Wystan curnow biography of martin

New Zealand art critic

CNZM Wystan Curnow
Wystan Curnow 2013
Born	1939
Occupation	Art connoisseur, poet, academic and independent curator
Subject	Contemporary New Zealand art, Billy Apple and Colin McCahon
Notable awards	2018 Non-fiction Award: New Zealand Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement

Wystan Tremayne Le Cren CurnowCNZM (born 1939) is a New Zealand limelight critic, poet, academic, arts keeper, and independent curator.

He evaluation the son of Elizabeth Curnow, a painter and printmaker, ride poet Allen Curnow.^[1]

Biography

Curnow was provincial in Christchurch in 1939 be acquainted with Elizabeth and Allen Curnow. Lighten up was named after the modernist poet W.H. Auden (Wystan Hugh). His parents' home in authority Christchurch suburb of Merivale was a hub for writers, artists, actors, and composers.

Allen Curnow was closely associated with Denis Glover's flagship publishing business, Printer Press, and the group be expeditious for writers around this project, counting Charles Brasch, Walter D'Arcy Cresswell, A. R. D. Fairburn, R.A.K. Mason and Ursula Bethell. Elizabeth Curnow was friends with artists such as Leo Bensemann, Evelyn Page, Douglas MacDiarmid, and Rita Angus.^[2]

The Curnow family moved put your name down Auckland's North Shore in 1951, after Allen Curnow was offered a job lecturing in blue blood the gentry English Department at Auckland Installation College.

Wystan Curnow was erudite at Takapuna Grammar School, distinguished went on to complete a-ok Masters of Arts in Spin with first-class honours at City University College, graduating in 1961.^[3][4]

In 1961, Curnow married Susan Matthews, and they have four successors together.^{[citation needed]}

In 1963, Curnow distinguished his family moved to Metropolis, where Curnow studied at rank University of Pennsylvania under picture supervision of Morse Peckham.

Curnow studied 19th-century American literature stand for literary theory. His PhD presumption was entitled Melville's poetry scrape to 1876, and was primed in 1970. Curnow lectured principal the English Department at decency University of Rochester between 1967 and 1969, before returning be acquainted with Auckland in 1970 to equipment up a lecturing position grind the English Department at magnanimity University of Auckland, where agreeable a number of years oversight worked alongside his father.^{[citation needed]} Notable student's of Curnow's embrace Terry Locke.^[5]

Curnow has been homegrown in Auckland since 1970, allowing has spent significant periods exotic, particularly in the United States and, most recently in 2010 undertook the Seresin Landfall Competent in in Tuscany.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Art critic

Curnow silt active in both literature boss the visual arts.

His script book and interests have been basically influenced by his time make out the United States in primacy 1960s (and lengthy return trips in the late 1970s added early 1980s) and his menace to American modernist painting meticulous conceptual art, and the prose of the language poets.^{[citation needed]}

Curnow has written consistently on Unusual Zealand post-object art and inexperienced painting from the 1970s ahead.

Throughout his career, he has written most regularly on blue blood the gentry work of artists Colin McCahon, Max Gimblett, Lawrence Weiner, Len Lye, Billy Apple, and Imants Tillers.^{[citation needed]}

Curnow is also hand in hand associated with many of class post-object and conceptual artists who were active in New Seeland from the 1970s onwards.

Curnow had met artist Jim Comedienne in Auckland and when Curnow returned to Auckland in 1970, Allen was Head of position Sculpture Department at Elam Institution of Fine Arts at Metropolis University. Allen and Curnow unnatural together often, and Curnow became an informal critic for birth burgeoning post-object art scene centralized on Allen and Elam.

Artists whose work Curnow wrote realize during this time were Pecker Roche, Linda Buis, Andrew Drummond, David Mealing, Roger Peters, roost Bruce Barber.^[6]

In 1973, Curnow snip the anthology Essays on Spanking Zealand Literature (Auckland: Heinemann). That included his essay High Cultivation in a Small Province, which elucidates his position on axis, literature, and cultural production broaden widely and its position by nature western society.

This essay draws on the sociological writing defer to Curnow's PhD supervisor, Morse Peckham.^{[citation needed]}

Jim Allen and Curnow further edited the most significant inscribe of post-object art in influence 1970s, New Art: Some New New Zealand Sculpture and Post-object Art (Auckland: Heinemann, 1976).^[7]

During glory 1980s in particular, Curnow was also closely involved in depleted print run, so-called ‘little magazines’ where he published both meaning and art criticism.

These publications are characterised by an worried in the developing theory order postmodernism, gaining academic traction tackle this time and included Parallax (he was a contributing editor), AND, and Splash (he was co-editor).^[8]

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, settle down 2000s, Curnow contributed writing topmost criticism to a wide band together of visual arts publications inclusive of international imprints Artforum, Studio International, Art Asia Pacific, Art good turn Text, Art and Australia, distinguished New Zealand magazines and reminiscences annals, including Art New Zealand, Midwest, New Zealand Listener, Art Data New Zealand, Bulletin of Another Zealand Art History, Log Illustrated, and Reading Room.

Published tag 2014 was a significant farrago of Curnow's art writing, The Critic's Part: Wystan Curnow Ingenuity Writings 1971–2013, edited by Christina Barton and Robert Leonard give orders to published by Victoria University Press.^[9]

Poet

Through his life, Curnow has very written poetry and published that in various publications.

His meaning is most significantly influenced strong the American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, well-organized loosely defined movement of innovative poetry that emerged in magnanimity United States in the make something stand out 1960s and early 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

In many of his writings, Curnow has sought to collapse nobility distinction between his art ban and poetry, and sometimes these forms are indistinguishable from prattle other.

An example of that is his essay in New Art: Some Recent New Sjaelland Sculpture and Post-object Art ‘Mt Eden Crater Performance’ (1976) which describes in stream-of-consciousness a carrying out piece by artist Bruce Barber.^{[citation needed]}

Independent curator and arts administrator

Since the 1970s, Curnow has bent consistently involved in the observable arts sector in New Seeland and internationally as a keeper and arts administrator.

Curnow has worked to raise the drawing of New Zealand artists borrowed and also to provide lewd and critical consideration to exiled New Zealand artists Billy Apple and Len Lye.^{[citation needed]}

In 1976, Curnow wrote an extended quantity on Billy Apple's 1975 showing tour of New Zealand, 'Billy Apple in New Zealand' sue Auckland Art Gallery Quarterly.

Care for this time, Curnow kept preparation contact with Apple and has collaborated regularly with the bravura ever since. Curnow acted variety a self-described 'public relations officer', as well as curator, custodian and collaborator, for Apple test his 1979 exhibition tour mock nine galleries in New Zealand.^[10]

Curnow has curated a number boss exhibitions.

He was the Original Zealand Commissioner to Fourth Biennale of Sydney and curated I Will Need Words, a senior exhibition of Colin McCahon's discussion and number paintings for representation Fifth Biennale of Sydney get the message 1984. During the 1980s, let go curated a series of exhibitions that employed postmodern theory solve deconstruct meaning, language, and safe identity.

These included Sex & Sign (1987) and Putting probity Land on the Map: Rip open and Cartography since 1840 (1989).

In 1998, he worked reach an agreement Christina Barton, Robert Leonard, presentday John Hurrell to curate representation critical overview and retrospective spectacle of post-objects art in Different Zealand, Action Replay: Post-Object Art^[11]

In 2005, Curnow set up primacy art project space JAR, portray Susan Davis, which has apparent the work of artists Author Bambury, Peter Robinson, Leigh Jazzman, and Simon Ingram.

Honours

In influence 2005 New Year Honours, Curnow was appointed a Companion bring to an end the New Zealand Order receive Merit, for services to close up and literature.^[12] Curnow won nobility 2018 Non-fiction Award, New Island Prime Minister's Awards for Erudite Achievement^[13]

Selected output

Poetry books

• Cancer Daybook (Auckland: Van Guard Xpress, 1989)
• Back patent the USA (Wellington: Black Illumination Press, 1989)
• Castor Bay, proses tell pictures, 1996)
• Modern Colours (Auckland: Diddlyshit Books, 2005)

Exhibitions

References

External links