example, in looking at Mary House's poems written on the subject of World War I, I have touched on the origins of her style and convictions, the political climate of the time, and contrasted her romantic and heroic notions with letters written from Gallipoli and the Somme by her brothers Tom and. Deane Hewitt, and of course I have used historical texts as well. Thus I have provided more of a mise en scene than does the editor of Rachel Hennings' letters for example. (The Letters of Rachel Henning, ed. David Adams, Penguin, Melbourne, 1969.) At the same time my outlines of various events are necessarily brief; the material spans, at its furthest stretch, one hundred and eighteen years. It would have been possible to concentrate on one period or theme, as for example Dr. James A. Hammerton does in Emigrant Gentlewomen (Australian National University, 1979), which uses letter books of the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society as a starting-point, or as Judith Wright does in Generations of Men (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1959) in which she draws on her grandfather's diaries to explore the history of the pioneers of north Queensland. It would also have been possible to restrict my thesis to a biography of Henry alone, which was my original intention. However as Mary Simmons' presence became more insistent and active, she demanded equal billing with Henry, and their childrens' correspondence from, variously, the Coolgardie gold-fields, remote cattle-runs in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the trenches of. World War I, also drew me on into increasingly tangled personal relationships and wider history. In order to untangle the lives and experiences of the eleven people whose letters, diaries and poems are edited here, I have in effect peacocked this large body of valuable source material. For example, Will's letters and diaries written in Coolgardie between 1896 and 1906 provide an extensive picture of daily life on a diggings. Only a fraction of that material is included in this thesis. The same is true for a wide range of topics which I have touched on: the colonial experience, emigrant women, the squattocracy and the labour movement, the 1890s, Australia at war and so on. My starting-point was not historical. It was a curiosity about the hedonistic and indolent young gentleman who wrote a diary in Bath in 1860. I followed him to Australia in 1864 and watched him change into a hardworking and ambitious landowner. In 1871 the indomitable Mary Simmons sailed into view and things became increasingly complicated. During the 1890s Henry lapsed into disappointment and apathy. But now their children were setting out to discover Australia all over again, this time seeing not through English, but through Australian eyes. Nearly all of the children shared their parents' facility for expression, and individuality of style, and many of them wrote poetry, like Henry. Thus the record of two very different Victorian English emigrants changes into the record of an Australian Victorian and Edwardian family.
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    The singular career of Clarice Beckett: painting and society in Melbourne, 1916-1936
    McGuire, Margaret E. ( 1984)
    Clarice Beckett has been a fugitive figure in the short history of Australian art. For more than thirty years after her death in 1935, her paintings were not seen outside a small circle of family and friends, and many were neglected. She became almost a nobody: Mrs. Beckett’s daughter, who had never travelled, never solicited success, never married, and who finally never left her parents. She had established, it seemed, only tenuous connections to the world. However between 1923 and 1933 she mounted annual exhibitions of her work in Melbourne. These exhibitions were reviewed with surprising regularity and often at some length. She also exhibited annually with the Twenty Melbourne Painters from 1923 to 1934, and the Women’s Art Club (WAC) from 1926 to 1931. These exhibitions were also widely reviewed. The discernment and attitudes revealed in this criticism constitute an illuminating depiction of culture, and of the place of women in art, in Australia between the wars. Beckett, or Miss Beckett as she was spoken of then, is now recognized as one of the finest painters Australia has produced, certainly before 1935. That this is so is due not so much to feminist art historians, and not at all to the attention paid to Australian landscape painting between the wars, but to the recovery and exhibition of hundreds of her paintings, and the recording of the recollections of friends and family, as a result of the researches of Rosalind Hollinrake. A study of Beckett’s art must account for her uniqueness and justify her promotion from the rank and file of Meldrumite painters. Such a study must also call into question the generally accepted notion that there was an absence of modernism in Melbourne till the years after her death. (From Chapter 1)
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    A critical biography of George Johnston
    KINNANE, GARRY ( 1987)
    A Critical Biography of George Johnston discusses the relation between the life and the work of Australian novelist George Henry Johnston, 1912 - 1970. The early chapters of the thesis are concerned to give an outline of Johnston's family background in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick, his schooling, his work as a lithographer and as a reporter, and his first marriage, all of which are compared with Johnston's autobiographical fiction covering the same period in his life. Following this, the narrative traces Johnston's years as a war correspondent overseas, and his development as a writer of documentary books on war subjects. Some space is given to his later reflections on the role of war correspondent. After the war, Johnston married Charmian Clift, with whom he had three children, and with whom his career as a writer of fiction got underway when they began writing novels in collaboration. Clift was to have a profound influence on Johnston's life and writing. In 1951 Johnston and his family went to London, where he was a newspaper executive. The chapters dealing with this period show the increasing strain on Johnston of attempting to write novels while working, and the damage it began to do to his health. In 1954 he gave up journalism, and with his family went to live as a full-time author on the Greek island of Hydra. From about this time Johnston and Clift wrote separately, and Johnston's attempts to become a highly paid international novelist met with only sporadic success. The financial strain, and the temptations of living in a community of foreign artists, affected Johnston's marriage and eventually his health, and in 1959 TB was diagnosed. From this time Johnston became introspective, deeply unhappy, and much more serious about his writing. His writing had so far been of mediocre quality at best, and this thesis gives only descriptive space to it. But from 1959 on his new seriousness began to make itself felt, and his writing grew in stature as it increased in autobiographical focus. The development of this is discussed in detail. With his health bad and his life in disarray, Johnston grew nostalgic about his past in Australia, and out of this came his most acclaimed novel, My Brother Jack, written in 1963. There is a substantial chapter dealing with the complex forces that produced this work. Its success in Australia brought Johnston home in 1964, and when Clift and the children joined him later, there was renewed optimism that they could get their lives back in balance. This was the case for a year or so, but again Johnston's poor health, worsened by smoking, intervened. His last years were spent turning the fictionalized autobiography begun in My Brother Jack into a trilogy. The tortuous nature of this material, and his worsening illness, requiring lung surgery, slowed his progress, but its importance to him, which is discussed at length in the closing chapters, sustained him. He was devastated by Clift's suicide in 1969, and lasted only another year himself, just failing to complete the final volume of his trilogy.
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    Penleigh Boyd 1890-1923
    McDonald, Hamish ( 1986)
    This thesis traces the life and work of Penleigh Boyd. In so doing it seeks to elucidate the influences which shaped his art and his life. In this process a number of themes emerge: Penleigh Boyd’s relationship to and position in the Boyd family; his own attitude to his art and the world around him; the influence on his art of other Australian artists, and the cultural milieu in which he was brought up. Penleigh Boyd was born in England in 1890 while his parents were staying at the country seat of his mother’s family. The family returned to Australia in 1894 and lived in Sandringham until 1907 when they move to Yarra Glen. Boyd attended the National Gallery School in Melbourne from 1905-1909, and, after two exhibitions in Melbourne, set off for Europe early in 1911. He stayed in Europe, mostly in England, for almost two years before returning to Australia newly married. Back in Australia he painted for two-and-a-half years and built a house at Warrandyte before he enlisted in the A.I.F. He served in France until September 1917 when he was gassed at Ypres. Repatriated to Australia in 1918, he settled in Warrandyte and painted the wattle pictures for which he is most remembered. In 1922 he left for England to organize a loan exhibition of modern art which was shown in the major capitals of Australia in 1923. Not long after the exhibition closed in Melbourne, Boyd was killed in a car accident while travelling to Sydney. Penleigh Boyd repays study for a number of reasons. Firstly, he belongs to one of the best-known of Australia’s many artistic families. His brothers Martin and Merric, his son Robin and his nephew Arthur have all made highly significant contributions to Australian cultural life. Penleigh Boyd is less well-known than most of the members of the Boyd family, partly because of his early death, but also because his art is neither as individual nor as lasting as that of the more famous members of the family. If he is remembered, it is for his paintings of wattle in blossom. These paintings are, it is true, unique in Australian art, but they cannot be compared to the achievements of either of his brothers, or indeed of his son Robin. (From Introduction)
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    Antipodean gothic
    Moore, G. Marie ( 1984)
    Introduction: The work of craftsmen who furnished Australian churches has been largely neglected and this has prompted me to seek out and research their art workmanship. It is proposed to discuss some British architects who were working during the Gothic Revival movement in England and who had some influence on the architecture in Australia. These architects forged links with the Pugin circle and craftsmen. Other British architects came to Australia and designed Gothic Revival churches and cathedrals. In order to simplify discussion the local architects have been divided into Roman Catholic and Protestant, even though in few cases was the work of an architect restricted to one particular denomination. English suppliers and craftsmen worked to designs supplied by English architects and their Australian counterparts. At first most of the Australian architects tended to employ many of the same craftsmen as their English colleagues, but it was not long before local craftsmen and suppliers were producing work comparable in quality to that of their overseas competitors. It was gradually realized that local craftsmen, like local materials, had their own particular advantages for Australian churches, and were by no means necessarily inferior to those from overseas sources. As well, architects were better able to control work done under their direct supervision, more quickly and more cheaply. Even working to an architect’s detailed plan, overseas craftsmen did not always meet the high expectations of the Australian architect. When one wanders around a church or cathedral, it is often impossible to find out who was responsible for a pulpit or font, an altar, mural decorations, a lectern or some other item of church furnishing, because so few Victorian craftsmen signed their works. It is almost as difficult to discover the name of the architects as church records are frequently non-existent. In some instances only one surviving example of an artist’s work has been found, as some church officials and clergymen apparently were not interested in the craftsmanship of the Victorian era and were quite happy to see this work removed. But others were just as reluctant to see the old treasures disappear, as evidenced in the comments of a parish priest: ….the murals were painted on canvas….and were taken down, and to my horror burned, despite a plea from someone in the parish….that they be preserved. The brassware is no longer part of the church furnishings and so I presume they along with the very beautiful pipe organ were given away or sold…..The church has been repainted…. but lacks character….unfortunately….those in charge were of a definite practical bent….with little concern for aesthetics. This must be a common complaint these days…. It is , and clearly highlights the constant difficulty in tracing the work of nineteenth century craftsmen, because so much has been thoughtlessly destroyed, given away or sold. Nevertheless, with the assistance gained in conversation with curates and other interested people, as well as from the surviving records, I have been able to piece together information on the craftsmen. The main aim of this thesis has been to build up information on the craftsmen, wherever possible, to locate extant examples of their work, and to discuss other works known to have been made for a particular church, but which has since been dismantled, given away or destroyed. This study is concerned with the work of craftsmen in seven separate categories: the wood carvers; decorators and gilders; stone carvers and masons; tillers; gold and silversmiths; art metal workers; and stained glass artists. The aim is not so much a detailed stylistic analysis of this great body of material, as a survey of the output of the major craftsmen in the colony, and some of their more important works elsewhere. The mass of data has been summarized in the extensive tables at the end of the thesis.
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    Art criticism in Australia 1970-1984
    McAuliffe, Christopher John ( 1986)
    My research proceeds from two fundamental assumptions; that art, like all 'reality', is socially and discursively constructed; and that art criticism, as a major element in the institutional discourse on art, plays a crucial role in its constitution. Art is not a finite and unmediated thing in itself to be dissected in the search for a transcendental generative essence, rather, it is to be understood as a domain of discursive practices, the specificity of which rests on material and ideological conditions of possibility. While acknowledging the importance of the material ‘base’ in the determination of these conditions of possibility, I do not consider art to be a mechanistic superstructural reflection of it, a mere ideological mirror of the conditions of production. Furthermore, it should be understood that the material ‘base’, too, is discursively constituted; it is not an essential self-identity but a textual representation. (From Introduction)
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    L. Bernard Hall and the National Gallery of Victoria: conflict and change
    Saunders, Helen Lorraine ( 1984)
    In all, Lindsay Bernard Hall acted as Director of the National Gallery of Victoria and its associated Schools of Art for a period of 42 years. During this period, the Gallery underwent a dramatic change from an unstructured colonial Gallery dependant upon limited Government funding to on able to purchase works on a competitive world market as a result of the Felton Bequest. Because of his position as Director, it could be argued that Hall was instrumental in many of the changes that occurred. However, despite the amount of study undertaken on Australian art and artists of the period, Hall and his work has been virtually ignored. There is no biography of the artist and the limited detail that survives depends upon subjective articles reflecting the contradictory attitudes towards Hall that occurred over time. This thesis is concerned with Hall, his work and his influences.
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    Odilon Redon and "les maîtres d'autrefois"
    Gott, Edward Kevin ( 1986)
    Redon's copies after the Old Masters have received no study in the literature to date; they comprise, however, a significant section of his oeuvre. His numerous cop s are here studied as a body and related to a re-analysis of his artistic theories. His singular output is tied closely to visits to the Louvre and the use of photographic reproductions of works of art to stimulate his creative processes. Redon deliberately bombarded himself with a mass of artistic stimuli which he then utilised as elements of a visual vocabulary to create his own distinctive style. His use of art-historical imagery is part of a conscious process in which continuity of artistic tradition is stressed through echoes and referents to masterpieces in his compositions. A substantial part of his oeuvre can be seen as a commentary on past art and its potential guiding role for those artists of his day who sought a return to the mysterious and the poetical. A reconstruction of his milieu shows that many of the visual references from the Old Masters which he includes in his work were intended for the discernment of a select group of friends and collectors with similar art-historical interests. The process of quotation and extensive use of iconographical precursors is aligned to an aesthetic philosophy in opposition to the "materialistic reproduction" of the Impressionist school. Redon provides the key to an alternative view of late nineteenth century interests. His aim was to produce an art inspired deliberately by art as much as nature; his means thus became also his message.