Deutscher and Hackett

In May 1970, Tony Tuckson, a well-known and respected arts administrator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, presented a large number of abstract paintings at Sydney’s Watters Gallery, choosing to exhibit a survey of his older work, mostly produced between 1958 - 1965. This was simultaneously his first and penultimate solo exhibition, with Tuckson passing away prematurely in 1973 at the age of 52. Holding the position of Deputy Director to Hal Missingham since 1957, Tuckson’s observation of strict standards of professional ethics discouraged public exhibition of his own artworks for almost a decade. Only when his curatorial focus was wholly devoted to the pioneering collection of Aboriginal and Oceanic Art, and the commercial landscape of art galleries in Sydney was sufficiently robust, did Tuckson suddenly emerge from the shadows.¹
 
The appearance of this ‘underground, secret action painter’ presenting a fully-formed and sophisticated abstract expressionist practice, was nothing short of astounding for local critics.² Reviewing the year in art, critic James Gleeson described this arrival as ‘a sudden flood.³ The first exhibition immediately generated recognition at an institutional level – Daniel Thomas attempted to purchase two works for the Art Gallery of New South Wales (the trustees only allowing one, namely Greeny yellow [TP23]), and the National Gallery of Australia acquired Black, red and white upright [TP14] for their collection, still over a decade before the completion of their building in Canberra. Blue and red (TP2), c.1958 – 61, is a key painting from this first exhibition, a pivotal example of Tuckson’s private transformation from figuration to absolute gestural abstraction.⁴
 
The rhythmic spacing of blue and red lines, both straight and curved, across the scumbled white surface of Blue and red retain the distant memory of earlier figurative compositions, both from the Cocktail for two series and his De Kooningesque female nudes, one of which was exhibited as cat. 1 in the same exhibition at Watters. The process of abstraction from figures into a flat schema of shapes had been developed from a series gouache on paper works in similar saturated tones throughout the mid-1950s.
 
Confidently gestural, Blue and red was painted with a palpable sense of urgency. With a restricted palette of just three hues, the painting is arranged vertically with an ordered, grid-like structure of horizontal and vertical shapes evenly dispersed across the cardboard. Visibly unconcerned with smooth finishes and decorative polish, Tuckson’s immediate and raw mode of creation emulated those of the international avant-garde, namely French Art Informel (Jean Dubuffet), and American action painting (Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock), to which Tuckson had been exposed through periodicals received by the library at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.⁵ Other more local influences abound in Tuckson’s 50s abstractions: the flattened cubist space and layered shapes from early instruction in abstract art at East Sydney Tech from Ralph Balson and Grace Crowley, and confident linear figuration from Ian Fairweather, whose work Tuckson collected in the 1950s, not only for the art gallery but also for his personal collection. Tuckson’s important recognition of Australian Aboriginal art as fine art rather than ethnographic artefacts also influenced his own mark-making towards the end of the 1950s. Synthesising these various influences into a refined and distinctive gestural style marked Tuckson as Australia’s foremost abstract expressionist, whose legacy continues to be felt today.
 
1. Santoro, L, ‘Going Public: Tuckson at Watters Gallery,’ in Tuckson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018, p. 65
2. Lynn, E., ‘Incandescent Glow’, Bulletin, Sydney, vol. 92, vol. 4707, 6 June 1970, p. 49
3. Gleeson, J., ‘Profit Loss in 1970’, Sun, Sydney (undated except in Tuckson Files, Art Gallery of New South Wales)
4. The TP and TD numbering system for Tuckson’s artworks was devised posthumously, starting from his first exhibition. Blue and Red was the second work listed in the catalogue for the exhibition at Watters in 1970, hence TP2. In the show, all works were exhibited untitled and described solely with medium and size, and approximately dated in tranches: c.1958 – 61, May 61 – Oct 62, Oct 62 – 1965 and one work from 1970
5. Daniel Thomas, cited in Legge, G., (et al.) Tony Tuckson, revised ed., Craftsman House, Sydney, 2006, p. 29
 
LUCIE REEVES-SMITH