Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith
Angels and Bed

Angels had appeared in McCahon's imagery as far back as the 1940s, their roles shifting as needed, from heralding to protecting.

In the Angels and Bed paintings the explicit theme is illness, death, and the role of angels as protectors.

The impetus for the Angels and Bed series 1976 -77, was a gift for a friend who was recuperating from an accident. Around the bed of the sick friend hover the white rectangles of protective angels watching silently over their charge. Again demonstrating McCahon's use of everyday circumstances and surroundings for inspiration, the apparent origins of the angel motif as used here was quadraphonic loudspeakers in the injured friend's bedroom – alluded to by the inscription 'Hi-Fi' on Angels and Bed numbers 4 and 8.

The Late Works

Two Biblical texts dominate the final period of McCahon's painting: the New Testament's A Letter to Hebrews and Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament.

Copying from the New English Bible, McCahon transcribed chosen passages on the loose sheets of a sketchpad. In his employment of these texts in his paintings, most do not exactly follow the passages as laid out in the Bible. Instead, McCahon adjusted them to suit his needs, emphasising certain aspects and possible meanings.

In his last four paintings, all of which draw upon texts from Ecclesiastes, the collapse of McCahon's faith is written in episodic progression. Painted in his distinctive, cursive white script on black, almost featureless, backgrounds, the deliberate character of the handwriting shows an individual still able to bend his hand to his will. But the bleakness of the texts show the battles raging inside as he struggled with the frightening idea that all he had previously held to be true, especially faith and its supposed rewards in the hereafter, might now be misguided and false.

Over the course of time McCahon's beliefs had evolved from a positive outlook, through a period of doubt, to finally, utter despair. Whatever were the specifics that led McCahon to these eventual conclusions – and they can surely be found in the combination of his burdens of age, illness, alcohol, the widespread misunderstanding of his work, and indeed the times generally – his artistic authority shines more clearly than ever through these final works.

On large-scale, unframed 'blackboards' with white lettering, McCahon describes the futility of a temporal life. From the formal perspective of the Western art world these late works show McCahon at his most original and authentic.

 

Colin McCAHON
New Zealander 1919–87
Is there anything of which one can say, Look, this is new? 1980–82
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
195.5 x 181.0 cm
The Bank of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand
Reproduced with the permission of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust