Flag Design by Frank Carpay, 1969. In the collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Tā-ū-rangi.
Flag Design by Frank Carpay, 1969. In the collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Tā-ū-rangi.
This beautiful work from the Hawke's Bay Museum's Trust collection features a dove and olive branch by Frank Carpay (b.1917 d.1985) and is so fresh looking for an artwork that it is 51 years old.
The dove, a symbol of peace, has been used for thousands of years andin cultures such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Both military groups and pacifist groups have used the dove as a symbol, as did artist Pablo Picasso when he featured the dove on a poster for the World Congress of Peace in 1949.
Carpay actually met Picasso in 1950 in the South of France when he was working at Madoura Pottery in Valauris and 20 years later in 1969, Carpay entered this work into an international flag design competition1.
In many parts of the world the olive branch is also seen as a symbol of peace. Some say this stems from the fact that an olive tree takes years to bear fruit, so one who plant olives must be expecting a long period of peace.
But all artwork is viewed in the present and this Christmas, for those families separated through border closures, Carpay's image seems to have special significance as a travelling messenger of love and peace across the globe.
When Carpay produced this work in 1969, he was reflecting on a different global context and a time when the peace movement was at its height.
The movement had gathered momentum after the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War ll.
In the late 1960s the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War saw it gain even more impetus.
Also in 1969 John Lennon, a figurehead for the peace movement, had returned his MBE medal to protest the British government's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War. In December of that year, Lennon married his partner Yoko Ono and the pair staged the first of their two week-long Bed-ins for Peace.
Here in Aotearoa, where Carpay was living, activists called for a national foreign policy that was more independent of the United States of America and expressed their pacifist convictions on the streets and in the media.
One of New Zealand's best, Carpay was trained in graphic design, ceramics, screen-printing and metalwork practice.
He began working in the ceramic industry after some encouragement from Picasso, working in both the Netherlands and New Zealand at Crown Lynn. However critically recognised Carpay was for his ceramic work, it was not commercially successful for Crown Lynn and he left the factory after four years.
During his next career iteration as a secondary school teacher, Carpay honed his skill in screen printing and it was in this that he saw the potential to commercialise his design work. Carpay launched his fashion company in 1954, a business which specialised in his screenprinted textile designs.
While Carpay's commercial design work did not contain overtly political content, in his flag design image we get a glimpse into his political world. Living through World War ll in the Netherlands, and through the early 1950s, the social and economic reconstruction of the period would have been one of inordinate change.
Carpay and his wife's emigration to New Zealand in 1953 would have been a huge upheaval and I like to think he would have found the isolation and relative stability of New Zealand a comfort.
This year more than ever, many of us have had pause to consider the benefits of Aotearoa's isolation and stability, most of us thanking our lucky stars to be living here in the Pacific.
So, this Christmas season MTG Hawke's Bay wishes all the best for you and your loved ones, whether they be here or overseas. Also for the New Year, in the words of pacifist John Lennon 'Let's hope it's a good one'.
