Start ups

Here are the first sentences from some New Zealand art books and catalogues. You can find out where they came from on OTN Stuff.

1 “My mother wished I had been a daughter.”

2 “If a country’s name is a matter of its identity, a title which confers upon it status and unity as a nation, then New Zealand has long endured a crisis.”

3 “Atlas.”

4 “It was late afternoon in September 1991, one of those pristine spring days when Sydney takes on the aspect of a super-realist painting, hard-edged, chromatic, unforgivingly exact.”

5 “The last canvas was rolled and put high in the storage shelf.”

6 “Our purpose here is to get some things straight about this book.”

7 “Rather than attempting a definitive history of New Zealand painting this book aims at simply being a general introduction to the subject.”

8 “This book began as a discovery”

9 “In an early colonial environment there is little room for art, for artists who make a living from their painting or for the systems of art promotion and management.”

10 “This is a book partly of pictures: a book to be looked at for the pleasure of looking.”

11. “The time was when the ends of the earth were worlds away.”

12 “This book is a study of two hundred years of New Zealand painting.”

Answers on OTN Stuff