The Bright Shapes and the True Names : A Memoir
Patrick McCaughey
One morning Christine Abrahams and I had been sorting Fred Williams' gouaches into the Erith series and the Flinders Island series. Fred came in just before lunch to see if we had got it right. He took one look at the gouache on the top of the Erith pile, picked it up and tore it into pieces. 'That's going for a start,' he said in a business-like way. Christine turned pale with shock.
Patrick McCaughey remains one of Australian art's most remarkable and charismatic figures. The Bright Shapes and the True Names is the story of his brilliant career—his emigration to Australia at the age of ten, his discovery of art in his late teens, his days as the dynamic and outspoken art critic for the Age and his glittering directorship of the National Gallery of Victoria.
Together with memories of Fred Williams and other artists, the frenzied activity of the Whitlam government's Visual Arts Board, and an extraordinary account of the notorious theft of Picasso's Weeping Woman from the NGV, McCaughey offers a fascinating and enthusiastic insider's view of the Australian art world and its development over three decades.
Praise for The Bright Shapes and the True Names:
'This deeply likeable memoir…will stand as a monument to the kind of Australia McCaughey continues to adore—the Fred Williamses and Peter Corrigans and Vincent Buckleys. The title, from a Buckley poem¡,implies that art and life, 'the one the mirror of the other' can restore the paradisal perspective on what matters. With the lightest of touches, that is what McCaughey does in this memoir. If the book is, in Yeatsian terms, the recollection of 'a smiling public man', McCaughey takes the trouble to ensure that the smile is real and that we don't only see the surface…This book is remarkable for its humanity, wit and sheer curiosity.'
Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald
'An enchanting chronicle that flows so swiftly and reads so naturally, as if he's talking to us, the 285 pages are finished all too soon.'
Michael Shmith, Age
Patrick McCaughey
Patrick McCaughey is the author of Fred Williams, and The School of London and Their Friends. He has been the recipient of three honorary doctorates: Monash University 1990, University of Hartford 1992 and Connecticut College 1997. He now lives in Connecticut.
