Arthur Boyd

Seven Persistent Images

Exhibition
29 Jun – 29 Sept 1985

Arthur Boyd, Figure supporting back legs, (1973), National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, The Arthur Boyd gift 1975. Reproduced with permission of Bundanon Trust.

About

The works in this exhibition have been selected from the Arthur Boyd Gift to the Australian National Gallery. The purpose of the exhibition is to show the connections between the artist's vision and the images which make up his iconography. Seven drawings have been singled out as representative of Boyd's subjective reality and of his intense preoccupation with subjects capable of expressing his unique vision of human conflict. The seven drawings project images and ideas to which the artist repeatedly returns in his compositions—images which are also evident in his interpretations of biblical, literary and mythological themes. The iconography for Boyd's thematic paintings is selected from this deliberately limited repertoire of images.

All the motifs in Boyd's compositions have archetypal equivalents which at one level retain their original significance, while at another they transcend it and acquire new symbolic meanings. In this way they give continuity to the artist's visual narrative through transformation. For instance, Boyd's father, William Merric Boyd, was a potter; in his son's work his image is projected as the archetypal artist struggling to be creative and original. It is an allegorical representation of the outcast and persecuted creator.

The seven source images:

  • South Melbourne woman and crippled dog
  • South Melbourne man with a trumpet and handkerchief
  • The Cripples, 1943
  • Chimney and smoke
  • Outstretched figure
  • Peter the dog
  • The fountain, lovers and lion

Text sourced from: Gunn, Grazia. Arthur Boyd : Seven Persistent Images, Gallery A, Saturday 29 June to Sunday 29 June 1985. Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1985.

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