James K. Baxter Speaking at the Opening of an Exhibition of Paintings by Drew Peters

It may seem peculiar that a poet should have the job of opening the first exhibition of a New Zealand painter. In a way it is; in a way it is not. The language of the art critic is (thank God) a closed book to me. Yet, though the mediums are various, a certain basic faculty of natural contemplation precedes and underlies the creation of any work of art, whether it be a poem or a picture or something else. So I can speak from that primitive common ground.

I remember, in Christchurch, having the privilege of the company of Colin McCahon. On one occasion we sat on the bank of the Avon and threw empty bottles at the ducks. We did not discuss poetry or painting, but various other matters that concerned the lives we had to live. McCahon was then working as a market gardener. He thus divided the work for which he was paid from the work which he was born to carry out. I remember him saying that he would continue to paint crucifixions till he could paint a happy one. Most New Zealand artists have to go young into the houses of ill fame. One has to have a clear mind and a strong will to avoid this. McCahon avoided it. I think Drew Peters has also kept free of it. This gives him a great initial advantage.

A girl who had worked in a house of ill fame once remarked to me that though she had quite liked the work and the pay was good, she found it unendurably irritating when the clients spoke of love. In the same way, I think, the clients of the commercial artist should abstain from speaking of art, when they want a sketch of somebody wearing brassieres or a new mural for a power station. Let us talk of technique but not of art, in relation to the works of the journalistic brothel. To do otherwise is to insult the despair of the performers.

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It seems to me that our art schools are places where the old whores teach the beginners the tricks of the trade. I have heard the story (it could be apocryphal) of the teacher in one of our art schools who was also a producer of popular works. He had a filing cabinet loaded with geometrical sketches (A – a hill and a tree; B – a road and a house; C – a creek and a toetoe bush

. . .) and was able to combine these sketches in endless combinations for his moneyed public. I believe that in later life he tried to leave the house of ill fame, but could not manage it. The habits had become part of him.

For some the position is even simpler. There was the young man, who showed some talent in High School, and got a job putting the dot on the ‘I’ in the advertisement for Zip heaters.

To speak instead of art. If you look round these walls you will see many images of death. Drew Peters has mentioned in his brief written statement of his experiences as a young man at the time of the bombing of Europe. The sense that death is part of life is a central theme with which he grapples; as McCahon did in his crucifixions. It is an inevitable theme in this age.

A work of art is not a representation but a sacred object. The tribesmen made their masks with beards of grass to ward off the demons and bring rain. Two forces were at work: the benign power of life that tries to absorb and include what would otherwise destroy it; and the response of the artist, including at least a minimal technical ability. Drew Peters is drawn somewhat to the making of ikons. After what I have already mentioned, his integrity, I would stress his originality; not novelty, but a return to natural origins, the tranquil shapes of nature torn open by the power of death. These shapes exist in the void of unhope (so different from the cheerful and soothing hell of the journalistic brothel) and await the birth of new life as the images of the tribesmen awaited rain and fertility. Et verbum caro factum est . . .

What is the position of the artist at this present gathering, this cultural ceremony? Art precedes culture; culture springs from art, as a reflection of a reflection of what is known. Thus the natural position of the artist is one of humiliation, spiritual destitution, a darkness that waits for the birth of light.

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