Grafico Topico Update: In memory of Margaret Olley
Although from some years ago, Sue Smith feels this review still captures the essence of Margaret Olley's approach to art and life.
Rushcutter's Bay and Still Life
Margaret Olley
Philip Bacon Galleries
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 1998
Review by Grafico Topico's SUE SMITH
An edited version of this review was first published in The Courier-Mail 17 October,1998
THERE'S nothing like painting what you're familiar with," says Margaret Olley. "You can do all sorts of things with the ordinary." She pauses to consider the alternatives. "To go off and paint the Swiss mountains is a monumental task, best left to God!"
But though Olley, 76, mostly paints still-lifes and the interiors of her own house, her world is anything but limited. She is a knowledgeable benefactor, who has given to public galleries works by Arthur Boyd, Edgar Degas and Georgio Morandi, as well as early Indian sculptures and miniatures.
The range and depth of her own art has also been recently discovered: last year, an acclaimed retrospective exhibition of her work, presented in Sydney, Brisbane and Newcastle, showed landscapes, nudes and self-portraits, as well as the interiors for which she is well-known.
And Olley has always been an open-minded traveller, absorbing new cultures and the master painters like a sponge: "I'm always trying to learn, (going) to the great sources," she says. In May this year, she went to London to see a huge Bonnard retrospective; before that, there was Rembrandt in Australia, Vermeer in Europe, and Matisse in New York. She has excellent recall, describing in detail paintings and exhibitions she has seen up to forty years ago.
As we speak, Olley talks constantly about the masters. It is partly a defense mechanism, a way of gently deflecting probing questions -- like most artists, Olley is reluctant to talk about the whys and wherefores of her own work. But she also loves these artists: they are her touchstones, her guiding angels. When, for example, she chooses to paint her favourite yellow room half a dozen times -- as in her current show at Brisbane's Phillip Bacon Galleries -- somewhere at the back of her mind are works such as Picasso's variations on the "seated woman" theme, a series she saw in Paris and has never forgotten.
A large exhibition, drawn from the collection of Paris’s Musée National d’Art Moderne, of 180 works by European artists René Magritte, Victor Brauner and many other surrealists working from the 1910s to the late 1960s has been drawing delightedly puzzled crowds to Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art (the exhibition’s only Australian venue).
AMERICAN expatriates in bohemian Paris when the 20th century was young, the Steins – writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife, Sarah – were among the first to recognise the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Through their friendship and patronage, they helped spark an artistic revolution. 
America’s second city, Chicago, is très riche in museums, fabulous skyscrapers, music, fashion, comedy, and, Flaneur would venture, just about anything else your heart would desire in a world metropolis.
Grafico Topico finds everything blooming beautiful at Giverny … but whether you go to France or not, a bouquet of books and a video / DVD offers an enjoyable armchair tour
