Collection Articles - Painting
No! by Tony Fomison
|
No!
Tony Fomison, 1971
Oil on canvas
Purchased 1973
Reproduced courtesy of the Fomison Estate
73/243 |
No! was begun in 1969 while Tony Fomison was living in a house
in Riccarton Road with Philip Clairmont and other bohemian artists.
Typical in its intensity and edgy mood, this work was inspired
by a newspaper photograph Fomison saw when he was in England during
the late 1960s.
Fomison often found his subject matter in almost chance discoveries
of photographs or illustrations. Although the painting is from
the newspaper photograph it is not specifically about the subject
of the report and circumstances that the photograph depicts. Rather,
Fomison has adapted the man’s head and violent gesture into
an archetypal expression of negativity and lack of communication.
There are no words, the mouth is shut and obscured by the hand
and eye contact is withdrawn. Pulled right onto the front plane
of the painting the huge hand is thrust forward virtually into
the viewer’s face. Fomison’s images are an expression
of the artist’s inner world with archetypal symbols which
stand for humanity’s continuing predicaments. Here he seems
to be focused on the problems of interpersonal communication.
Fomison’s style is economic and expressive, often simplifying
his subjects into grim and unsettling caricatures. He was greatly
influenced by the works of European master painters such as Caravaggio
(1571 –1610) and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 –1494),
but his works were always driven by his own distinctive, and often
eerie creative vision. Fomison saw himself as an outsider and
his work frequently explored that theme. Following time spent
in institutions, Fomison became fascinated with painting prisoners
and people with disfigurements or diseases or outcasts in the
community. Part of a series of portraits, many of prison inmates,
this work is typical in its intensity and edgy mood and uses a
style he developed overseas: ”I had found a way of painting
derived completely from my drawings.” The hand and face are
painted in almost monotonal black and white with subtle umbers,
that create a wide range of dark hues. Although the composition
is built up from numerous thin layers of paint Fomison leaves
no visible brush marks.
The former Robert McDougall Art Gallery’s purchase of this
work in 1973 was the first-ever institutional acquisition of Fomison’s
work and at the time, No! was the biggest painting completed by
Fomison, who remains one of New Zealand’s most original artists.
Anthony Leslie Fomison was born in Christchurch in 1939. He attended
the University of Canterbury between 1957 and 1960, studying sculpture.
While he was studying at University, Fomison became involved in
the excavation of a Maori archaeological site in Redcliffs and
later joined expeditions led by Roger Duff and worked for him
in the Canterbury Museum Ethnology Department. He recorded the
Maori rock drawings he observed in caves and shelters scattered
throughout the South Island by making traces of the ancient drawings.
This began his lifelong interest in Maori and Polynesian cultures,
which he often incorporated into his work.
Travelling to England and Europe in 1963 on an Arts Advisory Board
grant, Fomison was influenced by the Old Masters but produced very
little work at this time. He joined a street gang while in Paris,
surviving on his wits and money gleaned from chalk drawings on pavements,
but was arrested for vagrancy and spent three weeks in La Sante
prison. Once back in London Fomison worked during the day and tried
to paint at night, but found the stress to be too great. He was
admitted to London’s Banstead Hospital where three months forced
rest enabled him to resume his painting. Following his return to
New Zealand in 1967, Fomison moved to Christchurch and worked with
the Canterbury Society of Arts. In 1971 he had a large solo exhibition
at the CSA that included No! and other paintings depicting
concentrated forms strongly modelled in black and white. Living
in Auckland during the 1970s, he developed a range of imagery that
drew on Polynesian myths and legends and images from his own imagination.
Fomison was the first recipient of the Rita Angus Fellowship in
1985. He died in Whangarei in 1990.
Jennifer Hay
Related
|
', '') "No! by Tony Fomison")
