Johnny Bell

b. 1938

South-East Australia

As the“Swinging Sixties”rippled towards Australia, Margaret Jones - the legendary pioneering female journalist wrote a feature for the Sun Herald about what she described as “a minor miracle”. “Collectors queued for six hours before the Barry Stern Galleries in Paddington opened,”Jones explained in 1962 about an unprecedented exhibition by a debut solo artist. In the first hour alone, £2000 worth of the young artist’s paintings had sold - $120,000 in today’s money. Buyers sought to toast the celebrity artist, but he wasn’t there. He was at home in East Sydney’s notorious red-light district with his young wife and son. Before the official opening, however, the young Johnny Bell, 24, then seen as the future of Australian art and a rival to his contemporary, Brett Whiteley, had been spied prowling uneasily amid the chaos. Lady Mary Fairfax purchased the exhibition’s massive tour de force, Mardi Gras, and for the rest of her life it hung in the Southern Highlands retreat she shared with her husband, Sir Warwick(then patriarch of the Fairfax newspaper empire). Perhaps no young Australian artist has ever shone so brightly, then turned their back on fame and fortune at the height of their celebrity as Bell did - apart from Ian Fairweather, “the hermit of Bribie Island” with whom he has often been compared. And yes, with the artistic world at his feet, he admits, that he“disappeared”. A dramatic, well-publicised falling out with his former friend, Barry Stern, meant he never committed to a commercial gallery again. Over the intervening years, Johnny’s lived in squats and strange places including under a ledge with an overhang where I could keep his stuff dry. He took refuge there on the sandstone cliffs of La Perouse, off and on, for 30 years. Yes, there were undiagnosed mental issues, from the age of four. Johnny says that he never regarded them as breakdowns, but creative episodes that were sometimes terrifying and sometimes great.What saved him he believes, was that he always avoided psychiatrist. Today, at 87, Johnny still paints or draws most days, scraping by from week to week on his pension, exhibiting occasionally, and is the proud grandfather of ten. The young man who in his 20s looked for all the world like a thin-faced Modigliani portrait is still handsome, sporting a wispy beard borrowed from a Fu Manchu movie. Hidden amongst his possessions are scores of sketch books awaiting to be assigned; diaries full of phrases learnt in Indonesia, Timor Leste, and Aboriginal Australia; and smaller paintings which speak to a lifelong love of dancing and sexual encounters. © Steve Meacham

Exhibitions

Let's Dance!December 2024