Painting In N.Z. As Good As In Europe

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30125, 8 May 1963, Page 12

Painting In N.Z. As Good As In Europe

The exhibition of New Zealand Painting which is at present to be seen in the students’ common room at the University of -Canterbury was selected by the director of the Auckland Art Gallery, Mr P. A. Tomory.

Mr Tomory has a European background and was known to me personally before he came to New Zealand. I cannot claim, therefore, to look at the exhibition with standards altogether different from those that were applied by Mr Tomory.

Indeed, if I had walked blindfold into the gallery nothing in the nature of the works exhibited would have given me a clue to its New Zealand origin, except the titles of some of the pictures.

Once more one is made aware of the fact that “art now’’ is neither regional nor national, but universal. There is no such thing as New Zealand painting, just as there is no such thing as British or French painting (or, in spite of some claims to the contrary, U.S.A. painting). There are various styles, from the directly representational to the completely “abstract,” and these are found in every country. In this sense the art of New Zealand is universal.

What is somehow surprising, however, is that the various styles that are found today are so competently represented in this exhibition. I have no desire to be careless in my compliments, but excluding the works of a dozen geniuses, there is no country in Europe that could produce a show of substantially better quality.

Perhaps I am quibbling by using the word “substantially.” Of course a nation of 150 million people can produce more good painters than a nation of 2J million. But not proportionately more. If t New Zealand can produce 10 good painters, Great Britain should have 200 and the U.S.A., 600. I believe, on the evidence of this exhibition, that New Zealand has at least 10 good painters: I very much

doubt if there is the equivalent number in other countries.

It may be suggested that some of these artists, in spite of their closeness to the international style, do nevertheless represent distinctively Maori or Polynesian influences—the two vigorous abstractions by Para Maitchitt might be mentioned. But in other countries there are paintings that are based on African or Mexican motifs. If original elements remain in the design, they are there for formal reasons, and do not necessarily betray racial or spiritual influences. The same may be said of New Zealand paintings that belong to some lairopean tradition. Hildegard Wieck is a brilliant expressionist whose name indicates a Germanic origin; but equally ex-

pressionist in sijyle is the “Catcher and Ram” by Dennis Turner, who is presumably of British origin. In fact, both are New Zealanders and both are good artists, and that is all that matters.

In a brief notice I must not be expected to mention all the paintings that on different grounds appealed to me. But I was once more impressed by the work of Paul Olds, of which I had seen several examples in Auckland and Wellington. He has a very individual sense of colour and composition, at once lyrical and constructive. Dorothy Bramwell’s incrusted use of oil is rich and solemn, technically an extreme contrast to Nelson Kenny’s spontaneous and immensely vital calligraphic paintings. Rudolf Gopas is another expressionist of confident achievement, and among

other artists whose work excited my curiosity were Tim Garrity, David Graham. Louise Henderson, Max McClellan, Quentin Macfarlane, Nan Manchester, Milan Mrkusich, Olivia Spencer Bower and Cina Wooleott, New Zealand’s doyen of landscape painters. T. A. McCormack is represented by two small but sensitive “abstracts.” The New Zealand landscape, however, has bold interpreters in Freda Simmonds and W. A. Sutton. Sutton’s “Pastoral No. 3” succeeds in dominating the very inadequate gallery in which the exhibition is hung. ■ I am left with the impression that contemporary art in New Zealand deserves a better setting than the only one that Christchurch could find to accommodate this distinguished exhibition. Indeed, the general impression I have received during a four-week visit is that what is wrong with art in 'New Zealand is a lack of encouragement from the country itself. An emergent new country like Southern Rhodesia has one of the best small galleries of contemporary art in the world. New Brunswick has another. I need not mention the beautiful galleries in small countries like Denmark and Finland.

Wtyat New Zealand seems to lack is a public worthy of its artists. A society without art is spiritually corrupt. New Zealand is not without art, but there is a wide gap between its social structure and its artists which should make every New Zealander feel profoundly uneasy.

New Paper Unit.— More than 31,000 tons of newsprint will have spun off the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company’s new £4,000,000 newsprint machine before the Gover-nor-General (Sir Bernard Fergusson) officially opens the plant extensions today —(P.A.)

Spedaily written for “The Press’’ by SIR HERBERT READ.