Vision overcomes years in wilderness

By LINDA HERRICK

If ever there was a fashion victim in New Zealand art over the past 40 years, it would have to be Don Binney. A darling of the Auckland art scene in the 60s - he graduated from Elam in 1962 - Binney had his first solo show in 1963 and his iconic, deceptively simplistic bird-landscape paintings were a hot collector's item.

In those days, New Zealand culture endured, almost despite itself, in an immature environment lacking historical or critical perspective. Critical fallacies developed during the 70s which harshly derided "landscape" art. During that decade, Binney was subjected to a bewildering level of attack.

Even worse, the criticism died over the following two decades. Instead of talking about his work, debating its worth, Binney was ignored. He was the invisible man. As Oscar Wilde said, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."

Happily, Binney learned to listen to his own counsel and kept working. And now, more sensibly, he's come full-circle, neither in nor out of fashion. At the age of 63, he's finally being saluted in a touring retrospective and in a new book - in fact, the only book devoted to him - Don Binney: Nga Manu/Nga Motu-Birds/Islands, by Damian Skinner (University of Auckland, $49.99).

The book contains 75 plates of works from 1962 to 2002, an introductory essay by Skinner, and an illuminating, bittersweet interview called "A Recovered Commitment". Looking at the plates, with their sublime affection and sadness for the birdlife and landscape of this country, it's easy to ask of those doubters of the past, "What was their problem?"

Skinner, 29, a Wellington-based art historian who most recently curated the touring Michael Illingworth show, says, "I've always liked Binney's work and I realised Illingworth and Binney had very similar kinds of careers, both had been heralded in the 60s, been celebrated and famous, and then had fallen out of critical favour. Their work changed as well. Illingworth started to paint very small, odd paintings, and then he died in 1988. We never got to see where he would have gone.

"Whereas Don, in the same period, his work definitely faltered. He started doing a number of graphic prints in different media. He says it was his way of saving himself, but in the 90s [in the essay], he says, 'I've been peed on so much, why don't I do what I want to do?' and began to paint again."

Skinner says he was struck by the absurdity of the now-obsolete critique that a person who spent 40 years painting birds and landscapes was worthless.

"Do you go, 'Is that dumb?' or do you start to look closely and think about what has happened during that time? In the 60s he was so closely aligned to a search for national identity and that was seen to happen in very particular ways - through what they [critics] called the 'harsh light', the 'bright light' of New Zealand, which defined the landscape. Everything gets reduced to a graphic dark line and you have to draw almost rather than paint to capture the quality of the landscape.

"If you were responsive to the light, you would produce a particular kind of New Zealand painting."

But then landscapes suffered that critical reversal, Binney was reconfigured as an artist going over old territory, and that, says Skinner, "really gutted him".

"A lot of what he told me didn't make it into the book. The decision was made to keep the book as a celebration - not everyone would be interested in this art history stuff. But from being really celebrated when he was 24, to being reviled and then ignored, Binney went into a critical wilderness. It was a personal crisis and an artistic one. He indicates that clearly."

Indeed, says Skinner, the process of the book "may have been quite a healing process for him. It made up for a lot of neglect."

The published interview with Binney is notable for his trademark acerbic wit. He describes Elam's teaching philosophy during his days there as a student as "balefully anachronistic", the place as "frumpy, wonderfully frumpy".

"The thing that struck me about working with him was his incredible honesty and being able to be entirely frank," says Skinner. And to be self-critical, as well.

"I asked him at the beginning for a list of what he thought were his best works and without variation, in the end, the 75 plates in the book are the 75 Don listed. I think his ability to judge his own work and be critical was incredible. A lot of artists are unable to stand back from themselves in any sense.

"So the good thing that's come out of his experiences is that he has a pretty good sense of himself and what he's done."