New Zealand Drawings Invitational 1976
JAMES ROSS
In November the Auckland City Art Gallery showed an exhibition of drawings by invited New Zealand artists, 103 painters, sculptors and printmakers submitting 120 drawings in what must have been one of the largest single drawing exhibitions any local art gallery has mounted. Despite the quantity, the overall quality is by no means exceptional.
This exhibition in fact goes no further than the previous two drawing invitationals that were held in 1972 and 1973 at the Barry Lett Galleries and Manawatu Art Gallery respectively, and in some respects is not as good. Both previous shows enabled artists to submit up to three drawings, the present show only two, while most artists are represented by one work - too little on which to base an appreciation. Where the Auckland show does score well is with its fully-documented catalogue.
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| GRETCHEN ALBRECHT Titirangi March 76 ink and acrylic |
Among perhaps inevitable omissions, the most negligent is that of John Parker, the 1975 Frances Hodgkins Fellow whose large, awkward charcoal drawings must rank among the most interesting produced in that year. A good many in the present exhibition pre-date those considerably.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the present exhibition is the lack of any apparent selection policy. A judicious selection could perhaps have enabled viewers to clarify any directions that New Zealand drawing mayor may not be going in. This to my way of thinking has been compounded by the convenors' lack of definition (on purpose) of what drawing should be taken to mean. Is a painted surface or wooden construction a drawing because the artist says so? Perhaps this sort of re-definition would be given a greater validity if the artists concerned had been asked to justify it in the catalogue.
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MICHAEL SMITHER Off New Plymouth 1974 pencil |
Problems of definition can be construed as being only important or problematic to critics: but if one accepts that drawings tend to embody in the simplest (and often most elegant) terms the essential characteristics of an artists credo, we can see that many of the drawings in the present exhibition are really full-scale essays. The small paintings of Milan Mrkusich and the beautiful construction of Peebles fall in to this category. Although it must be said that both are extremely successful as works of art, they are however somewhat weightier statements of a non-drawing order. Works that tell us about the gestation of their ideas would have been more interesting.
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JOHN PARRY Hannah 1976 pencil |
The two small drawings obviously torn from Colin McCahon's sketch-book can serve to clarify my distinction. They are thoughts made visible, the germ of ideas, diagrams of future activities that mayor may not be elaborated upon in the more permanent media. On top of this is the unique graphic quality that only drawings have, of black marks upon white paper. Such drawings have to my mind a strength that comes from their simplicity and openness of intent that often disappears in the more serious occupation of painting.
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JEFFREY HARRIS Self Portrait 28 April 1976 pencil |
Other painters such as Jeffrey Harris see drawing as an activity less related to painting, more as an end in itself. His Self-Portrait is fanatically composed of razor-sharp lines that precisely delineate textures and surfaces. With care and patience the drawing is gradually built-up to make a complete statement about the Harris family group within their rural environment.
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NIGEL BROWN Table Drawing 16 March 1975, pencil and watercolour |
Like Jeffrey Harris, Tony Fomison considers drawing as an end in itself and not necessarily as a preparation for painting. This is not so with an artist like Gretchen Albrecht. She has related drawing to the scale and intent of her painting. Large, expansive gestures with an ink-laden brush have been slashed across the paper surface in the manner of the Japanese Sho painters. The drawing itself becomes a literal e:pression of its creation, relating clearly to aspects of this artist's painting, but revealing the different qualities of ink and paper as opposed to paint and canvas.
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COLIN McCAHON McLeavey Sat Here early 1975 felt pen |
Differing intentions can be seen in the careful, finished renderings of Gordon Walters. His drawings are virtually final plans for paints. He is able with these small studies to check on the visual dynamics of an idea without having to go through the time-consuming processes of his sort of painting.
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| DON BINNEY Taumaiti and Duck's Quarry from Sandstone Bluff crayon and charcoal |
Others use collage and paint to construct an image, while there are also watercolours, pen and ink studies - in fact almost every media is used in this exhibition. There are also too many life-drawings that go no further than the facile practice of craft, while many of the landscape-based drawings fall into the familiar formulae. In the next drawings invitational I would like to see fewer artists invited, more works from each artist, and an overall theme behind the selection. For example: landscape, realism, abstraction or whatever you like. In this way we would at least see clarified the intentions of artists, many of whom work in similar ways. This would be of value to both artist and public.
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| DENYS WATKINS The Menu April 1976 mixed media |
It was the nineteenth century French painter Ingres who told his pupils that the technique of painting could be mastered in a week but the study of drawing demanded a lifetime. The warning served to underpin his famous dictum that without drawing there is no integrity in art.
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ANDREW BOGLE One Hundred and Thirty-three March-May 1976 collage |
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GORDON WALTERS Kapua ink |
Originally published in Art New Zealand 3 December/January 1976-77