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Arts & Communication Realist art of Kenneth Jack and rural towns

Its message may include its absences, such as the absence writings can be seen as revolutionary. His writings noticed
of a visible human community and the precarious nature the openness of the period and the changes that might be
of life in small towns where services are under continual brought about. Meanwhile, socialist realism art hinted at a
threat of being merged or removed altogether when world where people did not need to pretend to be happy in
populations dwindle. Jack’s second-tier status can be seen order serve the interests of the party or state. Neither sort of
in his record sale price of US$51,334 in the year after his art is laughable really. In this study, the question in the article’s
death (2007), compared with AUD2.4 million for Drysdale title can be answered. While socialist realism presents clear
and AUD1.68 million for Boyd. Peaking a few decades after and unambiguous settings that the artist “approves of” (and
Drysdale and Boyd, Jack was unlikely to replace them in Jack meets this criterion), he is a less bitter pill to swallow
the established canon and was probably happy to operate compared with the work of an artist like Boyd as he does
in the tier to which he was assigned. Jack was only 22 years not critique such topics as the presence of white people in a
old when Boyd painted Melbourne Burning in 1946 – 1947 space where they obviously do not belong, and where they
and 21 when Drysdale painted The Drover’s Wife. He tend to interfere with existing peoples. It is not that Jack’s
took a while for his career to peak as he only became a work is unrealistic—it is very realistic in depicting certain
professional painter at the age of 39 after resigning from vistas—but rather that everything else is outside of the
Caulfield Institute of Technology. The present article also frame. Viewers can then choose their own thoughts about
suggests that there are complexities involved in using the the unseen as well as the seen.
term “ideology” arising out of the fact that it has multiple
alternative shades of meaning or usages . Acknowledgments
5
8. Conclusion None.
If negation is a more crucial feature of modern art, it is Funding
revealing what was already there—every sort of art speaks None.
to an ideal and hence negates the world as it is. Williams
92
says the following: “There has always been an awareness that Conflict of interest
to represent the world is to negate and reconstitute it. Any
one sign points beyond itself to all possible signs, any one The author declares that he has no competing interests.
picture to all possible pictures.” The dynamic of history and Author contributions
the dynamic of art are different, yet interrelated, as both are
concerned with meaning-making. Perhaps art is the history This is a single-authored article.
of the manner of this interpretation. If all types of art speak of
an ideal type, it negates the world of the present and rebuilds Ethics approval and consent to participate
it. Socialist realist art and Tolstoy have common elements: Not applicable.
If socialist realist art was laughed at by noncommunists, it
still allowed for the deconstruction of what was revealed Consent for publication
about the kind of world that needed this ideal or thought
that it did. Tolstoy’s writing opened the door on another Not applicable.
world that was in the process of negating what the Tsarist Availability of data
Russian feudal order presupposed, Tolstoy’s own world. In
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the character Levin perceives Not applicable.
93
that he needs to learn more about the emerging money
economy. Lenin picks up that Tolstoy portrayed Russia References
94
from the emancipation of the serfs (1861) up until Bloody 1. Jack K. Longreach Railway Station. Queensland: Paintings
Sunday (1905) as a revolutionary epoch. However, Tolstoy and Drawings, with an Introduction by Fred McKay C.M.G.
himself retreated behind the conservative rural socialism Bowen Hills, Brisbane: Boolarong Press; 1994. p. 76.
exemplified by the Narodniks, who resented progress. Thus, 2. Jack. Innisfail. Queensland. p. 29.
Tolstoy recognized attitudes of optimism about change
and the future that were not his own and, in that sense, his 3. Jack. An example is Innisfail. Queensland. p. 29.
4. Jack. An exception is Barrier Reef Hotel, Cairns. Queensland.
5 Foucault preferred not to use the term “ideology” That appears to depict three Aboriginal Persons. p. 18.
(or “alienation”). This can be viewed as either a strength
or weakness of his work or even as both a strength and a 5. Jack. One exception is Herberton. Queensland. p. 24.
weakness. 6. Jack. Queensland. p. 5.

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 9 doi: 10.36922/ac.3481