Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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from influences and not be in any way emulative, but rather seek out one’s own
individuality”. 5
Although this seems, on the surface, to be precisely the attitude of the Romantic artist, I
did, however, take Ward’s cautions very seriously. My original emphasis on
Expressionism was also usefully complicated, as I researched Ward’s early years in
New Zealand, by a growing realisation of the extent to which he was – at some deep
level – also a “New Zealand” filmmaker. This, of course, was another label that
required careful definition and placement, but by juxtaposing “New Zealand” and
“European” perspectives, I have hopefully been able to arrive at a multi-dimensional
study that respects the fluid process of the filmmaker’s on-going search and experiment.
Literature Review: Romanticism
Texts that I found useful in defining Romanticism and situating Romanticism within its
social, political and artistic contexts were Morse Peckham’s The Triumph of
Romanticism, 6 Arnold Hauser’s classic The Social History of Art Vol 2, 7 Hugh
Honour’s Romanticism 8 and Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New: Art and the
Century of Change. 9 Cynthia Chase’s examination of the notion of the Romantic artist
as visionary and Romantic beliefs regarding the superior reality of art contributed to my
understanding of what traditional associations are at play when Ward is described by
critics as a “visionary” film-maker. 10 James Twitchell’s Romantic Horizons: Aspects of
the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting discusses the Romantic Sublime from its
origins in the eighteenth century to its significance as subjective experience and its links
to the notion of artistic “vision” in the nineteenth century. 11 Jacqueline Labbe, who has
examined the Romantic Sublime from a feminist perspective, argues that the experience
of the sublime is a kind of masculine rite of passage. 12 Both of these books were useful
in contributing to my understanding of John Downie’s argument that Ward’s work is
5
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997.
6
Morse Peckham, The Triumph of Romanticism (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South
Carolina, 1970).
7
Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, vol. 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1951).
8
Hugh Honour, Romanticism (London: Allen Lane, 1979).
9
Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change, updated and enlarged ed.
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1980 and1991).
10
Cynthia Chase, ed., Romanticism (London: Longman, 1993).
11
James B. Twitchell, Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting, 1770-
1850 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983).
12
Jacqueline M. Labbe, Romantic Visualities: Landscape, Gender and Romanticism (Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press, 1998).