John Brack: Unique Australian Art

John Brack was not only one of Australia’s most notorious artists through the artwork in which he created, but was also a pioneer for many art forms today, that embody everyday elements of the Australian people in a modern artistic form. One of the biggest takeaways I got from learning about Brack was his participation and movement of the antipodean art group. The antipodeans were a group of seven modern Australian painters who included Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh and John Brack. Their artwork stressed the importance of figurative art and protested against standard abstract expressionism. Their underlying motive and art trend favored the embracement of “unique Australia”, based

By doing this, I think he allowed his work to be more relatable to his fellow peers. For example, in Collins St. 5pm, a painting that depicts the busy post rush hour commuters traveling along Collins Street in downtown Melbourne is a very simplistic piece of art at first glance. In the image, hundreds of white Australian men, dressed in the same standard suite attire, show little to no emotion on their faces, as they casually make their way to or from work on a typical 9 to 5 workday. As this image may seem to lack a certain demeanor to it, considering the value and praise it receives, the intentions Brack had for the piece when it was first produced were completely different from what he thought about it many years later. “Looking back on it now I am totally unsatisfied, because of the condescending attitude I adopted in relation to the people in the street, their lives were just as complex as mine, if not more” (McDonald, John. 2009). The reason I find this quote and piece so fascinating is because he seems to have originally produced this piece with a sense of negative associations. But like many things in life our point of view of intentions regarding something can change, and after reading more about Brack I think this was seen in his Collins St. 5pm piece. His intension of producing this piece seemed to be rooted from the “basic” middle aged, white Australian male at first, but even to an artist as regarded as Brack, his intensions seemed to change. Overall, I learned a lot about the more modern artist views Brack had, and Australian art style in the 1950. I also grasped a better understanding of what kind of person and intensions the most prominent modern Australian artist to date, had in mind when producing his world-renowned pieces