tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710695321433147697.post2724648432984535230..comments2022-03-05T07:36:43.357+13:00Comments on Jack Ross: Opinions: Hotere: Out the Black Window (1998)Dr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710695321433147697.post-14423541024323432842013-11-21T21:22:15.841+13:002013-11-21T21:22:15.841+13:00I was impressed when I read through this book and ...I was impressed when I read through this book and lot more about Hotere (I also watched a YouTube docu of his work and his ways of working at the time: but I saw that exhibition and I thought - this artist is primarily looking into the "darkness", that is,he is not primarily concerned with the Gulf War (I know he did "protest art") but at the time I felt that the texts I saw distracted from the power of this art. It doesn't with McCahon. Then, later reading more about his work, I saw now that this "commitment" was important. But thinking again it seems you were (this is unspoken) as I do now: if in this case these poets (Manhire, others, and even Hotere) were going through a kind of ritual of "political correctness" and kind of jumping on the band wagon. Perhaps Hotere had done better to tell them to go away, I sense a desire to "be in on the act" (o.k. we all like to be part of things and the more we are seen the better as far as writers and artists are concerned): but I think Hotere's art, overall, needs no language. Indeed the meaning is deferred. The poems and the "Libyans Unite" is from a feeling of "political correctness" - we cant do art if people are dying or we have to have a Maori saying something meaningful - and the students are reacting to the resultant. Good on them. But I feel the poets did them and Hotere a disservice. Hotere was a great artist he needed not these others. His is a work that stands and looks out toward infinity: the work of an individual genius. That he was Maori or cared or cared not about Iraq is irrelevant.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.com