Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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thinking about art. The Encyclopedia of Visual Art suggests that: “Because
Romanticism was essentially a matter of outlook, we can hardly talk of it in terms of a
set of formal stylistic characteristics”; rather in Romantic art there was “a peculiar
intensity, a state of heightened awareness that is at times visionary and at times simply
sensuous”. 116 Raymond Williams’ chapter “The Romantic Artist” in Culture and
Society 1780-1950, defines one of the most important Romantic ideas about art as “the
increasing emphasis on the ‘superior reality’ of art as the seat of imaginative truth”. 117
Although “vision” can not be reduced to “style”, the visionary artist needs to develop an
adequate – and usually original – artistic language, and needs to take great risks in
doing so, undeterred by commercial criticisms that he or she is making his/her work no
longer accessible to the average reader or viewer.
Ward has often been described as a “visionary”. John Maynard, the producer of Vigil,
commented that what distinguished Ward from other filmmakers was that “he’s got a
vision” and that “he’s an artist as a filmmaker”. 118 In an earlier article for the NZ
Listener, Maynard talked about Ward’s “extraordinary concentrated vision”, which
“comes from within, it deals with the interior lives of people”. 119 Ward has been known
to use the term “vision” for example when he describes himself as “looking for pockets
of the outside world to match my own interior vision”. 120
Related to the notion of the artist as visionary is the association of Romanticism with
mysticism, in some cases with religious mysticism, as in the work of William Blake.
That is, such art creates a sense of depth of the kind we associate with religion – a
meditative approach to life, death and the other basic elements of life. Cynthia Chase
links the growth of religious themes in Romantic art with Abrams’ interpretation of
Romantic thought as the shifting of aspects of the Western religious (‘Judaeo-
Christian’) tradition to secular (or unorthodox) contexts. 121 This is supported by
Hauser’s assertion that: “During the years of the French Revolution, no pictures with a
religious content were seen at all in exhibitions […]. But with the spread of
Romanticism, the number of religious paintings increased and religious motifs finally
116
The Encylopedia of Visual Art, vol. 4 (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica International Ltd, 1968)
746.
117
Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950 50.
118
Lynette Read, interview with John Maynard, 29 September 1999.
119
John Maynard quoted in Gordon Campbell, "Vincent's Vision," NZ Listener 25 May 1985: 19.
120
Vincent Ward quoted in Simon Cunliffe, "Dreams and Rain," City Limits 7 February 1985.
121 Chase, ed., Romanticism 5.