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June 23, 2003
Sydney Nolan is one of Australian's great modern landscape painters. He is notable for exploring the pioneering myths, the drought and flood.He also had a good photographic eye.
His 1940's landscapes of the Australian interior (outback) have shaped how we (white Australians) see our continent.
That aerial image of mountain ranges is an alien, inhospital landscape that is devoid of plant or human life. It is a dead world. An example of the sublime as a mode of terror that struck dread and fear into our very being.
It is a misleading representation---a European one of Australia as the other of European civilization.
Nolan continues with the dead heart interpretation 40 years latter:
Sidney Nolan, Central Australian Landscape, 1981, Oil on composition board
So why a misleading representation? Consider these representations of specific places in the "outback"-----in the Macdonnell Ranges, west of Alice Springs---by Albert Namatjira.
Inland Australia is far from the dead heart. It is full of life.
The dead heart heritage of Nolan has taken white Australians a long time to throw off. His representation of the Australian landscape as death continues to be celebrated today as iconic, rather than seen for what it was--a European myth.
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