As Adam and Eve

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

Most consider the ‘Save Manapouri’ campaign of 1959–72 a triumph of populist environmentalism. But Michael Illingworth saw it as a compromise. He wrote of the site of this lyrically beautiful southern lake, threatened by a proposed dam: ‘Seal it entirely from the junk of our civilisation — let man only go there naked and on foot to learn to love this land as do our Maori hosts when they speak of the ancestral lands.’1 Illingworth’s art similarly swings between idealism and righteousness, sweetness and bitter satire. It sought to shake a dominant Pākehā culture from its self-induced malaise by positing a ‘return to nature’ and embrace of the Māori world instead.

As Adam and Eve intends to shock — both through its comically explicit nudity and its simplified style which breaks landscape and human forms down into interchangeable shapes and patterns. Illingworth claimed that ‘only lovers’ would face this painting.2 He meant those able to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh and of modern art without hang-ups. He presents us with his alternative ideal for Aotearoa New Zealand — agrarian, utopian and sexually liberated.

Illingworth believed that an ability to experience the true majesty of the natural order set him apart. His stylised treatment of the landscape is often called ‘mythic’ or ‘poetic’. It moves beyond ‘what we all can see’, revealing deeper truths that most are blind to. Both paintings are essentially about seeing. They encourage us to glimpse the wonders of nature, see through the trappings of materialist culture and conservative morality, and look to art and Māori for inspiration. Both stare back at us. They address us as lovers, or chastise us as traitors to our true selves.

Aaron Lister