Charles Meryon, The Death of Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 12 June 1772, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (1846-1848) I Sometime between 1846 and 1848 drew the scene en graiselle in pencil and crayon, heightened with chalk. It’s a largish work, one metre by two metres – a heroic scale for a “heroic” subject, executed by the French artist Charles Méryon (1821-1868) and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848. Thence it passed on to the artist’s closest friend, Antoine-Édouard Foleÿ (the two were stationed together at the French naval base in Akaroa on Banks’ Peninsula), a member of the Paris Positivist circle of the philosopher Auguste Comte, who left it to his son. The drawing was purchased in Paris by New Zealand-born British art collector Rex Nan Kivell, who smuggled it back to London, rolled up in the leg of his trousers, as the Second World War broke out. Eventually this magnificent curiosity entered the National Library of Australia as part of t
Recently the Spinoff published an opinion piece by Peter Gilderdale of AUT contending that Auckland University’s threatened closure of specialty libraries represents some kind of internal schism within the bourgeoisie, and that the outrage expressed doesn’t go, “beyond cost-cutting and general ideological antipathy as an explanation for what the university is doing. ...Well written as they are, the articles boil down to arty people expressing outrage to other arty people. And the people doing these cuts don’t care about arty folks.” Gilderdale opens his explanation for his view like this: “I sometimes wonder whether the arts community entirely realise the depth of the antipathy for, or (what is worse) indifference towards them which these cuts represent. If you live in Grey Lynn, Titirangi (or Wellington), read the Listener , go to the theatre, and listen to RNZ, your cultural support networks mean you are barely going encounter people for whom the arts are not a vital part of
Given the tendency of the New Zealand media to be relentlessly jingoistic to the point of sycophancy when it comes to our film-makers in Hollywood, by way of counterpoint and because you are highly unlikely to see attention drawn to them elsewhere, I have compiled a list of less than glowing reviews of Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit , concentrating on the ones that raise interesting points rather than merely being snarky. In no particular order: Richard Brody, "Springtime for Nazis: How the Satire of "Jojo Rabbit" Backfires, The New Yorker , 22 October 2019. Peter Sobczynski, "Jojo Rabbit", eFilm Critic , 23 October 2019. Nick Schager, "Jojo Rabbit": Taika Waititi's Nazi Satire Tries and Fails to Find the Funny in Fascism", The Daily Beast , 19 October 2019. Adam Nayman, "Jojo Rabbit" and Taika Waititi's Childish Approach to Nazism", The Ringer, 18 October 2019. Jonathon Romney, "Film of the Week: Jojo Rabbit&
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