DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY The Painting of Rudolf Boelee Part 1
Part 1
1969 - 1999
At age 29 (1969) I started to paint seriously. The progress was rather rapid and by 1972 I was ready to have my first solo exhibition with the Society of Arts at the Rotorua Museum.
DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY The painting of Rudolf Boelee
Reviews, Articles & Letters: Ian Rockel -John Coley - Jonathan Smart - Pat Unger - Nola Barron –Justin Paton – Warren Feeney - Janet Bayley - Susan Campion - Emma Pratt – Felicity Milburn - Adrienne Rewi – Esther Venning –Nik Wright – Ian Henderson
Design & Commentaries: Rudolf Boelee
Publisher: Crown Lynn New Zealand Limited
© Rudolf Boelee 2013
“3 Stages of Woman” - triptych – 1970 Oil on hessian on board Private collection
I arrived in Christchurch, the 5th of January 1963, aged 22, and started working at the Clarendon Hotel as a steward. Before coming to New Zealand I had been doing that type of work; first during my compulsory army time and then on freighters with the Rotterdam Lloyd and later their passenger ship “Willem Ruys�. Life in Christchurch was really interesting, people were friendly, and there was always something to do after the hotel job had finished. Bars closed at 6 o’clock, but there were coffee bars and parties. Ann, who I had met on the ship and then travelled around Europe with, came back to New Zealand and we got married. Soon after that we hit the road again and worked in hotels in Te Anau, Wellington, Hellaby Freezing Works in Auckland and then moved to Australia, working in hotels in Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Katoomba. When Ann became pregnant we moved back to Christchurch to be near her parents. Daughter Scotia was born 1966 and son Blair 1968. I worked first as public servant for the Housing Corporation but eventually went back to the hotel industry and worked at the Russley Hotel as a cellar man and assistant bar manager for a few years, averaging 60 hours a week but getting paid really well, in the days when the unions still had power to safeguard workers conditions. The hotel life was not exactly a very healthy one: on a nice day the bars used to be blue with smoke by 9.15am! Eating hotel food all the time and not getting enough exercise and drinking a bit too much, I became overweight and very unfit. I did buy a double bass, because jazz had always been my main interest together with modern classic literature: Dostoevsky, Camus,
Miller, Sartre, Boll, and Kafka. By age 28 I had enough of looking after drunken people and anti-social working hours. I applied for a job as sales manager with fledgling wine company Villa Maria Wines in Mangere, Auckland. I suppose my knowledge of European wines helped me get the job, but I had to move up there on my own and when it came down to it, I did not really like the work or living in Auckland that much. My brother in law Rab had been working in paper mill town Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty, as a pool manager, and he told me there was lots of work down there in the paper mills. We moved to Whakatane, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, in 1969, after first working in the Tasman Pulp and Paper mill for a few months and then managing a wine and spirit firm. I ended up being employed in the Whakatane Board Mills. These days were the times of full employment; there was lots of work around if you wanted it. In Auckland I once had 3 jobs in one day! I became a mill hand, a job that paid really well. The negative was that I had to do shift work, but it did give me a lot more spare time and I started to think of some new direction in my life. The first 4 years in Whakatane were really good, it has a nice climate, great beaches and it was wonderful to spend a lot more time with my kids before they started school. Getting used to living in a small town was initially really beneficial. We got a dog, Pete, lived in some nice places. At age 29 I started to paint seriously and to play competiton rugby at the same time with the Porporo club. I suppose it had something to do with the overweight situation!
Becoming a painter in Whakatane was rather a thrilling time for me, there was a really good little library and the librarians were great by helping me to get inter-loan books from the National Library and Country Library Services. I bought two great Thames and Hudson books locally: Lucy R. Lippard’s “Pop Art” with contributions by Lawrence Alloway, Nancy Marmer and Nicholas Callas and “Art without Boundaries: 1950-70” by Gerald Woods, Philip Thompson and John Williams, I still own these books now…I became acquainted with the philosophical theories of Marshall McLuhan, Herbert Marcuse, Roland Barthes, fascinating reading at 3 am, while minding a large paper machine. In the Netherlands I had been an avid cinema goer and in the years before coming out to New Zealand I had seen some French “New Wave” films and was really impressed by the attitude to painting by the CoBRA artists, Karel Appel especially. In New Zealand I became more interested in the work of Frances Bacon and the new English Pop school of Richard Hamilton, RB Kitaj, David Hockney, Peter Blake et al. At that time I was not really familiar with contemporary New Zealand art, the downside of living in an isolated town like Whakatane.
The Whakatane Board Mills produced all the cardboard requirements for the whole of New Zealand, industry was protected in those days, so there was no ‘Free Trade’ agreements and workers got paid really well. I started painting with Dulux enamels on large sheets of cardboard and later with oil on much sturdier Whakatane board. I made my own paint with pigment made by Samson and white clay used to coat certain types of paper boards. The actual costs to paint were low and I could afford to experiment a lot. I started off by painting really thickly, sometimes using clay and setting the boards on fire, but over time I used less and less paint and worked on texturesd surfaces : on hessian or gluing river sand onto the card board. Source image material came from the waste paper department, bales of old magazines were pulped for centre fillings for new board. I found a lot of the image material for my first show that way. One day I had a visit from Ian Rockel, Director of the Rotorua Museum, and I was offered a solo exhibition by the Rotorua Society of Arts.
DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY In one corner of the Rotorua Arts Society Gallery rests a large sack covered object that is titled "Man in a bag." The sacking is distended with the man's efforts to escape before the Mafia puts him in the sea. The intention is deliberately humorous and is only one facet of a powerful first exhibition by Rudolf Boelee, Whakatane. He adds a notice to the sack, "Please touch, wet paint." The paint is wet. This works brings to mind the American artist Claes Oldenburg who digs holes in Central Park and calls them excavated sculptures. Some of the public were so enraged with the American; they climbed in the hole and attempted to kill the artist. But he succeeded in stopping whole armies of Archie Bunkers in their tracks, even if he reinforced their prejudice in doing so. Already the museum has had an offer of assistance to remove the display to the city dump, so it has touched a chord somewhere. On the other hand, four paintings were purchased on the first night of the exhibition, proving how violent the schism is over non-photographic works of art. The 29 paintings and one object represent less than one year's work of this self-taught man who works in a cardboard factory. Most of the works are expressionistic, belonging to the tradition of Kirchner, de Kooning and Francis Bacon. Colour is applied very obviously for emotional reasons to drive home his reactions to events and surroundings. Like most expressionistic work it relates to particular situations and the "message" content is very important – that is the paintings are very literary; the artist is not specifically concerned with painterly problems of form and representation of dimensions; the graphic content is a tool employed to bash the message home, not applied for its own delight ands analysis – he is no Paolo Uccello avoiding his wife's bed for the delights of perspective. Again, with much expressionistic work, the reaction and the message are
concerned with two psychological positions; anti authoritarianism and eroticism. Eroticism is his specialty. His earlier "red" series could well be described "the long hot summer" – fleeting visions of bouncing breasts across the red – hot mind and hand. The anti – authority tendency does not restrict itself to totalitarian figures, but even our own Marshall comes in for a snide comment. And so do the glib values of advertisements. Here the approach is more in the traditions of Peter Blake and Lichtenstein, the pop artists of the sixties whose exact copies of comics, posters and television ads are blown up into carefully painted enlargements of our idiocy. In keeping with an art where the message is the thing, any formal means can be employed in driving the ideas across. Boelee liberally sprinkles his paintings with words. It is very important that people see the intended humour in many of the works. For example, there is the 5c health stamp showing a Kiwi in his singlet with a pot stomach. There is is the portrait of the girl, over - scribed "Mum and Dad, I have something to tell you." In the mirror we see she is very pregnant. There is the body assembly kit – set, the Jack the Ripper victim with instructions of procedure, and the Negro dreaming of a white Christmas. Visitors have until December 15 to make a Christmas purchase or to throw up. – Ian Rockel Rotorua Daily Post, December 1972
“Scotia and Blair” - 1971 – private collection
The exhibition was a success, from the point of view of sales, sold enough for a deposit for a house (not very much in those days, $22.000). I got a great review, which helped clarify quite a few things for me, in how others viewed your work. I met artist Ted Bullmore, and his family, who helped and advised me on how to hang my work and who gave me an insight in contemporary NZ practice. The one really dumb thing I did not do, was document the show, did not even occur to me then. The few b/w images I have, like the portrait of the kids, were taken before the work was taken over by truck from Whakatane to Rotorua. This work was already sold before I got to the opening with the catalogues and the person who bought it did not actually know the price until then! The next year I spend on renovating our pre-war State House, very neglected but with great ‘bones’. My paintings became more photo realist, like the one on the next page, which was also my first work to go into a public collection. Life domestically did not go well, the children were now both at school, and because of the shift work I did not see so much of them. My wife also decided she liked someone else better, so by about 1974 I started my new itinerant life for the next five years…
“Obstruction „67 for Ann Boelee” oil on board Rotorua Society of Arts Collection Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa 1974.11.02
Bay of Plenty friends mid 1970’s
I painted this large head (120 x 120 cm) in a small room, while working at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, Tokoroa. It was also the time that smoking joints became a part of my life style. The little details of how the weight of the glass frames pushed into the flesh of Sigmund Freud’s face were fascinating to me on such a large scale. I bought a van and travelled a great deal around the North Island in my days off. Below a painting of my wrestler brother Onno AKA Otto Mannheim (120 x 120 cm) these works are oil on board and in private collections and painted in 1975.
Travelling around Europe, 1976 – Uzes, Southern France with people whom I met there.
I lived with my cousin Tom Stuip for a while in Rotterdam during 1976/77, banjo player extraordinaire, who introduced me to bluegrass and country, music I did not know much about. The Netherlands had great clubs where avant garde jazz musicians performed. Lester Bowie and his band played this type of very theatric collage music, anything from Dixieland, to calypso through to ‘new thing’ music, all combined into the same song. I started to think about how I could do this in my painting…
After 18 months I had enough of living in Europe, because I realized that I was not really a Dutchman any longer and New Zealand is where I should be. On the road, painting is not really possible, and I suppose my mind was so full of ideas and I needed to do something about them. So I went back and worked for a season on a friend’s dairy farm in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Wonderful therapy and I loved the cows…my favourites; No.44 and No.38, beautiful Jerseys! At the end of this I had to move to a major centre and from what I had heard Christchurch was supposed to be really good and it was… I found a great cheap flat in the centre of town; the Gladstone Hotel was just around the corner, punk and new wave bands played there regularly. I got a job in the Justice Department and started to set up a studio. I met some likeminded artists and for the first time in about 6 years I felt actually quite settled and started to paint seriously again with increasing confidence. My ‘palette’ changed from monochrome to extremely bright colours and it was exciting. Made a number of sales and decided to have a large solo show at the Canterbury Society of Arts. On July 29, 1981 I opened at the Mair Gallery …
Rudolf Boelee's shocking art Canterbury Society of Arts, Christchurch July 29 - August 9, 1981
A work in Rudolf Boelee's exhibition at the Canterbury Society of Arts is called 'Dutch Earthquake', one of a pair of paintings showing a de Stijl chair embedded in a severe Mondrian - like grid of coloured rectangles. In 'Earthquake' the verticals and horizontals quaver slightly off perpendicular, producing an image that indeed looks as though its stability has been affected by a violent shake. Boelee's title doubtless refers to the tremors the Dutch master Mondrian's paintings sent through the art of the twentieth century, but it could just as well refer to Boelee himself for his big, bold and brassy exhibition has all the delicacy and restraint of a force 6 Richter scale earthquake. Walking into this show sets the adrenalin flowing. It is saturated with colour as biting as acid and which makes no apologies for its neon gaudiness. This is a good, strong show that reveals a painter analyzing the art of his time while confidently taking from it the elements he needs to make his personal statement. His success is creating an extensive, consistent and arresting exhibition indicates his deep involvement
with painting. It is especially noteworthy since Boelee received no formal art tuition Rudolf Boelee was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and was young when the heart of that port was heavily bombed during World War 2. He recalls the city crowded with de Stijl architecture, and also dreary school lessons which left him with distaste for art. In his teens he became a seaman, as did many young men raised in that great European port. Long periods at sea followed. The environment he knew best was the downtown, neon - lit, impersonal but invigorating crush of the busy seaport, the purple and pink of bars, saunas and other low - life places, the crash and flash of pin ball alleys. Boelee brings this visual vitality to his paintings and weaves into them influences of op art, pop art and constructivist content he encountered in his ports of call and in Rotterdam. His achievement lies in his combination of these elements into works that are successfully eclectic. Together they constitute a voice that is Boelee's alone. Technically, his paintings have their rough edges, but they are confident, muscular and crammed with genuine, resourceful and often witty visual ideas, no mean achievement in a first one-man show. Make an opportunity to see this exhibition. Review: John Coley, the Star, 5 August 1981 Photographs: Gary Ireland
Rudolf Boelee New Zealander, b.1940
Do You Promise Not To Tell 1981 Purchased 1981 Reproduced wih permission Enamel, acrylic on wood 81/35
1981
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
Rudolf Boelee - The Happy Father 1982 (triptych) - Collection Christchurch Hosptals
GREETINGS ‌to a slice of contemporary art pie
With a reversion to an almost childlike simplicity and an utterly unsentimental focus on familiar things right in front of our eyes (like our own hands for instance),artists like Dick Frizzell and Rudolf Boelee are producing some compelling images. Brett Riley on the arts Coloured Xerox collection the Christchurch Art Gallery
1982 - Sleeve Designs for Flying Nun “ Mainly Spaniards� Printed in blue on yellow, pink and red card. Record lables in orange. After these sold out photocopes on coloured papers
During 1982, I left Christchurch for about a year and a half to go up North and back to the Netherlands. On my return I got involved with the Free Theatre and did a number of major productions with them between 1984 and 1986; the first “1984 – The Future is Now”, as a performer, “The Ride Across Lake Constance” as stage designer, “Lulu”, “The Mortal Pleasure of Wanda Lust” both as stage designer and actor. My sets were really walk-in paintings and doing this type of work strongly influenced my own work. Things were a bit tight financially, but I got a commission to paint these backdrops on polystyrene for the Christchurch Festival Cabaret at the Town Hall. 1984 poster design: Lesley Maclean
Christchurch Festival Cabaret Murals – Limes Room – Christchurch Town Hall – 1984
This was my first set ever and a real breakthrough, ‘coming away from the wall’, painting everything including; wall, the floor & the figures + the play was great!
Stuart McKenzie Sarah Raymond Nansi Thompson Charles Heywood Roy Montgomery
Matisse Patterns
. YOU ARE INVITED TO THE OPENING OF .
*PRIVATE EYE * BOELEE . McMILLIN . NEATE . WHITWORTH 5th JUNE WEDNESDAY 8PM
C.S.A. GALLERY . 66 GLOUCESTER STREET
THE MORTAL PLEASURE OF WANDA LUST Stuart McKenzie – Rudolf Boelee – Lara Strongman – David McKenzie - Robin Neate - Charles Heywood – Christine Roger
Invite Design: Robin Neate
A play for nostalgia? I put on my bobby-sox; my tapes of walkman blues; and took “a walk down lonely street to Heartbreak Hotel...” That not being the James Paul Gallery, but the title of the joint exhibition by Marianna Bullmore and Rudolf Boelee that hangs till the end of the month. Suggesting Bullmore’s furniture views as those of “broken-hearted lovers’ is tantalizing, but few would believe me. With supine curves of settees, coffee tables, lamps and zany paper patterns, the décor is high-tack, 50’s style. Enhancing the mood is Bullmore’s method. She applies paint absolutely flat, each colour is outlined crisply in black or edged with masking tape. The effect is deadpan. No people. Only the television set, pot plants, and those wonderful wallpapers – their jellybean and deco patterns busy beside settee fabrics built up the look something like linoleum in plaster, then sanded. It is 50’s designer décor in the clean flat style of American Pop artists James Rosenquist or Tom Wesselman. Without titles it is hard to say whether Bullmore is mocking 50’s taste or affirming it. Is it nostalgia or subversion? The choice is democratically ours, or do we avoid it by getting carried away with their meticulous eye for pattern. Other works, on wood are patterned variously but with definite Pacific flavor. Art Review by Jonathan Smart, THE STAR, February 18, 1987
Skin-like Boelee’s 10 figurative works inhabit an area between reality and abstraction, as does Elvis’ song. The figures, photographic positives on plastic, sit skin-like over irregularly shaped, coloured and painted paper backgrounds. The effect is like a screenprint, but a painter’s version minus the printing process. And although the relationship between figure and ground seems arbitrary, the arrangements of colour, pattern and focus, highlights combines where the absence of titles only emphasizes Boelee’s abstract intentions. Collaged are fragments through a screen. The whole flickers like images on a television set. There is the grainy coarse registration of the news photograph, atop collage techniques of Pop art’s heroes (Rauschenberg and Warhol) and subjects – mass media, lifestyle and the cult-of-the-star. However, anonymity keeps Boelee’s image choice personal. His “personnel” are icons of a private past as well as reflections of Hollywood glitsch. There are 50’s models and actresses like Jean Shrimpton, writers Franz Kafka and Jack Kerouac and closer to his European roots, Adelheid Schulz, a woman of the Baader-Meinhoff. There are touches of blues-beat and the bottle, amphetamines and plastic culture, and a little of Paul John’s portraits perhaps. While not exactly “death clerks dressed in black” (none still live). Boelee’s work sits curiously well with Bullmore’s – the latter in its first public showing. For “the ex-lovers” there are rooms to crash. For the painters, the shared nostalgia of a happy show.
“Heartbreak Hotel” an exhibition of work by Rudolf Boelee at the James Paul Gallery, 567 Colombo Street, until 28 February, Reviewed by Pat Unger - The Press, Wednesday, February 18, 1987. Rudolf Boelee is a pushy artist; he pushes his images through the limitations of technique and manages to push the viewer into pleasurable sensations of partial and hazy recall. Known for his murals, set designs and bold paintings – often of the movie world – Boelee continues to aim for immediate communication in this exhibition. Working with photographic positives that have been prepared for silk screening, he opts for highlighting the process of reduction itself, rather than the production of endless repeats... The black-on-clear images are placed over coloured papers that are cut into curved areas or geometric patterns, giving each background a quick, hand-done touch. By his use of the dotting and random screen process, Boelee alters and enhances his photographic portraits, figures and groups. He changes their reality into works of design and graphic impact. Lacking titles and catalogue numbers, each work is purposely reduced in identification to enhance surface effect. World War 2 soldiers, including his father and minorities being arrested in the Netherlands are realized only by verbal explanation. Portraits of writers, actors and revolutionaries are only identified after some searching. They contrast the woman image in this show, which is mainly the body-beautiful revamped. Boelee’s zoom for the close-up is a zoom on to design. Content is ultimately surrendered to surface; expression makes way for impact. These works show that there are many solutions to every design problem, and Boelee explores one solution in this show. By not committing himself to the final product, it suggests that further interesting interpretations of the visual image will come from the artist.
What do you see?
Preceding page: “Adelheid Schulz”, private collection, this page “Untitled: private collection.
C.S.A. GALLERY 1 September 1986
The Trustees Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation
Dear Sirs
I am happy to provide a reference for Rudolf Boelee, a painter who shows a high degree of commitment to his art and considerable ability. Over the past years we have exhibited his work in two one-man shows and in annual group exhibitions. His main works are large pop art paintings depicting the 1940’s era and Hollywood references. He also has much experience and acclaim for his theatre sets and acting ability, and for several fine Mural Commissions. I feel that Boelee’s work has not had the acclaim that it might have received overseas, where a wider more cosmopolitan audience would have appreciated the underlying messages which his work conveys. I am sure that he would make good use of the award to expand his talents in a more supportive financial environment.
Yours sincerely Nola Barron Director
By 1987, I felt I had reached an end in the way I had been working over the last three years I was involved in 12 theatre productions between 1984 -87, as well as 8 group shows and 3 solo shows. I suppose I was tired of working in group situations and financially things were fairly dire. I was offered temporary work with the Commercial Affairs Division of the Ministry of Justice, an employer whom I had worked for a few years in the late seventies and early eighties. This was a perfect opportunity to take stock of my life and practice. I had met Robyne Voyce a few times during the early Gladstone years. We did not really connect again, until we both had returned to Christchurch. Robyne had been overseas for five years; India, UK, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Australia. We met by accident in (bookshop) Whitcoulls and I suppose felt similar about being back in Christchurch; in 1988 we became a very happy couple. We bought our present house in Gloucester Street for our cat Bill and spend the first year totally renovating the interior and exterior.
The photograph on the left is of my son Blair and his partner Maria and their baby Bonnie. Blair died in an car accident on the 21th of January 1989
.
“Blair�; acrylic, silkscreen on board
1989 turned out to be an unfortunate year, with the death of my son Blair and on Christmas Eve I had a heart attack., 6 weeks of recuperation and then working part time. I joined a woodwork class at Risingholme Community Centre with tutor Dag Guest and learned how to make my own panels. The first paintings I did, once I was getting better, was a portrait of Robyne and a self portrait., both 1989
Portrait of Robyne Voyce - oil and acrylic on board- detail
Self portrait - oil and acrylic on board - Collection of the artist
I was also included in a group show called “The Chair” at the C.S.A., where I showed my “Dutch Earthquake” diptych
The painting above was commissioned by the district manager of the office where I was working; my job was sorting out filing systems, when nationwide computerization programs were first introduced in the late nineteen eighties. I worked with numbers all day long, so making a numbers painting seemed sort of logical (with a nod to Jasper Johns). The Minister of Justice saw the work and commented favorably, so I received another commission for head office in Wellington. At least I was painting again …
Commercial Affairs Division – acrylic on board – Collection Ministry of Economic Development, Christchurch
“I want to know why people should not have decent wages, why they should not have decent pensions in their evening of their days, or when they are invalided. What is more valuable in our Christianity then to be our brother’s keepers in reality…I have no desire to get rich…I want to see humanity secure against poverty, secure in illness or old age. I do not care what the details are…We are here to serve, not merely to talk.” These excerpts were recorded from an address given by Michael Joseph Savage, first Labour Prime Minister, shortly before his death in 1940.
The work in this exhibition refers to these sentiments and to the art of the constructivist movement, whose aims was not only artistic, but pertained to the formation of a new style of life. They believed art could be capable of guiding humanity toward a brighter future, a new and revolutionary utopia
Ironic, elegiac epitaph to yesterday's Utopian ideals – Rudolf Boelee "Visions of Utopia" Review:
Justin
Paton
The
Press,
June
1
1994
Not so long ago, art was going to change the world. In the glittery schemes of idealists like the Russian constructivists, art would be the catalyst of social reform, and the very mortar of a new Utopia. Yet it never happened. History intervened, shattering such innocent hopes. Rudolf Boelee's pithy show, 'Visions of Utopia', speaks straight to the nub of this dilemma. Few shows have held the High Street space so well. Boelee's big, bright, iconic works comprise groups of wooden tablets, deployed in chequerboard or cruciform patterns, and screen-printed in ultra-bright synthetic colours. They pack a big visual wallop, but that is not all. Two tragic histories intersect within these works, and it helps if you know the sources. First, there is the history of the Utopian art movements of the early 20th century, whose pristine geometries Boelee recalls through the use of the cruciform format. Second, there is the history of Michael Savage's labour government, whose hopes for a land of milk and honey Boelee recalls in the desperately cheerful screen-printed daisies that fill these works. So, from the emblems of a failed Utopia
to the images of a heartbroken socialism, from Russia in the early 20th century to New Zealand at the same time, Boelee traces a telling arc. We are led to see the old New Zealand fantasy of a pastoral paradise alongside the constructivist fantasy of a revolutionary paradise and it is a deeply sardonic comparison. Sardonic, because the generosity and optimism of that moment begins to look more and more noble from the vantage of our own bitter political times. The show has its slack points. There are derivations, for sure - Warhol for those repetitive silk-screens, Gilbert and George for those massive, intensely coloured floral tablets. And, as always when art has an axe to grind, there is a nagging sense that we are being told what we already know. But Boelee's show is launched beyond these gripes by the resonance and concision of its historical analogies, and its against-the-wall humour. Like so many artists right now, Boelee is composing an ironic-elegiac epitaph to yesterday's tragically high ideals, a memorial to an era that was less knowing but also less cynical. 'Visions of Utopia' springs from a reluctant recognition that art today must make do among the husks of those big hopes. Still, it is here, deep in the rubble of old ideals, that art may find its feet.
Rudolf Boelee Exhibition Reviewed by Warren Feeney, Greymouth Evening Star August 17, 1994 Rudolf Boelee's 'Vision of Utopia' at Greymouth's Left Bank art gallery looks at the aspirations of the Russian Constructivist art movement early this century, linking their sense of morality and socialist values firmly with Michael Joseph Savage's Labour Party in New Zealand. Both sought equality amongst humanity and both, in the context of the 1990's have failed. Boelee quotes randomly from the Constructivist world, utilizing their concerns with geometry in the screen-printed boxed forms on display, mixed with portraits of constructivist artists. Boelee also demonstrates a good sense of the amoral by quoting equally from pop artist Andy Warhol. The passionately spiritual and utopian visions of the Russian Constructivists could not be more different from the superficial stylish concerns of the New York artist. This unusual mixture does, however, largely succeed. The Russian Constructivists wanted art to be closely linked to the needs and aspirations of working people. They called for the abolition of art galleries, with their capitalist pretensions, and praised the work of house painters. The desire for art to have real meaning in the life of humanity was closely linked to the rise of communism in Russia. They shared some of this socialist vision with the labour movement in New Zealand in the 1920's and 1930's. Boelee makes this point well in 'Red Cross' constructing a poignant and moving image. Assembled around a cross, Boelee combines Warhol's flowers with a promotional picture of Michael Savage. The familiarity of this image to New Zealanders makes it as powerful to them as any of Warhol's art images are to the
international art world. The combination of cross, flower, and deceased socialist, surrounded by two equally large artworks, 'Japanese Paradise' and 'Paradise no.1' makes this exhibition worthwhile. There is sense of profound and tragic loss, made all the more touching by placing it within the walls of an institution the constructivists hoped would no longer be needed. Boelee conveys a sense of something precious that has been lost. He also gives this a much more powerful meaning by placing it in such local context. The work is firmly balanced between New Zealand identity, and international art. 'Vanitas' is also a work of strength dealing with imagery of time and death firmly organized in a geometric grid. Boelee plays off this inevitable monotonous composition with a rich variety of colours. It is when Boelee is dealing with these and other "weighty" issues that his work at its most successful. The more firmly it is placed within the political and utopian, the more personal and human it is.
1994-96 High Street Project, Christchurch Left Bank Art Gallery, Greymouth Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru Eastern Southland Gallery, Gore Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North
My father Bram in the centre with his friends, in their A.J.C. uniforms, on a biking trip in the Ardennes, southern Belgium, in the late nineteen twenties. My father was a committed socialist in his youth when the left and the right were very radical and highly visible. This was in the time of Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler. Socialism in Dutch terms meant social democrat, not communist. My father trained as an electrician and then studied at night school to
become an electrical engineer, incredibly hard working through the toughest times; the Depression of the thirties and then the Second World War. As a young man I was not that interested in their belief system, everything my parents had strived to achieve was already there when I grew up. I suppose what made me change my mind was the so called neo-liberal revolution of the 1980’s in New Zealand. First introduced under a Labour Government, with Rogernomics, and then the even more doctrinaire extreme National Party with the likes of Ruth Richardson as Minister of Finance. The appalling spectacle of greedy people becoming greedier and the picking on the most vulnerable in society was truly disgusting. I suppose I reverted to type during that time and became known as a socialist artist, socially conscious would be more correct. I grew up in a constructivist apartment complex in Rotterdam and the feel of all these influences became a big part on my practice. The touring of Visions of Utopia was a very positive experience for me. Robyne and I going to all these different galleries around the South Island in our Cortina station wagon to hang the work, meeting local people at the openings and having to give floor talks‌
On the previous page, an early union banner at the Blackball Hilton 1994, birthplace of the Labour movement in New Zealand. Following pages installation images of Visions of Utopia at the Aigantighe Gallery, Timaru
Visions of Utopia have plenty of impact
Artistic NZ-Dutch synthesis by Susan Campion
Visions of Utopia, by Rudolf Boelee, Manawatu Art Gallery, until February 25. Reviewed by Janet Bayley This is a strong-looking show with plenty of heart in it. The visual impact derives from Rudolf Boelee’s use of colour, repetition and graphic techniques derived from photography, screen-printing and photo-mechanical reproduction. These combine strikingly with layers of content in the dynamic Vanitas 1994 on the end wall. Boelee presents fascinating relationships across the histories of art, societies and politics without weighing the work down at all. Constructivism was a dramatic, people-oriented, early modernist art movement that blossomed after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Its artists thought their work could guide humanity toward as brighter future, a new Utopia. This vision Boelee connects with 1940’s New Zealand, and implicity expresses in his work now. The benign face and impassioned words of the first Labour leader Michael Joseph Savage, an iconof New Zealand’s own failed experiment in socialist idealism, underscores the dhow in elegiac way. This is a really worthwhile show, whether your interest is the Savage connection to Palmerston North, politics, art or all three. Manawatu Standard
SELF-TAUGHT artist Rudolf Boelee opened his exhibition Visions of Utopia at the Manawatu Art Gallery on Friday. Describing his work as an attempt to synthesise the artistic traditions both of his native Dutch and adopted New Zealand cultures, Boelee says Visions of Utopia represents actual events from New Zealand 1930s and 1940s plus the USSR of the 1920s. The exhibition looks at the aspirations of the constructivist art movement linking its sense of morality and socialist values with the first Labour Government of Michael Joseph Savage. The aims of Visions of Utopia is to join past and present while emphasizing the plight of both the Maori and Pakeha descendants of the figures in the exhibition who now make up a bitter underclass without the pride and resolve of their working class ancestors. While much of Boelee’s exhibition consists of silk screen print panels it also features large scale pastel on paint drawings
The Tribune, Sunday, January 21, 1996
Manawatu Art Gallery Rudolf Boelee P O Box 32092 Christchurch 12th of March. 1996 Dear Rudolf, The local Teachers College students have been spending a lot of time in your exhibition as their lecturer set an assignment around it. I don’t know how many times Blair or myself had to explain a little about constructivism or who Michael Joseph Savage was! Anyway I thought the show looked really strong in the Upstairs Gallery, it can be very hard to pull that space together. I have enclosed the newspaper clippings that appeared about your show, if you do not already have them. Athol tells me that you have some interest from other North Island Galleries? All the best! Thank you for exhibiting here at the Gallery and for taking time to present a talk. It was much appreciated. Regards, Emma Pratt – Curatorial Assistant
Crown Lynn New Zealand - The Show A Rudolf Boelee exhibition In collaboration with Brian Shields and Craig Stapley
1996-97 High Street Project Gallery, Christchurch City Gallery, Wellington
Since the 1980's Robyne Voyce and Rudolf Boelee became interested in collecting ceramics from the immediate postwar period. This interest led in 1993 to the acquisition of the Crown Lynn New Zealand name, which was the former trade mark of Crown Lynn Potteries Limited. Once known as the "crowning" glory of the ceramic industry in New Zealand, offering a touch of elegance and perfection in a range of your choice, until it became yet another casualty of the deregulated nature of industry in New Zealand. In 1996 the project "Crown Lynn New Zealand, A Salvage Operation", a Rudolf Boelee collaboration with graphic designers Brian Shields and Craig Stapley, was exhibited at the High Street Project Gallery, Christchurch and City Gallery, Wellington. Crown Lynn New Zealand was a breakdown of distinction pop culture and "serious" culture, different genres and different art forms and also investigated some of the ideas of 'De Stijl', a constructivist group of Dutch artists active in the early part of the 20th century. Rudolf Boelee
Installation High Street Project Crown Lynn New Zealand Preparing for Opening Night – June 18, 1996
Christchurch Nik Wright LOG Illustrated Summer 1999
The other real great buzz I've got recently was seeing the Rudolf Boelee retrospective at CoCA. His stuff looks so damn good especially when he collaborates with Brian Shields and Craig Stapley. This trio does modernist design by numbers, but they do it so well you know they're not just piss-taking clones, but real design classics of earlier eras that are only now being brought to the fore as part of some retro resurgence. Perhaps the best example of the subtlety of their illusion is the beautiful DIOR fashion advert from the 1996 Crown Lynn series "Watch out for world's behind you". It could have easily come direct from the pages of Harper's October 1956.
Purchased, 2002 Reproduced with permission Digital photo montage. 2002/216 1996
Rudolf Boelee New Zealander, b.1940 Brian Shields and Craig Stapley
The Tynans. 1996
An altered portrait of the Tynan's at home. The background above them is taken from Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
Rudolf Boelee New Zealander, b.1940 Composition With Painter 1996
Purchased, 1996 Reproduced with permission Mixed media on wood 96/65 1996
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
THE NEXT CALL RUDOLF BOELEE 11 COMPOSITIONS 1996 HIGH STREET PROJECT
solvent transfer, collage, watercolour, texta coat, acrylic on board
Things to Come Rudolf Boelee McDougall Art Annex, Christchurch - 1997 Bishop Suter Art Gallery, Nelson - 1998
Text: Felicity Milburn With "Things to Come", the McDougall Art Annex presents works by Christchurch based artist Rudolf Boelee, who came to New Zealand from the Netherlands in 1963. It is an exhibition intended to continue and build upon the themes explored in Boelee's recent travelling show, "Visions of Utopia", which has toured between many galleries in the North and South Islands. Boelee describes his work as "history painting"; an attempt to seek social significance from events and situations from 1950's New Zealand, and to relate them to present conditions. "Things to Come" was designed especially for the large, open Annex space, and consists of work on paper, on canvas, and on painted and silk-screened panels. Each piece is completed with the addition of simple geometric shapes which are painted directly onto the wall, in colours which were influenced by those of 1950's ceramics. Drawing from sources as various as science fiction, 'Vogue' and 'Popular Mechanics' magazines, the Grecian Acropolis and New Zealand's racing icon Phar Lap, Boelee examines the way daily life of the 1950's and 60's was affected by popular culture. Each image presents visions which are comfortably familiar, but which can carry a multitude of other
connotations. What happens to an image when we suspend the naive belief in a perfect future which abounded when it was first published, and regard it now with the jaded and jaundiced eyes of the late 1990's? Some of the works, which are collages made up of solvent transfers and laser prints, are especially conducive to this treatment. Take for example, the image of "Rebecca and the Maoris"- when initially presented, this picture of a young Maori girl as an exotic and friendly ambassadorial native seemed appealing and positive, but many will now regard it as distasteful, oversimplified and patronizing. With H.G.Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come", as its starting point, this exhibition aims to contribute to some understanding of contemporary society, locating its disquiet in the here and now. Boelee's stylish constructions present images of the social traditions which encouraged previous generations to believe in an optimistic and uncomplicated life: the symmetrically perfect wedding party, the "Man from Prudential" and the New Zealand Railway Cup. The grimy underside to the prosperity of the 1950's is implied by darker images such as "Mother England", a bleak, Bosch-like portrayal of the realities of industrial Europe. By examining the expectations ordinary people previously had of a "Brave New World" as an affluent and altruistic utopia, we can reflect on how well the future actually measured up, and wonder, perhaps, how accurate our own predictions can be.
Works look back and forward at same time By Adrienne Rewi The Press 16-4-1997 Rudolf Boelee arrived in New Zealand as a merchant seaman in 1963 and stayed. He’d come from the Netherlands and he moved through a wide range of jobs, supporting his family before he began painting in the late 60’s. “It seemed to me the only sensible thing to do” he says now, convinced that “it’s all about communicating”. Boelee currently has two exhibitions showing in Christchurch – “Things to Come” at the McDougall Art Annex and “The Fall” at Campbell Grant Galleries – and in both, he has concerned himself with producing works that take from the world around him, works that look and forward at the same time. It was a collection of old family photographs found in broken frames at a Riccarton flea market that triggered “Things to Come”. Boelee was saddened by the abandoned evidence of someone’s personal history and he saved the photographs for over a year. As Felicity Milburn points out in the exhibition catalogue, “that scattered pile of pictures is like the ramshackle collection of memories we all hold within our minds, which gels together to form a complex layering of time an experience. Throughout our lived we re-examine these moments in an attempt to piece together an entire story, re-evaluating the importance of meaning of each as we attempt to fit everything into a single, unified context”. For Boelee a gathering of things around him is crucial to his work. It may be a gathering of personal memories, reinterpreted through modern media, or it may be the gathering of familiar visual images
From the national culture – NZ Railway cups for instance, which stir up a wealth of connotations for many New Zealanders, memories of Crown Lynn, once considered the pinnacle of the nation’s ceramic industry. He draws from his memories of his own childhood in Rotterdam, where he was born in 1940 – “all those things I remember like still photographs” – and he layers them with the present. It is his belief that we should revisit our past, looking with the eyes of the present, comparing our expectations for the future which has eventuated. He attempts to seek social significance from the events and situations from 50’s New Zealand, relating them to the present. Boelee’s art also draws on the Dutch art movement “De Stijl”, or “the Style”, which flourished in the early part of this century. The key philosophy of the group, which included such noted names as painter Piet Mondrian and designer Gerrit Rietveld, was an insistence on the social role of art, design and architecture; a utopian faith in the transforming abilities of new technologies and a conviction that art and design have the power to change the future. They did not regard any one type of artistic expression as being inherently being more valid than another and they included architects, painters, philosophers, and designers of graphics, interiors, and furniture. Boelee’s sensibilities are aligned with this philosophy and as a former theatre set designer, he also moves beyond the walls with his art making, offering works with elements painted directly onto gallery walls and samplings of furniture design. He relates too, to the De Stijl notion that is does not need to cost a million dollars to put a painting on the wall, or to create an example of fine furniture or architecture. Works in both shows feature mixed media based
around photographic imagery, solvent transfers, laser prints and computerized images – collages enlarged to giant proportions. “This way I can use text and colour that I wouldn’t paint. I like playing around with new technology – sitting at a computer with someone you barely know, trying to find a common language together. Everyone has got something to offer. It’s a pooling of skills and I like the accidents that happen, accidents that leave room to generate a whole new field of ideas to explore,” says Boelee. His gatherings of completed works – “some icons of assurance, others enigmatic pictures of unrest” – range in size from the very large to the small and intimate. It is serial work that stimulates viewers’ memories and refocuses our present as a product of our past.
Artist’s notes on the exhibition The works in this exhibition can be seen as an examination of aspects of the Constructivist movement, whose members believed that art could be capable of guiding humanity towards a brighter future – a new and revolutionary utopia. These sentiments are the subtext for these works. The rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930’s ultimately reaching its climax in the Holocaust, bringing an end to these aspirations. “The Fall” commences from that point. The exhibition is divided into two parts; an historical and a futuristic view of the human condition, both use existing literary texts as a formal device. The historical view on the series, “The Fall”, incorporating texts from the novel of the same name by Albert Camus (1956). It central character describes “his fall” to chance acquaintance. The work in the exhibition could be seen as our collective fall. The series “Strange Cargo” approaches from the opposite end in time with text from William Gibson’s “Mona Lisa Overdrive” (1987), who’s writing resembles a mood reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The figures in these works were film actors of that same era – the 1930’s, the rise and victory of fascism. Gibson unlike most science fiction writers has always been more interested in the social aspect on how new technology might impact on our lives.
The specter of a future society degenerating to some kind of hi-tech barbarism appears to be very real
STYLISH WORKS, HEAVY INTENT
ROBYN USSHER
Rudolf Boelee New Zealander, b.1940 4 x NZR Cups 1995
Purchased, 1997 Acrylic and silkscreen on wood 97/18.1-4 1995
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
Creator: Rudolf Boelee (Netherlands b. 1940)
Description: 4 NZR Crown Lynn cups and saucers. Date: 2000 Medium: Acrylic, silkscreen and lacquer on wood. Extent: Actual - 300 x 400 mm Subject: Art works ; Transport ; Conflicts of law
University of Canterbury Collection
Art of politics From the Cradle to the Grave, by Rudolf Boelee, at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, until May 15. Reviewed by Esther Venning. Although this exhibition only has four works, their scale, impact, and inter-relation make it well worth a visit. Aesthetically, the works are thoughtfully conceived and skillfully executed. The media are well handled from the vibrant colour combinations and expressive texture of Boelee’s pastels, to his controlled yet startling acrylics. Instead of framed pictures Boelee has created laminated images and a triptych of crosses which compel in their repetition while delighting in subtle variation. True to his modernist interests, the cross and the square are consistent motifs encouraging creativity and individuality within a unifying whole. More interestingly though, this exhibition tackles the difficult task of successfully combining art with politics... Boelee uses early modernist styles, particularly of the Russian avant-garde, not purely for the aesthetic but also for the associated ideals. “About This” idealizes proletariat portraits and incorporating scraps of text about Russian avant-garde art. In other works Boelee applies the development and increasing sophistication of these ideas to the New Zealand experience. The “From the cradle to the Grave” superimposes the iconic portrait of Left-wing hero Michael Joseph Savage with geometric patterns and colour fields, illustrating Boelee’s desire to unite progressive politics and art. “Heirs to the Future” is a very impressive triptych of
aesthetic and intellectual depth. However interpreted, it is a very interesting and rewarding exhibition. The Press, Christchurch, Wednesday may 13, 1998
The Future is Now A Rudolf Boelee exhibition in collaboration with Brian Shields and Craig Stapley
19 August- 5 September 1998 Centre of Contemporary Art
Christchurch Nik Wright LOG Illustrated Summer 1999
Boelee is rad because he can use art for political commentary without looking like a complete wanker. I believe some artists feel that they are empowered to comment on politics, science or medicine and their insight can impart some real intellectual truisms. Sorry, but most who try are just plain sad. Unless one is commenting on a real and serious personal experience, how can one expect to know more about cancer than a qualified doctor?! Boelee's commentary is focused on the inverse, how politics uses art to push political agendas. His tribute to Michael Savage looked at the Constructivists contribution to communism by quoting directly
from workers' manifestos. Seven essential strengths for New Zealand is a pointed dig at the right wing nature of our modern governments. The 'strengths' are taken from Mussolini's propaganda (not that I realized that - very informative that brochure and why can't most conceptual artists just say exactly where they're coming from too?). The images reference El Duce's promotion of classicism to play upon Italian nationalism, and an idealized view of 1950's New Zealand. The distinctively New Zealand iconography of woven flax panels are broken down into modernist geometries to form border columns (did anyone say appropriation Gordon Walters style?). These 'strengths' - integrity, management, commitment, innovation, order, employment and measurement - could be seen as a bleak commentary on the totalitarian nature of our current society. The work had a strong graphical layout; Boelee does modernist cliche's well. To see them done badly check out Dave Thomas' and Chris Heaphy's recent collaborative show at the Jonathan Smart - infinitely eye-easy and boring. I guess it has to be said that I enjoyed Boelee's work because it made me realize how 1950s New Zealand was still principally the domain of ex-pat Englishmen. In fact I felt like the show could have been equally at home in a traditional British Museum.
Review: Ian Henderson
'The Future is Now' (title from Orwell's 1984) has at its first memorable images a series of works titled 'Crown and Glory' (numbers 3-8) and ' Memorial to the Silent Revolution' (numbers 1, 2 and 4). The former is a triptych and the latter a diptych, and both feature the same image, that of an inverted clay pot. It could, of course, be seen as just that, an inverted clay pot, but it is also reminiscent of the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. It has a direct referral point on the image of the cloud rising from the volcano in the work 'Introduction' ( Seven essential strengths for New Zealand), the first of the most fascinating works of the exhibition, Boelee presents in league with Brian Shields and Craig Stapley.
A series of digital photomontages, 'Seven essential strengths for New Zealand' take in both the Italy of Mussolini and post-war New Zealand. The two images under the titles of 'Employment' and 'Measurement' feature young soldiers, whereas 'Innovation', 'Commitment' and 'Integrity' have classical icons, reportedly from Mussolini's Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista. These images can
be contrasted with the image of Charles Upham under the heading of 'Order', and Sherpa Tensing and Sir Edmund Hillary under the heading of 'High Achievers'. Mussolini's classical icons were used to remind his people of the culture and past of Italy, and its greatness. Our heroes are also seen as representatives of our greatness. Is it possible to separate the two? This thoughtprovoking sequence of works contrasts, quite deliberately, our icons with those of the fascists. What is the artist saying? Is it that icons are merely that, merely icons to be looked at and admired? Or is there a subtle a subtle criticisms of the iconisation of people and images, that what we have done is no better (or no worse) than what the fascists did?
Surely it could be said that such blind iconisation could be seen to be as damaging as that performed by Mussolini's propaganda?
DISTURBANCE IN THE GALLERY End of Part 1