This Artwork Changed My Life

During the week Robyn Price sent me a link to an article on the Artsy website which prompted this post. The article is one of several in a series: ‘This Artwork Changed My Life’ and discusses how Josef Albers’ 1963 book ‘Interaction of Color’ affected the writer’s (Philadelphia based artist, Odili Donald Odita) worldview and understanding of the current racial tensions in America. The article can be found at: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-josef-alberss-teachings-color-helped-way-address-social-change

Other articles in the series reflect on Masaccio and ‘facing grief’; the British painter, Jenny Saville, and ‘body image’; René Magritte and ‘tapping into one’s inner world’; and Tracey Moffatt and the ‘complexities of the Australian identity’. The series is at: https://www.artsy.net/series/artworks-changed-lives

A few weeks back Liz Douglas reminded me of the importance of art in our personal worlds with the suggestion to watch Philip Mould’s ‘Art in Isolation’ series online. Philip is an English art dealer who is familiar to local audiences from the television programs ‘Antiques Roadshow’ and ‘Fake or Fortune’. In this series of more than 20 episodes, Philip shares the private side of his life and interests, as he discusses his connections with art in his collection. The series can be viewed at: https://philipmould.com/news/40-art-in-isolation-all-episodes-series-catch-up/

The third prompt comes from the current National Gallery of Victoria online course – ‘The Art of Writing’ – which uses ‘art’ as a starting point to inspire writing. The first week of the course includes Keat’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ as examples of how art has led to other ways of ‘seeing’. The recently posted poems by Lynn Morgan are another excellent example.

Considering the question: ‘which artwork changed your life?’ my answer is ‘The Lure of Paris’ by local Victorian artist Stephen Bush (b. 1958).

I first saw this painting in Stephen’s survey show ‘Blackwood Skyline’ at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne in 2003. As you can see from the installation photograph, it is more accurate to say I saw eight examples of this painting at the museum. The Lure of Paris is not small (183cm x 183cm) is, unusually for a work of art, square and painted in monochromatic grey (grisaille). Seeing the multiple images of the same scene was exhilarating and challenging as it provoked intense looking to make sense of the image and then discern the subtle differences between the paintings. 

The painting is evocative and enigmatic. Three plush toy Babar elephants are perilously negotiating a rocky coastal environment (reminiscent of The Great Ocean Road) as the sea sweeps and crashes around them. One Babar is perched determinedly on a small rock in the ocean and the other two are engaged in abseiling the cliff behind him. The picture suggests a grand historical narrative with its intense landscape and regal figures, but the protagonists come from a children’s story. What are French children’s characters doing in this treacherous landscape?  Are they arriving – and if so why? – or are they trying to clamber to safety? And, why are there three Babars?

The Lure of Paris is a painting which invites looking and re-looking as it is rich in associations. The fictional elephant, Babar, was created by the French painter and writer Jean de Brunhoff in 1931. In the story, Babar escapes from the jungle after his mother is killed and makes his way to the big city to learn about civilisation – which he then takes back to his fellow elephants in the jungle. On the death of the king, Babar who has ‘lived among men and learned much’ is crowned the new King of the Elephants.

The story was initially told by the artist’s wife to their children to soothe them during times of illness. In this sense it speaks of triumph over adversity and the need to undertake the mythological hero’s journey and overcome obstacles to achieve mastery. The initially vulnerable Babar acquires the skills to triumph and lead. Perhaps in the painting, we are seeing him demonstrating these skills.

More recently, the story of Babar has been read as a narrative of colonialism. Babar can be seen as escaping from his ‘pre-civilised’ state and nature to become the cultured adventurer taming his inner and outer ‘wildness’. Are the forces of ‘savage nature’, which crash around him, still lurking to challenge his fragile (but natty three-piece) armour of civilisation?

The painting also references the historical, en plein air and romantic pictures of the 19^th century. Monet’s wild Rough weather at Étretat, Stanfield’s Mount St Michael, Cornwall, Turner’s seascapes, and the solitary figures confronting nature, in works by the German artist, Caspar David Friedrich, come to mind.

Stephen painted the first series of pictures between 1992 and 1994. Since then he has completed at least one ‘version’ of this work annually entirely from memory. Not only is this an extraordinarily impressive visual-cognitive-memory exercise, it is also a reference to the Old Masters who refined their technique by repeating the same scenes.

The title of the painting is another evocative feature with its allusion to temptation, travel and the cosmopolitan world of creativity. Stephen is coy about the meaning of the painting and the origin of the title – although the title may be connected to a book of the same name published in 1991 by H. Barbara Weinberg. Weinberg, as curator of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, wrote about the many American artists of the 19^th century who ventured to Paris in search of artistic inspiration.

I have met Stephen many times over the years and was fortunate to spend time with him, and his soon to be wife the American curator Liza Statton, in New York while he was undertaking the (sadly no longer in existence) Australia Council Green Street studio residency. Stephen, Liza and I visited both commercial and public galleries and Stephen discussed the influences on his art practice.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stephen showed me his favourite American landscape painters – particularly the painters of the Hudson River School; at the Whitney, we looked at the paintings by Edward Hopper; and at MoMA we spent a long time experiencing the ‘shifting reds’ in Matisse’s The Red Studio.

The National Gallery of Victoria has seven works by Stephen in the collection. An early work by the 23 year old artist from 1981, the leering Tattoo, beckons Hopper.

Early morning – Kingsway (1986-1987) uses the rooftops of suburban Melbourne to find beauty in, and replicate, the idyllic and arcadian landscapes of the American artist, Frederic Edwin Church.

L.L. The wish being the father to the thought includes images of ‘Stephen the explorer’ fossicking the landscape – as the 19^th century German naturalist and explorer ‘L.L.’ (Ludwig Leichardt) – did to understand our connections to country.

And, Hawkweed from 2006 connects with Stephen’s ongoing fascination with the use of colour in art.

On the’ Art Works for Change’ website there is an interview with Stephen that discusses his practice. It reminds us that Stephen is an artist who ‘morphs traditional landscape paintings into dream-like visions of a world interrupted by human desires. In [his art we see] the tension in our relationship with nature through unexpected combinations of subject matter, painting styles, and colors. He creates idyllic scenes typical of 19th century romantic landscape painting, and disrupts them with archetypes of the manmade’. See: https://www.artworksforchange.org/portfolio/stephen-bush/

The Lure of Paris #25 hangs in my bedroom and is the first thing I see each morning. I am still intrigued by the painting and often spend many minutes looking at it. During the coronavirus pandemic it has taken on new meanings. The steadfast Babar withstanding the vicissitudes of nature, the need for cooperation to extricate us from this dangerous and uncertain space and time, and the possibility of a brighter future emerging in the distance  (we may get to Paris eventually) – all give my favourite painting a new, particular and urgent relevance. As Stephen says: ‘ the act of painting is one of ponder, revision and improvisation’.

I look forward to readers sharing ‘the artwork that changed your life’.