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In 2016–17 a series of exhibitions in Britain examining that country’s early twentieth-century art included retrospectives of Paul Nash and Vanessa Bell and a survey of Sussex’s contribution to modernism. There was also The Mythic Method: Classicism in British Art 1920–1950, which featured well-known artists Henry Moore, Wyndham Lewis and Ben Nicholson as well as several ‘overlooked figures’. Among the latter was sculptor John F. Kavanagh (1903–1984), who left Britain in early 1951 to become Senior Lecturer in Sculpture at Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts.
Kavanagh’s inclusion came about when curator Simon Martin spotted his plaster relief Classical Male Athletes (c.1930) at an art fair and recognised its suitability for the planned exhibition. It was displayed just inside the entrance to The Mythic Method, alongside Henry Moore’s 1921 linocut Frieze of Dancing Figures. This exposure may not ensure Kavanagh’s permanent rescue from the ranks of ‘overlooked’ artists, but it does provide an opportunity to examine his career as artist and teacher during a time of major changes to sculpture in both Britain and New Zealand.
The exhibition title, The Mythic Method, was inspired by T.S. Eliot’s 1932 description of the structure James Joyce employed in Ulysses, itself borrowed from Homer’s Odyssey and used to offer a new perspective on the modern world. Joyce employed classical myth as a link between antiquity and contemporary events, and Simon Martin suggests that while the history of modern art has been presented as ‘a relentless dash towards the future’, artists can look back―in this case to classical themes― as much as they look forward.
Early twentieth-century modernists reacted against the historical and allegorical subjects favoured by late Victorian artists. They explored the new concept of personal expression, and their appreciation of non-European art was in stark opposition to the traditional art-school training and the Greek ideal of classical beauty. A new generation of sculptors also turned away from the pedestal, academic conventions
