Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith
Texts and Abstraction

Throughout the 1950s McCahon gradually developed the style which typifies his 'middle' period. Basing his compositions on Cubist influences filtered through Picasso, the artist arrived at a type of Analytical Cubism, but with softer tonal harmonies closer to Braque. In Flounder Fishing Night, French Bay 1957 McCahon extended this exploration of the technical aspects of visual perception by experimenting with the juxtaposition of different colours to create the pictorial illusion of advancing and receding rectangles.

In the first paintings with words – in block letters – the image is constructed in an 'architectural' manner, achieving pictorial illusion through limited colour and the placement of the words on an ambiguous background. From this time on, words became overtly important in McCahon's work.

At the same time, McCahon started painting in series or sequences. These took the form of either multi-panelled works, or several single paintings in which the same motif or theme was explored (although in the works of the 1950s this was generally without a particular narrative thread). Eventually this resulted in McCahon painting images 'to walk past'.

In 1959 McCahon produced his first important body of 'written paintings' – the Elias series. The ambiguous comments of observers at the Crucifixion, as reported in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, provided the material for these works. The impetus for this change from the landscape subjects that had dominated the preceding few years was McCahon's fear that his painting had become too dominated by landscape concerns; too preoccupied with solving technical and stylistic challenges that, while personally interesting, eschewed any real attempt to communicate his core concerns to an audience. In the Elias works, McCahon explored the deeply human concept of doubt: the doubt of the bystanders, of the suffering criminals crucified at the same time as Christ, of McCahon himself, and, not least, the doubts of his audience. Although the text is the key element in the Elias paintings, colour is also important and is used to establish different moods in each of the works.

The rectangular shafts of light and triangular shapes in He calls for Elias 1959 subsequently find echoes in the Gate paintings of 1960–62. In these series, the subject of which is McCahon's concern that humanity should find a 'way through' the challenge posed by nuclear weapons and the Cold War arms race, the artist also reaches his own form of abstraction. This achievement was the fruit of his early – and recurring – interest in Cubism, as well as his then more recent interest in Mondrian, Malevich and the Russian Suprematists.

However, although satisfied with the technical success of his first Gate paintings and the subsequent Bellini Madonnas, McCahon was less confident of the extent to which these essentially geometric abstractions had succeeded in conveying his broader message.

 

Colin McCAHON
New Zealander 1919–87
Will he save Him? (Elias series) 1959
enamel on hardboard
122.0 x 90.0 cm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand
Gift of the artist, 1982
Reproduced with the permission of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust