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ART - AUSTRALIAN - KEITH LOOBY - CATALOGUE ESSAY |
| Keith
Looby Resurrection 1964 Resurrection is the second in a sequence of canvases from Looby’s years in Italy
(1960-64), that play on religious, personal and artistic concerns. Resurrection
is a young artist’s work, its mural scale demanding stamina and
ambition to incorporate the universe of ideas and visual sources from
the early Renaissance and Byzantine, focussed through Bosch and the
elder Breughel. Though not devotional, and indeed doctrinally naïve,
the twenty-four year old Looby had been excited by Pope John XXIII’s
initiation of Christian-Marxist dialogues. The
painting allowed for hope even if it displayed the faith of a Doubting
Thomas. The momento mori in
the top right-hand corner shows the skull of the ape, a Darwinian rather
than a Christian comment. Perhaps the key is the figure on the left who
carries a candle, as if seeking the truth, but who has turned his back
to the scene. As
in frescos and icons, the structure involves a hierarchy of power, with
cardinals on the top and holy clowns along the bottom. The crucified and
resurrected Christs merge in a central double-headed, mask-like image,
which is tied to the Pieta beneath. Vertical lines of limbs and faces
are set against horizontal and diagonal sticks to establish the design,
in which sculptural figuration and repetitive physiognomies blend into a
cartooning peculiar to Looby. The crowded feel is relieved by the play
of light and colour. Resurrection’s place as “an Australian masterpiece”, as Jeffrey Smart wrote at
the time, comes from Looby’s control of its contraries, the
achievement of stillness despite its busyness. |