The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri · synthetic polymer paint on canvas, one canvas · a field of dotted grounds divided into zones of country, crossed by travelling lines and set with roundels, with the bushfire of Lungkata at its centre · 1977 · painted at Papunya or its outstations in the early years of the Papunya Tula painting company · over three metres wide · National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, shown there since 2007 · the unit scored is the canvas of 1977, the smaller Warlugulong of 1976, painted with Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, being context
Mode
Western Desert painting in synthetic polymer on canvas; a topographical map of country as the Dreaming orders it
Mythos
The Dreaming laid on the ground: the paths and sites of ancestral beings, with Lungkata’s judgment by fire at the centre; built, and load-bearing in every element
Phase
Painted in 1977, six years after the transfer of ground, body and sand designs to boards and canvas began at Papunya in 1971; one of the painter’s large map canvases of 1976 to 1980
Presentation
One canvas in synthetic polymer paint, in the restricted earth palette of the early Papunya years (ochre, red, yellow, white, black, greys); dot, line, roundel and footprint
Register
Cool and even; an ordered field broken at one place by fire
Scale
Over three metres wide, more than six square metres of dotting; a whole region seen from above, several Dreamings in true relation
Governing Proposition
In 1977 Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, an Anmatyerr man known first as a carver, laid on one canvas over three metres wide a wide country as the Dreaming has it: tracks that are the paths of ancestral beings, roundels that are the sites where they acted, dotted grounds that are the country between, and at the centre the fire with which Lungkata, the Blue Tongue Lizard Man, burnt his two sons for eating a kangaroo without sharing it. The wager of the canvas is that a country carries all its stories at once, that a place is where they cross, and that the ground a settler map calls empty can be shown to outsiders, whole, as a named and owned order.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Warlugulong is a place, and the canvas named for it is a map of country with that place at its heart. There Lungkata, the Blue Tongue Lizard Man, burnt his two sons for eating a kangaroo without sharing it, and the fire, its smoke and its ash spread out from the centre of the picture through the dotted grounds around it. It is the one violent event in an ordered field, and it is shown as what it does to ground: a burst of white and dark breaking through the dotting without disordering the picture.
The work scored is the canvas of 1977: synthetic polymer paint on one canvas, over three metres wide, by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, an Anmatyerr man born about 1932, who died in 2002. It was painted at Papunya or its outstations in the early years of the Papunya Tula painting company, and it is held by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. An earlier and smaller Warlugulong, painted in 1976 with Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is context, as are the painter’s other large map canvases of 1976 to 1980, Man’s Love Story and Napperby Death Spirit Dreaming among them. The canvas of 1977 is credited to Clifford Possum.
The story at the centre carries an articulated ethical content: a father’s punishment of the failure to share food, and fire as judgment. It is set where it happened, at a named place on named and owned ground, so that the archetype and the particular are one object. A story of a father and two sons, a judgment on the one who does not share, and an event on the land are not three readings laid over the picture; they are one mark at its centre, and the rest of the country is drawn in relation to it.
Movement II
Everything on the canvas is one of three things, seen from above. Dotted grounds fill the field to its margins, divided into zones of country. Travelling lines cross it: tracks of footprints and the paths of ancestral beings. Roundels punctuate it, marking the sites where those beings did what they did. The means are few, dot, line, circle and footprint, and the palette is the restricted earth palette of the early Papunya years: ochre, red, yellow, white, black and greys.
The myth is not evoked here; it is the structure of the painting. The tracks are the Dreaming’s paths, the roundels its sites, and the map is the Dreaming laid on the ground. Each roundel and each track stands for a named place and a named passage across country, so that to remove one would be to remove a site from the map; in that sense nothing on the canvas is ornament. The structure is the tradition’s and not the painter’s invention, and the canvas carries it rather than builds it; but it carries it in every element, and nothing in the picture stands outside it.
The law holds at both extremes. The fire at the centre, the most violent thing in the picture, and the quiet dotted margin obey the same physics, since the fire too is shown as ground and what happens to it. Several Dreamings with different beings, kinds and tempers sit on one field without a breach of that law. What the law cannot justify from within is the edge: the field stops where the canvas stops, not where the country does, and the extent of the dotted grounds is set by the support rather than by any argument.
Movement III
The dotting is controlled over more than six square metres. Its density and spacing are varied zone by zone, so that one ground separates from the next without an outline, and the zoning tells where one being’s country gives way to another’s. The dotted infill is not texture: it is the substance of the country between the sites. Clifford Possum was known first as a carver, and the precision shows in the register the tracks keep across the whole field and in the sureness of the roundels.
Seen across distance the dotted grounds shimmer, in a way reproduction loses, and at its full width the field reads as an aerial vision of a whole region. The elevation is cool rather than transporting. The surface is even by intent and the palette restrained; the work rises at its centre, at the fire, and holds level elsewhere, where a painting that rises again and again would climb. Its grandeur is the grandeur of extent and of the claim, a cold kind, and it is credited at that.
The restriction is made a discipline. The fire’s white and dark break through the dotted order without disordering it, and the tracks hold their line from one zone to the next. Against that stands the evenness: the means are few, the finest Western Desert canvases of the following decades push surface and colour further, and in places the handling is even to the point of routine. But few means are not thin means; the control of density, register and zoning across the field is the work’s structure.
Movement IV
The transfer of ground, body and sand designs to boards and then to canvas began at Papunya in 1971, and the stake was real from the start: the disputes of the early years over showing sacred designs to outsiders, and the risk of turning law into commodity. Within that collective turn, Clifford Possum’s own was the large topographical canvas. Instead of one story on one board, many Dreamings of a wide country are laid in true relation to one another on a single field, the travelling lines carried across the whole. That was a new kind of picture in the tradition and in painting at large, made with inherited means, some five years after the movement began.
The form is the claim. A narrative sequence would set the stories one after another; the map holds them present at once on one ground, so that the country carries all its stories together and a place is where lines cross. The overlap at the crossings is where the meaning is densest. What the painting discloses to the outsider, in a form that can be seen whole, is that country is not scenery but a written order, and that the ground a settler map calls empty is densely named and owned. Much of what it states is legible only through keys, and some is withheld by design; to most viewers the disclosure is of the structure of the meaning more than of its contents.
The orders held are laid on that one ground: the land as physical country, its ecology, the ancestral and the sacred, the law and the ethics of sharing, a father and his sons, kinship and the ownership of country, and, by the act of painting it for outsiders in 1977, the settler state and its market. That last order is in the occasion more than the image, and the inner life is not one the picture holds. On this axis the canvas stands level with Las Meninas, which holds court, family and art and stands at 9.2.
Movement V
For some twenty years after it was made the canvas was out of public sight. Since 2007 it has been shown continuously in Canberra and widely reproduced, and it has become the central image of Western Desert painting in Australia. Its form was whole throughout, and the tradition it draws on is living and has outlasted the conditions of 1977, which keeps the picture legible. The long absence is charged against it; its standing as an emblem since then is presence, and is not counted as reach.
The reach that counts is within the movement. The large map canvas reorganised what a Western Desert painting could be, from a board for one story to a field for a whole country, and opened the scale at which the movement would later work; Clifford Possum’s canvases of 1976 to 1980 are the reference for the large ambitious picture in the desert. Beyond the movement the reach is real but diffuse, carried in the reception of Western Desert painting as contemporary art from the 1980s, and no later work by a named painter can be shown to have turned on it alone. Four decades of writing have followed: the painter’s biography, the gallery’s catalogues, the scholarship on Papunya.
Beside Gerhard Richter’s October 18, 1977, at 8.5, whose subject is the same year, the canvas stands lower on what is disclosed and on the closeness of its form, and higher on the archetypal deep. Lascaux, at 8.6, outscores it by wide margins on height and on making, its myth inferred where this one is known and load-bearing; The Trinity of Rublev, at 8.9, stands level with it on the archetypal deep, theology made structure there and the Dreaming made structure here. At the centre of the canvas the fire still spreads through the dotted country, a judgment on the ones who would not share, set at the place where it happened.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites in two directions. Each roundel and each track stands for a named place and a named passage of a being across country: remove one and a site goes from the map, and the law says what is there. In that sense nothing is ornament. But the composition is a gathering. The canvas holds several Dreamings because the painter chose to hold them, and a map can take one more line or lose one at its edge without changing its claim. The dotted fields are required as ground, the country between sites, but their extent is set by the canvas and not by the argument.
Score: 8.3 / 10
What the painting brings into the open is a meaning, not a mood: that country is not scenery but a written order, crossed by stories that are also law, and that one place holds many of them at once. It shows the outsider, in a form seen whole, that the ground a settler map calls empty is densely named and owned. The fire at the centre adds an articulated ethical content, a father’s judgment on the failure to share food. Held below the gate by access: much of what the canvas states is legible only through keys, some is withheld by design, and to most viewers the disclosure is of the structure of meaning more than of its contents.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The elevation is real, and cool rather than transporting. At over three metres wide the field reads as an aerial vision of a whole region, and the dotted grounds shimmer across distance in a way reproduction loses. The fire at the centre, a burst of white and dark spreading through the dotting, is the one place of terror and grandeur, the more striking for the order round it. What holds the axis here: the surface is even by intent, the palette restrained, and the work rises at its centre and holds level elsewhere. Its grandeur is of extent and of the claim, a cold kind, and is credited at that.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The axis the work most nearly owns. The myth is not evoked here; it is the structure of the painting. Tracks are the paths of ancestral beings, roundels the sites where they did what they did, and the map is the Dreaming laid on the ground; the ground is particular, named, owned country, not an emblem. Lungkata’s fire is at once a story of a father and two sons and a judgment on the one who does not share, set at the place where it happened. The archetypal structure is the tradition’s, carried rather than invented, but the axis asks whether it bears load in the work, and here it bears every element.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The turn was large, and partly the movement’s. The transfer of ground, body and sand designs to boards and then canvas began at Papunya in 1971, and the stake was real: disputes over showing sacred designs to outsiders, and the risk of turning law into commodity. Clifford Possum’s own swerve inside that is the large topographical canvas: instead of one story on one board, many Dreamings of a wide country laid in true relation on one field, the travelling lines carried across the whole. That is a new kind of picture. It extends a swerve others made five years before, with inherited means, and is credited without the founding.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Substitute another form and the work cannot say what it says. A narrative sequence would put the stories one after another; the map holds them present at once on one ground, which is the claim: that the country carries all its stories together, and that a place is where lines cross. The dotted infill is not texture but the substance of the country between sites, and its zoning tells where one being’s country gives way to another’s. The fire’s spread across the dotting enacts the story’s event on the ground. Held below 9.0 because the form is partly a convention the painting inherits, and the field ends at the canvas’s edges rather than the country’s.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Return yields. The tracks can be followed one by one; the zones repay comparison with the country as walked; the overlap of stories at the crossings is where meaning is densest; and the fire at the centre changes its sense as one learns what burning means in the desert. The painting has drawn sustained writing for four decades: the painter’s biography, the gallery’s catalogues, the scholarship on Papunya. The evidence is real but shorter and narrower than the record round the older European paintings, and part of the yield is closed to the outside viewer by law: a limit of access, not charged to the work, but not credited as shown either.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The field is Western Desert painting and, beyond it, painting at large. The intrinsic force is high: the large map canvas reorganised what a desert painting could be, from a board for one story to a field for a whole country, and opened the scale at which the movement would later work. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Clifford Possum’s canvases of 1976 to 1980 are the reference for the large ambitious picture in the desert movement, and since 2007 this canvas has been shown and reproduced as the movement’s central image in Australia. Reach in the wider field is real but diffuse, in the reception of Western Desert painting as contemporary art, and no later work it alone redirected can be named.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at forty-nine years. The form is whole, and the fabric, synthetic polymer on canvas, is in a national collection’s care. Presence is uneven, and that is the charge: for some twenty years after it was made the canvas was out of public sight. Since 2007 it has been shown continuously in Canberra and widely reproduced, which is the credit. The tradition it draws on is living and has outlasted the conditions of 1977, which keeps the image legible. The absence holds the figure at the lower end for its span, a tenth short of what the widest presence would earn.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the medium is high and load-bearing. The dotting is controlled over more than six square metres, its density and spacing varied zone by zone so that grounds separate without outlines; the tracks keep their register across the whole field; the roundels are drawn with a sure hand; the fire’s white and dark break through the dotted order without disordering the picture. Clifford Possum was known first as a carver, and the precision shows. The restricted palette is made a discipline. Against a higher figure: the means are few, dot, line, circle and footprint, later desert canvases push surface and colour further, and some of the handling is even to the point of routine.
Score: 8.8 / 10
One physics governs the whole: everything is ground, site or path, seen from above. Take the two most distant elements, the violent fire at the centre and the quiet dotted margin: they obey the law equally, since the fire is shown as what it does to ground. Several Dreamings, with different beings, kinds and tempers, sit on one field without any breach of the law of representation, and the range they cover, judgment, journey and death among it, is wide. Narrowness is not the source of the coherence; it holds over a wide range. Held a tenth below 9.0 because the law is the tradition’s and the canvas’s edges cut it arbitrarily.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The orders held are many and integrated: the land as physical country; its ecology, in the fire; the ancestral and the sacred; law and the ethics of sharing; the family, a father and his sons; kinship and the ownership of country, to which the painter’s own Dreaming belongs; and, in the act of painting it for outsiders in 1977, the encounter with the settler state and its market. They are not listed but laid on one ground. What holds the axis here: the encounter with history is in the act and the occasion more than in the image, and consciousness, the inner life, is not an order the picture holds.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Archetypal Deep at 9.0, then The Living Form at 8.9 and The Inner Law at 8.9. The Dreaming laid on the ground as the structure of the painting, every track a being’s path and every roundel a site, with Lungkata’s judgment set where it happened; a map form that holds many stories present at once on one ground, which is the claim; and one law, ground, site and path seen from above, which the fire at the centre and the dotted margin obey alike.
Limiting Dimension
The Sublime and The Encompassed at 8.2: an elevation cool and even by intent, rising at the centre and level elsewhere, and orders many and integrated in which history lies in the occasion more than in the image and the inner life is absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 8.3: every mark is required by what it names, but the selection of what is named and the extent of the ground are set by the painter’s gathering and the canvas’s edge, not by an argument.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.3 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.9, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Archetypal Deep at 9.0, The Imperishable at 8.7, The Swerve at 8.6 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 falls short by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.2. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The gate fails because what the canvas states is legible to most viewers only through keys, and some of it is withheld by design, so that the disclosure is of the structure of the meaning more than of its contents. The twelve sum to 103.0, an average of 8.58 that displays 8.6, in the band of Tier IV and short of the 9.0 the summit also requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas in reproduction and in the published literature, not from standing before it; the composition is known well in its large terms and less well in its detail. The work scored is Warlugulong of 1977, synthetic polymer paint on one canvas, by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (Anmatyerr, about 1932 to 2002), painted at Papunya or its outstations in the early years of the Papunya Tula painting company and held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, where it has been shown since 2007. The canvas is credited to Clifford Possum; whether Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri had any hand in it is not established. Not in the unit: the smaller Warlugulong of 1976, painted with Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the painter’s other large map canvases of 1976 to 1980, which are context. The form stands whole as painted, and nothing in the canvas is known to stand in place of an original; its years out of public sight are weighed under The Imperishable only. Nothing is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the exact dimensions, the terms and price of the purchase, the canvas’s sales before it, the number of Dreamings the canvas holds and the names of those beside Lungkata’s, the place of burning in the renewal of country, and any further story the canvas carries.