Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann Peter Simpson Auckland University Press, $75.00, ISBN 978869404710 It has been a prolific few years for New Zealand art history at Auckland University Press, with monographs on Bill Culbert, Marti Friedlander, Len Lye…
A Micronaut in the Wide World: The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy Gregory O’Brien Auckland University Press, $59.99, ISBN 9781869404703 The exhibition staged in Wellington City Gallery to accompany the publication of this book contains a striking homage…
Dick Frizzell: The Painter Dick Frizzell Godwit, $75.00; ISBN 9781869621742 It’s funny how an established artist’s moment can seem to arrive suddenly second time around with an exceptionally appealing – almost unbelievable – narrative logic. After the remarkable debut and…
The Invention of New Zealand: Art and National Identity 1930-1970 Francis Pound Auckland University Press, $75.00, ISBN 1869404149 Francis Pound’s The Invention of New Zealand is an uneven and often quirky work but one with which anyone interested in the…
Towards a Promised Land: On the Life and Art of Colin McCahon Gordon Brown Auckland University Press, $79.99, ISBN 9781869404529 As I began to read the 16 essays, plus introduction, that make up Gordon Brown’s Towards a Promised Land, I…
Bill Culbert: Making Light Work Ian Wedde Auckland University Press, $99.99, ISBN 9781869404390 Making Light Work is a great title, the best I’ve come across for some time. It makes me smile and think of Bill Culbert, the subject of…
Field Punishment No 1: Archibald Baxter, Mark Briggs and New Zealand’s Anti-Militarist Tradition David Grant, paintings by Bob Kerr Steele Roberts, $34.99, ISBN 9781877448461 In his introduction to Field Punishment No 1, David Grant expresses his satisfaction that New Zealand…
Red Studio: Forty-five Prints John Z Robinson Longacre Press, $39.99, ISBN 9781877460388 John Z Robinson is an artist in many media, and in two major modes. One is the ebullient use of colour in free-style painting; the other the witty,…
Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye Roger Horrocks Auckland University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781869404222 Last September I visited the blockbuster Salvador Dali exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Glamorous and edifying though it was, I…
The Frangipani is Dead: Contemporary Pacific Art in New Zealand Karen Stevenson Huia, $60.00, ISBN 976189693251 “The Frangipani is Dead” is a curious phrase to use as a title for a survey of contemporary Pacific art in New Zealand. Actually,…