© 2011-14 Sait Akkirman, including all photographs.

05/02/2014, + Gus Fisher Gallery, at Old Government House o Robyn Hughes - "Into Cassino".

Robyn Hughes: Cassino Series

Monte Cassino. It is a name many New Zealanders know but few know much about. How many know where it is and what it signifies? The present-day small Italian town south of Rome is nothing special but what happened there during the Second World War has lasting importance. New Zealand soldiers were among the mixture of divisions cobbled together to face elite German forces in entrenched positions defending the Gustav Line and the approaches to Rome. The Germans proved to be formidable enemies and left horrendous numbers of casualties among the Allies before their successful withdrawal at the end of May 1944, just a week before the D-Day invasion of Europe. With her Cassino series of paintings Robyn Hughes has been inspired to undertake the most ambitious task of her career and to take her long-term pictorial engagement with interactions between New Zealand and Italy to a new level. Her series has been planned to mark the 70th anniverary of the battles which took place between January and May 1944. It has a personal dimension as well in that her father was a Major in the 19th Armoured Regiment, part of the 2nd New Zealand Corps that served at Cassino.

Robyn Hughes's Cassino series is comprised of multi-part works, all on unstretched canvas, designed to be displayed together but not necessarily in a strict order. While collectively they assume an added gravitas, it is perfectly possible to view them one at a time as self-sufficient paintings. For each painting has been designed and executed by itself with a coherent theme drawn from her response to some aspect of the battles. The paintings go together easily because the vision behind them remains the same and the theme in its grander dimension runs through them all. They do not have to be hung in a particular sequence to work as intended, nor do all of them have to be displayed at once to generate a particular effect. It is likely that the gallery setting will in every showing inflect the works in some subtle way so that they will reveal new aspects to the viewer.

They are contemplative paintings that encourage reflection on Cassino rather than a specific response. There is something for the person with no art background as well as for the painter and critic. While it would be possible to relate them to a tradition in modern New Zealand painting going back to Colin McCahon of surrounding and involving the viewer with unframed canvases of mural-like dimensions, this relationship is less important than the originality of its application to European war art. In New Zealand war painting has previously been primarily illustrative and realistic in intention. Also, it was made at wartime by artists like Peter McIntyre and Russell Clark who were commissioned to accompany the troops onto the battle fields and record first-hand experiences. The paintings were official commissions to support the war effort and to acknowledge the sacrifices made. Robyn Hughes's are paintings generated by her personal response to Cassino and what it means today many years after the battles. The emphasis has gone from the official to the private, from the external to the internal consideration of the subject matter.

In conception her paintings all have certain consistencies, one of which, as she has noted, is they suggest the terrain of battle fields rather than show actual fighting. In preparation Hughes visited the town of Cassino several times, also going to sites of the battles nearby such as the famous Benedictine Monastery prominent on a hill above it. She became very aware of the steepness of the hillsides, the difficulties of access and the exposed nature of the pathways to the summit fortified by the Germans. In her canvases she creates abstracted landscapes where the actions take place, even though no soldiers or weapons of war are shown. Instead their presence is evoked by carefully selected texts taken from letters and diaries and records of the fighting by ordinary soldiers and civilians. The writers remain nameless – they stand for the anonymous protagonists who were sent into battle sometimes not knowing why they were there. By reading their words as we look at the canvases we can imagine the plight of the soldiers stranded in the maze of hills, rivers and rocks that make up the inhospitable environment. Her landscapes show visible evidence of fighting in pitted surfaces, indications of blasted trees, of fire and explosions as well as debris like the remains of white tapes, designed to mark minefields, that were torn away by appalling weather and ferocious use of weaponry on both sides.

Hughes in no way celebrates war. Her dark tones in many of the canvases and the way her paint is swirled, layered and disrupted convey a sombre mood . Often we seem to look down upon (the works were painted on the studio floor) and into a disordered world of smoke, flames and disorientating obscurity. In fact, there is no orientation. We are lost in a world condemned. There can be no winners or losers here at ground level. War at Cassino is itself an evil nobody there can escape – civilians or soldiers.That is why there is no celebration of commanders like Freyberg who figure large in war histories and whose every action is noted and evaluated. Instead it is the men in the ranks, the American and Polish soldiers and New Zealanders whose voices are heard in the overlaid quotations. Her frequent use of text introduces a human note to the inferno and allows the thoughts and reflections of the participants to be heard against the background of Cassino. These texts have all been selected for their emotional resonance by the artist. For example, the touching one from a Polish soldier that at night when the guns stopped firing nightingales could be heard singing.

The Cassino series has no specific beginning or ending. In fact the works can be hung in various sequences and not necessarily by the date of events referred to in the texts. Because no particular actions are shown or important events like the bombing of the Monastery recorded, the series does not have a narrative content as such. Nor is there a climax or a sense of culmination or victory. Rather it is a compassionate reflexion on what Cassino was and still is today by a woman artist who was not an observer or participant. Women appear to have played no part directly in the fighting but many were civilian victims of the shelling and bombing that destroyed their homes and livelihoods. And many, too, lost loved ones on the battle fields. Scars take a long time to heal and this impressive series of paintings may well become part of the ongoing process.

 

Michael Dunn

Nov. 2013


(Text kindly provided by Gus Fisher Gallery.)