THE HUNDERTWASSER FRAUD

The Whangarei Council, in its infinite ignorance, is planning to build a fake Hundertwasser building. In spite of protest letters in the local papers they have already spent a vast amount of money, without honest consultations, on so-called planning.
This is my initial submission:

THE HUNDERTWASSER FRAUD


If I were stupid enough to do an oil painting, inspired by a Goldie, and sell it as an authentic Goldie, I'd likely end up in jail for fraud. Yet that is exactly what our Council is proposing. The idea came from a scrappy sketch on the back of an envelop, that was all. The actual building will be designed by a European architect, NOT by Hundertwasser. Yet the Council is trying to sell it as an authentic Hundertwasser. FRAUD by any definition.

Hundertwasser's popularity in New Zealand has been diminishing for years. At his first Auckland exhibition in 1973, the gallery was packed, and the papers wrote rave reviews. At a later exhibition in Auckland I was the only visitor!

He spent 2 months in the Kawakawa hospital, close to his summer home near Opua. He liked Kawakawa, was very active in trying to preserve the fine historical post office. Yet the Kawakawa people who knew him personally, discarded his views, and demolished the building. Hundertwasser ended up with a public toilet instead.

In 1958, in Seckau, Hundertwasser wrote an essay about the relationship between the designer of a building, the people who would build it, and the inhabitants. In this case the designer will obviously be some architect in Vienna, not Hundertwasser himself, and the way he described it in many of his speeches, the inhabitants were clearly ordinary people, not influential people like the members of the Chamber of Commerce.


In his own words, and quoted from his manifesto:


Only when the Trinity consisting of ARCHITECT-BRICKLAYER and INHABITANT is one Person or one Unity, the house they build is a living architecture.


This Trinity ARCHITECT-BRICKLAYER-INHABITANT is equal to the Trinity God Father-God Sun-Holy Spirit.


If they get separated their architecture becomes crime.


Two of the three requirements are broken, so Hundertwasser would consider the proposal AN ARCHITECTURAL CRIME. His words.

Who am I, that I dare make such strong statements? I am a graduate of the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; I served at the Canterbury Museum and Auckland War Memorial Museum in senior positions for 22 years; I was a Founder Trustee of the Whangarei Art Museum; served on the committees of the Reyburn House Art Gallery, the Quarry Art Centre, the Arts Council, etc. etc.

And I am ashamed the Council is proposing such an architectural crime and blatant fraud.

Leo Cappel