John Brack and Noel McKenna – strange bedfellows in the new National Portrait Gallery blockbuster exhibition

John Brack (1920-1999) and Noel McKenna (born 1956), at first glance, appear to be strange bedfellows.

Although the two artists never met, the younger artist, McKenna, has, over the decades, created a body of work in reverence of Brack’s art.

The co-curators of the exhibition, Dr Emma Kindred and Isobel Parker Philip, have teased out other conceptual parallels and common artistic concerns.

Both Brack and McKenna were, to some extent, loners, maverick figures who did not appear to belong to the prevailing popular trends in Australian art of their day.

Both appear to have had a melancholic predisposition and spent a considerable amount of time working within the confines of their studios, from which they conducted interrogations into their surrounding society, broader questions of being, and what could be termed the human condition.

Brack is now widely regarded as the greatest non-Indigenous painter that Australia has produced in the second half of the twentieth century.

His paintings at auction go for over $1 million, and his major retrospective exhibitions are among the best-attended exhibitions of Australian art ever held.

Brack’s early work was fed by a local reality – the evening rush hour in Melbourne, drinkers in a bar, office workers, school children, footballers and people at the horse races.

Subsequently, Brack turned his attention to more global themes, including alienation, crowd behaviour, social rituals and questions of coercion and conflict.

Also, Brack’s artistic language began to change, and rather than the faces of office clerks, children at play or jockeys on their mounts, he sought a more timeless language of mannequins, pinned to the smiling faces of professional ballroom dancers, reflections in shop windows and postcards, pens and pencils.

All of Brack’s art is designed to be read on multiple levels beyond the literal, descriptive one.

This exhibition is studded with famous works from Brack’s oeuvre with major loans from the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia, plus a host of rarely seen gems tucked away in private collections.

There is always a sense of visual excitement that grips the viewer on encountering a Brack painting as one marvels at the immaculate finish, the freshness of the imagery and frequently the underlying irony.

McKenna is a Brisbane-born artist who, by the age of 25, had settled into Sydney, where he discovered Brack.

His artistic language is very different from that of Brack, usually employing thinly spread pigment on canvas in sparse compositions, with figures depicted in a simplified manner and often shown interacting with their pets or, sometimes, with horses.

There is a great degree of autobiographical narrative involved in his work, with the artist shown relaxing in his favourite room, surrounded by his favourite books and with his favourite canine companion at his feet.

In one work, he produces a chronological happiness chart that records events in his life against a happiness graph. We learn that he was happiest between 1985 and 1987 when he married Margaret, made his first trip overseas, and his grandmother died.

Other painted charts record his various pets and experiences – these are all rich pickings for a psychoanalyst.

Some of McKenna’s Brack-inspired works include the art dealer Dr Joseph Brown admiring Brack’s painting of Two typists that he owned, or Brack’s famous Self-portrait, where the artist is shown shaving, juxtaposed with McKenna’s cat admiring itself in the mirror, an image the artist had sourced from the internet.

The more fruitful parallels are those of conceptual intent – interior spaces, attitudes to children and animals, and the sheer absurdity of being.

There is humour in both artists’ work, but it is the sort of humour that masks the pain of everyday living with avenues of escape blocked by reality.

If not exactly bedfellows, Brack and McKenna are fellow travellers, and by juxtaposing their work in about 90 exhibits, we are given a greater insight into the art of each artist.

John Brack x Noel McKenna: A face in the mirror, is at the National Portrait Gallery, King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, until 19 July, daily from 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is free.