Like many foundation stories, the white Australian narrative about the birth of the globally celebrated Western Desert Aboriginal \u201cdot painting\u201d movement is steeped in myth.<\/p>\n
For decades it has gone like this. In 1971 a young, eccentric middle-class art teacher from Sydney, Geoffrey Bardon, arrives in the remote assimilationist Aboriginal settlement of Papunya, 250km west of Alice Springs.<\/p>\n
At the settlement, made up of disparate desert peoples (Warlpiri, Pintupi, Luritja, Anmatyerr, Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara), Bardon meets a group of men including Clifford Possum, Charlie Tarawa, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa and Maxie Tjampitjinpa.<\/p>\n
He convinces the men to paint on hard surfaces the \u201cdreaming\u2019\u2019 stories they had hitherto only committed with fingers to sand and ceremonially on to one another\u2019s bodies, beginning with an expansive mural of honey ants on the external school wall.<\/p>\n
The honey ant mural being painted, 1971, footage by Geoffrey Bardon (from Mr Patterns).<\/p>\n
Bardon starts to sell their works. In so doing he not only conceives the western desert painting school but also a voracious global market for what the critic Robert Hughes<\/a> called \u201cthe last great art movement of the 20th century\u2019\u2019. The men will later become known as the celebrated Papunya \u201cpainting men\u2019\u2019. But Bardon meets impossible opposition from the white assimilationist authorities to the point where he must flee Papunya with his physical and mental health in tatters. He never works again.<\/p>\n In death at 62<\/a> in 2003 Bardon has largely remained in popular and internet<\/a> consciousness (if not that of the 21st-century art academy) as the synonymous hero and martyr of the Papunya<\/a> \u2013 and, more broadly, Western Desert \u2013 art movement\u2019s origin story.<\/p>\n But a new biography \u2013 Art Mania: Geoffrey Bardon and the Painting Men of Papunya<\/a> by Kitty Hauser \u2013 brings extraordinary new understanding to the teacher and his somewhat culturally parasitic older barrister brother, James (\u201cJim\u2019\u2019) Bardon.<\/p>\n Art Mania is more than a biography of \u201cGeoff\u2019\u2019, as Hauser calls him, and his role in the emergence of the Western Desert painting movement. It is also partly about Jim, who used his younger brother\u2019s year or so at Papunya from 1971 as his own creative fodder for two novels (including the critically acclaimed 1991 novel, Revolution by Night, which won the Victorian premier\u2019s literary award for new writing), film documentaries, and numerous articles and speeches he penned for Geoff.<\/p>\n Author Kitty Hauser at her home in Earlwood, NSW. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In the book, Hauser concludes of the elder brother: \u201cJim got a fair bit of literary mileage out of the painting men, or his idea of them. There could hardly be a better example of appropriation, even if it has gone under the radar (including, perhaps, Geoff\u2019s) because of the obscurity of Jim\u2019s writing.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Hauser has examined the extensive private Bardon archive held by Geoff\u2019s widow, Dorn, to produce a multi-layered book about intercultural agency and theft, about who gets to tell whose stories and about how a template of white saviour\/hero mythology has long formed a narrative opacity \u2013 a sort of settler state cataract \u2013 over the Papunya art story.<\/p>\n Hauser makes \u201cno claim to know what was going on\u201d for the painting men at the time. Hers is, she writes, \u201ca white story, an account of a white myth\u201d.<\/p>\n Illustration: Kitty-Hauser HR<\/p>\n This is also a book about mental health \u2013 the mania of the title \u2013 and psychiatry. For after Bardon left Papunya in 1972, physically and mentally ragged, he was admitted to Sydney\u2019s Chelmsford hospital under psychiatrist Harry Bailey<\/a>. There he was subjected to deep sleep therapy \u2013 a barbaric treatment, antithetic to psychoanalysis, that blended extended heavy sedation with electro-convulsion to \u201cre-set\u201d the brain and psyche. The treatment was exposed in a 1990 royal commission<\/a> as responsible for 24 deaths.<\/p>\n Of Papunya, the settlement for the assimilation into \u201cEuropean forms of work and rewards\u201d and Chelmsford, Hauser writes: \u201cDidn\u2019t both institutions seek to instigate (imperfectly) a deliberate forgetfulness, a whitewashing of minds, in one case, and of entire cultures in the next?\u201d<\/p>\n Obliterating memories<\/p>\n Chelmsford was already in British-born Hauser\u2019s consciousness when, soon after settling in Australia in 2003, she saw a short 1970s magazine article about Bardon and the Papanya painting men. The article featured an evocative colour photograph of the large-limbed Bardon sitting on the earth. He is surrounded by some of the painting men (and a child) who look upon the open book or sketchpad on his lap.<\/p>\n She says: \u201cIt was the photograph, in combination with the unlikely mention of Chelmsford hospital, that got me interested \u2013 two apparently disconnected things (Aboriginal art and deep sleep treatment) connected through this man. Plus it was, of course, a remarkable story, with \u2013 as I now realise \u2013 elements of myth.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Bardon, Hauser\u2019s mother-in-law, Noeleen, had been a patient of Bailey\u2019s at the hospital in the 1970s and her \u201cdistress continued, with repercussions both for her and the family\u201d. The synthesis, for Hauser, of these two otherwise seemingly disparate institutions formed the seed of her book.<\/p>\n \u201cThe juxtaposition of Chelmsford and Papunya was surreal but suggestive thematically: sleep, forgetfulness, whitewashing,\u201d Hauser says. \u201cI wondered if there were parallels between the hospital and the settlement, since both sought \u2013 so it seemed to me \u2013 to obliterate memories in one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018A short story with a long ending\u2019<\/p>\n While Bardon had little knowledge of anthropology, his self-placement at the centre of the Western Desert art creation narrative echoes that of numerous anthropologists\u2019 early cultural contact with First Nations communities.<\/p>\n \u201cNot to take anything away from his timely and impactful intervention,\u201d says Margo Ngawa Neale, Indigenous art curator and writer, but \u201chistory tends to inflate the influence of white fellas like Bardon over the existing painting practices in Black communities where agency, voice and work is easily eclipsed.\u201d<\/p>\n From Donald Thomson<\/a> to Norman Tindale\u2019s geographic mapping of First Nations tribes<\/a> and collecting of Aboriginal hair samples<\/a> for his genetic map, to Charles Mountford\u2019s early \u201cdiscovery\u2019\u2019 of North East Arnhem land bark art (like Bardon at Papunya he recognised its aesthetic value and was among the first to export it from communities), white men placing themselves heroically at the vanguard of Indigenous cultural knowledge \u2013 as discoverers \u2013 is nothing new.<\/p>\n \u2018Meanings of the signs and symbols\u2019, in Geoffrey Bardon\u2019s 1979 book, Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert<\/p>\n Neale, who is of Gumbaynggirr and Wiradjuri heritage, says Bardon\u2019s involvement with Papunya art represents \u201ca short story with a long ending\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a damaged man but a talented one who gave the best of himself to the painting men of Papunya \u2013 he became a messiah in the eyes of many, if not himself. He was the right man in the right place at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n Bardon\u2019s short time at Papunya was a whirlwind of enthusiasm and tireless commitment. Besides teaching at Papunya elementary school (Bardon was himself a painter and qualified art teacher), he used his own resources to supply materials including acrylic paints and boards to the men. Bardon recognised the men\u2019s profoundly beautiful works for their artistic merit ahead of their anthropological value. On weekends he packed his Kombi van with the men\u2019s works and drove to Alice Springs where he sold the paintings to a fledgling arts centre and returned with money for the men, who all had to perform other manual work duties around the settlement for the white administrators.<\/p>\n Papunya \u2018painting men\u2019 with Geoff in December 1971. Photograph: Fred Friis (GBP)<\/p>\n Some in authority viewed the painting as a distraction from work. Bardon\u2019s chaotic, shambolic approach to his life and work in Papunya \u2013 together with his status as a single man \u2013 brought him criticism and derision.<\/p>\n \u201cBehind the scenes questions were raised about Geoff\u2019s character, and his capacities, especially in relation to managing money,\u2019\u2019 Hauser writes.<\/p>\n Meanwhile tensions developed with Pat Hogan, the woman selling the artworks in Alice Springs. Then a senior official at the settlement accused him of \u201ctrafficking in Aboriginal paintings\u201d.<\/p>\n While Hauser uncovered a written comment by Bardon that \u201cI was always tempted to cheat them\u201d, she says \u201cno evidence has turned up\u201d that he did. Rather, his record-keeping, like so much about him, was simply chaotic and he was \u201cmaking it up as he went along\u201d in the nascent Aboriginal art market.<\/p>\n At Papunya, Bardon was sometimes unwittingly exposed to secret, sacred stories. Considerable tensions would emerge between the men of the disparate First Nations communities represented at the settlement because some of the men were sharing stories that were culturally taboo for outsiders \u2013 among them Bardon \u2013 to see.<\/p>\n \u2018Meanings of the signs and symbols\u2019, in Geoffrey Bardon\u2019s Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert. Illustration: Supplied<\/p>\n Bardon became increasingly paranoid, isolated and depressed. He thought he was under surveillance including, once, by Asio.<\/p>\n Hauser quotes his widow, Dorn: \u201cHe just couldn\u2019t take criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, one Friday in 1972, Bardon went off \u201con a binge\u201d to Alice Springs, stayed in a pub and \u201cinsulted and abused anyone he could find once there\u201d, according to his brother. But the painting men, many of whom loved him but also relied on him, followed him into town with their works intended for sale \u201cwrapped up like wounded animals\u201d. On the Sunday he was hospitalised.<\/p>\n Jim crossed the continent to bring Geoff back to his parents\u2019 home in Sydney\u2019s gentrified Randwick.<\/p>\n \u201cGrandiosity, delusion, paranoia, fury, shame and a lingering sense of having let everyone down \u2013 the inevitable earthward phase following the exuberant one,\u201d Hauser writes of that time. \u201cWe might draw a curtain over it, as Geoff himself did, in public at least; except that the mania to which it was connected had been the right sort of thing to bring to the cross-cultural party, or at least not the wrong one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018The limits of knowing\u2019<\/p>\n Back in Randwick, Bardon told the family doctor he was \u201cdepressed in my struggle to evolve a new art form with the Aboriginals\u201d. He was referred to psychiatrist Harry Bailey and admitted to Chelmsford for deep sleep therapy in August 1972.<\/p>\n He was fortunate to survive the psychiatric therapy, already discredited, that aimed to psychiatrically reset patients who were being treated for everything from substance addiction to depression and mood disorders by drugging them to keep them unconscious for a period of days or weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cI did recover but could not hold a proper job and have been an invalid ever since,\u201d Bardon said in a documentary, Mr Patterns, filmed in the last year of his life.<\/p>\n While producing Mick and the Moon (a 1979 documentary about one of the painting men, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri \u2013 for which he returned briefly to Papunya) Geoff began a relationship with Dorn Saunders, a boarder at the Bardon home. They married and moved to Taree in northern New South Wales. They had two sons. They lived in Taree until his death, largely surviving on his pension and the meagre earnings from writing.<\/p>\n In Papunya he had acquired dozens of paintings. A wealthy collector, Margaret Carnegie, bought many of Bardon\u2019s pieces in the 1980s. Such works would later profoundly multiply in value as the global market for Western Desert painting exploded. Bardon would tell a journalist, \u201cAt the time I didn\u2019t have much money. So, I had to sell them.\u201d<\/p>\n There can be no doubting Geoff Bardon\u2019s sincerity in helping and supporting the painting men of Papunya. But beyond his altruism, as Hauser reveals, it is clear that he also considered Papunya a personal artistic opportunity.<\/p>\n A postcard from Geoff to his parents in 1971<\/p>\n \u201cIn places among Geoff\u2019s papers it was clear that almost from the start he was trying to corral his experiences at Papunya into some other form: a novel, a film script, some kind of science fiction,\u2019\u2019 Hauser writes.<\/p>\n In Bardon\u2019s archive, Hauser came across a diagram and writing in which he portrays his Papunya experience consistent with popular American writer Joseph Campbell\u2019s<\/a> cinematic monomyth template of the questing hero returning, against all odds, with a communal prize.<\/p>\n In assembling a more holistic picture of Bardon, Hauser credits the fine research of others, including Luke Scholes, John Keane and Vivien Johnson, who established that painting was already happening when Bardon arrived in Papunya and that he was not the first to take works out of the settlement.<\/p>\n Others have also strongly suggested that people were also already painting at other Western Desert Aboriginal communities including Yuendemu.<\/a><\/p>\n