Sidney Nolan: Desert and Drought
Religion

Following the critical and commercial success of the Australian outback and Burke and Wills subjects, the Nolan’s travelled overseas in August 1950. In the churches, museums and galleries of Europe, Sidney Nolan embraced the art of the Old Masters.

Returning to Australia in August 1951, Nolan grappled with his Australian and European experiences. It was serendipitous that his return to Australia coincided with the inaugural Blake Prize for Religious Art. Between November 1951 and January 1952, Nolan completed a group of highly original images of religion, which as his first major series completed with the direct knowledge of European art and culture, imposed a less familiar iconography on his more recognisable desert landscapes.

A key to understanding some of the seemingly absurd and surreal imagery that appears in Nolan’s paintings, both religious and otherwise, is his abiding interest in the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55). Known as the ‘father of existentialism’, Kierkegaard used irony, parody, satire, humour, and deconstructive techniques in order to make conventionally accepted forms of knowledge and values untenable. Rather than achieving faith by virtue of reason, Kierkegaard advocated suspending reason in order to believe in something above reason, thereby attaining the highest form of faith by virtue of the absurd. By placing significant Biblical events, including upside down angels (occasionally without limbs), tents and exotic trees in the Australian outback, Nolan intended to disrupt preconceived notions of Christianity and reality, utilising Kierkegaard’s philosophy as a visual point of departure.

Sidney NOLAN
(1917–92)
Flight into Egypt 1951
oil and enamel paint on composition board
91.5 x 121.4 cm
The Westfarmers Collection, Perth
© Courtesy of Mary Nolan