Wystan Curnow

Neither Here Nor There The Writing of Wystan Curnow 1961-1984 Thomasin Sleigh A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History Victoria University of Wellington 2010 Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii List of Illustrations iii Introduction 2 Chapter 1 1939 – 1970 7 Chapter 2 1970 – 1976 42 Chapter 3 1976 – 1980 88 Chapter 4 1980 – 1984 113 Conclusion 149 Bibliography 155 Appendix: Complete bibliography of Wystan Curnow’s writing 160 Abstract This thesis addresses the writing of Wystan Curnow from 1961 to 1984. Curnow has written a great deal throughout his life, and the challenge of this thesis has been to select an appropriate time frame and important texts to place within it. The period of 1961 to 1984 has been chosen because it encompasses the 1970s, an interesting decade of experimentation for Curnow and also because the early 1980s signal a shift in Curnow’s work. I argue that Curnow’s encounter with post-object art and the immediate, phenomenological writing he produced in response to this work gives way in the early 1980s to a style of writing directly informed by post-structural and postmodern theory. Further, this study looks not only at Curnow’s criticism but also his poetry to reveal how, in their form and content, these two strands of writing together construct one of the first arguments for an ‘avant-garde’ in New Zealand art and literature. The thesis is divided into four chronological chapters. These follow the course of Curnow’s life from his birth in 1939 up until the publication of his seminal essay on Colin McCahon ‘I Will Need Words’ in 1984. The first chapter begins with the biographical background of Curnow’s youth and education and considers the significance of the eminence of Curnow’s father, Allen Curnow, in the decisions that Wystan Curnow has made throughout his career. This chapter then goes on to look at Curnow’s experience in the United States, studying for his Ph.D. and engaging with contemporary American culture. Chapter two begins with Curnow’s return to Auckland in 1970 and goes on to look at his important pieces of writing from the 1970s up until his return to New York on sabbatical in 1976. Chapter three focuses on this trip and the key texts which followed it. And finally, chapter four examines the early 1980s, the increasing influence of continental theory in New Zealand and the shift this precipitated in Curnow’s writing. i Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my supervisor, Tina Barton, for initially pointing me in the direction of Wystan Curnow’s writing as a thesis topic, and for all the time and enthusiasm she has given to this project. Her close editing and incisive suggestions have vastly improved this thesis through its many drafts. Thanks also to the staff of Victoria University’s Art History Department and the Adam Art Gallery, especially Laura Preston and Anton Berndt, for listening to my thoughts over morning cups of coffee. Importantly, I would like to thank Wystan Curnow for meeting with me for extensive interviews, promptly responding to my email badgering and allowing me to art historically “tidy up” his life. I sincerely hope that this thesis does justice to the complexity and significance of his work. I extend my gratitude to a number of people who have helped me collate information related to this project. Tony Green, Alex Calder, Jim Allen, Mark Williams and Roger Horrocks were all generous with their time through interviews, email conversations and discussion. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Sally and James, for supporting all their children’s never ending tertiary education. And Mark, thank you for your encouragement and for cooking dinner for me on those long nights of writing. ii List of Illustrations Wystan Curnow standing in Robert Morris’ Untitled (1965) in the exhibition Some Recent American Art at Auckland City Art Gallery (1975) 1 Rita Angus, Wystan Curnow, 1941 9 Cover of Evergreen Review, vol. 1, no. 3, 1957 25 Cover of Artforum, Summer, 1967 32 Robin White, Mana Railway Station, 1971 53 Billy Apple, 8x8 A Subtraction, Auckland City Art Gallery, July 1975 66 Roger Peters, installation view Songs of the Earth, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1975 74 David Mealing, installation view A Jumble Sale, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1975 74 Cover of New Art Some Recent New Zealand Sculpture and Post-Object Art, 1976 78 Bruce Barber, Mt Eden Crater Performance, 1974 80 Cover of New Argot, vol. 3, no. 1, 1975 84 Poster for ‘in the big green dome’, poetry reading, March 4, 1980 97 First page of ‘Climbing Rangitoto/Descending the Guggenheim’, 1979 99 Programme for ‘Full House’, 1979 104 Cover of Art New Zealand, no. 15, 1980 120 Cover of AND, no. 1, 1983 127 Poster for poetry reading and launch of Splash no. 1, 1984 129 Exhibition guide for The Fifth Biennale of Sydney: Private Symbol/Social Metaphor 143 iii Wystan Curnow standing in Robert Morris’ Untitled (1965) in the exhibition Some Recent American Art at the Auckland City Art Gallery (1974), Photograph: Robin Morrison 1 Introduction In recent years there has been a growing concern about and interest in the state of art criticism. James Elkins claims in his book What Happened to Art Criticism? (2003) that whilst art criticism is ostensibly on the rise, given the number of art magazines and journals in print, it is paradoxically read by very few people; it is in a state of both ‘vigorous health and terminal illness’.1 Elkins’ small book was published seven years ago, and now, with web 2.0 technologies, art criticism and visual art publications have continued to proliferate. Blogging is quick, cheap and wide-reaching, and online publishing is a cost effective method for texts to be circulated. Buoyed by an art market that has survived the 2007 economic crash, the writing – both critical and laudatory – which saturates the visual arts continues to increase across a variety of contexts and mediums. At a time when there are ever expanding avenues to write about art, it is important to look back at the histories of art criticism in order to see how current ideologies and methodologies were constructed and how they are perpetuated, and to track discursive and formals shifts that have occurred over the relatively short history of contemporary art criticism in New Zealand.2 This thesis addresses the writing of Wystan Curnow, whose career both precipitates and takes part in a period of change in the practice of art criticism in New Zealand. The late 1960s and the 1970s saw the professionalisation of public galleries in New Zealand, the establishment of art history as an academic discipline, and the development of a market for contemporary New Zealand art. Alongside these changes there was a growing awareness of a need for art criticism which supplemented and critiqued these activities. Two important 1 James Elkins, What Happened to Art Criticism?, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003, p.6. 2 Critics have, of course, written about art throughout New Zealand’s colonial history. By the term ‘contemporary art criticism’ I am referring to the period in New Zealand from the late 1960s onwards where the professional structures encompassing the visual arts – a network of public art galleries, tertiary study opportunities in art history and fine arts, journals for art criticism and art history, regulated state patronage, a market for contemporary New Zealand art – were put in place. This thesis seeks to place Wystan Curnow’s writing within this history, but also to show how his work complicates these narratives. 2 venues for art criticism, The Bulletin of New Zealand Art History (1972) and Art New Zealand (1976), were set up, and more was discussed and written about the visual arts in this country than ever before. Curnow intersects with this history at crucial points, as critic, poet, curator, advocate, audience member, editor, collaborator, and cultural commentator. Curnow’s work presents a series of conundrums for the art historian. He is academically trained in nineteenth-century American literature but the majority of his writing is on New Zealand contemporary artists. He is committed to two very different modes of art practice – ephemeral post-object art and abstract painting. He is an art critic who dislikes casting judgements, and a poet who rejects expression. He is a theorist who deplores the ‘multiple role-playing’ inherent in New Zealand culture, but he performs numerous roles in a variety of cultural spheres. His art criticism takes the form of poetry and his poetry takes the form of prose. He is a challenging cultural commentator, but the majority of his writing is published in little-known publications. And he is a New Zealand poet predominantly involved in an American poetic community. In constructing a map of Curnow’s writing, as this thesis has sought to do, these dichotomies disrupt attempts to form a cohesive narrative. Curnow has reservations about the discipline of art history, “art history tidies things up in a disturbing way, it backdates things. It is like things are more evident in the history than they actually are in terms of someone trying to account for them. There isn’t a very clear inside track to things.”3 Indeed, in writing this thesis it has been hard to grasp a ‘clear inside track’ to Curnow’s writing. His interests are divergent, his output prolific and his intent often to slip outside the mainstreams of culture in New Zealand. 3 Wystan Curnow, interview with the author, February 2009.

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