Going on Alone
Recent Acquisitions at the Hocken Library
JOHN CASELBERG
The function of art is the extension of
human consciousness. . .
If consciousness is likened to a cleared space, art is that which extends it in
any direction...
No artist is great (or really an artist) unless he reaches some point in the
unknown outside the cleared space then adds to the cleared space.
HUGH MacDIARMID
Last winter the Hocken Library displayed recent art acquired 1971-1977, the aim of which can be described in the above quotation from the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid. The Hocken buys New Zealand work solely: a policy which other galleries could usefully follow. The financial outlay is modest; the benefit incalculable. Spiritually as well as monetarily the best of this work increases in value year by year. The collection maps what New Zealand has created so far; and preserves a foundation on which the future can develop.
Held in the Otago Museum foyer, the exhibition consisted of seventy works by thirty-five artists. The notable omission was M.T. Woollaston, whose painting has grown yet more masterly over the last decade. Unfortunately Dunedin did not see the Nelson Suter Gallery's exhibition of Woollaston drawings and watercolours currently touring; and no other recent work has been shown here.
McCahon and Hotere therefore dominated the Hocken selection. McCahon's Song of the Shining Cuckoo filled one end wall of the foyer, making almost a separate display. A Hotere Malady painting faced towards it from near the opposing end of the hall. This canvas was hung on screens in front of the Museum's gigantic kauri tree cross-section: a permanent exhibit indicative of the riches once lavishly produced by this land, then greedily, thoughtlessly squandered.
The McCahon Song is a predominantly grey and white stations of the cross celebrating the lives and deaths of several New Zealand artists; and the black Hotere, bearing a crucifix shape, tolls out a requiem also. Yet these two works reflected more vitality and warmth than some of the brighter items on view.
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MARTE SZIRMAY, Drawing,
1972 charcoal, 76.5 x 55.9cm. |
Working in the mountain-range shadow of Maori art, or behind a sea-spray of English watercolour tradition, then following such figures as Van der Velden, Rita Angus, Woollaston and McCahon, it has not been easy for younger painters to 'add to the cleared space' by producing work relevant to New Zealand society. Many find 'a way out' which writers of poetry similarly have taken.
Indigenous poetry was pioneered largely by
R.A.K. Mason with The Beggar, published in 1924 when he was nineteen. In
the 'thirties he was joined by that other 'born' poet Denis Glover -
happily for us all still writing with undiminished vigour - and by others
including Ursula Bethell, Fairburn, Cresswell, Curnow, Brasch and Robin Hyde.
Their work sprang from experiencing the effects of the merciless first world war
and its fearsome aftermath. R.A.K. Mason wrote:
A battle we fought, for instance, was against domination from abroad,
particularly blind obeisance in any shape to such countries as England and the
United States. We hoped that younger men would carry on where we left off, not
mechanically or imitatively, but not going back.
There was a 'going back' by both writers and painters, young people who had not been tempered perhaps by external difficulties; who had not learned that before their work can be relevant to society they must grow - beyond expressing personal suffering - into objectivity and an identification with a community which itself is placed in perilous circumstances.
'Going back' has occurred in other countries.
Writing of the Scottish 'Renaissance' inspired particularly by MacDiarmid, the
New Zealand-born poet Sydney Goodsir Smith observed that:
The war and the early war years saw the second wave of MacDiarmid's
Renaissance. . .
But in the fifties the Beats began exerting their attraction and the young poets
coming up sheered away. . .; by the sixties this had hardened into positive
literary antipathy. . .
As if by rejoinder, many years ago R.A.K.
Mason exclaimed:
It is strange that thousands are ready to die for their country while few ever
try to live for it. In war everyone is willing to make the supreme sacrifice; in
peace it is too much to expect anything for one's country.
The Hocken exhibition contained another McCahon, a Rose-Garden painting, which describes suffering, particularly by Polynesian people, in Auckland. On a black canvas hangs a necklet of small roses or jewels: islands of light shining against almost unimaginable loss and pain. The large Hotere too was echoed elsewhere: by a painting commemorating Te Whiti of Taranaki; the drawings for his big Malady series; a watercolour of Otago sea and sky; and an illustration for Hone Tuwhare's Sapwood and Milk. Two assured Gordon Walters' designs expressed a synthesis of Maori and European in New Zealand.
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| JOHN PARKER Taieri
Panorama charcoal drawing 52.8 x 80.8 cm. |
The influence of the Beats and overseas fashions including 'realism' did not swamp the remaining work shown. Marilyn Webb searchingly portrayed the taut structure of land under the sky; Robin White delineated portrait-landscape interactions and appearances; Joanna Paul's Thought Without Words I For Charles Brasch was a deeply-felt impressionistic panel; and in several drawings and paintings the 1977 Frances Hodgkins Fellow, Jeffrey Harris, proved that he understands the duration and intensity of the battle to be fought anew by each young artist; and that there are no easy rewards.
Two artists with European backgrounds from which they legitimately enriched the collection are Marte Szirmay - in two extraordinarily strong drawings of machine-like objects - and Rudolph Gopas, sombre and expressionist in both a recent print and his acrylic Pacific Coast III. By contrast, Anna Caselberg and John Parker have pursued their work away from even local main centres. The former was represented by an opalescent Otago Harbour watercolour; Parker by two charcoal drawings, Taieri Panorama, executed with careful draughtsmanship, and Ford Prefect... This work came from his Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition of 1975, when he was Frances Hodgkins Fellow. Then, an exuberant series of fifty charcoal drawings produced a stimulating and indelible effect. Philip Trusttum's Ticket to Marseille canvas was the happiest picture on show.
Writing in the seventeenth century, as he was
nearing his own hard-won maturity, the eloquent and saintly Thomas Traherne
realized that:
Either he must go on alone or turn back for company.
The Hocken exhibition has demonstrated that younger artists continue to 'go on alone' even now, cutting their own paths to 'add to the cleared spaces' of human consciousness here; thereby increasing New Zealanders' understanding of themselves and of the earth that all inhabit.