KEY POINTS:
Hamish Keith constructed a simple but extremely exciting theory towards the end of last night's debut of The Big Picture series.
That the portrayal of New Zealand and its Maori inhabitants by Captain James Cook's shipboard artists directly influenced the attitude of Britain towards the peoples of the
South Pacific as it embarked upon the age of colonisation.
Cook's artists - men like Sydney Parkinson and William Hodges - painted and drew Maori as civilised, cultured people, emphasising dignity and bonhomie, not savagery, as Keith put it, thereby reinforcing Britain's decision to colonise New Zealand by treaty rather than take by force. Consider, in contrast, the studies of the savages of Africa and their colonial history.
Of course, our colonial track record was not sweetness and light and Keith alluded to that by showing Hodges' dramatic painting of a waterspout in Cook Strait, with a pa on fire on a coastal hill.
It was a work which was to have a direct link to Colin McCahon's Storm Warning, with its flicker of fire.
Why was it burning? Both men, although more than a century apart, were asking the same question, said Keith, both fretting about the future of this country.
If the first episode of this series is anything to go by, we are in for a superbly made, thoughtful journey.
Keith, who wrote the commentary, is a confident and insightful guide who doesn't over-insert himself into the visual aspects.
He began with a clarification that this series is his personal view of our art history, explaining that he - like so many of us - had grown up thinking art was the work of dead foreign people.
Then, at the age of 15, he encountered a McCahon painting setting the Virgin and Child in a Nelson landscape. It started his lifelong fascination with our art.
Keith castigated Theo Schoon's improvements to the mysterious rock drawings in the caves of Canterbury as yet another example of the cultural misunderstandings which had been occurring since Abel Tasman's arrival here in 1642.
We saw drawings held at the Dutch National Archives of Tasman's bloody skirmish at Golden Bay - the bureaucratically minded Dutch, commented Keith, killed on their way to what they thought was a committee meeting, adding with a little smile, that it was a pity the idea didn't catch on.
The Dutch explored in the name of commerce; the British to learn more about the world in the Age of Enlightenment. That's why Cook's three voyages here carried artists to paint the plants, landscapes and people - and the images they took back to Europe changed the way those old powers viewed the world. Keith even suggested that drawings of the moko fired up the enthusiasm for tattoos among English seamen.
So yes, The Big Picture brings big ideas to the small screen, but it couldn't work without the art. Keith's narrative is beautifully matched by a flow of paintings, engravings and historic sketches presented within a context which clarified why they are linked to where we are in the world today. Art is about now, whenever it happened, he pointed out. Simple and true.
For anyone who grew up with a cultural cringe indoctrinated by an education system based on the British syllabus - that is, as he pointed out, most people schooled here pre-1950s-60s - The Big Picture was revelatory.
New Zealand has always had a unique culture; it has just taken a while to appreciate that, post-colonisation. But we are getting there, by leaps and bounds. The Big Picture, chapter one, was an impressive way to illustrate the story of who we are, and feel mighty proud about it. If the series continues the way it has begun, the word seminal springs to mind.
But one gripe. Why, when so much time, money and effort has gone into its making, did TV One screen its debut so late on a Sunday night after the oh-so-British story about Lady Chatterley's Lover and a legal spat which was all about the English class-war?
* The Big Picture, TV One, 10.25pm Sunday.
