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The Life and Work of Godfrey Clive Miller, 1893 - 1964
PhD thesis by Ann Wookey
Conclusion (link to notes)
Miller’s career as an artist spanned around forty-five years, comprising three quite separate phases. During the first two of these he moved from being a talented painter of naturalistic persuasion to a fully-fledged Modernist. The representational mode of Miller’s earliest paintings is almost naturalistic, verging on the Impressionist. There is also little, if any, conscious use of organisational structures, and a limited palette that tends towards the monochromal. These factors characterise the pictures of the 1920s, most of which were done in Australia. Miller himself specified monochrome and sepia as significant for his progress at that time. In so doing, he acknowledged an early involvement with a late-nineteenth century artistic concern. This was the representation of the natural effects of light and so shade and depth upon the canvas. Miller’s painting techniques at the time drew on his direct visual experiences moderated by an understanding of tonal painting practices. Theorists important to him then were Ruskin with Modern Painters and The Elements of Drawing, Solomon with The Practice of Oil Painting and most probably Rood with Modern Chromatics 1. As would be so in other periods the practices of fellow artists were also significant for his development.
The early transitional pictures are either Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist inspired in their imagery and still verging on the naturalistic; or they are marked by the appearance of Modernist form veering towards the abstract and characterised by a non-schematic planar quality. A compositional matrix is generally present. However, in the more representational paintings these matrices are not evident to the eye. These two painting modes can be dated from the very late 1920s into the mid-1930s. Late transitional pictures are marked by non-representational form abstracted from naturalistic appearances. Generally the imagery and a schematic design matrix have been integrated together onto the picture surface. These matrices are thus quite apparent to the eye. However, occasionally no obvious structural matrix is evident and other characteristics then mark the picture as late transitional. The first structures of this phase seem to be a progression from the earliest transitional treatments into more regular and refined matrices based on variations around the golden section ratio. Dynamic symmetry matrices also made their appearance now as dominant structural motif, but often in a clumsy, unresolved manner. There are other canvases organised into regular rectangular divisions that in themselves are a dynamic symmetry ratio. The major theoretical source for these matrices was Ghyka. This late transitional phase is datable to the mid-1930s into the early-1940s. Miller’s outstanding achievement for colour during the 1930s was to disengage it from form, thus making it an independent artistic element capable of carrying symbolic meaning. Cézanne and other Modernist painters since the late nineteenth century were influential here. This achievement by Miller followed on his experimenting with alternative colour treatments through his pictures. In the early 1930s he continued with tonal painting. However, a new interest in contrast harmonies accompanied this. He also turned to the painting of local colour moderated by the action of light. Effectively, Miller now tempered his reliance on visual experience and knowledge of earlier painting technique with a newly acquired appreciation of nineteenth century scientific theories of coloured light and the colour practices these spawned. The theoretical influence was arguably Rood once more, but re-examined in the light of Miller’s exposure to European Impressionist, Neo-Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Consequent to this enhanced understanding of colour-light theory and contemporary pictorial colour practices came the maturing of his own colour method. It was then that colour became an independent artistic element. Rood arguably remained the major theoretical source since Rood’s recommendations about satisfactory colour combinations, as pairs, triads, etc, appear in Miller’s work from the latter half of the 1930s.
The mature paintings remain non-representational abstractions from naturalistic appearance. However, they became far more symbolic in nature. This took place by way of their increasingly refined schematic grids derived from dynamic symmetry theory and Miller’s recourse to Anthroposophical colour. The major part of Miller’s œuvre falls into this period. From around 1942 to 1953 has been attributed the early mature phase and from about 1952, the late mature years. The primary theoretical influences were Ghyka again and Steiner. Once more there are paintings marked by the absence of any evident matrix of major design significance. Miller’s assimilation in about 1940 of the symbolic approach to colour taught by Steiner heralded this final phase. Steiner’s colour system draws on Goethe’s colour theory where the colours derive out of light and darkness. From there, Steiner attributed them psychological and spiritual values. Consequently a new conjunction of colours entered Miller’s repertoire while a previously deployed set took on altered significance. Evident also in this early mature phase is a pronounced tendency towards full prismatic colour representation [although subservient to a more major colour set at times]. This was important to Miller as one means of conveying the Monist metaphysic of unity, which he had accepted as life principle during the 1930s. Although Miller’s introduction to Anthroposophical colour theory certainly inspired his colour practices of the 1940s and later, Modernist practices and the tradition stemming from Rood remained his artistic imperative. This commingling of divergent theoretical bases continued into Miller’s final years where canvases in which his achievement of ‘tone colour existence’ are to be recognised. These pictures provide an apparent sharp contrast to his colour paintings “after Steiner” because they revert to colour more closely reflective of nature. “Apparent” is used with specific intent. A major concern for Miller in his late paintings was the portrayal of light. On first impression the aim parallels that of his earliest Melbourne period. However, his aspirations had been significantly broadened beyond that of representing light as seen. Involved during these later years was the portrayal of inner light and colour which Miller had come to believe endowed all reality and experience. These, inner light and colour, had their source in the spiritual life. Miller’s “spiritual” colour coincided essentially with the hues of nature but adjusted, importantly, to the necessities of Modernist artistic practice. Consequently his late colours are most often more fully saturated than is normally perceived for the world around, and of heightened luminosity. In any one painting, therefore, the colours tend to be both more high-keyed [light] and low-keyed [dark] than that of our surroundings. A play with high and low-keyed colour values is also evident across each surface. Miller thus re-introduced tonal contrast harmony into his late canvases. It is in this sense that his words, ‘tone colour existence’, are to be understood. The natural alliance between tonal contrast and drawing, at least when traditional monochromal mediums like pencil, charcoal or chalk are in play, accounts for Miller’s accordance of the “science of drawing” a significant place in this, his final period as a painter.
The meaning Miller intended for his paintings is admirably captured by these words from the late-1930s:
One must sway with the sway of Life, rise and decline with the Life motion . . . [T]he seemingly dead stick of the creeper stem on a brick wall, the bursting of the magnolia, the sprouting frond from the seed the cherry orchard opening into its spring blossoming have in them what we humans have but little of. They are unfolding, blossoming, participating into Life 2.
Life and creation fascinated Miller. Not only that, but from around 1936 onwards the unity metaphysic entailed became the underlying theme for most, if not all, of his work. However, any straightforward rendition cannot be claimed ever to have been painted. Miller chose instead to express his subject by way of symbolic correspondences established between ideas, experiences and objects painted. Moreover, correspondence of meaning runs across his various genres. To recall, these include the still life, landscape-with-figures, reclining nude, landscape and religious subjects quite traditional to the nineteenth century. Then there are the cityscape and “everyday” still life themes that were increasingly favoured in Western painting as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries progressed. Lastly, there are abstracts, that special contribution to the Western art tradition from twentieth century artists. Miller viewed the creative principle essentially as an aspect of the spiritual in life. Those two human experiences, creative activity and the welfare of the spirit, almost fully occupied his every day. His own experience of life, therefore, is what his pictures convey.
A quotation from John Fowler’s closing passage to A Maggot is surely an appropriate epitaph for this most enigmatic and mystical of artists:
Like all mystics . . . he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tense grammar does not allow, the imaginary present 3.