Stephanie G. Mathis Fred Williams and the You Yangs at the Geelong Gallery does not represent the first or most comprehensive exhibition of Williams’s work in the 35-year period since his premature death in 1982. The true significance of the show is that it highlights a pivotal moment both in his oeuvre as well as in modern Australian art.
Fred Williams You-Yangs landscape 1963. Oil and tempera on composition. The Wesfarmers Collection in Perth (c) Fred Williams
The exhibition is located just 22km away from the You Yangs and can be seen from the rail line or road on the way to Geelong. The exhibition’s focus on more than 50 oils, gouaches, and drawings in Williams’s You Yangs (1963-64, 1965-66) series illuminates an “epoch” in depicting the Australian landscape and highlights his complex artistic method.
Australian art is traditionally centered around landscapes and country motifs. Australian non-Indigenous Art came of age when it broke away from the imported European conventions for landscape painting and found a uniquely Australian language.
Fred Williams, You Yangs Pond 1967, gouache. National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Purchased by The Art Foundation of Victoria through the H. J. Heinz II Charitable and Family Trust Governor and the Utah Foundation Fellow, 1980, with assistance from the Estate of Fred Williams
Williams’s art is both abstract and representational, formalist, and expressionist. Williams, in his first You Yangs collection, often dispenses entirely with the horizon. He does away with the traditional European landscape painting foreground, background, and middle ground. Williams flattens his picture plane by adopting an aerial or elevated viewpoint, over a scrubby and irregular landscape, without a focal area.
Williams has stripped the landscape to its essence, removing all specifics such as time of day, season, and weather. Mark Dober, an artist who has created this work of art, described it as “the transcendent,” a realm that is beyond the present and everyday.
Williams’ You Yangs paintings predate the Papunya dots, even though this aerial view may have some similarities. His exposure and immersion influence Williams’s You Yangs paintings in cubism, modernism, and other traditions. Art historian Daniel Thomas called this his “greedy history of art”, which he acquired while traveling Europe in 1963 on the Helena Rubinstein Scholarship.
Fred Williams You-Yangs landscape 1963, watercolours, gouache with coloured chalks. National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Gift of James Mollison 1995 (c) Estate of Fred Williams
Williams’s genius is in his ability, through calligraphic daubs, to suggest fence lines, bushes, trees and rocky outcrops, arranged in a landscape-like manner, but precisely formed along the axes, of geometric grids, and structural motifs, such as the golden means, the right angles, the cross, and the figure 8.
The placement of colors and their recurrence, which is both planned but surprising, draw the viewer’s eye to the canvas. It appears as though the viewer has been transported into a landscape. The suggestion of fences and cleared land suggests that man is absentia.
Williams’s work was meticulous and deliberate. He would be taken to his favorite spot once a week to paint gouaches or watercolors plein air. He discarded many of them almost immediately because he considered them to be unsuccessful. He often spent one day preparing and another day recovering after this intense work.
Fred Williams You Yans landscape 1965, oil canvas. National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Purchased by the Visual Arts Board and Australia Council, 1977.
In the studio, he painstakingly worked from these quick sketches, exploring compositions both in etchings and oils. Sometimes, this took years. He was an intellectual painter who, with every work, sought to solve formal problems.
The juxtaposition of different views of a favorite knoll on the You Yangs in various media is one of the highlights of this exhibition. These include watercolour, gouache, charcoal, and chalk (1964), as well as aquatint engraving and drypoint in 1963 and 1964, and in aquatint engraving and drypoint in 1963 and 1964.
Fred Williams Knoll In The You Yangs, c. 1963-1964, charcoal and colored chalk. (c), Estate of Fred Williams National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria (Founder Benefactor Mrs Lyn Williams), 1988 (c), Estate of Fred Williams
The viewer can gain an insight into Williams’s way of working, reworking, and resolving his images using various media. Williams didn’t favor one medium over the other, and it’s instructive to compare the small etchings with the large iconic canvases.
Williams’s paintings are regarded as a true representation of Australian bushland, despite their formalism and abstraction. Many have even referred to the scrub as the “typical Williams land”.
Williams experimented and evolved throughout his career, even though the You Yangs are considered to be a turning point or breakthrough in Australian art. Williams abandons his geometric clusters in Yellow landscape (1968), an luminous golden painting which beckons viewers to get closer. The canvas is alive and filled with calligraphic, seemingly random marks.
Williams, the first Australian artist to be invited to show solo work at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) in 1975, returned to Australia from his exhibitions abroad with renewed confidence and vigor.
Fred Williams You Yays 1973, gouache. National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Purchased by The Art Foundation of Victoria through the H. J. Heinz II Charitable and Family Trust Governor and the Utah Foundation Fellow, 1980, with assistance from the Estate of Fred Williams
Williams returned to the You Yangs landscapes in 1978. This time, he used a luminous and light canvas with an opalescent background. The later work is more expressive and has a more liberated palette than the earlier series. The horizon is now restored and, although the landscape features are still not defined, they have become more distinct and recognisable.
Williams’s legacy is broad and lasting, despite his illness in the middle of his career a few short years later. Margaret Plant summarized this legacy in a tribute to Williams written for the NGV:
