Every day the Magic Realist Jack Featherstone walks up Mt Gillamatong, a couple of clicks south-west of Braidwood. Recently, when he got to the top, he found the valley was blanketed in fog: “a real pea-souper”. Jack committed the scene to memory, and so, a week later, this painting (acrylic on stone) is the result… And then…

And then, Jack always exhibits in the Canberra Show. Last weekend this painting of Mt Bendethera and Deua Valley (looking due East to Moruya over the distant mountains) took out the Reserve Champion Prize (plus a number of others along the way). Jack was well pleased.

This boomerang was once owned by Daisy Bates, and was acquired by her at Ooldea, south-east of the Spinifex Peoples‘ lands, some time in the years prior to 1935.

What makes this example distinctive is not so much its connection to Daisy Bates, but how it carries signs of a provenance of another kind. Each side has been carved in distinctively different styles, suggesting that it was owned, traded, and used by more than one desert-dwelling family long before it fell into Daisy Bates’ hands at Ooldea.

In a trade of a different kind, in 1938 Bates gave it to the Carr family in Adelaide, in return for favours rendered.

By contrast, this plastic boomerang was designed and manufactured by Frank Donnellan (“Champion Thrower”) and (apparently) marketed by Stephen Silady (“Champion”) in the 1960s.

Here is Frank giving a demonstration at the Australian Pavilion of Montreal’s Expo ‘67. (Life photo: Bob Gomel).

Neither Frank nor Steve was of Aboriginal descent.

If you search for more about Frank Donnellan, you’ll find “Moves to Boost Boomerang Throwing (But Do Aborigines Care?)” in Dawn (“A Magazine for the Aboriginal People of New South Wales”, published by the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board). In this article it becomes apparent that by the 1960s the “sport” of boomerang throwing was no longer an Aboriginal affair. Despite his best efforts (and challenges to famous Aboriginal boomerang makers) Frank could not get the Indigenous spectators to participate in his displays. Steve was already the champion.

Notwithstanding its non-Indigenous origins, the plastic boomerang carries a printed caricature of a “traditional” blackfella.

On the other side, one finds an official “Australian Made” label – complete with its own boomerang trademark – plus the moulded brand name (Derwent Plastics, the Silady family company) and the printed label which confirms its provenance, all of which contribute to a very particular cultural significance.

Material culture provides us with such clues to historical realities that would otherwise be lost to our cultural consciousness. Given that it was designed to be thrown away, how remarkable is it that this (injection-moulded) boomerang has survived intact?

By contrast, in the case of the artefact from Ooldea, I can’t tell you the maker’s name, nor am I able interpret the symbolic value of the complex imagery on either side. The plastic boomerang conveys more mundane messages about its origins. However we can but marvel that both artefacts have survived to the 21st century with this much of their provenance intact.

“Vintery, mintery, cutlery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

This Common Koel (a member of the cuckoo family) doesn’t understand our problem. Let me explain. We have learnt three crucial things about the Koel in the last few months. One is its very annoying wake-up call. The Koel migrates to Canberra in the spring time. One day it starts calling at 4.00 am and then it continues without pause for three months or so. Second, when you are finally of a mind to silence it, it becomes invisible, it resorts to its powers of ventriloquy, and continues to drill its penetrating call right through your semiconscious brainbox, from who-knows-where. Evil to the core, we suspect it uses this capacity to focus a wall of sound to drive other birds from their nests. Then (third point), in its own sneaky cuckoo way, having outsourced its rearing responsibilities to our local wattlebirds (fat baby Koel is peeping continuously in the trees in our front garden as I write this story) the mother hangs around to make sure the foster parents do the right thing! So yesterday we saw the mother in the same bush watching the wattlebirds feed her very chubby progeny. Holidays are over. Handover day is nigh. Time to collect junior.

Sociological Metaphor Tags: Anthropomorphism. Unethical Behaviour. Bad parenting. Cross-species exploitation. Excess sugar in the diet. Childhood training.

Eeek! The quiet and leafy suburbs of Adelaide are easily shocked: in this instance by this chunky 1958 Ford Edsel Citation convertible. The Edsel was produced between 1957 and 1960, and was by all accounts a bit of a flop. Its styling was judged to deliver less than it promised – and the entirely new production line intended to replace the Lincoln in the race against GM misjudged the market entirely. The addition of a dramatic vertical grill to an otherwise conventional lumpy body shape was insufficient to sustain production numbers, and the brand died. Now they’re rare. And especially in original unrestored condition like this example.

Why are collectors attracted to the last of the breed, to lemons, or to examples of 20th century design which disprove the ideology of modernity’s inexorable progress? It’s not just a matter of rarity, but also some sense of being just outside the norm, of (at last) making fun of another generation’s questionable taste and judgement. Thus this great shiny lump of steel, wide enough to seat three abreast, with huge V8 motor, which handles like the Queen Mary, even with enough gadgets to aspire to technological progress, inspires a special appreciation of conspicuous consumption and an aesthetic of excess among baby boomers.

The Ford Edsel is often cited by design historians as the archetypal instance of designers marketeers stylists getting it wrong. The timing was terrible, when the launch coincided with the onset of the 1957 recesssion. Established brands were being closed down in every direction. By the time it hit the market, there was no niche for the Edsel to fill, and so it died, at a reputed cost of $40m. Wiki claims the name itself may have contributed to its demise: “…in honor of Edsel Ford, former company president and son of Henry Ford. Marketing surveys later found the name was thought to sound like the name of a tractor (Edson) and therefore was unpopular with the public. Moreover, several consumer studies showed that people associated the name “Edsel” with “weasel” and “dead cell” (dead battery), drawing further unattractive comparisons.”

But of course we should treasure the remaining examples – especially those which have not been ruined by restoration! They teach us where we’ve been, and show us where not to go. Iconophilia thanks Tony and Olive for the photo-essay.

Iconophilia thanks Jan Luedert for these recent photographs of a 1953 Buick being reconstructed in downtown Havana. Jan writes: “the pictures where taken near Trinidad the UN World Heritage City. The shop was set up by two Cubans as a private enterprise. The interesting thing about these vehicles is the way that it represents “true sustainability” as these cars are rebuilt, recycled and always find their way back to the road. What they also do at the shop is install a more modern diesel engine so the while the chassis is old style 50s the engines are usually new and often diesel. It is incredible to watch how without a fair degree of ingenuity and with how few resources a car that would rust away in our world finds its way back to the road. Cars are mostly communal in Cuba and one hardly ever finds a car with less than five people in them.”

More paint than metal, methinks. For more background, read this piece by Tom Miller from the NYT.

But who among you doesn’t feel just a little bit guilty that we in the outside world take such perverse pleasure in observing the fact that Fidel’s Revolution has subjected his country to this technological time-warp? How pictureque is it (still) that Cuban citizens are forced to live out the historical antipathy to the U.S.A. by driving around in these decaying icons of the excesses of the decade of the 1950s? Contradictions abound in such circumstances. For example, what are we to make of this 1948 Cadillac Fleetwood snapped by The Iconophile in the back streets of Tehran in 2007? If it looks somewhat abandoned, consider (a) how difficult it would be to get spare parts these days, and (b) how much more politically incorrect it would be on the streets of Tehran than Havana?

Remember the evidenciary significance of the reflection in the eye in Twin Peaks? Well I’m not sharing the backstory here, and neither is The Sailor, whose sees all… (but please remember to turn off your flash if you wish to try this experiment at home).

…in this case from the dreaded process of “restoration”: this 1925 Bugatti Brescia Type 22, which sold recently at Bonhams, had sat on the bottom of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland for 73 years.  As the story goes:

The car was built in 1925 and registered originally to an owner in Nancy, France, then later sold to and registered by a Parisian owner. Eventually, Bonhams speculates, it wound up in the hands of a Swiss architect of Polish descent who reportedly never paid the import duties on the car. The local authorities in Ascona, where the car was stored in 1936, demanded either that the overdue monies be paid or the car destroyed — and so it was dumped in the lake, where it was eventually discovered by a diver in 1967. In 2009 that the vintage Bugatti — or what was left of it — was recovered by members of the local diving club.

The American underbidder had intended to restore it… Luckily the winner wanted to keep it as it is and paid €260,500 for the privilege.

(a) How not to lift a painting. (b) How not to transfer your DNA to a work of art. (c) How not to let the punters see how you treat their treasures…

See ArtDaily for the full catastrophe story.