Angry Penguins started as an art and literary journal -at first based in Adelaide, which after 2 years moved to Melbourne- founded in 1940 by surrealist poet Max Harris. The reason for the move was Harris’ involvement with the Heide Circle. (Imagine it like Charles’ and Marie-Laure’s de Noailles Villa, but in Australia)
The title is derived from a phrase in Harris' poem "Mithridatum of Despair":
"We know no mithridatum of despair
as drunks, the angry penguins of the night,
straddling the cobbles of the square
tying a shoelace by fogged lamplight."
The Angry Penguins later became linked to and inspired an art movement of the same name. Their goal was to bring Avant-Garde concepts into Australian art and literature while integrating Australia into the wider international modernist movement.
However, the Angry Penguins gained notoriety after falling victim to a famous literary hoax. That brings us to:
THE ERN MALLEY HOAX
The Ern Malley hoax, also known as the Ern Malley affair, is Australia’s most famous literary deception. It takes its name from Ernest Lalor “Ern” Malley, a fictional poet whose life story and body of work were fabricated in a single day in 1943 by conservative writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart. Their goal was to deceive the Angry Penguins, and prove that the journal would publish anything non-traditional and psedo-modern.
Imitating the modernist poetry they despised, the hoaxers deliberately created what they considered bad verse and sent sixteen poems to Harris under the pseudonym of Ethel, Ern Malley’s supposed sister. Harris and his peers in the Heide Circle were captivated by the work, believing Malley to be a literary genius. Enthralled, they dedicated the next issue of Angry Penguins to him, celebrating his supposed brilliance.
Ironically, the Ern Malley poems have outlived their creators' intentions, gaining a cult following and enduring as significant works in Australian literature and are now more widely read than those of his creators! The affair has since inspired major writers and artists, including Peter Carey and Sidney Nolan.
SUNDAY REED + JOHN REED + SIDNEY NOLAN
In 1934, Sunday and John Reed purchased a former dairy farm on the Yarra River in Heidelberg, Victoria, which became known as "Heide." Passionate about the arts, they supported various creative fields, including jazz, poetry, and literature.
Throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Heide became a gathering place for modernist artists, many of whom lived and worked there. Some of the most iconic artworks of the era were created at Heide, and the group of artists who frequented the property became known as the “Heide Circle”.
The couple met Sidney Nolan in 1938 and immediately saw his potential. They invited him to stay with them at Heide, where he created almost all of his -now famous- Ned Kelly series on the dining room table of the house. He said that those “angry, violent pictures” were inspired by the complicated and emotional events of his life with the Reeds.
John Reed broke Sidney’s marriage with Elizabeth Paterson after telling her that she was ruining her husband’s future career.
After that, Sidney Nolan had lived in a ménage à trois with the Reeds for several years.
When Nolan was -initially- torn between poetry and painting, Sunday, who was certain he was meant to be a painter, helped him choose. She gave him paints and paper, read to him in French, and asked him to paint or write what he felt. It was Sunday, too, who encouraged Nolan’s reading habits and cultivated his thinking. Comparing his initial letters to the Reeds to the ones just before he left Heide, his writing became “incredibly cryptic, intense, opaque and philosophical”.
Art historian Janine Burke has suggested that Sunday Reed helped Sidney find his artistic voice and in the process developed from a studio assistant to painting sections of the works herself, in particular the red and white squares in The Trial.
Sidney Nolan wanted Sunday to commit herself to him and after her refusal, he married John Reed's sister Cynthia. Cynthia was John and Sunday in one person, if you like. She was John’s sister and she looked like Sunday.
Nolan never met the Reeds again although they tried to keep in contact. Their love for him remained and they only had positive things to say about him and his work. He never invited them to the openings of his exhibitions and even vetoed their attendance at one they had arranged themselves.
Those 6 years were to have a profound and enduring influence not only on the rest of their own lives, but on the direction of art in Australia.
