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I do not think it has been fulfilled, and thepainting presents only its surface to me, withoutany feeling of being involved in it. I amtold that when 'Riverbend' was first shown(in David Jones Gallery) it was not hungflat against a wall, but on stands, which enabledit to be seen as a 'riverbend', and I canwell imagine that this might have had quitea definite effect on one's response to the painting.'Glenrowan' has much in common with'Riverbend', but it has been brought to life bythe giant prone figure of Kelly and the headof his horse: it engages you in a way 'Riverbend'fails to do, but tends to fade out wherepure landscape takes over from KeUy.'Inferno' (also on the cover) is somethingquite different. Goodness knows what you callit: a sketch for a painting, an unfinished painting,a sort of a mock-up of a painting, or, justa painting. It does not much matter what youcall it, what it has achieved is the importantthing, and its achievement is definitely somethingdisturbing. With vague recollections ofDante, I see the floating, disembodied souls ofandrogynous beings, armless, sexless except foran occasional swelling breast, and for the mostpart expressionless too, their heads painted in,but their bodies just blank white forms, thoughsometimes strangely flecked with patches ofred, or red and blue. I confess their precise significanceevades me, but the total effect is disturbingand haunting: it stirs some hiddenmemories and cannot be ignored.If 'Inferno' is the climax of the exhibition,then without doubt the 1966 Wimmera (andallied) paintings are the anti-climax. Nolanused to say he believed in showing everythinghe did, and if a painting was 'bad', well, somuch the worse for him, but just the same itwas part of him and of creative activity. I canonly hope that this group of paintings—as wellas the Eureka panel in the Reserve Bank inMelbourne—was made public in this spkit. Itis a pity in my mind that an exhibition whichdoes so much to confirm one's strongest convictionsabout Nolan should end on this note,and it must not be allowed to distract ourthoughts and responses from the rare andbeautiful experiences he has given us.Though we have other fine painters—I thinkparticularly of the sustained intensity andpassion of Arthur Boyd's work—the range ofNolan's vision, its penetrating quality, itsrevelation of inner meaning in the world aboutus, and the lyric intimacy with which hepresents it to us, place him in a special position,which enables him to seize our imaginationwith particular vividness, and at the sametime, to appeal to a much wider audience thanis the case with other major contemporarypainters.An interesting footnote to this article suggestsitself to me. Nolan as a young man wasessentially a 'modern'. Not only does his earlypainting show this—as at least one critic hasnoted—but his very active and imaginativemind was always occupied with the modernworld- and even with the world of the future.For instance, he was exercised with the idea ofa city of glass, and was already projectinghimself to the moon. Yet, today we find little,if any- evidence in his paintings of this kindof imaginative process, and though he mustbe fully aware of what is happening in theworld of art and science, the images in hispaintings give us no sign that he is himselfinvolved in this area. It is perhaps this factorwhich now tends to make him somewhat remotefrom our younger painters.WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1968 39