ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT £1m Duchamp Collection On Loan

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31276, 24 January 1967, Page 7

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT £1m Duchamp Collection On Loan

Works by the contemporary French surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp win be seen for the Ant time in New Zealand in May when a private collection worth more than £1 million will be exhibited at the Auckland City Art Gallery. The collection, which -will include some-of Duchamp’s famous assemblages, will be the major exhibition of the Auckland Festival. Owned privately in New York, it was recently shown at the Tate Gallery in London. The exhibition is regarded as a major event in the history of art in New Zealand. Duchamp has been a tremendous Influence on contemporary art. He leaped to fame when his “Nude Descending Staircase” was exhibited at the New York Armory Show in 1913. He became one of the leaders of the Paris dadaist movement, which dedicated itself to debunking "precious” notions on art. Other exhibitions planned for the Auckland Festival include one of 30 paintings from

the National Gallery, - Melbourne, an extensive collection of original .drawings and cartoons by the late sir David Low, the Dunedin-born cartoonist who became a household name for his cartoons in London newspapers;'and one-man-shows by two Christchurch painters,' D. C. Peebles and Rudolf Gopas. REGIONAL BASIS The ' annual exhibition of contemporary New Zealand painting organised by the Auckland City Art Gallery is being compiled on a regional basis this year. Instead of the gallery’s director selecting works, this year four people in the main centres 'are. producing a regional selection of two major works from eight painters and writing an introduction for the catalogue. :■ The Canterbury selection has been made by John Coley, an art lecturer at the Christchurch Teachers’ College, and a founder of the 20/20 Vision group, who says he wanted to represent a fresh element in Canterbury painters. The Canterbury painters

represented ara Rosemary Campbell, Sus® Chaytor, David Graham, livian Lynn, Quentin MacFayane, Trevor Moffitt, W. A. I Sutton and

Phillip Trustuml Works by tfidolf Gopas, Don Peebles land. M. T. Woollaston we» also sought, but they werefinable to participate became of other exhibition comnitments. Wellington/ works were chosen by iter McLeavey, the capital’/Sole dealer in contemporare ’ New Zealand painting, air Dunedin works by J. D7/3harlton Edgar, director offhe Dunedin Gallery. I

ARTIST M’PEALS A Sydiy artist, Michael Gordon rown, has appealed against /three months’ gaol sentenc/for delivering to a gallery Buntings described by Mr G.J Locke, S.M., as “an orgy ofibscenity.” BroJi, aged 28, a professionalprtist for 10 years, exhibit* the paintings at Paddinsfn’s Gallery A on Nqtfnber 12, 1965. Tfi magistrate said: “It is diffiult to imagine anything mJe indecent. It is a pity

that some of the material could not be published. If it were, the public would strongly support the action I am taking. “What does one see, looking at the pictures not as an art connoisseur, art student, or art critic, but as an inexpert, unpractised, ordinary man? “You see large paintings representing divergent objects, shapes, forms, words and symbols and in some, if not all, there is much undue emphasis on sex.

“Fortunately for society it is the judgment of the ordinary man—judging by fair objective standings, judging by the stands of the community as they are in fact and not as they are represented by a noisy minority—that the law of the land demands of this Court.

“Judged according to these standards, I entertain no doubt that the matter here objected to is not only indecent but grossly indecent.”

JUGOSLAV EXHIBITION Barry Cleavin, a Christchurch etcher who recently received a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant, is one of

three New Zealand artists invited to submit prints for the Seventh International Exhibition of Graphic Art at the Modern Gallery, Ljubljana, Jugoslavia. The others are Patrick Hanly of Auckland and John Drawbridge, a Wellington artist at present visiting London.

Entries to the exhibition showing characteristic worka of the latest international graphic achievements will be submitted for final selection by a jury. New Zealand is also being represented in a big international print exhibition in Japan. Kees Hos has three relief prints and Mervyn Williams has three silk sceen prints in the Fifth International Biennial Exhibition of Prints being held in the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. According to Yukio Kobayashi, director of the Tokyo museum, the biennial now has the status of an authorative international exhibition. Fortythree countries are represented by 187 artists who are displaying a total of 533 works. 5

The New Zealand selector for these exhibitions is G. C. Docking, director of the Auckland City Art Gallery.

POP SPECTACULAR The trustees of Britain’s Tate Gallery have acquired a very large and spectacular painting by Roy Lichtenstein, one of the leading American Pop artists. Entitled “Whaam” (1963), and measuring sjft by 13}ft, it depicts one fighter aircraft shooting up another, which is disintergrating in a tremendous explosion of flame. Like many of Lichtenstein’s works it was based on an image from a strip cartoon, enormously enlarged. , NEW PRESIDENT

Walter Thomas Monning-] ton, aged 63, has succeeded; Sir Charles Wheeler as president of the Royal Academy. He has been an academician since 1938. He teaches at Slade School, University College London, where he was educated, and is chairman of the faculty of painting, British School at Rome, a trustee of the British Museum, and an executive member of the National Art Collection Fund. The election was the closest fought contest in the 198-yesr history of the academy.