Lot 90: ROBERT MACPHERSON (B. 1937)

UNTITLED SERIES ONE acrylic paint on canvas with different wire lengths 61 x 45.6 cm each panel Painted in 1979 PROVENANCE Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane Three works were acquired from the above by the present owner in 1979 The remaining six were acquired by the present owner in 1983 EXHIBITION Brisbane, Ray Hughes Gallery, 1979 Brisbane, IMA, Robert MacPherson: Survey Exhibition, 1985 NOTES Conceived by the artist in 1979, these panels were acquired by Mal Enright in two instalments, firstly from Ray Hughes' gallery in 1979, and following their exhibition as a set in the important Robert MacPherson: Survey Exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in 1985. A smaller work from the series, Untitled Paintings 1980-81, forms a crucial part of MacPherson's representation in AGWA's extensive collection. As a fascinating premeditated enigma - a painterly conception with a typical simplicity of means - each self-referential piece is a seminal work in major investigations by the artist into painting as a container, pictorial space, Russian Constructivism and the icon as a religious and domestic signifier.1 We might see the panels as naming the three dimensional space they occupy, as according to Cripps, they describe their own display.2 His regulative idea is the subject matter describing how the work is hung, the canvasses installed at an angle to the wall. Each grey-green form describes the dimensions and shapes of the hanging angle of the canvas, and correspond to the volume of space behind and beyond the picture plane. A void, then, is the 'real' pictorial space of the works. Further, the deliberate confusing of the imagery of his paintings with the painting itself paradoxically abolishes traditional notions of 'pictorial space' and has a constructive dialogue with the work of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The piece catches a shift in the artist's formal logic of applying found systems to painting as object and container, comprehensively extending these notions to include the container of art in the space of the spectator. For Periz, there is another insouciant poke at key debates in 1960's formalism here, namely the disciplinary demarcation between painting and sculpture.3 Utilising the formal and material conditions that constitute an imminent pictorial language - although not textual in this instance - he paths the way to eventually include in his work text and image, and currently, text as image. It might be argued the work itself defines precisely a space 'between' readings of MacPherson's oeuvre. The space Untitled Series One 1979 creates, so it would follow, allows us to juxtapose concerns of his past [investigations of the painterly process] with a different present [his explorations of language and other sign systems]. If we were to read much further into it, we might ultimately see these painted forms as shadows of reason that inform and unify with astonishing efficiency his entire output to date. In them the door is left slightly ajar; Robert MacPherson is nothing if not discreet. 1. SEE: Trevor Smith, 'The World in My Paintbrush' in Robert MacPherson ex cat AGWA 2001 pp 60-62, and 'Artist's Statement' in Robert MacPherson: A Proposition to Draw 1973-78 ex cat University of QLD Art Museum 1993 for extensive coverage of MacPherson's idea for the 'painting as container'. 2. SEE: Peter Cripps 'Robert MacPherson' in Robert MacPherson: Survey Exhibition ex cat IMA 1985 pp8-9 3. Ingrid Periz 'Close your Eyes' in Robert MacPherson: Survey 1975-1995 ex cat National Gallery Victoria 1995, unpaginated. We are grateful to Simon Wright for this catalogue entry.