On the right wavelength

By T.J. McNAMARA

Art offers a huge spectrum of sensations from the academic to the innocent and exhibitions this week exemplify wavelengths across the whole range from ultraviolet academic to infrared innocent.

The academic show is where it should be, at the university's Gus Fisher Gallery in 74 Shortland St, until August 30. It is called Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Worpswede Artists: Prints and Drawings.

Worpswede, a village in north Germany near Bremen, was a famous artists' colony and included a landscape artist, Otto Modersohn. In 1901 he married another young artist, Paula Becker, who was immensely gifted.

At first it seemed exactly like the situation where a gifted woman artist subordinates her work to the dominant male in her life.

But Paula Modersohn-Becker was made of sterner stuff. She absorbed all that the Worpswede artists - talented but artistically and socially conservative - could give her and frequently went to Paris.

There her work, influenced by van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne, rapidly evolved. She simplified her shapes and made strong monumental forms, trying to convey not just appearances but the inner spirit of her subjects which were frequently women, children and self-portraits.

For a short time her output was inspired and prodigious but she sold only five paintings and returned to Worpswede where in 1907 she gave birth to a daughter and died shortly after. She has a special place in the development of modern art.

Sadly, the show at the Gus Fisher does not include any of her 700 paintings but it does have a mass of material about the milieu of Worpswede. It is a show for students of art history.

What emerges from it are the remarkable skills, particularly in printmaking, of Fritz Mackensen, Fritz Overbeck, Heinrich Vogeler and Hans am Ende who, with Otto Modersohn, made up the group who worked there.

There are beautiful evocations of the dark, flat, cold north German landscape and some delightful illustrations of fairy tales. What is abundantly evident in the drawings by Paula Modersohn-Becker is that she was the only radical, the only one of them with a special vision.

Her bold, clear reductions of form to line make their work look almost fussy by comparison and she offers special insights. Her drawings of nude women have a truth that drawings by men seldom attain. Her excellent prints also show a strong sense of form as well as a sympathy for poor people.

The men would have been astonished that with all their technical skill and contemporary reputation they have become no more than footnotes to her fame.

If you want to jump from the past to the present, Milford Galleries (26 Kitchener St) is offering the work of three young New Zealand artists until July 21.

Grant Whibley is showing three of his huge birds, just a head with a shape like a hill, a beak and a couple of glittering eyes but each one conveying a remarkable sense of character. They are surreal, at once strange and a bit dangerous. The portrait that uses the hooked beak of the huia is particularly strong.

These paintings sit better in the frame than his previous work though more attention is needed to the way the eyes catch the light.

From Canterbury comes Simon Edwards with 10 small studies of the moods of the sky with titles like Southerly Change and Low Cloud.

They are delicately painted although cautiously coloured. Damien Kurth's glasses and a bowl on a white field have yet to evolve the intensity that would lift them beyond exercises in paint.

If you prefer sculpture, there is an exhibition of three-dimensional work by Lyonel Grant at the John Leech Gallery (Khartoum Place) until July 26. The show is distinguished by one powerful work carved from stone, Kotiate IV.

This is a Maori figure with the traditional three fingers and simplified head. It is rhythmic, solid and strong and given extra energy by being poised on a narrow base.

The exhibition also has a long series of striking drawings in ink on paper, each showing half a face. The faces are all highly stylised but there are fascinating differences in personality despite the distortion. It is enlightening to see how the manipulation of a few features can effect changes in character while remaining statuesque. The exhibition includes some pieces in cast glass which are appealingly ornamental.

It is quite a jump from there to the Whitespace Gallery in Morgan St in Newmarket where a naive, innocent manner is applied to making little narrative paintings.

These story-tellings are by Andy Leleisi'uao and illustrate a fable in which aliens descend on Samoa and play lively games with the inhabitants. The works reveal a good sense of colour and a lively fancy. They are funny in every sense of the word. Until July 18.