Tracey Moffatt's
Beauty Series 1994/1997
Gael Newton AM 2026
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| Australian artist Tracey Moffatt 1994 series Beauties in cream and in wine. |
An art work with ‘Beauty’ in the title usually presents an image of an ideal female type of its own time. Australian artist and film maker Tracey Moffatt always an iconoclast, instead presents us with a dandy. Her ‘Beauty’ is a good looking dark-eyed man who looks away from camera seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
He wears a casual striped sleeve T shirt and a cowboy or rodeo rider hat pushed up and away from his face perched at a jaunty angle. He could be Mediterranean or Mexican or an actor. The pose and professional lighting recall vintage Hollywood studio pin ups. Our dandy’s thin moustache and hat are like those Australian American actor Errol Flynn wore in his wild west roles in the 1930s-40s.
By 1994 Tracey Moffatt was quite a star herself as an indigenous artist, known for pushing the boundaries of what roles and costume her characters could adopt. Home viewers would be primed to see the dandy as indigenous. In her photo-series since the 1980s she has deliberately made the racial origins of her characters ambiguous. In 2003 Moffatt commented on the Beauty series:
This image is raceless ...someone said he could be a Mexican cowboy, he could be an Italian cane-cutter. In a way, it might be about me. I get asked if I am Indian or Puerto Rican. I can move across cultures. The most insulting thing that I ever hear, and it always comes from Australians, is 'Oh, you don't look Aboriginal', reassuring me, like, 'Don't worry about it'. I actually think I do. I think I look like my mother'.
Beauty in cream and in wines were made in 1994 and first exhibited in Localities of Desire: Contemporary Art in an International World at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The Beauties were included in the survey monograph Tracey Moffatt. Fever Pitch, Piper Press, Sydney,1995 and Beauty (in wine ) was selected as the cover image for major survey The Photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 2015. The Beauties were illustrated and discussed in the catalogue for Moffatt’s solo show as Australian representative at the 2017 Venice Biennale 2017.
Until around 2017, Beauties series was described as a tribute to Andy Warhol‘s 1960s pop poster-colour screen-prints of celebrities. This suggestion was possibly a deliberate misdirection on Moffatt’s part . It was said her dandy was based on an anonymous 1950s rodeo rider portrait. Interpretations emphasised how the image reflected Aboriginal aspirations and right to have the same dreams as others. The image was reflective of the issue of exploitation of indigenous stockmen and rodeo riders on stations and missions.
The titles of all Moffatt’s works are echo chambers evoking popular TV and film narratives, stereotypes and soundtracks. In the case of the Beauties perhaps we hear the country and western twang of Summer wine the 1960s hit song by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. But also there is the familiar fashion parade mantra of ‘now we see so and so in burgundy chiffon’. There could also be that refrain from Paul Simon’s Kodachrome. ‘I think images are worth repeating’.
Increasingly information since around 2017 has been attached to the series that the dandy is the artist’s maternal uncle Jack Moffatt (c 1930 -2015) a former Cherbourg mission dormitory boy. Moffatt who lived and worked in Cherbourg, was a fine sportsman and a lively, entertaining and well liked character who modelled himself on movie stars including Errol Flynn. So Jack chose the hat and Hollywood look for his own portrait at a Queensland studio in the 1950s (or 60s as he appears older than his 20s). It is unlikely there was a portrait studio in Cherbourg able to offer this type of study. Kingaroy was more likely the nearest studio.
One of the Beauty trio was chosen by Betty Hegarty for her Jack's Story: The Life of Jack Moffatt, c 1930 as Told to Ruth Hegarty Taigum, Queensland: Yubuna Munya, 2011. A copy of the original photograph was presented by Jack's sister, Annie Moffatt, to the Rationshed Museum in Cherbourg, Queensland. There is quite a lot online about Jack. He was a striking handsome man even in old age.
Moffatt as a performer herself and director of photo-narratives would have resonated with her uncle’s aspirations. With such a personal image, the Beauties is unique among Moffatt’s series.
Stepping back the Beauty images have a place in the long history of Aboriginal performers willing and coerced for the camera. The works swell in and out with ripples of evoked sound, associated images, colour and content. Jack Moffatt performs and directs his own image which expresses aspiration and a richness to his sense of self, his niece casts him in an enigmatic production of her own making. Behind each layer are the hundreds of past and present images defining and also liberating and expressing Aboriginal people
The Beauty series line up like a triptych of stained glass windows and despite the interesting association with uncle Jack, remain enigmatic and affecting works. Judy Annear chose Beauty (in wine) for her catalogue cover in 2015 because ’ a major work of national significance’.
Beauties is one of the smallest of Moffatt’s edition sizes. The series sold early and well. Only four public collections hold Beauties and only seven prints have been listed at auction since 2015 of which only two were in Australia. The majority of the prints are in private collector’s hands. I am watching the auctions all those prints will come back on the market.
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Beauty (in cream ) 1994 Beauty (in wine) 1994 Beauty (in mulberry) 1997
as shown in in the Tracey Moffatt retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney 2004
Black and white digital photographs, colour tinted during printing process 100 x 71 (image) 123 x 102 cm (sheet).
Each in an edition of 20 plus 1 artist’s proof
Mulberry may be1997. Film edges on prints of in cream and in wine show printing date of 1997 which may have led to confusion over series dates. |
Exhibited
Localities of Desire: Contemporary Art in an International World,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 21 October – 11 December 1994
The Enduring Glance: 20th Century Australian Photography from the Corrigan Collection,
Bendigo Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 22 June – 28 July 2002,
and Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland, 2002 (illustrated on the cover)
First 20 Years, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 7 February – 9 March 2002
Tracey Moffatt, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 17 December 2003 – 29 February 2004
Photography is Dead! Long live Photography!, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 23 July – 9 November 1996
Tracey Moffatt, Lismore Regional Gallery, New South Wales, 13 March – 25 April 2009.
Literature: Butler, R., and Thomas, M., 'Tracey Moffatt From Something Singular... To Something More',
Eyeline, vol. 45, Autumn – Winter 2001
Annear, J., The Photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2015,
pp. 112, 120-121 (illustrated p. 296, and illustrated cover).
Newton, Gael and Moffatt, Tracey. Tracey Moffatt. Fever Pitch. Sydney : Piper Press, 1995, pp. 20-21
King, Natalie (editor). Tracey Moffatt : my horizon. Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts: Melbourne, Victoria:
Thames & Hudson Australia, 2017, p. 125 (illustrated)
King, Natalie (editor). Tracey Moffatt : my horizon. Sydney : Australia Council for the Arts; Melbourne, Victoria : Thames & Hudson Australia, 2017, p. 125 (illustrated, another example)
Collections
Museum of New Zealand / Te Papa Tongawera (O.043081, acquired 2015)
Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (2008.223.001, acquired 2008)
State Library of New South Wales (the Cream variant, 9661569, purchased 2021
Australian Catholic University Art Collection, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne
More about Tracey Moffatt
more of Gael Newton's Essays
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