What is so interesting about an artist who married young, divorced shortly afterwards, had no children, lived mostly on her own and in isolation, travelled to Europe only once, was a pacifist and a feminist, dedicated her life entirely to art but sold as little as she could, no drama, no scandals?
Well, if art means anything to you, everything.
The biography is brilliantly researched, simply, but elegantly written, and as well as tracing Rita's life, it offers also a lesson in 20th century Kiwi history and society, life in this land of milk and honey, at the far edge of the world. Plenty of prints of her artwork accompany the text.
And this weekend, the great exhibition of all her major works, many of which never displayed to the public before. Can't wait.
Finally, I want to rec Alice Tawhai's Luminous, a collection of most exquisite short stories nominated for the Montana book award.
Alice thinks of writing stories as being like painting with words. The colours and the shades have to be exactly right. Her writing practice could be seen as unorthodox as she doesn't start each story at the beginning and finish at the end, she just writes random paragraphs until she knows that they're all there, and then strings them together in an order that makes some sort of sense. Alice prefers anonymity and thinks that her inspirations, her characters she writes about, deserve any accolades she receives.
4 comments:
Ooh, Luminous looks very interesting. I've never heard of the author. Will have to see if I can find it at my library.
I think you'd love it.
She's a NZ writer, a Maori. Doesn't want to be photographed and doesn't talk at all about herself and her life (I'm not even sure she uses her real name).
http://www.huia.co.nz/books/513
I put both books on my "to-read" list. We need to know each other better, for it seems American culture has flooded the world; as if any other culture does not exist. On our TV channels you can see almost only US films and TV series. The majority of books that have been translated are written by American authors. The EU politics obviously cannot make any decisions without US breathing a word to it.
Perhaps we are oceans apart, Slovenia and NZ, but through art, any kind of art, we might overwhelm the differences, bring continents closer.
You're right, Harka, American culture dominates NZ, too. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's probably even more pervasive here than in Europe, because since English is the national language, there's even less incentive in producing home-grown literature/films/tv shows. Well, as you now, out most famour film-maker, Peter Jackson, hasn't /writtendirected a truly NZ film in ages.
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