Jeffrey Smart

Sandra McGrath November 10th, 1976. Interview with Jeffrey Smart in Double Bay. Testing. One, two, three. The nice thing about tapes is I've got to use them so much over the last year that I never even truly think about them anymore. I mean, I've used them for 12 months.

Jeffrey Smart How do you know that's picking us up?

Sandra McGrath Because it's got a red light, hasn't it?

Jeffrey Smart Well, uh, so I had lunch with him and dinner with him, and, uh, he's the one who wrote that book Survivor— you know, the book in the Andes when everybody ate each other.

Sandra McGrath Yes! Did he write that? God, I loved that book! You know, I couldn't take it, put it down.

Jeffrey Smart Right. Well, now he's a Roman Catholic.

Sandra McGrath What did he think about that cannibalism?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, Mr. Zahn—oh, it's all right, he got around that. Uh, Mr. Zahn, a friend of mine, said, "I'm a bit against the Pope not allowing women to be priests," you see. And he said, "Oh, but women are not human beings like men are." And his wife was sitting about five feet away. So he said, as they're not human beings like men, uh, what do you think of that?

Sandra McGrath What do you think of it?

Jeffrey Smart And why did he—I don't agree with it. I think a woman should be a priest.

Sandra McGrath Why do you think a woman should be a priest?

Jeffrey Smart Well, I don't see—well, I I don't see why a woman shouldn't be. Why, why not? What makes us so special about a man? Why should we be the only ones to be priests?

Sandra McGrath Well, what about the idea that women that no great literature, art or architecture have ever been produced or music has been produced by women?

Jeffrey Smart Great sculptures been reproduced, been produced by women. And Barbara Hepworth is a much better sculptor in my very unhumble opinion than Henry Moore, whose work I loathe. I really do detest Henry Moore. You know that.

Sandra McGrath I don't know that. Why do you?

Jeffrey Smart I think—well, I just like Barbara Hepworth and I think that, um, Louise Nevelson's a beautiful sculptor.

Sandra McGrath Oh, she's fantastic.

Jeffrey Smart What are you talking about? Of course women—they can't paint. It's harder for them to paint, I think, because of

Sandra McGrath Why?

Jeffrey Smart their sort of mummy business.

Sandra McGrath No, theoretically it's harder to be a sculptor because it's such physical activity. You know that actual chisel on the marble is crude energy from, you know, a muscle.

Jeffrey Smart Well, a woman can do it now with modern dental equipment. But no, no, I think they can write, and I think they can sculpt. They make very bad philosophers because they know it anyway. They've got it inbuilt. They're not going to waste their time being philosophers. Mummies know. If you give birth to a baby, you know a lot, Sandra, I think.

Sandra McGrath That might be the envy complex, though, like penis envy.

Jeffrey Smart You can work that out or something. We both envy each other for different things, you see. No, I think—I think I didn't agree with Piers Read at all.

Sandra McGrath Sandra Jobson said the other day, yes, today in fact, and she interviewed Wran, and Wran said he intended to make imprisonment not a form of prostitution, he would only make a fine for prostitutes. And Sandra Jobson said, "Well, why don't you fine the clients?" And Wran turned to her and said, "Where did the newspaper dig up this woman from?"

Jeffrey Smart Yes, they'd get more money in effect if they fined the clients, wouldn't they? Because a good girl in Rome can take on about eight or nine. So the fine, the income, would be more, wouldn't it, for the state?

Sandra McGrath Good thing, isn't it? Well, why should the woman pay—this is irrelevant, I don't know how we got into this that we're talking about women, but that was an interesting question actually she posed: why should women pay the fine, not the man? I mean, he's the transgressor, actually.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, yes, that's right.

Sandra McGrath In a logical sense he's the transgressor.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, that's right.

Sandra McGrath Who cares about logic, though?

Jeffrey Smart Well, I don't know. I really don't know what prostitution is, you see. I really don't know. We're all whores in a sense, aren't we? Sometimes.

Sandra McGrath Exactly.

Jeffrey Smart At least the prostitute's honest about it. And you know that marvellous book, I've forgotten, of Guy de Maupassant, where the prostitute felt affection at some stage during her, uh, transports with a gentleman client. And she had to go and confess to the madame, because she was so upset. And the madame said, "You mustn't feel that again, my dear. You know,

Sandra McGrath business is business."

Jeffrey Smart business is business." That, I think, is bad, that a prostitute has to not feel anything. Fancy. We're not here to talk about prostitution, Sandra.

Sandra McGrath No, we're not. We're we're here to talk about you and your idea about lots of things. One of them starts with the idea that a long time ago, really, almost a long time ago stylistically and through contemporary sense, I said to you, "Jeffrey, there's a great movement towards realism at the moment, and if you could only—" Do you remember me saying this to you?

Jeffrey Smart I do.

Sandra McGrath "Why don't you pull your bloody socks up and get an exhibition together in New York? There's a whole, the wave has moved in your direction. You've sat through abstract expressionism and

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath uh, God knows what else, lyrical abstraction, everything else, the movement is in your—" And you said, "Oh, hell no, I'd rather sit in my villa in outside Florence and just do my own thing." Now,

Jeffrey Smart I really would still, honestly.

Sandra McGrath what do you feel about the whole scene about the swing? And, I mean, that obviously is a dramatic swing to your particular

Jeffrey Smart Even though now, even though now—

Sandra McGrath field. I mean, you must feel somehow justified or elated or—

Jeffrey Smart Yes, I feel I felt very good in Venice, and since I've, you know, the last Biennale, and since this new Phaidon book they've put me in, you know, can you believe? Yes. I mean, it's marvellous to be in that with people like Pollock, and with Allen Jones, and with Pearlstein, and with Hockney. That's marvellous, you know, at least that's—

Sandra McGrath How do you think that you actually—

Jeffrey Smart that's a chapter in the Tate Gallery.

Sandra McGrath Well, tell me about that sort of period when you were an outcast, so to speak, artistically or styl—not artistically, stylistically.

Jeffrey Smart I'm still an outcast by the establishment,

Sandra McGrath Uh-huh, how do you mean? You just told us—

Jeffrey Smart because, no, the academics today, uh, the establishment people, like the art galleries, they still regard—they're still traditionalists, aren't they, today? The the tradition of this, of this—

Sandra McGrath Well, you can't say that with the National Gallery buying the Pollock.

Jeffrey Smart Darling, the tradition of the century now, of this century, has been change, constant change. And so the traditionalists, the academics, are now looking for the next lot. See, they think the painting's finished. And I know the painting's not finished. It's only just beginning for the first time. You see, I was telling, uh, Stephen this morning that I've seen The Hague, at The Hague recently again, I saw the big Vermeer View of Delft. And I looked at it very closely, and it is done with a camera obscura.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Jeffrey Smart And I'm telling you, Sandra, that if Vermeer lived today, he would be onto every trick of sensitised canvases uh, and projecting onto it, and he'd be a photorealist for a while, you know. Then he'd get back to the problem of painting, which is a form of meditation. Painting is not, um— Look, painting has been everything but the real, for what it is. It's been everything in the past, excepting what it really should be, which is a form of prayer or meditation. You know, in the in the Renaissance, it was—

Sandra McGrath So you're saying painting is really a form of meditation or prayer, and do you believe in that sense that it becomes a process of self-discovery?

Jeffrey Smart Yes, of course it is.

Sandra McGrath What is one looking for?

Jeffrey Smart Well, I don't know, but you look, you take—you can't say the taking off the onion, the onion is the onion, but, look, in you can only know what it is by knowing what it is not. And it's not colour photography, and I don't think it's photorealism. It is not—

Sandra McGrath What's your objection to photorealism?

Jeffrey Smart I No, I think it's good, uh, today, because it was a nice It is a nice movement that brought people back to the image, because it's also very brassy, which is rather nice. Plastic, beautiful.

Sandra McGrath So does chrome.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, chrome's lovely. Well, we've all we've all known that for a long time.

Sandra McGrath Not too many people can paint it.

Jeffrey Smart Yeah, but still, the people are still painting vases of flowers. They're not painting electric irons and telephones, and they should be painting a telephone. You know, that's very important today. Telephone's more important than a jug. I mean, you know, my old thing, Vermeer painted jugs and ladies pouring in. Now we should be doing people with telephones in their hands instead. I think that's, you know, that's what's— that the life's changed, that's all. But in the in the Renaissance—

Sandra McGrath You made the remark once that keeps on being repeated in magazine after magazine, which I think doesn't really do you credit, you said a man's natural on horseback, but a man isn't natural in a rocket. And I think actually you really feel a man is becoming very natural in this particular technological age.

Jeffrey Smart The first sight of a man walking on the moon was very surreal.

Sandra McGrath Appeared strange.

Jeffrey Smart Very surreal.

Sandra McGrath Exactly.

Jeffrey Smart But I still think people look surreal, don't you? Excellent. That organist—I saw a lady this afternoon standing against a white wall. She had a lilac dress on. Oh, she looked very odd. I can tell you. Oh, she looked wonderful! And there was a shadow behind her, you know, and I thought, "Oh, what are you doing against that shiny white wall?" Looked very odd. Uh, but you see, you know it all better than I do. In the Renaissance, it was—

Sandra McGrath I don't know anything better than you do.

Jeffrey Smart In the No, in the Renaissance it was trompe l'œil. You know, they were really interested Piero della Francesca was not interested for that for its own sake, but you can say that most of the painters of the Renaissance were interested in trompe l'œil, or decoration, or keeping up with the Joneses. Big Italian families, big building palaces, and having decorations by so-and-so or by so-and-so, and, uh, impressing their neighbours. It was that. I mean, it's got about as much to do with art, the motive, as the, um, Egyptian things at, uh, of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel in Egypt. That was put there to impress anybody coming into Egypt that look out, be on guard.

Sandra McGrath Well, what's the difference?

Jeffrey Smart The bosses here are very important.

Sandra McGrath So what? I mean, so what? What's the difference between someone buying a great big Estes today or a Pearlstein that they're going to put it over their their sort of mantelpiece in their Fifth Avenue apartment? What's the difference?

Jeffrey Smart Do you think—I I know, I think that, uh—

Sandra McGrath I think the the analogy doesn't hold up.

Jeffrey Smart I think the people that bought are buying Morandi, or bought Morandi, didn't buy him to impress people. They bought him because they're beautiful pictures. Have you got any more cigarettes?

Sandra McGrath No, only that one.

Jeffrey Smart Thank you, ma'am. We'll get some.

Sandra McGrath Well,

Jeffrey Smart contemporary movements in painting. Now, I want to tell you about Venice this year, the Biennale, which was extraordinary. The East—the West German Pavilion was completely empty. It was quite empty. And we walked in and it had nothing in it. that overpass there, the motor pass, you know, they've got that thing for the railway and all that, it's so lovely.

Sandra McGrath What's beautiful in it?

Jeffrey Smart I don't know, it's just beautiful to me. It looks lovely.

Sandra McGrath But it has nothing to do with man, does it?

Jeffrey Smart Yes, man built it. Man built it.

Sandra McGrath Yes, but you're using urban constructions almost as a still life, aren't you?

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath Not as a sort of

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath comment on the so- human...

Jeffrey Smart I agree with you. Yes.

Sandra McGrath Well, that's what I wanted to hear, because I mean I'm just sick of reading about this bullshit.

Jeffrey Smart And metaphysics.

Sandra McGrath This business that you are sort of uh just really your paintings are about a discussion of the metaphysics of modern man, which I don't really believe.

Jeffrey Smart I don't I don't agree with that either.

Sandra McGrath I mean, I know you too well to know that that's bullshit.

Jeffrey Smart Yes. But some people think that I'm just uh making a comment about man and his environment.

Sandra McGrath Right.

Jeffrey Smart Or that I'm an ecologist, that I'm I'm uh protesting about, you know, what's happening to Italy. Now, look, uh just two days before I left Rome...

Sandra McGrath Set the record straight: what are you doing?

Jeffrey Smart Well, I tell you how my mind is working now. Just b- two days before I left Italy, I saw a thing of such hallucinatory beauty that it- it was a series of of um rectangular signs with the big zebra like that to deflect the traffic to the right. I'm praying to God it's still going to be there when I get back, because I can't wait to get back to draw it. I'm like someone who's had an awful shock, you know, I've seen it, it's so beautiful, and each one like a playing card, one in front of the other, is casting a shadow on the next one, and in the distance, through and below them, is the city of Rome, making a lovely little decorative thing like a necklace, and then there's these beautiful black and white shapes, all casting shadows on each other, and I'm just longing to get back, because I want to do drawings, and then I want to start doing studies, to work that out into a picture, you know, uh that it's really, it's that's one of the reasons I want to go home quickly, because I want to start work on it.

Sandra McGrath Why can't you live here?

Jeffrey Smart I could live here.

Sandra McGrath Why don't you?

Jeffrey Smart Well, you know, now I've lived there so long, all my books are there, oh God, cost me so much to get set up and move again.

Sandra McGrath That's not the real reason.

Jeffrey Smart Well, I like it there, too. But there's no reason why I shouldn't live in Italy. You're an American, you live here. Henry James was an American, he lived in England. James Joyce was an Irish Irishman and he lived in

Sandra McGrath I know, I know, we don't have to cite. I'm just saying what is the stimulus that keeps you there.

Jeffrey Smart Italy, you know.

Sandra McGrath We can name all the expats.

Jeffrey Smart Well, I like Italians. I like Italian, you know, the Italian scene. I like it because it's a modern country. Also, I think, you know, I think that uh culture exists uh the Alps, I think they've only got culture north of the Alps and civilization south of it, as I told you. To me, the civilization in Italy is natural. Just the way a shop is laid out. Just my local grocer's shop, I like it.

Sandra McGrath Well, Justin said to me when I talked to him that he felt that Australia was so lonely that he couldn't live here because things were too lonely, that he felt that man had never trodden this earth here, and that that whenever he came to Australia he felt an immediate loneliness. Now, that's why he had to live in Italy.

Jeffrey Smart Maybe. I don't know. I certainly have felt as lonely in Italy as I've felt here. I don't know. I think perhaps, I don't know, I'm not so sure about that one. I think if you're lonely you take your loneliness with you, don't you? Like Lawrence Durrell's poem, Drifting Cities, you remember? Where the man finds every city street lonely and he realizes the loneliness is in himself. But I don't, I don't feel any lonelier there than I do here, or vice versa.

Sandra McGrath Why do you feel particularly attracted to urban life rather than country life?

Jeffrey Smart No, I think Oh, mainly because I've always lived in cities.

Sandra McGrath And you have no sort of desire to depict the bucolic,

Jeffrey Smart Yes, yes, uh

Sandra McGrath primitive and the innocence of

Jeffrey Smart we went down to Kangaroo Valley and it was so beautiful, I could see ways of painting that.

Sandra McGrath But you never have.

Jeffrey Smart But I I have, yes, I have painted uh you know, natural scenes, as you might call them. But uh

Sandra McGrath Not very often.

Jeffrey Smart Well, it seems to me that it's been done for so long, it's like sitting down and painting a portrait of someone against the background. So what, you know, I mean, I know that th- the original mind can make new shapes of it. Morandi did extraordinary things with landscapes, from Cézanne, and look what Cézanne did to landscape. But that is just my kick. I like uh modern cities and things that go with it. It's there's nothing profound about that, I don't think.

Sandra McGrath Well, they're so profound. Most people are trying to get away from the sort of urban image, and you keep treating it rather lovingly. Why?

Jeffrey Smart Yeah, but I can I can do my my sort of Mondrian thing, Mondrian made to look real, sort of thing, which is what I like, really, uh with these things more easily, can't I? Thank you, my lovey. I can do that, you see, you know, it's uh Y- you realize, you knew that Mondrian was a follower of Rudolf Steiner

Sandra McGrath Mhm.

Jeffrey Smart and that he was a mystic,

Sandra McGrath Mhm.

Jeffrey Smart didn't you?

Sandra McGrath Are you a mystic?

Jeffrey Smart Well, I hope so. I like to think I am.

Sandra McGrath I mean, are you a member of the occult or uh

Jeffrey Smart Well, occult just means secret, doesn't it?

Sandra McGrath Occult only means secret.

Jeffrey Smart That's all it means. And uh

Sandra McGrath I mean, the people that call

Jeffrey Smart what you, what you really know, what you really know or what you've come to believe must be secret because it is ineffable and cannot be communicated. That- But that's

Sandra McGrath God, you sound like John Passmore.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, but that can't be communicated because it's ineffable, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Do you think that the artist has a particular strange role in society, or do you understand why you have this particular calling?

Jeffrey Smart I don't think the artist is any wiser, uh you for any reason, any other than any other man or woman. I think that uh a writer's views on politics or on religion, or Einstein's views on music or economics, is no more valuable than the other man's. It's just that he's taken up one particular thing. And I don't think that my opinion of religion or the occult or any of that thing is is any more important than a priest's. Not as important as a priest, because a priest, whatever of whatever whatever Buddhist or Hindu or Christian persuasion, that is his work. I I, as an artist, my business is painting. I know about the technique of painting. The rest of it, you know, my opinion is not specially um valid, is it?

Sandra McGrath Do you find that there's a difficulty as an artist in getting and maintaining that sort of freshness that one always sees and generally sees in the early work of a painter, that sort of almost innocence of vision, but how one without becoming repetitive or that one's knowledge gets in the way of producing a fresh image?

Jeffrey Smart But you never you never paint the perfect picture. You never can. You know, no picture is ever finished. They're always just abandoned. And so the the the the canvas never comes off quite, so then you're getting on to your next one, you think, "Now this one I'm really going to do it." Uh as Leonard Woolf says, it's the journey, not the the the journey, not the arrival, that matters. It's the doing of it that matters, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Well, what does the doing do for you?

Jeffrey Smart Doing...

Sandra McGrath Do you think it makes you a better man? Do you think it makes you a

Jeffrey Smart Well, I like I like doing it.

Sandra McGrath better person or a better...

Jeffrey Smart No, I'm not interested in the moral side of it. No, I just like painting, like someone likes playing golf.

Sandra McGrath Do you do you think that it makes you a better craftsman?

Jeffrey Smart Yes. Is that irritating you, what I... ?

Sandra McGrath No, no, that's fine. No, no, no. No, I just want to know about the artistic process.

Jeffrey Smart No, I think that it's just a nice way for me to pass the day. I like it. I enjoy painting and I'm looking forward to getting back to doing these.

Sandra McGrath But you said that art was a form of meditation or prayer.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, yes.

Sandra McGrath So that's contradictory to just passing the day.

Jeffrey Smart Oh, well, yes, it is. No, no, you can spend your time praying.

Sandra McGrath But you see what I mean? You've just said two things that once...

Jeffrey Smart No, I didn't. I don't mean passing the day in the sense of getting rid of the day, of of boredom, of getting through a day. I don't mean it like that. I would rather spend my time, put it that way, painting, really, than doing most other things. I like it. I really enjoy it.

Sandra McGrath Do you know why you like it?

Jeffrey Smart I suppose it's quiet and I can listen to music at the same time, and I suppose I'm a sort of juggler.

Sandra McGrath Well, what do you want to communicate, or do you want to communicate?

Jeffrey Smart No, I sup- I don't think so. I it I just it's the juggling, isn't it, the shapes? It's

Sandra McGrath Well, I mean, someone once said that Joan Sutherland's never going to go out in the Sahara Desert herself and and sing the Bell Song on her own. Uh it's very unlikely that she- Out of uh What's the name of that opera Joan Sutherland sings the Bell... ?

Jeffrey Smart Lakmé.

Sandra McGrath Lakmé. No one's ever going- She's not going to go out in the Sahara and sing What's it called? The Bell something? The Bell...

Jeffrey Smart The Bell Song.

Sandra McGrath The Bell Song.

Jeffrey Smart Mhm.

Sandra McGrath Uh I mean, do you care if you communicate?

Jeffrey Smart I suppose so. It's nice when people like your painting, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath What do you would you most like to communicate?

Jeffrey Smart I don't know.

Sandra McGrath I'm being tough on you today, aren't I?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, you're a clever girl. You really are. But, you see, you're asking me questions, I don't know the answers.

Sandra McGrath Yes, but you ask...

Jeffrey Smart You're like saying...

Sandra McGrath No, you do know the answer. You just you do know the answer. You can't spend a lifetime doing what you've done without having asked yourself the same questions I'm asking.

Jeffrey Smart Well, I can't say anything else accepting that it is a form of meditation. Compare it this way: the actual thing of prayer, you might be you might pray for a week Anyway, you'll see in the exhibition, because in this exhibition I've got...

Sandra McGrath How do you see this exhibition as different to the last?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, it looks so beautiful. I've just seen...

Sandra McGrath Mainly acrylics or oils?

Jeffrey Smart Uh, mainly oils again, now.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I'm glad you escaped acrylics, because I used to be very pro acrylics, and having looked at a lot of acrylic work, I don't think it holds up after a while, because it's very dry.

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath Start to look like 50-year-old skin.

Jeffrey Smart I'm going to have another go at them again, just for a while.

Sandra McGrath They're not hold...

Jeffrey Smart Mm. Well, I'm finding it's nice to mix...

Sandra McGrath You've had a sort of brief love affair.

Jeffrey Smart I've mixed the two. I've mixed the two a little bit in this exhibition.

Sandra McGrath Oh, you mean... not in one painting?

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath That's not unsafe?

Jeffrey Smart No, no, no. I've gone into that with friends at the Uffizi. Acrylic base is...

Sandra McGrath Is water-based.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, is water base, and if it's thoroughly dry, which it has to be, you paint on it. There's nothing wrong with that fundamentally, as a way of painting. You can put oil on acrylic with great safety. There'll be no bloom. I wouldn't put oil on very thick acrylic. That's a feeling, though. That's like painting oil on a raincoat.

Sandra McGrath Exactly. It's going to fall off.

Jeffrey Smart You know, the feel of it is is wrong. Yes, but you go by feeling a lot of the time for those things. I mean, the Old Masters are in fairly good condition, and the people who faked them 100 years ago, their fakes are in bad condition, because also painting is craftsmanship. It's feeling. It's not only what you read in a book. The aesthetics is not only in the colours and the evaluation values.

Sandra McGrath Have you changed the imagery in this exhibition at all? I mean, are there still airports and the backs of buses and...

Jeffrey Smart That's right, yes.

Sandra McGrath Still...

Jeffrey Smart Yes. Traffic signs.

Sandra McGrath Traffic signs.

Jeffrey Smart Well, you know, if you've found a few symbols to use, um, you can spend the rest of your life with them. Fra Angelico was all right with virgins and angels and architecture and landscape of his period. Or think of the limited imagery...

Sandra McGrath What do you see in the backs of buses and trucks and airport triangles and things and zebra crossings?

Jeffrey Smart They're beautiful.

Sandra McGrath In what sense do you?

Jeffrey Smart Now, come off it. What is what is what do you see beautiful in a Chinese vase, which still moves perpetually in its stillness? I mean, uh, you're asking me why do I think the Chinese vase is beautiful?

Sandra McGrath No, I'm asking you why...

Jeffrey Smart Why is the...

Sandra McGrath ...you, that there's a whole range of technological 20th-century images in which you could have turned your attention towards, and that you chose some predominant images.

Jeffrey Smart I'm happy with them now, and they're the things that that um give me a kick.

Sandra McGrath I mean, does it have the shape, I mean, the shape, and they're geometric, first of all. They're generally very geometric and...

Jeffrey Smart It's rather nice working out a pedestrian crossing in perspective, in space, and at the same time making it into a two-dimensional decoration, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Mm.

Jeffrey Smart It's It's wonderful.

Sandra McGrath You're telling me, aren't you?

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath You're You're the one who does it, I don't.

Jeffrey Smart It's beautiful to do it. But Ian Bent and I...

Sandra McGrath Do you feel that you're making some comment on society, or...?

Jeffrey Smart No. No. None. But Ian Bent and I went around drawing the Anthony Caros in that big exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, and making lovely line drawings of the Anthony Caros, getting them at different angles. And the drawings come out as beautiful little abstractions. I mean, it might just as well be that, that I paint in a way, excepting I'd like to put a figure in it to give it scale. I think the figure gives scale to things, don't you?

Sandra McGrath Yes, I think figure gives...

Jeffrey Smart I like I think Le Corbusier putting in his Modulor man, then immediately things took on some sort of relationship. Just like the wave of Hokusai, where you see the wave and then you suddenly realise there's a long boat with little men pulling at oars. Then the whole thing becomes, uh, real.

Sandra McGrath But you don't really have any real concern about modern man and his displacement, or...?

Jeffrey Smart No, I don't think so.

Sandra McGrath All right, do you have, you know, do you feel he's an alien in your world of trucks and zebra crossings?

Jeffrey Smart No, I don't think so. I think he knows his way around. He knows what a pedestrian crossing is. I think it's a friendly thing to help him across to stop stop him being killed. The traffic lights are quite nice things, too. I mean, they're all um, they're rather benign, aren't they?

Sandra McGrath So you really think those technological things are rather benign rather than overwhelming or oppressive?

Jeffrey Smart They're to help him live. Oh, no. I think they're beautiful and friendly. They're there to help him move around in the world, aren't they?

Sandra McGrath Mm.

Jeffrey Smart Oh, I can't see that it's a a dreadful, ominous world really, darling.

Sandra McGrath Well, that's what a lot of people write you up as being.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, well, they can. I don't care what they write, honestly.

Sandra McGrath Well, as I said, that's why I had this talk with you. I know you too well to know that you wouldn't feel that way.

Jeffrey Smart The pictures will always... Yes.

Sandra McGrath Uh, and I knew...

Jeffrey Smart I'm more interested, you know me, that day we had in the British Museum, I'm more interested in, uh... Ah, oh, the way-back stuff, you know. That's That's what gets me. Oh, she's Oh, they're all right, they're just playing. They're all right. They seem to be becoming good friends. No, I'm sorry, I can't um tell you what beauty is or what ecstasy is, or trying to recapture moments of ecstasy is, but you know those things cannot be. And I've said, you know, that um it is trying to crystallise moments of ecstasy.

Sandra McGrath Can't you say to me just once, ecstasy is an attempt to defeat death?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, it might be. Yes, yes, yes. That not not that one wants to perpetuate oneself. I would be very sorry if all my paintings got destroyed, but um... Oh, no. What was I going to say to you then? Something else about painting. Getting back to Piero, um... You know, it is a old, old problem, isn't it? I remember telling you about getting close up to the Christ, the resurrected Christ, at Borgo Sansepolcro. Do you remember?

Sandra McGrath Mm-hm.

Jeffrey Smart And getting...

Sandra McGrath Staying on the ladder.

Jeffrey Smart Yes.

Sandra McGrath Yes, I...

Jeffrey Smart And then you realise that that Piero was not really a classic painter at all, that he also was carried away by his subject at the time. I know those things. Uh, but then, after that, you have to paint the picture. You know, he's you've you fall down if you die if your form, if your structure is not good. It's not enough, is it, to go around feeling?

Sandra McGrath Ecstasy.

Jeffrey Smart It's not enough, because most people can feel that.

Sandra McGrath Everyone feels it.

Jeffrey Smart Everybody feels it. It's not a prerogative of the artist. But that that what I can do is paint the way I know, which not any many other people can do, because it's my own way.

Sandra McGrath So you don't really feel that the artist has a special role in society?

Jeffrey Smart I shouldn't think so. I should think the politicians and the, uh, ecologists have more role in society, haven't they? The psychiatrists and all that all that bullshit. I think the priest the priest...

Sandra McGrath Well, see, this is very I it's very strange. I feel they have a tremendous role in society, very hard to define, but I can hardly ever find an artist who agrees with me. So, I don't know, I'm very confused by that issue. I haven't found one artist yet who's prepared to make a stand on it. And yet we all know that we really relate the whole development of society through art and architecture and music, basically. Um, and really politics is way down on the line and the scale of how we really relate the development of man, or the ascent of man in Bronowski's terms. Uh, that we tend to go back time and time again to how the artist or the architect, particularly the artist, portrayed life in his time, and that seems to be very definitive is in a sort of historical sense. But yet you can't find the artist to actually, you know, Arthur Boyd said to me, "Oh, no, I think they're just, uh, like court jesters, really."

Jeffrey Smart I think we're more than that. I think I think the the great artist, as Cézanne said, as all things I've said to you before, I think the great artist is as Cézanne said, he said art is a priesthood, and only the pure in heart can enter.

Sandra McGrath Do you look pure pure in heart?

Jeffrey Smart I'd like to.

Sandra McGrath What do you doubt?

Jeffrey Smart I do about art.

Sandra McGrath Do you?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, yes. I hate dishonest tricks, and, um, confidence tricks in art, which you see. Oh, no, I think you have to be dedicated to your painting.

Sandra McGrath To the exclusion... Passmore's I've been doing a whole series of articles lately on the sort of octogenarians of Sydney painters like Passmore and Lloyd Rees.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, but Passmore's brainless.

Sandra McGrath Do you think?

Jeffrey Smart Oh, yes, he's completely brainless. Don't You won't quote me on that, will you?

Sandra McGrath No, of course not.

Jeffrey Smart No, but I don't know, Pass Jack's not Jack is not a thinker. Jack is really not a thinker of anybody. He's just a

Sandra McGrath He has Oh, that's what I give you.

Jeffrey Smart He's a man with a certain facility in his hand, and that's why why...

Sandra McGrath He had a whole theory about teaching and...

Jeffrey Smart Well, he went to bits when he started doing abstract work, because the one thing that Jack lacked was composition. All sense of...

Sandra McGrath Well, he should have had that, of all things. We'd say that...

Jeffrey Smart Well, he's never had it. No, you can't ever learn that one. You can't learn composition, Sandra.

Sandra McGrath That's an ongoing... Oh, you can.

Jeffrey Smart You can't.

Sandra McGrath That's the one thing you can.

Jeffrey Smart You cannot learn. No, you can't.

Sandra McGrath It's instinctive, you think?

Jeffrey Smart You can learn you can learn what or how the Old Masters composed their pictures. You can learn dynamic symmetry. You can learn how Poussin did it, and you can analyse the structure of great classical pictures. No, no more for the tape. Thanks.

Sandra McGrath Oh, no, dear.

Jeffrey Smart Yes. But you can't, ah, you cannot... You can teach what people have done, but when it comes to painting a new picture, the composition then must be, uh, to be unique, or to be not to be repetitious, has got to come from the artist, the real artist, in the way that the Flagellation of Piero's is a completely original composition. Now all Cézannes, nearly all Cézannes avoid every cliché of picture picture-making. Every Cézanne gives him... See, Cézanne is not appreciated still. You know, all that Cubist baloney, I mean, he gave up doing that by 1890,

Sandra McGrath when everything you were doing appeared a non sequitur. You would agree with that, don't you?

Jeffrey Smart Yes, nothing to do with it, mm.

Sandra McGrath And, as I said, the only time I remember saying to you is, there's a movement coming about now in which you can be in the forefront of. Get to New York and, you know, get yourself there. You didn't even have to do that, and then you've done it anyway, but that was later. That was in '67, even maybe even a bit later.

Jeffrey Smart I was very pleased when you bought my painting, very, because I knew that you were a lady who knew, and you had been buying that sort of painting that we've been discussing, and you hadn't bought me. And I was very pleased when you bought me, because I knew then that you understood what I was getting at, you know, and that made me feel a little less lonely. You, that was very...

Sandra McGrath But you did feel lonely.

Jeffrey Smart That was very important to me when you bought that picture, really it was. I'm not bullshitting. I'm not...

Sandra McGrath Are you bullshitting me? I will edit that out.

Jeffrey Smart I am not bullshitting you. I am not bullshitting you on my word of honour, on my absolute word of honour. That was a big day for me. It wasn't as big a day as as it is getting in this Phaidon book with all, you know, with David Hockney. There is no bullshit in it. When you bought me it was a it was a thrilling thing for me because you were, you were the avant-garde symbol. You were the John Olsen lady. And then when and I thought, oh well, you know, but then when when I was gathered in to that to your vision, I thought, oh well, now there's somebody who has a good vision and they're seeing what I'm doing. It was good for me, really. And I'm not bullshitting you. And I'm very sorry you had to sell it. Never mind.

Sandra McGrath Life goes on.

Jeffrey Smart Oh, life goes on.

Sandra McGrath Well...

Jeffrey Smart But you see, and I was very happy when Pop came in because I could see that was returning to the image more. Because it was anachronistic, Sandra, at that time to see those beautiful Motherwells and Soulages, which are very romantic paintings, to see them in very classic buildings of Mies van der Rohe style. That never before has it happened that a very romantic art has gone into very classic things. In before in the past romantic art has gone with romantic architecture or classic art with classic architecture. Do you know what I mean? And this time in the '50s we had this anachronism and I felt a little unsettled. I thought perhaps the bomb's going off very soon. We're having this stylistic contrast, and it's not a nice time, you know? There's something wrong. It's like when the gables lost the keystone. Do you remember? Before the Revolution.

Jeffrey Smart ...himself, isn't it? That's where we are now. Anybody can paint in any way they like. Doesn't matter.

Sandra McGrath Tell me, though, do you feel that there's a sort of, in the realist school, photorealism, neorealism, what the hell, urban realism, romantic realism, whatever, do you think this return to realism has any, why do you think it happened in the 70s, mid-70s, really?

Jeffrey Smart It's such a short time, Sandra. Cézanne died in 1906, that's 70 years ago. And 70 years in the history of easel painting is nothing. Easel painting is a new thing, isn't it? It's all, easel painting, like since the Van Eycks, is a new thing. It's - it's - it's not quite as new as the symphony orchestra, but now we're - we're off. I mean, you know, it's starting properly, easel painting.

Sandra McGrath Why do you believe that painting isn't dead? (Lovely question.) What in the human spirit...

Jeffrey Smart Because it's a nice thing we've evolved. It's a nice thing we've evolved, like the sonnet was for a long time. It's a nice - it's a nice medium. It's a nice motor car to get into to travel somewhere in. With an easel painting, a picture in a frame, as I said to you, it's a nice form of meditation. And it's new. And painting is new, you know, it's only 300 years old really, 400 years old. It's only been going recently. I've been down to Paestum to see the Greek paintings they've discovered, 600 BC.

Sandra McGrath Frescoes, they must be.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, they're frescoes. But they're the only Greek paintings in existence.

Sandra McGrath They're very naturalistic.

Jeffrey Smart They're very naturalistic, and they're very good. They're - they're contemporary with archaic sculpture. They're also a bit grotty because it was, after all, a colonial place. It wasn't Athens. You know, it - it - it wasn't Syracuse.

Sandra McGrath Do you know that the fragment I saw there, because my daughter happens to be Greek fresco painting at - fresco learning at the moment, and she and I were looking, comparing a Greek fresco painting - well, fresco, it's obvious - with an Etruscan one. And it is quite amazing that the - the Greeks had an almost Matissian sense of background decoration.

Jeffrey Smart Very.

Sandra McGrath Quite amazing. The Etruscans treated background almost like a theatre, a theatre set. There's an almost stagingness.

Jeffrey Smart Yes, uh, now you're getting mixed up with, uh -

Sandra McGrath Greek, isn't it?

Jeffrey Smart You're getting mixed up with the Pompeian paintings and Roman paintings, where it was used as theatrical set.

Sandra McGrath Oh.

Jeffrey Smart Greek painting, um, Greek painting of, say, the great Greek paintings of 400, 500 BC, um, I think, we only know them from the mosaics, that they were copied, the mosaics were copied

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Jeffrey Smart of from that Greek originals, were, oh, more like, uh, Chardin's. They were very strict compositions. Then you get the Hellenistic, um, sculpture, which in my unhumble opinion is a lot of bull, and it's vulgar and bad. And in, oh God, what's the town in southern Turkey where I was last year, where they've got all the mosaics which are copied from Greek paintings of Hellenistic periods, um, near Anatolia, in southern -

Sandra McGrath I don't know that part of the world, dear, I don't know.

Jeffrey Smart southern Turkey. Oh, well, we'll have to look it up. Anyway, the - the point about that is, it was the greatest city, Paul went there. It's on the borders of Syria and Turkey.

Sandra McGrath Damascus?

Jeffrey Smart No, it's on the coast. It's on the river Orontes. It's the big city on the Orontes River. [sighs] Oh, God. Anyway, it was one -

Sandra McGrath We - we don't really -

Jeffrey Smart It was one of the great cities, and there are these huge mosaics, done for the Romans, about 150 BC, which are copies of Greek painting, about 350 BC, which are very much like Rubens, who I loathe. There's big fat bodies with cool tones, reflected warm lights, the florid movements, the lot. And Greek painting was doing that in the Hellenistic period. Well, so, when you - no, but when you say to me, "What do I think about realism in the last, you know, five years?", you think of the time that we've got to talk about painting. From archaic Greek to Hellenistic was 300 years. 300 years. I mean,

Sandra McGrath Aside from your own - of course we are.

Jeffrey Smart we're very impatient. We look for what happens in every 10 years. Cézanne died 70 years ago. There's no need for much change, really.

Sandra McGrath Well, there have been enormous changes.

Jeffrey Smart There has been, yes, very unsettled. But, but, uh -

Sandra McGrath We can't have a sense of nostalgia about it.

Jeffrey Smart You can't moan about it because it's happened. But there's no need for it. I mean, we just should get on with the business of painting.

Sandra McGrath Probably the greatest change in the history of art has actually been in the last 70 years. And that, I mean, it's unquestionably the greatest changes in, in styles has been in the last 70 years.

Jeffrey Smart Ah, well, if people are more conscious, they're more self-conscious. Artists are more self-conscious about what they're doing now. Before, they were depicting. Now we know that we're making pictures, don't we? Velázquez led a double life. He had one life as an official portrait painter, where he was pleasing them, and another life where he was being an artist.

Sandra McGrath Well, he had a dreary, whole, total life as a court painter.

Jeffrey Smart Yes. But he - but at the same time he produced beautiful pictures. Uh, and that was his secret, and he had to keep that to himself. They weren't looking for that silvery light,

Sandra McGrath No.

Jeffrey Smart or for this little nuance. But he - he was.

Sandra McGrath Do you feel you're a secret painter?

Jeffrey Smart Mm. Yes, I think people look at them for another reason. I think I hope they'll be seen one day just as...

Sandra McGrath What do you want them to see, like Velázquez's silver light, in 50 years?

Jeffrey Smart I want them to see the formal values in the pictures. The formal values.

Sandra McGrath The tough geometric constructionism of them.

Jeffrey Smart That's right. Mm, the two-dimensional - the two-dimensional design with a three-dimensional pull backwards and resolved on a two-dimensional plane, to realize that's what I've been really trying to do.