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SPEECH BY THE1F PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P4. KEATIN( G, MP
OPENING OF ARTHUR BOYD RETROSPECTIVE
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
TUESD) AY 14 DECEMBER 1993
1 am delighted to bc here this evening at the opening of a long overdue retrospective
exhibition of the work of one of Australia's, not to mention the world's, great living
painters. At the time of Arthur's last retrospective, the critical notice in the Adelaide Advertiser
was accompanied by a special offer of a washing machine for forty nine guineas, which
gives you an idea of how long it has been between drinks.
Thirty years in fact.
That is remarkable in itself. But what is even more remarkahlc is that, at the time or
thec Adelaide retrospective, Arthur had already been painting ror thirty years.
He started painting at a Lime, as one writer has said, when the air was heavy with the
arrogance and respectability of old men, old and tired in spirit and in the handling of
painlt. When some critics were happy to announce that Australian art pointed to the way in
which life should be lived in Australia, with the miaximum of flocks and the minimum
of factories.
A permanent Antipodean arcadia.
We owe Arthur Boyd a large debt for removing Australian art from this rcalm of
provincial complacvency.
With sonmc of the most compelling image., of any painter before or since, he showed us
those factories and the social deprivation which went with them, lie opened our eyes
to the horrors of war. To the plight of indigenous Australians and our callous
disregard for their future. To the threat to our environment.
Like Nolan and Drysdale, whose work was also featured during the 1964 Adelaide
Festival, Arthur Boyd has provided us with new ways of seeing Australia and a new
sense of being Australian.
A warts and all way. A way that. is more complete, and thereby mome valid.
This is not to suggest that Arthur's work is a catechism of grim rectitude. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
As befits such a delightful character, his work is full of jollity, of gentlc mockery and
self deprecation. But at the appropriate time, as I have said, it is serious too.
Someone once said that Arthur Boyd as a painter of the Australian landscape was able
to successfully combine the golden vision of Streeton with the darkness conveyed by
earlier painters such as Buvclot and thereby to show us the hush it rcally was a
thing of menace as well as beauty.
In a more general sense too, he has enabled us to sec the darkness as well as the light
in Australian life. Just as Manning Clark did. Just as novelists like Rodney Hall and
David Malouf are doing.
For the last sixty years, despite the fashions of the moment, he has been there, taking
our spiritual temperature, and offering his prognosis for our national well-being in his
own unique way.
Not hecoring or harassing. Jus opening our cyes to things which wc might have been
otherwise inclined to overlook or sweep under the national carpet.
As he himself has said, he has been concerned with a certain grandeur in things, even
little things. And he has been second to none in helping us to comprehend the
dimensions of that grandeur.
People whose judgment is much morc expert than mine see in Arthur's work a wide
ranige of influences. At times it seems that of itself it is a mini-history of Western art.
But, as Barry Pearce points out in the exhibition catalogue, while he has takcen what he
has needed from European tradition, he has also given back something of his own
which is a sense of our essential difference.
He has brought to Australians, and to the world at large, a sense of the Australian
identity. In this way he has lived up to the credo of the Antipodean Manifesto " in the growth
and transformation of its myths a society achieves its own sense of idcntity. In this
process the artist may play a creative and liberating rol." Y
Other artists have played this role too, but it is hard to recall anyone who has played it
better.
Arthur's own career has so far spanned sixty years.
But when one takes into account his remarkable forbears and talented relations, it is
fair to say that when we eecbrate Arthur's achievements we arc also paying tribute to
the Boyd family. The Boyds have been intimately connected with art and letters in
Australia for well over a century.
And in a country which has only known Lwo centuries of European settlement, such a
family contribution to our history is surely unique.
It is fair to say that, for ordinary Australians, the idea of being grateful for the
existence of partcular faimilies is somewhat a novel idea.
From the early days of the colony we have rejected the idea of a bunyip aristocracy, of
the idea of special status deriving from the inheritance of money, or property or other
privilcgc. But the Boyd family is nothing like that.
Their status derives from the spiritual rather than the material dimension from the
fertility of their imagination, and their ability to convert it by pen, paintbrush or pottcrs
wheel to a vision of ourselves which we otherwise mightn't have had.
Arthur, I'm sure, because he is such a modest and unassuming person, would be the
last person to claim any special status for his family indeed, he would probably reject
it with the same vehcmence that he rejects any ascription of special status for himself.
But he is a special Australian, as the work in this exhibition attests.
And an Australian of rare gencrosity.
Many people here tonight arc probably aware that some of the works in this exhibition
are part of the 1975 Boyd gift to the National Gallery. A gift which played no small
part in getting the Gallery going.
But not enough for the Boyds.
Early this year I met Arthur and Yvonne in the sadder circumstances of a memorial
service to their brother-in-law and great friend, Sir Sidney Nolan.
I was privileged to be able to speak about Si Nolan's legacy to Australia's cultural life,
just as I have been able to do in relation to Arthur today.
And I was able too to announce the Government's acceptance of the girt by Arthur and
Yvonne Boyd of their beloved Bundanon properties.
This was a gift to the nation of profound significance, and one which the
Commonwealth Government was proud to accept and to support.
Subsequently the Bundanon ' Irust was established and we provided $ 5.43 million to
help it bring to reality Arthur Boyd's great vision for Bundanon.
As if that gift wasn't enough, I am plcased to be able to announce tonight that the
Bundanon Trust is to be the beneficiary equally with his children of the copyright in
all of Artur Boyds works.
Arthur's assignment of his copyright means that his support for the work of the Trust
will continue for many ycars to come.
The Bundanon gift is valued in money terms at more than $ 12 million.
I hope that Arthur and Yvonne Boyd's great generosity will be matched by thc rest of
Austalia when the Bundanon Trust commences its major gifts campaign early next
year with my strong support.
All Australians wil have the opportunity to assist Bundanon through the Trust's
Donations, Friends of Bundanon and Merchandising Programs, and I urge them to do
SO. It remains for me to congratulate the Art Gallery or New South Wales for the
tremendous achievement of putting this show together. Edmund Capon, Barry Pearce
and Patricia McDonald have assembled a collection which can more than hold its own
with any of the overseas blockbusters.
And that perhaps gives the truest indication of the achievement of Arthur Boyd.
To a painter who wanted to paint the Great Picture, or if not the great one, then some
very good ones, I can only say in sincere admiration, Arthur, that your wish has been
granted in abundance, and we arc all the better for it.
And now I have great pleasure in declaring the exhibition open.