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• Auction House:
  Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings and Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  06 Dec 2011 ~ 6.30pm (NZ Time)
• Lot #:
  24
• Lot Description:
  Don Binney
  Binney, Two Aspects of Tokatoka, 1979 The flattened forms and hard-edged style, with its sharp outlines and tight control of paint, immediate
  oil, acrylic and impasto on two sheets of primed steinbach paper, laid onto MDF board or similar
  1465mm x 1100mm
  signed Don Binney and dated 1979 in brushpoint upper right; inscribed Two Aspects of TokaToka in another hand on label affixed verso; inscribed NY/NW/29 N° 33. Don Binney. Aspects of Tokatoka in another hand on original Barry Lett Galleries label affixed
• Provenance:
  Purchased by the current owner from Barry Lett Galleries, 1979.
• Notes:
  Binney, Two Aspects of Tokatoka, 1979 The flattened forms and hard-edged style, with its sharp outlines and tight control of paint, immediately mark Two Aspects of Tokatoka as the work of Don Binney. Painted in 1979, the work takes the idiosyncratic and highly recognisable form of Tokatoka Peak as both its point of focus and its point of departure. The rare plug of the volcano, with its distinctive chiselled peak, that is situated near the edge of the Wairoa River in Northland is accurately captured in Binney's painting. As the hardened lava core of the plug has lost the majority of its mountainous terrain through gradual erosion, the sculptured peak appears in Two Aspects of Tokatoka as an arid summit that dominates its surrounding environment. Dividing the painting in half, Binney offers two views that differ in angle and in distance from the mount. The potential for the painting to become fractured and disorientating is neatly avoided by Binney, who substantially reduces and distils the landforms, body of water, clouded sky and small scattering of trees. In doing so, he has ensured that individual forms and slices of colour in Two Aspects of Tokatoka cohere into an ostensibly abstract series of concordant patterns. Further pictorial harmony is achieved by a balanced contrast of paint application and breadth of setting between the two tableaux. The use of thick impasto paint in the grassy hill at the base of the painting combined with the visibly brushed paint in the bulging grey cloud in the bottom view gives way to a smoother, more polished handling of paint in the top half of the painting. This division between a seemingly solid, fortified base and a comparatively lighter, more incorporeal, top portion is carefully mitigated by painting the top vista at a closer proximity to Tokatoka Peak so that the solidity of the mountain anchors the scene. The clarity of form, sinuous outlines and sharp, crisp light of Two Aspects of Tokatoka is characteristic of the approach to the New Zealand landscape that Binney developed and consolidated in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. During this time, Binney came to refocus on the landscape as an object of interest in its own right, rather than using it as a compositional backdrop for the birds that had assumed pride of place in his canvases of the 1960s. By the early 1970s, a realist approach that embraced reduced forms, hard light and an omniscient landscape presence had come to be the hallmarks of Binney's mature style. These features were heralded by art critics as the defining characteristics of a distinctively New Zealand approach to painting that were seen to confirm the existence of an identifiable tradition. In this, Binney's painting Two Aspects of Tokatoka can be seen not only as an iconic and characteristic piece within the artist's own oeuvre, but also as one of a series of landmark paintings that Binney produced at a time when New Zealand art history was seeking to establish its own historical lineage. That lineage was seen to extend from the regionalists of the 1930s into a diversity of later styles that included abstraction yet were nevertheless linked by the artists' responses to the unique landscape forms and quality of light in New Zealand; this is a consistent aspect of Binney's work and is central to Two Aspects of Tokatoka from 1979. JEMMA FIELD
• Estimate:
  NZ$60,000 - 80,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.