Elvis replies

I’ve got a huge amount of admiration for Peter Ireland as an art critic. We used to know each other when I began reviewing in Christchurch in the mid-eighties. He used to send me irate letters then and he’s doing it now here – and I’m flattered, for his articles would come close to the top of my list of personal favourites over the last fifteen years of Art New Zealand. I like his erudite and acerbic style (though he has mellowed a little). I like it even when it is me he is roasting, for despite his sneering comments here about the ‘uncritical’ blogosphere he is demonstrating exactly why online dialogue is so good. It’s democratic in a way that hardcopy magazines can never be.

But now he seems to be acting as a spin doctor for the Bieringa film company, or as Leon Narbey’s public relations officer, writing no longer like a critic but as a human interest newspaper reporter, giving us a background story about ‘actual achievers’ instead of looking hard at the film in itself (especially its cinematography) when evaluating my review. Yet he accuses me of not attending to the film as ‘actual subject’.

Ireland, despite his seductive phrasing, entertaining wit and skilled avoidance of using McLeavey's name, is more than a little two-faced. He takes great pleasure in telling me I’m school-masterish (he who started his review with a story about Napoleon before getting round to the ‘critic’s responsibility to the subject’), that I make unsubstantiated assertions (as if his view that ‘the critic’s responsibility is to examine the actual subject’ wasn’t) or unexamined assumptions (unlike say his view that the film subject’s deep privacy compelled his considerable achievements to be kept secondary to his interest potential for the film-maker).

In my article I think I provide more constructive argument than he acknowledges, though his criticism of some of my Popelike pronouncements is correct. However Ireland is too protective of this film crew. My discussion of Narbey’s contribution was insensitively worded perhaps, but he’s not a sacred cow, and even though I could have delicately said ‘Perhaps Leon could have…. etc.’ there was a crudely expressed but valid rationale behind my thoughts. As for the three film references, I set up a scale to get the discussion started. They are not crucial elements in the argument, though I later briefly provide some justification of my negative view of Mita’s Hotere by comparing her with Bieringa in having an agenda, that both these directors are consistently following previous projects, but that his agenda doesn’t dominate over his subject.

Ireland likes to think that only this film-maker can have access to McLeavey’s personality and that the viewer’s knowledge of him is somehow irrelevant, that any personal experience they’ve had with the subject of the film doesn’t count in its evaluation. However it is a documentary we are talking about and it is reasonable to compare points of view, to see if Bieringa’s view and that of a viewer like me coincide or overlap at all. My view is not an imagined one. It is not fantasy. I’ve known McLeavey for many years, not with anything like the depth that Ireland and Bieringa have for sure, but enough to have some clear notions about his personal qualities. My list of questions was not a check list of essential topics but a demonstration of how broad his interests are, and how much richer the film might have been.

That is why Ireland’s repeated view that only the ‘actual subject’ be reviewed is unrealistic. It assumes such a thing is easy to determine, that the filmic experience has clearly definable parameters controlled by the director, and ignores the outside appraisal that any viewer informed about the subject might provide.

I don’t want to get into repeating what I’ve already said in my review about McLeavey’s complexity, his art historical importance or the film’s odd branding, but if Bieringa has the material to make three more films, The Man in The Hat shows he was thinking like a timid Kiwi and not the adventurous Dutchman he could have been. It is true we have a small population base here for such a film’s audience, but the current crowds at the touring Rita Angus exhibition (her second survey) show that audiences do change with skilled marketing, that interest in NZ culture does snowball and people do become educated. It is not a view that this horse ‘was bound to come in second’ that I have argued. It is that track conditions are changing and a better trained nag could have anticipated them.

Rushed job

The Man in the Hat
Directed by Luit Bieringa
Produced by Jan Bieringa
Photography by Leon Narbey
73 minutes

There must surely be no more revered contemporary art personality living in this country than the historically pivotal art dealer, Peter McLeavey. There has been some brilliant journalism about him and his hugely significant contribution to our visual culture (by Bryan Staff, Grant Smithies and others) but so far - until this year - no movie documentation. So when Luit and Jan Bieringa’s film about him was announced as being included in this year’s International Film Festival, there was considerable excitement. Yet my impression after seeing it is that it is a bit of fizzer. Lovely to hear the man talk, but as art docos go, not as appalling as Merata Mita’s Hotere, but nowhere near as good as Leanne Pooley’s Being Billy Apple or Judy Rymer’s Victory Over Death. Just so so.

So what went wrong? Why wasn’t it as good as those last two? With the co-operation of a tirelessly loquacious, charismatic personality like McLeavey, and an esteemed cinematographer like Leon Narbey it should have been superb. Why wasn’t it?

First of all only three days were spent filming. Somebody like McLeavey, whom everyone knows is a complex individual, will always tell great stories (even to strangers) about his childhood, family and friendships with certain key artists - but that is just the surface. He needs to be gently prodded so that he is continually recorded at length to make a substantial document. Something over a couple of hours with real depth. He is so engaging he is always watchable.

There are many unpresented questions that could have been asked: I’d like to know what was it like to fill a Morris Minor up with paintings (as I’ve heard he used to do in the sixties) to take them to motel rooms in distant cities to try and sell them? Why and how did he persuade Woollaston to make the wonderful panoramic landscapes? Where did he learn to become a salesman? Did he ever consider that the role of spiritual themes might be over-rated in this country? Why did Hammond’s prices go up after the Auckland Island trip and not before? (What was it about the imagery?) Why did he get upset with L. Budd ‘blonding’ his chaise longue? And most importantly, when did he start wearing a hat? The McLeavey brand is actually his silvery (Warholesque) hair, his round ruddy (babylike) face, and those alert blue eyes behind stylish glasses. Always instantly recognisable. No hat.

Much of the film, as you’d expect, is fascinating, especially when our subject is talking about his nomadic childhood, his Catholic education, Freudian psycho-therapy and his bouts of depression. Or his passionate collecting of internationally sourced photography or publications of New Zealand poetry. The excerpts of letters from or to him from McCahon, Woollaston and Walters are the highlights.

The film’s photography though is disappointing. Some of the interviews were held when he was slumped in a chair and filmed from below, making him look facially a bit squat or froglike. He should have been filmed at eye height. After all, he is a salesman of infinite persuasion and charm, a great communicator who is very expressive and direct. Show him as he is normally seen.

Furthermore, in this film, too much is made of Wellington and its inhabitants. McLeavey, perceived by many as a national treasure, is admired everywhere in this country and beyond, but Bieringa, in my view, wastes too much time showing life on the streets of the capital, and his subject’s daily wanderings between home and gallery. Such subject matter is consistent with Bieringa’s earlier film on Ans Westra, and as director it is natural he follow his own creative humanistic impulses – though his agenda is not overbearing to the cost of his subject as Mita’s was in her Hotere. Yet despite his comparative restraint, for documenting such a significant player in our visual heritage it is regrettable that he did not play ‘David Sylvester’ to McLeavey’s ‘Francis Bacon,’ and develop some extended, really pithy conversations over three whole months, instead of only three short days.