Theo Schoon (Artist research)

Artist research:

Name: Theodorus Johannes "Theo" Schoon

Where are they from and where are they now:

• 31 July 1915 – 14 July 1985

• was an artist, photographer and carver in New Zealand of Dutch parentage.

• Theo Schoon was born at Kebumen, Java in the East Indies (Indonesia)

• Theo lived in Java with his parents and brother before being sent to the Netherlands for his education. He attended the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and also travelled widely in Europe. In 1936 he returned to Java and set up an art studio. In 1939, with the war looming, he and his parents emigrated to New Zealand.

• drawing, printmaking, painting, wood carving, potting, stone carving, jewellery-making and photography

• Schoon was very interested in Maori art. From the mid-1940s He studied the early Maori rock drawings in Canterbury caves and was employed by the Department of Internal Affairs to record the drawings from 1945 to 1948.

• He returned to Auckland in 1952 and shifted his artistic focus to Maori designs in Moko (facial tattooing), carved gourds, and kowhaiwhai (rafters of meeting houses)

• In 1963 his gourds were the only artwork by a Pakeha (non-Maori) featured in an exhibition of Maori art held at Turangawaewae marae, Ngaruawahia. Most of Schoon's gourds were sold to tourists and only a few remain in New Zealand today.

• Effectively, until very recent times, the name of Theo Schoon has been edited out of the history of New Zealand art.

• Paradoxically, Schoon was vilified for his efforts to extract something from what he saw as the only major artistic tradition available in this country - Maori art. Unsatisfied with tokenist gestures towards Maori culture (now so widespread in the arts) Schoon set out to learn the hard way precisely how Maori art was made. He applied himself to the task with a consuming passion and energy. His study did not take weeks but years. It was not made exclusively in the sheltered environment of libraries and museums but backed up by footwork around the country in search of any vestige of a living tradition.

• in the process Schoon became a leading authority on the art of the Maori-not perhaps in an academic sense, but from sheer first-hand knowledge of surviving examples. Using his camera as a tool, Schoon built up his own reference file of negatives of carvings, tattooed beads, rock drawings, rafter-patterns and greenstone ornaments. Very little escaped his sharp eye and incisive analysis. From this basis Schoon gradually evolved his own works. In doing so he broke some of the rules laid down in fine art circles. How could a serious artist take photographs? Gourd growing could have nothing to do with art. And carving in greenstone-surely that must be a sad sign of artistic depravity!

Artwork (for each relevant piece):

• THEO SCHOON Carved Gourd c1965 (photograph by the artist)

1. Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorus_Johannes_Schoon

• http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5s4/schoon-theodorus-johannes

• http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issues21to30/theo.htm

• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/pictographs.htm

• http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/10030958/Friendship-worked-to-save-rock-art

1. Rock Art:

• Maori rock art was discovered by Europeans and for many years these fading drawings, "time-filling scribbles of storm-stayed travellers", wrote ethnologist Roger Duff (1912-1978)

• were dismissed as ‘‘doodles’’, difficult to understand, and a less interesting manifestation of Maori culture than artefacts like tools or sites such as pa. Schoon said in an interview in 1982 that the Maoris "never did such a thing as doodling for no purpose. But we cannot interpret these symbols. When the knowledge is gone ... The danger comes in when we start to interpret these drawings."

• Theo Schoon was an itinerant Dutch painter and experienced photographer, employed by the department to record via paintings and photography South Canterbury's rich vein of Maori rock art, as there were fears at the time that the artworks could be lost forever.

• The Maori cave art is depicted in extremely sensitive and faithful renderings by an artist who initiated a process that really got New Zealanders thinking about what it was that made Aotearoa unique in the world, and that is of course Maori art and culture."

1. What I have learnt:

• Thought: Jewellery is such an important thing to me especially with items gifted and passed down from my family and the importance they hold for me – I could make some jewellery.

• The idea of his work selling mostly to tourists brings up the theme of souvinerism because they saw it as a cultural icon to take home.

• He could only produce Maori art because he took years to study it and fully understand it so it was properly represented. I don’t have time for this so really need to stay away from Maori symbols/motifs.