Invercargill Revisited
This week I spent a couple of days in Invercargill, primarily to go whitebaiting but also to catch up with some of the valued friends I have who live who live there.
As usuaI when I’m in Invercargill, I stayed in this house, they are most generous hosts, in fact, last year they staged a birthday party for me.
Dogwood
One of the great pleasures of living in such a southern part of New Zealand is that I
am seeing a floral display that coming from the warmer northern part on the country is of an intensity that I have never experienced before.
One of my favourite Ansel Adams photos was of the Dogwood. I think that his photo is a lot better than mine.
Austin Ulster
A few days ago I was taken for a spin in this fully restored very valuable 1931 Austin Ulster, thought to be the only one in New Zealand. Here it is parked at St Bathans.
Developed from the famous Austin 7, it has a 750 cc twin carburettor engine. No doors, and an exhaust that runs alongside the passenger ending in a very stylish fishtail alongside the pointed rear. Altogether an enchanting ultracute car. I want one!
What is your intention?
Today I want to say something about a common belief among teachers of art, especially at a tertiary level. Students are often not only encouraged but required to write something about their work, sometimes in advance of its production i.e. a statement about their intention.
I don’t know where this practice comes from but I don’t believe in it. Often the statements are extravagant in both their language and their claims. We’ve all seen them in catalogues, and on exhibition walls although I won’t go so far as to say that we’ve all read them.
Frequently the artist’s statements are spiced up with quotes, Baudrillard is a favourite. Derrida too, of course.
Until recently I used to think that having students write these was a harmless if irritating and useless practice, but no more than that. Recently I have come to shift my opinion. I believe that it may actually be damaging to the creative process, that it may create static and interfere with the welling up of an art work into one’s consciousness. Like talking too much about the content of a novel that you are writing instead of just quietly getting on with it and letting it develop a life of its own, a life which may go in surprising directions. If I were a teacher I would discourage the practice, possibly even try to stamp it out, but then art teachers in New Zealand frequently follow it themselves, they have after all, commonly come through the same art schools, the same orthodoxy.
I’ll finish with one of my favourite quotes, this one from Groucho Marx. “Art is art, isn’t it? And water is water and east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like apple-sauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.”