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John ReedTHE NOLAN RETROSPECTIVESidney Nolan is easily the most publicised ofall Australian painters, and, if for this reasonalone, it is logical that he should have a retrospectiveexhibition throughout the country; butof course the very fact of his popularity, aswell as the sheer weight of the exhibition makeit difficult to approach it objectively. Themajority tend to follow automatically theimage that has been created for them, and,inevitably others react against this. In eithercase the true value of the paintings is liableto elude the observer, and, in fact, we mustremember that this 'true value' may elude themost perceptive contemporary observer, andits assessment must wait for a later generation.In the meantime one does as well as one can,remembering that in selecting and presentingthis exhibition, Nolan has taken the risk ofexposing his weaknesses as well as his power,and that one must approach it equally exposedand with one's perceptive faculties fully alert.In reviewing (I think in the Bulletin) ElwynLynn's recent book 'Sydney Nolan. Myth andImagery', Dr Bernard Smith laid the groundopen for a much more complete research intoNolan's work and its sources and implicationsthan has ever previously been undertaken. Itprovides a powerful and important challengewhich deserves to be taken up by someonehaving the necessary scholarship and insight;but my own concern in this article is with thepaintings themselves as they present themselvesto my eyes. I am concerned far more in knowing// they succeed—which involves an aestheticvalue-judgment—than in tracing theirsource in Nolan's philosophy, their symbolicsignificance, their link with tradition, their interrelationshipbetween themselves, or anyother of their aspects which, to me, are moreessentially the province of the research studentor the historian than they are of the contemporaryobserver reacting to the pictorial imagepresented to him.Quite clearly this is a personal and subjectiveapproach; but I believe that, with some explanations,it is the best approach available tothe contemporary viewer of works of art. Heis in a particular position: he is part of theworld of today (as the artist is), and, as such,the art which is being created now is, in asense, being created out of him. It is not possiblefor him to judge it 'objectively' in the wayhe can be objective in relation to a work ofart created 200 years ago; but he can respondto it out of an instinctive awareness of itssources and its particular message to him, andas part of an audience with its roots in thosesources. This does not imply that every man ishis own art authority; but, on the contrary,presupposes a specific involvement in the contemporarycreative process and a developedsensibility, which, one imagines, comes fromthis involvement.In thinking about one's responses to an exhibitionof this size—143 paintings—one probablyfinds oneself doing so on two levels, firstmaking an overall assessment, and then consideringindividual paintings or groups ofpaintings. This is a big exhibition by our standardsand must be judged as such—in otherwords it would not justify itself if it only containeda few very good paintings, and one mustnot be unduly impressed with its size as such.After all it represents only 5 paintings a yearfor the period covered, and the main problemsinvolved would seem to have been, not thefinding of 143 paintings, but the decision onwhich to choose and the organisation involvedin getting them together and transporting themfrom one place to another.Seeing the exhibition as a whole was certainly,for me, a definitive experience. Foryears we had heard a great deal more aboutNolan's work than we had seen of it; onlyoccasional paintings or relatively small exhibitionshad been haphazardly shown in one state36 WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1 968