Inspirations: the spirit of deco and the art of the abstract truth

A while ago I spent a delightful few days in Napier, New Zealand, enjoying a weekend celebration of 1930s elite lifestyles, an annual event inspired by the architecture that dominates the centre of town. By design it was more Hollywood fantasy than reality, but that made it all the more fun. An inspiration.

The ‘art deco weekend’ also brought just about every 1930s car in the country into one spot, and that got me thinking. There were hundreds of them, polished, preened and restored. And they were more than just demonstrations of the love their owners had poured into them. Though they were that. They were more than just world automotive history. Though they were that too.

They were art. Art in the sense of abstraction – of the way concepts can be poured into something real, then invoke emotion in the recipient. Perhaps, if the artist is lucky, the intended emotion.

These cars encapsulated the spirit of the early twentieth century, an age of shapes and forms made possible by the wild collision of new thinking, new materials and new demands – particularly the need for genuine streamlining in ever-faster aircraft. That translated into art, it translated back into the everyday on the ground, mingled with infusions of Mayan styling, and lifted everyday objects like cars, tea-cups, buildings, vases, furniture – and everything else it touched – above the mundane. In part it was a product of depression thinking; a rejection of gloom. And ultimately the whole floated on a conscious effort to transcend the nineteenth century – to simplify, to streamline. Literally.

It came out in writing. What is Hemingway, with his sparse style, if not art deco? The styles that emerged in everything from ashtrays to pens to cups to buildings to cars to art were an explicit rejection of art nouveau. Modernism – of which ‘art deco’ was a part – took the new and exalted it.

To me it came together in the cars, because they were art for everyman, art in a real sense; an ultimate expression of the materials of the twentieth century – metal, chrome, glass, rubber and bakelite. Conceptually they carried a vision – accessible to everyday people, even if only as a drive-past glimpse – of hope in an age beset by war and depression.

Suddenly it was 1940…

And isn’t that inspiring?

That relationship between time, society and art hasn’t gone away. And art is an expression of human abstract endeavour - encompassing not just painting, drawing or sculpture, but all the ways in which we can communicate through the abstract. Writing, for instance.

What do you figure?

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I’ll be back blogging full-strength from 14 January. Here’s what’s coming in 2013:

- posts on kindness and the positive side of the human condition…with
- some posts on my favourite writers
- some posts on New Zealand scenery and photography
- a systematic how-to series on writing
- some science geek posts
- a short series on history mysteries
- and more

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Summer skies, blue waters and a promise for the year

There is a pleasure about summer that seems to blow away the cobwebs of a busy year and the gloom of winter. Today I thought I’d share a few pictures I took recently in Napier, New Zealand.

It’s my home town, though I don’t live there these days; and it underscores the fact that there is a lot more to New Zealand scenery than Tolkien landscapes. Especially in summer when the blue skies stretch huge from horizon to horizon and the water laps against beaches lined with pohutukawa. These pictures are unedited apart from some minor cropping, adding my copyright notice, and re-sizing to fit the blog. I was playing with a polarising filter and new lens – looking to capture the feel of the day in a place deep in the South Pacific where the summers are Californian and the architecture pure Hollywood.. What do you reckon?

Ocean going waka moored against East Quay, Ahuriri harbour, Napier New Zealand. Earlier in 2012, I spent hours standing in Awarua harbour, Rarotonga, trying to photograph this one.

Greywacke brought down to the sea by the rivers that cross the Heretaunga plains give Napier’s beaches their shingled look – and tint the summer sea azure.I went for full polarisation with this one to bring out the clouds, which the hills inevitably sweep into interesting shapes.

The Tom Parker Fountain, on Napier’s town centre foreshore, was donated by local identity Tom Parker in 1936. Though modelled on an English example, it is pure deco, a Hollywood fantasy in a townscape that was once going to be rebuilt along the lines of Santa Barbara. At night the water is lit in rainbow colours from beneath. I’ve been photographing it for years in many weathers and seasons.

Coming up this year:

The response to my last post, making 2013 a year of kindness, has been just fantastic – and everybody agrees. Thank you so much for your support! And let’s do it.  The year of kindness. So – on this blog, this year, we’ll have:
- posts on kindness and the positive side of the human condition…with
- some posts on my favourite writers
- some posts on New Zealand scenery and photography
- a systematic how-to series on writing
- some science geek posts
- a short series on history mysteries
- and more

Copyright Matthew Wright © 2013

Inspirations: Secret Gotham in Hobbit Land

The MLC building. It’s not really these colours…

 Amidst all the Hobbit hoopla with its seven-story promo posters and street-light banners and tie-in toys and movie ticket lines and book and all the rest, New Zealand’s capital city – Wellington’s – got a secret.

Like most secrets it’s in plain sight. Wellington Gotham. Streamline moderne buildings from the early 1940s.

Across the road from the MLC, the Prudential building. I didn’t filter this image, it’s natural colour (insofar as the CCD in my Canon captures it).

Two of them date to the early 1940s and that classic age of streamline moderne, quintessential Deco - the age when Flash Gordon conquered the universe. It was the pinnacle of step-Mayan, chrome-curve streamline architecture. It was ultimate Modernism in that breathless moment of triumph before the joy of it was cut short by the horrors of the Second World War, and changed forever.

They’re just part of the scenery. Nobody pays them any attention. And that’s a pity, because they’re magnificent examples of the art.

The other week I went for a wander down Lambton Quay armed with the camera and a notion of capturing the abstraction, the shape as idea; the feel of the buildings as Gotham; the sense of the late 1930s. Some of these pictures are exactly as they emerged. Others…well, I’ve been a bit adventurous with filters. Other than some minor cropping, though, they’re exactly what I saw through the lens.

This building used to house the Defence headquarters – wonderful example of art deco. They moved a few years ago; it’s under renovation. Another natural colour image; I had to wait for clouds to clear to get that blue sky.

What I was interested in was the interplay of shape and colour, the way that these conveyed the essential feel of a bygone age. Did it work? I don’t know. But it was fun to do.

The State Insurance building of 1940. Not Middle Earth, but from the sky colour, possibly one of those new super-earths they’ve found, with thick air and maybe a touch of iodine in the atmosphere.

I find it amazing that these slices of style can be found in the city. To me they’re inspiring – inspiring to me as a writer, inspiring to me as a photographer. A prompt for thought, a prompt for the imagination. And definitely not Middle Earth.

Is there a place you know that is a little slice of Gotham?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

A small tribute to scenic New Zealand

Over the years I’ve taken many photos of New Zealand’s scenic spots. I thought I’d share a few today, by request from a reader. Starting at the geographic top.

This is the lighthouse at Cape Reinga, just a little east of the sacred bay where Maori spirits depart for the north. Hard to capture; the place is riddled with tourists.Below that, the Tom Parker Fountain, an art deco feature on the Napier waterfront, gifted to the town in 1936. At night it glows with coloured lights, like a Hollywood fantasy. Then there is my ‘bridges of Madison County’ – a steel bridge over the Mangone river, inland Hawke’s Bay.

Below that, Hikitia – a 1925 crane that’s been a feature in Wellington harbour for years. Currently being done up. It is used on occasion for lifting – and as a carrier for firework displays in Wellington harbour.

Below that,  a landscape near Nelson – classic Kiwi farm setting, this. Once upon a time, that house would have been loved. This isn’t far from Ernest Rutherford’s birthplace – there is an atom-shaped memorial about half a kilometre from where I took this picture.

I’ve finished with a waterfall on the West Coast, just inland from Reefton – a spectacular part of the South Island.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Some mid-week deco magic to share

A month or so back I spent a delightful weekend in my home town of Napier, New Zealand, surrounded by around 15,000 tourists and 400 vintage cars from the 1930s. I have to confess: I went a bit shutter-happy. Today I thought I’d share another picture or four from my collection. These are not staged. They’re pictures I took while just wandering around. It really was like this.

Some art deco street theatre – a ‘movie’ being shot on location. Fun stuff. I took this with an 18mm lens (see the distortions along the top of the memorial arch in the background) which meant I was bang in the middle of the action.

Car: 1930. Building: 1932. Photo: 2012.

This is the ‘Sun Bay’ – the memorial to the 258 who died in the Hawke’s Bay quake of 1931. Beyond is the Soundshell and town centre. In the Second World War this was a roller skating rink; German sailors cruising past on a U-boat in January 1945 apparently mistook them for dancers.

Suddenly it was 1940… (which is when the arch behind the car waa completed).

It was a magical experience – a fantasy rendition of what we all hoped Hollywood was like seventy five years ago. And with all the cars rumbling back and forth, the hundreds of people dressed up in 1930s costumes for the occasion, the period bands with their ‘tea-for-two’ jazz rhythms, a live improv street theatre re-enacting a movie shoot, it really was like stepping back in time.

I know, of course, that it wasn’t real history. I have a long standing interest in the history of the place – my work on that district includes the longest book I’ve ever written, all 250,000 words and 750+ pages of Town and Country, a history of Hastings and its surrounding district.

My most recent book on the area is Historic Hawke’s Bay and East Coast, which is a coffee-table picture history of the district. Lots of pictures, not too much text – the aim was to capture the magic of the past through some of the best available historical photos. The cover pic, curiously, was of the one-time skating rink seen above – it’s behind the car - but as it was originally in 1938, looking down from the stage of the Sound Shell. The real thing. Publishers David Bateman did a really great job of the production. It’s available online via Fishpond, New Zealand’s online bookshop. You can get it here, if you want.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012