Kngwarreye & Namatjira

The two Australian Aboriginal artists Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-96) and Albert Namatjira (1902-59) had different ways of approaching issues of their identity and incorporating their culture in their artworks. In different eras, these artists are similar by taking on a style which was seen as being more associated with a white or modern style than a traditional Aboriginal one. Albert Namatjira painted watercolour landscapes which were different to the traditional Aboriginal bark and cave paintings Australian society was used to in the mid twentieth century. He had to deal with issues of racism and tried to reconcile traditional Aboriginal beliefs of the land with his own identity as a Christian and painting watercolour paintings in the western style. When he became the first Australian Aboriginal citizen the difference between him and the other Aborigines and also from white society became apparent, problems which led to his arrest for sharing alcohol and death shortly after serving time in prison. Similarly, Emily Kngwarreye in the early 1990s produced a style which broke away from the predominant style of the Papunya 'dot paintings' and her work is regarded as being that of a contemporary artist, rather than an aboriginal one. As the highest grossing aboriginal artist ever, she was immensely popular, and this popularity became an issue which caused her problems, as dealers and galleries would pressure her to paint what they thought the market wanted. In her quite short artistic career, she developed several unique styles, and put many aspects of her traditional tribal culture into her work, but in her own original way. I will be talking about the different issues these two artists faced, both of whom were famous in their own time, and how they maintained their own identity given the problems that many Aboriginal artists have; of having to paint Aboriginal culture for a white audience.
Albert Namatjira's art was strongly influenced by the watercolours of the white painters who came to Hermansburg in the 1930s. Here in the 1920s Albert made and painted wooden items for tourists such as boomerangs to raise money for the desperate Lutheran Mission. Later the white artists Rex Battarbee and John A. Gardner put many of their paintings up in an exhibition in the town which many of the Aborigines saw in 1934. "an exhibition of their paintings of the Macdonnell Ranges at the Hermannsburg Mission Station...during which time more than three hundred natives saw the pictures." (Mountford 1949: 44) Once when Albert saw Battarbee painting Mt. Sonder he said to him "You know, one of these days I am going to take up painting...Just as a hobby mind you." (Ryan:19) Namatjira asked Batterbee to show him how to paint and requested that he get some watercolour paints and materials to use to do painting. By the time these had been ordered in and arrived, the two white painters were gone, Namatjira did some experiments with the brushes but it was not until 1936 when Batterbee returned that Namatjira would start painting seriously. Instead of choosing to paint in the traditional bark and rock painting method of ancient Aboriginal tribes, Namatjira painted the desert landscape as though through Western eyes. Significant is that he was the first Aboriginal painter to use this method, "the first Aboriginal Australian to paint in the white fashion with white materials and sell widely to white people." (Tidmarsh & Megow 1991: 9) In fact, some white Australians had difficulty believing that an Aborigine could execute such detailed and sophisticated landscapes.
Namatjira's works were colourful and varied depictions of the Australian landscape when most people from the south east would have seen the country only from black and white photographs. One of his first landscapes done in 1936, Central Australian Landscape shows a land of rolling green hills, not a harsh desert may have been a misconception of what the northern territory was. Another early work, Ajantzi Waterhole (1937) shows a close up view of a small waterhole, with Albert capturing the reflection in the water well. The landscape becomes one of contrasting colours, with red hills and green trees in Red Bluff(1938), with this device of complimentary colours that is often used by Western painters. In Central Australian Gorge (1940) Albert shows his ability for detailed rendering of rocks and reflections in the water. In Flowering Shrubs he contrasts the blossoming flowers in the foreground with the more barren desert and cliffs in the background. Namatjira's love of trees was often described so that his paintings of trees were more portraits than landscapes, which is shown in the portrait of the often depicted ghost gum tree in Ghost Gum Glen Helen (c.1945-49) His skills at colouring trees can be seen clearly in this portrait and Namatjira was fully aware of his own talent, as when describing another landscape painter Namatjira said to William Dargie "He does not know how to make the side of a tree which is in the light look the same colour as the side of the tree in shadow...I know how to do better." (French 2002: 131) His skills kept increasing with experience as is shown in the highly photographic quality Mt Hermannsburg (1957) painted only two years before he died, his works still popular right up to his unfortunate death.
Namatjira's works were very popular with some, however, many in the white community did not regard his works very highly. From the first time his paintings had been shown outside his own community, Namatjira's paintings caused much interest in the white audience. In 1937 Rex Batterbee had an exhibition of his own watercolour paintings in Adelaide, and included three done by Namatjira, who was still being taught by him at that time. The works generated much interest, enough to give the confidence to mount an exhibition of 41 works in Melbourne the next year. A great success, every single painting was sold that he exhibited in this show in Melbourne and also in the next show he exhibited in Adelaide in 1939. However, while his work was very popular amongst individual buyers, many in the community, such as art galleries and public institutions did not look upon his work favourably. One view was that Namatjira was 'selling out' to a white audience, by painting only pictures that a white person would like to see. The trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria refused to buy some of his work because they said it was less about his personal vision and more about making money, they "sensed that the fresh immediacy of his early manner had faded and given way to a complacent landscape formula, contrived to suit the market." (Ryan: 20) Another criticism was that his art was too simple, having been described as using a formula where he would usually show one gum tree to the left or right of the picture, as seen in Ghost Gum Mt Sonder (1957). This is obviously not the case when looking at the large variety present in the more than 2,000 landscapes he painted in his career. Regardless of the criticism, the popularity of Namatjira's views of the land continued to grow, especially with private collectors, who still today hold most of his works.
Namatjira's depiction of the countryside around his home shows his personal vision of the world around him. Many of his landscapes are in very vibrant colours, showing the beauty of the outback hills and trees. The landscape is very important to Aboriginal people, and his reason for painting these objects was not just to show the beauty of the landscape, but also because of the importance of these landmarks to his tribal culture. In all his paintings, the Australian landscape plays the dominant role. In even his paintings of kangaroos, his three or four portraits and few scenes of buildings and daily life, the land is still the main focus of the painting. (French 2002) His decision to paint this subject matter was an original effort, although starting off he was influenced by the white painters, this is no different to most artists who copy other artists at the beginning of their career. Culturally his work was different to the modern art of white Australia at the time, which in the 1930s and 1940s was expressionist and abstract. It was his own personal vision of the landscape around him expressed in his own way. "Watercolour landscape painting was neither obviously Christian nor was it 'traditional', though it could still portray the land which Albert and his father knew." (Tidmarsh & Megaw 1991: 15) There was much individual mythological significance to the features of the land surrounding the areas for the Western Aranda tribes of Aboriginal people. (Ryan 20)
Namatjira's individuality and popularity eventually caused problems for him when he became singled out for Australian citizenship, he became somewhat alienated from the rest of the Aboriginal community, but never fully part of the white culture. He was 'presented' to the Queen on her visit to Australia in 1954. In 1956 he visited Sydney staying at the home of writer Frank Clune and where, a portrait of him by artist William Dargie won the Archibald Prize, Australia's most prestigious portrait prize. During this visit he was presented with a truck by oil company Ampol as a promotion, and photographed "at the wheel of his Dodge truck" as the newspaper put it. (French 2002: 131) Another photograph taken of him in Sydney had him posing with an easel at Martin Place, although when doing landscape paintings in his homeland, Albert never used an easel, preferring to sit on the ground with paper on a board. In these photographs Albert was having to submit to the will of white society wanted him to act, rather than making his own decisions. "In both photographs Namatjira is having to imagine his traditional homelands as part of a 'grand publicity stunt' for the benefit of a gawking audience." (French 2002: 146) In 1957 he became an Australian citizen, the first Aboriginal in the country to be granted this status, which meant among other things that he had now access to alcohol. With a very generous nature typical of tribal cultures who do not recognise personal ownership of property, he would share this among his family and friends, which led to him being arrested in 1959 and he served two months in jail, dying a week after his release.
In contrast to Namatjira, Emily Kngwarreye only took up painting at a very late age, and her unique and original styles quickly fetched a high price in the market. Born in 1910, she did not take up painting seriously until she was nearly 80. She lived in the Arimatyerre tribe at Alhalkere in the Utopia community, about 200km north east of Alice Springs. For much of her later life she was mostly known for her batik work along with the rest of this community. Acrylic paintings were introduced to this community in by the Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association in 1988-89. An exhibition of some of the paintings of these artists' work organised by the CAAMA was held in called "A Summer Project", where Emily's work got immediate attention from critics. The attention she received coincided with the worldwide art boom that occurred at this time. Whereas the predominant Aboriginal style was based on the one developed by art teacher Geoffrey Bardon at the Papunya community in 1971 of many similarly sized dots carefully lying next to each other in distinct patterns, Emily created her own original style. This first style, in her paintings between 1989 and 1991, had many dots, sometimes lying on top of each other, of varying sizes and colours, as seen in Wild Potato Dreaming (1990) "Rather than applying dot marks according to precise regulated patterns in one plane...she strewed an infinity of dots, smaller often superimposed over larger, across her canvases." (Neale 1998: 47) This style was very expressive, with much feeling and emotion seen in the works and has been described by the curator of Aboriginal art at the National Gallery of Victoria as "The greatest dot paintings of our time; pointillist essays on colour and tone, formed from a massing and crowding of dots of different sizes." (Hewat 2000: 94) These original many styled paintings quickly went for high prices at auction, with a turnover for the Utopia group of painters of more than $1 million in 1989-90.
Emily went through many different individual styles in her short career as a professional painter. In 1992, the dots began joining into lines with parallel horizontal and vertical stripes, representing rivers and the contours of the land, in many different colours. She began using larger brushes than previously, her paintings now consisting of much larger dots than the finer, more intricate work which she did when she started that still probably owed some debt to the Pupunya school of painting that she was now breaking away from. In 1993 she began painting patches of colour and along with many dots which were like rings that were clear in the middle as seen in Alaqura Profusion (1993), made with a shaving brush that was called her 'dump dump' style which used very bright colours. The same style of rings of colour are also seen in My Mothers Country and Emu Country (1994). The next year was an even more aesthetic and contemporary style, ending her 'colourist' phase, she began painting with plain stripes that crossed the canvas. These were at first thick stripes which often represented the lines of yam tracks as in Yam Dreaming (1994) and Bush Yam (1995); the strange growth patterns of the yam, a plant which was critical for survival in the desert, but very difficult to find. Later in 1995 her paintings start to resemble in some ways the American Abstract Expressionist paintings with many thinner lines that criss-crossed the canvas but still on the same theme, such as in Yam Dreaming Awelye (1995) and also in black and white Yam Dreaming paintings. Several weeks before her death she painted lots of canvases over a 3 day period in 1996, using a very thick brush such as in Body Paint (1996).
Emily expressed a lot of her people's culture to do with the land in her works. She put down many aspects of the people's beliefs to do with the world around them, the plants and animals. The yam plant was an important source of food for the aboriginal people of the desert. Yam tracks was one aspect which particularly featured in her works. She painted many paintings on this theme, with the first thing she often did at the start of a painting was to "put down the yam tracking lines...[which] were Emily's individual expression." (Isaccs et al 1998: 151) This plant was especially significant for her as her middle name Kame relates to the yam plant, as meaning the yellow flower of this plant that grows above the ground. She described her paintings as having lots of meaning to do with all the aspects of the community's life including the yam plants in one of the few well known criticisms of her own work, she said her paintings mean:
Whole lot, that's all, whole lot, awelye, arlatyeye, ankerrthe, ntange, dingo, ankerre, intekwe, anthwerle and kame. That's what I paint: whole lot.
(Thomas 1988: 3)
Her way of painting these objects and beliefs is so original that she is often regarded as being more a contemporary Australian artist than an aboriginal one.
The success and demand for Emily's paintings caused her many problems within the community as she tried to maintain her individual identity. The myth of the woman in her 80s who had never been outside the central desert becoming a great painter was one reason for her popularity. She had in fact, been to Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra, though this was only after she had became famous. There was much pressure from the white community for her to paint in a certain way, when they believed that one of her styles was more successful than others. Many other inexperienced art dealers would go to her community to try to get a piece of the action, Emily once describing to a friend how she had "escaped from five or six carloads of 'wannabe' art dealers at Utopia" (Isaacs et al 1998: 146), Her paintings were providing income for the whole community. She rarely spent any of the money she got from her works herself, or when she did, it was to buy gifts for friends and relatives. She was at some times supplying a car a week to her community, in a society that did not believe in individual ownership, but the sharing of property with the group.
Both Ngwarreye and Namatjira used a unique style which was closer to a white style and different from the mainstream Aboriginal one in their respective periods. They both had ways of incorporating traditional Aboriginal culture within an art that could be regarded as westernised. Namatjira depicted his homelands which had great meaning to him and his people in a traditional western realist landscape style. While Ngwarreye painted stories from her culture in the style of a postmodernist contemporary western artist. The success and popularity of both of these artists shows that Aboriginal artists can successfully integrate their culture and identity into modern Australian art.


Bibliography

French, A. 2002. Seeing the Centre. The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Hart, D. 1995, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Paintings from 1989- 1995, Parliament House, Canberra
Isaacs, J. 1998, Emily Kngwarreye Paintings. Craftsman House, Smith, T. North Ryde, Sydney.
Mountford, C. 1949, The Art of Albert Namatjira, Bread and Cheese Club, Melbourne.
Neale, M. 1998, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Paintings from Utopia, Macmillan Publishers, South Yarra, Victoria.
Ryan, J. no date, Mythscapes. Aboriginal Art of the Desert. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Thomas, D. 1988, Earth's Creation. The Paintings of Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Malakoff Fine Art Press. North Caulfield, Victoria.
Tidmarsh, A. 1991, The Heritage of Namatjira. Australian Exhibitions Megaw, J. Touring Agency, Owen King Printers, Melbourne.


http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_Namatjira.htm, Fig.1-8, accessed 10/6/04
http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/2000/landscape/, Fig. 9, accessed 10/6/04
http://www.aboriginal-art.com/emily_pages/emily1.html, Fig. 10, accessed 10/6/04
http://www.wagnerartgallery.com.au/100102-280202-SummerExhibition.html, Fig. 11, Fig. 14, accessed 10/6/04
http://http://www.aboriginal-art.com/desert_pages/utopia_23.html Fig. 12, accessed 10/6/04
http://www.gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/featured/
kngwarreye/default.asp, Fig. 13, accessed 10/6/04
http://www.aboriginal-art.com/emily_pages/emily2.html, Fig. 15, accessed 10/6/04
http://users.senet.com.au/~bmgart/emily%20kame%20kngwarreye.html, accessed 10/6/04. Fig. 16, accessed 10/6/04




Albert Namatjira Central Australian Landscape, 1936. Watercolour over pencil on wove paper loosely attached to composition board, 27 x 37.9 cm. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Albert Namatjira Ajantzi Waterhole, South of Mt. Liebig, Western Macdonnell Ranges, 1937Watercolour over pencil, 26.7 x 19.2 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Albert Namatjira Red Bluff, c. 1938. Watercolour over pencil on smooth cream wove paper, 22.3 x 37.5 cm. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Albert Namatjira. Central Australian Gorge, c. 1940. Watercolour and gouache over pencil on thick wove paper, 53.5 x 36.7 cm. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Albert Namatjira. Flowering Shrubs. Watercolour on paper, 32.5 x 24 cm. Ngurratjuta Pmara Corporation Collection, Araluen Galleries Alice Springs
Albert Namatjira. Ghost gum, Glen Helen c.1945-49. Watercolour over pencil on paper. Private collection, Melbourne
Albert Namatjira. Mt Hermannsburg c. 1957. Watercolour, pencil, 36.7 X 54.0cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Albert Namatjira, Ghost Gum, Mt Sonder, Macdonnell Ranges, c. 1957. Watercolour and pencil, 25.2 x 35.8cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Wild Potato Dreaming, 1990, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 213.3 x 121.7 x 3cm. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Alalgura Profusion, 1993. 60" x 36".
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. My Mother's Country. Synthetic Polymer on Canvas, 125 x 71cm
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Emu Country, 1994, 60" x 36"
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Yam Dreaming, 1994. Acrylic on canvas925 x 615 mm
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Bush Yam, 1995. Acrylic on Canvas, 67 x 78cm
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Yam Dreaming Awelye, 1995. 60" x 36"
Kngwarreye, Emily Kame. Body Paint, 1996. Acrylic on linen, 90 x 120 cms