Festival art misses beat

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34104, 17 March 1976, Page 23

Festival art misses beat

The Robert McDougall; Art Gallery’s contribution to the 1976 Arts Festival has hardly been designed to quicken the visitor’s pulse—-nor, for that matter, has the exhibition of paintings by Dino Leonardi. of Bologna. at the Nova! Gallery.

Both the McDougall shows are historical. The first is a collection of works by the former New Zealand expatriate painter Sydney Thompson (1877-1973), the second 100 original prints from the Sir John Hott collection of the National Art Gallery.

Lately, works by Sydney. Thompson have been gaining steadily greater prices at auction. This move towards more widespread favour by the collectors is coincident with the increased regard in which he is held by writers on New Zealand art: the two phenomena bear no necessary connection in this country, as has been witnessed in the past. Thompson turned to painting during a period of richness in New Zealand art, but his! work was to be the product! cf lean years when most' New Zealand painting looked more to Europe, content sooner to produce distant hazy devitalised imitations of the prototypes, than to explore its own milieu. Given these attitudes, Thompson’s decision to spend a great portion of his: ■ working life abroad is consistent with widely held asipirations. The result was that his Van der Velden legacy was dispatched and the, by now ■conventionalised, forms of : French Impressionism accepted. Thompson was ob■viously not concerned with the pursuit of a regional ' form of painting, and no 'longer did his painting contribute towards the realisation of a New Zealand image. He had arrived at the style which he was to pursue, with little variation, it would seem, for the remaining 60-odd years of his life. This exhibition serves well to remind us how, when 'painting becomes reduced to the pursuit of retinal effects.; :and a technique is adopted :which readilv achieves those!

ends, what in one work: appears vigorous animated and refreshing, becomes a tiresome repetition of a formalised activity with little to offer the viewer in pursuit of more than sunlight,: when seen en masse. It is good to see the national collection a little more accessible than it is in its! Wellington-based mau-l soleum. The preparation of' touring exhibitions of the kind formed by this superb; collection of prints (although

appallingly framed and hung' like a philatelic show), is an activity too seldom engaged upon by the National’ Art Gallery, and yet it should he a central and regular one given the geographic nature: of New Zealand. In this sparsely populated country, where people identify with their city or town and only on such rare occasions as international sporting fixtures. and general elections, develop anything resembling national attitudes or concerns, we may justly be sur- . prised to know that somewhere in the depths of ! outer-inner Wellington we have such a national in-

•stitutron. After all since its: foundation its purpose has "been little more than that of municipal gallen to the city which houses it. I, for one. ■ look forward to seeing ! greater dispersal of some of lithe more interesting parts of its collection. VX’llut ( <i t > object to is an entry charge to the residents of this city's ; own gallery and collection, rat a time when its only’ . major exhibition is a comparatively inexpensive one drawn from the peoples' national collection. Why is arts 'festival immediately a lime ' to levy charges where other- ■ wise they would not be due? The Dino Leonardi show

lat the Nora Ghllery, ” hardly the late rre expect of an arts festival. Leonardi is neither a New Zealand painter or a representative of the painting from abroad which, when seen in this country, forms an invaluable injection of outside ideas m the close world of local art The visual arts public of (Christchurch may well n Ider where the arts festival was. The Hott collection aside, a gem admittedly but hardly provocative in the way a festival exhibition might be expected to be. the programme has been tiled in the extreme. —T. L. Rndnev Wilson.