Jeffery Smart - Cahil Expressway

Question 1

OS

Answer 1

Jeffery Smart, a prominent modern Australian artist, is known for his impassive and contrived urban landscapes, depicting familiar subject matter of the modern world.

Question 2

Depiction of SM

Answer 2

Cahil Expressway (1962), is an inexpressive portrait depicting an inscrutable and isolated man in a bleak, urban landscape, lacking identity and purpose.

Question 3

Aesthetic qualities

Answer 3

The disposition of various geometrical forms, including the flowing, continuous line of the wall, are carefully placed to build a harmonious and somewhat balanced composition. With subsequent viewings, the painting seems to take on a deeper level complexity, with the smooth texture and untarnished appearance of the road posing as a metaphor for modernity, travel and emptiness.

Question 4

AQ 2

Answer 4

Yet, despite this compositional rigour and clarity, Smart’s work generates a sense of mystery and unknowing, with elements partially obscured from view to create starting juxtapositions of scale. The one-armed man, standing motionless and out of place, appears to be frozen in time, causing a sense of absurd to pervade this innocuous state.