Interview: Alistair Fox talks about Peter Cleverley: Between Transience and Eternity

Alistair Fox is a New Zealand scholar, former university administrator, and writer who specialises in English Tudor literature and history, New Zealand literature and cinema studies, contemporary literary and film theory, particularly with regard to national identity and the creative process. From 2019–2022, he has regularly written catalogue essays, most frequently for RDS Gallery, Dunedin, which he owned from 2020–2022.

Despite his involvement in international scholarship, Alistair Fox has lived his whole life in the South Island of New Zealand, and has developed his career from his base in the University of Otago, where he taught several generations of students for 40 years. Alistair talks to NZ Booklovers.

Tell us a little about Peter Cleverley: Between Transience and Eternity.

This heavily illustrated book traces Peter Cleverley’s formation and evolution as an artist, identifying the myriad influences that aroused in him a profound sense of the transience of human life and the paradoxical complexity of the human condition. The portrait that results shows how Cleverley’s sense of the human condition has allowed him to convey it symbolically in a way that simultaneously captures not only the fragility of human life, but also its joys.

What inspired you to write this book?

A number of factors prompted me. First, a longstanding interest in the creative process and how various art forms have imaginatively depicted the evolving experience of New Zealanders. Three of my earlier books had explored this topic: The Ship of Dreams (on how masculinity is represented in contemporary literature), Coming of Age Cinema in New Zealand (demonstrating how this genre tracks the formation of New Zealand identities), and Jane Campion (which traces the links between this filmmaker’s life and art). I wanted to extend my investigations to painting to see whether the same preoccupations and dynamics could be observed in it. The life and art of Peter Cleverley provided an ideal case study for this purpose.

Second, since 2019, I have owned a small art gallery––RDS Gallery in Dunedin, directed by Hilary Radner, my partner in life and work––for which I have written a number of catalogue essays on local artists exhibited at the gallery. An earlier essay on Peter Cleverley showed me that he is a formidable artist who has not received the national recognition he deserves. I wanted to rectify that.

Third, I was encouraged to proceed with this project by the art writer Gregory O’Brien, who, emphasising the interconnections between “the trifecta of art, life, and place,” lamented the dearth of published work on South Island artists. He views this as unfortunate, given that, in his words, "New Zealand art that is exciting, artistically, is so often from the regions. It is really rooted in place with imagination and creativity." Andrew Paul Wood, an art-historian based in Christchurch, has made a similar complaint: “I have to say that I get a bit annoyed with the ‘Here be dragons’ attitude to South Island-based artists.” Once I realised that Peter Cleverley has a vision and a sustained practice that grew out of his location in the south of the South Island, I felt that a full-length study would help to redress this relative neglect of artists who have elected to stay in the south. Peter Cleverley is quintessentially a South Island artist. He has remained in the place where his family have lived for four generations, his art being informed by the views he has of the Pacific Ocean from his cottage in Kākānui, by his fascination with the conical hills of the North Otago volcanic field, and by his response to the vast, open spaces of Central Otago. This book, by drawing attention to the inseparable links between the local landscapes and Cleverley’s art, in Hilary’s words, is “a love letter to the South Island.”

What research was involved?

This book offers the history of a family as well as an account of an artist’s life and work. At the time I began working on this project, Peter Cleverley did not know when or from where his ancestors had arrived in New Zealand. That meant we had to search out this information from the archives, and in this respect, I was greatly helped by my sister Margaret Farrelly, who is an amateur genealogist and historian. She was able to comb through shipping records and passenger lists, and she also found out a lot of information about the Cleverleys from early newspaper accounts now available through Papers Past. Eventually, we were able to piece together a comprehensive account of their origins in South-East England, identify the ship on which they arrived in 1874, as well as their activities in the colony once they got here, their religion and value system, and their various occupations up to the present day.

Then, as regards Peter and his oeuvre, I conducted many hours of interviews with the artist himself, as well as his wife Pip, and his friends, such as David McLean. I also talked with former students who exhibited at the gallery whom he taught at the Dunedin School of Art. This gave me a sense of his art education; his life experiences, including years spent travelling through South East Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific; how his practice had evolved at the different stages of his life; his motivations; and the nature of his vision of the world. After that, we had to locate his paintings that were scattered across the country in the homes of collectors as well as in public galleries. I also had the good fortune to be able to interview his mother Noeline shortly before she died.

Prior to this, I had undertaken a systematic review of the history of New Zealand art, and of twentieth century art movements generally, so as to be able to locate Peter Cleverley as an artist within these contexts.

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

Once I had assembled all the information, the writing was the easy part. I would write for about four hours each day, starting at the beginning with an account of Cleverley’s origins and proceeding chronologically through the different stages of his career until the end. The actual writing took about three months. Other aspects of the process, however, were very time-consuming. I spent a lot of time transcribing the interviews so that I could identify the parts I wanted to quote. Then, there was the correspondence required to request photographic copies of paintings held by public galleries and to secure permissions to reproduce them. It was also challenging to assemble photographs of paintings that were not held in the artist’s personal collection, and then to ensure that all the photographs included in the book were edited to a publishable standard. In that respect, I must acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the Dunedin photographer and gallery owner Justin Spiers, who spent many hours on this task. Compared with the eleven other monographs I have published, this one was by far the most labour-intensive in terms of coordinating all the moving parts.

If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include?

Two pieces come to mind. The first is the soundtrack to the Brazilian movie The History of Eternity, with music by the Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner. I was listening to it frequently during the period when I was writing the book, and as the work proceeded, I began to feel that there were cross-modal correspondences between the mood and tone of the music and many of Peter’s paintings––especially the sense in both of the fragility of human life in the context of eternity. That is what gave me the idea for the title of the book.

The second piece is That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day), by Beasley Smith, as sung by Sarah Vaughan. Cleverley listens to music while he is painting, and this song suggested to him the title of one of his most important paintings, “Lolling Around Heaven All Day”––the painting that appears on the cover of my book. Peter changed “rolls” to “lolling” to underline the irony that heaven is actually to be found here on earth, not in some hereafter.

What did you enjoy the most about writing Peter Cleverley? What is the most surprising thing you learnt about Peter Cleverley?

What surprised me most about Peter Cleverley is how completely unpretentious he is, unlike the kind of artist who acts like a self-proclaiming genius. Peter is entirely modest and unassuming. There is a kind of innocence about him, which is why I likened him to Candide, the hero of Voltaire’s novella––the young idealist who ventures out into the world and observes its hardships before returning home. Cleverley did that. When he graduated from the Dunedin School of Art, he set off on an adventure that took him overseas for more than five years. During that time, he met people and saw sights that left him with a profound sense of the complexities of the human condition: the kindness of which human beings are capable, as well as the suffering and deprivation they often have to endure. The insights he gained have informed his works ever since, and he has continued to venture out into the wider world from time to time so that he is fully aware of circumstances that other peoples face, such as the plight of Syrian refugees, as well as the beauty and richness of their cultures. It is the breadth and depth of Cleverley’s vision that makes his work distinctive. While its imagery and values are deeply rooted in his own local environment and culture, his painting also integrates an awareness of, and profound sympathy for, those in the larger outside world––particularly those who face adverse circumstances. He is an extremely compassionate and sensitive man, and that is reflected in his paintings.

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

I am currently reading the collected short stories and novellas of Stefan Zweig in the superb translation from the German by Anthea Bell. I am fascinated by Zweig’s exploration of powerful emotional impulses, such as a doctor’s passionate obsession with an unobtainable women that leads them both to self-destruction in Amok, or the relationship between an aged professor of literature and a young man in Confusion that revolves around devastating secrets they each hide from the other. Then, of course, there is the magnificent film by Max Ophüls of Zweig’s Letter from an Unknown Woman. I am a great fan of Zweig’s writing.

What’s next on the agenda for you?

There are a number of emerging artists for whom I can foresee writing exhibition essays. I’m also thinking of moving into fiction after 40 years of writing academic books. My model in this regard is the French author Henri-Pierre Roché, who wrote his first novel when he was in his 70s. That was Jules et Jim, which the filmmaker François Truffaut thought was so good that he adapted it into a magnificent film. Roché’s example is inspiring; it emboldens me to try imitating him.

https://quentinwilsonpublishing.com/product/peter-cleverley-between-transience-and-eternity/