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The attitude of lightning towards a ladymountain

James Gleeson

Australia 1915-2008

The attitude of lightning towards a ladymountain 1939

Gadigal Country/Sydney, Australia

oll on canvas

Purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and

Ray Wilson QAM 2007 2007.909

James Gleeson came to know the work of the French surrealist painters during the late 1930s in Sydney, largely through reproductions in books and magazines. He quickly came to see in Surrealism a new, redemptive way of seeing and thinking about human experience. He wrote in 1940, at a time of global conflict, about the subconscious world of our dreams and desires: 'the mind seeks to return Into the past-into a world of pre-human organism; of substance, pulsing with the life-force, but not yet evolved Into humanity... Accessing this pre-human place offered hope: 'In surrealism the fire of art and the ice of science have met, and from the synthesis [human]kind has been endowed with a powerful new weapon for its combat against darkness and evil.

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Uploaded on December 16, 2023
Taken on December 15, 2023