Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan Africa: The End of the Game. Peter Beard, I just got in New York coming through. It's very good.

Sandra McGrath What do you mean, he's coming here?

Sidney Nolan He's not coming here. I've just brought the book here, this Peter.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see, I see, I see.

Sidney Nolan Yeah. Now, he's a very good photographer, but he's been to Africa a lot.

Sandra McGrath Well, I'm... have this definite distrust of photographers, I must say, because they're not as organised as other people are.

Sidney Nolan Yes, they're funny people.

Sandra McGrath It's a prejudice, I admit to it. It seems to happen more often than not, but that's justified.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, he's mostly on animals, so it's a bit different.

Sandra McGrath Rudy? Yes? Can I borrow this long pad?

Sidney Nolan This is Chinese pad.

Rudy Komon Yes, sure, sure, sure. Go ahead. You use as much as you can.

Sandra McGrath I love the shape of it.

Sidney Nolan I've started my story in the early part of my life here. First daily it begins. No, no, it's just I've got to go to Canberra for that.

Sandra McGrath Listen, how long have you been in Australia now?

Sidney Nolan Oh, about a fortnight.

Sandra McGrath Just two weeks? In Melbourne? We'll go through the sort of technical thing,

Sidney Nolan Yes.

Sandra McGrath where you've been and what you've been doing.

Sidney Nolan Yes. Well, I've driven, what basically I've done is to drive down to Melbourne and see all my relatives, and stop off at a motel at Wagga, by The Rock, it's quite nice. And get a morning of bird calls. Here it is. You're not going to join us?

Rudy Komon Oh no, no, no, I can't disturb you. I'll come later. I have to go to the storeroom.

Sidney Nolan You want something signed?

Rudy Komon No, enjoy yourself.

Sidney Nolan Thank you very much. Fine, yes. So, all we've done...

Sandra McGrath Thank you.

Sidney Nolan Thank you. What's he done, as Fred, or has he done as Dan? Oh, he's done as well.

Sandra McGrath I'm just looking at Olsen's frog. Is that a Fred frog or an Olsen frog? I think that's an Olsen frog.

Sidney Nolan That's an Olsen. I'm behind, I thought it used to be Fred, too.

Sandra McGrath He does the red.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, he does the red.

Sandra McGrath He does the red.

Sidney Nolan That's an Olsen's frog, yeah.

Sandra McGrath And Olsen does the white.

Sidney Nolan Olsen's quite nice, I saw him last year. I hadn't seen him for years. I saw him in Adelaide the year before. He's quite nice and pleasant.

Sandra McGrath Robust?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, sort of less Olsen-ish than he had been years before.

Sandra McGrath He's getting, now that he's a trustee...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that's right, he's got a few official things going, hasn't he?

Sandra McGrath I'm not sure of who. But anyway, back to you now.

Sidney Nolan No, yes.

Sandra McGrath So you've driven to...

Sidney Nolan So I've driven down to Melbourne and seen all my relatives and done all that.

Sandra McGrath You didn't have a show in Melbourne, did you?

Sidney Nolan No, but I'm going to.

Sandra McGrath Are you going to paint here for a while?

Sidney Nolan On the 18th.

Sandra McGrath You're going to live here for a while?

Sidney Nolan No, no. And I'll be in China on the 24th of April.

Sandra McGrath What will you be doing in China?

Sidney Nolan Well, I've been granted, by the look of it, the privilege to do a quite interesting trip. To go down the bottom, Guilin, where the... those mountains are, you know, the Southern Song painters worked those mountains. And then to go up to Xi'an, the old capital, to go over the railway. And then to go out into the desert, up into the caves where those Buddhist frescoes are, you know, fifth or sixth century, Luoyang. They're rather terrific. It's where Buddhism came around the back of the Himalayas and came into China in that way. So there's a lot of very good stuff, and it's it's right in the middle, of course, of China, on the edge of the desert.

Sandra McGrath Who's organised this trip? The Chinese government, or the Australian government, or yourself?

Sidney Nolan No, just me.

Sandra McGrath You just wrote them and said, 'Can I do it?'

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, I had to push around a bit. Yeah, but it's approved, so it's all right.

Sandra McGrath Have you ever been there? You've been there.

Sidney Nolan Yes, I've been there twice, yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath You wrote a book there.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, Cynthia wrote a book about it. Yeah, that was '65, just before the Cultural Revolution. But I wanted to have another look. I want to go, you know, right through the landscape, and...

Sandra McGrath I can't remember, did many paintings come from the period of the China trip? It didn't...

Sidney Nolan No, no, no, I haven't... I haven't cooked them yet.

Sandra McGrath Why do you think at that time you didn't try it? Because you weren't in the landscape enough?

Sidney Nolan No, it's just because it takes me a long time. It takes me about 20 years to, from, you know, getting a flashpoint to ultimately getting it done, I've worked out.

Sandra McGrath How did you... how did you work that out? What series are you talking about in this case that took you 20 years from the flashpoint to the execution?

Sidney Nolan Yes, well, say Ned Kelly, yeah, that started as a kid. Well, most things have been... Well, I've all been a bit like that, really. I was just talking about yesterday, driving down, the landscape.

Sandra McGrath Wasn't the African series fairly immediate after you did that, did go?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, that's a contradiction, because that is, in a way...

Sandra McGrath You know you can make your own history.

Sidney Nolan That's a contradiction from what I've just said, but I went to Africa and came back in order to paint an exhibition in London, and then went to the South Pole. I got a chance to go to the South Pole with Moorehead, and I took that. Because I took a big risk in trying to carry these impressions of Africa down to

Sandra McGrath To the South Pole.

Sidney Nolan The South Pole, and come back again and do the exhibition. And I did that, but of course I didn't really cover the African scene thoroughly, but I've been back a lot since. And I'm now going to start off on doing a lot about Africa.

Sandra McGrath You are going to start doing more?

Sidney Nolan Yes, on the elephants, yeah, on Roots of Heaven. Do you remember that book, Roots of Heaven?

Sandra McGrath Yes, mhm.

Sidney Nolan So I'm going to do that, about the combination of the man in Auschwitz who dreams about the freedom of the elephants in Africa, and this sustains him, and then he goes back later, and he's gun-running, and that sort of thing, and they crash a light aircraft onto a herd of elephants, and there's a whole load of stuff. But basically it's that sort of sense of freedom that the elephants have that I've become interested in. Well, they used to have, you see. Yeah, this book of Peter Beard's, actually, just to bring it for a moment, the last half, he's updated an earlier book, consists of hundreds, hundreds of photographs of dead elephants taken from a light aircraft. And they make extraordinary shapes, you know, some look like kabuki dancers and some look like pretzels and some look like all kinds of things, you know, it's quite strange, quite weird, an elephant carcass. And he had seen when he was at Yale, I think, the photographs that I'd taken of the Central Australian carcasses, and decided when he was younger that was an interesting thing to do. Anyway, it's a matter of doing the elephants before they disappear.

Sandra McGrath Is that after China?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, but sometime I've got to work hard for the rest of the year. This is... Because we came down through Mexico and everything, you know, and I've got to get back.

Sandra McGrath To Mexico?

Sidney Nolan No, I mean we came through America and Mexico and Tahiti and out here, and we're going back this way, so I'll have to work for the rest of the year in order to, you know, not to get clogged up.

Sandra McGrath How do you see the series in running from the... from China? You'll do... you'll start... when you finish China, you'll work on a series from China?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, what I want to do with China is a bit complicated, because later on I want to go again to China and see if I can go over the route that the 8th Army took when they retreated to the caves of Yan'an.

Sandra McGrath Oh, that would be fascinating. They wouldn't be too keen on doing that though, would they? I suppose they would.

Sidney Nolan Well, you see, step by step.

Sandra McGrath Wasn't that the old... what didn't they... wasn't that...

Sidney Nolan The 8th Route Army.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, 8th Route Army. Wasn't that the old China Silk Trade Route, almost all?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well it was going over that way, and then it cuts through.

Sandra McGrath Through, but wasn't it part of the old silk trade that they took?

Sidney Nolan Yes, and then it comes right back down, ends up at Samarkand and then through to, I forget where it ends up, Dublin probably.

Sandra McGrath Dublin!

Sidney Nolan It goes right through Venice, you know, and through to...

Sandra McGrath Right through, yeah.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that's right, that's the thing. But I'd like to to do that and then have a bit of a go at...

Sandra McGrath The African elephants?

Sidney Nolan Well, do the African elephants from the point of view of the freedom of... that they express. And then perhaps try and do this journey when I've learned a bit more about China, and do the journey and see what that feels like, and try and do that, because that was another freedom trip.

Sandra McGrath You mean the 8th Route?

Sidney Nolan Yes, yes. What... yeah, what I'm basically interested in...

Sandra McGrath Is the theme of freedom.

Sidney Nolan Is freedom, you see.

Sandra McGrath So elephants and the 8th Army route all end up equalling freedom.

Sidney Nolan Yes, it's all in the same...

Sandra McGrath Elephants plus... I'll have to start using my own shorthand.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's an instinct, like happiness or something, you know, it will force people along.

Sandra McGrath How do you see that in relation to communism?

Sidney Nolan Oh, well, I think that's a secondary situation, see. That's the tick... that's the... it's the rationalisation of the instinct. I mean, you see the... you see the photographs of Marx and Engels and that kind of thing out on the Chinese communes, these bearded Victorians.

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Sidney Nolan And then somebody said to me once, 'Oh, of course, the Chinese are very civilised people. Zhou Enlai read Ruskin.'

Sandra McGrath Mhm.

Sidney Nolan Well, in fact, he had read Ruskin.

Sandra McGrath Mhm.

Sidney Nolan Yeah. But all these things, the the communist part of it and the ideological part of it, are really the rationalisations of his instincts. I mean, I'm not much interested in the in the rationale. I mean, I'm interested, you know, as a citizen, but not as a painter.

Sandra McGrath Do you think they suffer there from the lack of freedom? Or is there the lack of freedom? You know, that...

Sidney Nolan Well, you see, all I think, you know, that... that applies to travel and that kind of thing. But I think basically what they base things on is that is that, uh...

Sandra McGrath I won't put anything in here that might jeopardise your trip, by the way.

Sidney Nolan No, no, I'll have to be rather careful about that. We can just go over those couple of little points to do with China. You see, they basically have the idea that happiness is not an an individual situation, that it can be a shared situation. Now, that's something to us which is a very difficult concept. But when you're in China, it does look, you know, the people do look as if they work things out in that way. So even if they're not free to travel as we do, or to live as we do, they nevertheless seem very happy people.

Sandra McGrath They do. Mhm.

Sidney Nolan And everybody who goes there, almost without exception, all the books I read on China, particularly a few years ago, the first people going in, in the early '60s, everybody comes out a bit bewitched and bewildered. Yes. You see, what is about China is that when we had the Renaissance we were kind of level pegging in one sense up to about the Renaissance, scientifically speaking, and then we shot ahead and the Chinese more or less stayed where they were. But I've just been reading they've made plans that by the end of the century they'll be level with any advanced technology in any country and in front of a lot. Well, they probably will be, you see, because they'll have a a push that they had during that Europe had during the Renaissance to find new scientific uh discoveries.

Sandra McGrath You're saying that from the Renaissance on, they sort of rested while Europe—

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're pretty good on gravity and all that kind of thing. And you know, there's a book of Kurt Vonnegut's, isn't it? His last one, he's got the Chinese discovering gravity and every Monday morning they let Brooklyn Bridge fall down. But they are hot stuff on lodestones and magnetism and gravity and all that, and and they might tap sources of energy to do with gravity faster than the the West might. No, but they have people on it.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. What do you think you will paint, what will you be looking for as a painter over there?

Sidney Nolan Well, of course, the double thing. I mean, an early Sung, a proper Sung landscape looks very like a late Cézanne landscape, you know, the brushwork and the and that kind of thing. So, from the point of view of art, it's a terrific landscape uh solution and identification in their painting, you know, probably the greatest, I suppose.

Sandra McGrath You mean you have a tremendous uh identification, or do you...?

Sidney Nolan No, they had a tremendous identification, and they produced a terrific solution to landscape painting, to the question of identification with landscape. The Sung painters, you see. Sung painting did, in the way that Cézanne did.

Sandra McGrath I'm just enjoying the painting.

Sidney Nolan So, you know, one gets a kick out of seeing...

Sandra McGrath You're saying really, that it's... I'm trying...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, you asked you asked the question. Yes, yeah, sure.

Sandra McGrath Uh because I know what you mean, but I'm just trying to get it in your words more crisply. Uh you're saying that the that the Chinese Sung landscape painters found a solution to the to the relationship of really the man or the painter into...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, exactly, yeah. They they did.

Sandra McGrath Uh how man relates to the landscape, yes, the relationship between man...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, they solved the problem. And it's one that preoccupies us here, as I mentioned downstairs when I walked in.

Sandra McGrath So they solved the problem of man's relationship to the landscape.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, of how the bush haunts one. They solved it. And we're in the process, presumably, of solving it. In this... See, this question of landscape is interesting in that, you know, in America now, it's kind of turned around that Pollock and Rothko and de Kooning, and so on, are really landscape painters carrying on the great tradition of the 19th-century American landscape painting. You know, it's it's turned around quite a lot.

Sandra McGrath Did you see that exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art called The Paradise, or something, The Earthly Paradise?

Sidney Nolan That's Rosenblum.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, The Earthly Paradise...

Sidney Nolan No, I didn't see that.

Sandra McGrath Where they used the Victorian painters and all that bit about the sublime...

Sidney Nolan Yeah. Yeah, that was Rosenblum, yeah. Well, the thesis is, you know, only half right, because obviously all the formal aspects of...

Sandra McGrath That's what you were really referring to when you said that, is that sort of Rosenblum uh thesis, aren't you?

Sidney Nolan Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah. Saying that Rothko and de Kooning really carry on the tradition of the 19th-century... Yeah. Yes, it's only half right. Like everything, because the other half is naturally due to Matisse and all the rest of it, and the formal uh problems and discoveries of the Europeans. But it's interesting how this pull of, you know, the Pollock comes from Wyoming, and uh he looks at the sea at East Hampton and says, "Well, it's like the prairie in Wyoming," and he paints. Uh it's interesting how it persists. The landscape persists. Even when the painters are presumably trying to destroy the concept of a landscape tradition, which Pollock was. I don't think Rothko would thank you for...

Sandra McGrath Telling him he was a landscape painter!

Sidney Nolan Hey?

Sandra McGrath For saying he was a landscape painter.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, he wouldn't like that much. But he probably would if he'd lived long enough and uh done some more, he might have come around a little bit. And so might, of course, Pollock, uh at least Rothko, because the late Rothkos, which are uh aren't as good, of course, but they seem to be reaching out after a lens-, you know, going backwards in a way into a landscape situation. He's beginning to put a...

Sandra McGrath What about, he'd just come... Oh no, we want him down by the pictures. Is that all right with you?

Sidney Nolan Yes, sure.

Sandra McGrath Okay. Terry, we've... Let's start at the flowers, because you haven't done flowers before, or this sort of...

Sidney Nolan No, I did lots of flowers before.

Sandra McGrath You did lots and lots of the flowers in the uh Garden of Eden, didn't you?

Sidney Nolan Yeah. The one thing is that Mary, uh you know, in our place, Boyd...

Sandra McGrath Pardon?

Sidney Nolan Mary Boyd.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Sidney Nolan She's Mary... up in Wales, where we live, in Herefordshire. She's got a lot of her father's pots there.

Sandra McGrath Oh, really?

Sidney Nolan Mm. Her father was Merric Boyd. He was a very good, an Australian potter. She's got a lot of these pots there. They're the things which interested me. You see, that's more pots than flowers.

Sandra McGrath Yes, the pots are the central focus, yes.

Sidney Nolan Well, that's really how it happened. Yeah. The pots were in our... It's sort of a piece of sculpture, really, as much as potting.

Sandra McGrath Listen, where in Wales do you live now?

Sidney Nolan Well, actually, it isn't in Wales. It's on the border of Wales. It's Hereford.

Sandra McGrath Hereford.

Sidney Nolan Heref-, Hereford. H-E-R-E-

Sandra McGrath Hereford.

Sidney Nolan -F-O-R-D. H-E-R-E-

Sandra McGrath Where the cows come from.

Sidney Nolan Where the, yeah, Herefordshire. Where right, practically on the, you know, Herefords.

Sandra McGrath You've got some Herefords around you?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, we do. I wake up in the morning and look at these, and they're really wonderful beasts. The condition of them. And it's very beautiful sheep around there. But also when it snowed, this this is where I'm beginning to get this interesting Chinese landscape, because the hills there, when it snows, snow, you know, the first snow started to melt, the hills are in China, you know, terrifically...

Sandra McGrath When it snows on the border there, it it has that sort of Chinese landscape feel?

Sidney Nolan Yeah. That's right, yeah. And it's that terrifically fine tonal distinction that you need to achieve to to get the thing to work.

Sandra McGrath It's terrifically fine what?

Sidney Nolan A tonal distinction. You know, the the finer the uh the differences between tones, the greater the pleasure to the eye, apparently.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Sidney Nolan Mm. So they say. And that's, of course, what Chinese painting is really about.

Sandra McGrath You're saying that's a Chinese theory?

Sidney Nolan Well, Edward Locke or anybody else said that. Where they use fine washes, Indian wash. It's if it's very fine and and you just notice, when you're just able to notice the distinction, it gives, apparently it gives your eye quite a kick. But you see, you never know what anything means, right? Because I've been told by people in China that it's meant to frighten you. Well, you wouldn't think that.

Sandra McGrath No, you wouldn't.

Sidney Nolan It would be true, would you?

Sandra McGrath No.

Sidney Nolan But I don't believe that.

Sandra McGrath I don't believe that.

Sidney Nolan I don't believe it either.

Sandra McGrath I don't think that makes any sense at all.

Sidney Nolan It doesn't work, does it?

Sandra McGrath Not at all.

Sidney Nolan I mean, it works for us all right, but I don't think it works for them.

Sandra McGrath No.

Sidney Nolan It didn't work in those ages, 10th century when they made these paintings.

Sandra McGrath Tell me, just for my own descriptive vocabulary, what are some of the flowers in these?

Sidney Nolan Uh they're they're peonies. Of course, I use dead flowers a lot. I keep them every month. They're banksias. That's a recollection of an Australian flower, which I didn't have up in England. And it's character is pretty strange, that's what, that's what makes the banksias. It's sort of a part of Australia at that time. And the others are, uh are things we gathered in the fields. They're essentially, uh, field flowers in the spring.

Sandra McGrath That's almost, that one and the other one are almost my favourite, these two.

Sidney Nolan These two here?

Sandra McGrath That one and that one.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, I think, well, I have mine too, in a way. That one I sort of like the way that perks up.

Sandra McGrath I like that sort of energy in that one.

Sidney Nolan Light coming up, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. It's almost like a sunrise.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that's right. It's like something that's... You see, people would put flowers this way, that way, that way. I don't like bunch, I like flowers to be apart.

Sandra McGrath The one on the end, is that a couple of peonies too and some uh fuchsias, isn't it?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, fuchsias, yeah. That's right.

Sandra McGrath And the uh, one of the green vase, they're uh, they are white, uh they're sort of spring daffodils, aren't they?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, they are, yes. They are mixed in.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, you've scrubbed you've scrubbed them a bit. Sort of scrubbed-up spring daffodils. I forgot, actually they're not daffodils, they're the ones that have... Jonquils.

Sidney Nolan They're jonquils, yes. They're pale with yellow centers.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, they're white almost. Well, they are white, in fact. And those are those um lily flowers, aren't they?

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath If you move, I'm I'm always orchestrating things, if you move there, then you can get you and the picture more, so you don't obscure the picture so much. And you might even try a shot down this way, Steve, so so you get him on the that on the and you get him, move that forward there, too. Well, you know, I just sort of if you take, yeah, one there, and then maybe... But, yes, I've got a book on Merric Boyd, and there's there's a lovely painting on the cover that belongs to that book, too.

Sidney Nolan It's rather stunning, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Sidney Nolan Well, of course, I've been... I've been quite interested. I didn't know... ...how much we should say about this, so... But in fact, I've been looking at the book because I've been very interested. And I've had the book up there, and I've looked through it of course, so... Yeah. And I knew her father. And those big paintings out there are related.

Sandra McGrath Yes, well, you know... ...I can I see the one with the vertical stripes particularly I thought of when I came in here. Well, there is a there is a deliberate attempt to relate to Arthur Boyd on the other side. So the book is not far away from the palette, so to speak. No, it's in the, uh, but the back end of it is incredibly sloppy, because I didn't have anybody to help me with research, you know. Sort of back, I mean the back end in the sense of all technical bit of pictures and... it was very sloppy, yeah. But I just couldn't afford to pay anybody to do it all, and it was just such a job to... You always pay in the end. And I hate that sort of work, anyway. Yeah, it's horrible, yeah, that's right. I It's just not me to do it. And I'm just so the book didn't have it. You know, I had to do it.

Sidney Nolan I don't I don't think books in a way need them. I mean, they're not, I mean, they're obviously needed. The information is needed, but it does sometimes just muddy the...

Sidney Nolan We were going down for Easter, but it was flooded out and he couldn't get to it and we couldn't and so that was the end of it. Uh, but we're going down there in, uh, about a week's time, a week or so. [Sandra McGrath: Have you been down there before?] Never, no, I've never seen it, no. It looks beautiful, yeah. [Sandra McGrath: I don't know how you can stand to stay away from it for long. Anyway, that's it.] Yeah, well it is a problem actually, of course, because, well it's a problem I don't have in a sense, because I've fallen too far off the cliff to have the problem anymore. You see what I mean, I've been around too much. But it is a problem of of staying quietly by a landscape or something, wherever it is, that's, you know, it's your own and you know it's beautiful, or being somewhere else thinking about it, which I suppose is what happens to him.

Sandra McGrath I mean, don't he paint all his Shoalhaven in London?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath But you do that a bit yourself. You paint Africa in London and...

Sidney Nolan Yes, I do that, you know, quite a lot, but I'm probably a bit, uh... ...I don't know how to put it. You see, I'm only the kind of painter I am by default, in a way.

Sandra McGrath How do you mean that?

Sidney Nolan You know, I started off to be quite a different kind of painter. You know, I was an abstract painter, and that was my world, and that's what I believed in, and that's what I was for five years. So I never thought, I never dreamt that I would be in any way ever painting a gum tree. In 18, 19, 20, 21, and all through that period, I was a completely abstract painter.

Sandra McGrath And what period do you date that from, when you were an abstract painter?

Sidney Nolan Well, well from '36, you see, when I was, you know, whatever I was,

Sandra McGrath to what, uh...

Sidney Nolan until, uh... I had an exhibition in, in...

Sandra McGrath That's going to confuse the book again.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, okay. In 1940, in June, I had an exhibition in Melbourne of completely abstract works.

Sandra McGrath In 19...

Sidney Nolan 40.

Sandra McGrath 40, right. So you're saying that '36 to say '40, '40...

Sidney Nolan Until I went in the army in '42, I was an abstract painter. And that's what I believed in, you know, body and soul.

Sandra McGrath Do you remember any turning point when you stopped believing in it?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, it's gradually, yeah, I couldn't get to Paris or Europe or America because of the war, and I was put into the army, or I went into the army, perhaps we'll say. And I spent it up in the Wimmera in Victoria, so I had four years on my own just looking at the, uh, at the very dry, sort of landscape which was the Wimmera, and that gradually overcame all, all my other formal preoccupations.

Sandra McGrath The landscape overwhelmed you in the end.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, but, but still, that, that doesn't mean that I became a landscape painter in spite of everything, because I still, I still start off pretty abstract even, you know, there's a, there's a part in the painting I do which is still abstract, we're just in abstract terms. As, you know, even though it might be a silly thing to do, I might just start on the road back to it now.

Sandra McGrath Well, those ones with the bush flowers are very abstract.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, that's...

Sandra McGrath They're the most abstract things you've done in a long time. I mean, I don't see all your work, obviously.

Sidney Nolan Mhm, yeah. But they were very abstract, and the actual concept of the whole mural and all that sort of thing is really very abstract.

Sandra McGrath I was talking to a friend of yours yesterday. I interviewed Werner...

Sidney Nolan Oh, Krüger, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Yes, he's such he's obviously a devoted fan of yours and says your work reminds him of German Expressionist... ...uh...

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Expressionism, that's one of the reasons. And he he's going to the Outback with you to do yet another film.

Sidney Nolan Yes, he's going up to Alice Springs next week, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Do you think he'll do an entirely different kind of film than the last one? Do you think he'll do an entirely different kind of film than the last one?

Sidney Nolan Oh, yes, entirely. It'll be the opposite. You see, he, uh, he's going to do two things, I think. In fact he's going to do three, but two are that, one, he's going to do the Ern Malley series of paintings from the point of view of of the metaphysics of frauds and hoaxes and all that kind of thing, even from a, even as that could arise in a political sense, if you see what I mean, of hoaxes and and he's kind of going to try and visually film the metaphysics of hoax. Well, he's become now interested in the metaphysics of landscape. So we're back where we started, because we don't talk about landscape in that way, about the metaphysics of it. [Sandra McGrath: That's very German, isn't it?] But it's very German, he does. And that's what he wants to try and explore in me. Well, that suits me because that is the hidden side of me that I'd like to, you know, have him try and, uh, film. [Sandra McGrath: It's certainly going to be fascinating.] Because, uh, you know, I'm, whatever it is, I'm in disguise, so to speak. I'm not a national sort of painter at all. You know, all the things that happen to you, like Ned Kelly and all this kind of thing, you end up with them round your neck, but, uh... As somebody said to me, Robert Cates in New York, he was in New York, he said, "I wrote a book about the Civil War, and it was a great success. And every book I wrote after, they said, 'Well, it's not like the Civil War.'" And he called Ned Kelly the Civil War syndrome, if you see what I mean. [Sandra McGrath: Yeah.] And that gets taken up, even though you might have started the thing ironically. In fact, that's what I did.

Sandra McGrath So it's really living down Ned Kelly.

Sidney Nolan It's really living down Ned Kelly, and of course I've now got in Canberra all this Anzac, uh, stuff, well...

Sandra McGrath And Anzac, well...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well, I'm the last type of person to be an historical painter of of national epics.

Sandra McGrath You did that because of what, the war series? That was The Anzac series was done on was commissioned, wasn't it?

Sidney Nolan No, I've been doing them for about 20 years. I did a lot in New York and, uh, but I've actually given the government, because my own brother died in the war, so it's just a way of, you know, doing something for him and giving them away. But it would be very difficult to establish the relationship between the the paintings and the sort of myth of Anzac as it's held by by the people here, I mean.

Sandra McGrath Do you find that, uh, people in Europe think of your work as particularly Australian, or do they, have you lived abroad so long now that...

Sidney Nolan No, I'm just now, uh, this is happening now in America, I think. You see, I had to get through this business of being an Australian painter and being a national painter and all that. But in the end it wears out over a longer period, again it's about 20 years. And now they've begun to take you on on on the kind of painting qualities. Because up till now they've been interested in what happened to the Anglo-Saxon when he went abroad and lived in a strange continent, because that was one of their interests, not only just in in Australiana, but that's now subsided and they're interested in painting.

Sandra McGrath They just see you as a painter now.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, they see me as a painter, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to have some shows in America, and the same, because I had a lot—not a lot, but I had a number before in the '60s and, uh, the '50s. And again it was the Australian thing that was of interest to them. Well, now they're interested in the painting, so I think I'm going to have a show at Houston sometime later in the year.

Sandra McGrath Are you still an Australian citizen?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yes, yes.

Sandra McGrath You're still...

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath When people talk about you in London, do they still drag in the Ned Kelly series, or they...

Sidney Nolan No, no, no, it's pretty all worn out now.

Sandra McGrath All worn through.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, there's been too many changes of style and themes and all that, so it's sort of done in. You know, they'll have rubber dolls of Ned Kelly now, and the rest of it. You know, it's... You know, it's lived long enough to be like Mickey Mouse, it's...

Sandra McGrath Do you think they actually are, or it could?

Sidney Nolan Well, it will, once you've got rock operas and, uh, well, I mean that's... Once you get that, it'll happen, but... The thing just lasts so long, you know, Danny does. This again is 20-year, but you, that's the way it was in Florence and in Rome and Siena and everywhere else. You get about 20 years run of the thing, and then that's... The younger generation comes along and they don't want to hear about it. And that's about the length of any art style. For instance, you know, Rosenberg said that Abstract Expressionism would last 300 years.

Sandra McGrath Oh, he was way out, wasn't he?

Sidney Nolan Yeah. I mean, it did pretty well, but it didn't do as well as that. So usually about 20 years is about it for anything, you know, for Cubism or for Australianism or anything. Max is what, 15 years, if you get down to it. You know, you remember what the how long the Fauves lasted and how long Cubism actually was a dynamic force and how long in fact...

Sandra McGrath Fauvism was only, wasn't that long, was it? I thought Fauvism was only...

Sidney Nolan Well, that was very short.

Sandra McGrath Only about five years.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that was five years, that's all. That's 1902 to, so whatever it was, 1904 to '09 or something. Yes, that was very short.

Sandra McGrath That must have been actually one of the shortest-lived movements in history,

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath except for maybe, uh, Dadaism or Vorticism was pretty much...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that was pretty short, because the war came along.

Sandra McGrath That was only one or two years, actually. That was only That was under five years, really.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah, that was very short. That was just Wyndham Lewis's, um, sort of Blast, you know, that only lasted three years, I think.

Sandra McGrath And Constructivism in Russia only lasted what, nine years, is that right?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath It's surprising. 1908 to about 1915, '17?

Sidney Nolan Mhm. It's the dynamic period of it, you know. There's a fallout afterwards, you know, when the imitators keep on going, but basically the, whilst dynamic, it's quite a short period. And, of course, the slight problem is if you live longer than these periods, then you change. [Sandra McGrath: Yeah.]

Sandra McGrath What do you like most, or think, um, was one one of your most Well, now we're talking about dynamic periods, dynamic periods?

Sidney Nolan In my case?

Sandra McGrath Mhm. Do you have a period of painting in which you really, uh, you still some you feel something particularly special happened to you aesthetically, or that you produced work that you thought was, uh, still for you particularly...

Sidney Nolan Yeah, you see, you have, um, you have ups and downs, and in Europe they've been accustomed to allowing a painter to have a number of downs and a number of ups over a lifetime, and wouldn't be in a... And we've been a bit rough on, one soon had a down, we'd say, well, he's - that's the end, whereas in fact it might be just the bottom of the trough. So really, the things you're fond of is when you're on the - on the up. Or what you've got to take in silence is - Sorry, can I grab those words? No, it's fine. Yeah, you have to - have to take the down.

Sandra McGrath If you had to sort of nominate periods of your - what you consider, not what critics consider, what you consider your peaks, what would you nominate?

Sidney Nolan Well, that's a quite difficult one. You see, that - those things I did of the Paradise Garden and the Snake and the Shark, that kind of thing, I was five years working on very big projects, you know, because they're quite big. They're 1,400 little paintings in the one big painting. And I slogged away at those for five years, and I enjoyed that a lot. Because I must have done about 5,000 paintings, you see. That's one of my most enjoyable. But I just had the problem that I anticipated the artists, in a way, who did things that you couldn't hang or you couldn't put anywhere, because it's too big. But it's maybe going to Pittsburgh, because I went there this time, you know, for the big painting of mine. They've got some big walls, so I think...

Sandra McGrath That's the spot.

Sidney Nolan That's the spot.

Sandra McGrath Where is it now, actually?

Sidney Nolan It's here in the store.

Sandra McGrath That's what I thought. And what other period would you nominate, that you were particularly...?

Sidney Nolan Well, when I was young, the abstract stuff, which I've never exhibited, you know. I've just kept all that.

Sandra McGrath Coz you've still got it?

Sidney Nolan Yes, I've still got all of it.

Sandra McGrath Do you intend to...?

Sidney Nolan Yes, if I can get to the point where I can see a a kind of proper retrospective coming up, I will, other than a collection of, you know, the best works. But if I can see any way of of of showing how your brain ticked over 30 years, 40 years, I'll put them in. But so far, I I changed too much, you know, there was too much of a gap between the abstract stuff and Kelly for me to put them together yet. See, I might need to have another five years abstract painting to...

Sandra McGrath To let bring the circle back, yeah.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, mm.

Sandra McGrath That's interesting. Are they in storage, or do you have them in the house somewhere?

Sidney Nolan No, I've got them in in England. Yeah, they're in storage. Well, I've got half of them up in Hereford. Actually, to tell you the truth, um, I every now and again, I do one.

Sandra McGrath Oh, really? Is that sort of you're like a secret drinker?

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath A closet drinker.

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Really? Do you?

Sidney Nolan Yes, yes, I do. Oh, it's just to see if I can, if the moment comes to press the button, to see if I can do it. And actually, I get as much pleasure out of it as as anything.

Sandra McGrath It's marvelous what you're doing. Mm.

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Is this the first time you've lived in Wales?

Sidney Nolan Yeah. Yeah, it's the first time I've ever lived in the English countryside.

Sandra McGrath How did you find it?

Sidney Nolan Well, I was so much part of London in the sense I went to opera all the time and concerts and all that because, um, I like music a lot. Er, but seeing we're only, er, 120 miles away, in fact we drive down every second week and so every week, er, going to the opera and concerts, and that kind of thing. Because I've followed music a lot all my life. Not all my life, but the latter part of it. So so I find living up there actually it's, um, it it's a kind of, er, it's a double thing. You're in the country with the cows and, er, and all that, and the snow and, er, the hills, and it's it's quite wild. I mean it's wilder than most of the stuff I've driven through. But we're just a few hours away from the apartment in London and the opera.

Sandra McGrath Sounds ideal. Do you think you will ever consider going back to Australia?

Sidney Nolan I'm going to - yeah. Everyone asks you. I'm going to die here, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Yes, you're going to die here?

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath And you're going to have to be very careful when you choose your moment, aren't you?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath What makes you say that, now?

Sidney Nolan About dying here? Well, you know, when, er, I stopped at this motel down at Wagga, I went out in the morning. It's because your father lived here and you were born here and his father was here and you knew them all and you grew up with them and, um...

Sandra McGrath When you stopped at the motel at Wagga, though, what did that have to do with it?

Sidney Nolan Oh sorry, yes, I jumped the gun. Well, I got up early in the morning at sunset, or at least at sunrise, and it was, er, at the Rock. It was a bit like Central Australia there, and the sun rose and, you know, it was really terrific. And then the birds got to work, and I was out there in bare feet, and and I thought, well, this is, you know, where I am and where I'll end up. But in a cultural sense, the the momentum of the world, you know, things going on in New York and London and Paris and everywhere else, is interesting enough to keep you on the move, I'm telling you. But in the end, um...

Sandra McGrath So you like moving around?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yes, I do. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath But you're going to move back here in the end?

Sidney Nolan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath I wouldn't think that you're so eccentric to...

Sidney Nolan Yeah. Probably Arthur feels that, too. Yeah, I think Arthur's, um, he's doing something with that now, that's what he's about. He's reached the age when he's beginning to want to.

Sandra McGrath One can see it in his paintings, yes.

Sidney Nolan Well, I'm bargaining on being able to live long enough to, er... You know, I I've asked the doctors how long I can keep it up, and they've said, well, give it give it 20 years, so about 2001, we'll celebrate that with champagne.

Sandra McGrath So the year 2001, you're coming back to Australia?

Sidney Nolan Yeah. We'll get as far as that and then...

Sandra McGrath Well, I think you'd better come back then. I think you might be pushing your luck if you left it.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, that's it. That's the point. I think after that, that's that's about it, and Kubrick's magic stone might start to speak then somewhere or other.

Sandra McGrath When I was talking to Werner yesterday, he said you were one of the - you were a real expert on Heidegger and Pound and, um, Which I didn't know, and why were you so interested in German philosophers?

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah. Did he make that up because he's German, or...? No, no, I didn't make it up, no. Because I have read with difficulty, because I don't speak any, at least I don't read any other language, so that's very difficult, and particularly the case with Heidegger. But Heidegger is very interested in the, er, way in which certain word patterns in poems, er, a cauldron, arise in a specific area. You know, across Europe, the the ending, the word endings, the sounds of word endings, if you run a graph across Europe, er, there's just a progression of the sounds, say from Russia right across to Dublin. The sound endings just have a vertical kind of union. Er, they all relate. So there's something to do with the geography and the voice and the words which come out and the poetry. Well, Heidegger talks about that, of course, in terms of the German language. And that preoccupies me by an analogy with what makes the Australians Australian.

Sandra McGrath You're saying some relation between the geography, the voice and the sound.

Sidney Nolan Yes, which makes poetry, or which makes art, I'd say. And I try and work out by analogy what it is here that makes the Australians what they are.

Sandra McGrath What do you think? What are some of your conclusions?

Sidney Nolan Well, it's it's difficult to say. I think the system works all right. I think Heidegger's right. But I don't know why it works. I don't know why there's terrific, er... You know, coming over the border from, er, from Mexico into, er, the United States, the immigration guy standing there and there's, you know, the - and he says to one of the young Americans, where do you come from? And the kid says, Montana. And he knows, the immigration guy knows if the kid does come from Montana or from Georgia. He knows. Er, and and this is interesting in some way. Why geography determines sound, yeah, so it must determine shapes. Yeah, very tricky one. But looks of it so. It may not be, you see, it it may be there's an aesthetic kind of level in this that's independent of all these factors. Mm, but it may not be. I tend to I tend to think it is to do with something here.

Sandra McGrath If you think about the Australian shapes, they really are quite different to the North American and English shapes.

Sidney Nolan They are, really.

Sandra McGrath There isn't anything even comparable to them. It's probably one of the most striking countries for shape, in fact.

Sidney Nolan Yes, there there I think it is, and I think probably the, um, there's going to be an interest in America in Australian painting, er, from that point of view.

Sandra McGrath Because it's real- it has a relationship to it.

Sidney Nolan Yes, well, when their insistence or their belief in the formal transmission of shapes has perhaps been battered a bit, and they're back to geography, the fact that they are Americans and they live there, and that's, you know, got something to do with their painting, then they might take an interest in us as being another continent a bit like them, and having perhaps gone through the same experience, rather than just 20th century modern art deriving from Cézanne and Picasso and the rest of Matisse and the formal aspects. I mean, they obviously exist, but this other thing keeps on pushing up a bit. Do you think? I mean, I'll have to ask you now because, you know, because I don't know and I don't want to know anyway.

Sandra McGrath No, I think it's all too... I think it's best if we don't know.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, yeah. Yes, if I knew, you see, I'd be... I'd just get in the corner and write a book about it, you see, and think, well, OK, I know, so I'll just write a book and, um... That's that, and I wouldn't be a painter. It's because I don't know that one keeps on painting. But it's somewhere poised between the two things, the aesthetic sort of responsiveness which has gone on from cave art and then the specific kind of shapes which emerge out of specific geographical situations. Tell me, if you had to analyze

Sandra McGrath your work over the years you've been painting it, how would you define the themes that have the themes that you're most interested in. We talked about the one on freedom, which was the Ned Kelly and the elephants and the, what's the other one you were talking about? The freedom theme. How about the Bondi? The last exhibition I saw here were the Bondi swimmers. How did that fit into it? Well, that's a kind of beginning of the thing I want to do on the Hawkesbury

Sidney Nolan River. The man, John Russell, came back here. He was kind of, you know, having been, in fact, having taken Matisse, of all people, in 1896 to the island where Sarah Bernhardt was, and having introduced Matisse to Monet, and having been invited by Van Gogh to come down and join him in, er, Arles with Gauguin, this guy comes back here and wants to paint the Hawkesbury and doesn't, because they say here, 'Who's Monet? Who's Sarah Bernhardt? And who's Van Gogh? And who's that?' And he gradually, you know, just loses interest. And, um, so I want to do a kind of thing on the Hawkesbury from beginning to end, with all the, er, Aboriginal things in Ku-ring-gai Chase and on tops of the cliffs overlooking the ocean, drawings of sharks. And I want to try and go right through from up in the mountains where it begins, where I've been looking, right through, er, Hawkesbury, and Ku-ring-gai Chase and all, right down to the shark drawings of the Abos, and then right down to the sharks and to the lifesavers, and of the sharks taking the lifesavers, and lifesavers.

Sandra McGrath They really started at the end. Hm? You started at the end.

Sidney Nolan Yeah, well I talked with Brett about this once in New York, in New York. And he said, 'Boy, that's that's a good noise. As the Australian wife,' 'housewife says,' 'ah, well.' And, er, he says, 'What does the Australian lifesaver...'