Colin McCahon: A Journey

'I get off the bus with the Damian Hirsts and the banana taped to the wall.'  ^[1]

On the bus with Colin McCahon
Essay by Hamish Coney

Doesn't 2019 seem a long time ago? In these last five years Covid arrived and upended our world. Here and abroad Governments have been welcomed and turfed out in short order.

Looking back over various Instagram feeds from that year, mine and many others, it's clear that in 2019, the centenary of Colin McCahon's birth, plenty of people were crushing on the exhibition A Place to Paint: Colin McCahon in Auckland, curated by the late Ron Brownson and Julia Waite (Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, August 2019 - March 2020).^[2]

Of the many conversations I had at that time the overriding theme was of New Zealand art lovers rebooting their relationship with the artist, renewing their vows… getting back on the bus with McCahon.

The idea of being on or off the bus with art is one I heard thrown about with plenty accompanying cackling, and thankfully a little thoughtfulness, during a recent podcast discussing the writing of the French author Michel Houellebecq ^[3] and his 2010 Prix Goncourt winning novel The Map and the Territory. 'Map' is something of a must read for art fans. On the one hand it's a nudge-nudge, wink-wink piss-take of the contemporary artworld, but on the other, a profound examination of the relationship of an artist and their subject. The reluctant hero of 'Map' is the artist Jed Martin who finds fame (to his great surprise) with a new body of work consisting of hi-res photographs of Michelin roadmaps - prompting, no little discussion as to what is the more REAL - the land itself or its doppelganger in the form of the map.

'I Fled North' ^[4]

From the 1940s to his passing in 1987, Colin John McCahon found himself in similar terrain. That journey, a bus ride if you like, took the artist across the entire country. Always moving northwards within his 'landscape with too few lovers' from Otago in the south to Ahipara in the north. His territory included Banks Peninsular, North Otago, South Canterbury, Craigieburn, Kurow, Titirangi, Muriwai, Te Urewera, Kaipara and points north in Te Tai Tokerau. McCahon's map was his faith and the questions he had for it - in his search for Truth in the King Country.

The 2019 centenary was also accompanied by major publications by McCahon scholars and curators including Justin Paton and Dr Peter Simpson5 There was even a first day cover issued by New Zealand Post with five works by the artist illustrating handsome stamps: the $4 stamp reproducing The First Waterfall (1964) from the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki collection.

In looking at the legacy, or legacies, of Colin McCahon, perhaps the most resonant for contemporary artists and the wider community, is the McCahon House Residency, located on the site of the artist's former 1950s home on Otitori Road, amongst the bush and regenerating kauri forests of Titirangi. The artist's beloved French Bay is at the end of the steep road. McCahon, his wife and their children lived in what was not much more than a shack from 1953 to1959. Three works from that period are featured in this catalogue including the 1956 portrait of his wife, the artist Anne Hamblett.

Since inception in 2008 over 50 artists have enjoyed the McCahon House Residency including in 2024 Anoushka Akel, George Watson and Benjamin Work.

'Feel his embrace'

In 2020 The McCahon House Trust published a commemorative document ^[6] in which they asked over 65 artists, curators, writers, politicians and all-round interesting New Zealanders to pen an essay on a McCahon work that is significant to them. The Rt.Hon. Jacinda Ardern selected Victory over Death 2 (1970), Sir Bob Harvey Dark Landscape (1965), Rt. Hon. Dame Patsy Reddy Gate III (1970) as did writer, curator and former Adam Art Gallery director Christina Barton and author Helen Beaglehole. The painter Judy Millar chose Muriwai: Necessary Protection (1972).Fiona Pardington chose a small Waterfall painting from the Hocken Collection Uare Taoka o Hākena, formerly in the collection of long term McCahon supporter Charles Brasch.It's a work from 1964, the same year as the large scale Waterfall Triptych in this catalogue. About the small Waterfall Pardington writes, 'It is from a series of waterfall paintings based on Colin's visits to Fairy Falls in the Waitakere Ranges, not far from where I live…Sheltered in the dark nubbed insistency of McCahon's strokes, the earth is smudged, cross-hatched, rubbed and silky. That's his feeling for our Earth Mother Papatūānuku…Above… the arching sky forms of Ranginui, his partial torso and …claiming arm. Feel his embrace.' ^[7]

I return often to this publication and its many voices. Lisa Reihana speaking about her relationship to the Urewera Mural is particularly eloquent, ''The work has a controversial history, but what I think it achieves is to remind us of McCahon's willingness to engage with Māori spirituality and histories, set within a spectacular Aotearoa landscape…And so Colin McCahon, you understand that value does not reside in the object, but in the deep dive; the engagement with people and ideas, the love of the land, and the struggles of the soul.' ^[8]

Most McCahon 100 writers seek not to articulate McCahon's position within a wider canonical discourse but to themselves. It's personal. A number of works such as Gate III, Victory Over Death and As there is a constant flow of light we are born into a pure land (1965) are selected by different people for different reasons. In each case these McCahon paintings are a defining signpost in their life journey; a location on their spiritual map.

Since 2019 there has been a lot of water under our collective bridge. At times the flow has been near overwhelming. The news of late sometimes appears to be getting 'worser'. However, in recent times there has been the odd ray of light. This year, at the 60^th Venice Biennale Aotearoa's Mata Aho Collective won the Golden Lion for their installation Takapau. ^[9]

It's tempting to wonder what McCahon would make of such an achievement. The celebration that ensued at this gold medal at the 'Olympics of the artworld' was akin to the outpouring of joy at golfer Lydia Ko's recent gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics - and no doubt quite a few jumped back on the art bus as a consequence.

I've been on the bus with Colin McCahon since I was a schoolboy, transfixed by Here I give thanks to Mondrian (1961), a Gate series work and kin to two of the works in this catalogue. If you'd like to read about that encounter you could look up page 33 of McCahon 100. I'm there in between curator Zoe Black and her favourite the early Ruby Bay (1945) and Annette Hamblett (neé Sprosen) on behalf of the Young Old Girls of Christchurch Girls' High and their choice of a paired back North Otago Landscape 19 (1967) which bears an uncanny (colour) resemblance to the elemental abstraction of B1 (1973) in this catalogue - both are exemplars of McCahon's 'less is more' approach to the intersection of landscape and abstraction.

"I only need black and white to say what I have to say. It is a matter of light and dark." - Colin McCahon

a matter of light and dark

So yes, while it may seem like a lifetime since those halcyon days of 2019, the McCahon bus has been rumbling on, most recently sighted in Lower Hutt at the Dowse Art Museum in the exhibition Nell x Colin McCahon: Through the Wall of Birth and Death ^[10] which closed in this past September. That show was one hell of a ride. If you missed it check out the weblink below.

McCahon and Nell make a bit of an odd couple but the younger Australian-born artist has been on the Colin bus for quite some time as she explained in the Dowse show notes, 'I could talk for ages about how McCahon's work resonates - his use of light and dark, his visual and spiritual tussles, the New Zealand landscape as an allegory for big questions, his use of Māori motifs and subjects at a time of burgeoning biculturalism and use of text in multidimensional ways.' The exhibition juxtaposed a selection of major McCahon works with recent responses by Nell across sculpture, objet trouvé installations and witty paintings of complex word play and friendly ghosts. I visited a couple of times.

The intention of my second visit was to spend some quality time with McCahon's Walk (series C), from 1973… all 11 panels and 12.6 metres of it. B1 in this catalogue was painted in the same year at McCahon's then new Muriwai studio. It's worth remembering that he only became a full-time artist, at the age of fifty-two, in 1971. Those Muriwai years are some of artist's most productive, when he was working with ambition and at scale. I wanted to return to the Dowse in June of this year because I was back on the McCahon bus and I felt a desire to do 'The Walk'. Perhaps I had been inspired by endless Instagram posts of people I vaguely know on their pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Yeah nah that was probably just FOMO.

I didn't want to just stand there and gawp at The Walk but to recreate McCahon's camino, along the beach at Muriwai, past the Tau cross, then past the jet black headland in panel nine. All the while with that blustery west coast sand, sea and sky at my left and McCahon's grief right there with me as I shuffled along parallel to that 13 metre painting at the Dowse.  1973 was a tough year for the artist. His dear friend the poet James K Baxter had passed away in October of the previous year and in May '73 one of most loyal supporters, the poet Charles Brasch passed away, followed soon after in July by the artist's mother Ethel. A month later he wrote to his friend and biographer Gordon H. Brown, 'I've been painting and feel awful. It's not what I wanted but what God allows me… I think I've got there. It's been a terrible struggle.' ^[11]

You can marvel at the economy of means in many of McCahon's works from this period, even delight at how dexterously he boundary rides along that line between abstraction and landscape. Again B1 is a case in point. For me, the real heft of a great McCahon work is that fertile space between the map and the territory. He provides a map in the form of his painting so we can venture into his territory, which invariably is vast and at times a little scary. Grief, faith, death... Angels in Bed or The Flight from Egypt. These are not subjects found often in contemporary art in 2024, but they occupied McCahon for his entire life.

For many of us it is when we are tested by some of these weightier life challenges that we might need to get onto the McCahon bus. When Hirst's suspended shark, a Jeff Koons puppy or Maurizio Cattelan's Art Basel Banana ^[12] won't cut it, here in Aotearoa McCahon will be waiting at a bus-stop near you.

Hamish Coney, September 2024

[1] and [3] Do You Even Lit?: Michel Houllebecq's Map and the Territory, part 1, March 21, 2024
[2] https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/exhibition/a-place-to-paint-colin-mccahon-in-auckland
[4] 'I fled north in memory and painted the Northland panels.' They were painted, he wrote, 'on the sun deck at Titirangi all on one Sunday afternoon and corrected for weeks afterwards'. Colin McCahon: A survey exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, 1972, p. 25.
[5] Justin Paton, McCahon Country, (Auckland: Penguin Random House & Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2019) / Peter Simpson, Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction Vol.1 1919 - 1959 & Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land?, Vol.2 1960 - 1987, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2020)
[6] Vivienne Stone editor, McCahon 100: Connecting Cultural Legacy with Contemporary Practice (Auckland: McCahon House Trust, 2020)
[7] Ibid, Fiona Pardington, p.81
[8] Ibid, Lisa Reihana, p.12
[9] https://www.nzatvenice.com/uncategorized/mataaho-collective-scoops-golden-lion-at-venice-biennale-in-a-huge-weekend-for-art-from-oceania-3084/
[10] https://dowse.org.nz/exhibitions-and-events/exhibitions/2024/nell-x-colin-mccahon
[11] Colin McCahon, letter to Gordon H. Brown, quoted in Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist (Wellington: Reed, 1973) p. 174
[12] https://www.vogue.com/article/the-120000-art-basel-banana-explained-maurizio-cattelan