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July 16, 2009
I know very little about the work of Ian Fairweather, or even much about him and his life. I knew the bare skeleton--that he was a nomad living on the margins of civilisation and that his work in the late 1950's and early 60's (eg., Monastery in 1961; Monsoon, Shalimar and Epiphany in 1961-62; Turtle and Temple Gong in 1965) is recognized as making him one of Australia's top modernist abstract painters.
I saw this work in the Queensland Art Gallery and it had little effect on me. I did recognize that Fairweather is unlike any other Australian artist:
Ian Fairweather, Kite flying, 1958
Fairweather's art does not fall within the recognised styles of modernist art ---impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism and cubism. In some ways the works represent an escape from the confines of modernist art.
I read the blurb, which in part said:
Kite flying is from a group of works painted in late 1958 and exhibited at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney in November that year. Fairweather’s intention was to get away from melody: 'one can get so terribly tired of melody if one hears it over and over again'. Kite flying has a planned sense of discord with occasional flashes of strong colours like red and blue which agitate and disrupt the surface of the work. The eye does not move rhythmically through the image but darts from point to point, not unlike kites whipped by the wind. The figures in the bottom half of the painting anchor and balance the upper sections, which are full of movement.
What is melody in painting I thought?
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There was a documentary on Fairweather on ABC TV this week. In it he said that his painting is about his experience of an event rather than the event itself as a camera would represent it.