Deutscher and Hackett

What could be more contradictory than movement within a Jeffrey Smart painting? Yet, he flirts with it all the time. His focus is invariably on objects that move - trucks, motor vehicles, aeroplanes, and the signs, autostrada and ports that go with them. Stillness, however, is the chief characteristic of his art. This is part of the paradoxical appeal of Smart's art. When figures are present within his paintings, they are usually seated on standing. If they move, he freezes them in motion, as in Third Study for 'The Construction Fence'. Nevertheless, the frozen movement of the running girl is not constrained as the figure and the fence heighten awareness of each other through their harmony in supposed contrast. Immutable as the fence may be, its painterly fluidity entices movement.

In his pursuit of compositional perfection, Smart often paints several smaller studies, of which this is a typically fine example. Although they lead to a larger, more detailed painting, they are in themselves complete works. Not only are they quite individual, they are also quite different in the prominence given to motifs, such as figures, which play lesser roles on the bigger canvases. In this study for The Construction Fence the chief interest is the running girl, free and vital in her movements, highlighted in bright pink against the contrasting green. She has been identified as filmmaker Bruce Beresford's daughter (presumably Cordelia); and the green fence that which surrounded the Victorian Arts Centre on Melbourne's St Kilda Road during its construction. Ironically, the interrelationship of place and performance is masterfully realised in a theatrical moment - the outstretched arms and shallow depth of field, which could readily pass for the stage.

DAVID THOMAS