The Chronicler and the Stylist: Masters Both

In a sense the fine exhibition called Landscapes by Karl Maugham and Dick Frizzell at the Gow Langsford Gallery is art that has come full circle since the great outburst of ‘modern’ art here last century. When I began writing about art in the 60s landscape was the most admired genre and this was emphasised…

Great things by Goya in Zaragoza

Not long ago, just before giving a talk that incorporated my long admiration for the work of Francisco Goya whose life lapped over from the !8th to the 19th Century,  I was able to visit Spain perhaps for one last time. As well as spending the best part of three days in the Prado in…

Reflecting on a Winter Lecture series…

In 50 years of writing art criticism for a newspaper I never used the pronoun ‘I’. It seemed a waste of words to say “I find this painting very impressive.” Rather than “This is an impressive painting.” Nevertheless, writing a blog has forced a change on me so unashamedly I talk about myself and hope…

Zaragoza and Goya

Zaragoza is certainly not on everybody’s tourist list but duty led my wife to a conference there and I tagged along in pursuit of paintings by Goya. The city is on the River Ebro that was an important Roman port and Goya grew up there.  His father was a guilder there but went out on…

In Search of Goya

A recent trip to Spain had many pleasures including revisiting things seen 40 years ago that had remained fixed in memory: the great Roman aqueduct in Segovia, the astonishing enfolding wall of Avilla, the extraordinary city of Toledo on its hill above a river, and the great works by El Greco in its Cathedral hospital…

Art Walk

Throughout the year, except in the dead of winter and long weekends, I take a group around Auckland art galleries private and public. This is under the auspices of Artexplore, a run by Caril Cowan and Brian Latimer, who also do van tours. Lately dealer galleries have re-established themselves on the outskirts of the business…

The Art Fair – Brief Memories

The Art Fair has come and gone. It was particularly bright and glittery and the work was almost uniformly attractive although geometric abstraction, after decades of feeding into design, particularly in architecture, has surely run its course to the point where it is neat but seldom surprising. Some things linger in the memory notably the…

St Paul Street Galleries AUT

At AUT’s St Paul Street Galleries there are two exhibitions that challenge the idea of European culture as central to our thinking. In Gallery 1 the work is by the BC Collective (Before Cook and Before Columbus), a husband and wife team that combine a Samoan and a native American. The show includes a vast Indian…

Irresolute of late …

I fear I have been irresolute of late and neglected my blog. I have been involved in some fascinating rereading of books first encountered at university and will have more to say later. In the meantime, there are some exhibitions that I began to write about but then, in the absence of a deadline, neglected…

Just a note about Jude Rae

Sometimes an artist has a splendid show that explores no new theme or change in style but simply affirms the consistent high quality of accomplishment. There is an exhibition of the paintings of Jude Rae at the Fox/ Jensen/ McCory Gallery in Putiki Street. It contains no startling innovation nor any of her remarkable interiors or…