Art by NZ’s ‘Paint Blacks’ for sale

Works from family collection of ex-Split Enzers Mike and Geoff Chunn on block

Artworks that helped shape the childhoods of Split Enz musicians Mike and Geoff Chunn will go on sale in Auckland next week. The 11 paintings and drawings by New Zealand artists were collected by the Chunn brothers’ late parents, Parnell allergist Dr Jerry Chunn, who died in 2013, and his wife Yvonne “Von” Chunn, who died in April aged almost 90.

Geoff Chunn describes the artists in the catalogue for next week’s auction at Parnell’s International Art Centre as “the Paint Blacks” — NZ, and mainly Auckland, artists from the mid 20th century who have all become household names.

“As Hannibal Lecter said, you covet what you see, so you tend to buy the artists of the city that you live in,” he said.

“I will never forget one afternoon in 1972, sitting among these wonderful pictures in the gallery-like living room of the middle terrace house at the top of Parnell Rd as my brother Michael, with four friends, tried out their new band on me. Split Enz was born,” he writes in the catalogue.

The 11 works are expected to sell for between $168,000 and $242,000 all-up, with the highest price of $50,000 to $75,000 expected for a Michael Illingworth painting dedicated to the poet James K. Baxter, A Calvary for Jim.

It depicts a Ma¯ori male in what may be a pa¯taka (storehouse) or may

vbe a reference to the crucifixion.

“A Calvary for Jim may be a portrait of the poet as a kind of seer, his brown eyes soulful, and his arm upraised like a prophet or preacher,” Linda Tyler writes in the catalogue.

“Or it could be a depiction of the subject in Baxter’s poem, The Ma¯ori Jesus — minus his blue dungarees.”

The second-most valuable work, expected to sell for between $35,000 and $45,000, is a painting by Jacqueline Fahey described as “a feminist reimagining” of Monet’s 1863 painting Le De´jeuner sur l’herbe, which showed two fully dressed men picnicking with two naked women.

In Fahey’s version, the two young women are splendidly dressed and the men are naked.

The other nine works from the Chunn family are by Dick Frizzell, Pat Hanly, Colin McCahon, Michael Smither, Peter Stitchbury and Toss Woollaston.

Next week’s art sale also includes a recently discovered, 100-year-old painting by Charles Goldie which has been in private ownership since it was painted in 1918.

The small painting, Kapi Kapi (An Arawa Chieftainess), is expected to sell for between $180,000 and $260,000.

The most valuable work in the sale is a painting by Don Binney, Shag and Vehicular Ferry, expected to sell for $350,000 to $450,000. Jacqueline Fahey’s Luncheon on the Grass and (below left) Michael Illingworth’s A Calvary for Jim are in the Chunn collection. Don Binney’s Shag and Vehicular Ferry and Goldie’s Kapi Kapi, (An Arawa Chieftainess) are also on sale.