FRED CRESS FULL CIRCLE
First published by Annette Larkin Fine Art, Australian Galleries and The Estate of Fred Cress 2018 Australian Galleries Publishing PO BOX 1183 Collingwood Victoria 3066
FRED CRESS
T + 61 3 8415 1524 publications@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any other process without written permission. Design: Stephanie Hall Printing: Adams Print Photography: Geoffrey Boccalatte & Victoria Fernandez National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Annette Larkin & Paul McGillick Title: Fred Cress ISBN: 978-0-6481162-1-9 (pbk.) Subjects: Fred Cress - Exhibitions Artists - Australia - Exhibitions Painting, Australian - 21st century - Exhibitions Art, Modern - 21st century - Exhibitions 759.994
& A u s t r a l i a N G a l l er i es 2018
All works reproduced in the catalogue are © The Estate of Fred Cress and are reproduced with the permission of The Estate.
A u s t r a l i a n G a l l er i es
Cover: Head’s up (detail) 2007 acrylic on canvas 150 x 250 cm p. 2-3: Fred Cress, Annandale, 2006 p. 4: The Other Side of Friendship (detail) 1988 acrylic on cotton canvas 198 x 183 cm p42-43: Small Talk + Gossip (detail) 1984 acrylic on cotton canvas 122 x 137 cm p44: Entrée (detail) 2000-01 acrylic on canvas 137 x 168 cm p46: The Player (detail) 1985 acrylic on cotton canvas 183 x 213 cm
FRED CRESS Full Circle Paintings and works on paper 1965-2009 To mark 80 years since the birth of Fred Cress on 10 July 1938 10 - 29 July 2018
8 Soudan Lane Paddington NSW 2021 Wed-Fri 11am to 5pm Sat 12pm to 5pm
in collaboration with
AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S
15 Roylston Street Paddington NSW 2021 Open 7 days 10am to 6pm
CONTENTS
Introduction by Annette Larkin
4-5
Fred Cress - Full Circle by Paul McGillick
6-7
Paintings 8-41
Biography 42-47
Illustrated works
48
FRED CRESS Introduction Stuart Purves and I are excited to be presenting the first solo exhibition of Fred Cress’ work since 2010, which will mark what would have been Fred’s 80th birthday. With the assistance of the artist’s family, we have delved into his archives to present key pieces from his oeuvre. Previously reserved for Fred’s private collection, many of these works are being offered for the first time to move into private and public collections. Arriving in Australia in 1962, the never before exhibited works from 1965, Artist Model Series and Red Thoughts allow us to see Fred’s early fascination with the figurative. The largest work in the exhibitions, Carschenna from 1973, is a seductively beautiful work realised at the height of Fred’s study into abstraction. Exhibited in the first Biennale of Sydney at the Sydney Opera House in 1973, it was subsequently included in the historic exhibition Ten Australians that toured Europe in 1974-75.
My first meeting with Fred was at Macquarie Galleries in Clarence Street, Sydney in September 1985, my first day working in the Australian art world. Fred, whose studio at the time was in Chinatown, would always stop by Macquarie to have a morning cup of tea and a chat with “the girls”. He kept business hours at the studio, which meant the end of the day often incorporated a wine before going home. Working at Macquarie Galleries for eight years, and this being Fred’s regular routine, meant that we all knew each other well - our families, friends and interests. During the 1990s & 2000s I visited Fred in his inspiringly beautiful Burgundy home, opening up a greater understanding of his later paintings. The week before he died, Fred asked me to assist his family with the legacy he was leaving, which we are celebrating with Fred Cress – Full Circle. Annette Larkin 2018
In the mid-1980s Fred’s paintings moved away from abstraction, with the introduction of recognisable objects and shadows of figurative forms. The titles also began to reveal his fascination with human emotions and relationships – The Secretive One, Player and The Joker. Fred won the Archibald Prize in 1988, with a portrait of his good friend John Beard. This significant achievement was pivotal for Fred, and provided the confirmation he needed that the figuration and storytelling in his work had found an audience. Following this award, he accomplished 20 years of successful art making both in Sydney and at his home in Burgundy, France, of paintings that delved into human relationships and their intimate interactions. He began exhibiting with Australian Galleries in 2003, having a solo exhibition every year until his death.
5
FRED CRESS Full Circle We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’, Four Quartets I am hardly the first to resort to Eliot’s sublime verse about the nature of life and the meaning of all our striving. But I can’t resist it because it is, I think, a very appropriate insight into the career of Fred Cress. He began as a figurative painter, but established his reputation in Australia as an abstract painter, only to astonish the art world by returning to figuration in 1988. One didn’t do that sort of thing. It was meant to be the other way round: a journey through figuration to discover the fabled and true land of abstraction. And not only that. After a brief period when his abstraction was a kind of degraded figuration, Fred emerged with a wholly new figurative œuvre, a series of seemingly sardonic vignettes, his version of La Comédie Humaine. In 1995, in a catalogue essay, I had occasion to refer to Fred’s vision. Noting that ‘vision’ can refer both to the fact of sight, but also to insight, I said that Fred’s insight was not just intellectual, but also emotional and psychological. His new figurative paintings were those of a moralistic satirist – not moralistic in the judgemental sense, but in the French sense of moralisme, having moral passion and a belief in the moral basis of life. In fact, it suggests an empathy with all humans, noting their fallibility, but retaining a capacity for charity and compassion. So, we don’t look at these paintings depicting the venality of humans in various social settings without also having a chuckle, suspecting that Fred did not exempt himself and was equally a part of that human procession of lust, greed, gluttony, gross sensuality, envy and so on. But in that essay I also noted that Fred’s version of Los Caprichos illustrated “the difference between the cartoon
caricatures of Daumier and the moral transfiguration of Goya, between clever draftsmanship and pictorial vision”. Temperamentally intense and with a confronting calligraphic power, these frozen moments of social drama draw us in. So much so, that we can easily miss the point that these are paintings and are meant to be appreciated as such. Fred had said to me that he had always wanted to be a “complete painter” and that abstraction had proven to be a necessary detour in order to learn how “to make paint work for itself”. This realisation was triggered by his 1974 visit to New York where he met all the luminaries of the ‘new abstraction’ such as Greenberg, Poons, Olitski, Noland, Frankenthaler etc. But rather than confirm his commitment to abstraction, the encounter de-stabilised it and sowed the seeds of doubt. It was a Damascene moment and reminded Fred that abstraction – the considered relationship of pictorial elements across a flat surface – was a necessary but not sufficient condition for good painting. It was a realisation which went back to Roger Fry and powerfully asserted by the likes of Matisse and Picasso who stopped short of pure abstraction, acknowledging that painting had to resonate with our concrete, everyday experience of the world if it were not to become…well, too abstract. From my Eliot quote it will be clear that I believe that Fred’s work was an exploration which ultimately led him back to where he had started, but knowing it for the first time. Having said that, though, one thing at least was always prominent – whether it be in the figurative, semi-figurative or abstract work – and that was his preoccupation with the nature and role of drawing. Fred had said that “all good painters are drawing painters”. In his abstract work Fred was always trying to reconcile drawing and abstraction, the linear and the painterly. Arguably, Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still had done so, but it really contradicted the orthodoxy (as espoused by Clement Greenberg) of the unity of the picture plane, no depth and no referential elements. Fred’s best abstract work from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s
explores this reconciliation, but inevitably his graphic gestures across colour-modulated surfaces implied depth and, by extension, narrative. So, it was – in hindsight – not surprising that his two-month New York sojourn provoked a crisis. It so happened that it coincided with a crisis in his personal life as his first marriage broke up. The reflections that this personal crisis invoked presumably triggered a need in Fred to deal with them through his art – and it was a need that demanded some form of pictorial story-telling. Goya-like as these new paintings proved to be, they have an irony to them. They depict a world of which we, too, are a part. We may be tempted to condemn the behavior depicted, but are forced to concede that we are just as guilty as the social actors captured in evidentiary moments by Fred’s camera-like eye. Abstract as the abstract pictures are, they call attention to how they are made. The graphic gestures remind us of the hand that made them and draw attention to the colour-field behind them. Similarly, the later figurative work does far more than depict problematic human behaviour. To begin with, Fred’s characters behave as though they were in private, not public, and oblivious to us the observers – or voyeurs as are some of Fred’s characters themselves. This makes us aware of the fact that we are looking at a painting, not real life. This defamiliarising device is often amplified by the use of an interrupting element – a repoussoir device – which interrupts our view of the main event, prompting us to look more critically at it. At the same time, Fred frequently has a kind of vortical perspective which pulls us down into the picture making us feel as though we were a part of the scene depicted, only to be pulled back to the surface again by Fred’s painterly treatment of the surface. He is constantly drawing attention to painterly contrivance. Powerful perspectival composition is balanced by the strong rhythms across the surface driven by the deeply modelled figures. Just like any good abstractionist, colour areas are coordinated
across the surface of the painting to create a unity of the picture plane, often with light coming from several sources rather than just the one as in traditional figurative painting. Colour is not used descriptively, but as a device to unify the surface. Another comment from Fred which I reproduced in that essay is this: “I use colour to create mood which reinforces the subject. I use colour to help create surface rhythms, but also to heighten emotion and develop a certain psychological state – one which sometimes runs counter to the action of the figures. It makes the pictures less obvious, which is something I like them to be.” So, while it is easy to be sucked into Fred’s demi-monde, he nevertheless has an array of devices which drag us back and remind us that we are, after all, looking at a painting. Despite the illusions, it is a painting we are looking at, not real life. The real issue is the tension between what is depicted and how it is being depicted, and resolving that tension demands the active participation of the viewer. And that, in a word, is what the Western tradition of painting has always been about. That makes Fred Cress a traditionalist – and an abstractionist at the same time. As Fry argued, all those formal decisions by the artist are actually what the painting is about; the figurative elements work in harmony with the formal character to animate the painting and provide the frame for generating aesthetic meaning. So, Fred Cress came full circle, back where he started, having explored and charted the liminal edges of his artistic world. Even his final Guide paintings with the central skull – Fred’s reconciliation with his imminent death, which happened in October 2009 – deliver their message while never abdicating their identity as paintings.
Paul McGillick, Writer & Editor May 2018
7
1. Artist Model Series c.1965 acrylic on masonite 91 x 122 cm
2. Red Thoughts (formerly Knave of Hearts) 1965 acrylic on masonite 91 x 122 cm
9
3. Cipher 1970 acrylic on cotton duck 107 x 107 cm
11
4. Carschenna 1973-76 acrylic on canvas 193 x 390 cm
13
5. Slatter 1975-76 acrylic on cotton duck 198 x 168 cm
6. Sewell 1979 acrylic on cotton duck 183 x 122 cm
15
7. Friends 1983 acrylic on cotton canvas 198 x 168 cm
8. Small Talk + Gossip 1984 acrylic on cotton canvas 122 x 137 cm
17
9. The Secretive One 1983-84 acrylic on cotton canvas 183 x 152 cm
10. The Player 1985 acrylic on cotton canvas 183 x 213 cm
19
11. The Joker 1985 acrylic on cotton canvas 122 x 152 cm
12. Once a Room 1987 acrylic on cotton canvas 183 x 137 cm
21
13. The Other Side of Friendship 1988 acrylic on cotton canvas 198 x 183 cm
14. Night Runners 1993 acrylic on canvas 213 x 274 cm
23
15. Otherselves 1994 acrylic on cotton duck 198 x 244 cm
16. A Pool Party 1996 acrylic on canvas 198 x 244 cm
25
17. Overtures 1998 acrylic on canvas 168 x 152 cm
18. The Board 2000 acrylic on canvas 152 x 168 cm
27
19. EntrĂŠe 2000-01 acrylic on canvas 137 x 168 cm
20. Table for Two 2002 acrylic on canvas 137 x 168 cm
29
21. A Taste of Love 2003-04 acrylic on canvas 137 x 168 cm
22. Simmer 2004 acrylic on canvas 152 x 168 cm
31
23. Give & Take 2005 acrylic on canvas 140 x 170 cm
24. Comforters 2005 acrylic on canvas 150 x 170 cm
33
25. Embrace 2005 acrylic on canvas 55 x 45 cm
26. A Crowd 2005 acrylic on canvas 50 x 65 cm
27. Partnership 2005 acrylic on canvas 50 x 65 cm
35
28. Head’s Up 2007 acrylic on canvas 150 x 250 cm
37
29. Incident 2007 acrylic on canvas 150 x 250 cm
30. Guide 2 2008 acrylic on canvas 55 x 45 cm
31. Guide 9 2008 acrylic on canvas 60 x 50 cm
41
BIOGRAPHY 1938 Born Poona, India 1948-61 Lived and educated in England 1962 Arrived in Australia, living in Melbourne, then Sydney SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2010 ‘End Game 2010’, Adelaide Festival of Arts, Adelaide 2009 ‘End Game One’, Australian Galleries, Sydney 2008 ‘Allusions’, Australian Galleries, Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne 2007 ‘Aspects’, Australian Galleries, Works on Paper, Sydney 2006 ‘Stock Show’, Australian Galleries, Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne ‘Glimpses’, Australian Galleries, Painting & Sculpture, Sydney ‘Sojourns’, East West Gallery, London 2005 ‘Facets’, Australian Galleries, Melbourne Annandale Galleries, Sydney Robert Steele Gallery, New York BMGART, Adelaide 2004 East West Gallery, London 2003 Robert Steele Gallery, New York Australian Galleries, Sydney Australian Galleries, Melbourne 2002 BMGART, Adelaide East West Gallery, London Annandale Gallery, Sydney 2001 Chapman Gallery, Canberra Australian Galleries, Melbourne ‘Australian Prints and Drawings’, Australian Galleries, Melbourne 2000 Annandale Galleries, Sydney East West Gallery, London BMGART, Adelaide 1999 BMGART, Adelaide 1998 Annandale Galleries, Sydney 43
1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1990 1989 1988 1987 1985 1983 1981 1980 1978 1977 1976
Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne Annandale Galleries, Sydney BMGART, Adelaide ‘Survey 1988-1995’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Espace Alliance, Sydney Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne BMGART, Adelaide Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne BMGART, Adelaide BMGART, Adelaide Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne Survey exhibition, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange, NSW Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Axiom Gallery, Melbourne VA Gallery, Purchase, New York Ludlow-Hyland Gallery, New York Gallery A, Sydney Gallery A, Sydney Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Gallery A, Sydney Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Gallery A, Sydney Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1967 1966 1965
Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne Bonython Gallery, Adelaide Gallery One Eleven, Brisbane Bonython Gallery, Adelaide Leveson Street Gallery, Melbourne Leveson Street Gallery, Melbourne Argus Gallery, Melbourne
AWARDS AND COMMISSIONS 2003 Awarded Member in the Order of Australia (AM) 1991 Kym Aunger (Chairman, Aunger Group of Companies, South Australia), portrait commissioned by Mrs Julie Aunger 1988 Winner, Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Winner, People’s Choice Award, Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
45
COLLECTIONS - GALLERIES Albury Art Gallery, NSW Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Ballarat Art Gallery, VIC Benalla Art Gallery, VIC Bendigo Art Gallery, VIC Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris Broken Hill Art Gallery, NSW Burine Art Gallery, TAS Gold Coast City Art Gallery, QLD Hamilton Art Gallery,VIC Lalit Kala Adademi, New Dehli, India McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, VIC National Gallery of Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne New England Regional Art Museum, NSW Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW Parliament House Collection, Canberra Peninsula Art Gallery, VIC Queen Victoria Art Gallery and Museum, TAS Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Rockhampton Art Gallery, VIC Shepparton Art Gallery, VIC Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart Townsville Art Gallery, QLD Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, NSW Wollongong Art Gallery, NSW COLLECTIONS - UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES Brisbane Grammar School, Brisbane Campbelltown College, Sydney Canberra College of Advanced Education, Canberra Curtin University, Perth Darwin Community College, Darwin Griffith University, QLD Macquarie University, Sydney
McGregor College, QLD Melbourne Grammar School, Melbourne Monash University, Melbourne Murdoch University, Perth Riverina College, NSW St Gregory’s, Sydney Sydney College of Fine Arts, Sydney University of Melbourne, Melbourne University of New South Wales, Sydney University of Queensland, Brisbane University of Western Australia, Perth UNSW Art & Design, Sydney COLLECTIONS - CORPORATE Arab-Australia Bank, Australia Artbank, Sydney Aunger Group of Companies, Adelaide Chartwell Trust Collection, New Zealand Commonwealth Bank of Australia Fairfax Media, Sydney Kemps Mercantile Collection, Adelaide Myer Foundation, Melbourne National Australia Bank, Sydney News Corp, Australia NWS Channel 9, Adelaide Pan-Continental Mining, Perth Phillip Morris Collection, Australia Qantas, Australia Rural and Industrial Bank, Perth Santos Ltd, Australia Sons of Gwalia, WA The Christensen Fund, USA Private collections in Australia, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, USA 47
ILLUSTRATED WORKS 1
Artist Model Series
c.1965
acrylic on masonite
91 x 122 cm
2
Red Thoughts (formerly Knave of Hearts)
1965
acrylic on masonite
91 x 122 cm
3 Cipher
1970
acrylic on cotton duck
107 x 107 cm
4
Carschenna
1973-76
acrylic on canvas
193 x 390 cm
5
Slatter
1975-76
acrylic on cotton duck
198 x 168 cm
6
Sewell
1979
acrylic on cotton duck
183 x 122 cm
7
Friends
1983
acrylic on cotton canvas
198 x 168 cm
8
Small Talk + Gossip 1984 acrylic on cotton canvas
122 x 137 cm
9
The Secretive One
acrylic on cotton canvas
183 x 152 cm
10
The Player 1985 acrylic on cotton canvas
183 x 213 cm
11
The Joker
12
Once a Room
1987
acrylic on cotton canvas
183 x 137 cm
13
The Other Side of Friendship
1988
acrylic on cotton canvas
198 x 183 cm
14
Night Runners
1993
acrylic on canvas
213 x 274 cm
15
Otherselves
1994
acrylic on cotton duck
198 x 244 cm
16
A Pool Party
1996
acrylic on canvas
198 x 244 cm
17
Overtures
1998
acrylic on canvas
168 x 152 cm
18
The Board
2000
acrylic on canvas
152 x 168 cm
19
Entrée
2000-01
acrylic on canvas
137 x 168 cm
20
Table for Two
2002
acrylic on canvas
137 x 168 cm
21
A Taste of Love
2003-04
acrylic on canvas
137 x 168 cm
22
Simmer
2004
acrylic on canvas
152 x 168 cm
23
Give & Take
2005
acrylic on canvas
140 x 170 cm
24
Comforters
2005
acrylic on canvas
150 x 170 cm
25
Embrace
2005
acrylic on canvas
55 x 45 cm
26
A Crowd
2005
acrylic on canvas
50 x 65 cm
27
Partnership
2005
acrylic on canvas
50 x 65 cm
28
Head’s up
2007
acrylic on canvas
150 x 250 cm
29
Incident
2007
acrylic on canvas
150 x 250 cm
30
Guide 2
2008
acrylic on canvas
55 x 45 cm
31
Guide 9
2008
acrylic on canvas
60 x 50 cm
1983-84 1985
acrylic on cotton canvas
122 x 152 cm
FRED CRESS FULL CIRCLE
First published by Annette Larkin Fine Art, Australian Galleries and The Estate of Fred Cress 2018 Australian Galleries Publishing PO BOX 1183 Collingwood Victoria 3066
FRED CRESS
T + 61 3 8415 1524 publications@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any other process without written permission. Design: Stephanie Hall Printing: Adams Print Photography: Geoffrey Boccalatte & Victoria Fernandez National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Annette Larkin & Paul McGillick Title: Fred Cress ISBN: 978-0-6481162-1-9 (pbk.) Subjects: Fred Cress - Exhibitions Artists - Australia - Exhibitions Painting, Australian - 21st century - Exhibitions Art, Modern - 21st century - Exhibitions 759.994
& A u s t r a l i a N G a l l er i es 2018
All works reproduced in the catalogue are © The Estate of Fred Cress and are reproduced with the permission of The Estate.
A u s t r a l i a n G a l l er i es
Cover: Head’s up (detail) 2007 acrylic on canvas 150 x 250 cm p. 2-3: Fred Cress, Annandale, 2006 p. 4: The Other Side of Friendship (detail) 1988 acrylic on cotton canvas 198 x 183 cm p42-43: Small Talk + Gossip (detail) 1984 acrylic on cotton canvas 122 x 137 cm p44: Entrée (detail) 2000-01 acrylic on canvas 137 x 168 cm p46: The Player (detail) 1985 acrylic on cotton canvas 183 x 213 cm