“A library is a pleasure dome…”: Germaine Greer and libraries

Sarah Brown – Archivist, Germaine Greer Archive

“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.” [1]

Germaine Greer’s sublime quote from Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, her intensely personal book on her search for the truth about her enigmatic father, epitomises Greer’s sustained and enriching relationship with libraries. Libraries are Greer’s safe place, source of intellectual sustenance and demonstrably essential to her scholarship and writing.

Daddy, We Hardly Knew You is Greer‘s story of embarking in the 1980s on a search for her father’s true history, primarily through genealogical research in libraries and archives, beginning in Reg Greer’s home state of Tasmania, progressing to Victoria and ranging worldwide. As an experienced and skilled researcher, Greer makes some biting, often hilarious, observations in this book, and in associated research notebooks and correspondence held in the Greer Archive, about her impressions of the research institutions she encounters. She writes of her frustration at not being allowed to personally search records in the Tasmanian Registrar-General’s Department  and Public Records Office Victoria, as she was used to at the UK Public Records Office, but having to rely on intermediaries, and to add insult to injury, pay for their services She is also shocked to find the State Library of Victoria (SLV) no longer the silent scholarly “Valhalla” she recalled from her childhood when her “dream was to live in this heavenly building and know all its secrets” but like walking into “deafening, smelly chaos” [2], as the SLV transitioned to the better resourced institution we know today, and where, despite her initial impressions, she receives useful advice from knowledgeable staff of the LaTrobe Manuscripts Library. Greer’s quote on the pleasure of libraries has in fact been incorporated in the State Library of Victoria redeveloped domed reading room, and her index cards for Daddy, We Hardly Knew You are held in the collection.[3]

Towards the end of her book, Greer gratefully acknowledges the role of archivists and librarians in finally solving the riddle of her father’s birth through their assiduous research and lateral thinking. “We were closing in on our quarry. Surrounded by gifted and hard working women the lazy man didn’t have a chance. Between my new friends, Mrs Nichols and Mrs Eldershaw at the Archives Office [Tasmania], and Mrs Rosemann at the Local History Room and Miss Record of Launceston College, and his doggedest of daughters, Reg Greer was about to be flushed from his cover. His bluff was about to be called.”[4] And their combined discovery is fascinating.

Page from The Obstacle Race – Green Notebook, 1976, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0045.00007

As one of the archivists cataloguing the Germaine Greer Archive, I have found evidence throughout of how much libraries matter to Greer. Series 2014.0045 Major Works shows their importance as she researched and wrote her major published works. This series contains many of Greer’s research notebooks, including several containing delightful sketches, notes and library citations, written as she traversed Europe seeking out forgotten women artists for her second major work, The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work (1979). Greer created sequences of handwritten index cards, taxonomies of reference lists, and folders of research material, often copied from library sources, for each of her major published works. [5]

Greer has an enviable capacity to work anywhere, but libraries are her essential resource, and also her comfort zone.  In an article for The Guardian, Greer, reflecting on the boredom of the bookless house of her childhood and her discovery of the joy of libraries, nominated her favourite word: “…if there were a word that remains lovable to me…it would be ‘library’. ‘Tea and buns’ may be nice, but ‘tea and buns in the library’ is rhapsodic.”[6] Greer has studied, researched and written in libraries throughout her career. In 2008, she declined an invitation to appear on an English Television Book Show, ‘The Write Place’, featuring authors’ studies/places of work, replying, “I’m afraid I don’t have a study, nor do I always work in the same place. Most of the work for Shakespeare’s Wife (2008) was done in libraries…”[7]

Cards belonging to Germaine Greer, various dates, Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2017.0004.00045 Membership cards from the Bibliotheque Nationale, The London Library, Royal Anthropological Institute Library, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi, Frick Art Reference Library, Witt Library, Bodleian Library (and an enviable charge card for the famous Liberty of London shop, c/- Greer’s agent Diana Crawfurd).

Series 2017.0004 Correspondence with Libraries provides a detailed snapshot of Greer’s continuous engagement with libraries and archives and her reliance on these institutions and their collections to support her scholarship and research for over 50 years. This series contains her interactions with over 40 institutions, large and small, public and private, British and international, arranged alphabetically, from the Augustan Reprint Society to Yorkshire Archive Service. The files include the fine detail of her scholarly use of libraries, including borrowing slips, index cards, user guides, library pamphlets, newsletters and brochures, and, always, correspondence between Greer and the institutions on ensuring she correctly cites, acknowledges, and obtains permissions for reproduction of their collection material in her publications. Greer’s fondness for libraries is perhaps best illustrated by her retention of her library and readers’ cards, dating back to 1966. Greer’s correspondence, and daily schedules, conscientiously prepared by her personal assistants, often show her preferring to eschew offers of dinners and hospitality to squeeze library research visits into her busy speaking schedules, for example visiting the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, before returning to England after speaking at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 1999.[8]

The series also contains records of Greer’s engagement in policy, campaigns and issues relating to the development and sustainability of libraries, inevitability touching on the changing roles and capacities of institutions over the years. Greer shows herself an early adopter of some technological developments, such as her support for the development of online databases such as the Perdita Project, a database enabling remote access to early modern women’s manuscripts, and her advocacy of microfilming of rare items for preservation.

Greer is also highly cognisant of the importance of unique physical collections and the research role of libraries and their staff, no doubt understanding that many of her very specialised research interests will never be candidates for digitisation, and also seeming to relish the thrill of the scholar’s chase to track down the elusive manuscript or reference, only achieved by academic knowledge and diligent research, where she leaves no stone unturned.  In 1995, her research on the short lived 17th century poet Anne Wharton (1659-1685) led her via the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, London, to Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, where she approached the Duke of Rutland asking to see letters held in the private family archive. In her request, Greer wrote “There is so little of a personal nature that relates to Anne Wharton that I cannot bear to think we have not examined this source properly” and hoped the letters between connections of Anne Wharton would correct Wharton’s misrepresentation in history “as a pious, rich, elderly woman when she was a young libertine…” [9]

Greer has long been an advocate for libraries in both formal and informal ways. She has been on the committee of the London Library, a Friend of the Lambeth Palace Library, and a Trustee of Chawton House Library and Study Centre, “a Library for the study of the works of early English women writers (1600-1830)” which opened in 2003. She has provided tangible support by speaking at fund raising events and offering donations of her five books on early women poets, published by her self funded imprint, Stump Cross Books: The Uncollected Verse of Aphra Behn; The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda (Vols.1-111); The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton. Correspondence also shows Greer has a finely tuned ear for the competitive rare book and manuscripts auction scene, writing, for example, of the Bodleian being outbid for a coveted Anne Wharton manuscript at a Sotheby’s sale in 2004, by the better funded Beineke Library at Yale.[10] And she has maintained an almost visceral hatred for the greedy opportunists in the book trade who make money by defacing antiquarian books by removing single plates to sell.

It would probably be easier to note libraries Greer has not used than ones she has, as her research interests have led her to access diverse libraries and collecting institutions everywhere. She has had extended relationships with certain libraries, including the libraries of the institutions she has been attached to, the University of Cambridge and University of Warwick. The University of Cambridge Library she nominates as her “second favourite library”, after the British Library,[11] and she has advocated for better resourcing for Warwick.[12]

Press coverage collage used on cover of The Great British Library Disaster (1993/1994): A report by the British Library Regular Readers’ Group (RRG), Germaine Greer Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2017.0004.00012

Greer’s relationship with the British Library, her “library of libraries”, is longstanding and has had complex periods, at times setting her at odds with British Library staff and the wider library profession.  Greer was involved with the British Library Regular Readers’ Group (RRG) in the 1990s. This lobby group produced a series of reports, including The Great British Library Disaster (1993/1994), critical of the prolonged redevelopment, cost blow outs, and loss of the Round Reading Room at Bloomsbury with the proposed move to the new British Library building at St. Pancras. Greer took an active interest in reviews of the British Library and the move and was publicly critical of the management of the British Library and its service to its readers in this period. In a 1994 article written for The Guardian, she decried what she saw as an increasing loss of readers’ rights and inadequate care of the books in the British Library’s care[13] and Greer’s script for a programme made for BBC2 TV in the same year, went so far as to claim “For librarians readers are raiders”; that “the librarians hate being in the library as much as the readers love it”, and concluding that the books awaited liberation by the readers “from “their book prisons and the dream battle that is waged between them and their jailers.” [14] The protracted redevelopment of the British Library at St Pancras was eventually completed and the new library was opened by HM The Queen in June 1998. Correspondence some years later, concerning arrangements for the launch event of The Whole Woman on International Women’s Day, 8 March 1999, indicates relations with librarians had been happily restored. The launch was scheduled to be held at the British Library, but appears to have been cancelled in solidarity with industrial action by British Library staff on their working conditions.[15]

The landscape of libraries has radically changed and continues to change, with constant questioning and redefining of operating environments, roles, functions, and funding. In the digital environment, where library resources are increasingly able to be accessed remotely and libraries may no longer need to be physically visited to be used, academic campuses are investing in “The sticky campus” [architecture and facilities] “designed to attract if not tether a wireless-digital-era student…” [16].

The Greer Archive provides insights on libraries from the perspective of a highly skilled and dedicated scholar, and confirms the ongoing role and importance of specialised collections and the knowledge of their curators and librarians to researchers like Greer. Perhaps the question for the future of libraries is whether it is researchers like Greer who will become an increasingly rare breed?

The last words also belong to Greer, the reader and researcher, the connoisseur and, sometimes quixotic, supporter of libraries. For Germaine Greer, “A library is a pleasure dome, bulging with honey dew and dripping with the milk of paradise…If readers had their way they would build nests in the stacks and sleep pillowed on the books that have meant most to them, drugged with the scent of words.” [17]

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the “Greer Team” in preparing this blog. My grateful thanks to former assistant archivist Dr Millie Weber who made the Correspondence with Libraries series accessible with her elegant listing; assistant archivists Lachlan Glanville, for pointing me to Greer’s provocative writing about the British Library of the 1990s, and Kate Hodgetts, for the beautiful photographs; special thanks to Dr Rachel Buchanan, Curator, Greer Archive, for her unfailing support and confidence in me and all her colleagues.

[1] Germaine Greer. Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989 p. 70.

[2] Ibid. p.69,71

[3] SLV Reference: MS 1287:  Index cards containing information on the Greer family tree, compiled during research for the book ‘Daddy we hardly knew you’ (1990)

[4] Daddy, We Hardly Knew You.p.239

[5] Series 2014.0039: Research and Reference Card Indexes contains index cards for The Female Eunuch and other works. All cards in this series have been digitised.

[6] Germaine Greer, ‘Flashy Libraries? I prefer to get my adventure out of the books not the building;’ The Guardian, 12/2/2007. Item 2014.0046.01091, Unit 21

[7] Publishers UK: Shakespeare’s Wife Paperback Edition Bloomsbury [Germaine Greer to Katie Bond, Sky Book Show, 23/10/2008]. Held in Item 2014.0052.00004, Unit 1

[8] Folger Shakespeare [Library – Correspondence]. Held in 2017.0004.00025, Unit 2

[9] Belvoir Castle [Correspondence, 11/9/1995]. Held in Item 2017.0004.00006, Unit 1

[10] Bodleian [Library – Correspondence]. Held in Item 2017.0004.00010, Unit 1

[11] TV One Foot In The Past 29/6/94 [Greer draft script]. Held in Item 2017.002.00153, Unit 4

[12] Germaine Greer, ‘Why Tim Clist should have had a year out’, The Independent, Oct 2000. Item 2014.0046.00633, Unit 11

[13] Germaine Greer, ‘Book up for a long hot summer in library land’, The Guardian, 30/5/1994. Item 2014.0046.00375, Unit 6

[14] TV One Foot In The Past 29/6/94 op.cit. Greer’s view of a “war” between readers and librarians was strongly refuted by Anthony Kenny Chair, British Library Board (AK/GG, 8/8/1994. Held in Item 2017.0004.00012)

[15] Publishers UK: [Transworld] The Whole Woman – Launch Event 8/3/1999 [GG/Marianne Velmans, 8/3/1999]. Held in Item 2014.0052.00043, Unit 3

[16] Ray Edgar, ‘Look and learn’, The Age 22/7/2017.

[17] TV One Foot In The Past 29/6/94 op.cit.

Finding Dürer’s Perspective

In the early 16th century Nuremberg-born artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) changed the landscape of his artistic practise – literally. Taking his cue from Leon Battista Alberti (1404 –1472) and Piero della Francesca (1415–1492), Dürer began to introduce the ‘secret art of perspective’ into his works.[1]  He used measurement and geometry to produce images that created the illusion of depth in a flat pictorial-plane. Over five hundred years later, the University of Melbourne’s Print Collection set out to celebrate Dürer’s cross-disciplinary approach to art and mathematics with the Dürer Drawing Day!

In the beginning of his artistic career, Dürer did not have the precise understanding of perspective that is associated with him today. Dürer struggled in his very early works to separate the different pictorial-planes accurately enough to create the illusion of depth. In The Prodigal Son Amid the Swine (1496) for example, a tree appears to sprout from the roof of a house in the background. The year 1510 is a turning point for Dürer’s artistic practise. After his travels around Bologna, he had gained and practised knowledge of the art of perspective sufficiently to apply it in his own drawings. The Large Cannon (1518) is an impressive example of Dürer’s mastering of the overlapping plane and ability to create the impression of depth in a two-dimensional landscape.

Unknown Copier after Albrecht Dürer, The Prodigal Son and the Swine, engraving

Dürer’s (not so concisely named) 1525 Painter’s Manual: A Manual of Measurement of Lines, Areas, and Solids by means of Compass and Ruler (Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt) consolidated all the information about perspective that he had learnt in Italy.  The manual starts with an explanation of how to draw the most basic line. Each section of the book develops this line into more and more complex forms. These  forms, including spirals, columns, foreshortened squares, two and three-dimensional shapes, then form the artistic building blocks for drawing objects that appear to occupy ‘real’ space. The Manual was designed as a ‘step by step’ guide for aspiring art students, although Dürer concludes with a series of ‘cheats’ designed to create ‘easy’ perspective (perhaps for the lazy student).

Albrecht Dürer, Draftsman Drawing a Lute (The Manual of Measurement), woodcut, 1525

The Dürer Drawing Day took its inspiration from some of the final ‘cheat’ images in the Manual. Two 1525 woodcuts show contraptions designed by Dürer to (apparently) ‘easily’ draw accurate images of people and objects.  The second of these shows a draftsman drawing a lute. To paraphrase Dürer’s own description, a draftsman uses ‘a strong thread’ hammered into the wall to create ‘the near point of sight’ and places a vertical frame parallel to the wall. Then ‘a lute or other object to your liking’ is placed on the opposite end of the table to the wall. The near point of sight is placed on parts of the lute and string attached with hot wax to the frame to mark where the near point of sight passes through the frame. The points that the crossed strings denote are then marked on ‘your drawing tablet’ creating an accurate dotted outline for the lute.[2] This complex description visually translates to the seemingly simple diagram shown in the woodcut.

Mastering an Old Master’s Technique

For the Drawing Day, this drawing device was recreated (complete with lute) to see whether Dürer’s ‘shortcut’ really worked. The experimental music collection at the Grainger Museum provided a back-drop for the Melbourne Print Collection’s attempt at an artistic experimentation of their own. With the exception of a few modern substitutes (masking tape instead of wax and Bluetac instead of a nail) a prototype Dürer drawing device was demonstrated to the assembled audience (including student artists) on the day.

Our modern reconstruction of Durer’s drawing apparatus

Theoretically, the device appeared to be a success. However, it was quickly discovered that the practical application was flawed. It required such meticulous positioning of the frame, object, paper and threads, that the slightest movement of any part of the device could undo the accuracy of the drawing. To create a perfect curve (as is required with a lute) was also incredibly time-consuming, as it required a lot of points to be marked in close proximity to each other – with each point requiring a minimum of two people to plot. A frustrated audience, who also struggled with Dürer’s shortcut, speculated whether the device was a literal drawing tool for Dürer or a visual representation of what a draftsman imagines when creating perspective or even a final joke on artists who did not take the time to read whole manual…

Alongside the drawing device, a number of Dürer’s prints (held at the Baillieu Library) were displayed for attendees of the Drawing Day to get up close to. The contrast between the complexity of the content of images (such as Melancholia, 1514), and the sparse and simplistic outlines produced by the drawing device was stark.  It was hard to imagine how the selection of dots and dashes on our page could ever evolve into a lute, let alone a detailed allegorical figure.

Selection of Durer prints from the Melbourne print collection

At the end of the Drawing Day the lute remained aloof and very difficult to draw. It seems most likely that alongside his understanding of geometry and his imaginative inventions, Dürer added a healthy dash of artistic talent to his works to make them masterpieces.

A masterpiece by one attendee of the Durer Drawing Day

With thanks to the Grainger Museum.

To learn more about the Baillieu’s Print Collection click here – http://library.unimelb.edu.au/collections/special-collections/print-collection

 

Katherine Reeve, recipient of the International Museums and Collections Award 2017

 

References 

[1] Walter L. Strauss, Introduction in Painter’s Manual: A Manual of Measurement of Lines, Areas, and Solids by means of Compass and Ruler (1525), (Abaris Books, New York; 1977), p.7.

[2] Albrecht Dürer, Painter’s Manual: A Manual of Measurement of Lines, Areas, and Solids by means of Compass and Ruler (1525), trans. Walter L. Strauss (Abaris Books, New York; 1977)

Parisian Past-Times: Chronologie Collée and the Leeds Album

As part of the Cultural Collections Projects Program, I have been given the opportunity to catalogue an album of 17th century French prints under the guidance of prints curator Kerrianne Stone. We know from a letter by Dr J. Orde Poynton that in the early 1970s a collection of nine albums comprising approximately 8,000 engraved portraits (with French, German and Italian origination) was purchased by the University of Melbourne from Dawson’s of Pall Mall, London. The Leeds Album may have been related to this purchase but without acquisition records available we cannot be certain. Although the exact provenance of the album has been difficult to determine, I have uncovered some interesting information in the process of cataloguing the prints.

Bound in embossed leather, the Leeds Album is an impressive collection of over 245 engraved 17th century portraits which have been pasted onto the pages of the album. The subjects of the portraits include a range of eminent European individuals – mostly French – from the late middle ages to early modern period including kings and queens, Holy Roman Emperors, notable members of the clergy, politicians, classical philosophers and a lone hermit. Contained in the album are the works of several prominent engravers, including Pierre Daret, Balthasar Moncornet, Louis Boissevin, and Pieter de Jode II. The portraits are stylistically diverse and demonstrate the different technical abilities and decorative styles that were applied by the individual engravers and by the artists whom the engravers copied. Many of the portraits in the album are accompanied by text printed in French and Latin. These texts usually describe the subject’s status, title and historical significance. The album is marked throughout with handwritten annotations, poetry and hand-coloured engravings, suggesting that the album was a highly utilised and valued object.

A bookplate bearing the Leeds coat of arms, and a portrait within the album, adorned with a personalised dedication to the Duke of Leeds, reveals that the album was formerly in the possession of Francis Osborne (1751-1799), British politician and the 5th Duke of Leeds. It is likely that he was given the album as a gift when he was appointed to the post of ambassador of England to France in 1783.[1.] Osborne declined the position, however, and subsequently served as foreign secretary under William Pitt’s administration instead. [2.] Osborne began auctioning off his collection of Italian, French, Flemish and Dutch art at Pall Mall, London, in 1796. [3.] The Leeds Album may have been included in this sale.

Sections of the album feature engravings taken from Chronologie Collée series. Chronologie Collée was a French printmaking phenomenon that involved a series of small portraits of influential figures, printed in tabular format, which could be cut down to individual portraits and pasted into an album. [4.] This technique was popular in France, and, from the 1620s, there were at least twenty series of portraits, as well as sheets of biographical text and decorative borders, stocked by various print sellers around Paris. [5.] The aim of the format is similar to that of contemporary card collecting or scrapbooking; an individual could collect complete sets, assemble their albums themselves and create volumes. The Leeds Album features engravings from at least three different Chronologie Collée series: Rulers and Dukes of Brabant, Foresters and the Counts of Flanders and the Portraits of the many illustrious men who have flourished in France. Many of the engravings in the album were not printed in a tabular format but as individual portrait prints; these have also been trimmed and pasted into the album in a manner that is consistent with the Chronologie Collée technique.

It is likely that the intended purpose of the album was to provide Osborne with a reference book of important figures in French history, in order to prepare him for his position as English ambassador to France. This suggests that Chronologie Collées had a didactic element, as well as providing a leisurely activity. Throughout the album there are sections of consecutive blank pages, which suggests that these sections may have been purposefully left blank for future additions. Whether Osborne assembled the album himself, and what his methodical approach was, is unknown, but the question presents an interesting avenue for further research.

Once the album has been accessioned it will be available online via the EMu (Electronic Museum) database for further research and engagement. The French Album offers a glimpse into collecting practices, and diplomatic relations, of 17th century France. The Chronologie Collée printmaking technique is an intriguing and under-researched format, and, as such, the French album is an exciting and illuminating source to be housed in the university’s cultural collections.

Rosalie Mickan, Catalogue Assistant

Notes

[1.]  Upon being offered the position of English ambassador to France, Osborne was gifted an album containing an exhaustive list of French knights and commandments and their coats of arms, it is likely that he was also gifted the Leeds album around this time. Sotheby’s, ‘Catalog of Knights, Commanders and Officers of the Order of the Holy Spirit,’ Auctions, Lot 38, 2009, Accessed 31 July 2017.

References

1 David Wilkinson ‘Osborne, Francis, fifth duke of Leeds (1751–1799)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 31 July 2017.

[3.] The Getty Research Institute, ‘Sale Catalog Br-A2164’, The Getty Provenance Index Database, ac-cessed 31 July 2017.

[4.] Royal Collection UK, ‘ Louys le Simple 21 Duc de Brabant. Charles le Gros 22 Duc de Bra-bant. Othon 23 Duc de Brabant… ’ Collections, accessed 31 July 2017.

[5.] Online Computer Library Center World Catalogue, ‘Chronologie Collée’, notes, accessed 31 Jul 2017.

  1. ↩

Revolutionary theatre is a risk worth taking

Bright pink poster with white outlines of people protesting, some are holding up placards. Orange "La Mama Company" written at top of poster
‘La Mama Company’ poster, 1969, designed by Ian McClausand, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109.00049

Looking back at La Mamas’ 50-year history, from inception in 1967 when Betty Burstall created an ‘immediate’ theatre space in Melbourne inspired by New York’s La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, reveals not only the rise of an Australian theatre nurtured by local talent, but a larger portrait of Australian society and culture. As challenges to cultural and social norms reverberated around the globe, alternative voices in the arts were becoming a powerful form of political and social engagement. Burstall was confident that, just like in New York, Melbourne performers and audiences wanted and needed a place for avant-garde theatre, progressive music, poetry and screenings of alternative film. She wanted audiences to feel that every time they descended the stairs to the stage, that it was “a risk worth taking”.[1]

In a company newsletter from October 1969 this vision was expanded: La Mama would be a theatre to make possible “a new audience-actor relationship. It was informal, direct, immediate. It was also a playwrights’ theatre…where you could hear what people now were thinking and feeling”.[2]   With a policy to present new Australian work, the move was financially risky in an arts scene dominated by the mainstream canon of mainly American and English work. “Revolutionary things are happening in theatre today and I want them here”.[3]  Burstall’s ambitions for La Mama were grand, but almost immediately the revolution began, namely in the form of pushing the boundaries of the Summary Offenses Act 1966.

Photograph of actors in an alley changing dialogue for the play "Whatever Happened to Realism"
‘Obscenity charges over new play’ The Australian, 22/12/69, La Mama collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109.00019

The earliest offender was the 1968 production of Alex Buzo’s Norm and Ahmed. The final line of dialogue “fucking boongs” is delivered by Norm to Ahmed, a Pakistani student, and saw actor Lindsey Smith arrested for using obscene language, and the play’s producer Graeme Blundell charged with aiding and abetting Smith.[4] Some five decades on and the play is perhaps even more relevant because of the offensive racial slur.

A year later, John Romeril’s Whatever Happened to Realism resulted in the conviction of nine actors for using obscene language in a public place. After a private viewing of the play, magistrate H. Bennet conceded that they were sincere in their protest against censorship, “The play, as far as I can follow, intends to show that actors and playwrights are restricted in portraying life by censorship, because of words deemed to be offensive or obscene. However, the play can be enacted just as forcibly without the singing or use of the words in question”.[5] The audience expressed their disagreement with the magistrate, following the arrested to the police station, chanting the offensive four letter word, amongst others.

Blue and white poster for Greek music night at La Mama. The performers were Tassos and Ionnidis Christos.
“Neo Kyma” poster, 1977, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109.00050

Still, La Mama continued supporting Australian writers, actors and directors, providing a place where collaboration was centre-stage. Stalwarts of the Australian theatre scene like Jack Hibberd, David Williamson and Graeme Blundell, were given the chance to practice and develop their craft, as were other performance artists, such as filmmakers Corinne and Arthur Cantrill.

In the decades following the ‘obscenity trials’, La Mama continued pushing audiences, exploring concepts of identity, and elevating voices of the silenced. Playwrights such as Mammad Aidani and Tes Lyssiotis used this platform to chronicle the variety of the migrant experience, whilst in 1990, Aboriginal actor comedian Gnarnayarrahe Immurry Waitairie and director Ray Mooney explored the relationship between black and white Australian cultures in their play Pundulumura: Two Trees Together.

The onstage events however are only part of what the La Mama archive preserves. Over 100 boxes of material spanning 1967-2006 was listed during a three-year project with volunteers from La Mama, culminating in detailed lists of records available via the University of Melbourne Archive’s online catalogue. These records represent the important narrative of women in leadership roles in the arts, Liz Jones took over as artistic director in 1977, and the story of a business not obsessed with profit survived, and thrived, for 50 years.

Local issues such as the inner-city property market boom forcing the 2008 Save La Mama Campaign, the relentless struggle to find funding, and formal recognition as a place of significant Victorian heritage, are played out through business and administrative records. A collection of theatre posters illustrates trends in art and printing, featuring lino cuts by Tim Burstall amongst a wild variety of style and quality, some still with holes left by the staples used to distribute them on light poles.

The archive also sheds light on the suburb of Carlton and La Mama’s historic role as a place for its diverse residents to express themselves. Migrant Greek and Italian communities found a home for weekly music and poetry gatherings and Burstall and Jones gave neighbouring student populations a forum to experiment with new ideas.

From the first donation of records in 1977, UMA has seen its relationship with La Mama as a valuable one, not only for volunteer projects and exhibitions but in maintaining a comprehensive record of Melbourne’s theatre history. The La Mama archive complements that of the Union Theatre Repertory Company which evolved into Melbourne Theatre Company, as well as smaller collections of ephemera from the late 19th century to the 1960s.

A selection of records and production posters from the La Mama archive is currently displayed on the ground floor of Arts West at the University of Melbourne.

 

[1] Liz Jones; with Betty Burstall and Helen Garner, La Mama: the story of a theatre (Fitzroy: McPhee Gribble, 1988), 2.

[2] La Mama newsletter, October 1969, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109, Unit 1, Item 1

[3] Handwritten notes by Liz Jones for “La Mama: the story of a theatre”, 1988, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1998.0110, Unit 19, Item 110.

[4] “Magistrate goes to see play”, The Australian, 24 July 1969, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109, Unit 3, Item 19.

[5] “Actors were obscene, but sincere says SM” The Australian, 3 December 1969, La Mama Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1977.0109, Unit 3, Item 19.

From beauty to war: reproducing The Judgement of Paris

The Judgement of Paris (1510-20) is an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1470-1482 – c. 1534) after a drawing by Raphael (1483–1520). It elicited many keen glances and enthusiastic comments from audiences when it was brought out for both public programs and classes at the Baillieu Library. It also proved to be a popular image during and after it was made in the 16th century; some scholars claim that it is the most famous engraving of the Renaissance. It was also sought out by collectors and the Print Collection holds three different copies of this one image.

When it emerges from the safety of its storage box, it is typically examined in the context of two key questions: what is it depicting, and what is its significance? One academic recently described it as the forerunner to the Trojan War: a startling contrast to its main subject of a beauty contest. Many of the great ancient world figures are gathered in this scene; the title role plays out at left where the Trojan Paris judges the beauty of the goddesses Athena (Minerva), Hera (Juno) and Aphrodite (Venus). Aphrodite emerges the winner because she offers the most desirable bribe, promising Paris the most beautiful mortal in the world, Helen of Troy, wife of Menelaos, King of Sparta. The union of Paris and Helen is the event which sets the Trojan War in motion. The figures at left are derived from a Hellenistic sarcophagus. [1.] The river gods depicted at right also strike a familiar chord in the canon of Western imagery, as Manet borrowed its composition for his painting Luncheon on the grass (1863).

Not only was the engraving a success for its composition and subjects, it also represents a change to the traditional role of printmaking. This print is classified as a reproductive print, or one that ‘copies’ another work of art, in this case a design by Raphael that has subsequently been lost. Before Marcantonio entered the printmaking arena, artists were often producing prints as original, albeit multiple works of art. The collaboration between Marcantonio and Raphael opened up a new dimension: the art of reproduction. They embarked upon the business of reproduction, and the repercussions of this intellectual property war are still at the front line of creative practices today.

 Raphael by Marcantonio Raimondi, (1517-20)

According to Giorgio Vasari, after seeing the prints of Albrecht Dürer, Raphael was inspired to set about his own printmaking venture. Raphael established a printmaking business with Marcantonio producing engravings after his paintings. Some, including The Judgement of Paris, were designed especially to be made into an engraving. Their enterprise gave rise to the long history of the reproductive print and the print selling trade. Marcantonio’s chief protégés were Marco Dente (Marco da Ravenna) and Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano) who also made reproductive prints, sometimes after their own master Marcantonio. When comparing impressions of The Judgement of Paris from the Baillieu’s Print Collection, subtle differences may be found. The darker impression has been identified as an early impression by Marcantonio, whereas the two lighter versions are careful later copies made by his student Marco Dente.[2] Images such as The Judgement of Paris convey a rich and complex lineage of production and reproduction.

 

The Judgement of Paris is on display in the Arts West lab during semester two.

 

 

Kerrianne Stone Curator, Prints

References

[1] Lisa Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi : copying and the Italian Renaissance print, New Haven: Yale University Press, c2004, p. 1

[2] Susan Lambert, The image multiplied: five centuries of printed reproductions of paintings and drawings, London: Trefoil Publications, 1987, p. 65

Number of posts found: 403

Post type

Previous posts