Clifton Pugh’s ‘Aboriginal’ Epiphany and the Transformation of his Landscape Art (1954–65)

AbstractThis article focuses on two episodes in the Australian modernist artist Clifton Pugh's (1924–1990) artistic career – his journey across the Nullarbor Plain in 1954 and 1956, and his travels to the Kimberley in 1964 – where his experience of the desert environment and its Indigenous inhabitants resulted in a pictorial engagement with aesthetic and sociological forms of Aboriginalism. Pugh's landscapes contributed significantly to national imagery during the 1950s and 1960s, yet his engagement with Aboriginal art, people, and culture has been overlooked. Drawing on the visual record, critic's reviews, and Pugh's statements and interviews, this article argues that Aboriginalism was a crucial element in shaping his expression of a primal Australian landscape and his own existential search for identity as an artist and as an Australian. It not only transformed his landscape art but also his sense of being and belonging in the Australian environment. Notes1 Robert Hughes, Art of Australia (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1966), 237; Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788–1970 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971), 407.2 Pugh’s engagement with the natural environment and his life in the bush have been extensively explored in biographies by Traudi Allen and Sally Morrison and survey texts by Christopher Heathcote and Sasha Grishin. I aim to present new material and interpretations of Pugh’s work based on my assemblage of the first catalogue of over 1,460 known artworks and how Pugh’s interest in Aboriginal art and culture intersects with his biography, personal statements, and interviews. See Traudi Allen, Clifton Pugh, Patterns of a Lifetime: A Biography (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia, 1981); Sally Morrison, After Fire: A Biography of Clifton Pugh (Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2009); Christopher Heathcote, A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art 1946–1968 (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1995); Christopher Heathcote, Patrick McCaughey and Sarah Thomas, Encounters with Australian Modern Art (Melbourne: Macmillan Art, 2008); Sasha Grishin, Australian Art: A History (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2013); Debbie Robinson, ‘Imaging a Biocentric Australia: Environmentalism and Aboriginalism in the Art and Life of Clifton Pugh (1924–1990)’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2022).3 Noel Macainsh, Clifton Pugh (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1962), 7–8; Allen, 52; Morrison, 131 and 412; Geoffrey Dutton, White on Black: The Australian Aborigine Portrayed in Art (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1974); Catherine De Lorenzo and Dinah Dysart, A Changing Relationship: Aboriginal Themes in Australian Art 1938–1988 (Sydney: S.H. Ervin Gallery National Trust Centre, 1988); Ian McLean, White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Claire Baddeley, Motif and Meaning: Aboriginal Influences in Australian Art, 1930–70 (Ballarat: Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, 1999); Christine Nicholls, From Appreciation to Appropriation: Indigenous Influences and Images in Australian Visual Art (Adelaide: Flinders University Art Museum City Gallery, 2000); Daena Murray, The Sound of the Sky (Darwin: Charles Darwin University Press, 2006).4 Bob Hodge, ‘Aboriginal Truth and White Media: Eric Michaels Meets the Spirit of Aboriginalism’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 3, no. 2 (1990): 202.5 Vijay Mishra, ‘Aboriginal Representations in Australian Texts’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 2, no. 1 (1987): 165–88; Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Post Colonial (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991); Bain Attwood, ‘Introduction’, in Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, eds Bain Attwood and John Arnold (Melbourne: La Trobe University Press in association with the National Centre for Australian Studies, 1992), i–xvi.6 Mishra, 165; Hodge and Mishra, 27; Attwood, i; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1979), 3.7 Said, 20–1.8 Hodge, 202; Attwood, iii and iv.9 McLean, 82.10 Attwood, i.11 Clifton Pugh, ‘Statement’, 1959, in Bernard Smith, Death of the Artist as Hero: Essays in History and Culture (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), 206–7.12 Clifton Pugh, ‘Gallery of Man Exhibition Video’, interview by Alex Bortignon, Festival of Perth, 1982.13 Ibid.14 Ibid.15 Morrison, 445; Clifton Pugh, Exhibition Statement, Royal South Australian Society of Arts, May 1959.16 Clifton Pugh, quoted in ‘Young Artist Paints Desert’, Sunday Times Perth, 10 January 1955.Morrison, 445; Clifton Pugh, Exhibition Statement, Royal South Australian Society of Arts, May 1959.17 Ronald Berndt, ‘Tribal Migrations and Myths Centring on Ooldea, South Australia’, Oceania 12, no. 1 (September 1941): 4.18 Morrison, 133.19 Clifton Pugh, quoted in ‘Australian Artists Look Outback’, Theatre and Arts Letter (1962): 4.20 Charles Percy Mountford, Aboriginal Decorative Art from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory of Australia (Adelaide: Royal Society of South Australia, 1939); Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, ‘Aboriginal Art in Central-Western Northern Territory’, Meanjin 9, no. 3 (1950): 183–8; Adolphus Peter Elkin, Catherine Berndt and Ronald Berndt, Art in Arnhem Land (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1950); Charles Percy Mountford, Records of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land: 1 Art, Myth and Symbolism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1956); Charles Percy Mountford, Aboriginal Art (Melbourne: Longmans, 1961); Ronald Berndt, ed., Australian Aboriginal Art (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1964).21 McLean, 96–7.22 Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970 (Perth: Fremantle Press, 2008), 317.23 Richard T.M. Pescott, ‘Preface’, in Charles L. Barrett and Alfred S. Kenyon, Australian Aboriginal Art (Melbourne: Brown, Prior, Anderson for the Trustees of the National Museum of Victoria, 1947), 3.24 Pugh, ‘Gallery of Man Exhibition Video’.25 Gertrude Langer, ‘Pugh’s Painting Is Vital’, Courier Mail, Brisbane, 3 July 1957.26 James Gleeson, ‘Bold Art: Appeal to Senses’, The Sun, 6 November 1957.27 The Herald, 6 March 1957, n.p., in MS9096 Papers of Clifton Pugh, Series 10. Scrapbooks of cuttings, catalogues and photographs, 1953–90, item 1, National Library of Australia.28 Max Harris, ‘Pugh Hits the Gong’, Mary’s Own Paper (Adelaide, May 1959), n.p. Harris joined the Jindyworobak Club in 1938, at its inception, and was its first secretary. His poem ‘I Scarce Could Bear This Day’ was published in the Jindyworobak Quarterly Pamphlet 1, no 1 (April 1939), 16, while ‘Let Me Not Call You Lovely’ appears in the 1940 Jindyworobak Anthology. Harris’ first book of poetry, The Gift of Blood (1940), was also published by the Jindyworobak imprint. Although Harris broke away from the Jindyworobaks, disapproving of their ‘Aboriginalising’ in the 1941 issue of the Angry Penguins, he continued to be associated with the group, publishing an article about ‘The Importance of Disagreeing’ in the Jindyworobak Review, 1938–48 (1948). See for example: Betty Snowden, ‘Max Harris: A Phenomenal Adelaide Literary Figure’, in Adelaide: A Literary City, ed. Phillip Butterss (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2013), 166; Max Harris, with introduction by Alan Brissenden, The Angry Penguin: Selected Poems of Max Harris (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1996), 8. Harris was co-owner of the Mary Martin Bookshop and instituted and authored its newsletter.29 Pugh, ‘Gallery of Man Exhibition Video’.30 Morrison, 445.31 There are five known works by Pugh depicting Aboriginal figures from this period: The Rainmaker (1955), The Rainmakers I (1956) and II (1957), Aboriginals on the Goldfield (1956) and Mission Girl and Wild Galahs (1956).32 Geoffrey Smith, Russell Drysdale 1912–1981 (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1997), 28.33 Russell Drysdale, ‘Log Book’, MLMSS 4191 Sir Russell Drysdale – Papers, 1933–81, box 6, item 19, 1963, 77, State Library of New South Wales.34 Pugh first visited Tibooburra with Drysdale in 1963 and later with Fred Williams in 1967, where on 22 October, they painted several of the ‘more than eighteen Aboriginal gravesites’ whereabouts they were able to ‘easily pick up artefacts’. Clifton Pugh and Fred Williams, ‘Journal’, 1967, unpaginated, in Clifton Pugh, MS9096 Papers of Clifton Pugh, National Library of Australia, 1943–91, Series 5. Diaries 1970–90.35 Daisy Bates, ‘Aboriginal Rainmakers’, The Australasian, 7 December 1929, 6.36 Frederick McCarthy, 'Aboriginal Rain-Makers and Their Ways’, part II, Australian Museum Magazine 10, no. 9 (15 March 1952): 304. See also Frederick McCarthy, ‘Aboriginal Rainmakers and Their Ways’, part I, Australian Museum Magazine 10, no. 8 (15 December 1951): 249–52.37 Morrison, 133.38 Clifton Pugh, ‘Art’, Architecture and Arts, October 1955, n.p.39 The Museum of Modern Art, ‘Museum of Modern Art Plans International Photography Exhibition’, Press Release, 31 January 1954, 1, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_325966.pdf (accessed 11 June 2019). Jane Lydon has argued that there was symmetry between the program of universality espoused by UNESCO and Australian assimilationist ideals of unity in diversity, applied to Aboriginal Australians. See ‘Happy Families: UNESCO’s Human Rights Exhibition in Australia, 1951’, in Jane Lydon, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 117–32.40 Pugh, ‘Gallery of Man Exhibition Video’.41 Ibid.42 Ibid.43 Ibid.44 Ibid.45 Ibid.46 Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh and Bernard Smith, ‘The Antipodean Manifesto’, in Bernard Smith, The Antipodean Manifesto: Essays in Art and Art History (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1976), 165.47 Ibid., 166.48 Pugh quoted in Smith, The Death of the Artist as Hero, 206.49 Allen, 65.50 Clifton Pugh quoted in Judith Rich, ‘St Francis in the Kimberleys’, The Bulletin, 3 July 1965, 44.51 Pugh quoted in ibid., 45.52 Clifton Pugh, letter to Betty Richardson, 18 November 1964, cited in Allen, 66.53 See Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012); and Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Broome: Magabala Books, 2018).54 Morrison, 235.55 Thalia Anthony, ‘Reconciliation and Conciliation: The Irreconcilable Dilemma of the 1965 “Equal” Wage Case for Aboriginal Station Workers’, Labour History 93 (November 2007): 17.56 Ibid., 17.57 Sally Butler, ‘Facing Melancholia: Racial Implications of the Disengaged Gaze’, in The Persistence of Melancholia in Arts and Culture, ed. Andrea Bubenik (New York: Routledge, 2019), 172.58 Ronald M. Berndt, ‘Review: Ourselves Writ Strange’, Oceania 19, no. 3 (March 1949): 302–4.59 James Gleeson, ‘Russell Drysdale’, Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly 2, no. 1 (October 1960): 42; Butler, 164; Jennie Boddington, Drysdale: Photographer (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1987), 50.60 Hugh Edwards, Pearls of Broome and Northern Australia (Perth: self-published, 1994), 47.61 Pugh, letter to Betty Richardson, 66; Pugh quoted in Rich, 45.62 Pugh, letter to Betty Richardson, 66.63 Pugh quoted in Rich, 44.64 Pugh, ‘Art’, n.p.65 Max Charlesworth, ‘Introduction’, in Religious Business: Essays on Australian Aboriginal Spirituality, ed. Max Charlesworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), xx; Mary Graham, ‘Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews’, in Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology, ed. Richard C. Foltz (San Francisco: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2003), 89.66 E.K. Grant quoted in Vicki Grieves, ‘Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy, the Basis of Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing’, Discussion Paper Series: No. 9 (Darwin: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, 2009), 7; Graham, 89.67 James Gleeson, ‘False Note’, The Sun, 23 June 1965, 34.68 Elwyn Lynn, ‘Myth-Making Crimes’, The Australian, 1 July 1965, n.p.69 Geoffrey Smith, Sidney Nolan: Desert and Drought (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2003), 83.70 Daniel Thomas, ‘This Week in Art’, 27 June 1965, n.p., in MS9096 Papers of Clifton Pugh, Series 10. Scrapbooks of cuttings, catalogues and photographs, 1953–90, item 1, National Library of Australia.71 The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1965, 16.72 Gleeson, ‘False Note’, 34.73 Haebich, 17.74 Charles Perkins, ‘Charles Perkins – Freedom Ride, Australian Biography Series 7, video, National Film and Sound Archive, 1999, https://dl.nfsa.gov.au/module/1554/#about (accessed 10 April 2020).75 Don Bennett, ‘Arthur Boyd: Art and Soul’, documentary film script, Film Victoria, Melbourne, April 1993, Bundanon Trust Archive, box 33, 28, Bundanon.76 Barry Pearce, Arthur Boyd Retrospective (Sydney: The Beagle Press in conjunction with Art Gallery NSW, 1993), 20–1; Geoffrey Dutton, The Innovators: The Sydney Alternatives in the Rise of Modern Art, Literature and Ideas (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1986), 159–60.77 Franz Philipp, Arthur Boyd (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), 83.