The agony and the ecstasy: Capturing beauty when all is falling apart
Michael Zavros explores angst in the most exquisite fashion in his latest exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries.
When attending an exhibition by Michael Zavros I’m always reminded of a line from John Keats. The opening line from his poem Endymion, actually: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
Because the works of Michael Zavros are so often beautiful, beyond words. But here’s the rub … beauty fades and ennui and entropy rule. Zavros is only too aware of this and that makes his oeuvre all the more interesting.
He paints beauty, well aware that things decay and keenly aware of his own mortality and the fragility of the world, a world where, according to W.B. Yeats: “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
That is part of a stanza of Yeats’ verse that introduces the catalogue to Zavros’s latest exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries. The exhibition is called Things Fall Apart – just in case we can’t read the subtext of his exquisite paintings.
Some people can’t, don’t or won’t, notes Zavros as we wander in the gallery. And that’s okay. But for those who want to go deeper there is another philosophical level to his gorgeous paintings. In Things Fall Apart Zarvos turns his aesthetic eye once again to the beautiful poignancy of natural decay and failure.
In these paintings he finds beauty in the irrevocable march of time, echoed in the way that things change over time.
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Take, for example, a large-scale photograph that is an outlier in this show. It’s called Stardust and features the artist’s son, Leo, looking spiffy sitting in the back of a Rolls Royce. Zavros is well known for his love of luxury brands and has collaborated with Rolls Royce at times, including for this photo. The story behind it is mysterious – there’s a present on the other seat and Leo is looking a tad wan.
So, we can make up out own story about what’s going on. It’s a lovely testament to family but also a moment that is now lost as Leo grows up. Yet here he is lovingly frozen in time by his father.
The Zavros children have long been subject matter and there are a couple of pieces in this show featuring eldest daughter Phoebe (Olympia is the younger), who is now studying art history at university. It’s an arty household and Zavros’s wife Alison Kubler is a well-known curator, arts writer and editor.
This might be the end of Phoebe’s run as a collaborative muse, Zavros tells us. She may have grown out of it. There are a couple of smaller paintings of Leo, too, who might now be his focus.
These family portraits are poignant and express Zavros’s love of family and his anxiety about the world they are entering.
‘I am exploring the tension that exists between the perfection in my painting amid this groundswell of global and personal change’
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The first painting I see, however, when I enter the gallery is called Poseidon and features a fallen Ionic column on the beach, where the sky meets the sand. Zavros is a Gold Coaster originally and of Greek heritage, so both these aspects meld in this stunning work that hints at his larger themes.
There are floral works and some sculptures, too, including a lovely little bronze hare, which is a nod to Albrecht Durer’s Young Hare.
Circling back to the title of the show, it works without understanding the reference. But as well as referring to a line in the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, Zavros refers to African writer Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, which was in turn inspired by Yeats.
The literary and philosophical allusions abound as Zavros confronts issues in his work.
“Many of the constants in my life are shifting,” Zavros says. “I am exploring the tension that exists between the perfection in my painting amid this groundswell of global and personal change.”
This is Zavros’s seventh exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries and his first in Queensland since his survey, The Favourite, entranced audiences at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art in 2023.
It’s an exhibition to be savoured for the aesthetic beauty, but it’s all the richer when you dig a little. In his titles and subjects Zavros tells us what he is thinking and feeling while distracting us almost with the beauty of it all.
Michael Zavros: Things Fall Apart continues at Philip Bacon Galleries, Fortitude Valley, until November 8.