STUDY FOR THE RED CARPET, 1970
JOHN BRACK
conté on paper
78.0 x 58.0 cm
signed and dated lower right: John Brack / 70
Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
Gwen Frolich, Sydney
Thence by descent
Private collection, Sydney
John Brack, Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 7 – 28 April 1971, cat. 17
John Brack Drawings 1945 – 79, Monash University Exhibition Gallery, Melbourne, 9 June – 10 July 1981, cat. 40
Grishin, S., The Art of John Brack, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, vol. II, cat. p144, pp. 57, 216 (illus.)
Lindsay, R., John Brack: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987, p. 133
‘In the winter of 1970 Brack made eight conté drawings of the nude from the model and the following summer, working from these drawings, executed a series of eight oil paintings. It was his normal working procedure to use the model for the drawings and then, without the model, take the drawings as his point of departure for the paintings...
The new series of nudes, when compared with the two series that preceded it, has a startling complexity, sophistication and subtlety. The conceptual elements remain relatively constant. The nude, who in her pose frequently echoes an artistic convention, generally refers to the past and to tradition; the bare studio with its naked walls and plain receding floorboards, refers to reality and the present situation; while the oriental carpet – the carpet paradigm – as if separating the two worlds nevertheless forms a strange physical bridge between them...’1
1. Grishin, S., The Art of John Brack, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, vol. 1, pp. 117 – 118