Woollaston Dominates N.Z. Painting Exhibition

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29263, 22 July 1960, Page 5

Woollaston Dominates N.Z. Painting Exhibition

The exhibition of contemporary New Zealand painting at the McDougall Art Gallery is one of the best shows the Auckland City Art Gallery has assembled. There are no notable omissions and as all the works were done in the last two years it gives an excellent survey of the state of serious painting in the country at present When it was originally shown at Auckland,, the exhibition included sculpture as well, but none has been sent on tour. The general level is surprisingly high and the show is not inferior to either the Israeli or modem British exhibitions. Most of the painters show overseas, usually European influences, but in a general rather than particular way. There are faint signs that an indigenous style is emerging. The general character of the exhibition shows a tendency towards airy, spacious composition with rather light, high-keyed colour. Several of the Aucklanders work in a style composed of simple forms and brilliant effects of light but it, owes sc much to the very individual example of Colin McCahon that it cannot be classed as a regional style. Of the 18 painters represented. 11 come from Auckland, three are from Wellington, three from Christchurch and one from Greymouth.

It is the one from Greymouth —M. T. Woollaston—who dominates the show, in an unobtrusive way. These are some of the recent paintings I mentioned in an earlier article. They represent not only a big step forward in Mr Woollaston’s technical and stylistic development but also a growth in his artistic stature. They are about twice the size of his usual paintings—and this 'is probably an important factor—and the colour has an atmospheric brilliance which was only hinted at previously. There are some wonderfully subtle colour modulations and Mr Woollaston organises his bold forms with great assurance. There is quiet spiritual strength in these big, spacious, ruggedlypainted compositions. Encouraging Development One of the most encouraging developments in New Zealand art in recent years has been the way this painter has, with scarcely any reference to the work of others, forged a personal style from his relationship to his environment; remembering the muddy colours of his early work, one might even say from the soil.

The five McCahons have been seen here before and it is good to see them again, except that they have been made respectable by being put inside frames which cut off about a half inch all round. “He Calls for Elias,” one of Mr McCahon’s finest paintings, is almost ruined by the frame. When they were hung simply as panels in his one-man show last year they looked much more satisfactory; they are cramped by the frames.

By comparison with the expressiveness of the McCahons and Woollastons, some of the other paintings are guncrack affairs, no more than a prettily-coloured surface. John Holmwood, for instance, spreads his paint on like icing on a cake, and to about as much effect. Don Peebles is another for whom the paint surface becomes a three-dimensional decorative substitute for two-dimensional structure. He achieves some powerful effects with big masses of black against breezy grey-blues, but his playing with the heavy pigment in the black is so meaningless as to be at odds with his main purpose. Each of Keith Patterson’s three paintings is an exercise in the use of a single hue in varying tones and intensities in a cubist manner. The yellow one is the most successful. The paintings by Alwyn Lasenby are not nearly as good as the ones in the recent Eight New Zealand painters exhibition. They are clumsilypainted, barely coherent structures

which the slight colour cannot support. None of these charges can be laid against the two paintings by Rudolf Gopas. They are very powerfully constructed, painted boldly but with dignity and the colour has a splendid rich glow. Since his work was last shown here, Michael Nicholson has developed his severely English academic style into something much freer and gayer, although he still has the academic tendency to rationalise every square inch of a picture. Art Society Collection Altogether there is much worth seeing and plenty to think about in the show, which is more than can be said for the, Canterbury Society of Arts’ permanent collection, on show at the Durham street gallery. Still, the Durham street exhibition is worth visiting because it contains the tattered wreck, cracked and torn, of a fine big Otira Gorge painting by van der Velden, which is not mentioned in the Auckland gallery’s catalogue of the painter’s known works, although it has been in the society’s possession since 1912. It deserves a better fate than mouldering in a storeroom. Apart from the van der Velden. the collection is notable mainly for a pleasant John Gully and a lively early Frances Hodgkins. It also contains a small classical landscape attributed to R. Wilson, but its mediocrity seems to indicate that the Wilson is not Richard. A better acquaintance with the old masters can be gained from the society’s collection of reproductions in the smaller room of the gallery. —J.N.K.