Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Jeffrey Smart (1921-) - Australian Modernist Painter

I've always loved and admired the modernist urban landscapes of Jeffrey Smart - partly cos they remind me of two other favorite painters - David Hockney and the Australian, Alan Oldfield (see earlier posts on both artists).


There is a quality of airlessness and bleaching light in all three, and a clear and spacious setting out of the elements in a picture. A real elegance of formal and geometric design.

Many of these things show one of Smart's strongest influences - the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca (1445-1492) ...

Piero della Francesca Piero 'The Flagellation Of Christ'

What I particularly like in Jeffrey Smart is the way he selects the most ordinary objects and street-scapes and turns them into something classic, sculptural and monumental.

'Morning, Yarragon siding' (1982-84)

'Bus Stop'

On a social level, I love that Jeffrey Smart has lived his life as an openly gay man.

In an interview I was watching today, he talks in such a natural way about, Hermes (?), his partner of thirty something years - not self-consciously pushing a currently politically-correct agenda.

He is also out-spoken in a more general way - and his candor is a breath of fresh air in the sometimes 'rarified' and chocking discourse of serious main-stream painting.

Second study for 'Monument and car park' (1972)

'Bus terminus' (1973)

The two men have lived most of the last forty in Italy, where Smart bought a house in Posticcia Nuova, near Arezzo in 1965.

Study for 'Holiday'

'On the beach, San Diego' (1983)

On a more personal level, I went to an auction at Lawsons here in Sydney a few years back to bid on a study for 'Cooper Park' ...

'Cooper Park'

... and sadly (in retrospect) stopped raising my hand as the work edged up to $14,000. Bugger! LOL.

I really really love this work.

There is something haunting or foreboding about the scene. Perhaps achieved through the dark sky.

And this, to a degree, is in counter point the guy lying casually back on the grassy hill, legs apart and shoes off. Staring unselfconsciously at the viewer - and maybe in askance. I imagine he's gay. Or want him to be.

Oh well, it's on The Regret List - quite high up in fact!

On a happier note, Jeffrey Smart's autobiography 'Not Quite Straight' was published in 1996. I must go out and get it!