National Radio, 21 April, Nine to Noon
National Radio, 24 April, Sunday Morning with Wallace Chapman
Plains FM, Tuesday 3 May
BOOKS&CULTURE
Of similar import is Jennifer Haworth's BEHIND THE TWISTED WIRE: NEW ZEALAND ARTISTS IN WORLD WAR I (Wily Publications, $49.99). History is about the meaning "for all of us" - and how better to convey that than by exploring the artists who, often, shared the experiences that engulfed so many ordinary Kiwis of the day? Haworth shows us how, a century on, we can perceive the emotions of those who found ways of expressing the inexpressible.
Who today could not be moved by George Butler's poignant image of two parents visiting their son's grave in 1920, amid the forsaken wreckage of the Polygon Wood battlefield?
All the important bases are covered, including the story behind Horace Moore-Jones' iconic Gallipoli painting Simpson and His Donkey, which he produced in at least six versions, some with different titles.
Haworth gives us unique insight into our WWI art, including the story of Nugent Welch - our first official war artist, and a soldier himself. Superb production values do justice to the work of the artists.
Matthew Wright, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London, has published extensively on New Zealand's military and social history.
A salute to overlooked war artists
Some years ago Cantabrian author Jennifer Haworth published an excellent history of our World War 2 artists.
Behind the Twisted Wire, well designed by Quentin Wilson, provides a handsome matching format large-scale paperback brim-full of colour reproductions of our World War 1 experience.
Haworth writes well and with conviction. She has organised the book by artists and themes.
Nugent Welch, George Butler and Waiter Bowring are the big names and each gets a lengthy chapter.
While the focus is on their war art, she documents their early and post-war lives (and some of their non-war art).
While interesting people, we learn they were not always welltreated by the army, which was slow to appreciate- the role of artists in documenting warfare and even slower to pay up.
As Haworth shows, although officially British dead were not meant to be depicted, some artists broke the rule.
Above all, though, they bring a sense of colour and mood to the landscapes of the battlefields.
It's easy to forget that people saw them in colour, not the black and white of historic photographs.
A couple of years ago I curated a WWl exhibition for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.
Research for it reminded me of the opportunities lost 100 years ago.
We appointed our military artists far too late, paid them shockingly (if at all) and failed to establish a war memorial art collection.
Many sketches, watercolours and oils survive, mostly with Archives New Zealand, but we have yet to establish a gallery for their permanent display.
Perhaps this book may help?
The volume under consideration is, if you like, the prequel to Haworth's earlier The Art of War: New Zealand War Artists in the Field 1939-1945.
It's a thorough and engaging account of the work of those men who combined an artist's eye with a soldier's spirit and recorded both the devastation and the occasional beauty they encountered on the battlefields of WWI, as well as the inevitable number of official portraits of officers.
Their number included two of this country's most eminent artists, Archibald Nicoll and John Weeks, who mercifully survived to have illustrious post-war careers. But there were many others, such as Horace Moore-Jones, whose The Man with the Donkey (aka "Simpson and his donkey") is perhaps the best-known and most-cliched image from the conflict and was advisedly not chosen for the cover.