Colin McCahon (1919-1987)

Today we’re going to be exploring the work and significance of Colin McCahon, who many people consider is New Zealand’s most important painter so far. I too think he is, but McCahon has often been misunderstood, and he died tragically, believing he had been rejected by this country. I sometimes think of him as our New Zealand ‘Jeremiah’.

OHP: Photo of McCahon

Phyllis: McCahon is both a New Zealand artist and a Christian artist, and it’s important to hold the two together. He’s a prophetic figure, his art and his message earthed in this country, where neither art nor Christianity has always had an easy path. It’s probably not accidental that the most complete exhibition of his paintings was put together posthumously, and not by a New Zealander but by a Dutchwoman, Marja Bloem, who curated a retrospective exhibition entitled, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith, in 2002. This was shown in Amsterdam and then brought to New Zealand before going to Australia. This of course was a great source of pride for New Zealanders as it was the first international show of a modern New Zealand painter. 

OHP: Angel of the Annunciation, 1947, oil on cardboard, 635 x 512 mm, Wellington: Te Papa Tongrewa

Peter: The first McCahon paintings which made an impression on me were his Angel of the Annunciation, seen here, and The Promised Land, as well as one of his huge I AM paintings – Victory over Death 2. These paintings aren’t exactly traditional Old Master religious paintings as we were used to seeing in Churches and European art galleries, but they’re unmistakeably of this land and its people, speaking to New Zealanders. I wanted to see Victory over Death 2 and his other I AM paintings placed permanently in St Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington, but I knew that was a pipe dream.
Here are some striking words McCahon once wrote:
‘Otago has a coldness, almost a classic geological order. It is, perhaps, an Egyptian landscape, a land of calm orderly granite. Driving one day with the family over hills from Brighton or Taieri Mouth to the Taieri Plain, I first became aware of my own particular God, perhaps an Egyptian God, but standing far from the sun of Egypt in the Otago cold. Big hills stood in front of the little hills, which rose up distantly across the plain from the flat land: there was a landscape of splendour, and order and peace. (The Crucifixion hadn’t yet come: perhaps this landscape was of the time before Jesus. I saw an angel in this land. Angels can herald beginnings.)
…..I saw something logical, orderly and beautiful belonging to the land and not yet to its people. Not yet understood or communicated, not even really yet invented.’ 
(in Beginnings: New Zealand Writers Tell How They Began Writing, ed. Robin Dudding, 1980)

Note those words, ‘I saw something logical, orderly and beautiful belonging to the land and not yet to its people.’  That’s one of the roles of an artist, to help us see our world properly, clearly, both the natural world and the society we live in. 

Now McCahon was a Christian – there was even a time early in his life when he wanted to be an evangelist. Well, he became one, though perhaps more of a prophet than an evangelist, and through his art. Think of him as being like someone who writes Scripture texts in big letters on the great stone faces which can jut out of the NZ landscape.

OHP: The promised land, July-August 1948, oil on hessian mounted on panel, 895 x 1320 mm, Auckland Art Gallery

Phyllis: In The Promised Land from 1948, we see all the major themes of McCahon in the late 1940s:
The NZ landscape setting – here we see a bird’s-eye, or angel’s-eye view of the northern tip of the South island. The angel at the top shares our view point. McCahon called this work, ‘a dream painting of my life in Nelson – places I loved, me, my hut and water and light and below Farewell Spit, the end and the beginning of it all’. (Cited in Simpson, Peter, p. 11)
The use of still life details – the jar of pure water and the candle – but here used for symbolic reasons – the candle symbolising Christ as the ‘the light of the World’, and the jar symbolising purity.
The pared-down human form – McCahon himself and an angel are painted in a profile and a three quarter view, reminding us of religious figures in works by artists like Piero della Francesca. But, like the real landscape setting, these are not beautifully idealised religious figures. Rather they are based on real people. 
The title ‘The Promised Land’ comes from the story of Moses leading the chosen people to the Promised Land, but it’s placed in our own space. Once again this idea is translated to New Zealand. We see here New Zealand as a promised land for new settlers. They’re being shown the way by McCahon himself in black singlet – like a prophet pointing the way. Thus the artist has the role of prophet. This seemed to be his vision. ‘Painting can be a potent way of talking‘ he wrote (in the Colin McCahon/ a Survey exhibition catalogue, 1972).

OHP: I Paul to you at Ngatimote, 1946, oil on cardboard, 505 x 635 mm, Auckland Art Gallery

In this work, I Paul to you at Ngatimote, here again the people are based on people McCahon knew.  But they wear a semblance of the dress of Biblical times – as McCahon intended us to see them as Biblical figures – the apostle Paul in a New Zealand setting, Ngatimote, which means place of, or belonging to, Timothy. So the setting deliberately reminds us of Paul’s letters to Timothy, beginning ‘I Paul to…’. Ngatimote is a farming area near Motueka. The barbed wire farm fence and the aeroplane add to its identity as specifically New Zealand in setting.  
These paintings were completely avant garde for 1940s New Zealand – the subject matter and compositions coming from McCahon’s knowledge of the Old Masters and of more modern artists, like Gauguin, which he’d acquired through looking at art history books. But the starkness of the figures, the almost primitive and ugly style of the figures, as well as using identifiable landscapes for these Biblical narratives, were completely new. This work is the first one where McCahon painted a Biblical narrative in a New Zealand landscape. These local settings were often commented on by art critics at the time. 

Peter: From early in his career McCahon was using a combination of image and words. And the words were usually quotations from Scripture. So he’s seeking a synergy between his New Zealand colours and forms and those words of Scripture which speak to him at the time and which he is striving to relay to his viewers. He observed rather pungently, ‘Once the painter was making signs and symbols for people to live by: now he makes things to hang on walls at exhibitions.’ To me, McCahon’s paintings usually break out of any art gallery context they’re hung in; they’re too big, too strong, too committed in their content, to be tamed for polite aesthetic enjoyment. They’re the statements of a prophet. I think of Jeremiah who combined compelling words and symbolic actions with a very public personal journey. ‘My painting’, said McCahon, ‘is almost entirely autobiographical, it tells you where I am at any given time, where I am living and the direction I am pointing in’.  And like, Jeremiah’s, that direction was an increasingly pessimistic one.

OHP: ‘Storm warning’, 1980-81, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 1945 x 1811 mm, Auckland: Private Collection

Phyllis: This large work was painted 34 years later, but it comes from the same Epistle in the New Testament – Paul’s Letter to Timothy. Here we see a far more abstracted landscape, and  symbolism now is not lamps and jars, but seen in the use of colours – reds blacks and whites – colours evoking meanings of sacrifice, death, hope, but still though the colours of New Zealand – the colours of Maori art. As well, we see broad areas of lights and darks in the painting – the dark of grim warning or death broken by the glimmers of the light of hope or revelation, or edged with the red of sacrifice, passion or violence. 
And of course we have more text here – I’ll read what the text states:
YOU MUST FACE THE FACT
the final age of this world 
is to be a time of troubles.
Men will love nothing but
Money and self. they will be
arrogant, boastful and abusive; 
with no respect for parents,
no gratitude, no piety, no natural affections
They will be implacable in their hatreds. 
Paul to Timothy.
So here we read apocalyptic words. This was a time of great personal torment for McCahon and those around him. He was fighting alcoholism and felt isolated artistically and personally.

Peter:  One of the themes running through McCahon’s paintings is the dialogue between faith and doubt in the believer. Rob Yule comments perceptively: 
‘A common misunderstanding of Christian faith portrays the believer as immune from struggle with doubt. McCahon shows that nothing could be further from the truth. As a Christian artist he struggled with doubt on two fronts: on one, because his faith isolated him in a secular society; on the other, because of the intrinsic ambiguity of faith itself.’ (in CSArts October 2008 Issue 31 p20)
Now, unlike Rob Yule, some other commentators believe McCahon had lost his faith by the end of his life, and they want to turn him into an artistic archetype of what they believe is the inevitable journey of New Zealand society from faith to doubt and secularism. I’m not sure that’s accurate. It doesn’t seem to do justice either to the paintings he was producing at the end of his life, or (more importantly) to the continuing dialogue we can discern between faith and doubt throughout the whole of his life – so characteristic of your and my experience too. What’s undeniable is the bleakness of his outlook in his final years, as alcoholism linked with mental illness took hold.

OHP: Elias Triptych, August 1959, enamel and sand on three panels, 1219 x 838; 1219 x 838; 1219 x 914mm, Auckland Art Gallery

Phyllis: In 1959 McCahon began working on the Elias series – a monumental series of paintings based on St John’s Gospel. He painted more than 120 works in this series, often poignantly highlighting Jesus’ own sense of desolation on the Cross. 
This is the final work in the Elias series. It’s shaped like a Christian altarpiece, a triptych.
Across the three panels three dimensional space recedes, ominous clouds hover across the top, with hope symbolised by light. 
The central panel – shows a symbolic landscape in a dark plain with a red cloudy sky and the rectangular tomb of Christ at the bottom bathed in light. The sky, or is it heaven, is linked to the tomb by a fountain of blood, symbol of God’s sacrifice, and ability to forgive.
Then there are two word panels either side with round stones symbolising the tomb of Christ also.
The left panel has the chief Priests and Pharisees speaking to Pilate ‘Sir we remember that the deceiver said while he was yet alive. “After 3 days I will rise again”. Pilate’s reply was, ‘seal the stone set a watch’. 
The right panel – records the time after the resurrection of Christ – spoken on his first appearance to disciples – on the bottom left – ‘why are you troubled and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?’ …Then comes the promise of fulfilment with the words top right , ‘Then he opened their understanding that they might understand. Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead’.
McCahon’s friend Toss Woollaston saw these works and said they make no overtures to the public, no effort to be charming or appealing for the subject is most of all, the predicament of man in his own world, culminating in the crucifixion. ‘The Crucifixion is implicit in every picture… whether by words or by light piercing the darkness’…(cited in, Barr Mary (ed), I will need words, Colin McCahon’s word and number paintings, 1984). 
Also it’s interesting that so many art critics have been uncomfortable with the idea of New Zealand boasting a Christian artist – one who was seeking the truth, in much the same way as we all are, with doubts and ups and downs. They prefer rather to concentrate on his New Zealandness, his avant garde approach, his environmental concerns.

OHP: Victory over death 2, 1970, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 2075 x 5977 mm, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, Gift of the New Zealand Government, 1978

Peter: The ordinary public hasn’t found McCahon’s art comfortable either, not so much for its religious content, but because it’s not the politely pretty representational style they associate with ‘art’. There have been some very crass reactions from New Zealanders, and from Australians also for that matter. When Rob Muldoon presented this work, ‘Victory over death 2’,  to the Australian nation a cartoonist there put two drunks in front of his version of the painting (focussing on the three central letters, IAM) with the caption, ‘Ish that all the time ish…? Lesh ‘ave another drink’. However, we can balance that ‘humorous’ reaction to the painting with one from the Australian National Gallery’s first Director, James Mollison, who said that  ‘Victory over death 2’ was ‘one of the most important paintings to have been made in the southern hemisphere in recent times’ (quoted in Bloem, 2002, p. 228).

Phyllis: It’s also enlightening that a Victoria University Adam Art Gallery handout ‘explained’ their McCahon I AM painting as the artist’s assertion of his own individual identity, and substantially downplayed McCahon’s primary reference in using ‘I AM’: that is, the Old Testament name of God ‘I am that I am’, Yahweh.  A prophet is without honour in his own country.
McCahon once said, 
‘I will need words….words can be terrible but a solution can be given. In spite of a message which can burn I intend a painting in no way Expressionistic but with a slowly emerging order…. ‘ (McCahon to John Caselberg, 1972).

OHP: May His Light Shine – Tau Cross, 1978-79, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 1875 x 2340 mm, Auckland Art Gallery: Chartwell Collection

Another Christian symbol McCahon returns to over the years is the cross, more especially the Tau form. We see this in this painting May His Light Shine – Tau Cross, from the late 1970s. Here he’s relating to Maori spirituality.  The Tau cross, named after the Greek letter it resembles, is a very old symbol, representing a number of things – a gate or opening, life or symbolic death, divine power.
Here it’s a source of light and of life. McCahon referred to the Tau Cross as a ‘load-bearing structure’. He has linked the Tau Cross to the notion of a kumara god – a fertility figure – to ensure good harvests of kumara – as worshipped by Maori before Christianity. 
The painting also has words from a poem by the 19th century priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a favourite of Mc Cahon’s. ‘Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.’ (from Hopkins’s, ‘Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord’)
This is one of several works from this period that reach out to Maori culture and spirituality…. 

OHP: Urewera Mural, 1975, acrylic on three unstretched canvases, 2550 x 5445 mm Aniwaniwa, Lake Waikaremoana: Urewera National Park Board

Another work that shows his relationship with Maori is this magnificent work, Urewera Mural, and once again we see the Tau Cross. This painting was a commission from the Urewera National Park Board, and the theme specified was to be, ’the mystery of Man in the Urewera’, emphasising the spiritual ‘quality of the pervading atmosphere of what is the Urewera’. (quoted from Bloem, P.223)
Here see the Tau Cross, this time a large Kauri tree in the centre – with the words Tane Mahuta (the God of the forest) written at the bottom. This looks like another altarpiece, but this time it is about Tuhoe people, the names of their leaders and prophets set in a vast landscape, a mystical painting. 

OHP: Gate III, 1970, acrylic on canvas, 3050 x 10670 mm, Wellington: Victoria University Collection

Peter:  We want to finish with ‘Gate III’, as one of McCahon’s most appropriate statements for us in Eastertide. It’s big – 3 metres high by 10 and a half metres wide. It’s a painting to walk past, from left to right, the left panel showing the darkness of an approaching storm, heavy with foreboding about secular culture, ‘this dark night of Western civilisation’. (It was painted in 1970, when the threat of nuclear war was gathering). Towards the right, the landscape brightens.

Phyllis: The transition from darkness to light is marked by a series of Biblical texts, framed by these giant letters, I AM, God’s personal name. The texts from the Psalms include a prayer for self-awareness, ‘teach us to order our days rightly, that we may enter the gate of wisdom’. And an invocation of God’s blessing, ‘God be gracious to us and bless us…’. On the far right, McCahon’s text links being ‘born into a pure land’ with the presence of ‘a constant flow of light’. The painting is now very appropriately exhibited at the Adam Art Gallery within Victoria University, a university with a very radical and secularist tradition. We say ‘appropriately’, because the whole picture is itself a profoundly counter-cultural statement, challenging that secularist tradition also, and asserting the disturbing presence of the eternal God and the life only He can give. 

Peter: Let these words in this painting be McCahon’s final words to us this morning: ‘God be gracious to us and bless us, God make his face shine upon us that his way may be known on earth, And his saving power among all the nations. The Lord bless you. The Lord. Your true goal, your holy mountain.’ 

A presentation given in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 3 May 2009, by Phyllis Mossman and the Rev’d Canon Peter Stuart.

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