Anything but scared

A trip to New Plymouth in the weekend, and the happy discovery that the collection hang which the website says closed on 31 May was still up.

The conceit of the show was that collection works were paired with each other, in variously happy and indifferent relationships: Francis Upritchard and Octavia Cook (crafty); Francis Upritchard and Rohan Wealleans (colourful); Billy Apple and Michael Stevenson (fluorescent lights and distance).

Once again, as with the Don Driver show, the curators have built extra walls and squeezed works in cheek by jowl. Of course, this means you get to see more of the collection - which, with the lack of a collection publication and the online collection still a WIP, is no bad thing - but the works simply don't get enough room to breathe, and the sightlines of the upper galleries are obliterated. It kind of makes you sigh for the days when the Gallery would give a whole floor over to Pae White's paper sculpture.

These quibbles aside, it was great to see some old friends. After spending quite a lot of time last week at Te Papa immersed in the two recently-acquired McCahons from the 1976 Scared series that have been put on display in the Level 5 galleries ( Mondrian's last chrysanthemum* and I am scared; I stand up) it was fantastic to compare these two with the Govett's Am I Scared, and get all connoisseurial over the brushstrokes and paint splotches & use of acid yellow. I would love to see the all six works from the series on display sometime.

It was also fantastic to see Shaun Gladwell's 2004 video work Multiple Descent [Taranaki] again. The work is very simple, and very beautiful - one after another, on a repeating loop, Gladwell accompanies two skateboarders to the top of the Centre City carpark in New Plymouth, filming their ascent in the lift and descent along the parking levels and ramps, lit by the late afternoon sun, the skateboarder going first, Gladwell following on his own board with a handicam. The only editing effects seem to be the slowing of the film, and the screening of sound so only the skateboards' wheels and the occasional indrawn breath can be heard.

One of the things I love about the video is that occasionally you catch sight of Len Lye's Wind Wand, but the work - which has become central to New Plymouth's new foreshore-focused identity - is treated without any ceremony, and is as much of a side-issue as the lone shopper caught pushing her trolley to her car. Instead, all the focus is on the two lanky teens; the slow scrolling motion of the leg that propels them forward, the way their hands hang from long thin wrists when they're not in use, the minimal lean and sway with which they navigate the concrete passages. In its own cool, self-contained way, Multiple Descent [Taranaki] is a very sexy piece of work.

Sadly, I can't find decent clips of any of Gladwell's video works online. Here's a stolen snippet of Storm Sequence (2000) though, complete with visitor commentary.



*The colour in that photo doesn't do justice to this work, it's definitely worth making an effort to see it in the flesh

Good company

He may have only scored half a page in 501 Great Artists, but Colin McCahon is the youngest* of the 10 artists on Matthew Collins' Easter art top 10 list, represented by Will he save him? (1959, Auckland Art Gallery).


*Youngest? Most recent? Most lately deceased? I need to go back to grammar school.

Not going quietly

I remember at the time of the McCahon survey 'A Question of Faith' talking with people who felt that the sentiment of the show - "the artist's spiritual quest, demonstrating how he explored questions of faith, doubt, hope and eventually despair" - was a bit pat, a too narrow way of viewing the late paintings.

I was reminded of this reading this recent interview with Kate Rothko Prizel, daughter of Mark Rothko, and her thoughts on the forthcoming Tate Modern Rothko show, which focuses on the later works:

'Seeing these paintings standing alone may have a very different effect on the audience,' she says. 'This time, there will be no side-by-side comparisons with the bright works of the 1950s, and [thus] the audience will not have a tendency to see the darkening colours as representing a change in his mood. With retrospectives, there is often a feeling [as you approach the monochromatic late works] that this was the ultimate walk towards his suicide. But look at them in isolation, and instead you simply feel something opening up before him. I do not connect any feeling of frustration in him at this time with a frustration over where his work was going. I see these paintings as a new beginning for him rather than a reflection of his mood.

'No one would deny that my father was very depressed towards the end of his life. I used to be very engrossed with that idea, too. There was a terrible tendency for me to see the paintings darkening, becoming less accessible emotionally, more hard-edged. I had a hard time separating them from his depression. But then I saw an exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, work that followed his completion of the paintings for the Rothko Chapel [commissioned by Dominique and Jean de Menil in the mid-1960s]. I hadn't been familiar with those works. It was a period when I wasn't in the studio a lot, and my father didn't have any at home. It was fascinating to see how those works had grown out of the chapel, and then how they led to the black and greys. That was the beginning of a whole new way of seeing for me.'

Emerging artists

In the late 1960s Rita Angus became increasingly irritated by repeated requests to reproduce images of her iconic early works Cass (1936) and Portrait of Betty Curnow (1942). Angus was concerned that the focus on these early works drew attention away from her current practice - here was an artist in her late 50s-early 60s, being represented by the work of her late 20s and early 30s.

I find it hard to remember, looking at the work of artists who I know through art history, not through association with my own life and age, that once they were young too. The first two rooms of Te Papa's current Rita Angus retrospective, for example, consist of works the artist produced before she was 30.

The Aviatrix (1933) is a new favourite - Angus was around 25 when she painted it.

Cass (1936) was painted when Angus was about 28 and

the masterly Self portrait (1936-1937) was finished before she turned 30.

Likewise, McCahon had already produced his early religious works by the time he turned 30: in 1947 alone, the year he turned 28, he painted Crucifixion according to St Mark, The Angel of the Annunciation, Entombment: after Titian and Crucifixion with lamp.

But no pressure, young artists! Take comfort from Gordon Walters: born in 1919 (same year as McCahon), he was a comparatively late starter. The Poet (1947) and New Zealand Landscape (1947) are probably his best known early works, and he was still a way away from the korus when he turned 30.

Images, from top, all from Te Papa's Rita Angus exhibition website

Rita Angus, The Aviatrix, 1933. Oil on canvas. Post Family Trust Collection.

Rita Angus, Cass, 1936. Oil on canvas on board. Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, purchased 1955.

Rita Angus, Self-portrait, 1936-37. Oil on canvas. Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is

UPDATE:

For those of you looking for the Colin McCahon painting, it's in the Christchurch Art Gallery collection, you can read about it here (warning, PDF) or listen to a podcast here.

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Best of 3 is taking a break: I'll be back next Thursday / Friday.

In the meantime, the Walker Art Center's design staff are blogging - check them out the behind the scenes on projects such as Kara Walker (complete with prudish American booksellers).

And to yesterday's anonymous commenter: noted, but not nice ....

Yeah, not so funny after all

Since posting below about the Art Squad, a story has hit the news about the theft of works by C.F. Goldie and Colin McCahon from the Auckland University Library ....

Art theft story - NZ Herald