Creative Ones - The Gloves are Off

Legendary Kiwi artist, Dick Fizzell, hits Nelson to open his exhibition "the Gloves are Off" | By Leonie Hall | Photography supplied


On the topic of art, Dick Frizzell doesn’t pull any punches. “I used to tell my students at art school to go and save the whales in their lunch time, but don’t bring it into the studio. It’s not the place. You’ll never make a good painting out of an earnest polemic, and you can’t save a bad painting with a heartfelt plea.”

Yet he is no stranger to a bit of art-political furore: His appropriation of Maori iconography in his early works “definitely did the business” for Frizzell’s career, as well as enlivened a debate around the use of cultural motifs. Nowadays we think nothing of it. The ‘Mickey to Tiki’ print is in mass production and at $90, is very affordable art.

“I don’t believe in that élitist idea of positioning art and making it difficult to access. It’s not high art versus low art; it’s good art versus bad art really. That’s all I’m interested in. Low art is popular folk art; high art is the dialectic. It’s like classical composers stealing good ideas from folk songs.”

By that definition, Dick Frizzell is a classical composer himself. For painted compositions of rudimentary signs and company logos that he has photographed, he asks $30,000 to $50,000 a piece. This is a man who 30 years ago said he wanted to make a name for himself. So how does he feel now? “Well, it makes me feel I’m not as good as Bill Hammond yet! There are levels and levels. They seem to be queuing up to throw $200,000 at Bill for another bird painting!”

With such playful subject matter, Frizzell seems to be having fun. “It’s not so much fun as the avoidance of complete sorrow I think. Art is problem solving really. It’s all about the planning, preparation, reference, and research so when shit happens, you’re ready. I don’t believe in that blank canvas or blind inspiration sort of myth, because I do paint to succeed. The idea that you’re meant to just wade into it, guns blazing and get into trouble and claw your way out of it seems to be a waste of time really.”

Unfortunately a lot of arts graduates have worn down (or bitten off) finger nails at the outset. “A lot of students just don’t trust what they see. They’re over-eager to add and layer, as if somehow it will suddenly turn into this magic thing that they want. But in actual fact you’ve got to take away the walls of protection, but to do that, you risk totally exposing yourself. It’s simplifying yourself, that is what you’re asking people to do. And they’re just scared of being banal at the end of the day. They hide behind an illusion of profundity.”

His curiously titled show, ‘The Gloves are Off’, seems to characterize his approach; that which is both deliberate and droll. “You know the Mickey Mouse type gloves that cartoonists put on, well there’s this one particularly insane tomato where there’s no hands at all, where the gloves are off… There are also a lot of young people starting to copy my work around the place, so I thought ‘the gloves are off! I’ll show you how to do it’!”