1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

[DRAFT ONLY - NOT FOR PUBLICATION] Across the Cultural Divide: Contemporary Maori Art Criticism in a Pakeha World Maori self-consciousness was one of the first effects of European contact. Maori people became aware of themselves as Maori. Eventually, Maori artists became aware of their art as ‘Maori art’, different from European art. They were made conscious of their own aesthetic concepts and of the conventions governing their art.1 Although the museum curator Roger Neich is referring, in this passage, to traditional art practitioners and practice, “Maori self-consciousness” is evident, in varying degrees, in the engagement and interaction of contemporary Maori artists with western art and society. At the present time there is considerable discussion within the New Zealand art community about contemporary Maori art—as the art historian Francis Pound observed in 1992: “Contemporary Maori art has become a hot critical topos.”2 A year earlier, in an ardcle on the brilliant young Maori sculptor Michael Parekowhai, Robert Leonard had written: ‘Contemporary Maori art’ is a contested term. There is disagreement on where to draw the line, on what kinds of work can be admitted as ‘contemporary’ Maori. Others will permit only those works by Maori which express traditional Maori concepts or values; use traditional materials and iconography. Some argue that the very idea of ‘contemporary Maori art’ is nonsensical, that Maori art is communal, marae-based, necessarily ‘traditional’. Underlying the debate is a fear that Maori culture might be corrupted from the outside. There is a desire to preserve what is essentially Maori in Maori art, but there is conflict over where that essence resides.3 Francis Pound recently framed a series of questions, in two versions: one, in the essay he contributed to the exhibition catalogue, Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art. In the other, an essay on the Maori sculptor Jacqueline Fraser and the issue of ‘Maoriness’ in the catalogue of the exhibition which was sent to Spain last year, we read: Contemporary Maori art. What is it? Is there such a thing? Can there be? Should there be? And if there is, or can be, or should be, how is it defined in relation to 1 AGMANZ News, 11: May, 1980, 6. 2 Headlands , 198. 3 Robert Leonard, Against Purity: Thre Word Sculptures by Michael Parekowhai, Art NewZealand, 59: Winter 1991, 52-