Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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work from a story, but he’s working from these things that come from within”. 128 Ward
reiterated this point in an interview for this thesis when he stated that in creating a work
of art: “You don’t actually start with something that belongs to somebody else […].
You start with who you are”. 129
In order to preserve his/her inspiration, the Romantic artist sometimes ran the risk of
isolation from society. But, as Vaughan points out: “It was not always a matter of
individual choice: artists in general were becoming isolated by social changes, by the
growing anonymity of their audience. Private patronage did not cease in this period, but
it certainly became a less significant outlet than the exhibition”. 130 Peckham asserts that
the importance of “the Self as the source of order, meaning, value and identity” stems
from the Romantic’s sense of isolation from the world and alienation from society,
which he claims “were the distinguishing signs of the Romantic, and they are to this
day”. 131 The Romantic sense of isolation from the world led in some cases to a
“tendency to remoteness from practical life with firm social roots and political
commitments […]. An unbridgeable gulf opens up between the genius and ordinary
men, between the artist and the public, between art and social reality”. 132 Such a stance
is again an untypical one in the film medium which requires large audiences, sizeable
investment and teamwork during the production phase. The theme of the isolated artist
at odds with society is, however, explicitly articulated in A State of Siege. Malfred, in
attempting to find “a new way of seeing”, feels compelled to leave her home, friends
and social circle in the South Island to start a new life in the North Island, where she
knows no-one. The implication is that in order to be true to her vision, she must reject
conventional society and start afresh, but in doing so, she is forced to rely on her own
resources, which prove inadequate to the task. Visionary art is thus in many respects, a
demanding, dangerous and high-risk venture. As we will see, this is particularly the
case in an expensive medium that depends upon a large audience.
Honour identifies “the only constant and common factor” in the work of the Romantics
as “belief in the importance of individuality – of the individual self and its capacity for
experience – and the rejection of all values not expressive of it. This emphasis on the
128
From an interview on Kaleidoscope, screened on Television One, 25 June 1984.
129
Lynette Read, interview with Vincent Ward, 11 December 1997.
130
Vaughan, Romantic Art 25.
131
Peckham, Romanticism: The Culture of the Nineteenth Century 19.
132
Hauser, The Social History of Art 682-83.