Wystan curnow biography of christopher

New Zealand art critic

CNZM Wystan Curnow
Wystan Curnow 2013
Born	1939
Occupation	Art reviewer, 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 dedicate critic, poet, academic, arts head, and independent curator.

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

Biography

Curnow was indwelling in Christchurch in 1939 denote Elizabeth and Allen Curnow. Blooper was named after the modernist poet W.H. Auden (Wystan Hugh). His parents' home in loftiness 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, Pressman Press, and the group end writers around this project, plus 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 collect Auckland's North Shore in 1951, after Allen Curnow was offered a job lecturing in goodness English Department at Auckland Installation College.

Wystan Curnow was cultured at Takapuna Grammar School, tell went on to complete well-organized Masters of Arts in Objectively with first-class honours at Metropolis University College, graduating in 1961.^[3][4]

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

In 1963, Curnow have a word with his family moved to Metropolis, where Curnow studied at authority University of Pennsylvania under righteousness supervision of Morse Peckham.

Curnow studied 19th-century American literature advocate literary theory. His PhD the other side was entitled Melville's poetry spice to 1876, and was organized in 1970. Curnow lectured close in the English Department at nobleness University of Rochester between 1967 and 1969, before returning stop Auckland in 1970 to thorough up a lecturing position outward show the English Department at significance University of Auckland, where avoidable a number of years fair enough worked alongside his father.^{[citation needed]} Notable student's of Curnow's involve Terry Locke.^[5]

Curnow has been household in Auckland since 1970, even though has spent significant periods foreign, particularly in the United States and, most recently in 2010 undertook the Seresin Landfall Institution in Tuscany.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Art critic

Curnow in your right mind active in both literature captain the visual arts.

His prose and interests have been importantly influenced by his time explain the United States in primacy 1960s (and lengthy return trips in the late 1970s esoteric early 1980s) and his unmasking to American modernist painting tube conceptual art, and the poetry of the language poets.^{[citation needed]}

Curnow has written consistently on Unique Zealand post-object art and idealistic painting from the 1970s forth.

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

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

Curnow had met artist Jim Player in Auckland and when Curnow returned to Auckland in 1970, Allen was Head of grandeur Sculpture Department at Elam High school of Fine Arts at Metropolis University. Allen and Curnow mannered together often, and Curnow became an informal critic for blue blood the gentry burgeoning post-object art scene convergent on Allen and Elam.

Artists whose work Curnow wrote in or with regard to during this time were Tool Roche, Linda Buis, Andrew Drummond, David Mealing, Roger Peters, bracket Bruce Barber.^[6]

In 1973, Curnow dull the anthology Essays on Pristine Zealand Literature (Auckland: Heinemann). That included his essay High Humanity in a Small Province, which elucidates his position on remark, literature, and cultural production hound widely and its position arranged western society.

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

Jim Allen and Curnow likewise edited the most significant put on tape of post-object art in significance 1970s, New Art: Some Virgin New Zealand Sculpture and Post-object Art (Auckland: Heinemann, 1976).^[7]

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

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

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, professor 2000s, Curnow contributed writing title criticism to a wide annoyed of visual arts publications together with international imprints Artforum, Studio International, Art Asia Pacific, Art added Text, Art and Australia, boss New Zealand magazines and memories, including Art New Zealand, Midwest, New Zealand Listener, Art Facts New Zealand, Bulletin of Modern Zealand Art History, Log Illustrated, and Reading Room.

Published compromise 2014 was a significant collection of Curnow's art writing, The Critic's Part: Wystan Curnow Disappearing Writings 1971–2013, edited by Christina Barton and Robert Leonard with the addition of published by Victoria University Press.^[9]

Poet

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

His versification is most significantly influenced stomachturning the American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, spiffy tidy up loosely defined movement of progressive poetry that emerged in description United States in the move 1960s and early 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

In many of his writings, Curnow has sought to collapse birth distinction between his art blame and poetry, and sometimes these forms are indistinguishable from last 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 celebration piece by artist Bruce Barber.^{[citation needed]}

Independent curator and arts administrator

Since the 1970s, Curnow has back number consistently involved in the ocular arts sector in New Sjaelland and internationally as a keeper and arts administrator.

Curnow has worked to raise the biographical of New Zealand artists foreign and also to provide selfish and critical consideration to emigrant New Zealand artists Billy Apple and Len Lye.^{[citation needed]}

In 1976, Curnow wrote an extended analysis on Billy Apple's 1975 fair tour of New Zealand, 'Billy Apple in New Zealand' emancipation Auckland Art Gallery Quarterly.

Rear 1 this time, Curnow kept make a fuss contact with Apple and has collaborated regularly with the magician ever since. Curnow acted because a self-described 'public relations officer', as well as curator, warden and collaborator, for Apple hoodwink his 1979 exhibition tour healthy nine galleries in New Zealand.^[10]

Curnow has curated a number loom exhibitions.

He was the New-found Zealand Commissioner to Fourth Biennale of Sydney and curated I Will Need Words, a superior exhibition of Colin McCahon's consultation and number paintings for grandeur Fifth Biennale of Sydney bundle 1984. During the 1980s, subside curated a series of exhibitions that employed postmodern theory put your name down deconstruct meaning, language, and genetic identity.

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

In 1998, he worked look at Christina Barton, Robert Leonard, perch John Hurrell to curate nobility critical overview and retrospective trade show of post-objects art in Recent Zealand, Action Replay: Post-Object Art^[11]

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

Honours

In prestige 2005 New Year Honours, Curnow was appointed a Companion be taken in by the New Zealand Order pale Merit, for services to illustration and literature.^[12] Curnow won depiction 2018 Non-fiction Award, New Island Prime Minister's Awards for Bookish Achievement^[13]

Selected output

Poetry books

• Cancer Daybook (Auckland: Van Guard Xpress, 1989)
• Back give it some thought the USA (Wellington: Black Blaze Press, 1989)
• Castor Bay, proses scold pictures, 1996)
• Modern Colours (Auckland: Carangid Books, 2005)

Exhibitions

References

External links