Talent is where you find it.
jaXas
From an...@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu Mon 03 Apr 95 17:49:12
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From: C-re...@clarinet.com (Reuter / Michael Perry)
Newsgroups: clari.news.features,clari.world.oceania.australia,clari.living.arts
Subject: The hanging of Australian painter Ken Done
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuter) - Ken Done is arguably
Australia's most commercially successful artist, but you will
not find his work hanging in the country's top galleries.
Yet in Japan, Done is idolized, his gallery exhibitions
attract huge crowds, his work has graced every cover of the
lifestyle Hanako magazine since 1988 and he has a radio show.
The relationship between Done and both the conservative and
avant-garde wings of Australia's art establishment has ranged
from outright hostility to begrudging acceptance.
Done is a multimillionaire who regularly makes the country's
rich lists, and that does not sit comfortably with the
traditional mythology of the struggling artist.
``The starving artist in the garret doesn't work, it never
has,'' a defiant Done told Reuters in an interview in his cabin
studio on the shores of Sydney harbor.
``It's the Van Gogh story that sticks so firmly in people's
minds. What needs to be remembered is that he actually painted
for a very brief period of time; he was 34 when he died,'' Done
said as he put finishing touches on a painting.
``Had he lived he would have sold a huge amount of paintings
and been very successful,'' he said.
Born in the small rural Australian town of Maclean, Done is
a classically trained artist, whose influences include French
impressionist Henri Matisse and Norman Rockwell, whose realistic
paintings of small-town America adorned the covers of The
Saturday Evening Post.
A former advertising art director, Done has combined his art
with his skills as a designer to produce merchandise such as tea
towels, beer cans, drink coasters, dresses, postcards, T-shirts,
all boasting his bold, colorful strokes.
Done's designs are so popular his company has an annual
turnover of $36 million.
But critics claim mass production dilutes the artistic worth
of his paintings, on which the designs are based.
Done says there is nothing new in the commercialization of
art into design, citing Pablo Picasso and Matisse, both of whom
produced fabric designs as well as paintings.
He also points out that every top art gallery now has a gift
shop selling postcards of the masters.
``When I first did that people stuck their noses up, now
they are all doing it,'' he said, referring to his galleries.
But it's not just the money that has offended Australia's
art establishment. They say Done's work is just not art.
They say his paintings of Sydney harbor, yachts at anchor
outside his cabin or beach scenes are too simplistic, lack
meaning and are basically hedonistic.
``They think it is too flash,'' the art critic for the
newspaper The Australian, Elwyn Lynn, told Reuters. Lynn said
many in the art world do not separate Done's art from his
design.
Terence Measham, director of the New South Wales Powerhouse
Museum in Sydney, says the art establishment equates the ochres
and muted grays of the bush with masters of Australian art,
while Done is a self-described ``colorist.''
Edmund Capon, director of the New South Wales Art Gallery,
says Done is not exhibited by major galleries because he is
perceived as commercially oriented rather than a pure artist.
A good friend of Done, Capon has exhibited him temporarily
and says he has the talent to metamorphose into a pure artist.
Lynn disagrees. He proclaims Done is already an artist but
adds: ``Sometimes he slips from that high allotted standard we
expect from our cultural heroes.''
In contrast, the Japanese art world embraces Done's bold
colors and simple strokes as true art.
``The work of a true artists knows no borders and of course,
the work of Ken Done crosses borders effortlessly,'' wrote
Japanese artist Yoshihisa Kinameri.
``The vibrant surprise of his colors rids people of anxiety
and makes them feel good. That is where his artistic god is
enshrined,'' Kinameri said in a book on Done's designs.
Done says the Japanese understand his work because art is a
part of their everyday life, citing their written language.
So what is art? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as: ``The
production of something beautiful, skill or ability in such work
as paintings or sculptures.'' A fair definition, says Done.
``An artist I think in the end becomes the sum total of all
the images he has seen,'' said Done, describing a 1984
self-portrait that superimposes half a dozen different faces.
Done says he is an artist and needs no official recognition.
But still he enters all of Australia's major art competitions.
``I'd be quite happy to be tagged an Australian painter, but
I do so many other things ... I guess I will just have to be
called Ken Done,'' he said. ``In time the name will either mean
something or people will say 'who?'''
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