An antipodean intimist: Janet Paul and aspects of early French modernism

Abstract

This thesis explores some influences and assimilations linking artists connected with French modernism, in particular Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Henri Matisse (1867-1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), to the work of the New Zealand woman artist Janet Paul (b. 1919). Paul's little-known career shows how an affirmative and innovative oeuvre can be created by combining a response to an Antipodean milieu with the knowledge and understanding of the early French modernist tradition. The thesis begins with a brief description of the Antipodean artist's general situation - the earlier geographical and spiritual isolation from mainstream Western art in the late 19th and first part of the 20th centuries and the effects of the international influences brought by modern communications. From 1912, when the English critic Roger Fry first articulated the unique power inherent in early French modernism, until the 1965 discourse of the New York critic Clement Greenberg rounded off the era of 'high' or 'later' modernism in the United States, it was possible to see a continuing 'avant-garde' creating art as a source of value to the present and the future. From the seventies onwards it has become increasingly apparent that a postmodern disorder can threaten the sustenance of that positive quality. Within the loose framework of modernism (and the subsequent postmodern events) I wish to focus upon Intimism as a mode used by modern artists to examine and reflect their feelings through their observations of domestic life and objects at close quarters. After a discussion of the origins of Intimism, the middle section of the thesis makes extended reference to the intimist art of Cézanne, Matisse and Bonnard from the late 19th century until the end of their careers. The last section commences with a biographical and historical study of Janet Paul's life. It is central to the understanding of Antipodean Intimism that attention be paid to the lives of women artists meeting the physical, intellectual and spiritual challenges of a young society. Through an analysis of her work it will be shown how this relatively unknown artist, greatly respected in her other professions as publisher and historian has, with her exceptional understanding of the early modernists, resisted the temptations of commercialism and fashion, and kept the integrity of an art that has the power, in the smaller orbit of the Antipodes, to offer the solace of beauty and the possibilities for moral and cultivated ways of living.