Reaching a design peak
The imagery of local alpine tourism and pioneering graphic artists shines again in lavish new books.
Every culture builds myths as a way of understanding their place in the physical environment, and New Zealand’s most prominent geographical features, its mountains, are potent symbols of awe and identity. For Māori, the maunga of Aotearoa were accorded deep respect as locations of spiritual significance. For the first and subsequent waves of European visitors, these same features excited wonder and trepidation.
Early 19th-century commentators were quick to see their potential to attract visitors, settlers and adventurers. As an early explorer and climber of Mt Taranaki observed, the mountain and its environs would “attract visitors from all parts of the globe”. Thus began the industry of enticement that now attracts millions of visitors a year, fuelled by tourism marketing agencies, peddlers of extreme experience and an entertainment industry hungry for majestic backdrops
Scenic Playground: The Story Behind New Zealand’s Mountain Tourism is an epic volume that unfolds this history magnificently. Lee Davidson’s opening essay engagingly relates the development of mountain tourism. The book is beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated and of a scale the contents deserve.
The project’s research team have unearthed a wealth of material: posters, magazine covers, photographs, glass slides, advertisements, lithographs and more. These have been used to create a work more than equal to its subject.
History is constantly being rewritten, and the histories of New Zealand design and art are no exception. Mitchell & Mitchell is another exceptionally well-realised project, this time chronicling the work of a designer and an overlooked painter. The volume is in two parts, telling the stories of graphic design pioneer Leonard Cornwall Mitchell (1901-71) and his painter son, Leonard Victor Mitchell (1925-80).
The older Mitchell’s work is becoming more familiar through a growing interest
in our design history. Highly talented and accomplished, he created a stunning body of work, encompassing posters, advertising and stamp design, produced to an exacting standard. He was still designing in the year he died. Some of his stamps are recognised as classics and are prized by collectors, and his screenprinted tourism posters are lush and luminous.
The paintings of his son, LV Mitchell, are less well known. He specialised in realistic landscapes, portraiture and commissioned murals, exhibiting in Wellington in the 1940s and 50s, but there is occasionally a psychological tension at play in his paintings in both composition and style that hints at surrealism.
With two Kelliher art prizes to his name, he left for Europe in 1959. He settled in England and exhibited successfully on the Continent. Although he disliked modernism, his style evolved, and the subjects of his later paintings expanded to incorporate a kind of stark social realism. The large body of his work in the book is rich and full of surprises.
The stories of both artists are interestingly told through family memoir and essays and with an impressive selection of visual material. Their work and lives are brought out of the shadows and into the belated but well-deserved spotlight. SCENIC PLAYGROUND: The Story Behind New Zealand’s Mountain Tourism, by Peter Alsop, Dave Bamford and Lee Davidson (Te Papa, $80) MITCHELL & MITCHELL: A Father & Son Arts Legacy, by Peter Alsop, Anna Reed and Richard Wolfe (Potton and Burton, $79.99)