American Art Critic, Clement Greenberg, writing about the work of
Australian artist, John Ogburn.
John Ogburn has his own kind of newness, the kind that belongs to a truly “compleat” painter. There haven’t been all that many such. And they’re seldom innovative in a conspicuous or obvious way. But they’re always new somehow or other by virtue of their “compleatness”, and the solidity that goes with it. They can challenge, examine and cross-examine your taste the way a lot of spectacular newness, intentional newness, doesn’t. I think of Thomas Eakins in my own country.
Ogburn can draw, boldly or delicately; he deals with colour from the inside, not the outside. (Let the beholder find out what I mean by that.) He can handle the stuff of paint as any real colourist must. Above all he can put a picture together, unify it, without cost to its intensity or complexity. Sure, he owes a lot to Matisse. A painter of this time couldn’t be indebted to anyone better. I venture to say that a superior painter nowadays has to owe something to Matisse. There may be exceptions, but they’re only exceptions (and I myself can hardly think of one). Ogburn may have digested Matisse, but he hasn’t regurgitated him in his own art. He hasn’t succumbed to him.
In 1979 in Sydney , when I first came across Ogburn’s art, I gathered that he wasn’t widely accepted in Australia because he wasn’t “new” enough, “far out” enough. You Australians may be as benighted as we Americans are.
Clement Greenberg
1985
(written on the occasion of the John Ogburn one-man exhibitions at the Greenhill Galleries in Adelaide and Perth in 1985)
Australian artist, John Ogburn.
John Ogburn has his own kind of newness, the kind that belongs to a truly “compleat” painter. There haven’t been all that many such. And they’re seldom innovative in a conspicuous or obvious way. But they’re always new somehow or other by virtue of their “compleatness”, and the solidity that goes with it. They can challenge, examine and cross-examine your taste the way a lot of spectacular newness, intentional newness, doesn’t. I think of Thomas Eakins in my own country.
Ogburn can draw, boldly or delicately; he deals with colour from the inside, not the outside. (Let the beholder find out what I mean by that.) He can handle the stuff of paint as any real colourist must. Above all he can put a picture together, unify it, without cost to its intensity or complexity. Sure, he owes a lot to Matisse. A painter of this time couldn’t be indebted to anyone better. I venture to say that a superior painter nowadays has to owe something to Matisse. There may be exceptions, but they’re only exceptions (and I myself can hardly think of one). Ogburn may have digested Matisse, but he hasn’t regurgitated him in his own art. He hasn’t succumbed to him.
In 1979 in Sydney , when I first came across Ogburn’s art, I gathered that he wasn’t widely accepted in Australia because he wasn’t “new” enough, “far out” enough. You Australians may be as benighted as we Americans are.
Clement Greenberg
1985
(written on the occasion of the John Ogburn one-man exhibitions at the Greenhill Galleries in Adelaide and Perth in 1985)