KAAPA MBITJANA TJAMPITJINPA

Painted at Papunya in 1971
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs
Acquired from the above circa 1973/4
Dr Harry Perelberg, Melbourne

The painting is in very good condition overall and has been reframed in a contemporary minimalist box frame
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Cf. For paintings of ceremony by Kaapa see Man's Ceremony for the Kangaroo Gulgardi, 1971, Young Man's Fire Dreaming, 1972, and Budgerigar Dreaming, 1972, in Bardon, G. and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p.135, painting 54, p.240, painting 156, and p.280, painting 216, respectively, illus; Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 9 July 2001, p.12, lot 130 for a related painting, Medicine Story 1971 by Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra.

This work was acquired directly from Pat Hogan by Dr Perelberg whilst he was practising in Alice Springs during 1973 and 1974. During this period he came to admire the early works of the Papunya movement and was particularly interested in Kaapa Tjampitjinpa's growing reputation.  Kaapa was the first Aboriginal artist to win a public art award when his Man's Ceremony for the Kangaroo 'Gulgardi', 1971, won joint first prize in the Caltex Art Award (The Alice Prize) in August 1971.  Gulgardi and another painting submitted to the Prize by Kaapa, The corroboree at Waru, 1971, are now in the collection of the Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs.

Dr Perelberg was particularly interested in Kaapa's 'Medicine' series of paintings and asked Pat Hogan if he was able to acquire one from her.  This painting is accompanied by detailed documentatin with an anotated diagram prepared by Hogan.  Much of this documentation is highly likely to be a secred and sacred nature and has not been quoted or reproduced for the purposes of this catalogue.  In her notes Hogan refers to this painting as 'a very special one'.  According to Perelberg, upon presentation of this painting Pat Hogan advised him that she considered it the most important in the 'Medicine' series.

Medicine Painting, 1971, illustrates an initiation ceremony in a higly formal but dynamic compositin characteristic of Kaapa's paintings.  The footprints in the upper register are of the initiates from Napperby Station,  in the artist's traditional lands.  Two bands below these, to the right, the boys are shown sitting in a row with their spears.  The ceremonial ground design is depicted at the centre of the painting, and again in each of the two lower quadrants; that on the right also portrays a ceremonial leader, in a similar pose to that in The corrooboree at Waru, 1971.

Medicine Painting, 1971, displays several key features characteristic of Kaapa's early paintings where he had developed highly articulated and often symmetrial compositions including traditional design elements and naturalistic imagery.  According to Bardon (2004, p.384) works like this display 'a strict symmetrical composition' of the Anmatyerre tradition, which Bardon describes as 'heraldic'.  The use of figurative imagery stems in the result of a number of factors.  According to Vivien Johnson (in Johnson,V., Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2003, pp53) the long history of interacion with Europeans that Kaapa and the Anmatyerre people in general had over the decades allowed the Anmatyerre a degree of self-assurance in the public domain.  Anmatyerre cremonies were also less gender-segregated than those of other groups, consequently women were permitted to view the ritual ground designs.  And the connections Kaapa and other Anmatyerrre artists such as his cousins Clifford Possum and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri had with Albert Namatjira and the school of watercolour landscape paintings at Hermannsburg was likely to be an influence as well (ibid: 62-3).  However Kaapa was well known for his strict adherence to traditional rules and protocols in his work, but he insisted that such paintings could be seen by men and women and were intended for public view, in contrast to the attitudes adoped by the Pintupi and other groups at Papunya in the early 1970s.

Kaapa Tjampitjinpa was one of the most important and influential of the first group of Papunya Tula painters, partly due to the fact he had produced some paintings prior to the arrival of Geoffrey Bardon.  Bardon records that Kaapa was most eager to participate in the Papunya painting movement and he become the first chairman of the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative in 1972.