Collins Street in 1903; most of the building in the foreground still existed in 1955.
Collins St., 5 pm is a 1955 painting by Australian artist John Brack. The painting depicts office workers walking along busy Collins Street in Melbourne after finishing work for the day—"Blank-faced office workers hurry by like sleep-walkers, thinking only of the pubs or their homes in the suburbs".[1] Brack conceived the work after reading T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land.[2] It is considered a companion piece to Brack's earlier work The Bar.[3]
Looking back on his iconic picture ... Brack found it to be "totally unsatisfactory", because of the condescending attitude he adopted in relation to the people in the street. "I should have known", he said, "that their lives were just as complex as mine, if not more so."
^ abMcDonald, John (6 June 2009). "John Brack". John McDonald. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
^Engberg, Juliana, "Collins Street, 5pm: John Brack's Enduring Cultural Icon', Art and Australia, vol. 34, no. 4, 1997, pp. 513-17.
^"Gallery buys The Bar". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 19 March 2009. Retrieved 27 November 2009.
^"In 1953, he had his first solo exhibition at Peter Bray's Gallery in Melbourne. Collins Street was exhibited at the same gallery in March 1956 and was immediately purchased by the NGV." McKiernan, M. (2010). 'John Brack Collins Street 5 pm, 1955'. Occupational Medicine, 60(2), 88-89.
