Book review

New Zealand Painting Since 1960: A Study in Themes and Developments by Peter Cape
Published by Collins, Auckland, 1979.

Reviewed by GORDON H BROWN

It is a simple matter to open this book, glance at the table of contents and, while idly turning the pages, allow the eye to settle here and there to take in the odd sentence and in so doing gain the superficial assumption that this is a book of substance. The themes are lofty and seemingly wide in scope, with implications that touch on matters aesthetic, philosophical, psychological and pictorial: so that the reader is entitled to expect a penetrating analysis of New Zealand painting as it has developed from 1960 to 1975. The trimmings are there: two appendices, two indexes, a detailed listing of the paintings, notes on individual artists and a bibliography of sources and references. All these suggest some degree of scholarship.

The first hint that all is not as it might be dawns on the perceptive reader after browsing through the plates. Apart from the poor layout and frequently inferior colour quality found in many of the reproductions, final judgement as to the reason for the often haphazard selection and the apparent lapses in artistic discrimination involved in the choice of paintings, may be withheld until the text has been considered. Fairness dictates that the plates should not be assessed in isolation but as illustrations of the author's thesis as presented in Part II of the text, Themes and Developments.

With the reading of the text, the author's treatment of his subject quickly emerges. Rather than a survey of painting in the usual sense, what the reader is presented with is a pot-pourri of ideas loosely related to the artistic process and what has happened in this country's painting since 1960.

In his first section The Phenomenon of Art Peter Cape endeavours to lay a foundation for the Themes and Developments sections of his book. Isolated passages can raise stimulating possibilities - especially when triggered by a pertinent quotation from some authority such as Charles Brasch, Monty Holcroft, Matthew Arnold, Robert Graves or Carl Jung. Although there is a host of promising ideas touching on individual subjects - on the economic basis of selling and collecting paintings, on art competitions, prizes and grants, on exhibitions, stylistic influences from overseas, art education and appreciation, art criticism, the reason why artists paint and visual motivation and perception - few of these aspects are expanded with the clarity needed to fully elucidate the assumptions the author endeavours to establish. Too frequently, when he turns to European or local art history to furnish an example, his knowledge of the subject lacks sufficient accuracy to fully support his argument. Nor is Cape's appreciation of the artistic process as applied to specific artists very penetrating. An instance occurs when he takes 'Hanly's splattered paintings in which the paint runs and mixes' as a case where 'the finished work is little more than an historical record of what has happened'. Hanly's work can be diversely labelled, but his insistence on the image denies what Cape implies.

Based to some extent on Jung's Man and His Symbols, Cape's chapter on Why Does the Artist Paint presents the most finely developed theme. Although it is tinged with spots of naivety (and a bias I personally find unconvincing), as a chapter it does have greater relevance to Parts II and III of the book. From it comes a sentence that most clearly points to the central theme the book at-tempts to develop. Cape writes: 'The first motivation for painting is, I believe, the need to create a memoir, that is, an object or image directly related to. . . its subject; it is the need to create a reminder that "this was what it was like", whether the "this" in question is a landscape, a person, an object, an emotion, a sensation or an idea'.

Part II, Themes and Developments, accompanied by its section of illustrations, is again an inconsistent mixture of promising ideas and ambiguous, unfulfilled explanation. The chapter Ideas Without Images begins with Harold Rosenberg's sentence concerning the 'appetite for a new look': yet what follows fails to utilize this pertinent theme and explain how this particular aspect of art has succeeded or failed in the context of New Zealand painting.

There are times when Peter Cape draws out from a particular painting some observation of interest - as he does with W.A. Sutton's Nor'wester in the Cemetery. But while the reader can find relevance In such comments, with other paintings the textual reference is inappropriate, even trivialised; or an illustration selected for comment is simply too insignificant to carry any weight. Each chapter takes as its theme a subject such as the landscape, people, or the Maori: but when read, the final impression gained is that of inconclusiveness. Explicitness being elucidation by example - and there are over 200 illustrations to draw upon - such examples should, the reader might assume, add weight and accuracy to the author's thematic argument. Through his inability to achieve such an aim, this aspect of the book can only be seen as a failure that is both critical and major.

No doubt the late Peter Cape desired to write a worthy book. Some effort has been made to eliminate the gross inaccuracies found in his earlier Prints and Printmakers in New Zealand, but in his new book the element of pretentiousness remains, however diminished. The tendency to quote himself culminates in the two append iced essays on Hanly and Smither, previously published in Landfall, which contain little to support the book's main thesis. As the main text demonstrates, Cape extended his aim beyond his ability; while in the last section the scholarly efficaciousness is slightly off-beam.