Best Art Books
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT: BETWEEN GESTURE AND GEOMETRY
by Luke Smythe (Massey University Press, $80)
Gretchen Albrecht’s rich career is superbly documented in this sumptuous wide-format hardback, well designed to accommodate her most widely recognised works — the hemispheres (two quadrants bolted to form a semicircle) and the elliptical ovals which succeeded them. The earlier (and later) phases of her practice are also fully covered. Since the turn of the century, Albrecht has often returned to more conventional rectangular formats without abandoning her signature shaped-canvas forms. But if “geometry” has been a constant in her work, so too (as suggested by the book’s title) has “gesture” — the free movement of form and colour across the surface of a work, most obvious in the sweeping, squeegee-created curves of the later hemispheres. (PS)
FRANCES HODGKINS: EUROPEAN JOURNEYS
ed by Mary Kisler and Catherine Hammond
(Auckland University Press, $75)
The superb exhibition of the same title has been and gone (now in Dunedin, later in Christchurch and Wellington) but as a record and reminder this fine book remains. It cannot replace “real paint on real pictures”, to borrow a phrase from Colin Mccahon, but it does offer wellinformed essays by local and international authorities, and a plethora of quality reproductions and other visual material (the list of works runs to eight pages). The contributors are a distinguished bunch while Auckland University Press has delivered appropriately high production values for an artist the Spectator in 1946 called “one of the most remarkable woman painters of our own or any country, of our own or any time”. (PS)
MODERNISTS & MAVERICKS: BACON, FREUD, HOCKNEY & THE LONDON PAINTERS
by Martin Gayford (Thames & Hudson, $55)
Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney are undoubtedly the superstars of post-world War II British art and rightly dominate Martin Gayford’s excellent survey of the period from the war’s end to the 1970s. Significantly all three, in their very different ways, were figurative painters during a period dominated by American abstraction from Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko onwards. It is widely understood that in this period New York replaced Paris as the world’s art centre, and part of the struggle of the British painters was to make their way in an environment increasingly hostile to figuration. The chapters on these three are full of new information, often deriving from the author’s personal interviews, but there is much more to the book which makes it a true history of the postwar London art scene. (PS)
SPLIT LEVEL VIEW FINDER: THEO SCHOON AND NEW ZEALAND ART
by Damian Skinner and Aaron Lister (City Gallery, Wellington, $40) This timely book takes its title from a 1966 Theo Schoon painting shown at Auckland’s New Vision Gallery in Auckland in 1965, one of the few solo shows of Schoon’s painting ever held, and recreated as the centrepiece of Wellington’s City Gallery exhibition, of which this modestly scaled, but well-illustrated publication is the catalogue. The exhibition will also be on show at Te Uru in Titirangi from March 7 until the end of May, 2020. The successive chapters, all but the last two written by Skinner and Lister, correspond broadly to component parts of the mosaic-like exhibition. Uniting all these various perspectives achieves a more rounded and comprehensive portrait of this multifaceted and controversial Dutch immigrant — painter, archaeologist, photographer, jade carver, gourd-grower and carver, advocate for and scholar of Maori art — than has previously been available. (PS)
MCCAHON COUNTRY
by Justin Paton (Penguin Books/ Auckland Art Gallery, $75)
Among numerous Mccahon centennial projects, Justin Paton’s handsome book consists of 15 brief essays (three to five pages) on Colin Mccahon’s art, each followed by a suite of up to 15 well-chosen pictures, often around a dozen. Most are full-page reproductions, some are spread across two pages, and a few extra-long works have fold-outs. The quality of the reproductions is excellent and the design is clean and smart. Paton, currently working at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is an engaging commentator — wellinformed, thoughtful, perceptive and often eloquent. Here is a randomly chosen sentence typical of the insights offered throughout: “All the times and places in Mccahon Country are available to us at once. We can go to Takaka in 1948 or to Kaipara Flats in 1971. And, just as important, we can move freely from either place in any direction. The body of work is so rich that new sightlines keep opening up.” All keen Mccahon fans will want to own this book. (PS)
LOUISE HENDERSON: FROM LIFE
edited by Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman and Julia Waite (Auckland Art Gallery/christchurch Art Gallery, $65)
This book fully documents the splendid exhibition on in Auckland and, later, to be seen in Christchurch. Together with some other essayists, each of the three curators contributes a chapter: Lara Strongman writes about the early landscape paintings in which Henderson, a French-born artist, comes to terms with the new country she has adopted; Julia Waite, deals with the middle years (1950s, 60s and 70s) in which Henderson, now living in Auckland (plus with sojourns in France and the Middle East), makes the transition to modernism through cubism and, later, more purely abstract styles; Felicity Milburn focuses on the last great series the artist completed, The Twelve Months (1987), painted in her 80s — huge paintings with which Henderson crowned a remarkably diverse career, now fully laid before us in this welldesigned and richly illustrated publication. (PS)
COLIN MCCAHON: THERE IS ONLY ONE DIRECTION, 1919-1959 (VOLUME 1)
by Peter Simpson (Auckland University Press, $75)
Peter Simpson’s Colin Mccahon: There is Only One Direction, 1919-1959 is undoubtedly the most important New Zealand art-book of the year. For the first time, we can begin to see the detailed shape of the artist’s career and accurately measure his achievement. The book has been a long time coming; there has been no comprehensive Mccahon book for 30 years. Simpson has written a profound, informative and readable book — one that will be foundational for the future. It is profusely illustrated with full-page reproductions of Mccahon’s paintings and other associated materials. It is not a biography, as Simpson takes pains to emphasise, but the story of the man and his work. Marking the centenary of his birth, Colin Mccahon: There is Only One Direction is the first of two volumes with its companion to be released early in 2020. Studded with fresh and previously unknown excerpts from Mccahon’s unpublished letters, Simpson’s archive discoveries add an entirely new dimension to both the painter and his creative work. (DH)