Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

            THE LIMITS OF INSPIRATION

A month back, in the depths of winter, my wife and I took a long road trip around various parts of the North Island, braving strong winds, fog and especially torrential rain. Among other things we took in a number of art galleries, delighted by the new exhibition at Wellington’s Portrait Gallery and bemused by some of the items in Whanganui’s Serjeant Gallery. But it was at a small, out-of-the-way town, which I shall not name for fear of seeming to ridicule its artists, that I had an epiphany.

In No-Name Town, having enjoyed coffee and a muffin at a salubrious café, having enjoyed ourselves walking along the river bank, we decided to go into the local Arts Society building. It was about the average length of a school classroom. An elderly woman sat at a desk, talking with a friend who departed shortly after we arrived. The woman at the desk welcomed us in and let us wander freely around the exhibition.

Here were charcoal drawings of horses and dogs. Here was a sparse sketch of two bloated men, which looked like a crib of Matisse. There were many landscapes and seascapes, of varying quality, the bright colours and brashness of brush strokes not necessarily being intentional. A foggy street scene was halfway towards being a Rita Angus. There were forays into fantasy, with scenes of princesses and knights riding on what looked like rocking-horse steeds. There were very many paintings of endemic New Zealand birds. Circling back to the curator’s desk, we saw larger canvases, each depicting many varieties of bird, which seemed to have been treated in an odd way. The colours were blurred and muted. They were created by the Thai Batik process, using hot wax.

Many items in the collection had been executed with a certain skill. I would be proud to have such skills. I could easily imagine some items decorating a bedroom or living room. But only one or two could credibly have been hung in an art gallery. For the hard fact was that there was nothing in this room that was not derivative, nothing that was not cribbed from the work of other and more original artists. The drawings of horses and dogs were the stuff of mass-produced postcards, no matter how skilled the local artist was. The landscapes and seascapes showed nothing that hundreds of more original artists had not shown before, and better. The fantasy scenes were the fodder of twenty thousand whimsical comic books. What was missing were originality, daring, a personal perspective. In a nut-shell, these were the typical products of a small town’s amateur artists. Some, I am sure, would have been senior-form schoolchildren, whose work might mature in a few more years. But many had reached the limits of their inspiration and the result was mediocrity.

Are these the comments of a snooty city-dweller encountering No-Name Town? Possibly. But my remarks could apply to many dozens of local Arts Societies around the country. Are they not, after all, as much in the business of socialising, of being a local friendly club, as they are in the business of creating art? And don't they at least set people taking an interest in better artists? Nothing wrong with that, of course, but only a miracle would bring forth a stunning work of art from such societies.

At which point, the epiphany hit me.

These small-town painters – don’t they put much thought, much time and much effort into their work? Perhaps they are not as fully-dedicated to art as more successful and publicly-known artists are. But when they stand before their easel and wonder whether they should show the beach from this perspective or that perspective, whether they should pose the bird in this stance or that stance, whether the sunlight should come from this side of the canvas or that side, are they not being as creative as they can be? How many of us, after all, have genuinely original thoughts? To make any art – even derivative and mediocre art – is to express oneself. The daubers of No-Name Town were expressing themselves, were creating what they saw as beauty, were giving pleasure to some of their friends and family.

That was the limit of their inspiration.