A survey of some new arts books that would make ideal festive gifts uncovers more variety than the contents of a Christmas stocking.
THE MIND AND TIMES OF REG MOMBASSA
by Murray Waldren
(HarperCollins $79.99)
If the name Reg Mombassa sounds familiar, it could be because he was the guitarist and singer with Aussie new wave pop band Mental As Anything for 24 years. But Reg's real name was Christopher O'Doherty, born and bred in the Auckland region in the 1950s. The family moved to Sydney in 1969, and our loss proved to be Australia's gain - not only was Mombassa (he changed his name when he formed the Mentals in 1976) a talented musician, he was also an excellent artist whose landscapes, cartoons and portraits are in some of Australia's major public galleries and private collections.
This comprehensive illustrated book is written by yet another expat New Zealander, journalist Murray Waldren, with Mombassa's co-operation. The artist does admit in the foreword that he was not so keen on the biographical bits, yet Waldren "cleverly extracted a fair bit of information that I and others had not previously revealed".
It's not just about the art. The first two chapters deal with Mombassa's childhood in New Zealand and offer a fascinating insight into the state of suburbia at the time. The young dreamer drew from an early age, and his childhood memories later became material for many of his paintings which are included here. He also started playing guitar when he was in his teens and the two talents remained the dual passions of his adult life.
The book is a comprehensive - 400 pages, plus discography, notes and exhibition list - account of a complex artist, musician and family man, whose work was often politically engaged. He left the band in 2000; his considerable output since then included the designs for the icons used in the Sydney Olympic Games closing ceremony. He says towards the end of the book: "In some ways, I have a very narrow life. I just work at my art and music and don't do much else ... I read a bit, that's probably the only outside interest I have, and watching the history channel and spending time around the family."
With the inclusion of so many familiar personalities from the New Zealand-Australian pool of musicians, this book has a wide-ranging, social history appeal.
PAINTING THE FRONTIER: THE ART OF NEW ZEALAND'S PIONEERS
by David Filer
(David Bateman $49.99)
When European migrants began arriving in New Zealand, many recorded their impressions of the landscape, the flora and fauna, and the Maori people in paintings. Some were professional; most were amateur, and many works from this early period were collected by Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull, later housed in the Turnbull Library in Wellington.
Filer, a Wellington writer and researcher, has gathered 170 works from the Turnbull collection for this attractive, slim book. The first chapter, Maori & Pakeha, examines how European explorers first saw Maori, with works by Captain Cook's artist on his 1769 Endeavour voyage, Sydney Parkinson; Herman Sporing, the Swedish assistant to Cook's naturalist, Daniel Solander; French artist Jean Piron; Augustus Earle, who painted a subject many other European artists ignored - Maori slaves; Joseph Merrett, who "had an eye for the beauty of Maori women", and more.
The following chapters cover War & Peace, Exploration & Settlement, which includes some intriguing images of Auckland in the 1840s, Sail, Steam & Rail, and finally, Work & Play, which includes the book's cover painting, Young New Zealand at Play by Philip Presants, an English printmaker who arrived in New Zealand in 1897. It was published in the Christchurch Weekly Press in October 1899, and shows a group of boys playing cricket in a West Coast mining town.
REAL ART ROADSHOW: THE BOOK
edited by Fiona Campbell
(Real Art Trust/Craig Potton Publishing $80)
In 2005, Fiona Campbell and Mark, the man she introduces in her foreword as her "then husband", established the Real Art Charitable Trust with the aim of taking New Zealand art around the country to schools. But how would the works travel? Where would they hang? When they saw the huge trailer transporting the National Science-Technology Roadshow, they had their answer.
The Campbells also needed help putting together the collection so they recruited art teacher Rob McLeod and Mahara Gallery director Gerald Barnett, drew up some guidelines then "went to market like three little pigs". After test-driving a trial collection, and receiving an enthusiastic response, Fiona Campbell (by now on her own) set about finding sponsorship for two touring collections: Black and Silver. Those works are now "collected" in this book, in alphabetical order (Albrecht to Youle). Opposite each plate is a short essay on the artist by a wide range of writers, including Mary-Jane Duffy, Anna Miles and Damian Skinner, plus a panel pointing the reader to associated web links, books and articles, galleries and museums. A useful introduction to contemporary New Zealand art.
LEN LYE
edited by Tyler Cann & Wystan Curnow
(Govett-Brewster Gallery/ Len Lye Foundation $75)
Published in September to supplement the huge Len Lye exhibition at Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image, this joins new publications by Roger Horrocks (Auckland University Press) and Lye himself (Body English, published by the Holloway Press) released a week ago to make this the year of Len Lye. All three are useful but this is the coffee table version perfect for Christmas delivery: an engaging balance of essays by Roger Horrocks, on Lye the film-maker; Guy Brett, on "Force Field and Sonic Wave"; curator Tyler Cann on Lye's "Mind, Self and Time", which includes some intriguing anecdotes and later in the book, a chapter on Lye's "fountains"; Wystan Curnow discusses his photograms; Evan Webb looks at the "trick and treat of vision" in Lye's film work; and Tessa Laird describes Lye as an ambassador for colour.
The book includes hundreds of photos and there's a handy lexicon at the back explaining Lye's aesthetic values such as "individual happiness now" and "old brain", plus a clear chronology, all adding up to a fine tribute.
LOOKING AT PAINTINGS: A PRIVATE VIEW
by Richard Cottrell
(Murdoch Books $79.99)
Cottrell, a theatre director who has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Bristol Old Vic and the Sydney Theatre Company among others, looks at "the human story" in 55 paintings by 20 artists in a hugely refreshing book which opens with a chapter on "A Highly Abbreviated History of Western Art".
Cottrell immediately declares that he is no expert "and this is not that kind of book". No, it's not - perhaps that's why it's such a pleasure to read because he focuses on the personal excitement of looking at pictures and his writing just gallops along. The first group of works he discusses in a chapter called Man's Inhumanity to Man features a sobering look at Goya's The Executions of the Third of May, 1808, which is a marvellously succinct piece of writing; Manet's The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1868-69; Picasso's Massacre in Korea, 1951, depicting the murder of civilians by American troops during the Korean War (a work I had never seen before) along with Picasso's Guernica, 1937.
After such cruelty it's a relief to move on to The Pleasures of Summer and Jean-Honore Fragonard, a homage to the Fragonard Room in the Frick Collection in New York, and his frothy pieces of pre-French Revolution romanticism. On we go to The Good Burghers and Frans Hals from the "Golden Age" of Holland, an artist about whom little is known. Cottrell highlights Hals' The Regentesses of the Old Men's Almhouse, 1664: "What old man's heart would not palpitate with terror at the sight of these unyielding, obdurately severe, old women!" he writes.
In further chapters Cottrell discusses Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ("spent most of his life in trouble of some sort") and his Supper at Emmaus painting from 1601, and a later, much darker version of the same subject created in 1606. He returns to Goya as The First Modern Painter; Vittorio Carpaccio, whose pictures of jousting knights and the triumphant St George give Cottrell "undiluted pleasure"; followed by chapters on Rembrandt, Agnolo Bronzino, Pissarro, Bramantino, Tintoretto, Botticelli, Seurat, Lucas Cranach, Titian and Cezanne.
He ends with an unexpected delight: Three Explorers - Australian painters Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and William Robinson. Robinson was artist unknown to me but thanks to Cottrell, I can't wait to see his Farm series, Four Seasons panels, and Dome of Space and Time in the flesh. An exceptional treat.
