Frank Greenall: The people want what they want

Frank Greenall

ONCE more, the people have spoken. Or at least some of the people have spoken. This election was no exception to typically poor local body voter turnout.

Various forms of so-called democracy have been floating around for a few millennia and, along the way, the will of the demos (the people) has thrown up some pretty kooky choices.

Window displays along Victoria Ave provide good, free entertainment. Right up there are the delicately eclectic arrangements at Antique Affaire, usually featuring items of popular fashion and cultural artefacts from the middle of last century.

There may not be one there at the moment, but if there was a copy of artist Vladimir Tretchikoff's famous painting Chinese Girl, sometimes known as the Green Lady, it would blend perfectly with the general time capsule of the window. The ambiguity of her expression, and the outlandishness of her tinted face and heavily rouged lips, created a minor sensation in its time.

Tretchikoff was often derided by the art establishment as King of Kitsch but, at his peak, his work was far and away the people's choice. His print sales were stratospheric, and attendances at his exhibitions rivalled those at major sporting events.

The hard-up garret dwellers of the highbrow art world gnashed their teeth as a chortling Tretchikoff wheeled barrowloads of loot to the bank.

His works, mainly featuring Far Eastern motifs, brought a touch of the exotic to many a drab, post-World War II living room. As prints, their affordability meant the average punter was able to commandeer his very own work of art, to be given pride of place over the mantelpiece.

Tretchikoff images of the likes of the brooding Chinese Girl, and Miss Wong and Balinese Girl imprinted themselves on many an impressionable mind back in the 1950s and '60s; a rare portal into a world far from traditional landscapes and hackneyed classical themes.

His main market was in Britain, but other Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were equally enthusiastic.

Tretchikoff was himself a rather exotic product. His family belonged to a Russian Christian sect based in Siberia, and his hometown, Petropavlovsk, was known for its "skins, lard, trunks, rams, bankruptcies, fortunes, oriental robes and facilities for scouring wool and washing intestines".

The aftermath of the Russian civil war forced the Tretchikoffs into Manchuria, and Vladimir moved on to Shanghai, then Singapore, working as a commercial artist. Narrowly eluding capture after Singapore's fall to the Japanese in 1942, he washed up in Indonesia, where he could paint themes of choice.

His wife and daughter had earlier been evacuated to South Africa, and he joined them in 1946.

Tretchikoff's career blossomed.

He was a new sensation. When conventional galleries refused to show his somewhat offbeat works, he arranged exhibitions with major department store chains.

An American tour of his works regularly attracted visitors of up to 60,000. An exhibition in Victoria, Canada, drew a quarter of the city's total population.

In Seattle, his show was next to a gallery featuring originals by Picasso, de Chirico, Rivera, Rothko and Klee. The lengthy queues for the Tretchikoff exhibition snaked past the near-empty gallery with the Picassos.

Tretchikoff sold well more than half a million Chinese Girl prints alone, leaving sales of such iconic works as Van Gogh's Sunflowers in his dust.

He was the people's choice and, like local body election results, for better or worse, you can't really argue with it.

Our people's choice for new mayor won Mastermind some years back with David Bowie as his specialist topic. Bowie once said that if he could own any painting in the world, it would be the original Chinese Girl.

Growing up, a print of it had hung over the fireplace in his family home in London, and perhaps his 1983 hit China Girl derived from it.

Tretchikoff's girl got around big-time.