Peter Pinson: ...We're in Burradoo, near Bowral, in the southern highlands of New South Wales. Since 2002 this has been the home for sculptor, Bert Flugelman.

Bert, you were born in Vienna in 1923. What were the circumstances that brought you, as a 15 year old, to Australia in 1938?

Bert Flugelman: Well, 1938 is historically important because of the Anschluss, when Germany marched into Austria.

Although they held an election, I don't know how purposefully, and 98 percent voted for the Germans. However, it meant, because of the German experience, that anybody of Jewish descent had better look out.

My father had enough connections in the business world to know exactly what was going on. And so he persuaded the people he worked for, that he had to go to Australia urgently on business.

And they, being Germans who had just taken over the enterprise from a Jewish owner, said yes. If it's important like that, you'd better go.

He never came back and he sent for his wife, my stepmother, and sent for me. It took six months to get visas and permits from the Australian government to be able to come to Australia.

It was a very prized possession. It was the first choice for anybody. Australia, it was the farthest away and it had a good reputation. So, one thing led to another and here I am.

Peter Pinson: You enlisted in the Australian army in 1943. This entitled you to take up studies at the National Art School in Sydney after the War under the CRTS scheme. Your fellow returned serviceman students included John Coburn, Guy Warren, and Tony Tuckson. Were they formative years for you?

Bert Flugelman: Were they...?

Peter Pinson: Were they formative years for you at the National Art School?

Bert Flugelman: They were indeed very important. I remember the work that was about. I mean, the things we dabbled in. So I remember Coburn's early work. I remember the whole atmosphere of the Strathfield years. There were two years in Strathfield because East Sydney Tech was crowded out with the influx of ex-service people. So we had Quonset huts...Nissen Huts, in Strathfield.

Peter Pinson: You were concentrating on painting at that stage.

Bert Flugelman: Yes. I thought of myself as a painter, or aspiring painter.

Peter Pinson: In 1951, your studies completed, you returned briefly to Vienna. It proved to be a catastrophic return.

Bert Flugelman: Well, it was that, yes. There's no one to blame really. I didn't finish my studies, I completed them because I thought they had no more to teach me, which was mistaken of course.

My then wife and I went to Europe on a slow Italian ship. It took three months to get to Venice, which was the port of exit. We made friends on board ship, who were also in steerage. And one of them was an Englishman who had migrated to New Zealand after the war. He'd been in the Red Berets, parachuted into Greece, and spent three years behind the lines.

Then when nothing helped him in New Zealand, he couldn't find work, nothing that interested him or nothing at all, he robbed a bank, and they caught him. Because of his war record, they only deported him.

He happened to have a roulette board on his person. He had a system he said, and we played the system. We tested it for three months, which is how long it took us to get to Venice. And it seemed to be water tight. We won, won, won. Nothing but.

There was a reason to it. On an average, we won one unit per week, or two units per week, and lost one unit per week. There was a bank of say 1,000 units and you lost one bank a week, two banks a week, and won one. You get the idea?

Peter Pinson: By the time you got to France, you realised that you had contracted polio in Vienna. But by the 60's, you were back in Australia and you explored painting, ceramics, and especially sculpture. You've said that in 1970-71, your work suddenly started to make sense. In what way did you mean that, and how did that come about?

Bert Flugelman: Well, I kept working no matter what. I knew there was something somewhere that would make sense to me. What puzzled me was that it seemed arbitrary what you made. There wasn't something you could learn and then benefit from in an orderly fashion.

I finally decided that the secret behind the business was to go ahead and work and just forget about that other nonsense. I decided to virtually give up painting at that time for the same reason. It was the days of Greenberg and the whole Greenbergian philosophy.

I didn't believe in the integrity of the picture plane and the kind of duty you had to its flatness and colour. So it seemed silly to carry on, except on a whim when I felt like painting.

Peter Pinson: Yes. You also began to concentrate on aluminium and stainless steel about that time, didn't you?

Bert Flugelman: Yeah, that was so. The first piece of sculpture I made was made out of fibreglass. It was three geometric entities, a cube and tetrahedron and...another one. They were made with steel with wooden frames and canvas stretched over them.

And then on a whim, I decided to build the framework inside this. I had my box where I could put a football bladder which was inflated from the inside, and then...so it gave this aerodynamic curve coming out from the solid.

I made those and fibreglassed them as they set and...I made out of fiberglass, as I said.

Peter Pinson: And then you found stainless steel?

Bert Flugelman: Yes, I was leading up to that. I was working in fibreglass and that was destroyed in transport. I then made something out of aluminium...There's six, equilateral, tetrahedron that are buried in Canberra that are part of this. I discovered that aluminium oxidised rather quickly and wouldn't hold the polish.

And so, the next conclusion, I went to stainless steel, which is very good in that way. It holds a surface indefinitely.

Peter Pinson: And it's reflective. Was that an important factor for you?

Bert Flugelman: That's an important part, yes. It started with a fibreglass piece which when I finished it, I had it sprayed by car spray people, and it had an automotive finish on it. So you could see yourself, it's like a mirror. I carried that over to aluminium, then carried it over to stainless steel, and I stayed with that because it fulfilled all the requirements.

Peter Pinson: In late 1972, you moved to Adelaide. That really marked the beginning of your career as a public sculptor.

Bert Flugelman: Yeah.

Peter Pinson: Can you tell us about how those public sculptures, and commissions came your way?

Bert Flugelman: In 1972, I went to Adelaide, and I went to Adelaide because I had a falling out with Bernard Smith, who promised money for the department, and never came good. I was working on a pittance, I was working on a tutor's salary, part-time tutor's salary, but I was there seven days a week virtually. He promised again, and I said "Well, that's not good enough."

Then Adelaide headhunted me and asked me to come down, and work for them as a lecturer.

Peter Pinson: And head of sculpture.

Bert Flugelman: And sculpture. I went down to look at them, and everything was beautiful. And I said to them...I had nothing to lose, I said "Look, yes, I'll come." But I had some stipulations. I will not attend any meetings, and I'll not do any homework.

Peter Pinson: Administration.

Bert Flugelman: Hmm?

Peter Pinson: You wanted to keep the administrative role to an absolute minimum.

Bert Flugelman: Absolutely. They said "Well, yes, of course." They were as good as their word. For the first three, four, five years, I happily worked away. After that, the senior lecturer in charge of sculpture, Max Lyle, went on sabbatical and they asked me to do one year. That led to being a senior lecturer, and running the sculpture department.

Peter Pinson: This was the period when significant commissions came your way?

Bert. Yes. I made what I think of as significant work at the time, but they weren't commissions, they were idiosyncratic outbursts, and the commissions came from that I imagine, because in '72, before I left, I had an exhibition at Frank Watters Gallery. They were always maquettes virtually, for proposals for major sculptures.

The exhibition looked quite good and was well received, but nothing happened, of course. Frank, after about three, four months, he said, "I think you'd better get yourself another gallery."

I said, "Why, Frank?"

And he said, "Well, I've tried to sell your stuff in Sydney. I've been to every architect and every designer. I finished up...I have bad relationships with all of these people. I think you'd better get rid of me because I'll only harm you because I think the work is excellent and would function.

So I said, "What will I do"? And he said see if Annie will have you in Gallery A. So, I went and saw Annie and she said yes, and so I had shows there.

Peter Pinson: And some of the work that you had in that Watters exhibition would form the conceptual basis for some of your later public works?

Bert Flugelman: Ultimately, every piece I made for...every polished piece, I made for this exhibition finished up being a public piece.

Peter Pinson: Can you describe some of the most successful public sculptures that you made in Adelaide?

Bert Flugelman: The first one I made was for the University, Adelaide University. And Flinders decided to celebrate their 100th anniversary by giving them a sculpture. And they commissioned me to make one and I did. And to this day, it stands in Adelaide University grounds. It was a spiral polished to a mirror finish and nobody took much notice of it. Nothing happened.

And then the architect of the Festival Centre, McCormick I think, they asked me would I be interested in making a sculpture for the foregrounds for the Festival Theatre. And I said yes, I'd be delighted.

I made it and they were delighted in turn. And to this day, it stands in front of the theatre but, as initially, it was intimately related to the building itself. I'm not as pleased now because they've shifted it twice since then and other considerations. And this has happened again and again where site specific pieces have been tampered with.

Peter Pinson: This Festival Hall sculpture was one that would have been fabricated for you?

Bert Flugelman: Of course, yes. I had to find a fabricator and I sat down and started ringing stainless steel fabricators in the phone book and described in simple words what I wanted. And I got a knock back everywhere until finally somebody said, "Why don't you see Brister," Brister and Co out of...whatever the suburb was. And I got the same advice two or three times more. So I went to see Brister and they said yes.

They were then...were specialists in one-offs. They made equipment for hospitals and for the Physics Department at the University and for the CSIRO in Adelaide, and they were big fish.

Peter Pinson: And they fabricated it in exactly the way you wished it to be done?

Bert Flugelman: Exactly, yes. They taught me a great deal. I learned to be more precise than I'd ever thought of being. Because...as tradesman, they didn't find it acceptable, but I said, well, this will do. And they said no, it'll not do. And I learned my lesson or I learned a lesson from that and that helped me develop the pieces further.

Peter Pinson: Another very popular piece of yours in Adelaide, were the two balls, one sitting on top of another.

Bert Flugelman: Yes, this is so. That was 1975, I think, and they're in the limelight once more. The council, they commissioned a re-designing of the mall. And they came...they rang me and said they wanted to shift the balls three metres to the left.

Well, in the initial commission, it stated clearly that it was site specific and that it had to be in the centre of the passageway. And the design of the thing, it takes all that into consideration including the vicinity to the awnings which are five metres high. And so I had to design something that was well above the awnings and would not be diminished by all the incidental architectural stuff around it and the advertisements and signage.

So I said no, I didn't think it was possible to shift them. And after a fair bit of conversation and correspondence, they said "Well, we wanted to make this a friendly sort of transaction and have your blessings. But if you don't give it your blessings, we'll do it anyway."

Peter Pinson: In 1976, you were commissioned to make an absolutely enormous sculpture, 25 metres long, of stainless steel cones, for the Australian National Gallery. What were the challenges for you with that work? And what were the pleasures?

Bert Flugelman: Well, it started off...Mollison, that's right. I had the exhibition at the Gallery A. I exhibited a thing called the North which was a linear piece. And James Mollison put a sticker on it. He reserved it.

And then after the exhibition, I was told "Well, he's cancelled that commission." And I was cross with him. And they said, "But he said he wanted something much more major from you". And so I said "I don't believe that. I think James just wanted a way out. He didn't want it anymore." After six months, Annie persuaded me to go ahead and do it anyway.

And so I made...I designed the cones and it was site specific, once again, in relationship to the other buildings and the lake and on and on. Seven, to me, is a magic number in any public sculpture like that. It's this side of symmetry and yet the symmetric content is an important one. But it's free...it could be an endless column. Look at the Brancusi.

Peter Pinson: And it reflects the sky and the nearby lake bushes and the movement of any people who are looking at it.

Bert Flugelman: Well, that's an important aspect. The reflective quality makes people want to look at it and they go closer and they'll look at their own reflection and they're delighted because that's the most interesting thing they've ever seen.

Peter Pinson: Another great commission you won was for the Dobell Memorial, the Pyramid Tower, that was intended for Martin Place. What were the issues that placing a modernist abstract sculpture in the middle of richly decorated Victorian architecture?

Bert Flugelman: I didn't...I wasn't in time to destroy the horizontal version. I'd already sent it off. It was a mistake. So the vertical version was the thing and that was the Pyramid Tower, like an endless column like the Brancusi.

There was a great outcry because Ronnie Swann thought he should have got it and the newspapers thought he should have got it. They voted on it and they had it on display for three months. And it went on and on and on. And finally we were allowed to go ahead with it.

And Franco Belgiorno-Nettis agreed to make it. That was one of the difficulties, finding a place to fabricate the thing from where it could be transported to the site. I would have made it in Adelaide, but there was no way of getting it to Sydney.

And so, anyway, Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, true to his word, made the thing, but not true to specifications.

Peter Pinson: It was very simple and contemporary in flavour, and it was in a setting of Victorian buildings. It reflected these buildings. So, did you see those reflections as being one way of integrating modernism with an historical setting?

Bert Flugelman: Importantly, yes, absolutely, and this was one of the most important elements in the Spheres.

If you have a busy mall, full of advertisements and full of signage everywhere, and people milling about, to compete with that is a kind of idiocy. You can't get anyone to stand still and contemplate and think about it. So, "if you can't beat them, join them" was the thing, and it proves a good policy.

Peter Pinson: The piece for Martin Place was ultimately re-located, on the corner of Pitt Street and Spring Street. What do you think of the new location for that sculpture?

Bert Flugelman: I think it's very good and very successful. I fought it very vigorously at the time, because it was removed on the whim of an alderman, Sydney alderman...I forget his name...serves him right. [laughs]

Peter Pinson: Now it reflects its surrounding buildings which are aluminium and glass, it reflects the moving lights, headlights and tail lights of cars as evenings come into play.

Bert Flugelman: I'm delighted with the way it worked out.

Peter Pinson: To some artists, their practice is a solitary career, but for you, you worked in workshops at the Adelaide University and Wollongong University. Was it beneficial working in a campus context like that?

Bert Flugelman: It depends on personality. I like students so I like that whole movement of ideas and people running around. I always made it a stipulation, before I could take the job, that I would be...I could go there anytime at all. I could be there day and night if I wanted to, and that the students could come in if I was there.

Each time the people agreed and I think that was the success of it because ultimately you teach...You don't teach people to make things so they can imitate you. What you have to think of is to create an atmosphere which they'll want to emulate.

They'll want to...they'll see the sense of going there early in the morning and leaving late at night. They'll see the sense of working weekends and doing things like that. And then they expect ridiculous things on the side. Very important too, when you take the students and you go to the Mildura Biennale, that's the one, that played an important part in the education and I made pieces for that year's on end. I used the spheres again.

Peter Pinson: If an art historian was going to sum up your contribution to Australian sculpture, what would you want that art historian to say?

Bert Flugelman: Well, it's more complicated than you can sum it up by saying a few words. You have to like what you're doing and you have to respect the students and you have to respect the whole process of teaching. You have to be personally convinced that you're doing important work.

Peter Pinson: I'm thinking not so much of your work as a teacher, although that's been important, but your work as a sculptor. Probably, you've done more with stainless steel than any other major Australian sculptor. You've been a leading sculptor in dealing with the issues of working public spaces.

Were there any other sculptural ways of working or ways of thinking that you think you've brought to Australian sculpture, that weren't there before?

Bert Flugelman: Well, I think that will emerge eventually. I think the work I've done has been very worthwhile. I don't regret any of it.

Peter Pinson: One of the other aspects about your practice that we haven't mentioned is your use of maquettes. Behind you at the moment are a number of sculptures about a metre in height that are exquisitely finished pieces. They look superb as they are, but you would see them as capable of being expanded to very major scale to occupy public spaces.

Bert Flugelman: Well, this is true, but realistically speaking, if somebody comes and offers me good money, I'll sell the maquette, but not the copyright. They were all meant to be enlarged and become public sculptures.

You don't live long enough to be able to do all these things. All of these maquettes are going to an exhibition eventually. One way or another, gradually, some of them will become public sculptures.

Peter Pinson: We mentioned a number of particular pieces of yours. Do you have a favorite that we haven't mentioned? Would Tetrapus, for example, be a particular one?

Bert Flugelman: Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Yes, that particular piece, yes. Tetrapus is probably the prime example, although I have another one up in the yard, which I regard as highly as I did Tetrapus when I made it.

That was...I came to explore certain structural things. I started to realise through experimentation and through making cardboard models before I finally decided on the material and the size and what-have-you...that a profile of an equilateral triangle, the dimensions of which can be altered at will, allow you to make a curved form.

Which I'd never been able to do before. That you could actually use it the way you sculpturally use it, you bend it to your will, as it were.

So I started to try this in cardboard, and once I had it right in my head what was happening, and how to tackle this, I made these. As you can see it's all three sided, and they're curved. I can curve one, and then curve the other one as I need it. I wasn't tied down to an absolute finish, and that attracted me. There are some thirty pieces I think.

When I finished those, and I realised that my faculties were diminishing at an alarming rate, I stopped dead. I haven't touched anything since.

Peter Pinson: You did have a studio assistant for some of these maquettes?

Bert Flugelman: I had a very talented studio assistant. He was a jeweller by training, and a silversmith. And he was also...because there wasn't enough work in those two trades, he worked as a builder, so he knew all about the practicalities of making.

He was the right person. Ian Frew was his name. He was absolutely the right person, because he had a talent for understanding what you're saying, and to virtually...empathy to an enormous degree. He made exactly what you wanted.

Mind you, what I wanted, what I made was always a cardboard maquette which I could alter at will until I got it right.

And then using those dimensions, I'd give it to Ian and say, "Make that." Well, he made it out of copper. We agreed on copper. And of course, I'd be in the workshop at the same time so I could keep an eye on it. But he was faultless. He knew exactly what to do, but it's not such a difficult concept.

Peter Pinson: One other difference in the maquettes to the public pieces is your exquisite use of patina in these maquettes. Can you tell us about your interest in surface quality?

Bert Flugelman: Well, that goes back to Brister and Company, the first fabricators, who said to me, "No, that's not good enough. You can do better than that." I learned..I learned that. I learned that from tradesmen. I think you've got to always keep your ears and eyes open and, you have to be an opportunist because you learn things by picking things up and you're flexible enough.

Peter Pinson: There are two threads that come together in your work. On the one hand, there's your interest in geometry. But on the other hand, there's your interest in nature, things found on the beach, the movement of branches when caressed by the wind, for example.

Bert Flugelman: All of that, yes. This is very true. I don't apologise for that. That's how it went. I like the idea of having control by making fine art sculptures, pieces that I have made and I have thought through. Then I like the idea of following a whim, following an interesting thought.

For instance, Tetrapus is one of the pieces where this flexibility comes to the foreground, because it's partly very much handmade. In order to make it, I had made actual models out of 3-ply, very thin ply.

That allowed me to play around with it and to get the form right. Then I realised that I could do that easily on the full scale piece.

So I had Ian with me, and we went to a fabricating engineering place. I found the solutions to the problems on the table... on a steel table. To do that curve...it's not like cardboard. You can't just bend it like this. But you can weld one end of it to the steel table, and then you can attach the other end to block-and-tackle.

Then you just pull and you keep pulling until it's distorted in the way you want it. Then you weld rods in position so that when you take everything off, it doesn't move. You weld two sides, you distort it with two sides to the curve. Once that is established you can then weld the third curve...the third side into position which makes it rigid. Then you do the next piece and the next piece.

So I have the Tetrapus. Well as the name implies, it was partly a joke because it looked a bit like an octopus...People said it looked a bit like an octopus. I decided, this has four legs so it's not an octo...pus, it has to be a Tetrapus, a four sided...a four-piece construction you say.

It becomes much more organic because of the freedom of shaping these things. That led me back again to nature and to the basic geometry of nature. The economy of nature's geometry is astonishing. Like... words fail me, chaps.

Peter Pinson: Tetrapus is a piece that has engaging, elegant, rhythmic form, but then on the other hand, there's something slightly sinister about it. Somebody once said about Emanuel Raft's paintings, that you felt you couldn't turn your back on them. Tetrapus is a little bit like that.

Bert Flugelman: I see. I hadn't seen it like that.

Peter Pinson: Bert Flugelman, thank you very much indeed.

Bert Flugelman: A pleasure.

Credits

Interviewer: Peter Pinson

Camera, lighting & sound: Cameron Glendining

Video editing: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen