Sidney Nolan was a man of literature. Whether giving form to stories, poems or myths, his oeuvre finds itself suspended in a grander and expanding constellation of artistic production. In this new collection of works on paper, there are references to the modernist poet Charles Baudelaire, the mythical mermaid and merman, and Ancient Greek mythology, each pared back to an icon of modernism.
‘Baudelaire: Voyage to Cythera’ most directly embodies Nolan’s adoration for poetry. It was created in 1965 for Robert Lowell’s book of translated Baudelaire poems. An expression of ‘Voyage to Cythera’, Nolan paints a spectre of a man, a swan poised to pierce his middle. Baudelaire’s poem charts the demise of a poet beneath the violent natural order; it is about the twin drive of eros and thanatos – life and death – that fuel and threaten humans.
Sidney Nolan 'Baudelaire: Voyage to Cythera'
Duality also underscores Nolan’s ‘Merman and Woman’, an original drawing that sees figures – man and woman, merman and harpy – entwine. It can be read as mythical or romantic, a visual metaphor for how we merge and transform in the throes of love. All unions are epic under Nolan’s hand. The half-fish half-human recurs again in ‘Mermaid’, a crayon-rubbing that by virtue of its medium, feels like an ancient cave drawing.
Finally comes ‘Sculpture Sketch’ – Nolan’s life after Ned Kelly. It was the European winter of 1955–56 and the artist was cloistered on the Greek island of Hydra, searching for a new myth to explore. Sensing a throughline between Antiquity and Australianness, he voraciously created works like this – centaurs, skulls, helmets and figures entwined, stars on his path towards the famed Gallipoli series.
Each work in this collection is museum-quality, emblems of Nolan’s iconic brand of modernism, myth and a directness that artist historian Bernard Smith describes as “urgent and real”. In the artist’s words, he was “just trying to work it all out.”
