Adam and Eve in Burning Thicket with
east, Bird and Serpent CIRCA 1968
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
158.2 x 181.0 cm
Provenance
Blue Boy Galleries, Melbourne
Bank West Collection, Perth
While in England during the 1960s, Boyd enjoyed much unanticipated success
as a result, initially, of securing an exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery in
London, showing his paintings from the ‘Bride ’series. Subsequently,
a retrospective of his work was announced for the Whitechapel Gallery in 1962.This
was followed in 1967 by a publication on his work by Thames & Hudson.
Boyd’s style at the time was considered by various critics as resembling “something
between Chagall and Stanley Spencer”. [The works generated]“...their
own frame of reference... by an eccentric involvement with life based partly
on religious experience. Spencer’s sexual fantasy was veiled by his village-prophet
religious imagery; Boyd’s spiritual impulses are encased in images of
flesh, gross and even kinky, through which he works out his theme of the damage
done to love in a world of sex.” (Hughes 1988)
Boyd
himself said:
There
are some of my paintings of figures lying in a landscape that are gentle
and represent romantic love, but with that you also have the dark side
-the
fear of castration, impotence, the fear of deprivation, the fear of being
left out, the fear or shame of being left out of sexual activities. This
is the
opposite of romantic love. There is also cruelty in sex.
(Pearce 1994)
Represented
National Gallery of Australia
All Australian State galleries and many regional and institutional
collections
References
Hughes, Robert 1988, The Art of Australia, Penguin Books, Ringwood, p.234.
Pearce, Barry 1994, Arthur Boyd - Retrospective, The Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney, p.22.
