''Angry Penguins'' was an art and literary

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

established in 1940 by

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

poet Max Harris. Originally based in

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

, the magazine moved to

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

in 1942 once Harris joined the

Heide Circle The Heide Circle was a loose grouping of Australian artists who lived and worked at "Heide", a former dairy farm on the Yarra River floodplain at Bulleen, Victoria, Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, counting amongst their number many of Australia's ...

, a group of modernist painters and writers who stayed at

Heide Heide (; Holsatian: ''Heid'') is a town in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is the capital of the ''Kreis'' (district) Dithmarschen. Population: 22,000. The German word ''Heide'' means "heath". In the 15th century four adjoining villages decide ...

, a property owned by art patrons

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second E ...

and Sunday Reed. ''Angry Penguins'' subsequently became associated with, and stimulated, an art movement now known by the same name. The Angry Penguins sought to introduce avant-garde ideas into Australian art and literature, and position Australia within a broader international modernism. Key figures of the movement include Sidney Nolan,

Arthur Boyd Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the middle to late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, ...

, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker. In 1944, ''Angry Penguins'' became the subject of a famous literary hoax perpetrated by anti-modernist poets

James McAuley James Phillip McAuley (12 October 1917 – 15 October 1976) was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic, and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax. Life and career McAuley w ...

and Harold Stewart. The journal ceased publication two years later.

Origins and ethos

The precursor to the ''Angry Penguins'' magazine, ''Phoenix,'' was published at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. Its main campus in the Adelaide city centre includes many Sa ...

with funds from the University Union. Funding was withdrawn in 1940 following a change in leadership. ''Phoenix'' was no longer published, but carried on as ''Angry Penguins'' under the Arts Association, with funding from J. I. M. Stewart and Charles Jury, and others. ''Angry Penguins'' was first published in the

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

n capital of

. The title is derived from a phrase in Harris' poem "Mithridatum of Despair": "as drunks, the angry penguins of the night", and its use as a magazine title was suggested to Harris by C. R. Jury. In 1942, Harris gained the patronage of

and Sunday Reed in

, and the magazine subsequently moved to the couple's home at

(now the

Heide Museum of Modern Art The Heide Museum of Modern Art, also known as Heide, is an art museum in Bulleen, Victoria, Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Established in 1981, the museum exhibits modern art, modern and contemporary a ...

). Through ''Angry Penguins'', Harris and various contributors promoted modernism in Australian art and literature, challenging traditional and conservative cultural norms. They embraced experimental and innovative approaches in poetry, painting, and other forms of artistic expression. The Angry Penguins artists were early Australian exponents of

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and

expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

, and included

John Perceval John de Burgh Perceval AO (1 February 1923 – 15 October 2000) was a well-known Australian artist. Perceval was the last surviving member of a group known as the Angry Penguins who redefined Australian art in the 1940s. Other members includ ...

, Guy Gray Smith,

, Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester. The magazine attracted criticism from different factions of the Australian art and literary worlds. Its main Adelaide rivals were the nationalist and anti-modernist Jindyworobaks, whose poetry drew on

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, or recognised membership of, the various ethnic groups living within the territory of contemporary Australia prior to History of Australia (1788–1850), British colonisation. The ...

culture and the Australian bush ballad tradition. According to ''Angry Penguins'' poet Geoffrey Dutton, "we stayed with Yeats, Eliot and Auden, ... and left Lawson and Paterson to the Jindys." The

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been ...

and associated

social realist Social realism is work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers, filmmakers and some musicians that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures ...

painters also publicly criticised ''Angry Penguins''. In the August 1944 issue of the '' Communist Review'', to support his assertion that the magazine "has nothing to offer to Australian art, and that its effect will be to destroy, not raise Australian standards",O'Connor, Vic. "A Criticism of Adelaide's 'Angry Penguins.'" The Communist Review. August 1944. https://www.marxists.org/history/australia/comintern/sections/australia/1944/adelaide.htm Vic O'Connor wrote that editors of cultural publications are responsible for fostering cultural development as a part of the overall advancement of "standards of social and economic life in Australia", and that the editors of ''Angry Penguins'' are "completely indifferent" to this". The final ninth issue was published in July 1946. A supplementary publication ''Angry Penguins Broadsheet'' was published until December 1946, lasting ten issues. The final issue of the ''Broadsheet'' edition was also the programme for the first Australian Jazz Convention.

Ern Malley hoax

''Angry Penguins'' found detractors in poets

and Harold Stewart, who, during their time at the

Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs The Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) was a mysterious and difficult-to-categorise think tank and possibly an intelligence organisation within the Australian Army during World War II. Set up and headed by the charismatic Alf Conl ...

, created a series of poems constructed as a pastiche of nonsensically arranged fragments, and attributed them to a fictitious poet named Ern Malley. McAuley and Stewart then submitted the poems to ''Angry Penguins'' for publication, and in doing so sought to prove that modernist poetry has no inherent value. The poems were received and published enthusiastically by the creators and patrons of ''Angry Penguins'', who dedicated the 1944 autumn issue to Malley. When it was revealed to be a hoax, ''Angry Penguins'' received negative backlash, and the affair tarnished the image of the magazine, which was subsequently tried and convicted for indecency on the grounds that the poems contained obscene content.

Legacy and influence

The Angry Penguins art movement was surveyed in the 1988 exhibition ''Angry Penguins and Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s'', held at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal ...

in London. In the exhibition's catalogue, English novelist C. P. Snow is quoted as saying that the Angry Penguins movement "was probably the last flowering of a 'national' modernism that a completely internationalised world of the arts was likely to see".

Cultural references

* '' My Life as a Fake'' is a 2003 novel by Peter Carey based on the Ern Malley hoax. It is a

first-person narrative A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar su ...

from the point of view of a young woman editing a literary magazine who encounters the perpetrator of the hoax (called Bob McCorkle, not Ern Malley, in the story) after many years. Carey is more interested in the idea of "

magical thinking Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea tha ...

" than a literal recount; the Ern Malley character is a flesh-and-blood person who haunts his "creator." * In

Richard Flanagan Richard Miller Flanagan (born 1961) is an Australian writer, who won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North (novel), The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' and the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for ''Question 7'', ...

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

-winning novel '' The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' (2013), the main character, Dorrigo Evans, meets the love of his life at the launch of ''Angry Penguins''. * The 2021 Stephen Orr novel ''Sincerely, Ethel Malley'' follows Ern Malley's sister, Ethel, as she travels to Adelaide to help Max Harris prepare the special issue of ''Angry Penguins'' (released in autumn 1944) of her late brother's poems (''The Darkening Ecliptic'').

References

External links

Angry Penguins
on Australia.gov.au (Archived)

on Ern Malley (Archived)
Digital archive of Angry Penguins
(1940-1946) on

Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...

Digital archive of Angry Penguins Broadsheet
(1946) on