Exhibition Shows Range Of N.Z. Art

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29297, 31 August 1960, Page 10

Exhibition Shows Range Of N.Z. Art

Nothing stimulates artists like money, it seems. The Hay’s, Ltd., Art Competition has attracted nearly every well-known painter in the country and many more.

The competition has provided splendid, opportunity for serious painters‘to exhibit and sell their work and the prospect of winning a substantial prize has encouraged those who, because of apathy or antipathy towards ordinary exhibitions, might not have otherwise entered.

If the failure of the judges to agree on a decisive winner is surprising, their choices are even more surprising. There will be few who do not find at least one of the three a selection difficult to understand.

Colin McCafion’s winning entry is not one of his best paintings; it is not nearly as moving as

his Northland Panels, “The Wake” panels or several other paintings shown in his one-man show in Christchurch last year. Nevertheless, it is a good painting, possessing uncompromising strength and intensity. A newspaper reproduction cannot do any justice to the subtle tonal modulations and contrasts' which are the source of its expressiveness. It is a painting which needs to be observed close up; only its general compositional scheme, which is. not particularly interesting or important, carries to any distance. It needs to be looked at for a long, time before it yields its secrets. It is a contemplative painting which needs contemplating upon. Above all, its title should be noted It is not a picture of anything. It is not meant to be anything but what it is. It is simply a stirface covered with paint of different tones and colours—as ultimately is any painting—and it must be looked at with this in mind if its stark, austerity is to be appreciated. Sharing first place with McCahon are Julian Royds, of Christchurch, and Francis J. Jones, of Hokitika., The latter is the discovery of the contest. His winning “Kanieri Gold Dredge” is delightful. The unsophisticated but deeply-felt poetry of his work places him squarely in the class of painters misleadingly named., “primitive.” Both its lack of se)fconsciousness and its vivid, glowing colour make it impossible hot to think of Henri Rousseau.

Mr Jones aims at photographic fidelity of representation but his absorption in his work is so complete that the depth and freshness of his perception are realised. His other painting in the show, “Waiau Ferry,” is almost as good, with its somewhat dramatic composition and bath-towel texture. Julian Royds’s “Composition”

is a curious choice, unoriginal and unimaginative in conception and shoddy in execution. It is roughly painted in reds, purples and black, with a tatty texture created by arbitrary scratching in the wet paint. It has a certain vitality, but I can find nothing more to say for it.

The winners of the merit wards are also an uneven group. M. T. Woollaston’s “Mapua” is richly satisfying. It is very freely painted, with most impressive breadth and sweep in the composition and lovely quiet colour. The unerring placing of the white accents demonstrates the Greymouth painter’s growing formal mastery. It is not a spectacular or emotional painting; it is quiet, airy, almost mystical in its effect. His other paintirig, the more tightly constructed “Waimea,” is equally fine. The immediately important thing about both is that they could have been painted by

no-one but a New Zealander with a profound love and understanding of his native surroundings.

Quentin Macfarlane, a young Christchurch painter, also finds his stimulus in landscape, but the results are very different. Both his “Snow Painting,” which won a merit award, and his “Mountain Painting,” are intensely lyrical works, with magical, poetic colour. They are marred only by the sumptuous, crumbly texture becoming rather insistent in places.

Another young painter, Graham Percy. from Auckland, uses strong earth colours and angular forms in his "The Coast Road." It is a pleasant but unremarkable work. The remaining winners of merit awards are N. Herber, of Christchurch, gnd A. M. Steven, of Timaru, neither of whom are remembered as having exhibited in the city before. The former’s "Crystallised Riverbed”

has some pleasing colour, but the red and ’ white have not been integrated with the general scheme of rich blues and greens, and the coarse surface is at odds with the colour. Steven’s “Beech Forest Composition” is a rectilinear abstract of no particular distinction. Among those who have not won prizes there is a good deal which it interesting and even impressive.

The judges have selected 98 paintings for hanging from the 406 submitted and the gallery is filled without being overcrowded.

All the paintings are for sale, although some of the prices make one wonder whether the painters really want to sell their work. In a country where the person who buys paintings is a rare exception, some of the prices are absurd. Surely it is better for a painter to sell a picture at lOgns. than to have it hanging on a gallery wall or stowed in the corner

at a studio bearing a lOOgn. price tag. There are many whe would like to buy paintings, but when a refrigerator or even a television set can be bought for the same price who can blame them if they choose the bourgeois comforts of a machine/ This exhibition is obviously going to arouse a lot of controversy at all levels; among the informed and uninformed, the perceptive and the unperceptive. If it arouses people to look hard at paintings and think about them instead of wandering round galleries like sheep, then May's will have performed a notable service to art. As it is, the Hay's contest has already resulted in the assembling of the best comprehensive collection of New Zealand art that has been seen in' Christchurch. Sponsors and painters have done their share. Now it is over to the public. „ —-JJI.K.