My Painting and the Impact of a Different Culture on it

Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 46-48, 1983 Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/83/01004603$03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. MY PAINTING AND THE IMPACT OF A DIFFERENT CULTURE ON IT Maurice Lang” 1. I am an Australian artist, living and working in France since 1957. My original home was in Perth, on Australia’s west coast. about 3000 km from the major east coast cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. I look upon Perth as being in frontier country, isolated not only physically by sea and desert but also culturally. When I lived in Perth, there was nocivic orchestra, and the local art museum possessed perhaps 200 paintings, mostly watercolours of landscapes by English painters. Art classes were given at the University of Perth and at a technical school. I attended some of the classes on a part-time basis and did watercolours at weekends while holding a job as a commercial artist preparing illustrations for farmers’ catalogues. In the years immediately following World War I1 many immigrants settled in Perth. Their coming from different countries, I am sure, had a stimulating effect on the cultural life of the city. In my own case it had a profound effect. In particular, I made friends with a Greek family, a relationship that helped enlarge my interest in the arts and create a desire to go to art school in Sydney. But to do the latter I needed first to earn the necessary money. So I went to work as a sheepshearer. a job that involved much travel about remote inland areas. My term of two years as a student at the East Sydney Technical Art School was an exciting cultural experience for me. At that time I even studied opera singing under an Austrian Jewish immigrant. It was he who led me to appreciate the continued practice and learning required to sing well, and I realized that this applied to painting as well. But this happy period came to an end. My funds were exhausted and I returned to commercial art. In this period I began dreaming of making a break, of going to Europe, to cities steeped in centuries of cultural development. At last, at age 26, I arrived in Europe: I moved from Rome to Amsterdam and finally to Paris. 2. In the early years in Paris, 1957-64, I attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, danced professionally in a folk dance troupe, married and began to raise a family. 1 feel that I really got my start as a painter when I made a series of oil paintings that reflected my fascination with Parisians and with typically Paris scenes, such as in cafes and bistros. An example from this series is ‘The Barmaid and the Cashier’ (Fig. I). Another of the series is ‘The Potato Eater’ (1964), which is based on an experience with a White Russian taxi driver. The picture shows a huge bald man hunched over a dish of potatoes. I was inspired to make the painting by memoriesof the man and our animated conversation about food when my wife and 1 travelled across Paris oneevening in his taxi. When we arrived at our destination, we invited him for a drink and it was then that I noted his great stature. Experiences such as this, very different *Painter, 37 rue de Chartres, 92200 Neuilly sur Seine, France. (Received 8 March 1982.) from those I remembered in Australia, impressed me deeply and provided many subjects for my painting. Paintings from this series were exhibited in 1969 at Galerie Claude Levin, Pans. In the late 1960sI experienced a kind of reaction to the diverse works by other artists about me. I turned to drawing with pen and ink. My subjects werefrolicking nudes, mythological figures, as well as my wife and sons. Then, and on various occasions thereafter, I made sculpture: papier-mache objects. By a very slow process of applying successive layers of glue and paper (without metal armatures, which tend to produce rust spots), I constructed full-scale human figures, plants, etc. expressing fantasy and humour. Some of my sculpture had symbolic themes, for example those that were individual issues of Time magazine...