Tony Fomison Three Faces c1970s oil on board 290 x 590mm PROVENANCE Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, 1980s. Tony Fomison – G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture Essay by MEGAN SHAW Tony Fomison was a master of mythology. His ghouls, jesters, skulls, spirits, werewolves and religious subjects show deep reflection on the metaphysical and the cultural. But what of the mythology that Fomison crafted of himself? Fomison painted few self-portraits throughout his career, making his red Self Portrait (Lot 56) a rare work to come up for sale. The difficulties of “trying a self portrait from life, which I’d never tried in oils before” kept him engrossed in this work until dawn on Sunday the 15th of September 1975. After a few hours’ sleep, he was back into painting until Monday afternoon: “& so to bed,” Fomison’s logbook records, “after the most exhausting painting I can remember borne out of my 1st self portrait painting from life – with a strange feeling of elation of peace.” Painted in an arresting red palette, his Self Portrait offers a highly charged first reading much like Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903) or Andy Warhol’s red Self-Portrait (1986), rather than a feeling of existential peace. Fomison’s sustained close observation of his own features better focused by the monochromatic paint and heightens his euphoric state.¹ Two key cultural influences gnawed at Fomison’s sense of place and self before he attempted this self-portrait from life. In August 1975 he visited the ‘Van Gogh in Auckland’ exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery which encouraged him to “pull my finger out & throw myself into my work.” Fomison was also reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which reinforced to the artist “how well off we are in NZ.” Fomison regarded the present Self Portrait as a breakthrough which began to dissolve “the ghost of my deep fears about my drawing ability (drg from life).” His logbooks confess that likenesses had always intimidated him, and that he was a “sucker” for watching portrait sketchers at fairgrounds or the Cook Street markets.² While Tony Fomison may have doubted his artistic abilities, the four works offered here testify to his great skill in colour, form, enigmatic storytelling and the essence – and even purpose – of painting. During Fomison’s stint in the 1960s as a pavement chalk drawer in a Parisian street gang, he copied works by Picasso including the Pierrot, a seminal figure from commedia dell’arte and pantomime for Modernists such as Picasso and Beckmann, Bloch, Dali, and Klee among others.³ Yet Fomison’s return to the Pierrot character mythologises him in a new way: by combining him with Dracula. The Perriot/Dracula (Lot 57) is painted in Fomison’s iconic black and white palette inspired by the 14th century European “dooms” and by gothic sub-culture. This was a stylistic continuation from his 1960s and early 70s works beginning with an all-black canvas and gradual additions of white paint.â´ The forms are expertly chiselled with sharp edges and creases, and theatrical lighting worthy of Caravaggio. And yet what defines Fomison’s subject is his ghostly collaret of translucent frills, and the inscribed title. Three Faces (Lot 59) is painted on an unilluminated background, peering at one another from beyond the edges of the frame. The figure on the left appears the most anthropomorphic, its shoulders visible and complete with recognisable facial features and hair. It locks eyes with the small green face to the right. Our eyes travel between the gaze of these two creatures, skimming over the lunar ghoul at the lower centre who is, perhaps, the most permanent in this transcendent scene. Three Faces is compositionally similar to Fomison’s popular lithograph The Question (1986) and the painting Song of Auckland (c1990) and although undated, likely painted in the late 1980's. Fomison’s painting is fundamentally allegorical, although the identities he casts in his mythologies are not always clear; these three could depict the three stages of life, a memento mori, or some process of metaphysical transformation. Two Masks with Curtain (Lot 58) is a porthole into communion and separation, image and reality, lovers and the beloved, image and reflection, and self-reflection, each binary captured within this small tondo.âµ The circular format favoured by Fomison in this period was traditionally reserved for religious works, however here it is employed to highlight the duplicity of human nature, much like the Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. Here, tragedy prevails in both ghoulish faces with the painting’s title referring to Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’ and the “reluctant masquerade.”ⶠThe right face cringes and withdraws into the shadows, while the left is deliberately lighter, warmer, perhaps foreshadowing Fomison’s later exploration of PapatÅ«Änuku, shielded here by a tree-like curtain. Indeed, in his logbook entry Fomison wrote that it “could be the starting point, for instance a tree-of-life theme, the faces flanking the central trunk.”â· This exploration of the tension of opposites found its form in Question and Answer; The Tree of Life (1989) now in Te Papa Tongarewa. Fomison was also intensely interested in the process of making which began by sourcing a base or canvas. Self Portrait is painted onto a checkered tea towel which is still visible from the reverse. Perriot/Dracula was painted onto a “pink-stained canvas” glued onto the reverse of an “ex junkshop scenic ptg”, and Two Masks with Curtain was painted onto the metal surround from a breadboard bought from a Ponsonby Road junk shop. Two Masks with Curtain hung on the wall in Tony Fomison’s home until at least 1981 when it featured in Bruce Morrison and Hamish Keith’s ‘Profile’ documentary, before the artist gifted it to his mother. Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift. 1 Excerpts from Tony Fomison’s Painting Logbook ‘From February 1973, Christchurch to Auckland & Beyond’, #98. 2 Ibid. 3 Tony Fomison: A Survey, 5. 4 Ibid, 10. 5 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176. 6 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1948), p. 27. Fomison was also inspired by Mishima’s The Decay of Angels (1971). 7 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176.
Tony Fomison Two Masks with Curtain 1977 oil on jute inscribed G'day Mum, here's your annual picture (I did it 1977, its addressed to a novel by that Japanese writer whose name I can never remember!) in graphite on label affixed verso 170mm (diameter) PROVENANCE Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, 1980s. Tony Fomison – G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture Essay by MEGAN SHAW Tony Fomison was a master of mythology. His ghouls, jesters, skulls, spirits, werewolves and religious subjects show deep reflection on the metaphysical and the cultural. But what of the mythology that Fomison crafted of himself? Fomison painted few self-portraits throughout his career, making his red Self Portrait (Lot 56) a rare work to come up for sale. The difficulties of “trying a self portrait from life, which I’d never tried in oils before” kept him engrossed in this work until dawn on Sunday the 15th of September 1975. After a few hours’ sleep, he was back into painting until Monday afternoon: “& so to bed,” Fomison’s logbook records, “after the most exhausting painting I can remember borne out of my 1st self portrait painting from life – with a strange feeling of elation of peace.” Painted in an arresting red palette, his Self Portrait offers a highly charged first reading much like Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903) or Andy Warhol’s red Self-Portrait (1986), rather than a feeling of existential peace. Fomison’s sustained close observation of his own features better focused by the monochromatic paint and heightens his euphoric state.¹ Two key cultural influences gnawed at Fomison’s sense of place and self before he attempted this self-portrait from life. In August 1975 he visited the ‘Van Gogh in Auckland’ exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery which encouraged him to “pull my finger out & throw myself into my work.” Fomison was also reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which reinforced to the artist “how well off we are in NZ.” Fomison regarded the present Self Portrait as a breakthrough which began to dissolve “the ghost of my deep fears about my drawing ability (drg from life).” His logbooks confess that likenesses had always intimidated him, and that he was a “sucker” for watching portrait sketchers at fairgrounds or the Cook Street markets.² While Tony Fomison may have doubted his artistic abilities, the four works offered here testify to his great skill in colour, form, enigmatic storytelling and the essence – and even purpose – of painting. During Fomison’s stint in the 1960s as a pavement chalk drawer in a Parisian street gang, he copied works by Picasso including the Pierrot, a seminal figure from commedia dell’arte and pantomime for Modernists such as Picasso and Beckmann, Bloch, Dali, and Klee among others.³ Yet Fomison’s return to the Pierrot character mythologises him in a new way: by combining him with Dracula. The Perriot/Dracula (Lot 57) is painted in Fomison’s iconic black and white palette inspired by the 14th century European “dooms” and by gothic sub-culture. This was a stylistic continuation from his 1960s and early 70s works beginning with an all-black canvas and gradual additions of white paint.â´ The forms are expertly chiselled with sharp edges and creases, and theatrical lighting worthy of Caravaggio. And yet what defines Fomison’s subject is his ghostly collaret of translucent frills, and the inscribed title. Three Faces (Lot 59) is painted on an unilluminated background, peering at one another from beyond the edges of the frame. The figure on the left appears the most anthropomorphic, its shoulders visible and complete with recognisable facial features and hair. It locks eyes with the small green face to the right. Our eyes travel between the gaze of these two creatures, skimming over the lunar ghoul at the lower centre who is, perhaps, the most permanent in this transcendent scene. Three Faces is compositionally similar to Fomison’s popular lithograph The Question (1986) and the painting Song of Auckland (c1990) and although undated, likely painted in the late 1980's. Fomison’s painting is fundamentally allegorical, although the identities he casts in his mythologies are not always clear; these three could depict the three stages of life, a memento mori, or some process of metaphysical transformation. Two Masks with Curtain (Lot 58) is a porthole into communion and separation, image and reality, lovers and the beloved, image and reflection, and self-reflection, each binary captured within this small tondo.âµ The circular format favoured by Fomison in this period was traditionally reserved for religious works, however here it is employed to highlight the duplicity of human nature, much like the Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. Here, tragedy prevails in both ghoulish faces with the painting’s title referring to Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’ and the “reluctant masquerade.”ⶠThe right face cringes and withdraws into the shadows, while the left is deliberately lighter, warmer, perhaps foreshadowing Fomison’s later exploration of PapatÅ«Änuku, shielded here by a tree-like curtain. Indeed, in his logbook entry Fomison wrote that it “could be the starting point, for instance a tree-of-life theme, the faces flanking the central trunk.”â· This exploration of the tension of opposites found its form in Question and Answer; The Tree of Life (1989) now in Te Papa Tongarewa. Fomison was also intensely interested in the process of making which began by sourcing a base or canvas. Self Portrait is painted onto a checkered tea towel which is still visible from the reverse. Perriot/Dracula was painted onto a “pink-stained canvas” glued onto the reverse of an “ex junkshop scenic ptg”, and Two Masks with Curtain was painted onto the metal surround from a breadboard bought from a Ponsonby Road junk shop. Two Masks with Curtain hung on the wall in Tony Fomison’s home until at least 1981 when it featured in Bruce Morrison and Hamish Keith’s ‘Profile’ documentary, before the artist gifted it to his mother. Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift. 1 Excerpts from Tony Fomison’s Painting Logbook ‘From February 1973, Christchurch to Auckland & Beyond’, #98. 2 Ibid. 3 Tony Fomison: A Survey, 5. 4 Ibid, 10. 5 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176. 6 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1948), p. 27. Fomison was also inspired by Mishima’s The Decay of Angels (1971). 7 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176.
Tony Fomison Perriot/Dracula 1975-76 oil on jute on board signed T Fomison, dated 7.7.75-29.4.76, inscribed Perriot/Dracula in brush point left edge 365 x 260mm PROVENANCE Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Acquired Auckland, c1976. LITERATURE Ian Wedde (editor), Fomison: What shall we tell them? (City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), 170. NOTE The work was purchased from a dealer show in Auckland. Mary Fomison gave her daughter Julia (Tony Fomison's sister) money to make the purchase on her behalf. Tony Fomison – G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture Essay by MEGAN SHAW Tony Fomison was a master of mythology. His ghouls, jesters, skulls, spirits, werewolves and religious subjects show deep reflection on the metaphysical and the cultural. But what of the mythology that Fomison crafted of himself? Fomison painted few self-portraits throughout his career, making his red Self Portrait (Lot 56) a rare work to come up for sale. The difficulties of “trying a self portrait from life, which I’d never tried in oils before” kept him engrossed in this work until dawn on Sunday the 15th of September 1975. After a few hours’ sleep, he was back into painting until Monday afternoon: “& so to bed,” Fomison’s logbook records, “after the most exhausting painting I can remember borne out of my 1st self portrait painting from life – with a strange feeling of elation of peace.” Painted in an arresting red palette, his Self Portrait offers a highly charged first reading much like Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903) or Andy Warhol’s red Self-Portrait (1986), rather than a feeling of existential peace. Fomison’s sustained close observation of his own features better focused by the monochromatic paint and heightens his euphoric state.¹ Two key cultural influences gnawed at Fomison’s sense of place and self before he attempted this self-portrait from life. In August 1975 he visited the ‘Van Gogh in Auckland’ exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery which encouraged him to “pull my finger out & throw myself into my work.” Fomison was also reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which reinforced to the artist “how well off we are in NZ.” Fomison regarded the present Self Portrait as a breakthrough which began to dissolve “the ghost of my deep fears about my drawing ability (drg from life).” His logbooks confess that likenesses had always intimidated him, and that he was a “sucker” for watching portrait sketchers at fairgrounds or the Cook Street markets.² While Tony Fomison may have doubted his artistic abilities, the four works offered here testify to his great skill in colour, form, enigmatic storytelling and the essence – and even purpose – of painting. During Fomison’s stint in the 1960s as a pavement chalk drawer in a Parisian street gang, he copied works by Picasso including the Pierrot, a seminal figure from commedia dell’arte and pantomime for Modernists such as Picasso and Beckmann, Bloch, Dali, and Klee among others.³ Yet Fomison’s return to the Pierrot character mythologises him in a new way: by combining him with Dracula. The Perriot/Dracula (Lot 57) is painted in Fomison’s iconic black and white palette inspired by the 14th century European “dooms” and by gothic sub-culture. This was a stylistic continuation from his 1960s and early 70s works beginning with an all-black canvas and gradual additions of white paint.â´ The forms are expertly chiselled with sharp edges and creases, and theatrical lighting worthy of Caravaggio. And yet what defines Fomison’s subject is his ghostly collaret of translucent frills, and the inscribed title. Three Faces (Lot 59) is painted on an unilluminated background, peering at one another from beyond the edges of the frame. The figure on the left appears the most anthropomorphic, its shoulders visible and complete with recognisable facial features and hair. It locks eyes with the small green face to the right. Our eyes travel between the gaze of these two creatures, skimming over the lunar ghoul at the lower centre who is, perhaps, the most permanent in this transcendent scene. Three Faces is compositionally similar to Fomison’s popular lithograph The Question (1986) and the painting Song of Auckland (c1990) and although undated, likely painted in the late 1980's. Fomison’s painting is fundamentally allegorical, although the identities he casts in his mythologies are not always clear; these three could depict the three stages of life, a memento mori, or some process of metaphysical transformation. Two Masks with Curtain (Lot 58) is a porthole into communion and separation, image and reality, lovers and the beloved, image and reflection, and self-reflection, each binary captured within this small tondo.âµ The circular format favoured by Fomison in this period was traditionally reserved for religious works, however here it is employed to highlight the duplicity of human nature, much like the Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. Here, tragedy prevails in both ghoulish faces with the painting’s title referring to Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’ and the “reluctant masquerade.”ⶠThe right face cringes and withdraws into the shadows, while the left is deliberately lighter, warmer, perhaps foreshadowing Fomison’s later exploration of PapatÅ«Änuku, shielded here by a tree-like curtain. Indeed, in his logbook entry Fomison wrote that it “could be the starting point, for instance a tree-of-life theme, the faces flanking the central trunk.”â· This exploration of the tension of opposites found its form in Question and Answer; The Tree of Life (1989) now in Te Papa Tongarewa. Fomison was also intensely interested in the process of making which began by sourcing a base or canvas. Self Portrait is painted onto a checkered tea towel which is still visible from the reverse. Perriot/Dracula was painted onto a “pink-stained canvas” glued onto the reverse of an “ex junkshop scenic ptg”, and Two Masks with Curtain was painted onto the metal surround from a breadboard bought from a Ponsonby Road junk shop. Two Masks with Curtain hung on the wall in Tony Fomison’s home until at least 1981 when it featured in Bruce Morrison and Hamish Keith’s ‘Profile’ documentary, before the artist gifted it to his mother. Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift. 1 Excerpts from Tony Fomison’s Painting Logbook ‘From February 1973, Christchurch to Auckland & Beyond’, #98. 2 Ibid. 3 Tony Fomison: A Survey, 5. 4 Ibid, 10. 5 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176. 6 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1948), p. 27. Fomison was also inspired by Mishima’s The Decay of Angels (1971). 7 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176.
Tony Fomison Self Portrait 1975 oil on cloth on board signed Fomison in brushpoint lower right; dated 1976 in brushpoint upper right 430 x 495mm PROVENANCE Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, c1975. EXHIBITIONS Tony Fomison: What Shall we Tell Them?, City Gallery, Wellington, 13 February - 22 May 1994. LITERATURE Ian Wedde (editor), Fomison: What shall we tell them? (City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), 101. Tony Fomison – G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture Essay by MEGAN SHAW Tony Fomison was a master of mythology. His ghouls, jesters, skulls, spirits, werewolves and religious subjects show deep reflection on the metaphysical and the cultural. But what of the mythology that Fomison crafted of himself? Fomison painted few self-portraits throughout his career, making his red Self Portrait (Lot 56) a rare work to come up for sale. The difficulties of “trying a self portrait from life, which I’d never tried in oils before” kept him engrossed in this work until dawn on Sunday the 15th of September 1975. After a few hours’ sleep, he was back into painting until Monday afternoon: “& so to bed,” Fomison’s logbook records, “after the most exhausting painting I can remember borne out of my 1st self portrait painting from life – with a strange feeling of elation of peace.” Painted in an arresting red palette, his Self Portrait offers a highly charged first reading much like Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903) or Andy Warhol’s red Self-Portrait (1986), rather than a feeling of existential peace. Fomison’s sustained close observation of his own features better focused by the monochromatic paint and heightens his euphoric state.¹ Two key cultural influences gnawed at Fomison’s sense of place and self before he attempted this self-portrait from life. In August 1975 he visited the ‘Van Gogh in Auckland’ exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery which encouraged him to “pull my finger out & throw myself into my work.” Fomison was also reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which reinforced to the artist “how well off we are in NZ.” Fomison regarded the present Self Portrait as a breakthrough which began to dissolve “the ghost of my deep fears about my drawing ability (drg from life).” His logbooks confess that likenesses had always intimidated him, and that he was a “sucker” for watching portrait sketchers at fairgrounds or the Cook Street markets.² While Tony Fomison may have doubted his artistic abilities, the four works offered here testify to his great skill in colour, form, enigmatic storytelling and the essence – and even purpose – of painting. During Fomison’s stint in the 1960s as a pavement chalk drawer in a Parisian street gang, he copied works by Picasso including the Pierrot, a seminal figure from commedia dell’arte and pantomime for Modernists such as Picasso and Beckmann, Bloch, Dali, and Klee among others.³ Yet Fomison’s return to the Pierrot character mythologises him in a new way: by combining him with Dracula. The Perriot/Dracula (Lot 57) is painted in Fomison’s iconic black and white palette inspired by the 14th century European “dooms” and by gothic sub-culture. This was a stylistic continuation from his 1960s and early 70s works beginning with an all-black canvas and gradual additions of white paint.â´ The forms are expertly chiselled with sharp edges and creases, and theatrical lighting worthy of Caravaggio. And yet what defines Fomison’s subject is his ghostly collaret of translucent frills, and the inscribed title. Three Faces (Lot 59) is painted on an unilluminated background, peering at one another from beyond the edges of the frame. The figure on the left appears the most anthropomorphic, its shoulders visible and complete with recognisable facial features and hair. It locks eyes with the small green face to the right. Our eyes travel between the gaze of these two creatures, skimming over the lunar ghoul at the lower centre who is, perhaps, the most permanent in this transcendent scene. Three Faces is compositionally similar to Fomison’s popular lithograph The Question (1986) and the painting Song of Auckland (c1990) and although undated, likely painted in the late 1980's. Fomison’s painting is fundamentally allegorical, although the identities he casts in his mythologies are not always clear; these three could depict the three stages of life, a memento mori, or some process of metaphysical transformation. Two Masks with Curtain (Lot 58) is a porthole into communion and separation, image and reality, lovers and the beloved, image and reflection, and self-reflection, each binary captured within this small tondo.âµ The circular format favoured by Fomison in this period was traditionally reserved for religious works, however here it is employed to highlight the duplicity of human nature, much like the Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. Here, tragedy prevails in both ghoulish faces with the painting’s title referring to Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’ and the “reluctant masquerade.”ⶠThe right face cringes and withdraws into the shadows, while the left is deliberately lighter, warmer, perhaps foreshadowing Fomison’s later exploration of PapatÅ«Änuku, shielded here by a tree-like curtain. Indeed, in his logbook entry Fomison wrote that it “could be the starting point, for instance a tree-of-life theme, the faces flanking the central trunk.”â· This exploration of the tension of opposites found its form in Question and Answer; The Tree of Life (1989) now in Te Papa Tongarewa. Fomison was also intensely interested in the process of making which began by sourcing a base or canvas. Self Portrait is painted onto a checkered tea towel which is still visible from the reverse. Perriot/Dracula was painted onto a “pink-stained canvas” glued onto the reverse of an “ex junkshop scenic ptg”, and Two Masks with Curtain was painted onto the metal surround from a breadboard bought from a Ponsonby Road junk shop. Two Masks with Curtain hung on the wall in Tony Fomison’s home until at least 1981 when it featured in Bruce Morrison and Hamish Keith’s ‘Profile’ documentary, before the artist gifted it to his mother. Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift. 1 Excerpts from Tony Fomison’s Painting Logbook ‘From February 1973, Christchurch to Auckland & Beyond’, #98. 2 Ibid. 3 Tony Fomison: A Survey, 5. 4 Ibid, 10. 5 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176. 6 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1948), p. 27. Fomison was also inspired by Mishima’s The Decay of Angels (1971). 7 Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243, #176.
Tony Fomison Garden of Eden Aotearoa 1980-81 oil on jute on board, artist's frame signed Fomison, dated 1980-1981 and inscribed Underpainting: mid-December-1980: Indian Red/Overpainting: Prussian Blue 13-14/1/81/a sea added bout same time, and sand, 25.2.81. (yellow ochre)/Finished 28.5.81/[No Title As Yet] in graphite verso; inscribed TONY FOMISON 'UNTITLED'/1980-81/24A in ink on label affixed verso; Janne Land gallery stamp verso 855 x 1375mm PROVENANCE Private ownership. Acquired from Janne Land Gallery, Wellington, c1982. EXHIBITIONS Tony Fomison, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington, 1982. Tony Fomison - Garden of Eden Aotearoa Essay by VICTORIA WYNNE-JONES A sandy, sunny promontory stretches thinly out into cool waters, below a powder-blue sky. The view of this serene harbour is crowded by an immense rock formation. Parts of the rock are illuminated from above, a soft light spills over a rounded curve and settles into long hollows in the undulating form. A wizened tree casts its shadow. Another shadow, one tremendously long and dark, is created by some unseen entity. A slender figure climbs up a reddish, rocky mound. Caught mid-stride, this attenuated creature appears wind-swept, her dark hair caught in a briny updraught; her pale form and long limbs seem loose and supple as she moves with ease. In the foreground the red rocks become a reflective blue-grey, they hump from left to right in repeated, wave-like shapes, piling and building upwards to reveal a seated figure, dwarfed by the wall of stone. He sits hunched, arms relaxed, in profile he seems to look towards the approaching woman. Bleached by sun and salt, another branch, this time a fallen one, spikes upwards from the rocks like a warning with wavering arms. What is to be made of this version of the Garden of Eden by Pākehā painter Tony Fomison? The landscape seems to bear very little resemblance to a fertile plain or garden of delight, though the warm-toned stones recall the clay from which Adam himself was moulded. The textured jute support provides an uneven ground for a complex interplay of light and darkness. Piercing sunlight beats mercilessly on sand and sea. Water and light bounce around and off the surfaces of boulders worn smooth by the ebb and flow of tides. Perhaps it is the light that introduces an element of the paradisical - together with the generous-sized boulders it almost evokes the sensation of sun-warmed stone on skin. Is Fomison trying to say that the threshold space of a coastal area or a sunny New Zealand beach is the closest one can ever get to paradise? Eden belongs to the Christian Bible's Old Testament, together with its vengeful Creator-God. The centre of the composition is home to a dramatic lighting effect, an oppressive, foreboding, almost-black shape that fills nearly one third of the frame with darkness. This obscurity divides the picture plane in two, ensuring the figures of Eve and Adam are kept separate, apart. Space is filled up with layers and layers of stone that press heavily upon each other, the only relief provided by a broad corner of azure and a triangle of negative space framing sea, sand and sky. A fraught atmosphere of contestation and opposition is evoked; not exactly good versus evil, more like positive and negative. The bright blue of the clear sky contrasts with the predominance of earthen dark umber, warm browns and creamy silver-grey. A play of warm and cold like a cool breath blowing on a hot, raw wound. All is soft and out of focus, outlines are blurred and fuzzy. There is a lack of clarity about the image, as though it is seen through a gauzy veil of tears, sleep or recollection. Yet there is also something less monotheistic apparent in this painting. The modelling of the enormous stony edifice hints that the forces at play in its formation were not entirely geological. Folds, cleavage and wrinkles appear almost fleshy, as though what has really been depicted is a broad-shouldered deity or ancestor hewn from the very land itself. This immense figure appears to be leaning insouciantly on one elbow so that Eve stands by his right upper arm and Adam is before his breast. According to such a reading, might the upper-most branch be the giant's Fomison-esque horn? For writer Simon During, paintings like Garden of Eden Aotearoa involve landscapes that are subtly anthropomorphised: "in ways that turn us simultaneously towards non-modern, 'mythic' cosmologies and towards Hollywood."¹ Indeed this larger-scale work depicts what During has described as "little white men dancing on the bodies of Polynesian giants," and within its single frame is contained "a micro-second of mysterious possibilities." On the one hand Fomison evokes what During calls "the dark space of the movie house" and its attendant cinematic devices, including miniaturisation and special effects enabled by camera trickery and immense studio lots. On the other hand what is depicted in Garden of Eden Aotearoa is something much more ancient and elemental, a cosmological realm in which gods, demi-gods and ancestors dwell. After all, the painting was completed in 1981, by which time the artist had received the Sāmoan pe'a from tufuga te tatau Sulu'ape Paulo II, together with friend Fuimaono Tuiasau.³ Fomison's Eden is testament to his drive to depict landscape in all of its multi-layered and multi-modal complexities; as he said, "I somehow had to convey a vision of the whole culture." This is where Aotearoa comes in: the biblical Eden of Christian missionaries and European settlers is commingled with Māori creation narratives and the stories brought to these Pacific shores from Sāmoa. Perhaps this hybrid painting was inspired and informed by what Fomison has referred to as a "vision of a shared society." If so, the vision is an uneasy one, filled with shadows and the play of dark and light. The image is dominated by the towering, earthen sea-cliff deity - he diminishes the presence of the tiny humans and the sunlit beach beyond. There is another reason the human figures are so small - it points towards humility. The vision of one man, of one painter, can only ever be partial. As art historian Peter Brunt explains, paintings like Garden of Eden Aotearoa can be understood as part of Fomison's attempt to respond to the imaginary needs of various cultures and communities.⁶ Though an exemplary figure, Brunt argues, of "the living of biculturalism and multiculturalism," Fomison is always peering through the colonial frame.⁷ The artist has ventured onto dangerous territory: just as it was in the Garden of Eden, there is a lot at stake - knowledge, power, betrayal and shame. Transgression is very likely. 1 Simon During, "Here's Trouble: Some Comments on Tony Fomison and his Work," in Fomison: What Shall We Tell Them? ed. Ian Wedde (Wellington: City Gallery, 1994), 46. 2 Ibid., 45. 3 Fuimaono Tuiasau, "Interview with Fuimaono Tuiasau," in Wedde, Fomison, 81. 4 Natasha Conland, "Telling Pictures: Narrative and Tony Fomison" (MA thesis, The University of Auckland, 1998), 72. 5 Ibid., 73. 6 Peter Brunt, "Framing Identity," in Wedde, Fomison, 65. 7 Ibid., 72.
Tony Fomison "Carcinoma of the Tongue Ulcerative Type" Fig.51 'Surgery for Nurses' by Bailey and Love, London 1942 (# 15) signed Fomison and dated March 1964 in brushpoint lower right and inscribed "Carcinoma of the Tongue Ulcerative Type" Fig.51 'Surgery for Nurses' by Bailey and Love, London 1942 in brushpoint upper left; inscribed Fomison exh. No. 34 crate no. 2 verso, on typed label affixed to stretcher 917mm x 710mm
Tony Fomison {King Lear} oil on hessian board title inscribed, signed and inscribed "You mad one turned into a fool by your own fool who has now become your Confessor - and the Punch and Judy show... is on"; dated 1988 Lincoln St; 1989 Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn' verso
Tony Fomison In this Crowded Ward the Beds Were Close Together and Someone Died Every Night oil on canvasboard on card title inscribed, signed and dated 1987 and inscribed '19 Lincoln Street, Grey Lynn, Auckland' verso
Tony Fomison Jester to the Current Court of France oil on hessian on particle board title inscribed, signed and dated 1981 and inscribed Underpainting, early May, Mars yellow 18.6.81, Blue 25.6.81 verso; Janne Land Gallery blind stamp applied verso 270 x 395mm Provenance: Private collection, Wellington
Tony Fomison Detail for a Dancing Skeleton oil on hessian in artist's original frame title inscribed, signed and dated 19 - 23. 9. 70, 20 - 26. 10. 70, 2 - 4. 11. 70, 15.12. 70 and inscribed from Magic Lantern advert for Famous Monsters of Filmland Comic; original Fomison catalogue exhibition label affixed verso Provenance : Purchased by the current owner from Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington in 1973. : Private collection, Christchurch Illustrated : Ian Wedde (ed), Fomison: What shall we tell them? (City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), p. 113. Exhibited : 'Fomison: What shall we tell them?', City Gallery, Wellington (touring), 1994 : 'Coming Home in the Dark', October 15 2004 - March 27 2005, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. 620 x 887mm
Tony Fomison I Was a Teenage Werewolf oil on canvas on board signed and dated 19 - 29. 6. 70 inscribed "I was a teenage werewolf" film 1957 Exhibited : 'Fomison: What shall we tell them?', City Gallery, Wellington (touring), 1994 Illustrated: Ian Wedde (ed), Fomison: What shall we tell them? (City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), p. 9. Reference : Ian Wedde, 'Tracing Tony Fomison', in ibid., p. 9 - 10. : ibid., p. 50. : Denis Gifford, A Pictorial History of Horror Movies (London, 1973), p. 9. Provenance: Purchased by the current owner from CSA Gallery, Christchurch in 1970. : Private collection, Christchurch. 330 x 232mm
