Enjoyed the exhibition on John Brack (1920-99) with my old friend E at the National Gallery of Victoria today. Brack had an amazing sense
for composition and equal parts wit and dry pathos. "The Bar" (1954), a riff on Manet, is the NGV's proudest recent acquisition. 
"The Car" from 1955, with much richer colors than this reproduction suggests, seems effortlessly profound. "Nude with two chairs" is unusually kind. I was also very taken by "Still Life with Meat Slicing Machine" (1955), wants to be on the cover of a book on 20th century life. Yet all these works are from the mid-fifties. His later work - hyperrealistic scenes of pencils and art postcards - seems traumatized by a too-long-delayed encounter (1973!) with ancient civilizations, 
though the restaging of Waterloo in colored pencils of "The Battle" (1981-3) and "The Hunt" (1988) with postcards of Babylonian reliefs 
suspended on tripods of colored pencils were at least visually satisfying. (Apologies for poor picture quality; I pinched from other websites.)
"The Car" from 1955, with much richer colors than this reproduction suggests, seems effortlessly profound. "Nude with two chairs" is unusually kind. I was also very taken by "Still Life with Meat Slicing Machine" (1955), wants to be on the cover of a book on 20th century life. Yet all these works are from the mid-fifties. His later work - hyperrealistic scenes of pencils and art postcards - seems traumatized by a too-long-delayed encounter (1973!) with ancient civilizations, 
though the restaging of Waterloo in colored pencils of "The Battle" (1981-3) and "The Hunt" (1988) with postcards of Babylonian reliefs 
suspended on tripods of colored pencils were at least visually satisfying. (Apologies for poor picture quality; I pinched from other websites.)
