Chapter 4

On Monday, Patrick called the Best Western at 13:00, but Olwen had not yet arrived. He left a message with his home number and his cell. And he thought about calling Sarah Mitchell, but decided to wait till after speaking to Olwen. He looked at what Rachel had written and thought about it.

Were pictures like literature? C.S. Lewis wrote:

A work of (whatever) art can be ether ‘received’ or ‘used’. When we ‘receive’ it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we ‘use’ it we treat it as assistance for our own activities. The one, to use an old-fashioned image, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have never yet explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of our familiar rides. These rides may in themselves be good, bad, or indifferent. The ‘uses’ which the many make of the arts may or may not be intrinsically vulgar, depraved, or morbid. That’s as may be. ‘Using’ is inferior to ‘reception’ because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it.” -- An Experiment in Criticism, X [1961]

What Rachel was talking about was the way Dupain’s and Williams’ work was received. The way the patterns (the landscapes), invented by each, enabled our view of Australia. Each takes us for a different bicycle ride. But the important thing was the ride, not the description of the ride. What was it Lewis wrote? Oh, yes: “If we have to choose, it is always better to read Chaucer again than to read a new criticism of him.” For Rachel, look at the painting or photo, not at what the critics say about it.

She was going to have to distinguish between history and criticism.

He was still thinking when Olwen called. After the usual re- introductions and some chit-chat, he said “You want to meet Sarah Mitchell, I was told.”

“Very much so.”

“What’s your schedule?”

“Well, want to get to the LA, to see what it’s like. But most likely she’ll be there, too.”

“Perhaps I might suggest that you try to see her around 11 tomorrow or Wednesday.”

“Oh?”

“The Assembly generally convenes at noon. She’d want to be there for that. At the beginning of the session, there can’t be a big backlog for her. Are you at the Best Western?”

“Yes.”

“OK. I’ll call Mrs. Mitchell and then call you back.”

“Wow!”

“Talk to you soon.”

Patrick called the Ministry and (luckily?) got one of the aides he’d met during his six months there.

“I’ve a young friend in town from UNE who’d like to meet Mrs. Mitchell, is it possible?”

“Any background?”

“She’s the daughter of two retired Navy officers and wants to go into politics. They live in South Grafton. She’s being recommended for PiP, whatever that is.”

“Oh. She must be a good one! Just a mo’ ... Tomorrow’s out. How about Wednesday at 10:30?”

“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

“What’s her name?”

“Olwen Evans.”

“An Irish lassie?”

“Welsh.”

“Oops. Well, she’s on Her Majesty’s sked.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Patrick called the hotel, and got Olwen. “You’re set for 10:30 in the morning on Wednesday. I told the aide you were a PiP candidate and that your parents were both Navy officers.”

“Well, it’s true. But the appointment is just great! I’ll go to at least an hour or so of the LA tomorrow so I’ll know just how boring it might be.”

“Now. Can we take you out for dinner?”

“Of course, but near here, please. I’ve a place want to go after ten.”

“Oh, where’s that?”

“ARQ Sydney. It’s on Flinders Street.”

“I – er – know of it. Hmm. What kind of food would you like?”

“Nearly anything, but not Chinese or Thai – that’s easy in Armidale.”

“Southern Italian?”

“Just dandy.”

“‘I’ll make a reservation and we’ll pick you up at the hotel around 19:00.”

“We?”

“Rachel and I.”

“Right. See you then.”

Patrick called Verde and made a reservation for three for 19:30. It would be under 10 minutes from the Best Western to Verde and just about 10 from there to ARQ. They’d walk her, but he’d not go in. ARQ Sydney was a well-known gay disco. He hoped Olwen would be OK.

He called Gordy and narrated all three conversations. “I’ll ask Nadine about ARQ,” he said.

A few minutes later Gordy called back. “Nadine says that as long as she avoids the drug sales folk and the guys with no shirts on, she’ll be OK. The loos are disgusting though.”

“I’ll tell her.” Patrick had just gotten off when Rachel arrived home.

“Do I have time to shower?”

“You have time for anything you want.”

“It’s fairly warm, what are you going to wear?”

“Chinos, tee shirt, carry a blazer.”

“I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

“Can you hear me?”

“Sure.”

“I read your stuff.”

“I expected you would.”

“It’s good. But it needs something.”

“And?”

“You need to explain quite explicitly that the Aboriginal manner of looking at landscape is totally different from both the western and the eastern points of view. I looked at Flood’s Rock Art of the Dreamtime.”

“And?”

“I’ll read a sentence: ‘Explanation of the landscape and everything in it has always been a prime focus of Aboriginal people in Australia’.”

“That’s brilliant! So the underlying difference is that the West, China and Japan depict the landscape whereas the Australians explain it!”

“Yes. Uh ... that’s very distracting.” Rachel had reappeared with her hair in a towel-turban and otherwise bare.

“Nothing you oughtn’t be familiar with. You spoke to Olwen?”

“Of course. Twice, in fact. And with the Ministry.” He went on to relate the various conversations.

“So, we’ll take her to ARQ?”

“Exactly. Nadine told dad that as long as she avoids the pushers and the ‘sweaty shirtless blokes, ‘ she’d be OK. Oh, and the loos are disgusting.”

“That last is true in many public places. The Gallery spends more keeping the Ladies and the Gents respectable than in keeping the entry and shop neat and tidy.”

“Anyway, I think you need to get back to the prose for UNSW. You’ve got well under a page and he’ll want several. One of which ought to be bibliography.”

“That last part is the easiest. Two or three books each where Dupain and Williams are concerned; two or three Flood items; Grierson on Documentary; McCaughy’s book on Australian art; and the first and final volumes of Hauser. That’ll be over a dozen items. And he can tell me to add something on photography or the history of landscape painting in Europe.”

“First volume of Hauser?”

“Absolutely, let me read it. He says:

Children’s drawings and the artistic production of contemporary primitive races are rationalistic, not sensory: they show what the child and the primitive artist know, not what they actually see; they give a theoretically synthetic, not an optically organic picture of the object. They combine the front-view with the side-view or the view from above, leave nothing out of what they consider worth knowing about the object, increase the scale of the biologically and practically important, but neglect everything, however impressive in itself, which plays no direct part in the context of the object. The peculiar thing about the naturalistic drawings of the Old Stone Age is, on the other hand, that they give the visual impression in such a direct, unmixed form, free from all intellectual trimmings or restrictions, that we have to wait until modern impressionism to find any parallels in later art. We discover motion studies which already remind us of modern instantaneous photographs, the like of which we do not find again until we come to the pictures of a Degas or a Toulouse-Lautrec, so that for the eye unschooled by impressionism there must appear to be some-thing badly drawn and unintelligible about these pictures.