This post is by publisher and writer Alister Taylor (no relation to Alan). We were honoured to be sent this obituary by Alister for publication - Alister Taylor has always been one of our publishing heroes, a pioneer in treading the entrepreneurial tightrope between art and commerce who created a body of work that's shaped NZ's cultural landscape of today.
Alan Taylor, one of New Zealand’s significant but virtually
unknown artists and writers, has died. He was 83. He died in obscurity, destitute,
ravaged by emphysema from a lifetime of heavy chain-smoking, still recovering
from an earlier stroke. Even the art dealers and auctioneers who sold his work
didn’t know of his death until I told them today. Nor did his friends. When I
told Sophie Coupland, Director of Art at the resurgent Mossgreen-Webb’s in
Auckland today, she said “Poor old soul.”
Born in the UK, Taylor served in the Korean War
(1950-1953) as a young British soldier in the combined Commonwealth forces (British,
Canadian, Indian, Australian and New Zealand), along with South Korean and
American forces, against the North Korean and Chinese armies. He was taken
prisoner and served several years in North Korean and Chinese POW camps, where
he endured prolonged sessions of attempted brainwashing, a near starvation
diet, disease and negligible medical assistance. More than 40% of Commonwealth
and US POWs died in captivity. In 1953 the US Department of Defence claimed
that more than 900 US prisoners remained in captivity after the North and the Chinese
said all prisoners had been released. The South Koreans claimed there were
55,000 to 65,000 of their troops still being held by the North Koreans. Indeed
in 1994, 41 years after the war ended, a South Korean soldier escaped from
captivity in North Korea and over the next 20 years a further 78 former South
Korean POWs escaped from North Korea. South Korea still claims the North has
565 prisoners from that long-ago war.
Scarred horribly from his POW experiences, Taylor was
stunned by the negative reaction he and his fellow POWs were met with on their
repatriation to Britain after their release. British army authorities suspected
them of being converts to communism – the result of the “brainwashing” -- and
they were shunned by the military and many of their former friends. Taylor took
his first opportunity to escape and arrived at Auckland Airport at Mangere
where he got as far as the local marae and fell in love with one of the Maori
maidens there.
I first became familiar with Alan’s quirky naïve work
when he began to send me cartoons for several magazines I had published: “Affairs”
magazine for schools in 1969, the NZ edition of “Rolling Stone” in 1972, “The
NZ Whole Earth Catalogue” in 1972, 1975 and 1977 and “The New Zealander” from
1981. Alan also sent his cartoons and drawings to others involved in the
publishing process, including editors of student newspapers among whom was the
barrister Hugh Rennie CBE, QC when he was editor of “Salient” and later at
the “National Business Review”.
Alan lived on his minute army pension and became
immersed in Maori art and travelled around New Zealand, visiting marae, meeting
Maori informants who could teach him Maori history and art and photographing
meeting houses. He was particularly interested in kowhaiwhai rafter patterns
and many of the primitive colonial and post colonial period carvings. He was probably
the first European to appreciate them and the first to describe them as “Maori
folk art”.
Alan wrote frequently and was widely published, often
in obscure publications but also by prestigious university presses in Hawaii
and North America. His pioneering book “Maori Folk Art” is now a rarity and
much sought after; it was first published in Hawaii and internationally and
then in a much expanded edition in New Zealand by a long-gone English imprint
Century Hutchinson in 1988. His 1966 book “The Maori Builds: Life, Art and
Architecture from Moahunter Days” was published locally by Whitcombe and Tombs.
His smaller publications, “The Maori Warrior”, “Maori Warfare”, “Maori Tattooing”,
“Maori Clothing” and “Maori Weaving” were all published by Brigham Young
University in USA but deserve a local collection of their own.
Alan was an avid protester and was always creating
cartoons and images of protest: on the threat of nuclear war, against
apartheid, against the Vietnam war, against All Black tours to South Africa and
on the perils of allowing South African immigrants and the racial ideals they
would bring with them to New Zealand. He gave me a set of unique water-colours
– small works devoted to notable New Zealand artists, but they are so obscene I
hesitate to hang any of them except in the lavatory; toilet humour.
He was always trading his current bits and pieces for
survival and even when paid handsomely for his paintings or his acquisitions
the money disappeared within a day or two. I remember him selling an ancient
and beautiful ceremonial greenstone adze for several tens of thousands of
dollars, but the next week he seemed as broke as ever.
His paintings were pointillist, primitive and
powerful; they vibrated with colour. Many of them related to historic Maori
incidents which he had researched intimately, others were of his favourite
fish, the pukeko, hills, native bush, historic locations or legendary and Maori
characters such as Captain Cook, Hongi Hika and Hone Heke. He gave my friend a
beautiful painting of a teddy bear for his son Silas on his birth. Alan had a
tender heart.
Alan was also a gentle character and a very generous
man. Once I received a gift from him – a metal tin in the post in which lay a
large greenstone tiki of the great Bay of Plenty chief Hori Pokai, who was
painted by Goldie. Attached to it was Pokai’s gold watch-chain and a silver
shield engraved with his name. Alan knew of my connection to Goldie and the
books I’d written about him and thought I would appreciate the tiki.
For a time, almost every week, a cartoon or Alan
Taylor drawing would flutter through the post. Whenever he knew I’d moved house
or location he would send me a painting related to the new place I lived –
Kororareka/Russell, the British destruction of Pomare’s pa opposite Opua while
Pomare himself was a guest on board a British naval ship, Mount Hobson,
Auckland -- all inscribed on the back with a suitable quotation and history of
the place or of related identities such as Hongi Hika, Kawiti, Pomare I and Governor
Hobson.
When Alan went to hospital in his final illness his
son Fetulaki and his mates cleaned out Alan’s rooms up the stairs in Dominion
Road in an area he had lived for decades. There is nothing left there to
remember him.
For much of his life Alan’s paintings sold for less
than a thousand dollars, rarely above $1500. Now that he’s gone, these
exquisite and colourful records of our past will undoubtedly soar in value as the
naïve gems left by colourful characters such as Alan Taylor so often do.
Alister Taylor
