The Question of Colour

Jan Walker

The controversy as to whether the National Art Gallery intentionally Inflicted its particular brand of conservatism on the New Zealand Maori Council has appeared (if not raged) in the local newspapers over some considerable time.

Wherever the fault lies, the fact that the National Art Gallery is revealed once again in its true dyed-in-the-wool blue colours after such a promising start to liberalise the tomb-like qualities and contens of the Gallery is a sad illustration of the one step forward two back principle.

Unfortunately too, the politics of the matter over-shadow the actual exhibits on display. This is chiefly because only a few of the exhibits were on display at the National Art Gallery, some three rooms removed from where the opening took place. The rest (uncatalogued, and unhung till late Monday 1st Sept.) were on view at the Display Centre.

The work of the Maori artists was on the whole stimulating and well executed. Several large paintings by Para Machett visually dominated the exhibition with their clarity of colour and sweeping design. The boldness and freeness of his work attacks the delicate intricacies of traditional Maori design and brings it alive with a twentieth century flourish.

Ralph Hotere in a number of highly buffed black paintings cut with thin lines and diagonal crosses evoked the mysticism and thorough exploration of colour present in most of his work. The carving of Fred Graham was particularly impressive, the craftsman having the particular talent of revealing in the wood the most sensual line of the grain. The flowing form of his carving had a perfect balance in his strong sense of design Cliff Whiting too had a fine though essentially simplistic line dominating his work giving it a strength which the work of an artist like Cathy Brown seemed to lack by her over-attention to detail.

Several paintings by Buck Nin incorporating a landscape crossed by a Maori motif appear disappointing in their predictability. Selwyn Muru employs his particular brand of muddy mysticism without ever allowing colour or content to come through his work.

The organisation was poor, the content very worthwhile in this exhibition of Maori asrtits. Their separation from other New Zealand artists does not show them up to be essentially different in quality and their contributions—historically psychologically, and visually—gives New Zealand art a real basis for further innovation.

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At the Peter McLeavey Gallery there is at present at exhibition of the most recent paintings of Milan McKusich. The seven paintings look at first impression like squares with the corners cut off, but this is not to take seriously the artist's intention.

MrKusich is an artist who is essentially interested in colour, and the reaction of the colour on the eye of the viewer. He has culled his paintings down in terms of their content and design until only the large colour fields remain, visually snipped at their corners by contrasting hues.

He says of his own work, "My painting does have content. It could be termed a kind of speculative metaphysics. Consequently it is difficult to be precise about the nature of the content. It does not exist for itself, but for Man as a vehicle of awareness."

The content of McKusich's painting is in their areas of colour. The canvas is underlaid With black paint and other colours are sponged over, the black undercoat giving the variation in surface colour. By this method he achieves unusual and attractive colour densities, for example his "Painting Dark Umber", "Painting Meta Grey No. 1" and "Painting Meta Grey No. 2".

McKusich rather ambiguously states the meaning of his work consists in the "significances people feel are there." He declares that he is totally uninfluenced by anything in the physical or emotional world about him. He says of his work, "The environment does not effect my work. Art is not the portrayed of environment or expression of personal feelings."

McKusich is probably the only painter in New Zealand who has so far abstracted his art that it is almost entirely related to the intellect and has its origins only in what has gone before. He identifies himself with Newman, Reinhardt and all other emblem makers and colour painters but his approval is intimately different and strongly individual. The cutting off of corners, a feature also of many of Colin McCahon's paintings is a reminiscent of design intended to show us we are looking at an area within the limitations of a square, and the contrasting corners build up a movement within the picture so we can grasp its dimensions.

McKusich is not an easy painter and his appeal will be entirely involved with the impact of the colour simplicity/colour complexity on the viewer. His "photographs" of paintings evoke the reality and pukrity of the art form. McKusich says, to quote Reinhardt "'Art comes from Art' (bless him)"