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Norman Lindsay

Australian artist (1879-1969)

Norman Alfred William Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, etcher, sculptor, writer, art critic, novelist, cartoonist and amateur boxer. One of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, Lindsay attracted both acclaim and controversy for his works, many of which infused the Australian landscape with erotic pagan elements and were deemed by his critics to be ungodly and degenerate. Apart from his creative output, Lindsay was known for his larrikin attitudes and personal libertine philosophy, as well as his battles with what he termed "wowserism".

If anyone assumes that going one's own way is the easy way, they are very much in error. There's no harder way to go.

Quotes

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  • The moral value of the Image in Art must consist in its power to arouse a conviction of Beauty.
    If a conviction of Beauty is aroused, all images of Passion and Action allied to it will become vitalized.
    Vitality in a work of Art thus becomes a communicable element in mind, and so fulfils its function of stimulating vitality in Life.
    • "The Sex Synonym in Art", in Vision (May 1923), p. 22
  • [N]o statement of a value in Art can have authority till the Art itself has forced that valuation on Life.
  • [U]nder the present condition of muddle in Mind-valuations, we must accept the accident a geographical isolation, and label our poetry "Australian."
    Beyond that, we have no concern for these variations in degree of rock and mud which pass for national distinctions on earth. Our valuation is one of Mind only, which disregards localisations in Time and Space, and which alone can become the symbol of a value in eternity.
  • The efforts of all common humanity are directed to one end — to make existence less difficult. To this end those rules of conduct that pass for morality also tend.
  • At its highest, where does one find man’s effort trend away from the struggle for existence?
    In Creative Art.
    Therefore, in Creative art one must find the direction of Life.
    A statement so intrinsically aristocratic must be repudiated by all common minds.
    That is understood.
  • If there is any man today who believes that the object of the eternal struggle for existence will evolve a higher type, an aristocracy of class, nation or race, that man has failed to read the history of mankind. In other words, he is a hopeless optimist.
  • It is essential to effort that existence should be hard, painful and uncertain. It is essential that the struggle should endure, for it is by the struggle man develops. If it ceased, and life became perfect — effort would cease; Life would cease.
    For Life is effort.
  • Sex is not only the basis of life, it is the reason for life.
  • In the art of biography, the idolator is just as objectionable as the debunker.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), p. viii
  • It has been, up to this, Britain’s job to push civilized conditions into the earth’s crude spaces, and a lot of wowseristic Bible-thumping Boer farmers were only obstructing a Roman occupation of the earth’s surface.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), p. 17
  • I never indulge sentiment over broken friendships. We have extracted all we need from a friend, and so get rid of him on the same terms as he gets rid of us.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), p. 53
  • Words are cheap currency, but coin of the realm has the sincerity on it.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), 57
  • Livingstone Hopkins had an infirmity common to most professional humorists; in himself, he was quite humourless.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), 96
  • They were a bloodthirsty lot, those sentimentalists who wept for the sad lot of the working classes.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), 96
  • The best love affairs are those we never had.
    • Bohemians of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1965), 145
  • Oh, no, no, no! Couldn't think of it. It's a very dangerous book. Had a very bad influence.
    • On being asked to illustrate the Bible. Quoted by John Hetherington, Australian Painters (Melbourne, 1963), p. 15
  • There is something extremely disgusting in having one's work pawed by policemen.
    • Interview with Kenneth Slessor, printed in Douglas Stewart, A Man of Sydney (Melbourne, 1977), p. 163
  • The peculiar rigidity of the English mind is seen at its noblest in the Times literary supplement.
    • Interview with Kenneth Slessor, printed in Douglas Stewart, A Man of Sydney (Melbourne, 1977), p. 164
  • If I didn’t escape at intervals with straws in my hair and commit a thoroughly idiotic, irresponsible and undignified piece of foolery, such as having a newspaper row with a politician over the banning of Redheap, for instance, I should have no other resource but to take myself seriously as an artist, and perish in a just conviction of ignominy.
    • Interview with Kenneth Slessor, printed in Douglas Stewart, A Man of Sydney (Melbourne, 1977), p. 165
  • A man’s self-respect is curiously involved with his ability to force a community to disburse certain sums of money for his maintenance and diversion. I have done thirty years of journalism, including jam-labels and inducements to use hair-restorers, and my conscience is undisturbed.
    • Interview with Kenneth Slessor, printed in Douglas Stewart, A Man of Sydney (Melbourne, 1977), p. 170
  • If anyone assumes that going one's own way is the easy way, they are very much in error. There's no harder way to go.
  • A writer who presents men and women as creatures truncated below the waist is exposed as one who goes about without his trousers saying, 'see, I have had my testicles removed.'
  • I am fanatic enough to believe that my thought is something the world needs.

The Magic Pudding (1918)

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  • Whiskers alone are bad enough
    Attached to faces coarse and rough
    But how much greater their offence is
    When stuck on Uncles' countenances
    • First Slice
  • Take my advice, don't carry bags,
    For bags are just as bad as swags;
      They're never made to measure.
    To see the world, your simple trick
    Is but to take a walking-stick—
      Assume an air of pleasure,
    And tell the people near and far
    You stroll about because you are
      A Gentleman of Leisure.
    • First Slice
  • [H]e was a very well-bred young fellow, polite in his manners, graceful in his attitudes, and able to converse on a great variety of subjects, having read all the best Australian poets.
    • First Slice
  • Bill was a small man with a large hat, a beard half as large as his hat, and feet half as large as his beard. Sam Sawnoff's feet were sitting down and his body was standing up, because his feet were so short and his body so long that he had to do both together.
    • First Slice
  • One was a Possum, with one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowl-yard.
    • First Slice
  • After that they had boiled jam roll and apple dumpling, as the fancy took them, for if you wanted a change of food from the Puddin', all you had to do was to whistle twice and turn the basin round.
    • First Slice
  • O, who would be a puddin',
      A puddin' in a pot,
    A puddin' which is stood on
      A fire which is hot?
    O sad indeed the lot
    Of puddin's in a pot.
    • First Slice
  • "Very well sung, Albert," said Bill encouragingly, "though you're a trifle husky in your undertones, which is no doubt due to the gravy in your innards."
    • First Slice
  • O Caribbee! O Barbaree!
    O shores of South Amerikee!
    O, never go there: if the truth be told,
    You'll get more kicks than Spanish gold.
    • First Slice ("Spanish Gold")
  • "Whiskers in the Puddin' is worse than puddin' in the whiskers," shouted the Puddin', standing up in his basin.
    • Second Slice
  • "You ain't got any tobacco," he said scornfully to Bunyip Bluegum. "I can see that at a glance. You're one of the non-smoking sort, all fur and feathers."
    • Second Slice
  • Bill, of course, treated this conduct with silent contempt. It was his rule through life, he said, never to fight people with beaks.
    • Third Slice
  • But at this season puddin' thieves generally go south-east, owing to the price of onions.
    • Third Slice
  • "Thank you," said the Mayor, peevishly; " but, on the whole, I prefer to be restored with peeled bananas."
    • Fourth Slice
  • Let your conduct be noble, and never sing the National Anthem to people wearing bell-toppers.
    • Fourth Slice
  • Well, if this ain't enough to dumbfound a codfish.
    • Fourth Slice
  • Don't you know that nothin' gives a man greater remorse than havin' his face punched, his toes trod on, and eggs rubbed in his hair?
    • Fourth Slice
  • Oh, rolling round the ocean,
      From a far and foreign land,
    May suit the common notion
      That a sailor's life is grand.
    But as for me, I'd sooner be
      A roaring here at home
    About the rolling, roaring life
      Of them that sails the foam.
    For the homeward-bounder's chorus,
      Which he roars across the foam,
    Is all about chucking a sailor's life,
      And settling down at home.
    Home, home, home,
      That's the song of them that roam,
    The song of the roaring, rolling sea
      Is all about rolling home.
    • Fourth Slice ("The Salt Junk Sarah")

Quotes about Lindsay

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  • These are faithful and loving studies of the model in which the breasts and thighs are as individual and eloquent as the faces, and every part of the body thinks, feels and speaks.
    • A. D. Hope, Norman Lindsay: Pencil Drawings (Angus & Robertson, 1969), Introduction

See also

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Wikipedia
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