Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 25. 6 October 1972

Beagle Holes Salient

Beagle Holes Salient

Sir,

The Colin McCahon painting cost $4,000. Half of this came as a grant from the Arts Council. The other half has been advanced by the University pending an appeal for contributions to the members of the Court of Convocation. The decision to buy it and the method of financing it were discussed at a meeting of the University's committee for the purchase of works of art which has a student member. That member did not turn up to the meeting.

All of this could have been elicited with a simple enquiry before you published you latest issue. But maybe you are less interested in the facts than in finding an easy way of stirring up dissent and mocking New Zealand's most considerable painter.

T.H. Beaglehole.

The student member on the Committee for the Purchase of Works of Art swears he neither knew of the meeting nor was sent an agenda.

The intention was, sir, to mock the University, not Colin McCahon, for whom / have the utmost respect, despite the graffitti. The motive for the latter / doubt your ability to understand if you remain in a rage.

There are people in the community able to pay $4000 for such a painting, but I don't believe this University ought to be of them. If you consider its 'educational' value, consider how many (perhaps lesser, but much more 'accessible') works, could have been purchased for the same amount.

Sir,

First Don Driver's $3000 work of 'fart' and then Cohn McCahon's $4000 ego trip — 'I am'. Why does Vic have to jump on the bandwagon of current bad taste in modern art and invest such a lot of money in that mindless piece of junk (which will be obsolete in a few years anyway) that McCahon is trying to pass off as 'art'. No doubt he is having a good laugh as well as cashing in our gullibility. The situation isn't helped either by the pretentious, pompous drivel and verbal diarrhoea that some art critics try to pass off as comment on present day society. You only have to look at some of the art displays in the library to see that there are far more talented people, whose work the top brass deem unworthy to purchase, e.g. Brent Wong, who at least shows some skill and inventiveness (and it's cheaper).

You may like to hear of an experiment my friends and I performed. Last year there was an exhibition of continuums in the library. As these objects seemed utterly absurd and worthless, we got a rubbish tin, placed it on a table next to the paintings, entitled it God Circumulum No 9, and added it, complete with price, to the catalogue. That rubbish bin stood on the table for several days and was not removed till the exhibition was. We felt that a rubbish bin had about as much artisticment as a continuum, which in turn has as much as McCahons white elephant.

Yours angrily,

Eva Petro.