Imaging The Apple

16 August – 3 September 2004

Curated by John R. Neeson

images

Dale Hickey, Apple, 2003

David Keeling, Apple On A Tree, 2003

Elissa Sadgrove, Untitled, 2003

Elizabeth Gower, Apple, 2004

Euan MacLeod, Head of Orpheus, 2003

Greg Creek, Untitled, 2003

Guy Stuart, November Apple, 2003

Janenne Eaton, Red Delicious Red, 2003

Janina Green, Apple and Hand Photographed By Candlelight, 2003

Jenny Watson, The Apple of My Eye, 2003

John Kelly, Apples, 2003

John R Neeson, Snow White, 2003/4

Jon Campbell, Golden Delicious, 2003

Juan Ford, Baconesque, 2003

Julia Ciccarone, Seed, 2003

Lesely Dumbrell, Pink Lady, 2003

Lewis Miller, Unitled, 2003

Lily Hibberd, Milktooth, 2003

Margaret Olley, Apple With Glass, 2003

Mary Lou Pavlovich, The Apple and The Worm, 2003

Maryanne Coutts, Apple, 2003

Nat and Ali, French Apple Tart - $5.50 Per Slice From Gallery Bistro, 2004

Pat Brassington, Apple Royale, 2003

Peter Burke, Big Apple, 2003

Philip Hunter, She’ll Be, 2003

Sadie Chandler, Still Life With Apple, 2003

Stephen Bush, Monkshood, 2003

Stewart MacFarlane, The Green Apple, 2003

Sue Ford, Possible Golden Apple, 2003

Tim McMonagle, Untitled, 2003

Tom Alberts, Apple, 2004

Vera Moller, Colette, 2003

Essay

Imaging the Apple / William Tell

Imaging the Apple is a show (a gig) in which thirty-three artists consolidate their vision, play or take 12 inch (30 centimetre square) pictorial chances.

In the jargon of American jazz musicians a gig was an 'apple', and a gig in New York City the big apple. A jazz interpretation of a standard or popular tune (in itself as iconic as an apple) takes advantage of the listener's familiarity with the melody to elucidate improvisation. Visual artists often do the same, choosing an apparently mundane image and finding pictorial associations with it, the matching rational or (in the tradition of Dada and Surrealism) paradoxical.

In 1968 the Beatles were prompted by similar associations using words and absurdist humour (John Lennon and George Martin both fans of the Goons radio show) to name their recording and business corporation (i.e. corp) Apple. The word in turn illustrated with an image. The printed label on the A side of an Apple 12 or 7 inch vinyl disk, is an emblematic green apple. While the B side (backside perhaps) label is a visual pun. The apple is cut exactly in half, presented as a flat symbol, the core (the turntable spindle hole) surrounded by the white flesh of the fruit.

The second late 20th century product marketed with the work and apple symbol was the Macintosh computer. The association of product and name equally absurd, the apple to the computer what the potato is to the vacuum cleaner. The branding again the result of word, rather than functional, association.

There are many thousands of apple varieties, but a limited number are grown commercially worldwide. McIntosh is a popular variety of apple in North America and Canada. As are varieties less common in this country, Lodi, Macoun, Maiden Blush, Monroe, Northern Spy, Rambo and Stayman Winesap. Intriguing names that conjure up an alternative set of image associations to those in this exhibition as well as possible marketing strategies.

The iconic Mac Apple appears to have a piece removed (a bite taken out of it). The capacity of a computer system to store data is measured in multiples of the unit, bit, eight of which constitute a byte. The Macintosh apple symbol is a visual interpretation of this pun, and coincidentally, a common misinterpretation of Genesis, chapter three, in the Old Testament of the Bible.

In the Garden of Eden, Eve and Adam were forbidden to eat a generic fruit. The apple wasn't specifically implicated in their fall from grace. But the apple came to represent dangerous temptation, (shades of Snow White) disobediance and clandestine pleasures of the flesh.

Michelangelo's representation of the Eden incident at the Sistine Chapel is an orthodox illustration of the story. The fruit unspecific, obscured in the hands of the protagonists. Jan Van Eyck, in the Ghent Altar Piece, reveals the fruit in Eve's hand, it resembles a spherical liturgical object fashioned in gold.

In a 1504 engraving, Albrecht Durer was initially circumspect of identifying the fruit proffered to Adam, which is partially within the serpent's mouth. Less so a second, distinctly an apple, his mate has lined up for delivery in her left hand but hidden from Adam's view. However, three years later the identity of the accused is revealed. Durer paints Adam carrying the branch of an apple tree, complete with strategically placed foliage and a succulent fruit.

A second legend that accounts for New York being called 'the big apple' dates from the 19th century, when the city was the location of a particularly high class bordello. An establishment presided over by a French woman, Eve, who had the best 'apples' in town. Women like 'Ida, sweet as apple cider'2.

Le fils de l'homme (The son of man) is Rene Magritte's painting with biblical sources for both its title and iconography. It is also an image that has been absorbed into the contemporary visual milieu through the ubiquitous poster stall. And the appearance of multiples of Magritte's symbol of urban conformity, the bowler hatted business man, in the revised version of the film 'The Thomas Crown Affair'.

Magritte's painting is a convolution of metaphor and social comment that raises repetitive speculation in the observer.Perhaps it's a self portrait, a substitute for a mirror, we can all be tempted into impersonal conformity? Is Magritte acknowledging the doyen of European apple painters Paul Cezanne? Cezanne wrote of painting portraits of fruit which, through their perfume, disclose experiences prior to their capture in a studio still life.

Obviously the Still Life is where the images of apples are to be expected.And they have appeared within that genre at lease since Romans (to Pliny's chagrin) painted images of transparent bowls of fruit on the walls of villas.

Between the fifteen and seventeen hundreds the wealthy burghers and merchants of northern Europe paid handsomely for the apples in their still lives. These works documented the abundance of their larders and tables, the raw ingredients for both simple meals and culinary spectaculars.

In the most opulent and Rococo of these arrangements, the apple, while adding magnificent colour, looks demure against the Egyptian violet of transparent skinned plums, ripe and split. Burst pomegranates and figs, exposing crimson interiors and peaches of which Rubens would be proud. Then occasionally in a less cloying morass, a scull, a protestant warning against worldly sin.For on these tables a dangerous red apple is well camouflaged.

The word apple does appear eight times in the Bible (but the only association between it and Adam, is in the throat of the human male). Four of the eight biblical references are in the phrase 'the apple of my eye'. Now a colloquialism, along with 'One bad apple can ruin the whole barrel', 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' and the local, 'She'll be Apples'.

Apples are believed to have originated around the Caucuses as what we know today as crab apples. To the ancient Greeks apples symbolised love. Roman armies were responsible for spreading the apple throughout Europe, and in turn, the British to their colonies.

The apple arrived in this country with the first fleet and by the late 1860's Australia had it's own variety, the Granny Smith. A popular fruit along with the Red Delicious, Jonathan, Braeburn, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Gala and Bonza.

Of course, Australia also has an island state, in the past referred to (by people who didn't live there) as the 'apple isle', because of the tonnage of the fruit it produced. And by remarkable coincidence, on a map, its tapering shape resembles the silhouette of a Red Delicious. In another, distinctly local, humorous word association, Hobart's 1930's football hero was Len 'Apples' Pye.

Why America claimed the apple pie as the definitive symbol of home and hearth is understood (if not totally relinquished) in a country with the same culinary root stock. Dishes featuring the plentiful, versatile and relatively inexpensive apple are frequent in everyday Australian food.And the dessert, common to acres of restaurant menus in Melbourne, the Taranto 'Mela Proibita', cannot be excluded from the list.

In Australian magazines, cooking editors and food stylists, continually present variations of the classic apple dishes, some adapted from other cultures and times. For example a recipe for apple meringue, adapted from Mrs Beeton's Apple Snow. In the original she recommends green apples like Bramley or Newton Wonder. A variety that further immortalises Sir Isaac's definitive postulations on gravity, prompted by observing apples fall to earth.

John R. Neeson

1. Born William

2. Composed by Phillip Horne October 4, 1838. Why is New York City called 'The Big Apple?', http/salwen.com/apple.htmlhttp/salwen.com/apple.html

Invitation

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