Growing up in Bendigo this painting has special significance for me – like the divisive title, I have both loved and loathed it over the years.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Locals may remember Yes/No hanging front and centre in the old 1960s cream brick foyer of the gallery, commanding a decision from the viewer.
Born in Melbourne in 1920, John Brack is predominately known for his social realist paintings of urban Australian scenes from the 1950s.
Often offering a wan and somewhat cruel caricature of the everyday, as seen in the severe long faced woman in The Bar or the infamous marching sea of ashen office workers in Collins Street, 5pm, Brack painted what he described as the ‘human condition’.
Long before the tidal wave of reality television and social media Brack had a technique for extracting the romance from life, instead offering a muted reality bathed in banality.
During the 1970s Brack began experimenting with symbolism, replacing the human figure with an assortment of everyday implements including cutlery, pens and pencils, which he used as metaphors for the complexities of human behaviour and relationships.
His palette and technique changed, colours became livelier and compositions more complex with objects and surfaces depicted in graphic detail.
Yes/No is part of a series of paintings that describes some of the fundamental aspects of human nature, of group mentality and opposing states.
In the painting Brack depicts a swarm of fountain pens at battle with a mob of pencils.
In the painting Brack depicts a swarm of fountain pens at battle with a mob of pencils.
- Jessica Bridgfoot
United in front, the pens’ metallic nibs are firmly rooted in a wooden table top, waving the playing cards ‘YES’ as placards for their cause whilst a band of sharpened pencils rushes forth on the cusp of a takeover.
As a child I found this painting inexplicably frightening, the underlying threat of violence from an everyday object more disturbing than violence depicted in its physical human form.
I now understand that Brack was clever in his use of the visual metaphor – where everyday objects were used to represent social friction.
In this instance Brack’s pens and pencils embody the idea of modern humanity - united in function yet grouped and segregated by appearance, a topical theme in this political climate and worth a considered look.
John Brack’s Yes/No was acquired by the Bendigo Art Gallery in 1997 and will be on display along with other significant modern works from the collection over the coming weeks.
