EPISODE TWO: Engaging with Difference. Episode two focuses on travelling artists like Augustus Earle and George French Angus who engaged with Maori society and were fascinated by their difference. We look at how Maori art responded ...See moreEPISODE TWO: Engaging with Difference. Episode two focuses on travelling artists like Augustus Earle and George French Angus who engaged with Maori society and were fascinated by their difference. We look at how Maori art responded positively to European impact and flourished with new technologies and new challenges. We see the invention of the carved meeting-house, the early art of settlers and their invention of the empty landscape which could be seen as a colonising device to steal identity. If there is nobody pictured in the landscape it could be interpreted as up for the taking. The impact of the land wars on Maori art is noticed - producing brilliant and defiant images for the iwi but not much in European art. The question is asked: Can landscape painting have meaning? Both Maori and settlers saw art and culture as laying a grid of meaning over mountains, plains and rivers. Settlers tried to grapple with how to mold their painting styles and models to reflect New Zealand reality.
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