Pictures at an Exhibition Trusttum does Mussorgsky

CONAL McCARTHY, Art New Zealand 113 Summer 2004-05

'As a painter', said J. W. M. Turner, 'you need a reason to paint.'(1) Since the separation of art from craft in the eighteenth century, one of the challenges for artists, now freed of the demands of patrons who determined subject matter arid style, was deciding what to paint.(2) In the twentieth century the creative autonomy of modem art was such that this freedom could become a burden. Over the summer of 2002-3, Philip Trusttum was cleaning his studio. Having finished a series of works, he was, as he put it, 'between stools,' and looking around for a subject.