You are on page 1of 47

1

ARTIST CD SERIES
STUDIO ARTS

CHARLES
BLACKMAN
Born 1928
4cats Gallery
269 Johnston Street, Abbotsford, Victoria 3067.
Telephone: 03 94177 422 Fax: 03 94177 608.
www.4cats.com.au. grant@4cats.com.au

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE LIFE STORY

CHAPTER TWO - REACTION OF THE ART WORLD TO BLACKMANS


ART WORK

CHAPTER THREE - THE MAIN FEATURES OF BLACKMANS


ART WORK

11

CHAPTER FOUR - ANALYSIS OF 2 SELECTED ART WORKS


USING THE KEY DISCUSSION POINTS

26

Analysis One SCHOOLGIRL AT KOOYONG 1953

A discussion of the interpretation of subject matter and influences


A discussion of the aesthetic qualities
A discussion of materials and techniques
A discussion of distinctive style

Analysis Two ALICE IN THE BOAT 1956

A discussion of the interpretation of subject matter and influences


A discussion of the aesthetic qualities
A discussion of materials and techniques
A discussion of distinctive style

CHAPTER FIVE - SAMPLE RESPONSE

44

FORMAL REFERENCES

47

This publication has been written by Therese Grant and Philip Grant, directors of 4cats Gallery, Melbourne as a resource
document for Year 12 Studio Arts students. Therese Grant has 14 years senior teaching experience and she is also a practicing
artist. She holds a Bachelor of Education (Visual Arts) and a Master of Education (Visual Arts) both from University of
Melbourne. Therese has been a director of 4cats Gallery since 2002. Philip Grant established 4cats Gallery in 2000. 4cats Gallery
operates as a commercial gallery. He has had extensive experience in public sector management, including arts facilities and
programs. He has a Bachelor of Arts (art history), Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws (Copyright) all from the University of
Melbourne. We appreciate the ongoing support of our Editor Helen Gilligan. 4cats Gallery.
This publication is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any
process without prior written permission from 4cats Gallery.

4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

INTRODUCTION
This Studio Arts education CD provides the student with an overview of the life and
work of Australian artist Charles Blackman. Information contained in this CD is
designed specifically to address the criteria set out in the Victorian Curriculum and
Assessment Authority Study Design. The Study Design for VCE Studio Arts requires
a student to study art works that have been made by artists in more than one
historical or cultural context. Charles Blackman has produced his significant works
from the 1950s to the present, predominantly in Australia.
The Studio Arts CD begins with an outline of the personal life of the artist and we
have called this the Life Story. This is an excellent way to introduce the student to
the life of Charles Blackman. We have provided the student with a brief overview of
some of the achievements, people and significant features in Charles Blackmans life
which have impacted on the production of his art works.
Following the life story we have collected a number of responses regarding the
artists work which we have called Reaction of the Art World to Blackmans Art
Work. This is an interesting chapter as it includes some of the views shared by art
critics and a general overview of the worlds reaction to Blackmans work. Some
artists create enormous reaction whilst others are less controversial. This chapter is
an interesting study not only of the individual artist but also because it demonstrates
how the art world and public interact and respond to different artists and why. It can
act as a teaching tool to encourage discussion and expand a students view of
Blackmans life and work.
Chapter Three presents the main features present in Blackmans work and is called,
The Main Features of Charles Blackmans Art Work. This chapter provides the
student with a general summary of the information required to learn about an artists
work, such as the aesthetic qualities, the usage of materials and techniques, the
subject matter and themes of the work, the development of a distinctive style, artistic
influences and the relevance of historical and cultural contexts on the production of
the work. We call these features, key discussion points. The Study Design also
includes New Technology as a discussion point. However, we do not believe this is
appropriate for the individual study of Charles Blackmans work. A discussion of new
technology is appropriate only when the artist is breaking new ground with
technology.
In Chapter Four Analysis of 2 Selected Art Works using the Key Discussion Points
we study two of Blackmans art works and apply four key discussion points to each
work. This provides the student with an insight into how different key discussion
points can be applied to the same art work. This chapter helps a student learn what
is relevant to discuss under each point and the type of language and material they
4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

could include in their responses. In this Studio Arts CD we have included a


discussion of the following key discussion points; the use aesthetic qualities, the use
of materials and techniques, an interpretation of subject matter, the development of
a distinctive style and the relevance of historical and cultural contexts. The
discussion of New Technology is not appropriate as a key discussion point for the
work of Charles Blackman.
Chapter Five called, Sample Response provides a sample exam response for the
student. A sample response is provided to show a student how they might respond
to a question related to one or more of the key discussion points related to the work
of Charles Blackman.
The final section in this Studio Arts CD lists the formal references that have been
referred to in this CD.
The best reference books available on Charles Blackmans work are;

SHAPCOTT, Thomas

The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsche,


London 1989

ST JOHN MOORE, Felicity

Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels: A


Retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings,
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1993

SMITH, Geoffrey &


ST JOHN MOORE, Felicity

Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland: National


Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2006

The best website to obtain online images of Blackmans work is:


www.savill.com.au/Charles_Blackman.html

4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

CHAPTER ONE - LIFE STORY


Charles Raymond Blackman was born in Sydney on 12 August 1928. He is
considered to be one of the leading figurative painters of the post-war period in
Australia. His haunting and enchanting images of women and girls, absorbed in
daydreams or games have an enduring appeal. Two significant themes in his work
have been the Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland.
Blackman was the third child and only boy in a family of four. His father, a
mechanical engineer in a printing firm, deserted the family when Blackman was four.
His mother was a lively woman who was also a compulsive gambler. She worked
long hours as a waitress and cleaner to support Blackman and his three sisters.
Occasionally, the children were placed in homes when she could not cope.
At 14, Blackman left school at Manly High School to help support the family by
working as a newspaper copy boy at the Sydney Sun. At the same time he attended
night classes in drawing and design at the East Sydney Technical College from
1942-5. In 1946 he was offered an art cadetship with the Sydney Sun which included
making copies of comic strips and touching up photographs. In 1947 Blackman left
his cadetship and became part of a group of artists and writers who wandered
between Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. At this time he was introduced to modern
art and literature by a young avant-garde poet from New Zealand, Lois Hunter. She
taught him about the world of writers such as Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, T.S.
Eliot and many more. Reading through her collection of books and poetry, Blackman
discovered the graphics of Odilon Redon, a French Symbolist artist and he was
inspired by what he found.
Blackman followed the group up to Queensland in 1948. There he met artist
Laurence Hope who was to become a lifelong friend as well as an important
influence upon Blackmans understanding of the human personality. Hopes
expressionistic works portrayed solitary figures with great energy and angst. It was
at this time that he met poet Barbara Patterson, his future wife and model. Patterson
was an articulate and intelligent woman and her literary expressiveness allowed
Blackman to arrive at a solid basis for understanding his own imagery. Barbara
Patterson was sight impaired. Barbaras increasing blindness had a profound
influence on his work. His empathy with her difficulty is illustrated in his early
preoccupation with the childlike subject and focus on the face with huge, dark eyes.
In 1948 Blackman travelled to Melbourne. He met more established artists, John
Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Danila Vassilieff and he also came to the attention of John
and Sunday Reed, the art patrons of Heide which was the meeting place for art
minded people. Blackman admired the Reeds and became good friends with them
and was introduced to Joy Hester, Albert Tucker, and Mirka and Georges Mora.
4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Barbara Blackman says


The Reeds ruled over a kingdom of the aesthetic such as most of us had never
known before, a kind of Heaven, where we felt awed and chosen to be guests,
whose esoteric rules we were always in danger of trespassing upon.
Blackman and Barbara were married in 1950. In 1951 they moved to Melbourne.
They moved into a tin shed at the back of a house in East Melbourne. Later in 1951
they moved to an old coach house in Chrystobel Street, Hawthorn where they could
live downstairs and have a studio upstairs. The house was without running water
and a bathroom. Blackman largely concentrated on his painting. Barbara worked as
an artists model and they largely lived off her income and sight impaired pension,
although Blackman did take odd jobs gardening in Toorak and Ivanhoe and working
as a factory hand at the Dulux factory. Blackman loved to observe daily lives of
suburban Melbourne, and he would take mental images back to his studio.
Blackman hung his paintings on the walls of the studio and sold to other artists,
friends and patrons John and Sunday Reed. At this time he developed his famous
Schoolgirl series. In 1953 he held his first one man show at the Peter Bray Gallery in
Melbourne showing these works. In 1956 Blackman worked as a cook with Georges
Mora, who had opened a restaurant in East Melbourne called the Eastbourne, later
renamed The Balzac. Around this time Blackman became part of a group called The
Angry Penguins who are considered to be the major figures of the modernist
movement in Australian art, based in Melbourne. The Angry Penguins included
Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Max Harris, John Perceval, Albert Tucker and Joy
Hester. Their aim was to modernise Australian creative arts and poetry, and
challenge traditions they saw as restrictive in Australian art in the 1940s and 1950s.
For Blackman in 1956, it was painting by day and cooking by night. Reading to
Barbara every day and listening to one of her first talking books he was fascinated
by the story of Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland and decided to do a series of
paintings depicting this story. In 1957 these works were exhibited at the Gallery of
Contemporary Art in Melbourne run by John Reed. In the same year his first child, a
son Auguste was born and a portrait by Blackman of Barbara and the baby was
entered in the Womens Weekly portrait prize. Daughter Christabel was born in
1959.
In 1959 Blackman became part of a group called the Antipodeans. It consisted of
Blackman and other Australian artists, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Perceval,
John Brack, Clifton Pugh and Robert Dickerson and art critic Bernard Smith. The
Antipodean manifesto upheld the validity of figurative painting and the role of
figurative painting to reflect society and history. The group rejected the claims of the
abstract expressionists who argued they were engaged in a purification of painting
4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

or to have invented a new language.


In 1960 Blackman won the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship and the family
left for England and set up house in London. Another child Barnaby was born in
1963. In the six years they spent there, Blackmans work was well received and he
was invited to hang paintings in exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Tate Galleries.
This was a happy and fulfilling time for Blackman and their home became the weekly
meeting place for the many expatriate artists, writers and poets living in London in
the 1960s. These included John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley, Roy de
Maistre and Melbourne entertainer Barry Humphries, who was making his way into
the London theatre scene at the same time. Blackman was close to the great art
museums of the world and many trips were made to Europe. In 1966, the
Blackmans packed up and sailed back to Australia where his work received high
praise and was much sought after. In the 1970s Blackman travelled to Europe
several times on scholarships including the grant of a studio at the Cite International
des Arts in Paris for twelve months. According to Barbara, It is our rich time. The
mining boom made fortunes, paintings sold like hot pies. The art dealers came to
Paris. They brought me big bottles of perfume, took us out to famous restaurants
and left with a roll of canvasses.
In 1978 Barbara wrote a letter to Blackman resigning from their marriage which was
to take effect on their 27th wedding anniversary. She said that a dark shadow had
fallen across their relationship, that they had both worked very hard to make it work,
but it was finished. In response Blackman said I will be your eyes, he said at the
beginning. Now those blinds must be pulled down on those windows to the world.
The blind and the not-blind are no longer useful to each other.
After his separation from Barbara, Blackman embarked on a relationship with a
young art student Genevieve de Couvreur, whom he married in 1981. Blackman had
two children with Genevieve De Couvreur, Beatrice and Felicien. Blackman and De
Couvreur separated in 1984, allegedly due to Blackmans excessive drinking and
partying. The 1980s marked a new era in Blackmans life. As my surroundings
changed me, my work changed too and I started to feel my way into the environment
as a painter. He acquired a property at Buderim Mountain overlooking
Queenslands Sunshine Coast and painted pictures of gardens, flowers and boats.
He designed a 10 foot stained glass window and developed an interest in music and
dance. Whereas most of his early work was concerned with the inner emotional
world, his painting also started to focus on the natural environment in which he was
living. Always travelling both in Australia and overseas Blackman collaborated with
many artists, musicians and dancers on privately commissioned projects. He worked
on designs for the ballet Alice in Wonderland where his designs were described as
stunning and also on a Western Australian Ballet, The Midsummer Nights Dream.
He started on his Rainforest series which took him over five years to complete.
4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

In 1989 he married his third wife Victoria Bower and they had a son, Axiom, born in
1990. Bower left Blackman in 1993. A major retrospective exhibition of Blackmans
work, Schoolgirls and Angels was held in 1993 at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Since the early 1990s, Blackman has suffered from Korsakoff's syndrome, a memory
disorder associated with alcoholism. Symptoms of this condition include amnesia,
attention deficit and failing vision. Another disturbing symptom is that people with
Korsakoff's will fill in the gaps in memory with fabricated or imagined information.
They will talk quite lucidly on a subject believing they are telling the truth, only for the
"truth" to change next time they tell the same story. In 1994 Blackman suffered a
near fatal stroke and required permanent care.
Since 1994 Blackman has had two carers, Fred OBrien and Ronnie Morrison, who
take it in turn to look after him. They have succeeded in weaning Blackman off
alcohol and Blackman still draws although he is unable to paint. His finances are
administered through the Blackman Trust set up by his friends to ensure that his
artistic legacy would not be completely squandered. It is interesting to note that
whilst Blackmans paintings commonly sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars he
does not own any originals of his own famous paintings. He once commented that
he was too poor to own a Blackman. Blackman is a generous man and was known
for giving away his paintings or selling them at a discounted price. Blackman is the
classic case of an artist who would benefit from an artist resale royalty scheme in
Australia. This proposed scheme (although it is not law yet) would ensure that artists
receive a small percentage (eg 5%) of the sale price every time their art works were
resold. Blackmans friend Nadine Amadio says It is immoral that an art dealer can
sell an original Blackman for $300,000 when the artist may have only received 5
guineas when he first painted it.
For services to art, Charles Blackman was awarded the OBE and the Queens
Jubilee Medal. Sydney University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.
In 2006, the National Gallery of Victoria, held a retrospective exhibition of
Blackmans Alice in Wonderland series of paintings. This exhibition celebrated the
50th anniversary of the series.
Blackman is now 78 and lives in Sydney.

4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

CHAPTER TWO - REACTION OF THE ART WORLD TO


CHARLES BLACKMANS ART WORK
The fact that Blackman has had such a long career means that the critical reaction to
his work has changed over time reflecting changes in Blackmans artistic practice
and general changes in art trends in the period between the 1950s to the 21st
century.
The works which receive the biggest acclaim for Blackman are his Schoolgirl series
and the Alice in Wonderland paintings created in the1950s, although reactions to
these paintings have varied over time.
Art critic Bernard Smith in his book Australian Panting 1788-1970 said.
Blackman is a painter of women but not of flesh, a kind of belated reply to Norman
Lindsays pseudo-classical eroticism, an artist seeking to penetrate a feminine world
of private sensations, hopes and fears. By combining tonal illusionism with forceful
rudimentary images, Blackman has created a personal art form of great beauty and
poignant expressive power.
In 1969 James Gleeson, author of Masterpieces of Australian Painting wrote:
There is nothing really mysterious about a Blackman painting-only something very
rare, for he is the most truly tender and warm hearted of our contemporary
Australian painters.
In the mid to late 1960s, critics started taking notice of abstract art works.
Blackmans form of poetic realism and figurative art became out of date. In 1968 art
critic Patrick McCaughey criticised Blackmans work as banal and lame and largely
created without thought and too much speed. Blackman started using more
abstraction in his work such as unreal colours and hard edge geometric shapes. He
expanded his subject matter and also started painting and drawing gardens and
landscapes. Blackman freely admits that in the 1970s he became more
commercial. The prices for his art were escalating and he catered to the strong
demand for small affordable Blackmans and engaged in large scale production of
prints of his work.
This commercialisation of his work and the widespread exhibition of it made him
unpopular with critics because they considered it decorative and not tackling broader
social issues which became popular in the 1970s. Blackmans career has often been
criticised because he had far too many exhibitions and viewers were not able to see
his work as a whole. Until the early 1990s his work was largely unrepresented in
major Australian galleries. This perception changed somewhat with the holding of
4cats Gallery

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

the Schoolgirls and Angels retrospective exhibition in 1993 and Alice in Wonderland
2006 where specific works from Blackmans most successful periods were shown
together.
Contemporary art critics are divided in their opinion of Blackmans work. Christopher
Allen in his book Art in Australia says that although Blackmans work is held in high
regard by many, to my mind it is thin and cloying. At any rate, his pictures of little
girls with flowers certainly belong to a register of personal sentimental experience,
not to the social domain.
Robert Nelson, art critic for the Age, in reviewing the Alice in Wonderland exhibition
in 2006 said that:
Blackmans Alice is part Modigliani, part Picasso. The style is similar to Sidney
Nolan and Arthur Boyd and is the nave art that passed for modernism in the 1940s
and '50s, where all expression - if there is any - is the product of style or mannerism
rather than observation of a dramatic instant.
In 2006, Alices Journey 1957, one of the paintings from the Alice in Wonderland
series was sold at Sothebys Auction House for a record price $1.02 million. This
was more than double the previous record for a Blackman work.
Blackmans work is held by the National Gallery of Australia and all state art galleries
in Australia. It has also been collected extensively in the UK, the USA and Japan.
Blackmans work is extensively represented in corporate and private collections such
as the Reserve Bank of Australia Collection and the Kerry Stokes Collection.

4cats Gallery

10

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

CHAPTER THREE - THE


BLACKMANS ART WORK

Born 1928

MAIN

FEATURES

OF

CHARLES

In this chapter we will deal with the following features of Charles Blackmans art
work.

The materials and techniques used by Blackman


The main subject matter, ideas and themes, influences that Blackman
expresses in his art work
The aesthetic qualities and the distinctive style in Blackmans art work
The relevance of historical and cultural contexts on Blackmans art work

New technology is not discussed as a main feature in the work of Charles Blackman
as this key discussion point is not appropriate to the work of Blackman.
THE MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES USED BY CHARLES BLACKMAN
Blackmans two main art forms are drawing and painting. Blackman largely uses
pencil, charcoal and ink washes and occasionally pastel in his drawings. He
generally draws on paper and occasionally on board.
In his painting Blackman primarily used a form of composition board or canvas.
Composition board is an artificially made product which is made by compacting
wood pulp and drying it to create a smooth hard wood surface. Common names for
composition board include board, hardboard, masonite, chip board, particle board
and more recently MDF or form wood. Both paintings discussed in this publication
were completed on composition board.
He uses a range of mediums for painting including traditional artists oils, oil based
enamel paint, acrylic paint, tempera and combinations of these mediums.
Tempera is basically the product of mixing egg yolks, egg whites and casein with oil
or enamel paints or gums and waxes to create a painting medium that has special
qualities. Curator, Geoffrey Smith says that Blackman created his own tempera and
learnt this from the textbook The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting with
Notes on the Techniques by Old Masters (1934) written by the German expert,
Professor Max Doerner. According to Doerner, tempera is particularly effective as a
medium on board. Tempera highlights light and is excellent for tonal modelling.
Blackman used tempera primarily to apply a white base which he would then paint
over and also to apply white highlights to his paintings. To create a white tempera
he would have mixed egg whites, egg yolks and casein (a form of milk protein) with
white enamel or oil paint.
4cats Gallery

11

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Geoffrey Smith says that Blackmans use of tempera mixtures allowed greater
freedom in his painting techniques. He quotes Blackman who said
Tempera has a lot to do with the immediacy of the paintings. Tempera acts as a
catalyst with enamel and as they dry at varying speeds they might flow into each
other. Explosions might erupt. The discovery of this medium allowed me to work
with spontaneity and seize the evocative power of the image as it opened up
The brushes that Blackman used for his painting included ordinary artist brushes as
well as flat edged brushes used by commercial household painters. Blackman often
created line by scratching the wet paint with the point of the brush handle. Paint
application varies from thin washes to heavy impasto. In some paintings Blackman
has applied so much paint that it has dribbled into neighbouring colours. Blackman is
known for his speed of painting and his desire for quick compositions and his brush
stokes are often rough and thinly painted. Blackman tended to block in large areas of
colour very speedily. Blackman was generally not guided by preparatory sketches
and let the act of final painting resolve the work.

THE MAIN SUBJECT MATTER, IDEAS AND THEMES AND INFLUENCES THAT
CHARLES BLACKMAN EXPRESSES IN HIS ART WORK
Blackman is primarily a figurative drawer and painter. Most of his drawings and
paintings consist of one or more human figures. Arts writer Walter Granek says;
Centred around themes of childhood, femininity, blindness and solitude, Blackmans
evocative imagery exposes an undercurrent of the uncertain and anxious, the
perplexed and fearful, the inquisitive and hopeful artist on the darker side of light
The most significant influence on Blackmans early career was his wife Barbara
Blackman. Felicity St John Moore says that Barbaras intelligence and ordered
literary mind deepened Blackmans experience of literature. Blackman had no higher
education in the arts. According to Felicity St John Moore, an arts writer who has
written several publications about Blackman, Blackman taught himself by devouring
and digesting everything at hand: art books, magazines, prints, illustrations, modern
literature and other peoples art. Barbaras blindness also deeply affected the way
Blackman painted. By circumstance he was forced to go into her unseeing world. He
was much more in tune with hearing information rather than seeing it and more in
tune with touch and feeling. Blackman says
My sort of painting isnt sparked off directly by visual things Its sparked off by
what I feel about something perhaps in a book.
4cats Gallery

12

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Walter Granek says that in his formative years 1950 to 1956, Blackman would often
read to Barbara, mainly literature by French authors, with the emphasis on
adolescent eroticism.
One such author who had a significant influence on Blackmans career was the
French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). At fifteen Rimbaud began his short writing
career which only lasted five years. Rimbauds poems were aggressive and he
pushed the idea that a poet or artist must be true to themselves and break down the
restraints and controls on personality. Felicity St John Moore says that Rimbaud was
important for Blackman because Rimbaud was very interested in childhood
memories and adolescence where the possibilities for good and evil are the greatest.
Blackman related to the fact that Rimbaud encouraged the artist to reach into their
sub conscious minds and go beyond the normal limits.
The following is a broad outline of the subject matter used by Blackman in his more
famous works.

Schoolgirls
In the early 1950s Blackman started painting an almost
generic schoolgirl wearing a school uniform and a mushroom shaped hat who is
usually depicted in situations of vulnerability. She is young or maybe on the verge of
puberty, sometimes faceless. She is a figure of threatened innocence, furtively
scurrying from, or being hemmed in by an environment of foreboding. Blackmans
biographer Thomas Shapcott in The Art of Charles Blackman, describes the
schoolgirls as; haunted, inward, dangerously clumsy and stylised inventions which
became a source of power and reference that was to be pivotal in the young artists
career.
Blackman has said that he saw in the lonely vulnerable little schoolgirls he would see
around Melbourne, a symbol for his own sense of loneliness and isolation at the
time.
A very significant artistic influence on the development of Blackmans schoolgirls
was French painter and lithographer Odilon Redon (1840-1916). Redon was an early
precursor to Surrealism, with his mysterious evocations of a dream world. Redon's
work represents an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche. He wanted to
"place the visible at the service of the invisible". His earlier work is filled with strange
and unrelated objects such as spiders and hot air balloons made of a human eye.
His aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind.

4cats Gallery

13

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Odilon Redon The Smiling Spider 1881


Charcoal on paper 49.5 x 39 cm

Born 1928

Odilon Redon Profile of a Woman with a Vase


of Flowers 1905 Oil on canvas 65 x 50 cm

Felicity St John Moore says that Redons work influenced Blackman to transform
objects and animals into human form and people into animals. She says that the
faces of Blackmans schoolgirls often resemble the smiling spider in Redons
drawings and their legs are angular and insect like. The ballooning hats of the school
girls move toward infinity like the strange eye balloon of Redon. Redons later works
involving women with flowers were also influential on Blackmans girls with flowers
works.
Thomas Shapcott quotes Blackman who refers to the powerful influence that
Australian poet John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942) had upon the development of the
schoolgirl series.
It wasnt until I started painting schoolgirls that Sunday Reed showed me John
Shaw Neilsons poetry about schoolgirls. They were full of a kinship, the sort of thing
that I was painting fitted in with it perfectly.
John Shaw Neilson was semi blind and so Blackman had an obvious affinity with this
condition. Although Neilson was semi-blind, he invoked strong visual imagery in his
poetry by using descriptions of colour, which also had an emotional meaning as well.
Blackman was also drawn to the sense of lost innocence of girlhood which often
4cats Gallery

14

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

appeared in John Shaw Neilsons work.


Nadine Amadio in her biography of Blackman, Charles Blackman: The Lost
Domains, refers to the fact that the schoolgirl series had been partly influenced by
Blackmans memories of the story of the tragic murder of a little schoolgirl in 1921.
Schoolgirl Alma Tirtschke was raped and strangled, and her body dumped in a
narrow lane. The murder shocked Melburnians because of its violence. Blackman
said
The jagged savage image that childhood is alone-coloured in a uniform-had a direct
and anguished effect on me.
Blackmans subjects are everyday schoolgirls to whom nothing horrible should
happen, but sometimes does. Interestingly the man who was sentenced and hanged
for Almas murder was innocent and in 2006 was granted a posthumous pardon.
Felicity St John Moore also refers to the unsolved murder of Barbara Blackmans
university friend Barbara Shanks in 1952. St John Moore says this also sows the
seed for the theme of innocent girls and lurking men.

Alice In Wonderland
In 1956 Blackman first heard the story of Alice in
Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll in 1865. Barbara Blackman was listening to it
on a talking book for the blind. Although Blackman had heard mention of the story he
did not actually know what it was about.
The story centres on the seven-year-old Alice, who falls asleep in a meadow, and
dreams that she plunges down a rabbit hole following a white rabbit in a waistcoat.
She finds herself first too large and then too small. She meets strange characters
such as Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the King and Queen of
Hearts. She experiences bizarre adventures and tries to reason in numerous
discussions that do not follow the daylight logic. Finally she loses her temper,
bringing down this dream world and wakes up.
Blackman produced 46 paintings dealing with Alice in Wonderland in a 9 month
period in 1956/1957. They are not illustrations of the story of Alice's journey as such,
but rather his reaction to hearing the story. Most of the paintings feature Alice and
the white rabbit together and draw heavily on the theme of cups and teapots from
the mad hatters tea party.
Barbara Blackman says that Blackman was absolutely struck by it, by the whole
absurdity of it. The brilliant, beautiful image-filled absurdity of the whole book."
Blackman says

4cats Gallery

15

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

"Alice is always that wonderful person who opens the door and takes you with your
mind wherever she goes. You could say its total Surrealism. It's more real than the
life you're actually living.My paintings are all about that surreality, not necessarily
about the actual illustration of the story."
Thomas Shapcott says that Blackmans love of Surrealism was released by Alice.
He says that in these paintings Blackman found complete expression for his own
zany, fun loving brand of logic in a world where teapots and teacups have a life of
their own and where flowers become more expressive than faces. At the same time
as painting Alice in the Boat 1956, (discussed in detail later) Blackman was working
as a night waiter and he was surrounded nightly by the objects that appeared in the
Alice paintings, such as plates, tea cups and table cloths.
Felicity St John Moore says that Blackman was struck by the parallel between Alice
and Barbara, including Barbaras own sense of spatial disorientation due to her
blindness. She says that the Alice series contains a number of Surrealistic motifs
from the Surrealist painters, such as Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst
that Blackman admired. For example in The White Tablecloth 1956, Blackman has
appropriated the image of a fruit dish and a half hidden face from Salvador Dalis
Apparition of a face and fruit dish on a beach 1938.
St John Moore says that Alice is the symbol for Barbara and the white rabbit the
symbol for Blackman. The ever present bouquet of flowers is a symbol of creation
and sex as Barbara was pregnant during the time he painted the Alice series.
In 2004 a controversy was created when Janine Burke, in her book The Heart
Garden, claimed that Sunday Reed was Blackmans inspiration for Alice. The
controversy was reported by Susan Wyndham in the Age in 2004. The Heart Garden
is a biography of Sunday Reed. Burke says that Alice looks like Sunday Reed. It
looks like her with the big blue eyes, the long face, the blonde hair and the flowers,
which was always Sunday's emblem. Barbara Blackman said: "Why would she
want to go out on this limb? I think it's a pretty thin limb. Charles never used anybody
as his model, but I was around him all the time. I was his Alice. I was his image." Art
historian and former NGA director Betty Churcher insists the paintings depict the
young Barbara Blackman with sightless eyes. "They're portraits of Barbara. If you
miss that, you miss a lot about the paintings."
Thomas Shapcott says that the white rabbit is;
Blackmans alter ego, the mischievous figure that mocks and disturbs the
solemnity of Alice in her pretend grown up hostess duties. The irreverent rabbit
keeps popping up at various times in Blackmans later career , like some necessary
spirit of disorder and male fun in a world largely enclosed in the powerful poetry of
the female mysteries.
4cats Gallery

16

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

The Age Art critic, Robert Nelson, writing in 2006 says that
Like the flying cards in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland that rise eerily and
inexplicably from their deck, the figure of Alice pops up in Charles Blackman's
paintings with a sinister energy. It's the head, in particular, hoisted above a
disproportionate ithyphallic neck, that looks so kooky and anomalous: this blonde,
erectile unit, sometimes mounted on a small body, is cast with vacant gaze among
flowers, airborne teacups, self-pouring teapots and animals, familiar as images but
wayward and wanton in their behaviour. Among a chaotic pitter-patter of details and
noisy paint, Alice's head is schematised as a nicely defined tonal egg with pursed
lips, generally riding on the same angle as that set by the stiff shaft of the neck. It
inevitably gives Blackman's Alice a hypnotically goofy look.
Gary Crew, arts reviewer for the Age in 2006 said:
The real beauty of these images is that Blackman's Alice is a human being. She is
capable of being, or becoming, or presenting as, a multiplicity of different personas.
As we all are. Especially in dream. Blackman's Alice is at once a girl and a woman.
She may be frightened, happy, bored, superior or downright cranky.
At the time he painted the Alice paintings Blackman was spending a lot of time with
John Perceval on outdoor painting excursions, particularly to Williamstown.
Blackman admired the work and artistic practises of John Perceval, in particular the
way Perceval could paint in a free and spontaneous way. Blackman says
My Alice paintings were probably the freest paintings that Ive painted. Im not
talking about the images Im talking about the actual way of painting. He was a
wonderfully ecstatic painter, John Perceval, very free and very beautiful. .. The thing
about the Alice paintings is that I would have the experience of watching John and
take that home with me in a kind of way act it out. Its as if I had adopted part of
his nature and this helped to loosen the problems I had always had, by making the
form reflect my inner feelings.
As discussed above, French poet Arthur Rimbaud was a very strong influence on the
development of Blackmans work. One of Rimbauds most famous poems is Le
Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat). Felicity St John Moore refers to this poem as
partial inspiration for the visual imagery created by Blackman in the painting Alice in
the Boat 1956 which is discussed in detail later in this publication. The poem
describes the journey of Rimbaud as a young sailor in a boat. Rimbaud uses the
open sea as a symbol for the freedom he seeks. He experiences the joys of floating
like an aimless cork, of watching amazing waves and moonlit nights on the sea and
wonderful sea creatures. But as he journeys on in the sea he realises he cannot be
4cats Gallery

17

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

alone in the sea left to ponder endlessly about his lost love and the horrors of the
world.

Women with flowers


In the late 1950s Blackman started another unique
series of works which usually featured a woman or girl holding flowers. He made use
of darker colours and heightened the chiaroscuro effect in his works. Perhaps the
most widely known of this series of work is a painting titled The Presentation 1959.
A small girl/woman is positioned in a burning red background holding a bunch of
white flowers as if she is making an offering to someone. One half of her face and
body is heavily shaded and similar to many of the works of this period the figure
almost has a double image, a positive and a negative. The eyes are shadowy and
lifeless which is a reference to Barbara Blackmans blindness. These images focus
on touching, holding, embracing and turning their bodies to hear, just as Barbara
Blackman without sight would have done. Blackman was heavily influenced by
Odilon Redons works of women with flowers.

Beach Scenes
Blackman had a long fascination with Australian beach
culture. Some of his earliest exhibited works were a drawing of a contorted swimmer
off St Kilda Pier, The Swimmer 1952 and a painting of a man with grotesque blind
eyes and short limbs floating off St Kilda pier called The Floating Man 1952. The
Alice painting, Alice in the Boat 1956 was partly based on observation from one of
Blackmans many drawing expeditions at Williamstown to observe the bay and boat
life. Blackman painted a number of works around lifesavers and the semi heroic
culture of the life saving club, such as Lifesavers Bondi 1967. Thomas Shapcott
says these works are significant to Blackman because he starts to explore the
imagery of the crowd which he had rarely done before. The painting Evening at
Ettalong 1969 contains 17 figures fishing, playing and exercising on the beach.
Shapcott says,
The sunny hedonism of Sydney pervades these works, the child images are closer
to the cut out energies of Matisse than to the fraught dreamings of earlier works.
Blackmans beach paintings have been quietly documenting in a resonant and
memorable way whole territories of Australian beach life that with hindsight we can
recognize as a notably vivid contribution to this important aspect of Australian life.

The white cat in the garden


In these works completed in the late 1960s
and through the 1970s, an elegant white cat sits in lush garden settings. Thomas
Shapcott describes the gardens as expansive and celebrative patternings of
individual leaf and flower. He says that in these works Blackman loses much of his
doubts and uncertainties that exist in his earlier works and the white cat is a symbol
of serenity and the garden a symbol of the everyday miracle of life. These works are
playful and buoyant.

4cats Gallery

18

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Dream of the Canecutter This is a series of paintings completed in 1982.


The 20 paintings in this series relate to a story created by Blackman of a migrant
Italian canecutter in the Queensland canefields. The canecutter falls asleep in the
canefields and in his dream an angel finds him. Together they revisit Italy and the
scenes of the paintings of Italian masters such as Piero della Francesca, Botticelli,
Titian and Tintoretto. For example in the painting Dream of the canecutter-Passing
Angels 1982, Blackman paints the dome of a cathedral and two passing angels
sourced from work by Piero della Francesca. These paintings are very serene and
soft. Blackman says
The reason why the paintings in this series are so soft and expressive is that I have
always loved the paintings that I have referred to in this series. Here was an excuse
for me to actually express my deep affection for the pre-Renaissance paintersThe
Canecutters dream paintings were painted with a lot of untroubled ease.
At the time of this series Blackman was living in Buderim Queensland near sugar
canefields.

Orpheus
In 1983 Blackman completed a series of work called the
Orpheus paintings. These paintings were an extension of a series of drawings he
had completed for the book, Orpheus-the song of forever, written by his friend
Nadine Amadio. According to mythology, Orpheus was the son of Apollo. He was a
poet and musician and it was said that Orpheus could play the lyre so well that he
could charm wild beasts and even make trees and rocks move with his music.
Amadios book is a fairy tale about a contemporary Orpheus which stresses the
theme of the eternal struggle of the creative spirit. The Orpheus paintings consist of
large scale figures of Orpheus.

Rainforest In the 1980s Blackman was commissioned by the Christensen


Fund to complete a major series of drawings and paintings. Blackman began with
the theme of the rainforest. He studied the Daintree rainforest in northern
Queensland. Many of these works feature the theme of the rainforest as a cathedral
and trees arch into the sky to create a cathedral like canopy and the viewer looks up
to the canopy of the rainforest as if looking up at the heavens. Blackman was
motivated by a genuine desire to preserve the environment. He liked the symbol of
the cathedral because he says that people protect and preserve cathedrals, whereas
with rainforests we have no respect. He decided to combine the cathedral with the
rainforest to convince people that they are one and the same, religious objects and
living museums. At the same time Blackman explored a series of works specifically
relating to rainforest butterflies and insects.

4cats Gallery

19

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

THE AESTHETIC QUALITIES AND THE DISTINCTIVE STYLE FOUND IN


CHARLES BLACKMANS ART WORK
Distinctive style is a way of describing the aspects of an artists work that give it a
distinctive look or style which a viewer can recognise as belonging to a particular
artist. In general as a viewer learns more about an artist they can usually pick up
several aspects of the artists work which give it its trademark look. Distinctive style
is created by Blackman in his work by the combination of the following aesthetic
qualities.
 Subject Matter Blackman is a figurative artist and usually features girls and
women in sad, vulnerable or introspective situations. The schoolgirl figure, the Alice
figure and the female figure holding flowers are particularly distinctive to Blackman.
The way his figures often have their eyes closed or stare blankly represents his
empathy with blindness. His figures are often touching or holding an object which
emphasises touch more than sight. There is a stillness in most of Blackmans figures
and they are often pictorially represented as seated or standing still.
 Use of Colour Blackman generally uses strong high key colours, such as blue
and red surrounded by darker black tones. His colour can be pure and intense, but
more often it is blended to create strong tonal contrasts. Pure colour is often dabbed
on to highlight the intensity of eyes, flowers and pieces of clothing in his works.
Colour creates pattern in many of Blackmans works such as The Chequered Dress
1963 or Stargazer 1955.
Tone
Blackman almost always uses tone to model the shape of faces,
figures and objects. In both his drawings and paintings, Blackman is a master of
tone. Variations in light and dark of one colour are used to model form, create line
and to create mood. Arts writer, Bernard Smith says that, by combining tonal
illusionism with forceful rudimentary images and rich resonant colour, Blackman has
created a personal art form of great expressive power. In the schoolgirl works
Blackman uses extensive tone in creating the shapes of the schoolgirl hats and the
tunics. In the Alice paintings extensive application of tone is used to model the forms
of Alice and the white rabbit and the numerous cups and saucers and bottles. Art
critic Robert Nelson for example describes Alices head in the Alice paintings as a
nicely defined tonal egg.
 Colour & Tonal Contrasts Blackman has a distinctive way of using contrasting
areas of colour and tone generally between light and dark colours to create mood
and a shadowy depth to his work. Felicity St John Moore says that at the core of
Blackmans art lies a duality.; a duality of dark and light, harshness and beauty,
mysterious expression and pure plastic substance. The colour and tone of
Blackmans figures are often strongly contrasted with the background colours and
4cats Gallery

20

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

tones. Blackman often painted dark lines around figures. This often emphasises the
cut out, child like quality of the figure against the background colours. This occurs in
the Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953 which is discussed later. Light and dark contrasts
are used extensively by Blackman in the schoolgirl series which emphasise the
contrast between innocence and danger and goodness and evil. In Schoolgirl at
Kooyong 1953 the predominant colours are azure blue and a contrasting rose pink.
Blue represents masculinity and aggression and pink suggests innocent girlish
femininity. Felicity St John Moore says that the faces of Blackman figures are often
carved out in shadow.

Detail Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953

 Expressionism Blackmans style of art has a distinctive Expressionistic


appearance. Blackmans art is described as Expressionistic because the image of
reality is somewhat distorted in form and colour in order to make it expressive of
Blackmans inner feelings or ideas. In Expressionist art colour in particular can be
highly intense and non-naturalistic, brushwork is typically free and paint application
tends to be generous and highly textured. Expressionist art tends to be emotional. In
keeping with Expressionism Blackman is known for his speed of painting and his
desire for quick compositions. His brush stokes are often rough and thinly painted.
Blackman tended to block in large areas of colour very speedily. Blackman often
relies on a high horizon line in his compositions. This creates distance and a sense
of depth and adds to the nave Expressionistic style of his work. Blackman often
uses colour in his works in the semi abstract way which is characteristic of
Expressionism. Skin tones often match the colours and tones of the surrounding
landscape and sky. For example in Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953 the girls rose pink
skin tone matches the colour in much of the foreground and background objects.
Blackmans art often borrows from Surrealist influences, particularly in the Schoolgirl
and Alice paintings where objects and figures are distorted and figures and objects
often float or fly in space. The shape and form of the schoolgirl, Alice and the white
rabbit are exaggerated. The schoolgirl has stick like legs and arms and an enlarged
head. The faces, if visible are rounded and the eyes appear large and the mouth just
a line. They usually wear an enlarged mushroom shaped hat with a band and a
strongly defined pleated tunic. The shapes of the forms in the Alice series are also
distorted to emphasise the Surrealistic and topsy turvy world of Alice.
4cats Gallery

21

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

THE RELEVANCE OF HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT ON THE WORK


OF CHARLES BLACKMAN
Under this discussion point a student needs to be aware of the cultural and historic
events which were occurring at the time the artist made their works and the
influences that these events had on the creation of those works. In particular we will
focus on the historical and cultural context of the 1950s when Blackman created the
Schoolgirl and Alice works.
John and Sunday Reed and the Heide Group The art world in Melbourne in
the 1950s was highly influenced by John and Sunday Reed who lived at what is now
Heide Museum. The Reeds were very supportive of artists. They supported the
careers of artists like Sidney Nolan, John Perceval and Joy Hester. Blackman
became part of the Heide circle and was influenced by the Reeds in several ways.
Sunday Reed introduced him to the poetry of John Shaw Neilson which became an
important ongoing influence in the development of the schoolgirl series of works. The
Reeds had an extensive library which gave him access to the French writers he was
fond of such as Rimbaud. Sunday Reed took an active interest in the materials and
techniques Blackman was using as well as the subject matter of his works. Felicity
St John Moore quotes Barbara Blackman who says When Sunday saw a convincing
gush of paintings she would insert a small gift of money into the works. The Reeds
provided fresh eggs for Blackmans tempera that he used in the Alice paintings.
They also purchased Alice 1956, The Bouquet 1956 and The Shoe 1956 from the
first exhibition of the Alice paintings. Felicity St Moore says that Blackman includes
the Reeds in his Alice paintings by symbolic references.
The Angry Penguins and the Antipodeans In the 1950s Blackman was
connected to several of the most famous Australian artists of the decade, through
his involvement with groups such as the Angry Penguins and the Antipodeans.
These painters such as Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker
and Robert Dickerson were all figurative Expressionist painters like Blackman.
Blackman visited their studios and learnt from them. Artists such as Sidney Nolan
and Albert Tucker influenced Blackman to develop his work around a story or
narrative such as the Schoolgirl and the Alice in Wonderland series. Nolan and
Tucker were having great success with their work which was based on a narrative
that ran through the work. For Nolan it was Ned Kelly and for Albert Tucker it was
his Night series. Barbara Blackman in referring to the Antipodeans says that
Geography as well as history united them. Isolated as they were from the art of the
past, the great modern galleries of Europe and America, they turned to each other
to see new original paintings and to examine new mediums. For example, as stated
above, John Perceval was highly influential in the development of Blackmans
painting style in the Alice paintings.

4cats Gallery

22

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Melbourne in the 1950s


Felicity St John Moore says that a common theme
running through the thoughts of artists like Blackman, Boyd, Nolan and Perceval
was that they all recognised themselves as outsiders who needed to define for
themselves who and what they were. The Australian cultural scene of the 1950s
was dominated by the conservative Anglo-Saxon culture of the time. Artists like
Blackman who referred to French literature and poetry were considered Bohemian
and strange. Australia was experiencing a post World War Two economic boom.
Thomas Shapcott says that Blackmans schoolgirls are often set against a
background of harsh industrial buildings which were a symptom of the massive
growth in industry in Melbourne in the 1950s. He calls it a territory of brutal
symbols, power without pause. Even the warfare of the playground has not
prepared them for the terrible commonplace of growth, and its betrayals. Shapcott
says that Blackman is a master of making houses and buildings emotionally
fraught. Blackman reduces these architectural aspects to space, line and shadow.
In the 1950s social attitudes towards children and adolescents were different from
today. Children were largely to be seen and not heard. The world of children and
their private thoughts and fantasies had never really been examined in Australian art
before. Blackmans Schoolgirl series was unique in the sense that the schoolgirls
were the primary subject matter. In the 1950s school uniforms were more formal and
dress codes rigidly enforced. Schoolgirls were always required to wear their hats in
public and this was symbolised by Blackman in his hatted schoolgirls. Whilst most
of the schoolgirls appear vulnerable, some are presented as mischievous and even
predatory. What is interesting about Blackmans schoolgirls from an historical
context is that they often appear alone or in pairs walking down deserted streets and
laneways. In modern Australia children are collected from schools and much more
protected from strangers than in the 1950s. Children of today are very aware of
stranger danger and parents are very aware of the potential dangers to their
children. In the 1950s issues such as paedophilia and child sex abuse were rarely
discussed publicly. Blackman in his schoolgirl series is really highlighting how
vulnerable these schoolgirls were. To the 1950s viewer these works would have
presented some uncomfortable truths about their own society which they probably
did not want to discuss or be reminded about.
Blackmans life in the 1950s When Blackman started creating the Schoolgirl
series in the early 1950s he often worked as an odd jobs gardener. On his way to
and from work he would see schoolgirls and this inspired his series. He says It was
the atmosphere of Melbourne, the trams going through Hawthorn or Moonee Ponds.
At dusk you saw all these little schoolgirls catching a tram."
Blackman has said that he saw in the schoolgirls a symbol for his own sense of
loneliness and isolation at the time.

4cats Gallery

23

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

The schoolgirl pictures had a lot to do with fear: A lot to do with my isolation as a
person and my quite paranoid fears of loneliness. These images are very obsessive
with a kind of Freudian anguish.
Arts writer, Felicity St John Moore in referring to the Schoolgirl series says that:
Feelings such as guilt, fear, sexuality and violence are represented voyeuristically
through the adolescent and metamorphic (mushroom hatted) figures of anonymous
schoolgirls located in timeless settings. Their school uniforms - aside from their real
life origin in the Hawthorn environment - evoke ambiguity and androgyny that are the
stuff of symbolist and Surrealist art and literature
Blackman is a small man and Felicity St John Moore makes frequent reference to his
small build as a cause of masculine anxiety for him. The fact that he was partly
reliant on Barbaras income at this time would not have done a lot for his male pride.
As indicated above, artists were outsiders in Melbourne society in the 1950s and he
was struggling to establish himself as an artist at this time. Barbaras blindness
would also have caused them difficulties. It is no wonder that Blackman was feeling
alone and vulnerable at this time.
In 1956 when the Alice paintings were started by Blackman he was working as a
night waiter. Blackman says that; I went to work in a restaurant at 5PM that finished
at 12 and then came home and my head was full of spinning plates and teacups and
Barbara would say I brought the rabbit into the restaurant at night and it would help
me do the work and the next day I would paint it all. The restaurant came into my
paintings. For example in Alice Tall 1956, Alice is painted wearing an apron worn
by the waitresses at the restaurant. Felicity St John Moore says that in1956
restaurants were prohibited from serving wine or alcohol. Accordingly to get around
this, restaurants would serve alcohol in tea or coffee cups. According to St John
Moore, in some of the Alice paintings the teacups have a wine red interior which she
says is Blackman referring to prohibition. When the Olympic Games were being held
in Melbourne in 1956, the normal prohibition on restaurants serving wine was
relaxed. In the painting The White Tablecloth 1956, the red wine is pouring itself
into a wine glass, which suggests this freedom to serve alcohol that was probably
occurring in the restaurant at the time this painting was completed.
At the time Blackman was painting the Alice paintings Barbara Blackman was
pregnant with their first child. It was a time of great change for the Blackmans
because Barbara had to give up her job as a life model which strained the family
finances. Blackman refers to Barbaras pregnancy in several ways in the Alice
paintings. For example the appearance of an Alice in Wonderland type medicine
bottle refers to the indigestion Barbara suffered during pregnancy and the fact that it
made her burp. Felicity St John Moore says that in Blackmans Alice paintings, the
4cats Gallery

24

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

vase of flowers symbolises the act of creation, fertility and sexual desire between
Blackman and Barbara.

Expressionism versus Abstraction In the1950s and early1960s Blackmans


form of figurative Expressionism was considered fashionable and contemporary.
However, in the mid 1960s, the Australian art world was embracing the challenge of
abstract minimalist art. Art academics swayed by international opinions, started to
accept this new style of painting. Artists were praised for removing as much of
themselves and their own subjective ideas from their art work. Figures and objects
were removed from art and abstraction reigned supreme. High art theory of the time
was all about letting the viewer create their own objective ideas and meanings.
The emphasis in art criticism at the time was about how colour looked on a canvas
or how paint was applied to a canvas. The artists meanings or messages were
generally irrelevant. For example in 1968 art critic Patrick McCaughey criticised
Blackmans work as banal and lame and largely created without thought and too
much speed. During the 1970s Blackmans work was out of favour with the critics. It
also coincided with a period of personal crisis for Blackman with his increasing
alienation from Barbara culminating in their divorce.
In the late 1970s the international art world started to reject the cold, empty abstract
minimalist works of the 1960s and 1970s and personal expression by the artist
came back into favour. Expressionism was popular again. Critics started looking at
Blackmans works with new eyes and public galleries started taking more interest in
purchasing his paintings and drawings as part of their collections.

4cats Gallery

25

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

CHAPTER FOUR ANALYSIS OF 2 SELECTED ART WORKS USING


THE KEY DISCUSSION POINTS
TITLE: Schoolgirl at Kooyong
DATE: 1953
MEDIA: Oil based enamel on composition board
DIMENSIONS: 63 x 75 cm
COLLECTION: Private Collection

Charles Blackman Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007.

4cats Gallery

26

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

SCHOOLGIRL AT KOOYONG 1953


THE INTERPRETATION OF SUBJECT MATTER
The interpretation of subject matter is a key discussion point which requires a
student to analyse the subject matter or objects contained in the art work. A
discussion of the subject matter includes a discussion of what appears in the work
such as a portrait, a figure, a landscape or still life for example. Artists do not work to
a formula and often works contain a mixture of subject matter for example a portrait
and a landscape and so on. Other works like abstract art works may have no
evidence of identifiable subject matter and without prior knowledge of the artists
intentions it would be difficult to interpret an invisible subject. The interpretation of
subject matter in Schoolgirl at Kooyong is relatively straightforward as the subject
matter is obvious to the viewer.
The subject matter in this painting is a schoolgirl walking along a footpath which is
bounded by a picket fence. Just behind the picket fence is a row of what look to be
rose bushes and flowers. Further in the distance is the Kooyong tennis stadium and
beyond that an open field with several buildings in the far horizon.
An interpretation of the subject matter in Schoolgirl at Kooyong is assessed
through observation and an understanding of what was motivating Blackman to
paint this work. Schoolgirl at Kooyong relates directly to Blackmans personal life,
emotions and influences. The painting has an eerie haunting quality about it and is
essentially about isolation and vulnerability.
The painting tells a story of a schoolgirl about 12 years old walking to or from school
in the vicinity of the Kooyong Tennis stadium in Melbourne. The girl is positioned in
the centre of the foreground and she is facing leftwards. The girls feet are obscured
and we can only see above her ankles at the bottom of the canvas. Her face, under
her big mushroom shaped hat is exactly centre of the composition. The girls face is
down turned and under her large school hat we can only see her pointy nose, full left
cheek and a little line for a mouth. The girl is painted wearing a tunic or pleated skirt
with an over jacket or blazer. The girls legs are thin sticks. The girl is clasping her
hands and gives the impression she is deep in thought on her way to or from school.
Blackman has painted a row of vertical shapes with pointed tops to represent a
picket fence. These shapes are painted vertically along a 45 degree angle which
rises from the left foreground to the centre right of the composition. In the left
foreground only the pointed tops of the picket shape are visible. As we pass across
from left to right the picket shapes become fully visible in the centre foreground and
then rising to the centre right. A triangular space below the ascending pickets is
created in the right foreground and this constitutes the footpath that the girl is
walking along. Blackman has painted lines across this triangular space to represent
4cats Gallery

27

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

cracks in the footpath. In the row of ascending picket shapes Blackman has inserted
a section of white curly decorative lines to represent a lattice style gate.
The girl is positioned in front of the picket shapes which are about the height of the
girls waist. The way Blackman has angled the pickets on a 45 degree plane means
that as the viewer we get the sensation that we are looking at the girl from a side
frontal position as if we are about to pass her in a car or tram going in the opposite
direction. The viewer is in an elevated position because we cannot see the bottom of
her feet which suggests that this is a view of the girl from a tram or big car. It might
also suggest a side long glance at the girl from a much taller pedestrian going in the
opposite direction of the girl.
In the immediate space behind the ascending pickets, Blackman has painted plant
and flower shapes to represent what look like pink roses.
In the centre ground behind the girl, the picket fence and the rosebushes, Blackman
has painted a series of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines and bands of solid
colour to create the impression of the hexagonal shaped (six sided) Kooyong tennis
stadium. The stadium is empty of people and suggests loneliness and desolation.
Beyond the imposing shape of the stadium is a dry, lonely looking landscape with
only a few trees. Behind this is a solidly painted bright blue horizon with several
phallic shaped buildings silhouetted against the horizon.
Blackman was inspired to paint schoolgirls because he saw them as symbols of
vulnerability and innocence. He felt that the schoolgirl image paralleled his own
experiences of aloneness and vulnerability. He would often see them around the
Hawthorn area where he lived catching trams or walking to school. The domestic
cosy feel of the lattice fence and the sweet feminine feel of the roses in the
foreground matches the girls inward innocent composure. This contrasts heavily
with the masculine geometry of the stadium and the big wide dangerous world on
the open plains. The fact that the viewer is looking at the girl from the perspective of
perhaps a passing tram or perhaps as a passing pedestrian gives the viewer a
sense of danger. Because of her downward face and thoughtful pose, Blackman
perhaps is suggesting that the girl is not aware of who is watching her and is
ignorant of the dangers that could be lurking.

4cats Gallery

28

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

SCHOOLGIRL AT KOOYONG 1953


A DISCUSSION OF THE AESTHETIC QUALITIES
Meaning and messages can often be derived from how the art work looks or how it
has been put together by the artist. A discussion of the aesthetic qualities includes
a discussion of the formal elements such as the use of colour, tone, texture, shape,
line and aspects of the composition which relate to things such as scale, balance,
proportion, movement and contrast.
Schoolgirl at Kooyong measures 63 cm high and 75 cm wide. It is a relatively
small scaled painting for Blackman. The scale of Blackmans drawings and paintings
is not consistent. His exhibited paintings range in size from approximately 50 x 50
cm up to Blackmans largest painting An Australian Picnic 1979 which measures
193 x 426 cm. The average scale of a Blackman painting would be approximately
100 x 100 cm.
The dominant aesthetic qualities in Schoolgirl at Kooyong are colour, tone, line
shape, space, contrast and emphasis.
Blackman has used a colour palette which arts writer Felicity St John Moore says is
primarily rose pink and azure blue. The dominating blue of the stadium and the sky
contrasts with the pink tones of the girls face and her uniform and the footpath and
the fence. This suggests gender symbolism in that pink is used to emphasise the
soft feminine aspects of the girl whereas blue is used to contrast the aggressive
male world.
Blackman has used a wide range of tonal variations in these colours to create forms
in the work. For example the girls face is painted in light pink to represent the light
hitting her face with orange tones to represent shadow areas on her jaw line. Her
face, under her hat is exactly centre of the composition, which suggests that
Blackman wants to create the girls face as a point of emphasis or as a focal point.
Her tunic is painted in stripes of colour ranging from light pink to orange with each
stripe bounded by a dark line to emphasise the pleats of the skirt. Her hat is painted
in white with dark blue tones to represent shaded areas. The open landscape in the
background has been painted in pink with tonal variations of yellow and orange. This
gives the open landscape a harsh, inhospitable feel.
Blackman uses line and shape extensively in this painting to create the eerie mood..
The schoolgirls large mushroomed shaped hat is a signature feature of all
Blackmans schoolgirls. The sharp pointy edges of the picket fence look like the
biting teeth of a saw and symbolise aggression and violence. The blue/black lines
painted in the pink footpath symbolise a childs dread at the dangers of standing on
4cats Gallery

29

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

cracks for fear that evil will follow. The schoolgirl is looking down at the ground and
perhaps she is trying to avoid standing on the cracks. Blackman is symbolising that
there is more danger for her in the real world. The curly lines of the lattice gate on
first glance seem to suggest domesticity and comfort. However, they could also
represent danger to the girl if she passed through the gate into the bigger world. The
curly tendril like shapes of the rose bush suggests eroticism. The pink roses dotted
along the fence look suspiciously like the apple from the Garden of Eden which Eve
plucked for Adam and for which they were cast out. Perhaps this symbolises that
there are many temptations for the innocent girl in this evil world and the girl could
easily succumb to these by simply plucking a rose as she passes by. It is not clear
from the painting, but it is possible that the girl is actually clasping a rose in her hand
and looking down at it.
In the centre ground, Blackman has painted a series of horizontal, vertical and
diagonal lines and bands of solid colour to create the impression of the hexagonal
shaped (six sided) Kooyong tennis stadium. This structure dominates most of the
centre of the painting. Blackman creates the illusion that the viewer is in an elevated
position (aerial perspective) and can partly see the inside of the stadium and the
centre court, with its tiered bench seating. The stadium is painted in blue for the
walls and supports of the stadium and rose pinks for the bench seating. The stadium
is empty of people and suggests loneliness and desolation.
Some of the buildings silhouetted on the horizon have a menacing phallic shape. In
particular one building that is painted in pink looks very much like an erect penis.
This building as a phallic symbol could represent the dangers of lurking male
sexuality to an innocent virginal young schoolgirl.
Blackman has relied heavily on the concept of overlapping of objects in this painting
to provide the strong sense of depth of space that appears. Overlapping occurs
when we perceive objects overlapping other objects as closer than the covered
object. In this painting the girl overlaps the fence, the fence overlaps the roses, the
roses overlap the stadium and the stadium overlaps the background.
The way Blackman has painted this composition means that as the viewer we get
the sensation that we are looking at the girl from a side frontal position as if we are
about to pass her in a car or tram going in the opposite direction. It might also
suggest a side long glance at the girl from a much taller pedestrian going in the
opposite direction of the girl along the footpath. This perspective may symbolise
male voyeurism. Because of her downward face and thoughtful pose, Blackman
perhaps is suggesting that the girl is not aware of who is watching her and is
ignorant of the dangers that could be lurking.
Blackmans art is described as Expressionistic because the image of reality is
4cats Gallery

30

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

somewhat distorted in form and colour in order to make it expressive of Blackmans


inner feelings or ideas. In Expressionist art, colour in particular can be highly intense
and non-naturalistic, brushwork is typically free and paint application tends to be
generous and highly textured. Expressionist art tends to be emotional and
sometimes mystical. In Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman has certainly used bold
colour which is not entirely realistic. He has also used expressive loose brush
strokes. The form of the schoolgirl is exaggerated and the painting certainly
expresses Blackmans personal feelings.

4cats Gallery

31

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

SCHOOLGIRL AT KOOYONG 1953


THE USE OF MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
This key discussion point requires a student to analyse the use of materials and
techniques present in the production of an art work. A student would begin by
outlining the materials the artist has applied, for example the type of paint used and
the surface material used. Secondly, a student would discuss the various
techniques and processes applied by the artist, for example tonal painting or textural
effects. Finally, an interpretation of materials and techniques involves a discussion
of how the artist has combined his use materials and techniques to enhance the art
work.
To produce Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman has used a piece of composition
board measuring approximately 63 cm by 75 cm.
Blackman has used enamel based paint in this work. Blackman created his own mix
of paint based on pigments he sourced from ICI mixed with a domestic brand of
enamel house paint. He also added extenders which lighten or darken the
pigment. Blackman liked enamel paint because it dried overnight and was much
easier to work with than traditional oil paints which took much longer to dry.
The brushes that Blackman probably used for this painting would have included
ordinary artist brushes. Blackman is known to create line in his paintings by incising
the surface with the sharp end of his brush handle. This could have occurred in this
painting, particularly in the pleats of the girls tunic, in the shapes of the pickets and
in the foliage of the rose bushes.
Blackman is known for his speed in painting and his desire for quick compositions.
His brush stokes are often rough and thinly painted. This is indeed the case in
Schoolgirl at Kooyong, although the application of paint varies in this painting. The
tiered seating of the stadium has been painted loosely and you can see how the
paint varies in thickness with some areas being thin and incomplete as the
brushstroke runs out of paint. The pickets in the fence are roughly painted.
Blackman has painted the roses with little daubs of thick paint. The open area in the
background looks like it was originally yellow but has been roughly overpainted in
the pink tones to match the rest of the pink in the composition. This is most evident
in the paint area between the rose in the top right hand corner and the light pole
further to the left. The picket fence looks like one band of white paint where
Blackman has then applied the lines of the pickets and overpainted them in pink
tones. In contrast to the rest of the surface, the blue sky and the blue walls of the
Kooyong stadium have been painted carefully and smoothly. Blackman tended to
block in large areas of colour very speedily and this seems most evident in the
footpath.
4cats Gallery

32

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

Blackman appears to have applied a wash in several parts of this painting. He would
probably have diluted the paint mixture with turpentine. This effect appears in the
foliage of one of the trees on the horizon and in some of the foliage of the rose bush
and in the shadows the rosebush is casting on the picket fence.
In Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman shows his skills as a tonal painter. In virtually
all of the composition except for the sky Blackman has applied tone to create form
and to create the harsh biting light of the sun. Blackmans use of tone is relatively
rough and he has generally applied the paint in loose quick strokes. Despite his
loose Expressionistic style of painting, Blackman has succeeded in creating a
striking contrast between the childlike, inward looking innocence of the girl and the
masculine hardness of the wider world.

4cats Gallery

33

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

SCHOOLGIRL AT KOOYONG 1953


THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DISTINCTIVE STYLE
This key discussion point refers to a discussion of an artists distinctive or unique
combination of subject matter, aesthetic qualities, materials and techniques and
their influences. In other words what are the things in this work that let us know that
this is a painting by Charles Blackman?
Schoolgirl at Kooyong is a signature work for Blackman. We can tell that it
contains Blackmans distinctive style for a number of reasons. The main subject is a
schoolgirl wearing her characteristic mushroomed shaped hat. The schoolgirl is an
iconic subject for Blackman and this work is from his famous Schoolgirl series. The
schoolgirl who appears introspective and vulnerable in a harsh or exposed
environment is a classic example of the way Blackman depicted the schoolgirl to
symbolise his own sense of loneliness and vulnerability. The buildings and
structures in Schoolgirl at Kooyong have a menacing dangerous quality which is
distinctive of Blackmans schoolgirl series. The picket fence is like the biting jagged
edge of a saw. The Kooyong stadium is massive and empty and the buildings in the
background are menacing and gloomy. As Thomas Shapcott says, part of
Blackmans distinctive style is that he is a master of making houses and buildings
emotionally fraught. Blackman reduces these architectural aspects to space, line
and shadow.. It is a territory of brutal symbols.
In both his drawings and paintings, Blackman is a master of tone. Variations in light
and dark of one colour are used to model form, create line and to create mood. This
painting is a good example of Blackmans distinctive tonal illusionism. Almost every
object or figure has tonal modelling.
Blackman has a distinctive way of using contrasting areas of colour, generally
between light and dark colours to create mood and a shadowy depth to his work. In
Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman has used two main contrasting colours, rose pink
and azure blue. Blue represents masculinity and aggression and pink suggests
innocent girlish femininity. Felicity St John Moore says that the faces of Blackman
figures are often carved out in shadow. The pointy little face of the girl is almost
carved out of the dark colours used to represent shadow under her hat and neck.
Blackman has painted a black line around the girl which as St John Moore says
emphasizes the cut out, child like quality of the figure. The pink phallic shaped
building on the horizon contrasts heavily with the blue sky. The girls white hat is a
focal point in the contrasting blue and pink palette. The green foliage of the rose
bushes contrasts heavily with the arid pink orange tones of the background.
Blackmans style of art, particularly his works from the 1950s and 1960s has a
distinctive Expressionistic appearance. In Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman uses
4cats Gallery

34

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

colour in a semi abstract way. The girls rose pink skin tone matches the colour in
much of the foreground and background objects. In an Expressionistic manner
Blackman has painted Schoolgirl at Kooyong in a rough and loose manner.
Blackmans art often borrows from Surrealist influences. The shape and form of the
schoolgirl is exaggerated from reality. The schoolgirl has stick like legs and arms and
an enlarged head. Her face is rounded and her mouth just a tiny line. The girls hat is
exaggerated in size. Blackman was influenced by French artist Odilon Redon.
Felicity St John Moore says that Redons work influenced Blackman to transform
objects and animals into human form and people into animals. She says that the
faces of Blackmans schoolgirls often resemble the smiling spider in Redons
drawings and their legs are angular and insect like. This is indeed the case with the
schoolgirl in Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953. St John Moore also says that the
ballooning hats of the school girls are like the strange eye balloon of Redon.

4cats Gallery

35

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN
TITLE:
DATE:
MEDIA:
DIMENSIONS:
COLLECTION:

Born 1928
Alice in the Boat
1956
Tempera & oil based enamel on hardboard
120.6 x 132.2 cm
Private Collection

Charles Blackman Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007.

4cats Gallery

36

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

ALICE IN THE BOAT 1956


THE INTERPRETATION OF SUBJECT MATTER
The interpretation of subject matter is a key discussion point which requires a
student to analyse the subject or objects contained in an art work. A discussion of
the subject matter in Alice in the Boat is relatively straightforward as the subject
matter is obvious to the viewer. This painting belongs to Blackmans famous Alice in
Wonderland series of paintings which he based on the Alice in Wonderland story. In
Alice in the Boat, as he did in most of the Alice paintings, Blackman features Alice
and the white rabbit. An interpretation of the subject matter in Alice in the Boat is
assessed through observation and an understanding of what was motivating
Blackman to paint this work. Alice in the Boat relates directly to Blackmans
personal life, emotions and influences. The painting has a surreal dreamy quality
and is essentially about Blackmans thoughts about becoming a father for the first
time to a wife who is blind.
The painting consists of a seascape scene with a white open row boat placed
centrally in the composition. The boat in Alice in the Boat has no rudder or oars
which suggest the boat is floating randomly. The sea and the sky are in blue tones
ranging from dark blue in the foreground to a light grey blue in the skyline. The exact
horizon line between sky and sea is hard to determine because Blackman has used
several bands of similar tone in the vicinity of the horizon which would appear to be
somewhere in the centre of the canvas.
The helm of the boat appears on the left hand side of the composition and the bow
of the boat appears on the right hand side. Blackman has angled the planes of the
boat to create the visual illusion that we are looking across at the boat from a
position about halfway between the rear and the right hand side of the boat. Moving
from left to right across the composition we see a white rabbit with extremely long
ears sitting in the helm of the boat. The rabbit is painted in tones of almost pure
white to grey. The viewer cannot see the face of the white rabbit.
Next we see a large black/brown teapot with a red nipple spout spurting out a trail of
white matter. Further right there is a large blue vase in the shape of a womans torso
filled with a mass of brightly coloured flowers which slightly overlaps the teapot.
Blackman has used tones of red, green, purple, lilac, yellow and blue to represent
the flowers. The positioning of the vase and flowers in the centre of the composition
creates a focal point and also adds to the dreamy nonsensical feel to this painting.
Next there is a brown coloured container with an orange label and a cork stopper in
its neck. It looks like a medicine bottle from which Alice in Wonderland would have
drunk from. The base of the container is not fully painted and appears to float.

4cats Gallery

37

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

To the right of the bottle sits Alice with a long neck, impassive eyes and long straight
yellow hair. She is only visible in the boat from the neck up. Her face is painted in a
pink/grey tone and she has a very long flat nose with a slash of deep red for lips. Her
large eyes are heavily lidded in a blue/black eyeliner. Art critic Robert Nelson
describes Alice as having a hypnotically goofy look with her disproportionately long
neck and staring blank eyes. Propped under Alices neck at the stern of the boat is a
bright blue teacup which leans precariously along the bow of the boat as if it is about
to fall. Blackman has manipulated the scale and the positioning of the objects in this
painting to give it a dreamy Surrealistic feel.
The boat casts a strangely shaped green reflection in the water in the foreground.
Felicity St John Moore says that the boat is a white tub with an apron of green
reflection that keeps the boat afloat and unknown gulfs at bay. In the immediate
foreground Blackman has loosely painted strokes of colour to represent the
reflections in the water cast by the figures in the boat.
At the time Blackman painted Alice in the Boat, Barbara Blackman was pregnant
with their first child. She was also legally blind. Alices blank staring eyes in Alice in
the Boat parallel Barbaras blindness. In all the Alice paintings Alice represents
Barbara. Barbara Blackman was also in hospital with a thrombosis on her leg during
the time Alice in the Boat was painted. Perhaps the boat in Alice in the Boat is
Blackmans way of liberating Barbara from her inability to move at this time. Arts
writer Felicity St John Moore says that the objects in the boat such as the teapot with
the nipple spout and the vase of bright flowers all represent sexuality, fertility and the
nurturing of the new baby. The medicine bottle represents the changing shape of
Barbaras pregnant body and is a direct reference to the medicine bottle in Alice in
Wonderland where Alice drank from it and changed size. The white rabbit in the boat
with its long ears represents Blackman. As Blackmans biographer Thomas Shapcott
says, the white rabbit is Blackmans alter ego, the mischievous figure that mocks
and disturbs the solemnity of Alice in her pretend grown up hostess duties.
Alice in the Boat has a gentle Surrealistic quality. The sea is calm and the sky
bright. Yet there is an element of danger or apprehension as if at any moment a
storm could brew up and capsize the rudderless little boat. The Blackmans were in a
period of change when Alice in the Boat was painted. The impending birth of their
first child meant change for the Blackmans relationship. It also meant possible
financial hardships. Barbara had previously worked as an artists model, but with her
pregnancy she stopped this. This meant greater pressures on the family finances.

4cats Gallery

38

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

ALICE IN THE BOAT 1956


A DISCUSSION OF THE AESTHETIC QUALITIES
Meaning and messages can often be derived from how the art work looks or how it
has been put together by the artist. A discussion of the aesthetic qualities includes
a discussion of the formal elements such as the use of colour, tone, texture, shape,
line and aspects of the composition which relate to things such as scale, balance,
proportion, movement and contrast.
Alice in the Boat measures approximately 121 cm high by 132 cm wide. It is a
relatively large scale painting for Blackman.
The dominant aesthetic qualities in Alice in the Boat are colour, tone, texture,
shape, space and movement.
The most dominant colour in Alice in the Boat is blue. Art critic Felicity St John
Moore says that the blue seascape in this painting was inspired by the sea at
Williamstown where Blackman would often accompany John Perceval on painting
trips. The sea and the sky are in blue tones ranging from dark blue in the foreground
to a light grey blue in the skyline. The vase in the boat is blue as is the teacup under
Alices head. Alices eyes are a deep blue and the eyelids are ringed in blue. White
features strongly in Alice in the Boat as the white boat stretches across the centre
of the composition. The rabbit is painted in white with tones of grey/brown to
represent the inner shapes of the ears and shadow on the rabbits body. Yellow is
also a feature colour and appears in Alices long hair and in some of the flowers in
the vase. The teapot is painted in a dark brown with lighter brown tones to model
shape and form. The spout of the teapot is a bright cherry red and looks like a
nipple. Red also appears in some of the flowers and in Alices lips. Green appears in
the foliage of the flowers and in a reflection of the boat in the water.
Alice in the Boat is a good example of the way Blackman uses extensive tonal
modeling in his work. The exact horizon line between sky and sea is hard to
determine because Blackman has used several bands of similar tone in the vicinity
of the horizon which would appear to be somewhere in the centre of the canvas. As
Felicity St John Moore says the sea and sky are seamless. Tone is applied to all
the figures and objects to give the appearance of form. For example art critic Robert
Nelson describes Alices head as a nicely defined tonal egg.
Blackman has used tone to create implied texture in Alice in the Boat. The gentle
tonal changes in the rabbit suggest a soft and fluffy texture. Alices face has a cold
porcelain appearance. The smooth surfaces of the vase and the teapot gleam in the
sun. The slight tonal variations in the water give a glassy feel to the water and this
still effect is also created by the existence of reflections in the water. Elwynn Lynn
4cats Gallery

39

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

describes the boat floating in limpid water under the pure and innocent sky.
Shape is an important aesthetic quality in Alice in the Boat. Blackman uses a series
of repeated shapes and objects in the Alice paintings to symbolise meaning. The
enlarged head and long neck of Alice symbolises Barbara Blackman. The size and
shape of her head is out of proportion to her torso. The white rabbit with his long
shaped ears represents Charles Blackman. The vase in the centre of the
composition is shaped like a womans torso. Felicity St John Moore says that in
Blackmans Alice paintings, the vase of flowers symbolises the act of creation,
fertility and sexual desire between Blackman and Barbara. The shape of the teapot
varies in the Alice paintings. In Alice in the Boat the black/brown teapot looks round
and feminine with a red nipple spout spurting out a trail of white matter. Felicity St
John Moore says this symbolises breast milk and the nurturing of the new baby. The
brown coloured container with the orange label is shaped like an old fashioned
medicine bottle. Felicity St John Moore says that the medicine bottle symbolises
change. In the Alice in Wonderland story Alice drinks from the bottle and grows
smaller and then larger. This is a direct symbolic reference to the change in Barbara
Blackmans body shape due to her pregnancy. The boat is shaped like an inverted
table cloth. The table cloth in many of the Alice paintings is used as device on which
to play out the relevant scene. The mass of flowers in the vases contrasts with the
solid shapes of the figures and objects in the boat and becomes a focal point.
Blackman has created the visual illusion of depth in Alice in the Boat in several
ways. Firstly the tonal changes between the water and the sky create an imaginary
horizon line and the feel of an endless sea. Secondly Blackman has angled the
planes of the boat to create the visual illusion that we are looking across at the boat
from a position about halfway between the rear and the side of the boat.
Blackman has created a sense of movement in this work. The sensation of
movement is related to floating and drifting. Blackman has positioned the teapot, the
vase of flowers, the medicine bottle and the cup as if they are floating within the boat
and ready to take off at any moment. This gives Alice in the Boat a dreamy
Surrealistic feel. The glassy effect of the water created by tone and the painted
reflections suggests the boat is floating aimlessly on the sea. Blackman has not
painted a rudder on the boat and this heightens the sensation of aimless floating.
Whilst Alice in the Boat displays symmetrical balance in terms of the positioning of
objects within the composition, there is an unsettling, floating sensation about the
work which negates a sense of balance or solidity.

4cats Gallery

40

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

ALICE IN THE BOAT 1956


THE USE OF MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
This key discussion point requires a student to analyse the use of materials and
techniques present in the production of an art work. A student would begin by
outlining the materials the artist has applied, for example the type of paint used and
the surface material used. Secondly, a student would discuss the various
techniques and processes applied by the artist, for example tonal painting or textural
effects. Finally, an interpretation of materials and techniques involves a discussion
of how the artist has combined his use materials and techniques to enhance the art
work.
To produce Alice in the Boat, Blackman has used a large piece of composition
board measuring approximately 122 cm by 135 cm.
Blackman has used a mixture of tempera and oil paint. Blackman used synthetic
house paint (oil containing enamels). He mixed his own paint using a select group of
primary pigments which he mixed to produce additional colours. To this mix he
would sometimes add tempera, which Blackman made himself. Tempera is basically
the product of mixing egg yolks, egg whites and casein with oil or enamel paints or
gums and waxes to create a painting medium that has special qualities. Tempera
highlights light and is excellent for tonal modelling. Blackman used a tempera and
oil mix primarily to apply a white base which he would then paint over. He would
also use tempera to apply white highlights to his paintings. The white boat, the white
rabbit and the streaks of white in Alices hair were probably painted using the
tempera/oil mix.
Blackman has applied the technique of tonal painting in Alice in the Boat.
Blackmans use of tone is very controlled and smooth in this painting as distinct from
many of his other works where tonal transitions are rougher and loose.
Felicity St John Moore says that because the enamel paint was fast drying,
Blackman painted the Alice paintings rapidly and freely. Blackman generally stood
while he painted over the board which was placed on a table. Blackman generally
did not spend too much time in preparatory drawings and preferred to paint his
images spontaneously. This spontaneity adds to the Expressionistic and Surrealistic
quality of Alice in the Boat.

4cats Gallery

41

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

ALICE IN THE BOAT 1956


THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
The meaning of historical and cultural context in discussing art refers to the time,
place and conditions in which an art work is created. It can also refer to specific
cultural or historical factors contained in the subject matter of the art work. Historical
and cultural context may be related to things such as the artists involvement in a
particular art movement, the social and cultural traditions influencing the artist or a
particularly significant event such as a war or political crisis.
Alice in the Boat was completed by Blackman in 1956. The painting specifically
references the Alice in Wonderland story created by Lewis Carroll in 1865.
Numerous works of art, literature, film and performance have borrowed the
characters and incidents of the Alice books to focus on themes such as the loss of
ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality or the border between insanity and
reality. Thomas Shapcott says that Blackmans love of Surrealism was released by
Alice. Felicity St John Moore says that Blackman was struck by the parallel
between Alice and Barbara, including Barbaras own sense of spatial disorientation
due to her blindness. At the same time as painting Alice in the Boat, Blackman
was working as a night waiter and he was surrounded nightly by the objects that
appeared in the Alice paintings, such as plates, tea cups and table cloths.
At the time Blackman painted Alice in the Boat, Barbara Blackman was pregnant
with their first child. It was a time of great change for the Blackmans because
Barbara had to give up her job as a life model which strained the family finances.
Blackman refers to Barbaras pregnancy in several ways in Alice in the Boat. For
example, the appearance of an Alice in Wonderland type medicine bottle refers to
the indigestion Barbara suffered during pregnancy and the fact that it made her burp.
Felicity St John Moore says that in Blackmans Alice paintings, the vase of flowers
symbolises the act of creation, fertility and sexual desire between Blackman and
Barbara. St John Moore also says that as Barbaras pregnancy advanced Blackman
only painted Alice from the neck up as occurs in Alice in the Boat.
In the 1950s Blackman was highly influenced by John and Sunday Reed who lived
at what is now Heide Museum. The Reeds were very supportive of artists. They
supported the careers of artists like Sidney Nolan, John Perceval and Joy Hester.
Blackman became part of the Heide circle and was influenced by them in several
ways. Through the Reeds, Blackman became friendly with John Perceval. Blackman
said that during the time of painting the Alice paintings, he would spend time with
Perceval on painting trips to Williamstown. Blackman says that Perceval encouraged
him to free up his style and be more spontaneous in his technique. The colours of
the sea in Alice in the Boat 1956 were directly inspired by the sea at Williamstown.

4cats Gallery

42

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

The Reeds had an extensive library which gave Blackman access to the French
writers he was fond of such as Rimbaud. The poem the Drunken Boat by Rimbaud is
the partial inspiration for Alice in the Boat 1956. Sunday Reed took an active
interest in the materials and techniques Blackman was using as well as the subject
matter of his works. The Reeds directly encouraged Blackman to paint narrative
works such as the Alice paintings. On a practical level the Reeds provided fresh
eggs for Blackmans tempera that he used in the Alice paintings.
In 2004 author Janine Burke, in her book The Heart Garden, claimed that Sunday
Reed was Blackmans inspiration for Alice. Burke said that Alice looked like Sunday
Reed. It looks like her with the big blue eyes, the long face, the blonde hair and the
flowers, which was always Sunday's emblem. The claim was hotly refuted by
Barbara Blackman. She said Charles never used anybody as his model, but I was
around him all the time. I was his Alice. I was his image." Art historian and former
NGA director Betty Churcher said "They're portraits of Barbara. If you miss that, you
miss a lot about the paintings."

4cats Gallery

43

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

CHAPTER FIVE - SAMPLE RESPONSE


QUESTION: Discuss two art works by an artist you have studied this year.
Explain the artists approach to subject matter and how they have developed a
distinctive style.
The artist I wish to discuss is Australian artist Charles Blackman, born 1928. There
are many factors which have contributed to the subject matter and distinctive style in
the work of Blackman. I will discuss two major signature paintings completed by
Blackman, Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953 and Alice in the Boat 1956.
The subject matter in Blackmans work has varied over more than 50 years of his
artistic career. Two important themes in Blackmans work have been the schoolgirl
and the Alice in Wonderland story. Blackman derives his subject matter primarily as
a means of expressing aspects of his own personal life. His subject matter is not
usually complex or academic, although there are always different levels of meaning
in his work. In the early 1950s Blackman started to feature a generic looking
schoolgirl in his drawings and paintings. She is usually wearing a large mushroomed
shaped school hat, with a school uniform with a strongly pleated tunic. She often
has a large head and face, large eyes and a thin stick like body. Blackman painted
solitary schoolgirls and schoolgirls in groups usually in situations which appear
menacing and harsh. Thomas Shapcott, Blackmans biographer says that
Blackmans schoolgirls are usually surrounded by a territory of brutal symbols and
ugly aggressive buildings.
In Blackmans enamel on board painting Schoolgirl at Kooyong 1953, he paints a
solitary schoolgirl walking along a footpath past the Kooyong tennis stadium in
Glenferrie Road Hawthorn. The footpath is bounded by a picket fence. Just behind
the picket fence is a row of rose bushes and flowers. Further in the distance is the
Kooyong tennis stadium and beyond that an open field with several phallic shaped
buildings on the far horizon. The scene is empty of people but the viewer gets the
sense that we are looking at the girl as we pass her in a car or tram going in the
opposite direction. The girl is painted wearing a tunic or pleated skirt. The girls legs
are thin sticks. The girl is clasping her hands and gives the impression she is deep in
thought on her way to or from school.
Blackman used the schoolgirl as a symbol for his own feelings of loneliness and
isolation. Living in Hawthorn at the time he would often see schoolgirls walking to
and from school and could empathise with the sense of vulnerability and danger
which seemed to surround them. At the time, as an artist he was largely
unrecognised and his wife Barbara was losing her sight. Blackman was not making a
proper income and like many artists of the time felt like an outsider. Blackman
sought inspiration from several literary sources to develop his subject matter, such
4cats Gallery

44

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

as Australian poet John Shaw Neilson who wrote poetry about young girls and the
eventual loss of innocence as they progressed to adulthood. French artist Odilon
Redon was influential in Blackman creating the spidery stick insect look of his
schoolgirls.
Blackman is also famous for his use of the story and characters from Lewis Carrolls
story Alice in Wonderland. In the 46 paintings completed in 1956 and 1957,
Blackman featured as subject matter, Alice, the white rabbit and many other
characters from the story. He also used Alice and the white rabbit in work he created
after this.
The enamel and tempera on canvas painting Alice in the Boat 1956, is a good
example of how Blackman used subjects from the Alice in Wonderland story to
express his feelings about his own life. The painting consists of a seascape scene
with a white open row boat placed centrally in the composition. Blackman says the
colours of the sky and sea in Alice in the Boat were inspired by the sea at
Williamstown where he would paint with his friend artist John Perceval. Sitting in the
boat is a white rabbit, a girl who is obviously Alice, a brown teapot, a blue vase full
of brightly coloured flowers, a medicine bottle and a large blue cup which are all
objects appropriated from the Alice in Wonderland story. The painting has a dreamy
Surrealistic feel to it and because the boat has no rudder or oars the occupants of
the boat are floating aimlessly.
Arts writer Felicity St John Moore says that in all the Alice paintings, the white rabbit
represents Blackman and Alice represents his first wife Barbara Blackman.
Blackman saw in the Alice story a parallel with his own life. Barbara was becoming
blind and like Alice she was often stumbling around in a strange unpredictable world
trying to get used to her blindness. Thomas Shapcott says that Blackman painted
himself as the white rabbit, because he was naughty and unpredictable. At the time
he painted Alice in the Boat, Blackman was working as a night waiter in a restaurant
and was inspired by real life tablecloths, cups and saucers that occur frequently in
the Alice in Wonderland story.
Barbara was pregnant with their first child when Alice in the Boat 1956, was painted
and Felicity St John Moore says that the bright flowers in a vase shaped like a
womans torso symbolise the pregnancy and the fertility between Blackman and
Barbara. The teapot has a pink nipple in its spout and is spurting out a white
substance which appears to be the milk Barbara will nurture their new baby with.
Blackman loved the poetry of French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the dreamy floating
aspect of Alice in the Boat was inspired directly by Rimbauds poem the Drunken
Boat. Blackman was also inspired by Surrealism. In the Alice in Wonderland story
teapots and cups could fly on their accord and this appealed to Blackmans
Surrealistic sensibilities. In Alice in the Boat, the medicine bottle is floating and the
4cats Gallery

45

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

blue teacup under Alices head also seems to be floating.


In Schoolgirl at Kooyong and Alice in the Boat, Blackman has applied his distinctive
style. The aesthetic qualities which give Blackmans work a distinctive style are his
use of stylised subject matter, his strong use of tone, his use of contrasting areas of
colour and his Expressionistic / Surrealistic style.
In both his drawings and paintings, Blackman uses tone extensively. Variations in
the light and dark of one colour are used to model form, create line and to create
mood. In both Schoolgirl at Kooyong and Alice in the Boat, almost every object or
figure has extensive tonal modelling. For example art critic Robert Nelson describes
Alices head as a nicely defined tonal egg. In Alice in the Boat, Blackmans
application of tone is much smoother and more careful, compared with Schoolgirl at
Kooyong where tone is applied by rougher and more carefree brushstrokes.
Blackmans distinctive style is noted for his use of contrasting light and dark colours.
In Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman primarily uses a light rose pink colour contrasted
with a deep azure blue. With this contrast Blackman sets up a duality between pink
for innocence and femininity and blue for dangerous masculinity. In Alice in the Boat
the white in the boat and the rabbit contrast heavily with the blue green colours of
the sea and the dark brown of the teapot. Alices bright yellow hair contrast with her
deep blue eyes and her bright red mouth.
In Schoolgirl at Kooyong and Alice in the Boat Blackman has applied his own
distinctive Expressionistic style. Blackmans art is described as Expressionistic
because the image of reality is somewhat distorted in form and colour. For example,
in Schoolgirl at Kooyong the girls rose pink skin tone matches the colour in much of
the foreground and background objects. In keeping with Expressionism, Blackman is
known for his speed of painting and his desire for quick compositions and his brush
stokes are often rough and thinly painted. In Schoolgirl at Kooyong Blackman has
employed this loose style and much of the composition is roughly painted.
Blackmans art often borrows from Surrealist influences, particularly in the Schoolgirl
and Alice paintings where objects and figures are distorted and figures and objects
often float or fly in space. The shape and form of the schoolgirl, Alice and the white
rabbit are exaggerated. The schoolgirl has stick like legs and arms and an enlarged
head. In Alice in the Boat, Alices head is enormous in comparison to the rest of her
body. The eyes are large and unseeing, a reference to Barbara Blackmans
blindness. The rabbits ears are unusually long. The shapes of the forms in the Alice
series are distorted to give emphasis to the Surrealistic and topsy turvy world of
Alice and therefore, the world of Charles and Barbara Blackman.

4cats Gallery

46

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

CHARLES BLACKMAN

Born 1928

FORMAL REFERENCES
BOOKS/CATALOGUES
AMADIO, Nadine

Charles Blackman: The Lost Domains


A. H. & A. W. Reed, Sydney 1980

ALLEN, Christopher

Art in Australia. From Colonisation to Postmodernism


Thames & Hudson, London 1997

BURKE, Janine

The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide


Random House, Milsons Point 2004

GRANEK, Walter

A Line Around A Dream: Charles Blackman


Malakoff Fine Art Press, North Caulfield 1994

MATHEW, Ray

Charles Blackman Georgian House, Melbourne, 1965

SHAPCOTT, Thomas

The Art of Charles Blackman


Andre Deutsche, London 1989

ST JOHN MOORE, Felicity

Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels: A


retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings,
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1993

SMITH, Bernard

Australian Painting 1788-1970


Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1971

SMITH, Geoffrey &


ST JOHN MOORE, Felicity

Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland:


Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2006

National

ARTICLES
CREW, Gary

Blackman pulls a rabbit out of his hat


The Age September 2, 2006

MASLEN, Geoff

Blackmans Wonderland The Age

NELSON, Robert

Charles Blackman The Age August 23, 2006

SEXTON, Jennifer

Through The Looking Glass


The Australian August 5, 2006

WEBB, Penny

Charles Blackman

WYNDHAM, Susan

Was Sunday Reed the hidden hand behind Nolan? The


Age October 2, 2004

4cats Gallery

47

March 15, 2002

The Age May 11, 2005

Written by Philip Grant and Therese Grant

You might also like