AUCKLAND LETTER Storm Warnings Out

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32396, 8 September 1970, Page 9

AUCKLAND LETTER Storm Warnings Out

(from

HAMISH KEITH)

The storms that have regularly swept the Auckland art scene have almost invariably been political. In the last few years, Auckland artists have acquired a quite creditable militancy in the face of what they have seen as bureaucratic liberties taken with their freedom rights or status.

Last year's A.C.T.F.A.-Arts Council clash demonstrated an ability on the part of artists to close ranks and to organise that surprised even the most hardened of art politicians. Outside threats to the health of the visual arts have

been enough, in the past, to sink the most basic stylistic or idealogical difference among painters and sculptors; but there are signs that this happy solidarity might not persist much longer. Two present exhibitions seem to indicate the lines along which the battlefronts may be drawn. Both shows are by out-of-town painters, and this accounts, perhaps, for the objectivity which has been obvious in comments about them.

At the Barry Yett Galleries, Ray Thorburn is showing his latest set of impeccable modular paintings. At John Leech’s, Frank Davis, who like Thorburn lives in Palmerston North, is exhibiting a collection of badly painted and crudely conceived works about a social issue—New Zealand’s bi-culturalism.

Davis has real things to say and says them incredibly badly. Thorburn’s works are without content, but are produced with what can only be described as a breathtaking control of bls materials. Both shows represent extremes in what might be called the opposing ideological camps that appear to be installing themselves in Auckland painting. The developing conflict is much more than just a stylistic battle between abstractionist and anti-abstractionist. The banners that are going to be waved before long are likely to have inscribed on them the more solid alternatives of “Form” and "Content”

The conflict, if it does blow up, will be welcome. However established or professional an art scene might become, its real maturity can only be measured by its ability to question its directions and aims. A critical environment that is able to analyse larger problems than merely the success or failure of individual painters is the necessary next step for New Zealand art.

If the issues that might produce this kind of critical situation have begun to crystallise, so has the necessary machinery. Auckland has always had newspaper art criticism on a more or less regular basis, but this has now arrived at an unprecedented volume, and added to it are the weekly reviews on Auckland radio stations. Although I am an interested party, I think it is fair for me to comment that art criticism here is now beginning to look very professonal. Auckland University’s art history department, under the. energetic direction of Professor Anthony Green, has also contributed to the development of a tough critical climate. When the department separated from the art school a period of ivory tower academicism was predicted for it. But nothing could be further from the result. Professor Green and his students have descended on the art scene with an unmistakeable intention to participate. Art history seminars have become something like a trial by art criticism, with exhibiting painters firmly in the dock. Auckland’s art battles in the last decade were entirely about getting the visual arts established. To a great extent that has been done. Now, with the visual arts firmly fixed in the scene, it is time to begin some serious debate about their purpose and about the directions they might take in the future.