Biography:
James Gleeson was born
1915 in Sydney, Australia. Known
as the ‘Father of Australian Surrealism’, Gleeson served on the board of the
National Gallery of Australia and helped assemble the collections of the
new National Gallery of Australia, which opened in Canberra in 1982. For more than six decades his work
has explored the realms and possibilities of the Surrealism ways portraying
through his artwork that there exists, beyond the obvious and every day, an
alternative reality experienced through dreams, hallucinations and differing
mental states.
He attended East Sydney
Technical College, an art college, and eventually became a teacher. His first exhibit was in 1938 as a
student at the Sydney Teachings College. Inspiration for many of Gleeson’s
earlier paintings came from Salvador Dali and in 1939 Exhibited with
Contemporary Art Society in its inaugral exhibition, Melbourne. In several
works from this period Gleeson articulated the way in which established
patterns of thought restrict our reactions to events by predetermining our
responses, and encouraged audiences to look at the world in a different manner.
During the 1940’s his art reflected the atrocities of war with
extremely powerful images that portray violence and mutilation, his art from
this period has been referred to as ‘amongst the most terrifying in Australian
Art’. In 1947, Gleeson absorbed the works of old masters and key figures
in the history of twentieth century art. From 1950 he began to hold solo
exhibitions Australia wide. His monumental image, Italy, 1951,
celebrated the extraordinary cultural achievements of the Western world, but
also alludes to the sense of loss and destruction caused by the Second World
War. Gleeson's paintings of the latter 1950s reveal an increased interest in
showing the unconscious in abstracted forms.
During the 1960s Gleeson
created numerous images relating to Greek myths and legends, and from 1962-72
was the Art critic for Sun Herald newspaper. In 1983, Gleeson entered the most
prodigious period of his painting career and embraced a radically different
pictorial format that included a dramatic increase in scale and shift in
technique. In 1987 Gleeson was awarded McCaughey Prize, National Gallery of
Victoria.
James Gleeson died in
2008, James Gleeson remains one of Australia's greatest epic painters and
social commentators of his generation. Although he has pursued a life-long
vision of subverting the workings of the rational world, his work has never
been an absurdist gesture, devoid of meaning and context. Each work possesses
an extreme seriousness, with political, philosophical and moral implications.
Title: ‘the Sower’
Date: 1944
Medium: oil on canvas
The subject matter is a man who has dislocated limbs and shows
to be in extreme pain, the artwork has re-occurring skulls, limbs and naked
women, vicious like creatures and a teddy, the color consistently used through
this piece of art is bleak; being dark grays, blues, mustards and blacks.
My understanding of this artwork is that it represents the
atrocities of war, having dislocated and monstrous limbs which refer to
a world at the point of self-destruction. I believe this artwork was intended
to influence people’s views against war. The bleak colors consistently used
through this work reinforce the idea of a time of sadness and heartbreak which
was what war is.
Three Elements
1.
One element which is vital to the artworks
meaning would be in my opinion the dislocated limbs; as this represents how
devastating war is and how many involved were injured permanently, and also
refers to a world at the point of self-destruction.
2.
The consistency of bleak colors is also a major
element which is vital to get the meaning of the artwork across to viewers, as
bleak colors represent sadness and the feeling of emptiness which greatly
applies to war, the consistency of dull colors allows the viewers of this
artwork to realize that the artist is addressing a serious issue through his
artwork. If bright colors were used there would not be that level of intensity
that the artwork has and would also change the viewer’s ideas of what the
artists intentions were with the creating of this artwork.
3.
The sharp knife like shapes used throughout this
piece of artwork are important as they suggest pain, as they are sharp and
crisp edges. This is a smart technique used by the artist as even though
viewers may not necessarily think about it when looking at the painting it
definitely adds intensity character to this piece of art by James Gleeson.
However if it was soft and flowed smoothly it would create a different
atmosphere which doesn’t fit to the idea of portraying war, as it would make
people think of happy times and peace when war is the complete opposite of
that.
Title: ‘The Infernal Machine’
Date: 1948
Medium: Oil on canvas
