What a feast of Watsons are on offer in Ken McGregor’s third attempt to capture the history and essence of Tommy Yannima Pikarli Watson, The Master Colourist. And of course this repeated effort is justified by the cruel history that this Ngaanyatjarra man – who died in 2017 – suffered at the hands of the “politics riven world of Aboriginal art”, as publisher Geoff Henderson of the Kate Owen Gallery puts it right at the start.
Did Henderson need to add that the black-balling of Watson’s mature art by institutions, awards and auction houses because he’d dared to assert agency and leave the remote art centre that had nurtured him was caused by “the perceived need to buttress the edifice of the art centre movement”? Well, when it turned out that those institutions were warned by Indigenous advisory groups not to allow this book to reproduce early artworks that they held, it seems Henderson may have a case.
But neither McGregor nor Henderson raise the question as to whether Tommy would have ever started painting without the encouragement of the painting women like Wingu Tingima who had moved to Wingellina/Irrunytju determined to create an art centre with the help of advisor Amanda Dent. Only then did the men – Nyakul Dawson, Clem Rictor, Patju Presley and Tommy Watson follow.
However, Tommy’s quick emergence as a star at auction, at the Desert Mob show and at the NATSIAAs caused the artist a heap of trouble in the tiny Irrunytju world. Humbugging, he claimed, was so bad he headed for Alice Springs with family to go solo. Alice is a tough town. And before long Terry Ingram in the Financial Review was reporting that Watson was earning a pittance from big sales at the Red Sand Gallery.
This had two effects. Alert Melbourne gallerist John Ioannou headed north, found Tommy in a humpy and offered him an exclusive dealership. And I was asked by the editor of the Australian Art Market Report to discover what carpet-baggers were and how they operated in the Aboriginal art industry. What I thought was a balanced report on the good and less good aspects of carpet-bagging lead to a writ of defamation from the aggrieved owners of Red Sand Gallery.
Which is the only reason that Tommy Watson was in court in Darwin assisting our defence. But Ioannou used it as an excuse to successfully sue Red Sand for grossly underpaying him for a large group of artworks painted in 2005. It turned out that they had offered a contract suggesting he receive 10% of retail, less costs. This is unmentioned by McGregor. Also unmentioned is the weak investigation of Red Sand by the Aboriginal Art.Trade dealers’ organisation, which cleared the gallery.
A third inaccuracy is the hurtful episode whereby Tommy was commissioned by curators Hetti Perkins and Brenda Croft to supply one of the eight Indigenous works that would be incorporated into the administration building of the new Musee du quai Branly in Paris. Because he’d left Irrunytju, Tommy was never invited to the opening, while the community art centre manager was. McGregor claims Tommy never saw the result.
In fact the proud facilitators of a vast magnification of the Watson canvas on to aluminium tiles went to the desert to show Tommy their work. It was all filmed. And I can only say that the artist’s look of total bemusement as he saw their work would have daunted more sensitive souls!
I cavil – but only because the book itself seeks to emphasise the political in its story.
In fact, it also tells us much more than has been revealed about Tommy Watson before – his orphaned history, his fighting ways, his upbringing in desert Tjukurrpa and performing inma, his political involvement in the huge Ngaanyatjarra Land Claim, and his initial determination to tell each story once only, never explaining anything. “His paintings for us are art – not to be understood”.
Sadly, the exigencies of Tommy’s life as he fell out with John Ioannou in Melbourne in order to return to deserts and family in Alice, where he discovered the house he thought he owned wasn’t his seems to have meant that a) he repeated stories when he thought he’d painted everything, and b) McGregor seems to have shared Tjukurrpa meanings with the artist – such as the beautiful Pangkalangu (2009/10) in which a terrified child is attempting to hide from cannibals who have come up from the south-east following a famine.
There are also some valiant attempts to make links between Watson and both Kandinsky and Klee. Kandinsky believed “words, musical tones and colours possess the psychical power of calling forth soul vibrations”, while John Ioannou is quoted as saying that Tommy’s canvases arose from “the inducement of an almost meditative process that involves intense rhythmic dotting, often accompanied by singing”. Perhaps even more interesting is a reference to the “Simultaneous contrast of colours”, discovered by Michel Chevreul in 1839. For Tommy’s instinctive use of pure contrasting colours in direct juxtaposition causes the “electric vibration” that’s the jolt I often get from his best canvases.
Sadly, another key quote from Ioannou – the man who learnt passable Pitjanjatjarra and became initiated to help understand Tommy – is missing. Given the almost infinite variety of reds that the artist employs, it’s important to know: “From the red head-band Tommy wears through all his paintings, red is a recognition of the blood spilt and ceremonies he’s undertaken, and the authority that comes from them”.
Finally, while appreciating the role that Chris Simon at Yanda Art played in Tommy Watson’s late life, and admiring his willingness to supply 4.8 metre canvases to a man in his late 80s with such brilliant results, I wonder why Yanda claims copyright on the artist’s complete oeuvre, well before they connected?
Ken McGregor’s book is launched tomorrow at the Kate Owen Gallery in Sydney alongside a spectacular exhibition of Watson’s work, which runs until 7th April. There are prices as high as $1.5 million.
