Jeffrey Smart

Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
James O. Fairfax AO; purchased from the above

Jeffrey Smart, South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne, 14 November - 12 December 1972, cat. 16 (label on reverse)
Jeffrey Smart,  Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 30 November - 31 December 1973, cat. 16
Jeffrey Smart: A Review, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 June - 19 August 1982, cat. 35
Justin O'Brien and friends: a birthday celebration, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 1987, cat. 81
Jeffrey Smart retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 27 August - 31 October 1999, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 26 November 1999 - 6 February 2000, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 10 March - 21 May 2000, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne, 10 June - 6 August 2000, cat. 43 (label on reverse)

Christopher Allen, Jeffrey Smart: unpublished paintings 1940-2007, Melbourne: Australian Galleries, 2008, p. 96
Nancy Borlase, 'Smart low-key surrealism', Bulletin, 15 December 1972, p. 12
Edmund Capon (ed.), Jeffrey Smart retrospective, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999, pp. 20, 43 (illus.)
Edmund Capon, Germaine Greer and Jeffrey Smart, Jeffrey Smart: drawings and studies 1942-2001, Melbourne: Australian Art Publishing, 2001, p. 96
John McDonald, Jeffrey Smart: paintings of the '70s and '80s, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1990, p. 157 (cat. 69)
David McNicoll, 'McNicoll's notebook', Sunday Telegraph, 12 November 1972
Barry Pearce, Jeffrey Smart, Sydney: Beagle Press, 2005, p. 116 (illus.)
Peter Quartermaine, Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, Melbourne, 1983, p. 68 (illus.)

This work is has not been lined and has the original stretcher. There are fine drying cracks confined to the red paint of the tank (lower centre). There are some very minor flecks of retouching to the yellow paint in the lower left hand side of the building (centre), confirmed by UV inspection. This work has recently received a light surface clean. For a full conservator's condition report, please contact the department. This work is in overall good original condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The dreamlike unreality of Jeffrey Smart's paintings, and the sense of unease, even vague threat that they engender, is most often achieved through the cunning disjunction of everyday things. Smart's 'slightly skewed reality'¹ is firmly based on visions of the actual world: cities and construction sites, highways and road signs and the dystopia of the semi-industrial urban fringe.

Occasionally, however, the artist employs more deliberate surrealist devices. In the present work, for example, he uses the Magrittean motif - as seen in such paintings as La condition humaine (1933, National Gallery of Art, Washington) - of a picture within a picture. Here, in the doorway of a brightly-decorated shed in a rural landscape stands a man² holding a painting of a brightly-decorated shed in a rural landscape, in which stands ... Reflecting on a slightly later work, a 1975 sketch of an auctioneer holding a picture of an auctioneer holding a picture, Smart dismissed the metaphysical conceit of infinite recession as being 'probably too childish,' too obvious, but at the same time proudly stated that 'I brought it off in Painted factory, Tuscany.'³

The artist's success in 'bringing it off' in the present work is in large measure due to its additional properties, those subtle manipulations of content, composition and surface for which he is justly acclaimed. To begin with, the factory mural is a sly hommage. In the 1950s, Smart studied in Paris with the veteran cubist Fernand Léger, and the decoration of the shed deliberately evokes the master's grand geometric abstractions of around 1920, works such as La ville (1919, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Element mécanique (1924, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris). With this art-historical allegiance firmly declared, our attention is naturally drawn to the overall geometry of the picture, to its remarkably clever composition. Not only is it a picture of a picture of a picture, but it is also an equally complex golden-section fugue of squares. Within the square stretcher edge is a second square form, the wall of the shed, butted against the right hand edge of the picture. Shrinking as it repeats, the square then bounces in towards the centre of the picture in the form of the black doorway (which perhaps obliquely references Kazimir Malevich or Sidney Nolan's Kelly-mask), then right and up again in the painting being held up by the young man. This 'final' square then implies a repetition of the whole sequence, but in miniature.

However, it should also be noted that the assertive modernist abstraction of the 'Léger' composition is somewhat ameliorated by its illusionistic representation. The mural being painted on corrugated iron, its ostensible flatness is at once complicated and contradicted by a screen of painstakingly-rendered shadow-striations.⁴  In turn this leads us to other dimensions of Smart's play between art and life, between the flat pattern of the mural and the depths of the real world. The cylinder form above the doorway chimes with the oil tank on the left of the building, the diagonal that cuts through the doorway with the angle of the pipe lying in the grass, the zig-zag at the top of the wall with the topography of the distant hills.

Painted factory, Tuscany dates from shortly after the artist and his partner Ian Bent relocated from Rome to the rural retreat of Posticcia Nuova in Pieve a Presciano, near Arezzo. The move to a new studio and a new environment (and possibly also the influence of Bow's taste) evidently had a positive impact, much invigorating Smart's practice. When the present work was first shown in Melbourne at the end of 1972, it was alongside such well-known paintings as Factory staff, Erewhyna (1972, National Gallery of Victoria). Patrick McCaughey spotted the change of gear, observing that 'the concentration in the paintings plus their unnerving decorative sense mark (a) new access in (his) quality ... it's good to see such a distinguished painter hitting such good form.'⁵

We are most grateful to Stephen Rogers for assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. Edmund Capon, 'Still, silent, composed: the art of Jeffrey Smart', in Edmund Capon (ed.), Jeffrey Smart retrospective, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999, p. 20
2.  The model for the figure was the painter Michael Ramsden, then husband of fashion designer Jenny Kee.  The couple returned to Australia in 1972 after some years in London.
2. Jeffrey Smart, quoted in Christopher Allen, Jeffrey Smart: unpublished paintings 1940-2007, Melbourne: Australian Galleries, 2008, p. 96
3. The vertical stripes are a favourite device of the artist, and can be seen in works from Conducted tour (1970, private collection through Corrugated Gioconda (1975-1976, National Gallery of Australia) to Container train in landscape (1983-1984, Victorian Arts Centre)
4. 'Australian painting in familiar custody', Age, 15 November 1972, p. 2