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Painting the Town: A Film About Yosl Bergner (1987)

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clip Anti-fascist exhibition education content clip 2, 3

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

The Contemporary Art Society of Australia, of which Yosl Bergner and fellow artists are members, mounted an anti-fascist exhibition in Melbourne and Adelaide in late 1942. Bergner talks about his paintings of Aboriginal people.

Curator’s notes

The montage of paintings of many different artists in this segment shows the intensity of feelings over what was going on in Europe. The music used matches the intensity of the paintings to great effect. Yosl’s work in this exhibition depicting the anguish of Australian Aboriginal people is stunning and he connects their plight with that of his own people, the Jews.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip discusses an anti-fascist art exhibition held in Adelaide and Melbourne in 1942, shows examples from the exhibition and then focuses on examples of Yosl Bergner’s work depicting Indigenous Australians. The narration explains that the exhibition was a response to the devastation of war and the persecution of Jews in Europe. The clip shows Bergner’s paintings of Indigenous Australians from the exhibition as he describes his response to their plight. The soundtrack features an avant-garde jazz performance.

Educational value points

  • The clip focuses on the work of artist Yosl Bergner (1920–) from the Anti-Fascist Exhibition of 1942 to emphasise his sympathetic portrayal of Indigenous Australians. While the narration says that he compared their suffering to that of the Jews under Nazism, he could not yet have known the full horror of the Nazi Holocaust. His view of Indigenous Australians as outcasts in their own land was unusual at the time but shared by others in the anti-fascist movement.
  • Yosl Bergner was born in Austria in 1920 and fled to Australia to escape Nazism in 1937, bringing with him new ideas about art, from his European training, that inspired the artist friends he made in Melbourne. He was an active member of the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne. In the clip he is seen being interviewed in his studio in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he has lived since 1951, having left Australia in 1948.
  • The clip begins with examples of the work of some other artists who, like Bergner, saw their work as having an important social and political role in documenting the suffering of the oppressed. Bergner’s friends Noel Counihan (1913–86) and James Wigley (1918–99) shared his social conscience.
  • The Exhibition was organised by the Contemporary Art Society (Victoria), founded in 1938 by young radical artists to loosen the grip of the conservatives who dominated the art establishment of the time. These artists believed that art had an important role in expressing political and social criticism but the art establishment held the view that art and politics were separate realms and it opposed the exhibiting of art inspired by social concerns.
  • The subject matter of the clip, the disquiet and anguish of artists responding to what they saw as the ills of society, is reflected in the jazz soundtrack and the images in the art montage. The artists’ response to news of war’s brutality is apparent in images of skulls, the destruction of cities, soldiers and the dead. Modern jazz music, rejected along with modern art by conservative critics, was played at the original Anti-Fascist Exhibition.
  • Albert Tucker (1914–99), John Perceval (1923–2000) and Sidney Nolan (1917–92), whose work is shown in the clip, went on to become major Australian artists but were at the beginning of their careers in 1942. They all served in the army and their work reflects that experience. However, their styles were more influenced by Surrealism and German Expressionism than by the social realism that influenced Bergner and the others.

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australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

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