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Robin Boyd described it as "the most spectacular single man-made
object in the land." Geoffrey Dutton wrote "for Sydney the Bridge
was more than a mechanical link, it was always thought of as something
organic. Through it the city would grow bigger and better." The
Bridge is a spectacular and marvellous aspect of the Sydney Cityscape,
a shape that punctuates, indeed completes the natural landscape.
For Ken Done, the shape of the bridge is central to many of his
Sydney paintings; more recently it takes on the symbolic role as
the bridge between white Australian and Aboriginal cultures. Ken
Done is interested in creating archetypal images of the experience
of living in Sydney, the place that he admires and loves, the main
source of his artistic inspiration. The bridge heightens the movement
and speed with which Sydney life has been associated which Dutton
finds ironic:
"It is odd that the Harbour, although an enclosed area, is a liberating
influence."
The bridge represents an elevated human presence in the environment.
Like other famous bridges from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, historically
seminal to human activity in the city, to the Golden Gate Bridge
that spans San Francisco Bay, conveying the drama of technological
advances. Sydney Harbour Bridge creates a focal point for the city
and is central to the city's identity. Its obvious aesthetic qualities
have appealed to Done throughout his career.
In 1980 two images were created by Ken Done that formed the basis
of his design business. He designed a cover for the magazine Billy
Blue, a coloured drawing of Sydney Harbour. In 1980 Ken Done held
his first solo exhibition at the Holdsworth Gallery. Then several
months later he held a second exhibition this time in his own studio
in North Sydney. He a made simplified design from the Billy Blue
drawing of Sydney Harbour Bridge and had it printed onto 12 T-shirts
to give to the press who attended the showing. Almost 20 years later,
the design known as "Classic Sydney" is still printed and has created
a turnover for Done's Art & Design business of some 8 million dollars.
Although in visual terms the T-shirt design bears only a limited
relationship to the main body of his artwork the design using the
motif of Sydney Harbour Bridge is vital in other respects. Behind
the seemingly naive character of Done's early harbour drawings is
an increasingly sophisticated grasp of impressions on visiting a
new place, and the dissemination of cultural ideas via tourism.
Presenting Sydney proudly as the perfect holiday destination Ken
Done has made an ongoing series of works entitled Postcard from
Sydney. The first, Sydney, Wish you were here 1984 employs the decorative
border of his cabin paintings. Employing text on the canvas and
painted with a light-hearted naivety, Ken Done's image in fact seeks
to validate the Pop Art notion of culture that draws its inspiration
from the wider social or public experience. Done's sheer pleasure
for his subject also leads him to employ saturated, unrealistic
colours; of the postcard paintings Opera House Evening 1996 and
Opera House and the Bounty 1996 Ken Done states:
"I'm dealing with the colours of Australia, I've made the sea blue.
Now obviously the sky is never quite that colour, and the sea is
never quite that colour. And in truth, none of the buildings in
the way I've drawn them exist. But it is very much the feeling of
Sydney Harbour. It also shows, not only do I get great pleasure
out of the sail - like floating quality of the Opera House itself,
but that I feel that between the shapes of the Bounty, the old sailing
ship, and a kind of modern ship, there's the history of Australia."
The clearly apparent visual splendour of the Opera House, Jorn
Utzon's 1960s masterpiece, itself sketched out initially in 'billowy'
forms, so redolent of sail and ships, set down within Sydney Harbour,
has become a central feature of Done's Sydney paintings. The shape
of the Opera House, and the manner in which the tiles on the surface
of the building reflect the water and light effects of Sydney harbour
provide endless possibilities in painterly terms. As a symbol of
Australia the Opera House represents timeless beauty in organic
form, epitomising the spirit of the city of Sydney and the cultural
aspirations of the nation.
Many of Ken Done's Sydney paintings concentrate on the visual form
of the Opera House and allude to the musical forms that he aspires
to in his lyrical abstract paintings. In Looking Again at the Opera
House 1995 Ken Done actually places musical quavers and notes on
the canvas:
"Sydney by Night" is a piece of music that James Morrison wrote
to my painting of the same title Š and it's a terrific piece of
music and a great thrill to me. We did an album together, he wrote
seven pieces of music to seven of my paintings Š to hear the musical
equivalent of a painting is really exciting and "Sydney by Night"
is a big gutsy sensual kick-arse blasting bamming, bopping song
about Sydney. It's good."
In the painting James and Don at the Opera House 1995 Ken Done
refers to his friends James Morrison and Don Burrows, two of Australia's
leading jazz musicians. In the place of the pylons of Sydney Harbour
Bridge, Ken Done has created musical quavers and the lines of the
bridge become a somewhat stylised musical score.
"I put James's trumpet upside-down in the top right-hand corner.
The Opera House is spiky and boppy because it was a big jazz concert
they were playing and I was trying to find the painterly equivalent
of the feeling of that particular evening."
In White Tiled Opera House 1995 Ken Done creates a gold building
against a magenta sea:
"To symbolise the capitalism and the wealth of the city itself
and the difference between the old early buildings down at the Rocks
and the big modern shapes behind them."
The detailing of the bricks on the bridge, and the dots on the
Opera House, to represent the tiles make a reference to aboriginal
painting, a reference that is explored more fully in the paintings
that use the Bridge in a more metaphoric sense. Ken Done saw that
in visual terms the Harbour Bridge and Ayers Rock were similar forms
and so too were the Opera House and Olgas; two pairs of icons were
visually interrelated. In The Bridge series 1997 Ken Done plays
with the formal possibility of incorporating the haunting, beautiful
forms manmade and natural, symbols of white Australia and Aboriginal
culture on the same picture plane in an attempt to bridge two visual
cultures. By integrating visual imagery for example, the Harbour
Bridge and recognisable motifs from Aboriginal painting, in this
case the dots imposed above the bridge, Done asserts the necessity
of bridging racial differences. As formal compositions the paintings
in this series are among the most harmonious understated images
in Done's oeuvre, and among the most accomplished paintings of a
contemporary Australian artist.
The political overtones of the Bridge paintings pertain to Aboriginal
integration in white society and the obligation of whites to make
every effort to understand Aboriginal culture. In East Circular
Quay 1997 Ken Done turns his brush to create an image of protest
against the bovine greed and blind mismanagement of building authorities
in Sydney which led to the construction of an outrageous commercial
building on the approaches to the Sydney Opera House. The Opera
House, Utzon's masterpiece, has as we have seen been incorporated
in many paintings by Done. In this work it is largely obscured by
the overblown new structure so devoid of any architectural or civic
merit. The painting is a painful comment on the individual's impotence
in the face of large-scale corruption and greed.
In 1996, Ken Done held a major exhibition in Paris where his work
was well reviewed by the critics. In anticipation of the exhibition
he painted a series of Twenty-Five Views of the Opera House 1996.
These small canvasses have since been reproduced together and are
being woven into a tapestry by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in
Melbourne. It is no coincidence that Done should paint in a manner
that would pay tribute to the artists of the Paris School whom he
has long admired. Done has been criticised in Australia for being
'bourgeois' and 'decorative', yet it is precisely the painterly
approach to light and life that inspired Monet, Matisse and Bonnard
that so grips Done as a painter.
Twenty-Five Views of the Opera House are sensuous canvasses, laden
with exquisite colour, reminiscent of Pierre Bonnard, yet also redolent
with the colour of the antipodean paradise that he represents. Twenty-Five
Views of the Opera House are a celebration of life and of the artist's
growing pleasure and sense of accomplishment with his own work.
They capture the mood of Sydney, profound feelings that are often
ephemeral and elusive. The technical facility displayed in the handling
of colour, the finest, subtlest pigments leaves one in no doubt
that Ken Done is one the most accomplished and prolific artists
working in Australia today.
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