Australian painting, colony to nation - Essay Example

Australian landscape paintings Australian art encompasses prehistoric art concerning objects in Australia. The various forms of Australian art include Aboriginal art by the indigenous people of Australia, landscape paintings, colonial art in Australia, Atelier and both contemporary and modernist forms of art. As a break down, Modernist form of art describes the modern day arts that encompass character or practice in a modern concept associated with cultural progressions. Its influence was the western culture and its aspects (Coombes, 2006:23). Secondly, Atelier, a French word, means the studio in which and artists does his work together with his students and apprentices to produce works of art that bore the artist trade name. Thirdly, landscape art is an art form that depicts the natural beauty of the scenery. This art involves the capturing of features like mountains, rivers, valleys, forests among many others. On the other hand, contemporary arts are works of art from during the post World War II period to date. The Australian Aboriginal art describes the artistic aspects of the indigenous people of Australia whose way of life was nomadic uncivilized (Appleby, 2012:31). In short, all these forms of art complement one another in describing what Australian historic art entails. They bring out the evolution of art in this isolated island nation that is rich and wealthy. Therefore, this essay will seek to bring out the history of landscape art in Australia in a sense that it was not a progressive discovery. It will blend ideas on the establishment of changing concepts in building pictures that are more appropriate. It will also the cultural construction that tend to out play one another in the complexity of invention web. Since the pre-colonial period, art has been a way of preserving a community’s heritage and pride. The techniques varied between different communities in the world. The artists in these societies used the locally available materials to try to express their concepts. Over the years, civilization led to the improvement in the doing of arts. For instance, during the Paleolithic age the people used to do their paintings or works of art in walls of caves that existed in their vicinity. These magnificent art works exist to date in museums and cultural heritage sites. Most of them are thousand and thousand years old, but they still portray the way of living for people in that era (Sayers, 2001:19). These paintings have helped archaeologists in writing the history of their nations as they give documented evidence. In essence, the history of art in Australia is no different from the histories of other countries as the stages it took in evolution are relatively the same to the others. Ideally, the art market in the traditional times strongly believed in oil paintings in representing landscapes of Australia. However, contemporary art over took the oil paintings within the domestic market paving way for international accreditation for artistes from Australia (Coombes, 2006:23). With the focus on landscape painting, the Australian landscape is one guided by notions of beauty, style, and decor. The landscape paintings by artists from Australia depicted their artistic tastes and preferences. In essence, paintings do not speak, but they tend to communicate. The expressions within a painting need to have a proper arrangement to depict its social relations to power. The communicative aspect and the social aspect need not separated as they will detract the meaning hidden in the painting (Short, 2005:197). Ideally, landscape painting is a highly selective process meaning that only the elements that are of essence get to select to be part of the painting. However, emphasize is also on some key aspects that trend to portray the meaning of the scenery in question. Essentially, these paintings provide a relation between them and the original landscape where drawn. Remarkably, some foreign painters also managed to paint out the landscapes in Australia despite the fact that they were not Australian natives (Bullock, 2012:45). One of these artists was John Glover whose native home was England. His interest in landscaping began at his adolescent years where he documented all of his sketches. His paintings sold well in England, and he became the founder member of the Royal Society for British artists. He immigrated to the Tasmanian region at the age of sixty-four where he became one of the land beneficiaries on the sloppy region of Ben Lomond. As a result, he developed his estate and did many paintings about it before his death. As a remarkable trait, Glover became the pioneer artist in regarding Australia’s vegetation cover seriously. Within his estates, he planted trees due to his fascination on how they grew and separated to allow light to pass through them. In contrast, he regarded the Aborigines as primitive Australian natives whose culture was sub-standard. In view, the Aborigines did not feature in his paintings, as they added no significant value to his work. His paintings on the Australian landscape were worth lots of money back in England. Before his arrival, the Aborigines staged a resistance to decline the settlement of the British foreigners. However, they effort were futile as the British relocated them to Flinders Island. All this happened in the year of Glover’s arrival that was 1831. Subsequently, Glover also encompassed pastoral paintings into his pieces. While at Van Dieman’s Land, he captured the scenario, which was the sheep, a shepherd and trees that were either dead or alive. The pastoral aspect depicted economic activity and progress (Bellam, 2007:91). The paintings that Glover did were of importance back at home; they portrayed the live satisfying scenery of the newly acquired territory. The paintings existed in an era when there were no photographic images or cameras to capture the state of a scenario (Mitchell, 2002:17). Therefore, the Britons who remained in Britain relied on the paintings as reports from the other side of the world. Evidently, with the establishment of the British rule came slavery and other unprecedented activities. The natives of Australia had to subject themselves to the British rule hence giving in to slavery. They had no choice as the British had better weaponry than they did. At one point, Glover did A View of the Artists House and Garden painting that depicted how the masters lived in the foreign land. The message sent by the painting was that life in Australia was considerable due to the slaves that they had. For instance, the slaves did all the manual work for their masters that made the Glover territory flourish (Mitchell, 2002:21). The people worked for their freedom. Glover’s painting depicted the results of slavery and not the process to which the landscape became what it was. In My Harvest Home painting of 1835, the theme of result was present. The native transformed the scenery of their land from the initial bush to ordered landscape. The death of Glover in 1849 did not symbolize the end landscape as it saw the entry of another phenomenon artist. Eugen von Guerard arrived in Australia three years after the death of Glover. Eugen’s view of Australia was that it had experienced new commercial activities, unlike many other nations. He was a German national who trained in Europe to become an artist. His works became the pioneer of federalism in Australia. Essentially, his interest in this region was because of the news of heavy presence of gold in the gold fields of Victoria. However, his gold searching expedition ended after two years of unfruitful search of the precious stone. He moved to Melbourne to continue on his stalled art carrier. His areas of specialization were romantically related sceneries and homesteads. He did paintings revolving around Godly themes in that nature was the work of God (Short, 2005:202). He did the Tower hill painting in 1855 that brought him immense fame in Australia. He travelled all through this land in search of virgin territories that no man had been to. For instance, the uncovering of areas that needed exploration influenced federalism as it helped to consolidate the nation. The discoveries brought out the aspect that some of the colonies lagged behind in terms of development hence by consolidating the nation the economic ability would spread widely. Ideally, he did his paintings in an era of immense economic boom. This portrayed his secular side as compared to other divine paintings that he did. In his paintings, the presence of the modern day buildings replaced the old forms of housing (Short 204). Unlike Glover, his paintings did not have the old huts and sheep, but instead had the estates built due to economic expansions. Subsequently, the rulers of early Victoria commissioned landscape paintings to savor that moment in time. Therefore, Eugen became a renowned figure when it came to capturing the fortunes that the people had accrued through their trade. At the close of the nineteenth century, various other forms of capturing of landscape emerged. Newspapers, novels, journal articles became the new forms of documentation. The subsequent writers also tried to illustrate how Australia developed from a wilderness to the modern Australia(Sayers, 2001:24). This was through the non-convicted pioneers who conveyed the unique Australian experience in the transformation process. These authors showed the other side of the foreign invasion. The landscape paintings done by the previous artists were those of suffering and slavery though they did not feature. The writers showed the softer side of the foreigners as they praised them for bringing economic growth to Australia (Appleby, 2012:37). In their view, they were friendly whose main interest was to develop the region. On the contrary, all these ideologies were a stereotype of what Australia was and had become. An artist’s work is to present state of affairs artistically without misconstruing the agenda. However, their work did play a role in explaining the evolution and the development of Australia but this information had to go hand in hand with other sources. Ideally, works of art from within time had the potential of becoming symbols of national heritage (Fenley, 1999:43). In the year 1938, an art critic by the name Basil documented that Australian historical art that included landscaping remained a reliable source of history. He mentioned that this form of art existed in the early twentieth century and that it had more masculine and pastoral features. This brought out the economic practices that were present at that time which facilitated the identity of native Australia (Cramer & harding, 2010:121). Other artist also gave immense contribution in the Australian art as their works were from the war period. This was between the first and the second World Wars. The works of Bunny Rupert and Preston Margaret were some of these art works. They opened up the flipside of the other forms of art that were in existence and not produced their influence. The most common feature that they had with the early 1920’s to late 1930’ arts was that they both had visual aspects of the then Australia. Arguably, the pieces by Rupert and Mary represented the reality of the Australian identity that many had sought to conceal (Bullock, 2012:48). Unlike the prior artists, they were natives of this region and hence it was necessary to represent the state of their nation as it were. The pieces done by the two artists were iconic. They represented the cultural aspects of the Australians in terms of value, belief, and norms embedded in their society. Before arriving at a national concept, it was vital to understand the process in which the nation underwent in its construction and growth. In essence, Benedict Anderson devised the idea that a nation would not be a nation today were it not constructed by the natives that dwelled within its borders (Bellam, 2007:72). The people were responsible for creating the cultural wealth and national heritage. The idea was people within a limited region and shared the same ideologies came together to form communities and paving way for political divisions. The national identity shared was a result of the represented agenda within the formed community. In this regard, any form of visual creations in Australia represented their national identity of its people and their journey towards attainment of the same. In her book, Ann-Marie elaborates that a nation entails more than distinctive claims but instead it is a sign of the merger between smaller portions of society to make it whole. For her, a nation is the result of a federation in initially marginal societies and the integration of diverse cultures within a region to make one recognizable figure. Consequently, general claims in history and artistic creations shaped the history of Australia. This was because landscape art and the pastoralist nature both characterized the activities of the then nation. They both emphasized the influence of the landscaping culture. On the contrary, the women aspect took the backbench when describing the development of culture from back then. Incidentally, the lives and the cultural issue of women came second in many, as they were less influential. However, this changed in the middle of the twentieth century as many incepted the women culture and influence as they also had their fair share of contribution in the shaping of history. The inclusion of women and expatriates in trying to understand history proved necessary, as it had captured most of the contributing factors to history. This would mean that by secluding their participation would make the equation unbalanced and inconclusive. In contrast, the women artists and the expatriates both had conflicting artistic ideas that paved way for new ideas and discussion subjects. Some artists also left the country and stayed abroad to return with conflicting ideas as to what the Australian culture involved (Sayers, 2001:181). An example of such would be Rupert Bunny, who lived in France for half his life then went back in his late years. Rupert’s pieces did not win the hearts of the Australians after he came back mainly because they tended to inclined more on the French culture (Sharp 45). In a rejoinder, Bunny reiterated that it was more beneficial for him to maintain his citizenship than to make a living out of it. Looking at the works of Margaret Preston, her art forms and ideologies propelled her into formulating her own concepts to be part of the cultural acclaims. Like Bunny, she spent most of her time in Europe because of her studies but later returned home to marry an Australian. They traversed their land and the world where she encountered other forms of different art. For her, she aligned herself to modern and still life creations. In other instances, she made use of Aboriginal art that brought out her unique way of artistry. She believed that this art illustrated the establishment of the Australian traditional systems. She enjoyed popularity among her natives as she stuck to their culture although she also used modernist art in her work. She too became an iconic figure in her country, as she was more aware of her being an Australian than other artists. She exhibited pride in her roots as her origin formed the basis of her work (Foster & Nettelbeck, 2011:48). Clearly, she stood out among other women artists that existed at the same time that she did. Essentially, she was influential in the shaping of cultural history as she took charge of her professionalism to develop it. Her idea was that artists of a nation have a role to play in changing society positively, and not just scholars and political leaders. During the post federation era of 1901, artists began receiving critic from all quotas. Many argued that the artists sought to make names for themselves rather than developing national culture that was the initial plan. Critics argued that they had derailed from the original goal hence their work had become insignificant. On the contrary, as the artists sought modernism to improve on their skills and nothing else. In a way, it was selfish but the gains accrued did not relate to what others had perceived. Therefore, those that thought that the modernists had diverted from the focus were those deeply rooted in the early landscaping form of art. This form of art had become irrelevant, as artists had evolved to more advanced artistic ways for efficiency and significance. This view stood in the way for artists like Rupert and Margaret, but it did not deter them from gaining repute. For Bunny and Preston, they represented what it meant to be an Australian from a different perspective as their art tended to be different from the rest. In essence, the rift that existed between the traditionalists and the modernists was a significant because both the divides contributed in one way or another to bring out the result that exists of modern day Australia (Layton, 1992:29). In summary, the Australian landscape paint5ings and other art forms facilitated the shaping of Australian history. The Aborigines were a notable feature in pre-colonial period as the art they did on rocks had to factor in. as much as their work proved primitive it was substantial as they too saw the need capture the moment that they lived. Sequentially, foreign involvement by other natives who had a stake in Australia also shaped the artistic culture and evolution (Layton, 1992:79). Most of them as seen in this paper used landscape paintings, which conveyed the message as it were in real time. However, their entry in to this nation was not without fault as they brought in slavery and forceful land acquisition. As a notable trait, they helped shaped the landscape of Australia by doing proper demarcation on the land. They also brought in civilization as they changed the forests in to lands of settlements and productivity. Ideally, every divide in the society contributed in one way or the other in the tackling of the cultural, social, and political needs that the society. Their contributions had regard in an equal and nonbiased form. However, foreign art met initial resistance, as it was an endeavor to get rid of the traditional artistic culture that existed (Bullock, 2012:78). In the end, it found its place in the society as Modernism became part of the society’s practices. Finally, the Australian landscape paintings visually portrayed the different historic stages involved in the attainment of present day free Australian society (Appleby, 2012:56). Bibliography Appleby, G., Aroney, N., & John, T. 2012. The future of Australian federalism: comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. 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Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, W. J. T. 2002. Landscape and power. Chicago [u.a.], Univ. of Chicago Pr. Sayers, A. 2001. Australian art. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Sayers, A. 2001. Australian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharp, N. The Artistic and the Literary Imagination in Australia and beyond: Finding Places of the Heart Among the Gun Trees. Available from: http://arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/colloquy/journal/issue012/sharp.pdf10 October, 2012. Short, J. R. 2005. Imagined country: environment, culture, and society. Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press. . Read More