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‘Wherever and whenever in the future Australian painting is discussed and evaluated, Margaret Preston will surely be one of those to be first mentioned.’ ¹ - HAL MISSINGHAM, AUGUST 1963

Margaret Preston died in May 1963, aged 88, leaving a large body of artwork, comprising paintings, prints and ceramics. Unlike many artists, she also left a substantial body of writing, covering the mature years of her art and life. The vigour of her opinions, well known to her contemporaries, has continued to create comment in the half century since they were written, as students and scholars of new generations discover the unique place of Margaret Preston in the history of Australian art. Excerpts from her essays have found their way into many and varied studies but it is the purpose of this collection to present a selection of her writings in their entirety. In this way, the reader can experience her direct voice, with all its vision, paradox and contradiction.

As Hal Missingham predicted, Margaret Preston is an artist for all seasons, with contemporary curators and art historians still in the process of re-evaluating her art and ideas. Central among the latter was her role in championing Aboriginal art and her foresight in promoting Australia’s cultural links with Asia. Assessment of her relationship to Aboriginal art has gone full circle in the last twenty years. Criticised as a form of cultural imperialism in the 1980s, the emergence of Aboriginal art from the margins has been accompanied by a shift in scholarly interpretation of Preston’s views. One notable example of this is Andrew Sayers’ recent comparison of her 1946 monotype, ‘Bush Track NSW’, to the spiritual force of a yam Dreaming painting by acclaimed Aboriginal artist, Emily Kngwarreye.’² As with any interpretation, both these responses will continue to be adjusted in line with new approaches to both Preston and Aboriginal art.

This collection of Preston’s writings spans three decades, the earliest contribution in 1923, the latest in 1949. Since her interests ebbed and flowed during that time, the essays are not presented chronologically but grouped according to theme. The first section, A Convert to Modem Art, presents her biographical writings and theories about Aboriginal art and the role it might play in the creation of a national art. The last section, Artists’ Groundwork, is a miscellany, comprised of selected travel writings and essays on craft and colour theories. It ends with a biographical piece, written at the beginning of the Second World War, where Preston recalls her experiences with shell-shocked soldiers during World War 1.

Preston’s writings of the 1920s are the outcome of her first period of maturity; a synthesis of principles and ideas acquired both here and overseas. Her writings of the 1930s could be loosely characterised as protest writings, aligned with the general tenor of small magazines of that era and the debates about nationalism that preceded World War 2. Her writings of the 1940s are more ruminative, with a new depth of appreciation added to her support for Aboriginal art.

The animating spirit of the work conforms to our impression of that ‘red-headed little firebrand of a woman,’³ described by Margaret Preston’s friends and contemporaries. The voice, at its best, is direct and uncompromising, at its worst, simplistic and sweeping in its generalisations. Language is sometimes bluntly colloquial (as in the references to ‘lubras,’ ‘blacks,’ and ‘dopey whites’). With some notable exceptions, such as From Eggs to Electrolux, the writings seem direct and unpremeditated; the views of a mature woman who was not shy of voicing her opinions about what she perceived as the impoverished state of Australian art and society. The writings were published in a variety of-journals, including Art in Australia, The Home, Undergrowth, Manuscripts, Jindyworobak Review, Australia National Journal and various Sydney Ure Smith publications. Preston adopted a variety of styles in these, in line with the tone of the publication and its intended audience. These ranged from artless fables, as in From Eggs to Electrolux, (where she mythologised her own early development); to evocative commentary, as in The Gentle Art of Arranging Flowers; to bold rhetoric, as in What is to be our National Art? In the process writings, another voice becomes clear, that of the experienced craft worker and educator, whose practicality was equal to adverse conditions, even those of wartime. Her repeated emphasis on improvisation regarding materials and techniques, gives valuable insights into her art practice, as does her obvious dismay at the use of mechanical and formularised approaches to craft.

Certain devices occur repeatedly in the writing. A fondness for the apt metaphor, as when she compares the ‘ironbound realism’ of Australian art to the newly opened ‘Meccano’ Sydney Harbour Bridge. A love of paradox, evident in such statements as; ‘An artist may work with a knowledge of science but he seldom works scientifically.’ Bold declarations, such as ‘There is nothing more horrible than realism in applied art’; rhetorical questions, like ‘Who wants Art?’; and impassioned injunctions, such as ‘Just get to it someone and originate.’ Mordant humour is also a weapon; ‘For Applied Art, Apply to the Museum.’ All these contribute to the armoury of her expressions, helping to keep the work alive today, in spite of the sweeping nature of many of her statements. A composite picture emerges of an artist committed to developing an authentic approach to her artmaking and fiercely determined to encourage others to do the same. Like many a returning traveler, Margaret MacPherson found the Australian art scene provincial and backward looking on her return home in 1920. She had been abroad, intermittently, for over a decade, studying in Europe and working, during the war, on soldier rehabilitation in England. By the time she returned she was over forty and set to marry William George Preston, recently discharged from the A.I.F. The couple married in Adelaide but settled in Sydney, which became the base for their peripatetic lifestyle. With newly acquired financial stability, it became possible for the artist to pursue a more independent line. Never making art with one eye on the market, she was now freed from the burden of earning her own living and set out on three decades of artistic experimentation, creating, in the process, some of the best loved images in Australian art.

In between, the couple travelled extensively, in Asia and the Pacific, China, Japan, Korea, the Americas, Europe, North Africa, India and the Middle East. Within Australia, they travelled to remote sites to experience Aboriginal art and rock carvings at first hand and to select art for exhibitions at home and abroad. Their destinations were challenging and adventurous, particularly when Margaret’s increasing age is taken into account. (She was nearing eighty when they travelled to North Africa and the Middle East, for example.) Even at home, they seemed unable to stay put, moving to various addresses in Mosman, Cremorne and Berowra.

The Sydney art scene in the 1920s was a mixture of divergent personalities and forces, and prominent among them was Sydney Ure Smith. His roles as publisher of Art in Australia, proprietor of the commercial art studio, Smith & Julius, and President of the Sydney Society of Artists made him a valuable ally or opponent, depending on your allegiances. Although he decried cubism as ‘a disease,’ he championed Margaret Preston’s work and consistently published her viewpoints and observations.

Some brief notes on the publications will help to context the work. Art in Australia and The Home (1920-1938) were both Sydney Ure Smith publications. The first was a high-quality quarterly that appeared between 1916 and 1942. In 1934 it was sold to Fairfax & Sons Ltd, with Ure Smith resigning as Editor in 1938. The journal continued until 1942, when war and changing perspectives saw to its demise. It was reinvented by Sam Ure Smith, as Art and Australia, in 1963; under which name it continues today.

The Home by far a more populist publication, was a magazine for women that echoed the style of sophisticated British journals. Australia National Journal (1939-1947) was a monthly, edited by Sydney Ure Smith and Gwen Morton Spencer. In addition to art and travel, its focus embraced architecture and industry and provided a forum for Ure Smith’s interest in contemporary design. The Sunday Pictorial was the Sunday edition of the Daily Telegraph Pictorial, then owned by Associated Press. Undergrowth (1925-1929) lasted only a few issues and canvassed the views of students, such as Jean Bellette, as well as more established artists like Margaret Preston. Manuscripts, (1931-1935) was published and edited by Melbourne bookseller, Harry Tatlock Miller, later to be associated with Sydney’s Merioola artists. The magazine had good production standards and was committed to contemporary art and letters, with John Tregenza noting that it became ‘progressively avant-garde in outlook.’⁴ Preston apparently liked the magazine’s emphasis on linocuts, which were promoted as a modern democratic language. In Manuscripts she was in company with prominent Australian writers, artists and critics like George Bell, Leon Gellert and Harold Herbert.

As John Tregenza notes in his study of the years 1923-1954, nearly fifty Australian ‘little magazines’ appeared, few of which lasted more than four numbers.’⁵ Margaret Preston praised the efforts of all such publications in her 10th birthday message to the Jindyworobak Review, noting that the works of even short-lived magazines ‘seem to cling to the most unexpected places and so the good work goes on.’ Both in the Jindyworobak Review and Venture (1937, 1939-40), Margaret Preston found a kindred spirit in Editor and poet, Rex Ingamells. An Aboriginal word, Jindyworobak meant ‘to annex’ or ‘to join,’ with Ingamells believing that a fusion of Aboriginal words with his own language might express Australia’s unique spirit of place. Rather more successfully, Margaret Preston was proposing a visual equivalent, using the language of Aboriginal design to express what was uniquely Australian.

Tregenza believes the small magazines were a way of combating cultural isolation as well as an attempt to define what was distinctively Australian. In that pre-television, pre-internet era, such magazines had an immediacy we associate with both, allowing a forum for new and dissenting voices, not found in the more established journals.

The focus of Margaret Preston’s writings was relatively narrow. She did not deviate from her primary themes; the need for Australian artists to seek their own form of expression and the likelihood that inspiration could be found in Aboriginal art or the traditional arts of Asia and Japan. After World War 2, with the sense of urgency abating and people free to travel, a number of the small magazines folded. As a result, Preston’s writings increasingly appeared in the more established publications of Sydney Ure Smith.

There is a continuous link in her support for the graphic qualities of indigenous art and the formalist theories of Roger Fry and others that she was exposed to in Europe. As well, the use of visual signs in Aboriginal art relates directly to the ideas of Synthetic Cubism which provided objects with a coded equivalent; a parallel Preston would not have failed to observe. Cubism was a kind of ‘litmus test’ in this era when modern art was discussed, because of its ability to separate the progressive from the conservative. Modern European art had borrowed extensively from the ‘primitive’ and on her return home, Preston recognized the untapped power of Australia’s own indigenous art. ‘Totemism is one of the origins of art,’ she wrote in 1925, and ‘it is ridiculous to deny that the aboriginal of Australia has no definite place in the making of a national art.’

Again and again, she was to assert the modernist credo of rejecting ‘downright realism’ and literary references in art. This emphasis contributed to some of her most contentious statements about Aboriginal art, such as; ‘mythology and religious symbolism do not matter to the artist, only to the anthropologist.’ As much as the blind appropriation of another culture’s imagery (a criticism frequently levelled at Preston), this could be seen as a rejection of the ‘religious’ sentiment that she despised in Victorian art. She was to be uneasy with Surrealist literary references for similar reasons. Her attraction to ‘oriental art’ was also in keeping with modernist tenets, with Preston advocating the principle that art should not ‘imitate nature as it is but in its ideal form.’ She wanted to create ‘a purely Australian product’ and did not believe it could be achieved by the landscape traditions associated with debate about a national art.

Aspects of articles in this collection are repetitive but have been included to show the gradual evolution of Preston’s ideas about Aboriginal art. Her cavalier attitude of the 1920s, advising the adoption of sacred patterns for cushion covers and golf socks, in time, was replaced by a more measured tone. By 1941, with first hand experience of both Aboriginal art and its creators, she could admit that she was ‘humbly trying to follow them in an attempt to know the truth and paint it and so help to make a national art for Australia.’ Her repeated stress on the Aborigines as the ‘lowest grade of humanity’ paid lip service to a then, widely circulated view that they (along with the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Africa) were the closest living peoples to the Stone Age. The statement was generally followed by a denial, with Aboriginal pictorial and decorative art cited as evidence to the contrary. ‘The aborigine is an artist,’ she repeated, again and again; ‘a true and sensitive artist whose work should be studied and treated with the respect that is due to true art.’

As Preston returned to favoured themes (such as the role of American art in posing a warning or an inspiration) she sometimes made contradictory statements but the passage of the years brought new insights and she revised her opinions accordingly. Some views, particularly regarding the making of art, remained unchanged. She disliked facility, a factor that influenced her questing mentality and her ability to change both medium and approach. The craft writings also reveal a hands-on, do-it-yourself mentality, the product of working under difficult conditions and the realization that artistic feeling is invariably stronger with ‘the combination of the hand and the brain.’ Her rehabilitation work during World War 1 involved extensive improvisation, searching the moors for plants that would give dyes. Later she experimented with traditional Aboriginal colours, even bringing back sacks of sand, from her outback wanderings, to her Mosman hotel.

Her writing reflects this distrust of well-wrought style, jumping from one idea to another, in a lively, conversational manner. The transcript of her lecture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1938 is a particular example of this and a curious insight into Preston’s views on recent European contemporaries. Her advice to readers of The Home on how to decorate a bedroom provides another angle, particularly when contrasted with the electric candelabra and old Chinese ginger jars advised by other writers. As might be expected, Preston stresses an authentic minimalist approach, inclusive of the reader’s own ‘intimate possessions’ and handicrafts.

Margaret Preston practised what she preached, becoming a nomad who searched for inspiration in unlikely places; an adept at finding her own masters, so she could learn from her own ‘intuition how to understand them. No sitting down in Art Galleries or Art Schools, with Art served ‘a la carte, nor any return to Australia with wonderful canvases of great successes.’ Over her long life, the young girl who aspired to the high stool in the art gallery, in From Eggs to Electrolux, became her own woman, and in the process made a unique and on-going contribution to Australian art.

Elizabeth Butel

NOTES:

1 Hal Missingham, Art and Australia, Vol. 1, No. 2, August 1963, p.90

2 Andrew Sayers, Australian Art, Oxford University Press 2001

3 Stella Bowen, Drawn from Life, Collins 1941 p.22

4 John Tregenza, Australian Little Magazines 1923-1954, Libraries Board of South Australia 1964, p. 44

5 ibid

Spelling of place names in the travel articles has been left unaltered but a small number of other corrections to spelling and punctuation have been made in line with current usage.