Real, Irrational or Both?
The Male Nudes of James Gleeson

  This exhibition focuses specifically on Gleeson's painting of the 1960s and early 1970s. At that time there was an important nexus in his work of classicism, surrealism, homo-eroticism and neo-Platonic notions of the perfection of form.

  Furthermore, all of these small paintings are from one collection, thus Gleeson's themes of the time are magnificently concentrated in this show. Here is a powerful distillation of a relatively private moment. Their very size and the dominating erotic themes, have kept these jewel-like works off the walls of the major public galleries. They remain 'cabinet', or genuine 'collector', pieces and it seems certain that they will remain so. As exclusive, private gems they help us challenge a rational and stultifying world.

  Classicism and Surrealism may appear to be strange bedfellows, but Surrealism, in both literature and the visual arts, is built on the element of the unexpected and the marvelous. What could be more unexpected than essays on perfection in the human form juxtaposed with the dreamscapes permitted by Surrealism. Gleeson, Australia's greatest living painter has always tested himself against the highest standards of craftsmanship, and thought. Indeed he was attracted to classicism because it facilitated this ever-present challenge and aroused his sense of the perfect. Michelangelo would have agreed that beautiful forms (c/f David) convey with direct power, the notions of purity and righteousness.

  Gleeson's ability to render the male nude is unequalled in this country. Indeed when one sifts through the history of western art there have been precious few painters who have pursued this subject. The photography of Mapplethorpe and the painting of Lucien Freud come easily to mind, but Gleeson's crystalline images presented here, are their equal. James Gleeson stands at the forefront of technical facility amongst Australian painters and his intellect goes unchallenged. He acknowledges Salvador Dali and T S Eliot as early influences.

  His "Totems in Arcadia" provokes thoughts of his very early works, but by 1981 when this was painted Gleeson had clearly moved to a new plane of accomplishment, while "Figure with Drawn Knee" may be counted amongst his very finest in this genre.

  Both demonstrate that Gleeson followed, throughout this period, the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras' maxim that 'man was the measure of all things'. This notion has been interpreted in many ways, but for Gleeson the startling perfection of his male nudes was the beginning of a 'real' experience, one which rapidly transformed into an erotic dreamscape of the slithering underworld. Robert Hughes has used the term 'snapshots of the impossible'. One suspects that for Gleeson both worlds, as he employs them, layered, conjoined or juxtaposed, are far from impossible. Indeed they are the place where he lived; in a world which was not circumscribed by sight alone.

  The Wagner show is one not to be missed. Rarely do such enriching opportunities come our way.

Dr Garry Darby
March 2007