Arthur Boyd: Testament of a Painter
Clip 1: Antipodean Chagall
2 min 53 sec (
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Taken from the documentary Arthur Boyd: Testament of a Painter (1994)
Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
Australian painter Arthur Boyd painted his ‘Half-Caste Bride’ series in the 1950s, drawing international attention to his work.
Art curator Barry Pearce explains how Boyd’s exposure to European painters like Goya gave him a new perspective on his own work.
Teachers’ notes
provided by The Le@rning Federation
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This clip shows the emergence of Arthur Boyd as a painter of international regard, through his series of paintings called Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-caste, also known as the ‘Bride’ series. A series of close-ups and details of early Boyd paintings with voice-over narration describe Boyd’s development as a painter in Australia and in London. Barry Pearce, Head Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales since 1978, describes Boyd’s trip to London and the success of his first overseas exhibition. A photograph of Boyd as a young man is shown.
Educational value points
- As the clip suggests, travel and place were important in the life and work of Arthur Boyd (1920–99). Boyd was born into an artistic family where he learnt the skills of painting, pottery and printmaking. At the end of the Second World War Boyd set up a pottery studio at Murrumbeena in Victoria before moving with his family to England where his paintings drew critical acclaim. For the rest of his life Boyd spent time living in both England and Australia. In Australia, Boyd lived and worked at Bundanon, a property in southern New South Wales. He donated Bundanon to the nation as a centre for the Arts in 1993. Boyd was named Australian of the Year in 1995.
- The clip explores paintings from the Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-caste series. In 1951 Boyd travelled to central Australia where he witnessed first-hand the poverty and disenfranchisement of Indigenous Australians. This disconnectedness between the two communities, Indigenous and white settler, was to provide the central theme in the series through the images of white bride and half-caste lover, often portrayed in an uncertain embrace.
- Boyd is described as the ‘antipodean Chagall’. Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was a Russian-born painter whose ‘fantastic’ vision influenced the Surrealist Movement. Chagall’s paintings, vivid in colour and often depicting episodes from Russian folktales or village life, are characteristically populated by people or objects that seem to float within the landscapes they inhabit, a motif also employed in the work of Arthur Boyd.
- Boyd’s later work was deeply influenced by his initial journey to Europe in 1959 where he saw first-hand the work of the great European artists, particularly that of Goya. Boyd’s landscapes often portray figures that bridge the old and new worlds, blending Greek myths and biblical allegory with uniquely Australian stories and Indigenous spirituality.
- As explored by the clip, Boyd had an important role in taking Australian modernist art to a wider audience. During the 1950s and 60s, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker (1914–99), Russell Drysdale (1912–81) and Sidney Nolan (1917–92) all exhibited their work overseas, bringing to US and European audiences their particular vision of Australian landscapes, society and history.
- Arthur Boyd was one of a generation of artists and intellectuals that included Albert Tucker, John Perceval (1923–2000), Sidney Nolan and Joy Hester (1920–60), who emerged during the 1940s and 50s and were associated with Heide, the home of John and Sunday Reed at Heidelberg in Melbourne, now the Heide Museum of Modern Art.
