"Idris Murphy’s extensive career as a painter has been widely lauded. Since 1988, Murphy has been Lecturer at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts, Sydney, and in 1994 received his Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong. Acknowledged as one of the most influential landscape painters in Australian contemporary art, his work is held in the public collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of NSW. In 2009, following a New Zealand tour, a survey exhibition of Murphy’s work—I-Thou—was held at King Street Gallery on William and at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney."
Murphy said that "the things that enticed me originally to go to New Zealand: Colin McCahon, to see the land and to see what he has made of it, and from it, first hand. To somehow use it as a contrast to the desert country that I am most at home with."
John McDonald wrote: "This intense identification with the landscape can be felt everywhere in this survey. It is a relationship that comes naturally to Aboriginal artist but requires strenuous efforts on behalf of Westerners, who have to break with the pictorial habits of a lifetime. Whereas most non-indigenous artists tend to objectify the landscape, Murphy tries to fuse his own subjectivity with the mood and spirit of a place. The results are far from realistic but they are powerful and persuasive. This quest entails a leap of faith on behalf of the artist, a willingness to believe in a greater truth that lies beyond the veil of appearances. In trying to discern the atmosphere conjured up by these paintings, one might use the word “spiritual” with confidence and “mystical” with only slight embarrassment."
Murphy "titled the show I and Thou, after the small but influential book by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. It is a basic existentialist idea, that one only becomes “I” through understanding one’s existence in relation to an “Other”; but Buber extends this to the relationship between a human being and God, and even to his own relationship with a tree. It is the tree idea for which Murphy has a special affection. In the catalogue he quotes Buber’s words: “In considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is no longer It.”
Murphy writes: "When looking back and considering the 'influences' on my work, several artists and writers come to mind; these may be more or less influential at any given time. There are though, certain connections that hold and seem to be continuing. Martin Buber has been one of these connections; often encountered in quotes by other writers. Buber's articulation of how we respond to the world has been seminal to my way of seeing and therefore how I 'see' my paintings. The Martin Buber connection (exemplified by McMahon's Painting I-Thou) added to my interest in the work of Colin McMahon; in particular the way in which he depicted land ... As the difference between the truth of a painting and the truth about a painting are significant. Buber's writings have for me been a way of continuing my assessment of western paradigms in painting and have added to my encounter with indigenous art."
I and Thou "is one of McCahon’s earliest ‘word’ paintings, in which words are presented as the main imagery. The words have a physical presence, appearing as three dimensional, solid forms in space, while still maintaining their linguistic function. The fracturing of the picture surface and the spatial ambiguities of the image clearly indicates the artist’s familiarity with Cubist notions of constructing space. The presentation of the words also resembles the handiwork of signwriters, whose craft had interested McCahon since youth."
"In the first ‘word paintings’ by McCahon each image is constructed in a manner best described as ‘architectural’. To compose the paintings I Am ... and I and Thou ... McCahon has rendered each phrase in block letters, achieving pictorial illusion through the restriction of colour and the placement of the words on (or in) an ambiguous background. Dating from February 1954, both images are notable for their strong vertical, linear structure.
The source for each title is clear. ‘I and Thou’ is the title of a book by the theologian Martin Buber. ‘I am’, which McCahon re-employs in several guises in later works, is drawn from Exodus 3:4–6:
‘Then Moses said to God, “if I go to the Israelites and tell them that the God of their forefathers has sent me to them, and they ask me his name, what shall I say?” God answered “I AM that is who I am. Tell them I AM has sent you to them.”’
Of course in McCahon’s painting of this name, an ambiguity is present. For while the ‘I’ in ‘I AM’ is the God of the Old Testament, it is also possible to read it as a statement of affirmation by McCahon, who with these words reasserts himself as an artist.
In respect of the work I and Thou 1954, critic Francis Pound has a further suggestion – that the ‘I’ is floating around in Cubist space because everything is still unclear: a New Zealand culture has not yet been formed. The ‘I’ moves around in time and space.!"
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I And Thou - Go or Go Ahead.
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