Biography revives Len Lye

By PAUL PANKHURST

Let's talk about reputation or, more specifically, the reputation of the artist. "It would be nice to think," says Roger Horrocks, "that there was a wonderful system for determining artistic reputations.

"It would be nice to think that the best art was always recognised and the best artists always got their just deserts."

Dream on.

During 20 years of research, Horrocks pondered why New Zealand-born Len Lye remained stuck in the cult category - known as a sculptor's sculptor and a filmmaker's filmmaker - and noted how talented peers of Lye in England, such as the composer and filmmaker Jack Ellitt and the sculptor Kanty Cooper, slipped through art history's net.

"You have to say to yourself, 'Why did these people come out badly from the art machine? Why is the art machine erratic? Why is it chancy?"'

For "the art machine" read: the museums, funding bodies, art markets, critics and art historians.

In Lye's case, Horrocks says one explanation is that he was from a generation of artists who would not play the publicity game; he was no self-promoter.

A second is that he wouldn't stay put; he skipped across media as a filmmaker, sculptor, painter, photographer and writer, and moved geographically, too, leaving behind the name he'd built in England to start afresh in New York.

One of the underpinnings of Lye's art was a fascination with motion, from the sketches he made as a young man of the changing folds in the clothes of people walking by in Wellington, through to later triumphs such as the hand-painted movie A Colour Box and the wild kinetic sculpture A Flip and Two Twisters.

While Lye found it natural to range across media as he explored his ideas about motion - and his ideas about natural energy, tribal imagery, and the unconscious mind - he left behind critics and audiences who knew one medium but not another.

A third factor inhibiting the spread of Lye's reputation was one of simple logistics: moving huge motorised sculptures around the globe is hard, making reputation-enhancing exhibitions difficult to stage.

A fourth reason might be that while he participated in some of the major artistic movements of the 20th century - he swam with the surrealists, to name one - he always remained somewhat off to the side, on his own journey.

Now, with the publication of Horrocks' weighty biography Len Lye, and a flurry of events taking place around the centennial of Lye's birth - July 5, 1901 - the question remains where Lye's reputation should stand.

In 1972, eight years before Lye's death, an NZBC documentary was entitled, Len Who? a question many New Zealanders would still ask today.

Horrocks' view is that Lye should be known to the world as a major artist, and known to New Zealand as one who ranks alongside Colin McCahon and Katherine Mansfield.

He cites several of Lye's major works to support this view, including the films Free Radicals (1958), Trade Tattoo (1937) and A Colour Box (1935) and the sculptures A Flip and Two Twisters, Blade and Universe.

Irrepressible energy flows through the work, from the scratch marks on film in Free Radicals that Lye described as "little zig-zags of electricity" to pieces of motorised sculpture where big pieces of steel dance and twist, thunderous.

The artist was a pioneer in making films without cameras, and his distinctive way of understanding movement is yet to be fully appreciated by artists and critics, Horrocks believes.

While Horrocks would wish for Lye to have a greater international reputation, the artist is not entirely treated as a footnote.

Last year, the Centre Pompidou in Paris gave him a one-man show - a first for a New Zealand artist, according to Horrocks - and published a book of critical essays. In Sydney, the New South Wales gallery has a Lye show scheduled for December.

What's needed now, according to the writer, is a comprehensive exhibition to tour overseas museums, where people would be amazed by the large kinetic sculptures in particular.

In the biography, he writes: "This next stage has been delayed by a catch-22 situation in which major museums remain nervous about making such an investment in a less-well-known artist, even though such an exhibition is the only way to confirm his 'major' status."

Certainly, 2001 will be the year when awareness of the artist hits new heights in this country.

The Horrocks biography is pitched to as wide an audience as possible, and it's a treat: a thoroughly documented examination of a major artist with a major personality.

From the unique dress sense to Lye's fantastically named philosophy of "Individual Happiness Now," it's the story of an individual's individual.

Contemporaries are quoted, describing the artist as "like a man from Mars," "the least boring person who ever existed," and a "crazy, excited and exciting guy."

His love affair with his own senses is traced back to childhood and the "sense games" he played, one day focusing on colour, the next on sound, the next on taste, and so on.

He's described repeatedly as someone who was, simply, exceptionally happy.

As Horrocks puts it, talking in the context of New Zealand: "I think there's actually a tremendous relief to find somebody you can put up there as an artist who's having a good time."

A range of events is coming up to keep the buzz alive.

A big exhibition, The Long Dream of Waking: Len Lye Centenary 1901-2001, opens on June 30 at the Govett-Brewster, the gallery in New Plymouth that is home to the Lye collection.

The same day, a Centennial Symposium on Lye will be held at Auckland University.

The New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington is also putting on special events, and Wayne Laird is preparing a CD of the sounds of Lye's sculptures, Horrocks says.

It all helps Horrocks' cause, but as he notes in his book, "It takes a long time to establish or re-establish the reputation of an artist."

* Len Lye a biography by Roger Horrocks is published by Auckland University Press, $49.95.