The 1955 John Brack painting “Collins St 5 p.m.” has had more impact on me than any other painting I have ever seen. Brack’s dark but honest vision cuts to the core of what life is really like for most Australians.
Collins St., 5p.m., John BRACK
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/3161/
I remember the first time I saw it, shown to me by my father. Dad was no great art critic, but he understood the deep truth of this painting, having worked in Melbourne and been bound to the daily suburban commute for over 40 years. You could almost see him shudder as he looked at the painting and reflected on the understanding by the artist of the average white collar worker. I also came to understand its true meaning, working for many years in Collins Street and walking by the spot it was painted everyday. Although the fashions and shopfronts had changed, the implications were still the same.
For most Australians this is the true Australia. A landscape of brick, concrete, traffic and cancelled trains and not the far and wide horizons eulogised in verse, song and cinema. For the most part, Australian’s vision of themselves as a people inhabiting a wide brown land is at best a myth and at worst a lie. We are coastal city dwellers, the most urbanised people on the planet, bound by mortgages and other commitments to the drudgery of the daily grind.
This painting will never be ranked as Australia’s favourite painting. That honour will be reserved for a landscape like Robert’s “Shearing the Rams” or Drysdales’s “The Cricketers” that reflect an image of how we wish we were. Brack’s masterpiece shows us as how we really are, a thought bound to make us uncomfortable.
You can see the original “Collins St 5 p.m.” for yourself, for free, hanging in the Ian Potter Gallery across the road from Flinders Street Station, Melbourne Victoria.
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