• 2007
The Big Picture

Summary "Art is not made for museums - it's made to be part of people's lives," asserts Hamish Keith, iconic arts commentator and presenter of The Big Picture. This series tells the story of New Zealand art from earliest rock drawings to the present day. For the first time, viewers will be able to watch a substantial series documenting in detail some of the most significant art works of our history. The six one-hour episodes were several years in the making. Keith presents a personal, and at times controversial, view of New Zealand's cultural history, showing how artworks reflect the way we have shaped our lives. Eschewing 'art speak' in favour of plain language, Keith explores pivotal moments in our history through artworks that reflect the world in which they were made. The series documents an encounter between cultures and their development across the next centuries. Keith confronts New Zealand's 'cultural cringe' and the impact it has had on it's art history. View more details

  • 2007

The Big Picture

Directed : Unknown

Written : Unknown

Stars : Hamish Keith

All cast & crew

8.7

Details

Genres : Documentary

Release date : Nov 17, 2007

Countries of origin : New Zealand

Language : English

Production companies : Filmwork

Summary "Art is not made for museums - it's made to be part of people's lives," asserts Hamish Keith, iconic arts commentator and presenter of The Big Picture. This series tells the story of New Zealand art from earliest rock drawings to the present day. For the first time, viewers will be able to watch a substantial series documenting in detail some of the most significant art works of our history. The six one-hour episodes were several years in the making. Keith presents a personal, and at times controversial, view of New Zealand's cultural history, showing how artworks reflect the way we have shaped our lives. Eschewing 'art speak' in favour of plain language, Keith explores pivotal moments in our history through artworks that reflect the world in which they were made. The series documents an encounter between cultures and their development across the next centuries. Keith confronts New Zealand's 'cultural cringe' and the impact it has had on it's art history. View more details

Details

Genres : Documentary

Release date : Nov 17, 2007

Countries of origin : New Zealand

Language : English

Production companies : Filmwork

Photos

The Big Picture (2007)

Episodes

View All Seasons
Episode 1 • Jan 02, 2008
Episode #1.1
EPISODE ONE: The World Intrudes. Hamish Keith looks back at New Zealand's earliest art, the rock drawings of the South Island and the impact they had on some 20th century artists and the encounter between Abel Tasman and Ngati Tumatakokiri in Golden Bay in 1642: the beginning of our history and the beginning of our art history. He follows the three voyages of Captain James Cook and the impact his artists and scientists had on the way Europe looked at the natural world. In particular, he looks at the art of the Pacific and New Zealand and its influence on how Europeans thought about Pacific society and Pacific cultures. We look at William Hodges, the artist of Captain Cook's second voyage, and the impact his work had on European art and its legacy in French Impressionism. A further look shows how the paintings of William Hodges and Colin McCahon both ask the same intriguing question about New Zealand and its future.
Episode 2 • Nov 24, 2007
Episode #1.2
EPISODE TWO: Engaging with Difference. Episode two focuses on travelling artists like Augustus Earle and George French Angus who engaged with Maori society and were fascinated by their difference. We look at how Maori art responded positively to European impact and flourished with new technologies and new challenges. We see the invention of the carved meeting-house, the early art of settlers and their invention of the empty landscape which could be seen as a colonising device to steal identity. If there is nobody pictured in the landscape it could be interpreted as up for the taking. The impact of the land wars on Maori art is noticed - producing brilliant and defiant images for the iwi but not much in European art. The question is asked: Can landscape painting have meaning? Both Maori and settlers saw art and culture as laying a grid of meaning over mountains, plains and rivers. Settlers tried to grapple with how to mold their painting styles and models to reflect New Zealand reality.
Episode 3 • Nov 30, 2007
Episode #1.3
EPISODE THREE: Civilising. Were New Zealand's Victorian dull, grey and repressed or were they exciting innovators laying the foundations for a flourishing and inventive metropolitan society? Was Victorian architecture our only golden age? Art societies, art schools and public art galleries flourish during this time. It seems that Maori art vanishes into museums and disappears behind a sea of red paint. Colonial artists present Maori as a dying race while the museums consign flourishing 19th century Maori art to the past and invent a false history for it. We look at how attempts to "revive" Maori art lead to imitations and pattern books. The brilliant painted meeting houses of the East Coast provide a lively alternative and a way to carry Maori art in the 20th century however there is a battle to keep it alive against the conservative views of official Maori culture. Other topics are: Searching for symbols - Maorilanders or Pakeha and a confusion of flags; An independent New Zealand defies Britain; Three European imports - none of them English - transform New Zealand art.
Episode 4 • Dec 07, 2007
Episode #1.4
EPISODE FOUR: Reinventing Distance. After a promising start New Zealand culture takes a wrong turn - the country turns its back on the Tasman world it had belonged to from the very beginning of European settlement and snuggles up to an imaginary Britain. Towns and cities pop up, and settlers start to reinvent their history. The ensuing struggle between town and country would last for nearly seventy years. Pakeha New Zealand seizes on Maori imagery to define its identity and at the same time Maori are persuaded to give up their identity and become brown Pakeha. Sir Apirana Ngata, with the best of intentions, continues to smother Maori art and the Maori Art School in Rotorua sets out to impose a single traditional style on the richness and vigour of Maori Art. Two prophets, Rua Kenana and Wiremu Ratana carry a changing Maori art into the 20th century. Only British teachers are imported for the country's art schools and some of them have a positive influence on ideas about New Zealand art. Artists struggle to make some sense out of the confusion and some of them do - inventing a New Zealandism which the more talented use as a Trojan horse to smuggle in a British modernism. A small group of artists - Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston and Rita Angus - find their own voice and cast a long shadow over what happened next. The Auckland Art Gallery, under the direction of Peter Tomory, begin to explore a New Zealand art history and define a context for New Zealand art and the idea of distance begins to lose its appeal to a new generation.
Episode 5 • Dec 14, 2007
Episode #1.5
Episode 6 • Dec 22, 2007
Episode #1.6
EPISODE SIX: The Braided River. A confident New Zealand art re-enlists in the world - choosing and adapting influences from the whole world of art and making something of its own. Sculpture heralds the beginning of an urban art and art begins to break free from the empty stereotypes of "National Identity", "Bi-culturalism" and "Telling Our Stories". The whole of New Zealand culture begins to grow up and celebrates what it actually is rather than what it was told it should be. Maori and Pakeha art begin to cross influence and enrich each other. Senior artists like Colin McCahon and Pat Hanly stop fretting about place and identity and confront issues of the larger world. In the exhibition Bone, Stone and Shell, jewellers lead the way in rescuing the richness of Pacific art from the museum cases in which it has been imprisoned for a century and Te Maori does the same thing for Maori Art launching its great treasures on to the world stage at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A whole new generation of artists get on with making art untroubled by who or where they are, although the arts bureaucracy still has a long way to go and Te Papa becomes a monument to a failed idea. Finally in the work of Shane Cotton and Bill Hammond the two great streams in the culture come together with Pacific, Chinese and the art of other cultures in New Zealand to make the great braided river of contemporary New Zealand art.
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