Art review
Robert Rooney

The University of Melbourne's selection at Monash University
Gallery emphasises the earlier periods of Australian art — tonal painting and early modernism.—which form ths,core of a collection some 100 years old,      '
About two-thirds of the paint­ings i on display are gifts to the university, and a number of these,' including works by de Maistre, Shore, Lawlor, and Vassilieff, pre­sented by Joseph Brown.

Overall, my impression was that small is beautiful, traditional is best, and modern is OK when safe (as in the more recent works).
Portraits by Tom Roberts, Vio­let Teague and Hugh Ramsay dominate the show. Ramsay's 'J.S. MacDonald (study)' towers above the rest with a masterful
display of tonal modelling that avoids the slippery bravura of his more Sargent-inspired port­raits.
MacDonald's youthful presence seems far from his later public image as the "ogre" of anti-modernism.
Ramsay, who died prematurely at the age of 29, is one of the"ifs" of Australian art. He had a keen sense of structure that would have set him apart from Meldrum and his followers.

Sandwiched between the port­raits are two small oil sketches by Rupert Bunny, painted in a style that recalls the pale color patches of Nabi intimism. These were among my favorite paint­ings.  Tonalists Alexander Colquhoun and Max Meldrum are also well represented.  Meldrum's 'Olinda Falls Road and Mt. Donna Buang' (1932) is one of those occasional flukes where he almost makes it compositionally.
George Bell, a pioneer of Mel­bourne modernism, is represented by a fine early example of his tonal style 'Edwardian Lady in Green Costume'.
Among the more recent' works I liked the paintings by Fred Wil­liams, John Brack, and Ralph Balson's 'Abstract' (1954).
Not so good was the bloated scale and unpleasant poly-vinyl surface of Arthur Boyd's charcoal drawing 'Nude in a Cornfield'.
THE Monash University collec­tion is less than 20 years old, and built up from acquisi­tions by a shrewd art advisory committee.
The selection from Monash, at the Melbourne University Gal­lery, places greater emphasis on the works of younger artists, mostly Victorian, who emerged during the 1960s. Some even entered the collection before their recognition by the State galleries.
Paul Partos is represented by an early stained and collaged Gorky-like painting 'Mer Black and Grey' (1964), while the paintings by Peter Booth, Robert Hunter, and myself, come from a slightly later period. From the imaginary "Banal School of Melbourne" beloved of art his­torians is Hickey's excellent painting of dark green tiles ar­ranged in a cruciform pattern, and my "Slippery Seals 2' (1967).
Booth's 'Untitled' (1970) is a powerful painting with the simple structure of two rectangles — one red and the other cream — and a tough, thick skin. There are also good works by Mike Brown, Rob­ert Hunter (a white on white painting), Irene Barberis, Kevin Connor, and Dick Watkins.
I found a lot of the 1970s pur­chases less interesting. Two ex­ceptions were John Brack's paint­ing of pens and pencils on the march, and 'Sir Louis Matheson' (1976), by Fred Williams, a por­trait that wins by virtue of its awkwardness.

THERE is a touch of megalomania in the installations, video, and prints by Arthur Wicks (pric­ed $50-$900) at Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Hawthorn. In 'Kit for Grasping the World' he wants to "reduce the world 'till it's within a hand's grasp", and like King Canute he desires to hold the tide at bay in 'Fragment for Against the Tide'. Can artists walk on water, too? you may ask.
Wicks certainly knows how to over-kill a simple idea. Not con­tent to present an event as a video, or photographic document, he has to surround it with aesthe­tic packaging, and merchandise it in the form of prints.
His work is a type of rococo style, quasi-conceptualist documentation, where information in the form of notebook jottings and instructions are rendered as orna­ment, photos are "artified" by adding touches of color, and back­grounds are spattered with de­corations.
'4 Steps 3 Times' and the many versions of 'Fragment for Against the Tide' and 'Sand Memories' are typical examples. The only things missing are the rubber stamps so popular in this sort of art.

The Standfield Gallery (formerly Warehouse Galleries) has opened in a more intimate space at 27 Murphy Street, South Yarra.Colin Jellett is showing seven carefully scrubbed and scumbled multi-layered paintings in oils and acrylics. On the level of crafts­manship they cannot be faulted, but the familiar configurations of­fer few surprises. They would be at home in the pages of 'Vogue Living'. (Price $650-$980).
One painting 'Vortex' was less ingratiating than the rest. It, at least, showed some signs of ani­mation..

The Age 13 March 1980