Guy Warren on 'Flugelman with Wingman' | June 20, 2024 | Illawarra Mercury - video Dailymotion

Illawarra Mercury

Interview from May 17,  2017 for the Bert Flugelman 'Wry ARTificer' exhibition, Panizzi Gallery,  UOW Library.  Video via University of Wollongong Library

Transcript

00:00You probably know the story, Bertie and I, no my wife and I had dinner with Bert and

00:06Rosemary at what was then Rosemary's house at Fiery Meadow, just out of Wollongong.

00:14It was a good dinner, a good night, and they had a big round table that we were eating

00:21from, and there were a number of people around the table, and inevitably there are always

00:27some people who aren't from the art scene, and they don't always quite know what the

00:32questions are to ask, so they find questions which they hope will be sensible.

00:37And so this woman, obviously searching for a question, leant across the table and said

00:41to Bert and me, have you two ever gone in for the Archibald?

00:46And we made the usual response at the time which was, oh God no, you know, nobody goes

00:50in for that, the trustees wouldn't know a good painting if it fell on them, you know,

00:56nobody takes it seriously, and at that point maybe Bert had had a glass of wine, one glass

01:04more than I did, because he leant across the table and he suddenly said, why don't we?

01:09Why don't we?

01:10He said, tell you what, I'll challenge you, you, we'll both go in, you paint me and I'll

01:14paint you.

01:15And I said, righto Bert, okay, and then I probably forgot all about it, you see.

01:20And then a fortnight later he rang me up and said, well when do we start?

01:24I said, when do we start, what?

01:26He said, you were going to paint me and I was going to paint you, and I said, oh alright.

01:31So we started painting each other, he drew me, I drew him, he started painting me and

01:38I started painting him, pardon me, and for a long time I'd been using an image in my

01:48drawings and my paintings which was a flying figure.

01:53And the flying figure came about, first of all, oddly enough, because in 68 I'd been

02:03in New York for nine months and came back to Australia and I was offered the chance

02:10to use Arthur Boyd's property down at the Shoalhaven.

02:14This was before he'd given it to the nation.

02:17There was nobody down there except me living in this wonderful big old stone house.

02:23And working in Arthur's studio on my own, my wife used to come down at weekends, and

02:28working in the studio a big black crow, carawong, used to come down and batter itself against

02:36the skylights.

02:40I would guess probably the sky was reflected in the skylight, but I thought it was a bit

02:44odd because the studio was very small and totally self-enclosed and it was almost like

02:51being in a prison.

02:52The door didn't even look like a door, it was part of the wall.

02:56And I thought there's something odd about this.

02:58I'm imprisoned in here and here's this creature who's free to go anywhere he or she wants

03:04to go.

03:05And it's trying to batter its way into me.

03:07It's an odd idea, you know, a bit stupid.

03:10But anyway, I started drawing this winged creature.

03:15Then I went back to Jamboree, to our little hut at Jamboree, and found that hang gliders

03:22were leaping off the escarpment above me.

03:25And they too reminded me of, well, winged creatures.

03:30And I thought it was very dangerous.

03:33I thought it was more than just jumping off cliffs, it was about taking risks.

03:39It was risk-taking.

03:42It's about risk-taking.

03:45It's about...

03:48Every culture in the world seems to have, in its iconography, has flying creatures.

04:00So somehow it becomes a universal symbol.

04:04So anyway, my little winged man became about taking risks.

04:09It related to angels, if you wanted to think of that.

04:13It related to birds, if you wanted to think of that.

04:16And because I didn't...

04:18It related to Icarus, the story of Icarus, if you wanted to believe that.

04:22But I didn't want to give it a particular name.

04:25I didn't want to identify it so that other people knew what it was.

04:29So I simply called it winged man, which didn't mean anything.

04:32To me it was just winged man.

04:35So when I started painting Bert for the Hunchaboard,

04:41I thought I would...

04:43For once, I got a great likeness, just a very good likeness,

04:48and it came off, just sailed off my brushes, I don't know how.

04:56And I wanted an image which related to Bert,

05:00and I thought, well, if I put the winged man in, it's about taking risks.

05:04Now, Bertie was about taking risks.

05:06He took risks all his life.

05:08He sometimes fell flat on his face, but he'd pick himself up

05:13and he'd keep going again.

05:16That was about that.

05:18So I thought, I'll do that.

05:20And this is where it gets really weird,

05:22because at that point, when I was just...

05:26I painted the little winged man in fairly small.

05:29Suddenly, for the first time in my life,

05:31it had never occurred to me before that Bert's name, Flugelmann,

05:35is a German translation which means winged man.

05:38Now, that made the hair stand up at the back of the neck.

05:41That really did. That was weird.

05:43So I painted the little one out and I painted them in again quite large

05:46so that the wings come right behind Bert.

05:50So they either could belong to Bert or they could belong to my winged man.

05:54And for once that year,

05:58the judges for the Archibald had a total change of heart

06:02and for once they made an incredibly intelligent, perceptive decision.

06:07And good for them.

06:10It wasn't worth as much as it is now,

06:13but it was a nice thing to win.

06:16I think the best comment made about it

06:20was made by Terence Malone,

06:23who was the art critic on the Herald in those days.

06:26And Terence reviewed the Archibald

06:29and he said it wasn't so much a portrait of a friend,

06:36more it was a portrait of friendship.

06:39It was a painting of friendship.

06:41And I thought that was a nice thing to say,

06:44a very perceptive thing to say.

06:47And how did Bert's portrait of you go?

06:50It didn't get into the Archibald.

06:53I don't know what happened to it.

06:55I think there were drawings from it somewhere.

06:59And Bert was overseas when it was announced.

07:05So he learnt about it, I think, when he was in London.

07:09He did say to me once later

07:11that he thought he got more publicity out of that win than I ever did.

07:15Which delighted me too.

Guy Warren on 'Flugelman with Wingman' | June 20, 2024 | Illawarra Mercury

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