Josie Robertson

Late this afternoon we learned that Josephine "Josie" Robertson, wife of Julian, died in New York on Tuesday. Josie was only 67 but she had been battling breast cancer for a number of years and it finally took its toll. She was a truly energetic and passionate woman who provided much of the drive and inspiration behind the couple's global philanthropic and business interests. At the beginning of their life's partnership art was very much her interest but one that Julian quickly came to share. He often tells the story that he was virtually dragged into his first major art museum experience, while on their honeymoon in Paris 38 years ago. Josie insisted they make a visit to the Jeu de Paume and a lifelong love of the post-impressionists was born.

Josie had taken art as her major when she studied at the University of Texas, from where she graduated in 1965. Although art history was not taught at the time she became a regular visitor to art museums. Once she and Julian began to form their collection, she told Gallery curator Mary Kisler in 2008, "it really started to work for itself, leading the way". She and Julian would talk about it a lot, and it became a wonderful common interest for them. She said at the time that her favourite work was Picasso's Femme à la résille, a striking study of his mistress Dora Maar, painted in 1938 and included in the Robertsons promised gift to Auckland.

The Auckland Art Gallery is greatly indebted to the Robertsons for the stunning generosity of their gift of 15 European masterworks, including some truly exceptional works by Picasso, Cezanne and Matisse, which they announced in May 2009. It remains a signal gift on any standard, unprecedented in this part of the world, and Josie was very much its co-author. She and Julian shared an abiding love of the arts and particularly of late 19th and early 20th century painting, and she had a discerning eye honed through their long experience as collectors. Josie loved their collection - their children, as she and Julian would both refer to their paintings - as she loved life. Her loss will be very deeply felt by her husband Julian and by their family and friends.

The Gallery has lost one of its most remarkable, generous and far-sighted benefactors. Her name and Julian's are to be honoured in perpetuity when the Auckland Art Gallery dedicates the level one Kitchener Wing the "Julian and Josie Robertson Galleries" when our developed building opens in mid 2011.

Chris Saines
Director
Wednesday 9 June 2010

WITH OFFENSIVE CANDOUR - Bulletin Artists in the Collection of the Auckland Art Gallery

The Auckland Art Gallery has a small, but very comprehensive, collection of original cartoons from The Bulletin, or by artists who found fame in its pages. The Bulletin was started in Sydney in 1880 by JF Archibald, who, during his 16 year tenure as editor was responsible for hiring some of the worlds best cartoonists. In the late 1880s The Bulletin was known as the Bushman’s Bible. It was read avidly by miners and saw millers throughout Australia and New Zealand, and was to become the authentic voice of the new colonial population, establishing the careers of writers and poets of the calibre of Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson and Steele Rudd. From the beginning The Bulletin was as famous for its black and white art as it was for its political and social commentary.

In the era before photographic reproduction magazine illustration was left up to a dedicated group of black and white artists and cartoonists. Initially illustrated by art editor William Macleod and other home-grown talent, publisher WH Traill determined to get new blood into the publication and travelled to the United States where he hired Livingstone Hopkins in 1883, a Civil War veteran then working for New York humour magazines Puck and Judge. In England in 1886 he discovered the great cartoonist Phil May, who was at that time an unappreciated artist working for the St. Stevens Review. May agreed to travel halfway around the world for a three year contract at 20 pounds a week. These two artists revolutionized The Bulletin and inspired a whole new generation of home-grown cartoonists, such as Norman Lindsay, Will Dyson, David Low and Percy Leason. May is credited with bringing a more simplified style of drawing to cartooning, influencing black and white artists everywhere.

Norman Lindsay started his 50 year association with The Bulletin in 1901, on the recommendation of Julian Ashton, while David Low was hired as a teenager on the strength of work sent from New Zealand. Many of these artists went on to become world famous, with Phil May inheriting the mantle of Charles Keene at Punch and Will Dyson and David Low becoming the top political cartoonists on British newspapers from the 1920s through to the 1950s.

This article features some of the rare surviving original artwork from the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery, which includes work by New Zealand born artists David Low, Unk White and George Finey.

Rod MacLeod


Norman Lindsay 1879 – 1969
“The joke-block, to have permanence as art, must not only demonstrate technical excellence, but must reflect the life of its generation”

Once Bitten 1915
Grinder (with offensive candour): ‘Now that there mower only chaws the grass. It wants sharpenin’.Why, yesterday, for two bob I sharpened the one they got next door.’
Old Poi: ‘Yes, I just borrowed it’.

Near Relations – A Study in Fowls 1916

Lindsay delighted in showing the similarities between people and their animals. He also enjoyed endowing animals with human qualities as in his classic children's story The Magic Pudding with its koala bear character Bunyip Bluegum.

The Lost Fare
Lindsay had a great understanding of kids. He was unique in depicting children as entities with concerns of their own in his cartoons. He had a parallel career as a successful comic novelist, and one of his most popular books was Saturdee which dealt with the various adventures of young Australians at the beginning of the 20th century.

Livingstone Hopkins 1846 – 1917
This cartoon refers to Sir George Reid, the Scottish-born Australian politician who was Prime Minister in 1904 -5. He was also the Premier and Treasurer of NSW in the 1880s and helped with the draughting of the Commonwealth Constitution, even though his lack of enthusiasm for Federation confused voters and earned him the nick-name ‘Yes No Reid’. A large man with a walrus moustache, he was a popular subject for cartoonists of the day.

Frank P Mahony 1862 – 1917

Mahony’s work was regularly published in The Bulletins early years. As well as fine pen and ink drawing his speciality was a moody dark wash that reproduced well using the printing methods of the day.

Our demoralized black brother

Police Trooper: ‘Well Jacky! What have you been up to this time?’
Jacky: ‘Not much, boss. Only swearing like a plurry trooper.’

Rider: ‘How far is that township?’
Pat: ‘No distance. You could throw a stone to it.’
Mick: ‘Shure – yer couldn’t – nor two stones nather.’

When the work was published Mahony’s original words were changed editorially:

Stranger (on horseback on country road): ‘Is it far from the top of that hill to the township?’

Hennessy: ‘No sir, yer could throw a stone from there into the main street.’

Murphy (contradicting): ‘Indade yer couldn’t, Hinnessy, nor two stones.

Look how far we have come

Since the webcam went live in 2008 it has been capturing the Gallery Development project everyday, rain or shine. To celebrate how far we have come with the building I have put together a little time-lapse video to illustrate how much has happened. We still have a long way to go but I hope you enjoy this glimpse at the current progress to the building.

You can keep an eye on daily activities through the webcam at www.aagwebcam.com

Horologist returns

A few months ago I did this post on Michael Cryns who looks after our Gallery clock. At the time, when I looked through his collection of photos, showing the inside of the clock from the past to present, there was only one photo of him and the clock together. Michael took this photo (below) himself and as you can see, it doesn't quite do him justice, as it only shows the top of his head.

He recently came in to do an interview with TVNZ for One News (which you can still see here) and I took the opportunity to take some more recent and fitting photos of Michael with the clock he has cared for over the years.

Michael with the beautiful bells in the clock-tower.

Michael with the TVNZ crew and Lee from Hawkins who showed us round.

Here Michael answered my request to show me how the bells chimed.

Climbing down the new ladder from the bell tower past the back of the clock face.

Les Cleveland and New Zealand photography (1)

It is always easy to identify nationalist intentions within New Zealand's photography if you are looking back at an historical image.With some camera artists such a revisionist approach is not only needed, it is actually appropriate. With the subtle photographs of Les Cleveland, I have always recognised a nationalist perspective.

Some years ago, I acquired for Auckland Art Gallery’s collection, Les Cleveland’s intriguing photograph John O’Shea and Colin Broadley at the Franz Josef Glacier during the production of “Runaway”, May 1964. (pictured above)

One of my colleagues asked me what the photograph ‘was’. It seemed an odd but pertinent question because it appears at first to be a double portrait of Runaway’s director and the film's lead character. This image is certainly a production document and while not intended to be a film still, it cannot be separated from the film’s making.

Colin Broadley is standing 'in costume' and is obviously still in character. I could have replied, “This 10 by 8-inch gelatin silver print is a behind-the-scenes image of the production of one of O’Shea’s finest movies Runaway.” Such a stuffy, yet correct, response would have really missed the point.

When looking at this photograph it is useful to know that it was taken immediately prior to the movie’s shooting of the scene when Colin’s character - David Manning - was about to ascend the Franz Josef Glacier. The local metaphor is clear – this character finds himself by going off and becoming lost himself in the mountains. This is an intentional loss, not a act of misadventure.

O’Shea positions the character as a New Zealand city bloke who has become a Man Alone figure inhabiting the wilderness. Is is interesting to recall that Bill Pearson’s brilliant book Man Alone was issued in 1960.

What is compelling about this photograph is that it shows a private moment of creative collaboration when issues of how to achieve the scene are being discussed on location. It is obvious how much John O’Shea has created an outsider character from a city guy. While dressed in a Swan-Dri woollen shirt, Colin Broadley remains totally in character – a sophisticated city swinger who has gone bush.

Local reviewers in 1965 did not realise how much Runaway was a radical film for New Zealand. One review said, “The picture has a brooding, dream like quality, but it lacks any real sense of urgency in the young man’s flight from himself, too many motives are started but never fulfilled, and the direction is deliberate. Unusual camera shots occasionally succeed in creating atmosphere and the photography of the New Zealand countryside is fine. Colin Broadley displays quite a personality as David, but Deidre McCarron is wishy- washy as Diana, and Nadja Regin is an utterly conventional vamp.” ("Runaway Killer” in Kinematograph Weekly, 1965)

If you look at the trailer that John O’Shea prepared for his film you will see how international in cinematic style Runaway appears. In its visual look, it is not dissimilar to Michelangelo Antonioni’s astonishing L’Aventura.
See http://data.filmarchive.org.nz/search/view_video.php?ref_no=F14194&no=1

Outside of New Zealand, the film was seen more clearly, “This is an absolutely brilliant film, all but unavailable on video, which is well worth seeking out. I viewed a print at the New Zealand Film Archive, and felt as if I was watching an undiscovered Losey or Antonioni film from the apex of the 1960s, with superb black and white cinematography, excellent acting, and a script which is suitably brutal and yet ultimately intangible, as in the best of both Losey and Antonioni. Do what you need to, but see this film; it is a remarkable testament to one person's determination to make a film without any studio to back him up. Shot for less than $50,000, without sync sound (but so skilfully "looped" that you'll never know it), and with a great "cool" jazz track, this is one of the undiscovered treasures of the cinema.”

Review written by W Dixon at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217776/usercomments.

See http://www.imdb.com/user/ur0103121/comments

For further background about the film’s significance refer to John Stuart Reynolds’ superb thesis Going far? - John O’Shea’s Runaway in the context of his attempt to establish a feature film industry in New Zealand
See http://hdl.handle.net/2292/334

I invited Les Cleveland to comment on his photograph John O’Shea and Colin Broadley at the Franz Josef Glacier during the production of “Runaway”, May 1964.

Les kindly sent me this fascinating response:
“I was touring South Westland in May 1964 and photographing a few buildings and landscapes when I encountered the cast and film crew of “Runaway” at the Franz Joseph Glacier terminal moraine. It was about 5 pm and they were all waiting in the last of the sunlight as they looked anxiously toward the jumbled mass of ice and rock at the terminal face. Two of their number was missing. I made several exposures of this group of people. There was good cause for concern as it would soon be dark, the temperature would drop and the ice was no place to be blundering about on in darkness. I had climbed most of the peaks at the head of the glacier and I was aware of the dangers that could be encountered on the terminal moraines so I stayed with the group in case a search had to be organised in the gathering darkness. However, the missing persons finally turned up and we all drove back to the hotel in Harihari where Pacific Films had set up their headquarters for shooting the final sequences of the film.”

Credit:
I am very grateful to Les Cleveland for his comments. I thank the New Zealand Film Archive for permission to provide a link to the Runaway trailer held in their collection of Pacific Films material.

Caption:
Les Cleveland
John O’Shea and Colin Broadley at the Franz Josef Glacier during the production of “Runaway”, May 1964 1964
gelatin silver print
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 2003
2003/42

Don Peebles, ONZM (1922-2010)

Canvas relief, brown 1979
acrylic on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1980

We learned the sad news of Don’s passing on the weekend, and tributes have already begun to flow. We wanted to offer our sympathies to his wife Prue and his children and extended family on behalf of the Auckland Art Gallery. He will be missed.

There is a quote that I have always admired by Don, when talking about his students who “come here experienced, and they leave (I hope) as beginners.” The quote says a lot about Don, his passion for teaching, indeed for learning, but underscoring it all, is that spirit of risk taking and testing that are essential for a life of artistic enquiry and that we appreciate so much in him.

The recognition that Don achieved during his lifetime was remarkable and a testament to his personality and his skill. His status as an Arts Foundation Icon testifies to his life-long achievements. We know that the spirit of experimentation so implicit in his work will live on.

The legacy of his prodigious artistic activity over more than 50 years will be sketched for many years to come of course. The first work acquired by the Gallery in 1960 was Wellington XII and since then we have acquired 15 works that demonstrates some of the extraordinary breadth of his creative output. The latest acquisition in 1997 came to us via the Chartwell Collection, who have also been enthusiastic supporters. His work was shown in the influential exhibition of  Aspects of New Zealand Art 1983, and more recently, his work has been on display at the Gallery in the collection exhibition, A Feeling for Form in 2005. Both exhibitions echo that character of testing and teasing the limits of his work, which is one of the ways in which we will remember him.
The lyrical exploration of form that sees his work erupt from the static picture plane of two dimensions and into the physical space of sculpture or painted relief is just one aspect of his impact on artistic production in New Zealand.

Our thoughts are with his family at this time.

Hanna Scott
Acting Contemporary Curator

The other blog

So, you may have noticed that I haven't discussed the Auckland Triennial, which opens tonight, on our blog. This is because it has a blog of it's own which covers all the goings-on and events happening from tonight until it closes on 20 June 2010 at all five venues.

Check it out here

I'll also be covering all the events, including tonights opening, through the blog and through the Gallery's twitter page.

Party with Cut Collective

Those of you who follow us on twitter or subscribe to our newsletter may have been lucky enough to win tickets to Cut Collective's private party in the Art Lounge a couple of weeks ago. It was a fabulous celebration of their work and I have put some photos from the night on our Gallery Flickr page.

The photo above has all 6 of the Cut Collective together.

I hope you all had fun!

Mindfood go behind the scenes at the Gallery

If any of you have picked up the latest edition of Mindfood Magazine you will have seen the fabulous photo shoot they did on the Gallery's development site. Photographing our Director Chris Saines, Dame Jenny Gibbs, Project Manager for the development site Grant Thomas, Architect Richard Francis-Jones, Curator Natasha Conland and Artists Ava Seymour and Shigeyuki Kihara. 

As well as the photos, which you can see in the magazine, they also did a great behind-the-scenes video of the whole thing which you can see here. It looks like it was a lot of fun!

Laurence Aberhart at Selma

Some photographs reach straight into one's heart. Laurence Aberhart’s black and white contact print of Flag and Bridge, Selma, Alabama 15 September 1988 is such a song.
Although made by a New Zealand artist, this is photograph brims with the history of modern America. One cannot look at this bridge and its reflection beneath the billowing flag and not be stunned by the image's symbolism. This bridge marks an awareness of African American civil rights from an international viewpoint.

On 7 March 1965, a day that would later became notorious as Bloody Sunday, armed state and local police officers attacked the 600 marchers trying to cross the bridge at Selma. They were there on a protest mission, to walk to Montgomery, the state capitol of Alabama.
This march was initiated by James Bevel and it registers a moment of change within the history American civil rights. Alabama had an appalling history of the non-provision of voting rights to its black citizens. Only 2% of the African American population were registered as voters even though they numbered over 50% of the state’s population.

The Library of Congress’s account of the day notes that the marchers were “demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by a state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.” (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar07.html)



Caption: Unknown photographer
The third civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama 21 March 1965
Front row from left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun; Reverend Ralph Abernathy; Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr.; Ralph Bunche (Undersecretary of the United Nations); Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
Photograph courtesy:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~religion/faculty/heschel-photos.html

Using clubs and tear gas the police prevented the marchers from crossing the bridge. They returned on 9 March led by the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr and were again repelled. After five days walking, starting on 21 March 1965, 3200 people finally succeeded in getting to Montgomery, 87 kilometres away. By the time they arrived in the capital the march had increased to 25,000 people. The distinguished Hasidic scholar Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel later wrote of his close involvement with these protests, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."On 26 February 2010, I telephoned Laurence Aberhart and asked if he would write an account of the circumstances of his making this important photograph at Selma. His reply is fascinating and I publish it in full here, knowing that it is an important account about the making of one of his key image.

New Zealand photography does not need to be 'of' New Zealand to be part of our culture's history. Laurence wrote:
"When I travel I often make a deliberate and conscious attempt to be in the location where a past great photographer once worked. Paris, in the locales that Atget once photographed. New Orleans and Louisiana haunted by Clarence John Laughlin. Vicksburg, Natchez, Mississippi and Selma, Alabama, where Walker Evans found his great Farm Security Administration material.
In 1988, I was lucky enough to be granted a Fulbright travel award to photograph in the southern states of the USA. There, I was often guided to the same places that Walker Evans photographed, often simply because he had worked there. So, in Alabama it was automatic to go to Selma. I was looking there for the buildings that Evans photographed, to witness the changes that time makes .

I was stuck by the symmetry of the bridge and it's reflection in the river. Remembering my other photographs of bridges [Alexandra, Otago] I thought that it would make a good subject. Looking around and knowing that Americans are so flag conscious and that I was in a 'significant' place - because of its import to the American civil rights movement - I noticed the flag on the porch of a nearby riverbank house.
I thought I could be clever and try and incorporate the two in one image. This required me to ask the owner of the house, luckily at home, if I could set my camera and tripod up on his porch to take the photograph. Permission was granted and the owner stood around watching. At some point I pulled my head out from under the dark cloth to hear the owner say to me something like

'Oh course you know that that's a famous bridge.'
[Me] 'Famous?'
'Well some would say Infamous. You know, where all that crap started from.'

It dawned on me that this was the Edmond Pettus Bridge that Martin Luther King and the civil rights march fought over in 1965. Dr King organised a civil rights march to gather in Selma to march to Alabama's capitol, Montgomery, to try and bring about voting rights for black people in the state.

The local police gathered on the far side of the bridge on the edge of the town and the route to Montgomery and on the day of the planned march, fought on the bridge with the protesters and turned them back. A few days later the protesters gathered in greater numbers, fought a pitched battle with the police again on the bridge and this time they were victorious and marched on to Alabama.

The attention that the march and the battle on the bridge gained caused more and more protesters to join the march so that they were so strong in number by the time they reached Montgomery. The decision was made to carry on the Washington DC, where, by the time they reached, the group was so large that they turned Alabama's refusal to permit black enfranchisement around. In fact, the resistance to civil rights for black Americans to vote was turned around. The battle on for the William Pettus Bridge was the turning point for America's civil rights struggle.

Back on the porch, taking the photograph, apart from wondering what the redneck Southerner was thinking as to what I was up to, my great concern was for my safety - there was, the whole time I was taking the photograph an increasingly irritated and in volume, increasingly higher pitched buzzing coming from a tiny iridescent blue humming bird, hovering just a few feet away from me, on station, guarding his nest in a hole in the riverbank very close by. I came away unscathed from both.

Caption:
Laurence Aberhart
Flag and Bridge, Selma, Alabama, 15 September 1988 1989
gelatin silver print
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1989