Footnotes

PROVENANCE
David Jones Gallery, Sydney
Collection of the late Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1941

EXHIBITED
Contemporary Art Society, Third Annual Exhibition, David Jones Gallery, Sydney, 9 September - 4 October 1941; then Hotel Australia, Melbourne, 14 - 31 October 1941, cat. 168

LITERATURE
'Contemporary Art: Vital Works at Annual Show', The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 9 September 1941, p. 7
Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors, The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1981, p. 87
Richard Haese, Modern Australian Art, Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1982, p. 87
Bernard Smith, Noel Counihan: Artist and Revolutionary, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 170
Keith Richmond, 'A Painter of Ordinary Life', Oz Arts, issue nine, 1994, p. 59 (illus.)
Janine Burke, Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker, Random House, Sydney, 2002, p. 170

Formed in 1938, the Contemporary Art Society held its first exhibition in 1939. Exhibiting artists included Noel Counihan, Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker. Through the encouragement of friend David Strachan, Vic O'Connor joined the Society and entered a landscape into the 1939 exhibition. It was to be a turning point for O'Connor. As described by Keith Richmond in his article in OZ Arts magazine, 'The C.A.S. comprised most of the younger artists of the period - figures like Bell, Arnold Shaw, Frater, Drysdale, Dobell and Gleeson, as well as traditional artists. The C.A.S. was founded in July 1938 to 'unite all artists and laymen who are in favour of encouraging the growth of a living art', in opposition to the then-current idea of the creation of an officially sanctioned 'self-constituted Academy'.

For a time the Society flourished, with branches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, but as the threat of an academy vanished differences arose between the various
groups who had joined the movement. The Bell group was the first to leave as they
were opposed to the part lay people played in the Society. The quarrel developed between Bell and a group around John and Sunday Reed - an avant garde circle which included Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval. The third group comprised those later termed the Social Realists: Noel Counihan, Vic O'Connor and Yosl Bergner.

It was in the early 1940s that Social Realism gained prominence in Australian art,
largely due to the Communist Party's stand against fascism and the entry into the
war in 1941 of the USSR. Many of its practitioners had bitter memories of the
Depression; they had also found entry to the art world a stony path indeed, and
were sympathetic to socialism and communism. Further, the evolution of Australian
society had shifted the main emphasis from the life and appearance of rural
Australia to the city.

While Vic says the term Social Realist was usually applied to Counihan, Bergner
and himself, to identify them as a group, 'we were, however, each quite different
from the other. Bergner's work reflected Jewish hopes and fears at that time.
Counihan had a record of achievement as a political cartoonist, and when he
began to paint, his work reflected his close association with working-class leftwing action. I was less sophisticated and had to find my way to my subjects. I was more of an instinctive painter.'

'If you look at my pictures, you'll see a lot of them have political or social connotations of some kind or other, but my approach tends to be from side on. I don't think pictures up. Images come into my mind pretty well formed with what I want to do. It's always been like that.'

Of the days in the C.A.S, O'Connor remembers that despite the differences in the
art world, there was still a lot of camaraderie between individuals. 'At one period,
there would be a Sunday afternoon get-together when we'd take along whatever
we were working on and prop the pictures against the wall, have a bit of grog
and the whole place would buzz with lively discussion.'

In 1941, Vic entered a painting, The Acrobats, in the C.A.S. exhibition and
shared a fifty pound prize with Donald Friend. In The Acrobats, he tried to convey the brooding feeling of the cityscape: 'I was in the city continually, and in the immediate pre-war era the mood in the streets was often disturbing, with an
atmosphere of violence. I used to feel there was an alienation - some degree of
alienation between people. It is reflected in drawings I did of the city at that time, and it is what I sought to express in The Acrobats - the isolation, the unsettled atmosphere and the divisions between people.'