James Gleeson
James Gleeson (born 21
November 1915)
is
Australia's foremost
surrealist artist. He is also a poet, critic, writer and curator. He
has played a significant role in the Australian art scene, including
serving on the board of the
National Gallery of Australia.
Gleeson was born in Sydney
where he attended East Sydney Technical College. It was here he was drawn
to work of the likes of
Salvador Dalí,
Giorgio de Chirico and Max
Ernst. In
1938 he studied at Sydney Teacher's College where he gained two years
training in general primary school teaching. He also joined the Sydney
Branch of the assertively experimental Contemporary Art Society. At this
time Gleeson became interested in the writings of psychologists such as
Sigmund Freud and Carl
Jung. These would become major intellectual influences for his art.
Gleeson's themes generally delved into the subconscious using literary,
mythological or religious subject matter. He was particularly interested
in Jung’s archetypes of the
collective unconscious.
During the
50s and 60s
he moved to a more symbolic perspective, exploring notions of human
perfectibility. At this time he increasingly fashioned small psychedelic
compositions made using the surrealist technique of
decalcomania in the background, to suggest a landscape, and finished
by adding a fastidiously painted male nude in the foreground. The ideas
for these compositions also saw Gleeson move into
collage with his Locus Solus series, where he produced a
substantial body of work by placing dismembered photographs, magazine
illustrations, diagrams and lines of visionary poetry against abstract
pools of ink.
Since the 1970s Gleeson has generally made large scale paintings in
keeping with the surrealist
Inscape genre. The works outwardly resemble rocky seascapes, although
in detail the coastline's geological features are found to be made of
giant molluscs and threatening crustacae. In keeping with the Freudian
principles of
surrealism these grotesque, nightmarish compositions symbolise the
inner workings of the human mind. Called 'Psychoscapes' by the artist,
they show liquid, solid and air coming together and directly allude to the
interface between the conscious,
subconscious and
unconscious mind.
Gleeson's later works incorporate the human form less and less in it's
entirety. The human form was then represented in his landscapes by
suggestions, an arm, a hand or merely an eye.
