Don Peebles.
Tribute to a canonical figure in New Zealand art. 2003
Tribute to a canonical figure in New Zealand art. 2003
Don Peebles was my drawing teacher for Introduction to Drawinng at University of Canterbury in 1975. Stephanie
The Dean of Music and Fine Arts, Jonathan ManeWheoki, gave the oration for artist Don Peebles who was presented with an honorary LittD (honoris causa), at the afternoon graduation ceremony on Thursday 1 7 April. "From 1965 until his retirement in 1986 Don Peebles taught at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. It is a mark of his distinctiveness as a teacher that, unlike his contemporaries - his colleague Rudolf Gopas and Colin McCahon at the University of Auckland - he produced no obvious followers, no disciples, no imitators. Yet both as a teacher and as an artist his impact on the raw material we call students has been considerable. In his foundation course in basic design he methodically grounded first year fine arts students in the fundamentals of line, shape, colour, texture and composition, thereby setting the more talented, committed and determined among them on course to become independent, individual artists and thinkers. His teaching philosophy is one with which every newly graduated person here today will surely identify - They come here, that is, to the university, experienced, they leave, I hope, as beginners'. "Students always appreciated that their teacher was creating some of the most advanced art of his time. His pristine geometric abstractions with their zones of pure uninflected colour seemed to be an extension of the person - somewhat austere, highly intellectual and meticulous, reminiscent of the person and the compositions of Piet Mondrian, the celebrated Dutch modernist. Hence, Don Peebles's affectionate nickname, 'Dondrian'. One of his colleagues, and sometime nemesis, delighted in telling students that 'Mr Peebles's paintings are very cold, very precise, and very boring'. Intellectually cool and visually immaculate, the works of the 1960s certainly are - but boring? Never. Even with the severely reduced pictorial vocabulary distilled from a close study of Univers,t of Canterbur Chronicle Jonathan Mane-Wheoki international modernism, he found it possible to be almost endlessly, brilliantly and gloriously inventive. "It fell to a later generation of art historians to piece together the story of how a back blocks Bay of Plenty-born, army conscript came to be one of the pioneers of international modernist art in New Zealand. Following war service in Italy in 1945, Don Peebles studied art in Florence and, on his return to New Zealand, in Wellington. In the early 1950s he furthered his studies in Sydney, immersing himself in the art and writings of the great French postimpressionist painter, Paul Cezanne. He returned to Wellington a thorough-going modernist and held his first solo exhibition in 1954. With the Auckland City Art Gallery's purchase of his 1959 work, Wellington XII, Don Peebles began to secure his place in the canon of New Zealand art history. "In 1960 he was awarded the New Zealand Federation of Art Societies Fellowship which enabled him to study abroad. In London he was jolted into a new way of thinking about abstract art by an article he had read in the Sunday Times. He whole-heartedly embraced the purist vision articulated by its author, the distinguished British artist, Victor Pasmore, and abandoned the gestural style of his Wellington paintings in favour of relief constructions and hard-edged geometrical abstractions. At Pasmore's invitation, he exhibited with the British constructionists at the Aldeburgh Festival. In 1965, the year in which he was appointed lecturer in design at Canterbury, he was represented in the exhibition of Contemporary Painting from New Zealand at the Commonwealth Institute in London. Since then, he has never ceased to be a major presence on the New Zealand art scene. "In 1996 he was accorded the honour of a major retrospective exhibition which toured nationally. Curated by one of our art history graduates, this exhibition covered the full rich span of the artist's career, from lively, fresh landscapes of the late 40s, the Cezannesque works of the early 50s, and the majestic Wellington paintings of the late 50s to the constructionist works and shaped canvases of the 60s - then on to the remarkable shift in direction in stained loose canvases and sensuous soft canvas constructions from the 70s to the present day. He is represented by such works in all the major public collections in New Zealand and in countless private collections. "In 1999 Don Peebles was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Two years later, he was appointed patron of the then : Robert McDougall Art Gallery. i When the new Christchurch Art: Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu ~ opens, his large blue/ green: painting Circular Motif No. 2 0 (1987) will be found hanging in pride of place in the contemporary section. By coincidence, the first Cezanne painting he ever saw, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in the early 50s, will also be on exhibition in the new Art Gallery. "Don Peebles has been a practising artist for more than 50 years. At the age of 80 he shows no sign of letting up and his current work radiates the freshness of vision and intensity of purpose that have always characterised his practice. The mark of distinction we confer on him today affirms his position as one of the canonical figures both in the history of New Zealand art and on the contemporary art scene. "Chancellor, I have the honour to present Donald Clendon Peebles for the award of the degree of Doctor of Letter (honoris causa) ."