Grace Cossington Smith - Modernism

Modernism

Smith was seen to be painting similarly to the style of Australian modernists in the early 1930s. She primarily painted in her own fashion, trying to avoid outside influences, with disinterest. However exhibitions and discussions with other artists, brought her awareness of current modernist trends in painting. Many of her paintings painted around 1932-33 were close in style to those of other contemporary Sydney painters. These paintings show objects being broken down into forms based on their colours similar to Cézanne, and have a cubist manipulation of some of the imagery. Her House With Trees, 1935, shows houses in pink, with unnatural blues for some of the bushes surrounding them. A distortion of the realist colours is apparent, with distortion also of the perspective lines of the actual house.

Her best known modernist painting is The Lacquer Room, 1935–36, showing a view across an Art Deco styled cafe called the Soda Fountain, which was then located in the David Jones department store in Sydney. The work itself is highly stylised, with pinks, yellows and blues on the walls and on the floor. The people depicted have little detail shown in their faces, though in what is shown they look obviously surprised and somewhat condescending in their glance towards the viewer. The vibrant glaring colours reflect modern style. The painting is notable for its absence of shadow; the walls are glowing with bright non-directional light and colour. Everything about the painting seems modern, from trendy green table tops to pinkish and red colours on the chairs and on the walls. Two unusual yellow modern style lamps on the walls have an Art Deco look. The customers wear fur coats with stylish hats, giving an impression that this is a place for well-to-do people though people did dress more formally to go to town in those days. The waitresses wear a bright green colour in keeping with the rest. The chairs have huge backs and tiny legs, reflecting a new modern world of manufactured objects, rather than traditional wooden furniture.

Smith's paintings included arrangements of flowers consisting of daffodils, hippeastrums and waratahs. As part of her personal oeuvre, she painted a work of a dog sleeping called Krinkley Kronks Sleeping in cool purples and oranges, although Rex was the name of the actual dog.