JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: CHARLES …26 April 1979 CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil and enamel on board,...

JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: CHARLES BLACKMAN 26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Charles, could we begin with the pictures you are sure about. Give us whatever information you can about them.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The first one—which seems appropriate, as it is the day after Anzac Day—is The March, Anzac Day.

JAMES GLEESON: No. 5.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. 5 comes from the exhibition I had in 1958/59, before I was awarded the Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship. I did two of these pictures: one is called Dawn Service and the other is called The March, Anzac Day. So they belong to that era of my work.

JAMES GLEESON: Is the information on our card correct? We donʼt have any medium.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil and enamel on masonite.

JAMES GLEESON: Fine. This is photograph No. 4.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Three children by the pond was painted in London in 1961. I had a studio in Jacksonʼs Lane. I had three studios in London: one in Jacksonʼs Lane, one in Archway Road, and one in Regentʼs Park. The one that I had in Jacksonʼs Lane was lived in by Len French after me and by Barry Humphreys after that. Yoko Ono moved into the one I had in Regentʼs Park and then I moved out.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. That is not part of a sequence.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. When I first went to London, at the beginning of 1961, Brian Robertson was organising the Whitechapel exhibition. He also organised exhibitions for Lawrence Daws, Brett Whiteley and me at the Matthiesen Gallery, where this picture was shown. How it was purchased I do not know; I have forgotten.

JAMES GLEESON: Does it say on the card?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It says ʻpurchased from the artist, November 1963ʼ. It must have been—

JAMES GLEESON: In the days of the old Art Advisory Board.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. In November 1963 I was still in England, so it could have been bought from my studio. Or I could have sent it to Australia; it might have been exhibited here. It is very hard to track that down.

JAMES GLEESON: ʻOil and enamelʼ—

26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil and enamel on board, which was the medium I was using at that time.

JAMES GLEESON: This, as I remember, is a big painting, although we do not have the measurements for it.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: There are three panels, three feet by four feet, with a four-foot height upright, which means that it is four-feet high by nine feet long.

JAMES GLEESON: And it is called Blue waves.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is called Blue waves. It was painted when I had my little studio downstairs in the very house that I live in now. I did a whole series of pictures on Bondi Beach. It was inspired in a vague kind of way by Seuratʼs Bathers, although this is rather a demure kind of object compared to that. It is painted on canvas that is stretched over masonite panels. It is just a straight oil painting. There are no other mediums used in it.

JAMES GLEESON: Where does it come from?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It comes from Rudy Komon, 1968.

JAMES GLEESON: It was exhibited, I suppose, at that gallery?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It was in the exhibition, yes.

JAMES GLEESON: No. 1?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. 1 is a monotype, which I did a great deal of in the mid-fifties. This is just one of them. This would have come from a set of sketchbooks.

JAMES GLEESON: It is a nude.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is a nude, yes.

JAMES GLEESON: Charles, would you describe your painting?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil paint. I did a series of monotypes and, now that you remind me, I must do some more. It is a sheet of glass where you use the straight oil paint without any medium because, if you use any medium at all, it starts to harden and you donʼt get a proper lift. If you keep changing the paint you have applied, the complex thing you have to work out is if you used too much turps you stained the paper, and if you used too much linseed oil you burned the paper. So I would pre-mix the paint into a fairly liquid state and then use it like that without any medium, and that seemed to be relatively successful. You got a very thin print; each line was picked up in a fairly refined way. I found that interesting.

JAMES GLEESON: Good, and that was one of a whole group.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, I did about forty or fifty at the time.

JAMES GLEESON: We have some others.

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CHARLES BLACKMAN: I think you might have. They were done on standard sheets of foolscap typing paper.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. This is a fairly recent acquisition, and one of my favourites—Luna Park.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Luna Park was done after had I lived in Melbourne for a while. Obviously, you can see influences of the work of Nolan and Tucker, who were there at the time. This is when I first started to meet the Australian figurative painters. Before that, when I lived in Sydney, my painting was fairly formal. I was influenced more by Picasso and Matisse and Miro than I was by anybody else.

JAMES GLEESON: Charles, before we go any further it might be a good idea to recapitulate and tell us where you studied, how you began—background information.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Not facts and figures, because you have all that facts and figures stuff.

JAMES GLEESON: You were born where?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: In Sydney. I was born in Kingʼs Cross.

JAMES GLEESON: What date was that?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It was fifty and a bit years ago—12 August 1928. I remember that when we moved to Manly we were very poor, my mother and my three sisters. We had to put all our clothes on when we went over on the ferry. I think I had three coats and four pairs of shoes and six pairs of trousers. It was like all these little pobbles getting off the Manly ferry. I left school when I was 13½. Young people who come from difficult, complicated and fractured backgrounds canʼt assess what is happening to them. I was fortunate in as much as I had a gentle mother. When I left school there was threat of war and a lot of young men were going into the army. I was too young, so I went to work on a newspaper, where I worked throughout the whole of the war.

JAMES GLEESON: What newspaper was that?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The Sydney Sun. It is very hard for me to pin down the exact date, but I think I left there when I was about 19.

JAMES GLEESON: Up to this time you had had no art training?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: You cannot say that if you have worked for a newspaper you have had any art training.

JAMES GLEESON: Were you drawing?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I worked in every department. I worked in the compository department, the shipping department, the Newcastle Sun department, or whatever you like. I did finally end up in the art department, as the boy who washed out all the bottles and the brushes. They all remember me very clearly because I always used a four-letter expletive when they asked me to change the water in their jars. I remain a memorable character in their minds.

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They were all wonderful people—terrific. I did have a certain talent and they were very encouraging and introduced me to life classes. The moment I got into the life class, my whole concept of art changed totally.

JAMES GLEESON: Where was this?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I canʼt remember where it was. It was in a funny little broken down old studio down in the Haymarket. It was full of red velvet drapes and strange amorphic beings all sitting around with plaster cast statues. I thought it was all very odd.

JAMES GLEESON: It wasnʼt Julian Ashtonʼs—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No; I never went to Julian Ashtonʼs. I had a friend who went to Julian Ashtonʼs. He was taught by Dick Gibson, who was obviously a wonderful man and kept saying to me, ʻWhy donʼt you come along here?ʼ

JAMES GLEESON: Gibbons.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is right—Henry Gibbons. He was a terrific man.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, so I believe.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: But for some reason or the other, the more he said it to me, the more perverse I became. Then I met a lady poet from New Zealand called Lois Hunter. She was the wife of Louie Johnson. She was a wonderful New Zealand poet and an extraordinary woman. We used to go to the Society of Realist Art life class and she turned up and started talking to us about Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Rimbaud and Verlaine. We had never heard any of these people. It hit us like a bomb and changed our lives. I gave up my newspaper life and took up drawing. That is all I did until I was about 21½, when Barbara and I went to Melbourne. Then I started painting.

JAMES GLEESON: Was this one of the paintings you painted when you went to Melbourne?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: This was after I had met Arthur Boyd and John Perceval. When I first went to Melbourne, John Perceval was a potter. He wasnʼt a painter; he had given up painting altogether. I was a pretty wild little person and I said, ʻWhy are you making all these pots when you should be painting?ʼ And he said, ʻNo; I donʼt want to do painting. I will leave all that to you hopeless charactersʼ. I said, ʻNo, youʼre not going to do that. Youʼre going to paint, and thatʼs all there is to itʼ. So I used to go out with John and carry all his paints for him because he only has one leg, as you know. It is something I think Australian artists of that era are grateful for—that they studied at each otherʼs studios. You probably do not get as much of that today as you did then. I used to go out and help Arthur Boyd make all his paints. I helped him build his kiln. I was his apprentice, so to speak. One learns things from that.

JAMES GLEESON: Of course.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: This painting was from the first exhibition I ever held—in my little loft studio in Hawthorn. The exact date you can check easily in a biography. I canʼt remember it. I painted in this little house for about a year and a

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half and then I put up all the pictures around the walls and invited the public. Allen McCulloch came along to the exhibition and liked it; he was very encouraging. He said there was another person living in Brunswick whom he thought was interesting—Len French.

JAMES GLEESON: That goes back some time.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. Does that cover information on that picture?

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, it does. The medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is enamel on cardboard.

JAMES GLEESON: With this one you queried the title. Is it not one that you gave it?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The title was more along the lines of This strange tablecloth. It is so long along now I cannot remember. I had a nice title on it. Years ago I was very proud of my title. It had something to do with a tablecloth—ʻthe magic tableclothʼ, along those lines. It wasnʼt Girl with flowers in a room. It is rather a spiritual sort of picture, where the figure is dissolving into this sort of overall space, and being pulled back for you by the rather bright flowers, or the prisms of light that are hitting from above, or whatever. It is, once again, a straight oil painting on canvas. It was painted in my Archway Road studio in London in 1962/1963.

JAMES GLEESON: I see—so it is one of the London ones.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. The picture was sent to Melbourne for an exhibition I had at Violet Dulieu, probably in 1963/1964. I cannot remember the exact dates but if you have that written down it is no great problem. That is where it comes from. It is actually a picture of Roslyn Humphreys—Barry Humphreysʼ first wife.

JAMES GLEESON: Is it? She sat—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, she didnʼt. I used to talk to her every morning before I went to work and finally when she came around she said, ʻYou have painted a picture of me, Charlesʼ.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. This one came as part of a gift.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, that is part of a gift. That is part of the Alice series of paintings, which were painted in Melbourne, in my Hawthorn studio. You would have to have the date—1950. It is very hard to identify this particular period. I did one painting, which is a distinct picture of its own, and then I did not work on it for some time. So it was a protracted period of about 2½ years, although there were distinct gaps in it.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes; I understand.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: This is an early one. The story is interesting. Barbara Blackman, a non-sighted person, got what was known as a ʻtalking book machineʼ. Thirty-three records were invented for blind people—that is how they

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started; the same as the typewriter. A story, which I had never read, came through the post. It was read by Alvar Ladell, who is a very famous BBC writer. It was captivating—wonderful. At the time I was working for Georges Mora in his restaurant, which was then called the Eastbourne Café. It is now called the Balzac. I used to go to work at five oʼclock at night. It is funny that we should talk about this because I was talking about it to Georges the other day. I was painting all these Alice pictures in the restaurant. I was in the kitchen all by myself—I had to cook dinner for 100 people every night. People used to say to me, ʻHow do you do it?ʼ I would say, ʻI have a rabbit who is an apport mediumʼ. Thatʼs how I got my rabbit. I would go home and paint Alice all day long and then go to the restaurant and work at night. I couldnʼt have done it without the rabbit!

JAMES GLEESON: Did you say there was another Alice picture in our collection?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: You should have three more. There was a gift of four.

JAMES GLEESON: Four?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Four distinctly different images.

JAMES GLEESON: All from the Alice period?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: All from the Alice period, and different sizes, yes.

JAMES GLEESON: We donʼt have any cards for any of them.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: This is the only evidence I have, in my hands at the moment, although I havenʼt checked recently. But I think they are all sketchbooks.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I think so.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs all.

JAMES GLEESON: So there are, in our collection, four Alice paintings.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes.

JAMES GLEESON: For which we do not at the moment have cards. Were they all done in this 2½ year period?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, all of them. They are very distinctive. You canʼt misplace them in any kind of way because they have that special growing and shrinking feeling. I am looking for another card that you had, of a hand.

JAMES GLEESON: We will come across it.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That picture—I always used to work about the same size, so that would be about the right size—is enamel and tempera on masonite. The distinctive thing about the Alice pictures was that the paints were all virtually handmade. All the tempera was handmade. The tempera was used as a catalyst.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes.

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CHARLES BLACKMAN: That would be interfered with monotype. You can see the watercolour on the page. I would do a drawing and then do some monotype and then do some watercolour. In this case it would be oil paint. So its medium would be compressed charcoal, oil paints, and a touch of monotype.

JAMES GLEESON: I see.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is a mixed media, in other words.

JAMES GLEESON: Let us identify it. It is called Untitled standing and jumping schoolgirls, but you have suggested that it might have a different title.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, thatʼs accurate enough. That is exactly what I said it should be called. It is a monotype, which is a mixed media thing.

JAMES GLEESON: The date is right—1952?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, black ink within the images.

JAMES GLEESON: Thatʼs right. So it is a mixed media work, drawn directly onto the paper—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: What I might have done, which is sometimes possible and which is what I used to do, is to print a tone on the page and just leave bits out of it, leave bits white. So you have a toned page from the monotype. When that was dry, I would work on it again. So it is a kind of retarded image.

JAMES GLEESON: I follow.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Sheet No. 8 is an interesting picture. It is straight enamel on cardboard, a 30-inch by 25-inch image. Whether you have that or not, I donʼt know, but that would be it. It was painted quite early in the piece. It is the first schoolgirl picture I ever did.

JAMES GLEESON: Two schoolgirls—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Two schoolgirls. I did another one on the same day; I remember it distinctly. Sunday Reed came in at night and said, ʻWhatʼs that?ʼ and I said, ʻItʼs a schoolgirlʼ, and she said, ʻThatʼs fascinatingʼ.

JAMES GLEESON: Schoolgirls have featured as a very positive and continuing element in your painting. Was it through reading the poetry of Sean Neilson or was it an instinctive thing that you were drawn to?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. Sunday Reed introduced me to the poetry of Sean Neilson after she saw me doing schoolgirls. The schoolgirl image just popped up in my personality. It is not untrue to say—all painters would say the same thing—that it is very much an environmental thing. Where I lived was heavily populated with schoolgirls—there were miles of them. It is one of those things. As a painter at the time my painting was getting a lot better because I was learning to cope with the size of the objects, and so it was possible for the image to emerge. It was no longer the continuing struggle of trying to work out what your personality was—you just got to the stage in life where the two things could coalesce for the first time. I think thatʼs probably true.

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JAMES GLEESON: When you read Sean Neilson, was there a sense of identification?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I loved it. Neilson had very poor eyesight. The thing I found fascinating about him was his description of colour. Obviously I was undergoing a similar sort of thing, in a purely psychic sort of way—trying to paint pictures which were unseeable.

JAMES GLEESON: I know what you mean—with Barbaraʼs sight problem.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Although I was not conscious of that at all. I remember Max Harris saying to me, ʻYou are painting your wifeʼs schoolgirl blindnessʼ, which I thought was absolute rubbish. I was wresting with these images—identifying with the schoolgirl, identifying with Neilson, and identifying with Barbaraʼs blindness. These are very distinctive things. This little picture represents where I began, the first emergent moment.

JAMES GLEESON: What date was that? We donʼt have a date for it.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: You donʼt have a date, so it would be pretty early on. It would be 1950 to very early in 1952. What do we say here with this girl?—1952. She is obviously a well-developed image. She is a distinct and developed image, whereas this one here is—

JAMES GLEESON: A sort of prototype?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right.

JAMES GLEESON: So it would be early 1952, or perhaps even earlier?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would either be just before Christmas 1952 or straight after it. During January and February and March of 1952 I was doing all those schoolgirl drawings. The funny thing is that I started doing all these enamel on board paintings of the schoolgirls and then I gave up doing that technique and I started on these little drawings here, of which you have a considerable number. They were all done with conté crayon on detail paper. Then when I finished doing that I changed my medium altogether. I started using my own powdered colours from ICI and mixing up my own mediums. Then the colour became very heavy and raw, either absolutely icy blue or blood red. I think it was only me. I had never heard of things such as earth colours. This is the truth.

JAMES GLEESON: Now we come to a group of drawings, or lithographs, are they? Some are drawings.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Before we go there, here is a drawing which has no page mark on it. You must have bypassed it. It must have been over on the side. What was the last page we had?

JAMES GLEESON: I am not sure. Mark it ʻXʼ.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: All right—1A. It is a drawing which was done immediately after I finished the Alice series. Circa1956 would be about right. The Alice pictures were done in 1955/1956. I remember when the Alice pictures were finished and exhibited. No drawings were done for them or after them, although

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drawings were done during the time they were being painted. We invited everybody around for dinner and I drew the whole dinner. We had practically nothing to eat. I drew absolutely everything—I did the wine being poured into the glasses and the tea being poured into the tea cups. We all had bread and cheese, because thatʼs all there was. These drawings were done. I did a whole set of about 25, of which you have a few examples. It is the hand reaching out in the dark for the cup. There is still the image of ʻDrink meʼ, and there is still the little doorway, although it has become personalised and Australianised. The landscape outside the room is very often an Australian landscape and the hand is very often the yearning after succour. It becomes more of a psychological object altogether than just the actual Alice reference.

JAMES GLEESON: So it becomes symbolic of something more profound.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The medium is very simply aqua or pencil and Indian ink. The whole series was done with aqua or pencil and Indian ink.

JAMES GLEESON: When you did the Alice series of paintings, did you work directly onto the surface with paint or did you make preliminary drawings and work from the drawings onto the paintings?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. They were paints. This was the thing about the Alice pictures which was distinct from others. They were a highly personal release. When you have that sort thing with a painting there is no interference with you and it. At the time, John Perceval was a great indirect help to me. At this time John was doing all his Williamstown paintings. This is how I can cross-identify. I used to go out with John and carry all his paints while he was doing his paintings. I even did one or two of the same sort of thing, outdoor with him. He used to go out and paint all day. Then I would come home and I would paint all the next week. He would only go out on weekends. He would paint his pictures on Saturdays and Sundays with me helping him. Then I would go home and paint all week. There obviously was—

JAMES GLEESON: A sort of cross-reference.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: A cross-reference, if you like, but you cannot identify an Alice picture with a Perceval landscape painting.

JAMES GLEESON: No.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They are totally and absolutely miles apart.

JAMES GLEESON: That is a marvellous drawing, incidentally. I think it is one of the finest ones.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It has that sort of power.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: There are three of these. Do you want any information on these?

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, on everything.

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CHARLES BLACKMAN: They are different from the others. Pages, 18, 16, 12 and 11 are all silk-screen prints manufactured for me in Adelaide by Charles Bannon. Charles Bannon was very active in having a silk-screen print studio in Sydney and then, for reasons which are very complicated, he left that business. He started up again some time later with a little silk-screen studio where I worked with him. Charles Bannon is a very good silk-screen. There are two good ones in Australia who work at that: one is Barbara Coburn and the other one is Charles Bannon. He couldnʼt do without the artist and the artist couldnʼt do it without him. It is one of those kind of closely knitted things. Page 11 and page 12 were both silk-screen prints using the butterfly image. They were done for Charles Bannon before 1970. The next two, on pages 18 and 16, were done by him in Adelaide after 1975.

JAMES GLEESON: Are they Alice?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. That is the blood-red. They are all coming out of the teapot, so to speak.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. And this one?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is based on a drawing I did called Paradise garden. When I went to live in Paris in 1973 I had the Mora Daring studio, where I worked. My trip was abbreviated. I should have stayed there for six months, but I couldnʼt.

JAMES GLEESON: What date was that, Charles?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is a bit confusing. The Blackmans all went to Paris, where they lived for 18 months. Just to give you some idea of what youʼre up against, I once gave a radio program in Perth. Barbara Blackman listened to it, and when I came out it she said, ʻCongratulations; you are 100 years oldʼ. So I wouldnʼt want to be too precise.

JAMES GLEESON: But this one is later than these?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: These are later than those two. That is what Iʼm trying to establish. Pages 11 and 12 are from the Sydney studio and pages 16 and 18 were done in the Adelaide studio. The technique is simple—silk-screen. You do your image and then it is photographic transfer to the screen, and that is when you start work. That is when the hard part starts. You canʼt cut a stencil like that; it is impossible. Anyhow, so much for those silk-screens. The other two you have here, pages 15 and 19, were lithographs produced in the studios of the RMIT in Melbourne with John Robinson and George Baldessin. When would they be? When did I have my exhibition of my Collette drawings? It wasnʼt last year; it was the year before.

JAMES GLEESON: I think so—quite recently. It is quite vivid in my mind.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would probably be 1975.

JAMES GLEESON: We can check.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Anyhow, those two are all you have in evidence at the moment. They were done on zinc plates in the RMIT workshop, which is now

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extinct. They pulled, I think, partial editions of these, and the plates were subsequently destroyed by the students.

JAMES GLEESON: The cat is the theme in both. These came after the big paintings of the catʼs gardens that you did here in this place.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: In my studio in Woollahra. They were done well after that, James. They were done for my fortieth birthday, and I am now fifty. So they would have been done in 1967, 1968.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Is that the first time the cat came in as a motif?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. Strange as it may seem, the cat motif goes right back to pre-schoolgirl times. You have in your collection a direct portrait of an orange cat, which was the first cat I ever owned. It was, along with the schoolgirls, the first emergent, identified Blackman-type image which was different to other peopleʼs. So the cat has always played a large part.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I know. I am conscious of that. Those are two quite nice lithographs of them.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Are you happy with that?

JAMES GLEESON: Yes.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: These three—pages 17, 20 and 21—are etchings printed in my studio at 159 Paddington Street. That is all they are.

JAMES GLEESON: You seem to have used most forms of graphic techniques—mono printing, lithographs, etchings. Do you feel any special interest in them or is it just searching for new ways of expressing yourself?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I draw. That is what I love most of all. My interest in graphics has been through other peopleʼs persuasion, to be frank. It was in Melbourne under Max Hutchison and Janet Dawson, when I first came back to Australia in 1966 after five years in Britain. Janet said when she was working at Gallery A as a printer. She did a Donald Friend edition and a Russell Drysdale edition and they said they would like to do one of mine, which I did. Then I did a whole folio. I became fascinated by it. My first ever involvement in lithography was at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Tate Adams set up a little after hours school. Freddie Williams, John Brack, Len French and I went to work there after school hours. Tate wanted to encourage the painters to come along and be involved. That was the first time a lot of us had met that sort of thing. It is fascinating. I was in Melbourne the other day at the RMIT. One almost imagined this tiny room and their ambitions as growing this gigantic complex—which is fascinating.

JAMES GLEESON: It is fascinating. It happened so quickly.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Amazing. These etchings were inspired by Shirley Rose, a friend of mine. I had two ear operations and went to bed and she came along and gave me plates, which I drew on. Once I started to do these etchings and Shirley Rose printed for them, it cheered me up because I was very unwell. Once again I became fascinated by the object. Within three months I had built

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myself a complete, comprehensive big print workshop, with an electric press and a proper aquatint box. I drove everybody mad. The real reason why I took it up with such delight was that at this time I met an Indian printer called Satish Sharma, who now works for the Ballarat CAE, or whatever the school of arts is there. Satish had worked in the Foundation Mate near Vance in the South of France as a printer, printing Miros and Braques and what have you. He had printed the biggest existing lithograph the bureau had ever done. So he was a real master. Satish came here. I immediately took a mortgage on my house, and anything else I could get my hands on, and employed him. We worked together for six months. I did with him a whole edition of dry points called Mother goose and other tales. I felt this was the sort of thing that Australians donʼt get very often, except with people like Baldessin and Armstrong and Satish. When a painter works with a master, he can help the painter himself to persuade the image off the plate. That is my point.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. So it was a very important meeting.


JAMES GLEESON: Charles, there are a couple of paintings here that we donʼt have photographs of, but you may be able to remember them and tell us something about them.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. The first one, which is called Charles Chaplin 1952, is enamel on masonite and was purchased from the Tolarno Gallery in Melbourne on 10 February 1976. It is a painting I did when I was painting my shop sign pictures. I painted the shop sign pictures in between doing Alice in wonderland and going to live in the country and painting all my landscapes by moonlight on paper paintings, which are not very well-catalogued because I was very destructive at that time; I would have destroyed 70 percent of what I did. That is a great shame, in retrospect, because they were much better than I thought they were as pictures. One night I had giant bonfire of all these piles of paper and Joy Hester said to me, ʻCharles, what are you doing?ʼ I said, ʻIʼm getting rid of the mess I made todayʼ. She said, ʻLet me have a look at it in future before you do itʼ. I adored Joy; we lived next door to each other. She used to come down at night and say, ʻNo, donʼt burn those. Wait till tomorrowʼ. She broke me of the habit. Charles Chaplin 1952 is a painting which is in black and white. It is oil on masonite. It has slightly curvaceous corners, which comes from the idea of sitting in front of the Charlie Chaplin movies. It is from the film—

JAMES GLEESON: Hence the black and white?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Hence the black and white, yes. It was a sort of image. When I cast my mind back, at the same time I had also seen the wonderful drawings Perceval had done of Charles Chaplin. When one is young, influences are never conscious things. The actual pictorial thing itself, as a device, was highly personal. It is very flat all over. It has what Brian Robertson often describes about Australian painting—it is totally anonymously painted, almost like a reproduction. It is not that you have only seen reproductions, and not real paintings. I thought that was a very funny remark. So that would have to be the same time as the shop sign pictures. I had an exhibition of those at Georges Moraʼs Gallery at No. 9 Collins Street. I am pretty sure that was the only exhibition I ever had with George. I could be wrong because he did have other exhibitions there.

12

26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Would the Charles Chaplin have been shown at that time?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It was shown in that exhibition—definitely. It was in Georgeʼs possession for a long time because I gave it to him. The other picture is The boy chasing the butterfly. They were very much slightly later schoolgirl pictures. This was when I was using the pigments which I made myself; they were homemade pigments. Also, I had a bit more money because I had sold a picture. I actually had twenty pounds. So I went to a place and bought 50 sheets of cardboard. It is painted on one of those sheets of cardboard, so it would have to be later than that. It would have to be 1952.

JAMES GLEESON: Good—1952. It is on cardboard.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right.

JAMES GLEESON: The paint is?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is enamelised paint. I made it myself—it was a mixture of all sorts of things.

JAMES GLEESON: Made by artist.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right. I can guarantee its lifespan.

JAMES GLEESON: That clears up that one.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is a very dark poetic picture. It was inspired by nightfall in Kew. What is the name of that wonderful garden up the top of the hill at Kew? You go down to the Yarra River. It is through Richmond, I think, just around to the right.

JAMES GLEESON: I donʼt know it, Charles.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Never mind.

JAMES GLEESON: Good.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is all your etchings, and all your unidentified cards.

JAMES GLEESON: There are also some unidentified cards here. We will look at them and see if they ring a bell in your mind. Let us look at this drawing, Charles, for which we havenʼt got a card. We have a title on it—Schoolgirl. It may come from one of those sheets.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: If my gift is still intact, there is a lot of stuff here—big pictures, big drawings—which you just donʼt have any evidence of. The confusion of a gift like this is that the Gallery is a big place and things are being catalogued at the time. The gift arrives in different shapes. Some of them are put into boxes as sketchbooks and they are identifiable. Some might be rolls of paper and put into a roll which contains, say, ten rolls. You might say, ʻThatʼs a Blackman drawingʼ, but within that roll you might have ten drawings. That is the confusing part.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Our problem has been lack of staff to do all the cataloguing and work-sheeting that is necessary; hence we are behind in it. So there are large works, you say—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It was a fairly comprehensive gift. I have a list on file with Christobel. There are something like 234 sheets of paper, and that includes big canvases and whatever. So it is a considerable number of objects. Although originally it was agreed that there should be 50 drawings and 25 paintings, it increased in number. When Joseph Brown and I were sorting it out, Joe said, ʻIt is a great shame to stick arbitrarily to a thing when you are missing out on a complete artistʼs sketchbook. So he encouraged us not to take just one page from it, but just to hand over the lot. That is where it became a bit confusing.

JAMES GLEESON: No doubt we will in time get all the other things work-sheeted. Then I can come back to you for a more detailed discussion of the things that are not yet here.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. There is no problem with that.

JAMES GLEESON: All these are part of the gift?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I should think so. Do you want to scribble in as I read out the names of these pictures, one after the other?

JAMES GLEESON: Yes.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: This is Schoolgirl and Crying child.

JAMES GLEESON: For the purpose of identification, I will label these sheets G1 to G5, indicating that they are part of the gift from the artist to the Gallery. On sheet G1, the first image is Schoolgirl and crying child.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The first image is Schoolgirl and crying child. Then there are eight lithographs that were done from the Melbourne technical college print workshop in 1952. So that makes nine. The next image is an early line drawing. What does it say?

JAMES GLEESON: Just ʻFigureʼ.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That would just be from a sketchbook.

JAMES GLEESON: Man in boat with floating figure.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is a little crayon drawing. That is an early drawing, too. That would be before I went to England.

JAMES GLEESON: So that is a crayon work. That brings us to the end of the second line. The third line is Lovers.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, there is Lovers, and the next one. They would be from the monotype era, both of these pictures.

JAMES GLEESON: So Lovers, and the next one, Head, are monotypes.

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. The little Boy on scooter is a lithograph from the same era as the ones you have had before.

JAMES GLEESON: From now on we donʼt have titles, so I will have to pencil them in. After Boy on scooter comes—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: A series of six, which were done after the Alice pictures. We just discussed this in regard to the drawing you had with the hand in the cup. Thereʼs a Hand and wine glass, and this one here you would call The toast because there are two hands and a wine glass. Thereʼs another Reaching hand and cup. This one is a slightly larger dimension but itʼs the same series of the hand and the cup, so youʼd call it Hand, tablecloth and cup to identify it. I think thereʼs a flower in this one, because it is very pink, so letʼs say, Hand, flower and cup for that one. It is a distinct little series.

JAMES GLEESON: And these were all lithographs?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No.

JAMES GLEESON: I am sorry—drawings.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, these are all aqua or pencil and Indian ink. The last title, James, so we are not confused, is The hand in the vase.

JAMES GLEESON: So that is six.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is right. That was the first time, too, that I ever used an Australian handmade paper. It is called ʻJones handmade paperʼ. It is wonderful.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: This one here is a 1961 crayon drawing, Face in hand. It would have been done in London. The next one is two people in a park—call it Pensioners. That is good enough. It is the same circa, same era; crayon, 1961.

JAMES GLEESON: Same as the London one—1961?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Make those a later date, James—they would be 1964. This is a portrait of BB done in 1967. It is pastel.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: This one here is Chinese café and was done when I was in Hong Kong, two years ago, in 1977.

JAMES GLEESON: What is the medium? Can you remember?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is just Indian ink, diluted.

JAMES GLEESON: And the next one?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs a crayon drawing—Nadineʼs baby, 1967.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: And the medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The medium that I always use when I say ʻcrayonʼ, is actually compressed charcoal. I always use the one thing. When I say ʻcrayonʼ, I am not being accurate. It should be ʻcompressed charcoalʼ, all the way through, unless charcoal is specified. The next one is Tapestry design, watercolour, and that would be 1970 or 1971. The next one is French park, ink drawing, 1971. The next four are part of the one drawing. It is separated out. The next four images are a composite.

JAMES GLEESON: Four images of one work.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right. Nude in a hammock is—

JAMES GLEESON: What medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is ink and watercolour.

JAMES GLEESON: Ink and watercolour.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: So there are one, two, three, four—which brings you to the one two from the left, at the bottom.

JAMES GLEESON: Do we have a date for that, Charles?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes; that would be 1973. The next one is Neilson drawing. It was from a set of illustrations I did for Max Harris and Geoffrey Dutton to illustrate Neilsonʼs poems. I think the magazine was called Australian Letters; they had a whole series of painters and poets. That drawing is compressed charcoal. It would have been done while I was in England, so it would be 1964. That is as close as I can get. The next two drawings are schoolgirl pictures. One is the The church. In the next one the schoolgirl is putting a marble up to her eye. It is a rather long title—Schoolgirl with marble—let them work out what she is doing with it. We will try and get the dates right. They were done in 1954, 1955; you can put those dates down—that is as close as I can get. That is the end of that sheet.

JAMES GLEESON: Now we come to sheet G2. Down the bottom, the fourth line down, and on the right, we have Alice in the room with floating cup and bottle. So we can identify that.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. 1 begins up there. It is an ink drawing, Nude. It is only a small drawing.

JAMES GLEESON: Any date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I was doing all my nudes in—approximately—1972, or 1973. That is the closest I can get to it, James, because they go backwards and forwards in time, as you know. The next one was done in Paris in 1971 and it is called Flower staircase nude. You can identify it by just calling it Nude, if you like.

JAMES GLEESON: Nude, Paris staircase.

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. Its size would be 18 inches by 30 inches, oil. You have four images. I am getting you wrong—you have to transfer that image to there. I beg your pardon James.

JAMES GLEESON: So No. 2 goes to fifth position.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is right. It is just a repetition of images 1 to 3 without the Identification. You have the nude photograph, the nude photograph again, then Identification, then the nude again and then we start the Paris picture. So Paris is No. 5.

JAMES GLEESON: I see; so the nude continues there.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. She is just repeated.

JAMES GLEESON: Identification.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, Identification, and Nude again.

JAMES GLEESON: So Paris, oil, goes to No. 5. And No. 6?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. 6 is mixed media on paper, The childrenʼs game, 1963. You have the size?

JAMES GLEESON: No.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The paper size would be—it is a standard sheet—25 by 30, probably, image size.

JAMES GLEESON: Good. No. 7?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Reading the second line, going from left to right, No. 7 is Nude, charcoal. 1973.

JAMES GLEESON: Is that compressed charcoal?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes; it would be all the same.

JAMES GLEESON: So 1973.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. The next one is monotype. It is going to be hard to tell from a photograph the size, but that is a monotype, 1967. It is a head, I think—Gothic head. The next one is a watercolour—Girlʼs head, 1963. The next one is watercolour, 1963.

JAMES GLEESON: Subject?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Dark figure.

JAMES GLEESON: Dark figure. No. 11?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is Venetian blind. It is a crayon drawing. It is red, like conté crayon.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would be an English drawing, so just put 1963 for that, because in 1964 I was painting all year. That brings us up to image No. 12. Images 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25—so 12 to 25—are silk-screen variations on a theme.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I see. So it is the same theme.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They were done for Gallery A in about 1967. Then there are a few bricks, which I had nothing to do with: four bricks. It says ʻdetail of damage, Arnoldson brickʼ. Then we get up to image No. 30, which is Alice in the room.

JAMES GLEESON: Alice in the room, Floating cup and bottle. So that is 1956; is that right?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I think so. That was a picture you purchased, from Sweeney Reed, I think, a few years ago. So I donʼt know anything about that. I think it comes from Sunday Reedʼs collection—put it that way.

JAMES GLEESON: It is a painting?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is a mixed media, James, so it would be gouache. Then images 31 to 36 are The Aspendale papers.

JAMES GLEESON: Tell us about those, Charles.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The Aspendale papers were printed at Gallery A in 1966, shortly after I came back to Australia after having lived in England. They were printed by Janet Dawson on Burnam green—handmade paper from Britain; we had a lot of trouble getting it. They were printed on a flat-bed press by Janet. The edition was interrupted in Melbourne because she had a lot of trouble, as it was so hot, with the inks. The edition was finished at Gallery Aʼs print workshop in Mary Street. They were drawn directly onto a zinc plate.

JAMES GLEESON: What is the theme of The Aspendale papers?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: ʻThe Aspendale papersʼ was a sort of coining of the phrase ʻthe Aspen papersʼ.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: I know it sounds a bit obscure.

JAMES GLEESON: The Henry James story?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right, the Henry James story, which is very famous. Having returned to Australia, after having been away for a long time, we went and stayed with my old friends the Moras. We got heavily into a conversation about Henry James for some strange reason and it emerged out of a direct kind of confrontation with some very old friends whom we were very fond of. It was almost as if we had brought some foreign substance back into their lives. So we gave it that title. But also, we were also staying at Aspendale.

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26 April 1979


CHARLES BLACKMAN: I forgot to tell you that. Now it makes sense.

JAMES GLEESON: So it has a double meaning.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. That is the last image.

JAMES GLEESON: That concludes G2.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thereʼs a bit of a confusion here. The Aspendale papers, reading from left to right, are images 1, 3 and 4. Identification is 2; so The Aspendale papers is 1. Just put ʻA papersʼ.

JAMES GLEESON: ʻA papersʼ, 1.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Also, 3.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: And 4.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: And 9 and 10.

JAMES GLEESON: So 9 and 10 are also ʻA papersʼ.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes—9 and 10, and 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15. No. 16 is also a lithograph. It is called Interiors.

JAMES GLEESON: Any date for those?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They were all done at the same time, so whenever Aspendale papers is—

JAMES GLEESON: Was it 1963?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No—it would have to be 1966 because I did not come back to Australia until 1966.

JAMES GLEESON: Fine.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: So we are up to image 16.

JAMES GLEESON: Two schoolgirls.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, Two schoolgirls. That is an original schoolgirl drawing; it was not done later.

JAMES GLEESON: It is what medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would be the same.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: A litho?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Charcoal, or crayon, or whatever my medium is. I am sorry if I am being confusing.

JAMES GLEESON: And the date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is the same as for all the other schoolgirls—1954, 1955 is the closest I can say. They go backwards and forwards. The next one is the same—1954, 1955.

JAMES GLEESON: And it is charcoal or crayon.


JAMES GLEESON: The next one, 19, is the same?


JAMES GLEESON: Now you have two sketchbooks, one with five images on it and one with six images on it. The group of five drawings is sketches from Alice in Wonderland and The schoolgirl.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, that would be right.

JAMES GLEESON: And the group of six paintings?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, they are not six paintings. They are just the same. They are small drawings. There is a little Alice one there, there is a Schoolgirl one. There is a nude.

JAMES GLEESON: Boy dreaming, Nude, Girl blowing her nose.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes—Nude blowing her nose. That is an original title.

JAMES GLEESON: The last one on this sheet is Woman with pot plant.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. It is a portrait of Barbara, a portrait of BB.

JAMES GLEESON: What is the medium, Charles?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That would be conté, 1967.

JAMES GLEESON: Good. That brings us to the end of sheet G3.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is correct.

JAMES GLEESON: Now, G4.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: So images 1 to 35. Images 1, 2 and 4 are called Moon beach. It looks like a conté drawing. Image 3 is Identification.

JAMES GLEESON: Is it the same drawing?

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They are all the same drawing.

JAMES GLEESON: Just photographed three times?


JAMES GLEESON: Image 5.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 5 is a conté drawing. It is early; it would be circa 1954.

JAMES GLEESON: And its subject?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: A Head.

JAMES GLEESON: Image 6?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 6 is Ned Kelly covered with daisies, would you believe? That would be 1952.

JAMES GLEESON: The medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Crayon.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: This is an ink drawing of BB, and it would be 1951.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next one is a drawing, Figure and flower, or Figure and vase—however you would like to describe it.

JAMES GLEESON: Figure and vase.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is wash.

JAMES GLEESON: Watercolour?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Pen and wash.

JAMES GLEESON: Pen and wash.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is also early, so it would be 1951.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is a watercolour of a cat. It is a watercolour, it is a cat, and it is also early; it would be 1952. All these are. The next one is Man and chimneys, watercolour, same circa.


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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is Schoolgirl, conté—whatever years I have been telling you the schoolgirls were living in. Image 12 is conté, Self portrait. It looks so much like me the title doesnʼt matter.

JAMES GLEESON: The date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: These would be of the same ilk and era.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, 1956.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Or 1952 or 1953, if you want to be precise. The next one is—

JAMES GLEESON: Image 13.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is Alice, and itʼs pencil.

JAMES GLEESON: Date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would be of the Alice period. What have you got down for the other Alice?

JAMES GLEESON: I would have to check, but it is of that period?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, it would be of that period, which would be closer to 1955. Say 1955—get as close to it as you can.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, we can check that.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next one is Children and sign. That is from the sign period; so 1954/1955 would be the date.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes, and what medium was Children and sign?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Pencil.

JAMES GLEESON: Pencil.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next two sketches are Alice sketches and they are crayon.

JAMES GLEESON: So that would be about 1955, too.



CHARLES BLACKMAN: Images 17, 18 and 19 are sketches for the Telephone box painting.

JAMES GLEESON: Telephone box. When were these done? Are they London ones?

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No. These are the first three drawings I did for the Telephone box, and then I did not paint it until fifteen or twenty years later. I did the telephones in 1961. From 1951 to 1965—that is the amount of time that elapsed between when I had that idea and when I painted the actual picture.

JAMES GLEESON: So this goes back to—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would have to be 1952/1953.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is crayon. That brings us up to 19.

JAMES GLEESON: So 17, 18 and 19.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right. The next one is 20—Two figures. The man is nude. The woman could be nude, but she is in the shade. That is just a straight conté drawing. These drawings would all be of the same era because they come from the same sketchbook.

JAMES GLEESON: 1952/1953?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Whatever you had down there in the past.

JAMES GLEESON: For the Telephone box?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: What have you got there? It would be the same. These are all more or less the same.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Some of them might even be dated, which we can check back on. The next one is Seagulls—just repeat the medium and the other things. So Seagull would be conté, circa. You can just keep going like that. The next one is Boats.

JAMES GLEESON: Conté, the same date. And image 23?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next one is different. It is Country man and itʼs pencil, the same date.

JAMES GLEESON: Pencil. Image 24?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Harbour, the same as the two before—conte and the same date.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 25 is Cassoury—the bird.

JAMES GLEESON: It is conté?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is pencil.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Pencil, the same date. No. 26?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 26 is Two figures. It is conté and it would be 1963. The next one is 27. This is a great help to historians—ʻSeptember 7, Charlesʼ! The next one is Bouquet, pencil.

JAMES GLEESON: And the date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They are all of the same circa.

JAMES GLEESON: So 1952?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, that would be right—unless I can pick up a date, which I cannot, because it is all too small. The next one, 28, is Two schoolboys, conté.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 29 is Theatrical figure.

JAMES GLEESON: Conté?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, same thing.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 30 is a drawing of a hoary-headed grebe, a bird.

JAMES GLEESON: Hoary headed grebe.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: ʻHoary headed grebeʼ is written on the drawing. It is pencil, the same circa, the same date.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 31 is a bit confusing because it looks like a portion of a lithograph. As the rest of it is not on this page, would you put a query on it to connect up.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 32 is Woman, pencil, the same thing. The next one is Nude and fir tree, same thing.

JAMES GLEESON: Pencil.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is right. The next two images are a continuation of the one we had before the last sheet, which was the Variations on a theme for a screen print. So 34 and 35 are attached to G—

JAMES GLEESON: A screen print, you said?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. It is G2. So images 12 to 25 on G2 would continue after that as a variation of the same.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: Fine. So that brings us to the end of G4.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs correct. We are reading from Identification onwards. We have a repetition of a drawing, which is the schoolgirl with the marble in her eye—

JAMES GLEESON: This is G5, image 1. You mean a repetition—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It already exists on another sheet; it has been described on another sheet. When I say ʻrepetitionʼ, I mean you already have it named and described. So images 1 and 3 on G5 are repetitions of an existing photograph.

JAMES GLEESON: I see. It is repetition of Schoolgirl with marble.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. Image 4 is St Kilda pier, conté, 1954, 1955.

JAMES GLEESON: St Kilda pier, conté.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: 1954/1955.

JAMES GLEESON: 1954/1955.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 5 is Floating man, ditto.

JAMES GLEESON: And image 6?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 6 is Young girlʼs arms, conté, 1963. Image 7, is once again, attached to a silk-screen series, which appears on G2.

JAMES GLEESON: Another variation, is it?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Thatʼs right, yes. Image 8 is two images on the one paper. One is a small oil painting, Girl with hands, 1963.

JAMES GLEESON: Girl with hands—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Girl with hands clasped, if you like—however you would like to describe it.

JAMES GLEESON: Girl with hands clasped 1963.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The same image is a sketchbook page, Lovers walking.

JAMES GLEESON: What medium is that?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is conté.

JAMES GLEESON: And the same year?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, the same year.

JAMES GLEESON: So 1963. Image 9?

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 9 is Flowered head. Itʼs an oil painting, 18 inches by 30 inches, 1973. Image 10 is The swings, pen drawing. It would be 1952.

JAMES GLEESON: And 11?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That is one of the set of aqua and ink drawings. It is Head, table, foot.

JAMES GLEESON: And the date is?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: After Alice in Wonderland. As I said, that set of drawings was done instantly after, so 1955/1956. They can check these facts against what they know. The next one after that is image 12—Nude, watercolour, 1973. There are two sketches on the one page; one is a self-portrait. They are both on the same sheet of paper.

JAMES GLEESON: What is the medium?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Ink and watercolour.

JAMES GLEESON: Ink. And the date, any idea?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: When would I have done that? It is not very important, but it is important to get it as close as possible. It would be in the mid-sixties.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Mid-twentieth century—image 14 is Face at window, conté, 1962.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is A group of children, conté, same year.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 16 is a watercolour, French people. It was done in 1971. The next one is A young girl, watercolour, 1964.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Just call image 18 The salute. There are so many descriptions that are not titles. Its medium is sprayed enamel—and I am not making it up.

JAMES GLEESON: How did you spray it—with an airbrush?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: With an airbrush, yes, through cut-outs.

JAMES GLEESON: Good. And its date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is 1965.

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26 April 1979


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 19 is Head—it is a Portrait of BB, 1964.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Conté.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next one is ink and watercolour, Self portrait at Orly Airport.

JAMES GLEESON: And a date?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It would be 1973.

JAMES GLEESON: Did you do it at the airport?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I did it as soon as I got to my destination. I sat at the airport for 17 hours.

JAMES GLEESON: Oh Lord!

CHARLES BLACKMAN: The next one is The lost child. It is pental pen, and that 1973, too.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 22 is Houses and signs, pencil drawing, 1955.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Figures dressing, the same date.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is pencil. The next one is Prone figure, watercolour, the same date.

JAMES GLEESON: And image 25?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Two figures. Images 25 and 26 are two sketches for a signed painting. They were done with crayon. The date would be 1955.

JAMES GLEESON: Any idea where the final painting is?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is one of the signed paintings—because it has the word ʻCollingwoodʼ written on it and some other funny looking word. I donʼt know precisely where it is, James.

JAMES GLEESON: It doesnʼt matter. We are up to image 27.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 27 is Head, conté, 1955.

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26 April 1979


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Image 28 is Flowers in a vase. It is earlier. It is pencil, so it would be 1953. Image 29 is a Schoolgirl, crayon, and whatever the Schoolgirl dates are—Iʼve lost track.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is conté. Image 30 is The picnic, ink on paper, 1954.

JAMES GLEESON: What is that one?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That one is Lovers in boat with floating figure.

JAMES GLEESON: Ink on white cardboard?


JAMES GLEESON: Part of a group we bought.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes. I canʼt help you any more than that. That is its description, which is ʻink and brush on paperʼ. Thatʼs brushwork, as you can see. It is not pen; it is brushed on.

JAMES GLEESON: Charles, that covers that group the came as a gift. Could you look through this lot of cards and tell me if we have already discussed any of them, or if they are not photographed?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: If that is your gift, you only have to check if you had that on your gift, James. It comes from the Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 8 November 1976, which is where some of these things come from.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: To describe them any further is pointless for me, because, if you have that gift, then you have it all.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: I should imagine that, if they were part of that gift, then you have it. It is no good me saying what you havenʼt got, because I wouldnʼt know.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: If you take my point. It says there are 32 items. Boy on a scooter, lithograph—we discussed that.

JAMES GLEESON: These are part of the gift?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, they are not part of my gift. They are part of your purchase from them. To clarify it for you, on this page is Boy on a scooter, lithograph. This is the last one we did.

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26 April 1979

JAMES GLEESON: G5 and the Lovers in a boat. Next to that was Floating figure.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. Thatʼs it there. That is the only one I couldnʼt identify. From the pages I have here, there are thirteen cards. One single one is Lovers in a boat with floating figure, which is a separate photograph. All the pictures which are on these cards are mentioned on G2.

JAMES GLEESON: Good; we will slip those to the back.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Right. That is their only description. Just to make sure there is no mistake, that one goes into the Lovers in a boat with floating figure.

JAMES GLEESON: Fine.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Crying children and man, lithograph—thatʼs in there. Children skipping is in there. Figure by a fence is in there. Figure by a fence is duplicated. You have two of those.

JAMES GLEESON: Maybe the card has been copied out twice.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: It probably has. Figure by the fence, Camera, Schoolgirls—three of these sheets are duplicated. The rest are only descriptions of what is inside.

JAMES GLEESON: Good. So that clarifies that.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Sheet G2.

JAMES GLEESON: Let me clarify. We have a group of 32 items from Rudy Komon Gallery, which we apparently purchased. They are not part of the gift?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: No, they are not part of my gift. Quite a few pieces in here are not part of my gift—you have purchased them separately from other people.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: Not a whole lot, but—

JAMES GLEESON: From Rudy Komon, for instance?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: From Rudy Komon or from Sweeney Reed or from Georges Mora, or from Joseph Brown or from other sources. But that has nothing to do with me.

JAMES GLEESON: Are there parts of your gift that are not represented by cards or photographs here?

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Yes, as far as I can remember—probably quite a few. There are two portraits, one of Barbara Blackman and one of Christobel Blackman, which are about six by five—

JAMES GLEESON: Oils or enamels?

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26 April 1979

CHARLES BLACKMAN: They are drawings on canvas covered with perspex. Then there are a couple of paintings. One is a big painting of Bellevue Hill at night and one is a painting of Ettalong Beach at night. There is a considerable number.


CHARLES BLACKMAN: But you probably have most of your drawings down here, all the ones of smaller dimensions. Probably what is lacking—

JAMES GLEESON: Are photographs and cards—

CHARLES BLACKMAN: Photographs and cards, and the sheer size of the objects.

JAMES GLEESON: Yes. They have not been fully done yet.


JAMES GLEESON: All right. That is what I must chase up when I get back to Canberra, and make sure that the other parts of the gift have been photographed and work-sheeted and cards made out for them.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: That would be right, yes.

JAMES GLEESON: Charles, thank you very much. That covers it very well.

CHARLES BLACKMAN: I am glad to be of help, James.

JAMES GLEESON: Thank you very much.

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JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: CHARLES …26 April 1979 CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil and enamel on board,...

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Transcript of JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: CHARLES …26 April 1979 CHARLES BLACKMAN: It is oil and enamel on board,...