Art

A Look in the Abyss

Item: Charles Blackman
Author: Patrick Mccaughey

by Patrick McCaughey •

March 1981, no. 28

Charles Blackman: The lost domains by Nadine Amadio

Reed, $100 hb, 144 pp

Art

A Look in the Abyss

by Patrick McCaughey •

March 1981, no. 28

This book must win the prize for the most lavish and the most amateurish book on an Australian artist. Not one of the 200 odd colour plates is dated; not even in the portentously titled Opus Index (a list of plates without page numbers!) do we get a single date or indication of present ownership. Where dates are given in the text, they are often vague and careless ‘... in the 1950s...’etc.

Earlier commentators and critics swim in and out of the text without reference and there is no bibliography or biographical outline. Proper names are misspelt e.g. Barrett Reed (instead of Reid), Al Alvares (instead of Alvarez) as though the author had taken dictation faultily from the Master. The text is frequently unconsciously comic:

Patrick McCaughey

Patrick McCaughey is former Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut, and the Yale Center for British Art. His most recent book is Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters (2014). His other works include Voyage and Landfall: The Art of Jan Senbergs (2006). He writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and Australian Book Review. He lives and works on the banks of the Quinnipiac River in New Haven, and has recently finished editing Fred Williams: Diaries 1963–1970 for the Miegunyah Press.