Peter McLeavey: The Life and Times of a New Zealand Art Dealer Jill Trevelyan Te Papa Press, $65.00, ISBN 9780987668844 Landscape Paintings of New Zealand: A Journey from North to South Christopher Johnstone Godwit, $75.00, ISBN 9781775530114 Promoting Prosperity: The…
Lateral Inversions: The Prints of Barry Cleavin Melinda Johnston Canterbury University Press, $55.00, ISBN 9781927145470 Lateral Inversions: The Prints of Barry Cleavin contains over 120 colour plates and is a beautifully produced book that affords serious consideration to Barry Cleavin’s…
Aesop’s Kiwi Fables: Paintings Ray Ching David Bateman, $50.00, ISBN 9781869538453 I spotted Ray Ching’s new book, Aesop’s Kiwi Fables, in our local post office-cum-bookstore. I stopped buying picture books some time ago; they have become so glossily tempting that…
Behind the Canvas: An Insider’s Guide to the New Zealand Art Market Warwick Henderson New Holland, $45.00, ISBN 9781869663674 In a recent New Zealand Listener, cultural curmudgeon Hamish Keith commented on the dangers of the art market: “Buying and selling…
Elements of Modernism in Colin McCahon’s Early Work Gordon H Brown Art History Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, $15.00, ISBN 9780475122032 Toss Woollaston: Origins and Influence Tony Green Art History Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, $15.00, ISBN 9771176304001 Colin McCahon…
Art in Oceania: A New History Peter Brunt and Nicholas Thomas (eds) Thames and Hudson, $130.00, ISBN 9780500239018 When New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) opened its landmark exhibition Arts of the South Seas in 1946, the war in…
Two Hundred and Forty Years of New Zealand Painting Gil Docking (with additions covering 1970-1990 by Michael Dunn and 1990-2010 by Edward Hanfling) David Bateman, $100.00, ISBN 9781869538040 Publishers presumably ask themselves some questions before undertaking a new book. What…
The Owl That Fell from the Sky: Stories of a Museum Curator Brian Gill Awa Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781877551130 Stag Spooner: Wild Man from the Bush Chris Maclean Craig Potton Publishing, $50.00, ISBN 9781877517686 The Indescribable Beauty: Letters Home to…
Tuhituhi: William Hodges, Cook’s Painter in the South Pacific Laurence Simmons Otago University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781877578175 In the last decades of the 20th century, with political correctness at its zenith, you could scarcely mention the British Empire in…
The Art of Peter Siddell Peter Siddell Godwit, $74.99, ISBN 9781869621872 In 1982, when Peter Siddell’s painting Urban Memory, 1982, was purchased by the Christchurch Art Gallery, no one could have dreamt how much value such an image might accrue…