Abstract:
This thesis examines the impact of Cubism on New Zealand art between 1930 and 1960. It focuses on the three influential modernists who arguably made the greatest commitment to the style in New Zealand – John Weeks, Louise Henderson and Colin McCahon. Detailed visual analysis of their artwork from the period reveals cubist-inspired elements which they combined with their individual interests and local subjects. The study charts the sources of these artists’ cubist knowledge and explores the effects which direct training in Europe had on Weeks, who studied with André Lhote in Paris between 1926 and 1928, and Louise Henderson, who was taught by Jean Metzinger in 1952. The influence of Cubism on Melvin Day, Charles Tole and Wilfred Stanley Wallis is also considered. These three artists taught themselves about the style through books and magazines and via some teaching contact with Weeks. The cubist-inspired elements in Colin McCahon’s artwork are identified and the style’s effect on the development of his abstraction is argued. Literature concerning ideas about multiple Cubisms and Cubism at the ‘periphery’ informs the visual analysis undertaken, and the artists discussed are placed within a wider global context that this literature provides for. Two thematic chapters in the thesis examine Cubism’s effect on the genres of still-life and landscape painting, arguing that it allowed for a revitalisation of the former and a break from the dominant modes of subject choice and depiction in the latter.