1 NEWTON I, 1960–64

In 1960 McCahon and his family moved from Titirangi to the inner- city suburb of Newton, in those days a predominantly working-class and Polynesian neighbourhood. The award of the first Hay’s Art Prize to McCahon for Painting (1958), a radical abstract, caused a furore in newspapers and much unwelcome negative publicity for the artist. After a year of little painting, he embarked on the Gate series (including Here I give thanks to Mondrian, p. 10), an important new series of geometrical abstractions, exhibited at The Gallery (Symonds Street, Auckland) in 1961; a further extension of the series was the sixteen-panel The Second Gate Series (1962, pp. 51–53), a collaboration with John Caselberg (who supplied the Old Testament texts) which addressed the threat of nuclear annihilation; it was exhibited in Christchurch with other work in 1962. Lack of critical enthusiasm for this abstract/text work led McCahon to reconsider his direction, resulting in a ‘return’ (his word) to landscape painting in a large open Northland series (1962, p. 33, 59) and Landscape theme and variations (1963, pp. 60–61), two eight- panel series, exhibited at The Gallery simultaneously with a joint Woollaston/McCahon retrospective at Auckland City Art Gallery. In 1964, after twelve years at Auckland City Art Gallery, McCahon resigned to join the staff of Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts, where he taught from 1964 to 1971. His first exhibition after joining Elam, Small Landscapes and Waterfalls (Ikon Fine Arts, 1964), proved to be both aesthetically and commercially successful.

10 Partridge Street The McCahons’ move from Titirangi to inner-city Auckland in Colin McCahon helping to install Jacob Epstein’s March 1960 was welcomed by the whole family. Colin told O’Reilly: bronze Rock Drill (1913–16) at Auckland City Art Gallery, 1961. E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Anne and all well & flourishing and all pleased to be Toi o Tāmaki, Colin McCahon Artist File in town after so long in the bush. No doubt will miss

21 the beach & bush in the summer but there will still be and Russell Clark from the University of Canterbury School of compensations. Fine Arts and Peter Tomory from Auckland City Art Gallery, could We are right in the middle of a Maori & Islander not agree on a winner and awarded the prize equally to Julian district – lots of people & activity & a lovely view of Mt Royds for Composition (‘a reddish Gothic interior extravaganza’, Eden (the mountain not the other thing).1 according to one review),5 Francis L. Jones for Kanieri Gold Dredge (a naïve representational work), and McCahon’s Painting (1958; see The ‘other thing’ was Mount Eden Prison. Prior to later Volume One, p. 268) – Tomory’s choice – works as different from ‘gentrification’, Newton and nearby Grey Lynn were working-class each other as the proverbial chalk and cheese. But it was McCahon’s and student neighbourhoods with a large Polynesian population work which caused the controversy. J. N. K. (Nelson Kenny), an which McCahon actively enjoyed. Number 10 Partridge Street able critic, said of it: ‘It is not a picture of anything. It is not meant was a small villa on the Arch Hill side of Newton Gully close to to be anything but what it is. It is simply a surface covered with paint Newton Central School. The house was compulsorily acquired and of different tones and colours – as ultimately is any painting – and demolished in the 1970s for the school’s expansion. The McCahons it must be looked at with this in mind if its stark austerity is to be moved to 106 Crummer Road in Grey Lynn in December 1976. appreciated.’6 Newspapers around the country, however, published Writing about Here I give thanks to Mondrian (1961), an early sneering attacks on both painting and painter. McCahon wrote Partridge Street painting, McCahon commented: bitterly to Brasch: ‘I have about 100 quite devastating cuttings from all over N.Z. which I am keeping for when I eventually manage The painting reflects the change I felt in moving from to leave N.Z. for good – to remind me in times of homesickness Titirangi with its thick native bush and the view of of what to expect should I return. (The Auckland Star reproduced French Bay to that of the urban environment. This picture the picture on its side.)’7 This ugly brouhaha interfered with belongs to a whole lot of paintings that were, believe it or his painting: ‘No painting to report[;] am having a long dry spell. not, based on the landscape I saw through the bedroom For the first time ever I have been really depressed with constant window. This also applies to the Gate paintings . . 2. bad reviews.’8 Alarmed by McCahon’s talk of wanting to leave the country, Before the Gate series arrived, however, McCahon experienced one Brasch wrote a long, sympathetic reply, imploring him to ignore of those unproductive spells which occurred when he moved to a newspaper criticism: ‘It’s worthless, nearly all of it, as you know. new place. He told O’Reilly: ‘Have had one of those periods when I agree it’s infinitely depressing to read, and hurtful when you’re I couldn’t break through at all.’3 The Online Catalogue lists only a consistently misunderstood, misrepresented, sneered at. But, Colin, handful of works for 1960. you must realise that in spite of it you have a large following and a As always, McCahon was very busy at Auckland City Art reputation second to none.’ He was sceptical about the likelihood of Gallery, in his role as keeper and deputy director, mostly organising McCahon’s succeeding abroad: ‘Will you really do better in another exhibitions such as the first of a historically important annual country (where – England? America?), as one among many, most of series of touring shows, Contemporary New Zealand Painting and them better known and better established?’ Furthermore, ‘are you Sculpture (1960). McCahon was represented by six works from sure that you’d be able to paint in another country, do you realize 1959, including Cross and four Elias paintings. He was excited about how your work grows out of N.Z.?’ He concluded: ‘I should hate the exhibition, telling O’Reilly that it completely outclassed the this country to lose you . . . Although I can’t always follow you, gallery’s Auckland Festival show: ‘. . . a huge Australian exhibition you’re still the first N.Z. painter to me’.9 McCahon was appreciative which sadly flopped – but rightly – it followed immediately on our of such caring concern: ‘Thank you for your kindly & reassuring Contemporary N.Z. ex. and just didn’t measure up . . . This was letter. I most certainly would be off tomorrow if I could but as you (with the N.Z. show) the first time some real pride and enthusiasm know am so well tied down I must remain here for years to come.’10 seemed to develop around N.Z. painting.’4 This positive mood was Troubled by the buckets of disparaging criticism being dumped sustained through the 1960s, especially in Auckland. on his friend, Woollaston published an impressive defence of the derided painting in the Press. He began: ‘In view of the unpleasant Hay’s Art Competition, 1960 nature of much of the criticism Colin McCahon’s “Painting” During 1960 McCahon was at the centre of a newspaper furore when has received, I feel the need to make some amends to the artist his Painting (1958) was made a joint winner of the first Hay’s Art concerned’. After seven detailed paragraphs describing the forms, Competition award in Christchurch. Three judges, John Simpson structure and colour of the painting, he continued:

22 I would say that, if the picture has a subject, a ‘meaning’ as people like to say, it would be of such a kind as to make necessary the extreme abstinence from representation that we find in it. It is too close to the unutterable for easy verbal communication: its subject is too disconcerting to allow many people to indulge in the easy response of ‘I like it’, which unfortunately is all that most people will allow of themselves for painting.11

McCahon was grateful: ‘But thank you for the words on “Painting” . . . No, I object to nothing there. I just wish it wasn’t necessary for these things to happen at all and am certainly glad I’m not in Chch . . . New paintings are much more difficult. The citizens of Chch are lucky they can’t see these ones.’12 By then the dry spell was over and he was hard at work on the highly innovative Gate series. The controversy about Painting (1958) expanded when William Baverstock, the ultra-reactionary director of the McDougall Art Gallery (already notorious for his role – as Canterbury Society of Arts (CSA) secretary – in the Pleasure Garden affair in 1948), successfully advised the City Council not to accept the donation by Hay’s Ltd of any of the winners, especially McCahon’s, on the grounds that it was ‘not art but the negation of art’, a decision loudly condemned by the art community in Christchurch, including W. A. Sutton, , , John Coley and E. N. (Ted) Bracey, who all wrote letters to the Press. Bensemann pointedly contrasted the Auckland City Art Gallery’s role as a ‘vital force in the art affairs of this country’ with the McDougall’s moribund status.13

The Gate series By March 1961 McCahon had finally moved on, telling Caselberg about ‘the stream of present painting which is happening again at last’.14 Caselberg – who had recently married seventeen-year-old Anna Woollaston in Auckland – was awarded the Burns Fellowship at Otago University for 1961; he planned to write a large sequence of verse plays about early New Zealand history and race conflict; for years he involved McCahon – as an experienced theatre person – in lengthy communications about them. Meanwhile, McCahon arranged to exhibit his new work at The Gallery in Symonds Street, established in 1960 by Frank Lowe and Don Wood, both architecture students who attended McCahon’s painting classes at Auckland City Art Gallery. He told Caselberg: ‘I have been doing further work on the whole lot in the present group – hanging an exhibition here August 28, with Frank [Lowe] & Don [Wood], about 16 paintings and, for sale, the drawings for Exhibition invitation, An Exhibition of 15 Recent Paintings by Colin McCahon, the Northland Panels.’ And in September: ‘Have just closed an The Gallery, Auckland, 1961. exhibition . . . here – had them done on T.V. too – Bob Chapman E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art expounding.’16 Chapman, who taught political science at the Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Colin McCahon Artist File

23 , opened the show and had spoken about the works on the brand-new medium of television. But the first of the new series to be exhibited was Gate: Waioneke (p. 13), a large painting with a self-fabricated curved top, McCahon’s contribution to Painting from the Pacific, an Auckland City Art Exhibition catalogue, Painting Gallery exhibition which included paintings from Japan, America, from the Pacific, Auckland City Art Australia and New Zealand. The exhibition reflected his conviction, Gallery, 1961. E. H. McCormick Research Library, formed in America and supported by Tomory, that there were Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki interesting connections between the art produced around the Pacific Rim. Not everyone agreed with the premise; Brasch was sceptical, as was Wystan Curnow, who wrote about the exhibition for . Poet and critic C. K. Stead called it ‘a piece of McCahonery’.17 Brasch commented in his journal: ‘This mystique of Colin’s that virtue lies in what is of the Pacific & that we must turn away from the baleful influence of Europe forms an interesting parallel to ’s New Zealand mystique.’18 The New Zealand contingent included several students from McCahon’s ‘attic’ classes which he started at the gallery after his return from America: (1913–1997), Alwyn Lasenby (born 1929) and . Wystan Curnow said of Gate: Waioneke: ‘McCahon once again gives proof of his ability to create symbols that possess a compulsive empathy in a work which, interestingly enough, is compositionally akin to those of [the Americans] Bischoff and Diebenkorn.’19 Diebenkorn’s Berkeley #23 (1955), which McCahon may have seen in San Francisco, was included in the show. McCahon’s An Exhibition of Recent Paintings at The Gallery consisted of eighteen works from the Gate series, including four from a sub-series called Sketch. Also included were 28 Northland drawings, the residue from the Gallery 91 exhibition. The oil paintings ranged in price from 15 guineas for the Sketches to 200 guineas for Here I give thanks to Mondrian. At his Little Congress talk in 1963, McCahon said (in Wystan Curnow’s summary): ‘These were followed by Black & White squares. Strong Mondrian influence. Out of these came a series of 20 “Gate” paintings. Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #23, 1955, Enormous opposition of black forms against a nothingness. At oil on canvas, 1575 x 1391 mm, photograph first he wasn’t sure the direction these paintings were taking – but taken by Katherine Du Tiel. 20 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of they emerged as a series of obstacles close and distant.’ Brasch the Women’s Board © The Richard Diebenkorn reported somewhat differently, referring to ‘the diamond-shaped Foundation series’ which ‘developed into a contrast between obstacles and space beyond the obstacles’.21 In 1972 McCahon wrote of the Gate paintings: ‘I touched on a usable image based on the South Kaipara Head landscape. The compositions all come from a tree outside our bedroom window, and inner city roofs. The shaped panels come from thinking how good it would be to paint the walls of the Auckland Town Hall. Gates all round.’22 McCahon later recalled the origins of these paintings in a 1974 letter to O’Reilly:

24 Now Gate 1961 & Gate Waioneke both come directly from South Kaipara. William[,] Matthew[,] Theo Schoon & I were taken there by a guy Neilson (painter). These & others come from that day & and to me are very much that beautiful & wild place. We were then in town – Theo just down the road. Anne & I bedded down in what is now my studio[;] trees & very high roof made up most of my schemes for all the Gates.23

It is noteworthy that for these, among the most completely abstract of his paintings, he still referenced origins in the ‘real’ world of landscapes, trees, roofs. A reviewer alert to the novelty of the new paintings was Wystan Curnow, who wrote in Home & Building: ‘To those familiar with this painter’s landscapes, these recent works will present some new and strange images . . . Not only is McCahon building his compositions in a fashion quite alien to that of previous works, he is turning his attention from the New Zealand scene to the world scene; from man in empty rather inhospitable country, to man in empty inhospitable space.’24 Curnow then focused on the internal structure of the paintings:

These pictures have no obvious horizon, without which there can be no clear sensation of orthodox perspective, of the static Renaissance ordering of the world. They lack a cohesive centre and they deny the frame: forms leap Gate 15: Black diagonal, 1961, enamel on hardboard, 1512 x 1220 mm from the canvas or move out of or into it. In fact the effectiveness of these symbols rests largely on their movements. Gates that open or shut, that fly out from, that orbit around in space. Their movement does not occur behind the canvas but tends to burst the picture and surround the viewer.25

In the Gates there are few vertical and horizontal lines; squares become diamonds; rectangles become oblongs; shapes are distorted from right-angled corners as if to suggest approaching or receding perspectives (an exception is the bottom-right corner of Black diamond, white square, p. 46). It is the absence of any horizon which makes this world so topsy-turvy. As compared to Northland panels or Elias, colour, too, is severely rationed, sometimes confined to black and white only, but more often dark shapes are seen against light backgrounds of cream, yellow or ochre. Brownish reds are occasionally present, as in Sketch 1 and Upper corners off, the second large gate (p. 45). Occasionally curves are introduced either in the shape of the canvas itself, as in Gate: Waioneke and Upper corners off, the second large gate, or internal to the picture as in Sketch 1, and Waioneke (p. 47).

25 ‘Corners off’ (to use McCahon’s term) are a regular feature; sometimes shapes are divided by a diagonal line (as in Gates 10 and 15). Most shapes are solid dark against light grounds but there are also white or pale shapes against dark grounds, shapes divided by a diagonal line (as in Gate: Waioneke and White corner, upper left), or otherwise altered by internal division, as in the angular greyish shapes (a roof line?) in the left oblong of Waioneke. Most oblongs are solid, but some are ‘open’ as in Gates 10 and 15; frequently shapes are cropped by the picture’s edge, implying extension beyond the frame. Also present are straight lines, either dividing a shape, parallel to the edge of a quadrilateral form, or apparently free floating as in Upper corners off, the second large gate. In the main, words are absent except for the strategically placed ‘GATE’ in Gates 5 and 10. Invited in 1974 by Robin Dudding, editor of Islands, to write about a favourite painting, McCahon chose Gate (c. 1960–62), saying, ‘This one, and the whole series, gave me great joy’:

All the various gates I opened and shut at this time were painted with reference to problems the painter Mondrian had struggled with in his work and I had now to confront Piet Mondrian, Composition III, 1925, oil on canvas, 492 x 492 mm, photograph too. How to make painting beat like, and with, a human taken by Kent Wang. heart. All his later paintings did this and I had to find out Phillips Collection, Washington DC, acquired 1946 how. Some of mine did work others were probably rejected transplants.26

While the whole series engages with Mondrian, McCahon’s remark most directly relates to Here I give thanks to Mondrian (1961), set apart by its title and several other unique features. In 1969 he said of this superb painting:

I had seen some early works [by Mondrian] in San Francisco, and also some of his later works in other parts of the States. What really impressed me was that, although they were often very small, they had an openness and scale that extended beyond the actual edges of the painting – a thing I find only happens in front of the originals and which cannot be seen in reproduction . . . Originally all straight lines in this picture were done with masking tape but I had some trouble with this method and they later had to be done by hand.27

McCahon doesn’t specify where else in America he saw Mondrians but there were several in the Phillips Collection in Washington Piet Mondrian, Composition with blue, 1926, oil on canvas, 611 x 611 mm. and the Arensberg Collection in Philadelphia which he visited, Arensberg Collection, Philadelphia Museum of including diamond-shaped canvases and others where primary Art, 1952-61-87, A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1952 colours were avoided.

26 McCahon’s homage is asymmetrical in an un-Mondrian-like way. A rectangle is placed inside the rectangle of the frame towards the top with three of its corners approximately touching three sides of the picture. This oblique inner rectangle is itself divided between a square portion and a rectangular portion. The square is divided into a (larger) pale side and a mottled greyish side. The square is edged by a narrow, variably coloured strip; on one side a yellow ochre strip extends the whole length of the inner rectangle. The pale triangle (but not quite a triangle) which divides the inner square is shadowed along one side by a soft-edged area of darkish grey, like nothing in any Mondrian painting, but implying depth, and further distance from the surface plane. Again most un-Mondrian- like are the cut-off corner at bottom right, where name and date are recorded, and the large and assertively prominent title: ‘Here I give thanks to / MONDRIAN’. This intriguing painting is full of asymmetries, approximations, complexities. It honours Mondrian but by swerving decisively away from his practice.

Bellini Madonnas, 1961–62 After The Gallery exhibition, McCahon moved on to the Bellini Madonna series (pp. 29, 48), painted across the last months of 1961 and the early months of 1962. The paintings in this small series of four – others may be lost – are more complex in structure and richer Colin McCahon with Here I give thanks in colour than the Gates. Blues, pinks, reds and greens are added to Mondrian (1961), in Arts & Community, to the (mostly) black, white and ochre of the Gates. McCahon had 1970, unknown photographer. owned books about the Venetian Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) since the 1940s and modelled Christ supported by Angels (1951) on his work. This series was an attempt as it were to ‘Christianise’ the austere geometrical idiom of the Gates by importing colours, textures and structural ideas from Bellini’s sublime Madonna and Child paintings, such as Madonna of the Pear (c. 1485, p. 28). The horizontal ledge on which the pear sits is replicated in several of the series and the marbling of the mantelpiece is echoed in textured passages throughout, as are the screens behind the Madonna. The triangular shape formed by Bellini’s Madonna and Child is also echoed in the series which abounds in triangular patterns. Several Bellini Madonnas were acquired by Edward Danziger, a London hotelier who purchased as many as twenty McCahon works in 1963, as McCahon reported to Brasch: ‘[He] bought, some of the “Gates” all the “Bellini Madonnas”[,] a few of the recent small canvases (from [Ikon, The Gallery, under a new name])[,] some earlier abstracts – I don’t think ever seen here in public. Quite a good choice of items in all – and pretty tough – fourteen are to be hung together – the rest I don’t know about.’28 Danziger’s plans to hang the works in a London hotel he owned were never enacted and the whereabouts of the works became something of a mystery, though most Bellini Madonnas eventually found their way back

27 onto the market. Two Bellini Madonnas were shown, with How is the hammer broken (1961, p. 49), as McCahon’s contribution to Contemporary N.Z. Painting 1961, the second of Auckland City Art Gallery’s annual touring exhibitions.

The Second Gate Series, 1962 Even before the exhibition at The Gallery, McCahon began contemplating a significant expansion of the Gate idea. He wrote to Caselberg in words that have become famous:

I am becoming involved with an idea for a large-scale statement on Nuclear warfare, this to take the form of a three or even preferably four fold – yes four fold – screen painted both sides ending up 16ft long (32ft both sides) by 8ft high. This screen rather than a wall painting as it could stand in entrances to town halls, universities etc . . . needing no support and possibly having the impact of a hoarding rather than of a large painting only. Having developed my new painting I must make some good use of it. I will need words. The new series goes under the general title of ‘Gate’ by which I mean a way through. What I want with this screen is a way through also. Words can be ‘terrible’ but a solution must be given. In spite of a message which can burn I intend a painting in no way expressionistic but with a slowly emerging order . . . Could you supply the words – few or many – it doesn[’]t much matter.29 Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Pear [Madonna col Bambino (Madonna di Alzano)], c. 1485, oil on board, 843 x 655 mm. This ambitious idea went through several permutations before Bergamo Galleria dell’Accademia Carrara, finding its final form as The Second Gate Series (1962) (hereafter 58MR00020 Gate II). Internationally, Cold War tensions were at their height in 1961–62, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was only months away, and McCahon (who joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was anxious to ‘make good use’ of his art to raise consciousness, to warn, and seek a ‘way through’ political and diplomatic obstacles (as well as personal and spiritual ones), which his paintings could model. The words of the painting, however ‘terrible’, must provide a ‘message’ and point to a ‘solution’. Caselberg’s first response was to send a page of haiku he had developed from a book about Hiroshima. McCahon made several text works out of some of these much later (in 1971, p. 30), but they did not suit him for his anti-nuclear ‘screen’. So Caselberg next compiled apocalyptic texts from the Old Testament, largely from Jeremiah, Lamentations and Isaiah, and it was a selection of these which McCahon ultimately used.30 In September 1961 he reported: ‘The recent page of painting text now being worked on – not with any success . . .’.31 This may refer to How is the hammer broken (1961,

28 The first Bellini Madonna (second version), 1961, enamel on hardboard, 1205 x 755 mm

29 p. 49), a majestic work which utilises the first part of Caselberg’s text. Here the Gate imagery of closed and open shapes in dynamic opposition cropped by the frame is accompanied by the urgent tones of biblical prophecy, divided by a strong red horizontal, as Jeremiah announces the destruction of Babylon (Jeremiah 50:23): ‘O EARTH, EARTH, EARTH. HOW IS THE HAMMER OF THE WHOLE EARTH CUT ASUNDER AND BROKEN.’ Ultimately, McCahon abandoned the ‘screen’ idea and reverted to a more conventional arrangement of sixteen discrete hardboard panels, hung side by side. The series was finally painted only in July 1962, not long before its inclusion in a Christchurch exhibition which he described to O’Reilly:

There are small things but not readily saleable I would think. The rest large Bellini-size and over. And one 32ft. long which I have been ready to paint for over a year & only got down to yesterday & on Tuesday, taking two days off work for the job. I don’t know quite what to call it but feel it needs a friendly sort of name like ‘Word’s [World’s?] Great Peppermint Cane’ possibly ‘Colin McCahon’s Bomb Screen’ (or Shelter). Shelter, I think . . .32

In July he wrote again: ‘The large work has grown to 40ft x 4ft now will be numbered on the backs – hanging left to right 1 inch between panels.’33 And in August, O’Reilly having agreed to speak at the opening: ‘In fact, the whole exhibition is very much on one formal plan & one idea. I will ask John Cass. to write to you about In my own village, 1971, it if he would, if you are to speak, it might help a bit considering charcoal on paper, 355 x 270 mm you won’t have a long time to look beforehand.’34 O’Reilly’s brief introduction to the cyclostyled catalogue ended: ‘It was at the [Gallery] “91” exhibition that we saw first work of the kind now on display, with nature vastly simplified but also vastly felt, as is but fitting in this nuclear age.’35 There were forty-six items in the catalogue of The Gate Series in Christchurch in September 1962, nine of them from the 1961 Auckland show. Of the rest, sixteen were Gate II (pp. 51–53), four were panels of a work also with an Old Testament text, The curtain of Solomon (only two of which survive, p. 50), which in its eloquence and lyricism was a powerful antidote to the scarifying rhetoric of Gate II, three were a mini-sequence called Tablet, five were entitled Was this the promised land (pp. 54–55), several others had Gate in their titles, and some miscellaneous pieces included Now is the hour (p. 56). From the 1959 show, Tomorrow will be the same but not as Colin McCahon, cover design, this is (see Volume 1, p. 303) was offered for public subscription, as Bill Pearson, Coal Flat, Paul’s Book discussed below. Arcade, Auckland, 1963. Pearson was one of McCahon’s main Gate II, like its predecessor The Wake, intersperses panels with informants about Māoritanga. text and panels without. There are eight of each. As with The Wake,

30 the text – in block capitals of varying size – is concentrated in the early panels (seven of the first nine panels have text), while after panel ten a sequence of five panels, eleven to fifteen, is completely word-free; the sixteenth and last panel features the single word: GATE. The distribution of the panels amounts to a kind of ‘syntax’ of the painting, establishing meaning by placement, sequence and emphasis. Anthony Green wrote: ‘The last “abstract” panels are properly “symbolic”. They suggest a bright Whole, some oppositions of light and dark, a darkness, and then some light goes off upper left, dark goes off lower right, revealing the word GATE. The last six panels are a kind of strip cartoon.’36 The emotional parabola of the work is from the clamour and dismay of the opening panel (the lettering inverted to suggest disarray), through the searing rhetoric of accusation, lamentation and apocalyptic prophecy – for example, ‘THE EARTH SHALL STAGGER / LIKE A DRUNKEN MAN / THEN THE MOON SHALL / BE CONFOUNDED AND THE The Second Gate Series (1962), / SUN ASHAMED’ – past the stern command of panel ten: ‘GO installation shot from Answering Hark: THROUGH / GO THROUGH THE GATES’, to the ‘slowly Caselberg/McCahon: Poet/Painter, emerging order’ of the final sequence of textless panels, and the Auckland Art Gallery, 2001. ‘solution’ of the final open GATE. E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Turning to other works in the exhibiiton, the small Was this the promised land series (pp. 54–55) explored the idealised concept of a ‘promised land’ which had been part of McCahon’s mental furniture since the 1940s and The Promised Land (1948) in particular. The five squarish works are enamel on hardboard; the title phrase (a query without a question mark) is inscribed on a curved hillside or headland (a form increasingly prevalent in his work). The headland image is combined with Gate series elements or other variations. In one the colour is unsually rich: double headlands are white and red against black, with the inscribed title on one while the other is doubled by a dotted line not previously seen in McCahon’s work. Another confines the colours to black, white and red, as in Māori decorative art and employs mostly vertical and horizontal motifs, while a third utilises more atmospheric colours (blues, yellows, browns) with gate- like motifs of cut off corners and intruding dark oblongs. Now is the hour repeats the mangōpare (hammerhead shark) design of the Koru series (discussed below) and associates it with the words of a popular Māori farewell song (used previously in 1958). All shapes and lines in this compact and well-resolved work are curvilinear as if acknowledging this feature of Māori design; the colours, too, gesture towards the black, white and red of Māori rafter patterns. In contrast to the Gate imagery, the incomplete shapes cropped by the frame are circular or elliptical, not rectangular or oblong. Peter McLeavey, later McCahon’s Wellington dealer, holding Was this Annoyed by Baverstock’s crass rejection of Painting (1958), the promised land (1962), c. 1964, McCahon’s Christchurch friends, led by O’Reilly and Summers, photograph taken by Robert Kennedy. were determined to get his work into the McDougall Art Gallery. Image courtesy of Te Papa Press

31 In 1959 O’Reilly had approached various people about purchasing Kenny’s Press review was important because it troubled Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is when it was part of the McCahon and influenced the direction of his immediate Gallery 91 show; these included Brasch, who replied sternly that development. Kenny found the biblical texts powerful and well- he was not convinced that it was worthy of inclusion in a public handled but thought the connection with nuclear warfare was weak: collection: ‘I don’t think you have been wise in choosing one of ‘these worded panels convey a strong sense of lamentation and tragic these recent works for the McDougall so soon, and I do not support intensity. But any explicit connection with nuclear warfare will you.’37 Somewhat priggishly he accused O’Reilly of irresponsibility: elude most viewers.’ He then explored the difficulties of addressing ‘To be plain, your rushing in like this seems to me to be rather a subject like nuclear war in painting: ‘Painting can express states irresponsible, and not the best way of persuading people that Colin of feeling, but what sort of feeling can it express about nuclear war is important.’38 O’Reilly was undeterred: ‘I have no doubt about the and retain artistic value? . . . The artist’s best answer is to let his work stature of “Tomorrow will be the same . . .” any more than I had reflect his ideal world of order, balance, and peace, and let that work of “On building bridges” when I exhibited that work here – which on those who see it.’ He went on to query the overall success of the led directly to Westbrook’s asking to meet Colin and – the same work: ‘Simply as paintings some of the panels are much below Mr morning – inviting him to work for him in Auckland.’39 History McCahon’s best. The first and last panels are very fine, but in some has certainly proven O’Reilly to have shown the better judgement. of those between the plastic invention is so slight that they simply The subscription plan was revived at the 1962 exhibition and do not hold the attention.’ The part that most troubled McCahon the public invited to contribute to the purchase of Tomorrow will was his discussion of how the viewer experiences the work: be the same but not as this is just as with Hodgkins’ Pleasure Garden. The price (65 guineas) was oversubscribed and a cheque for the When one reads them the eye following the words as it whole amount raised sent to McCahon, who replied: ‘And thanks does on the printed page all is well. But when the text has to both you & John Summers for all your efforts. I only hope that been perceived and the eye begins to study the object itself, the city fathers etc. won’t be too difficult. I suspect that they might then weaknesses become apparent. On the whole the series be. There’s not much allowed to pass in that direction.’40 But in must be described as a near miss in an attempt to bring off this instance, at least, his fears were unfounded. Baverstock was something new and grand – a miss probably because of a overruled. One city councillor, Stilwell, protested: ‘Surely we are not lack of certainty in defining the target . . 44. going to hang this monstrosity in our gallery.’41 The council voted on voices to accept the work. It has since become a centrepiece of McCahon expressed concern about Kenny’s review to O’Reilly, the Christchurch Art Gallery collection. admitting to the preference to be ‘flattered’ by reviews: Gate II got a somewhat mixed press reception, even from reviewers generally friendly to McCahon such as Kenny and I must admit I felt rather foolishly annoyed by him & his Summers. McCahon was grateful for occasional letters of support comments. There was no reason why he should have seen such as one from a Christchurch woman, Mary Woodward, to more – or other – than he did but his writing suggested an whom he replied: ‘The exhibition seemed to go off somewhat in the almost preferred refusal to understand. Not that it matters wrong direction judging from the papers. This I was sad about but finally but after lots of work one does like to be flattered. I nothing can be done about it now.’42 The critic who got most from mustn’t make it seem that I felt this altogether a bad review the work was Christchurch artist Maurice Askew, who in a radio – it wasn’t – but just that as it started off on the wrong foot talk was the first to recognise an affinity between McCahon and the in one direction it could never quite catch up.45 Russian abstractionist Kazimir Malevich as well as Mondrian: McCahon felt that by reading from left to right and only then Symbols to an artist are his way of speaking. Malevich took considering the work as a whole Kenny was putting the cart before the square as man’s assertion against nature. McCahon the horse; ‘reading’ should follow, not precede, ‘looking’ (this uses the square to reaffirm this, sometimes distorting it, position is somewhat in conflict with those who quote ‘pictures for but always using it dynamically in a stark brutality of people to walk past’ as a formula for how to read McCahon’s very statement . . . large paintings). It is an important statement: He has taken Mondrian’s discipline, economy amd humility, respecting that spiritual strength grows from Just how with a sequence like ‘the Gate’ you get across the denial, of shapes, of colours . . .43 idea that the actual number of separate panels is purely a

32 convenience and a poor second to an actual wall & that (‘And also: Welcome! Come here. Welcome, come here!’). This was the whole is to be looked at firstly, then the parts, that the McCahon’s earliest use of te reo – the Māori language – in his work; eye moves along the wall & reading as it moves, misses from this point onwards, Māori design, language, myth and history more than it gains. Reading follows the visual impact & would play an ever-increasing role. should not precede it – that of course, I realise, is almost McCahon’s introduction of Māori-related imagery was impossible – but ideal – but to return to the first: after this probably connected to the strong Māori presence in the immediate almost inevitable first reading this quite separate function neighbourhood of Partridge Street. Another factor was his of looking should happen . . . I’m sure it is only on this friendship with John Caselberg, Bill Pearson and Theo Schoon, level that the ‘sense’ does appear . . . I have felt for quite all Pākehā who had a deep interest in aspects of Māori culture. some time that the lack of true immediacy in this painting Schoon lived nearby in Grey Lynn and at this stage was growing and didn’t really fit its primary subject. (But then ‘the Gate’ is carving gourds with kōwhaiwhai and moko designs, a craft which only achieved by any human through contemplation & he shared with McCahon. McCahon painted, but did not carve, time[.])46 a gourd which Schoon gave him.48 The first of Caselberg’s suite of history plays, Duaterra King, had a rehearsed reading at Auckland A warmer response to Gate II – perhaps not surprising given City Art Gallery at about the time McCahon was painting these his intimate involvement with the project – was in Caselberg’s Koru works; Caselberg’s research made McCahon aware of race introduction to the Woollaston/McCahon retrospective (1963), in conflict in early New Zealand history. Pearson, whom McCahon which he spoke with the prophetic ardour of a John the Baptist: had known since 1948, was teaching at Auckland University, and much involved with Māori groups on campus; McCahon designed The great Gate series of panels on nuclear weapons the cover for his novel Coal Flat (1963, p. 30). Around this time, concerns the destiny of man. Because of so much newness too, Buster Pihama (also known as Buster Black), a Māori member and scalding truth and faith, we may shield ourselves from of McCahon’s classes at the gallery from 1956, became a close friend the beauty of these pictures and the call to action which all whose black paintings of mountains and cities at night Colin much such beauty must contain. . . . admired (and borrowed from to some degree). Only a change of heart can let mankind enter the kingdom of tomorrow. The purpose of these paintings is Return to ‘realist’ painting, 1962–63 to change our hearts. They offer a way through for New McCahon’s disappointment with the reception of Gate II, and Zealand art as well.47 Kenny’s criticisms in particular, led to a fundamental reassessment of his direction as a painter. In a 1963 talk he admitted he was Koru, 1962 worried by his failure to communicate with viewers because of the A small group of works not included in the Christchurch exhibition degree of abstraction he had employed. Wystan Curnow reported: was the Koru mini-series completed in the early months of 1962; three are numbered Koru 1, Koru 2 and Koru 3; two are called, simply, [Gate II was] unintelligible to ChCh viewers who saw Koru (p. 57); and a sixth is The koru triptych: haere mai ki konei, haere them. The paintings misfired, and this worried him. mai ki konei, hei ano. Apart from the triptych all these works were Came to the conclusion that it was essential to find a way oil on hardboard; the triptych, the last to be painted (in July 1962) of communicating to people. He must go back and start on unstretched canvas and considerably larger, was exhibited in the again from scratch – to the Otago Peninsula paintings in 1963 Group Show. These Koru works are historically significant as the fact. He was looking for a feeling of order that he had first paintings by McCahon to include recognisably Māori imagery, realised in them.49 namely the mangōpare koru design from kōwhaiwhai rafter patterns. The koru element is placed in a context of Gate-like imagery, or, in Late in 1962 McCahon worked on a large group of paintings one case (p. 57), the French Bay paintings of 1958–59. with the generic name Northland. His comments to O’Reilly about The koru triptych was primarily landscapes without specifically them suggest they were in part a response to Gate II ’s reception and Māori imagery; they featured hills, ridges and headlands in black, Kenny’s review: grey and tan on tall unstretched canvases. The Māori element was the titles printed in block capitals along the bottom of each work: In spite of no time at work have produced about 20-odd HEI ANO: HAEREMAI KI KONEI: HAERE MAI KI KONEI canvases since Sept.[;] began this in an attempt to clarify

33 images, to stop myself making alterations & collecting my ideas all at one time to put down immediately what I want. Some successes, some failures. Really these are about the Pacific dream – rather like the ‘Pineapple Prints’ the Islanders wear. The first few largish ones are down for the Group & after the others may be quite a worry to Kenny.50

McCahon later described the methodology of Yellow and black landscape (1962, p. 58), one of the few not called Northland:

In painting this, and most of the other paintings from about this period I used unsized canvas. The canvas was made sopping wet and on this oil paint was used, but only after most of the oil had been soaked out first by putting it on paper. This gives a very matt finish to the final painting, but it has to be done very quickly. The technique also allows a great deal of freedom.51

Apart from four sent to the 1962 Group Show, three were included in Contemporary New Zealand Painting and Sculpture 1962. Kenny, as it happened, liked the new landscapes:

One who does provide a glimpse of new directions – or perhaps – a return to and an advance along an old path – is Theo Schoon, Incised Gourd, c. 1955–65, Colin McCahon, who exhibits four very recent canvases. engraved gourd with blackening, 300 x 210 x 200 mm. On unstretched canvas he has stained rather than painted Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o big round forms in dark yellow and black. The colour has Tāmaki, C1995/1/14.1-2 great warmth and the shapes are at once simple and richly satisfying, especially in the one dated 2.9.62 [Northland, cm000167].52

Formally speaking, most of the Northland paintings explore the relationship between cloud shapes and hill forms. Of Yellow and black landscape, which was gifted to Auckland City Art Gallery by McCahon’s 1962 painting class, he wrote: ‘I think it does contain a feeling for space between the two horizontal lines but I must admit I have some reservations about it as a painting.’53 He identified the double hill shape as ‘a hill just south of Omapere’.54 The Northland paintings led to even larger landscapes using the same technique. In December he told O’Reilly: ‘. . . am painting again. More of the same thing as the Group ones. Have an exhibition coming Catalogue for a rehearsed reading up next year at the Symonds St gallery. Am filling it with 8 x 4 of Duaterra King (1962) by John 55 Caselberg at Auckland City Art [2.4 x 1.2 metres] canvases of that sort of thing. So will be busy.’ Gallery, April 1962, the first play in This exhibition took shape asLandscape Theme and Variations at the Crux Australis, an epic sequence Ikon Gallery (as The Gallery was renamed) in May 1963. of historical dramas about race relations in nineteenth-century New A letter to Caselberg in March explained this ‘return to “realist” Zealand. Design by McCahon. painting’, partly with reference to Braque:

34 Northland, 1962, oil on canvas, 1195 x 825 mm

35 [I am] in the last stages of working on a huge landscape for Don [Wood] (for the Festival). It[’]s quite a thing – I think, but will never really know. A return to ‘realist’ painting but a realism impossible without the previous work. I’ve spent a great deal of time being concerned about the painter[’]s ‘communication’[,] about the degree of abstraction possible. Whether the communication is for the few or the many . . . Am still most uncertain & have urges to return to the freedom of abstraction and not to be tied down to the very real restrictions of the material world. I did feel – looking at Braque, that the particular balance of things & spirit was right and did communicate to a large section of people.56

He went on to mention the upcoming Woollaston/McCahon retrospective at the Auckland City Art Gallery: ‘This exhibition really puts both Toss & myself into the “has been” class. None the less I am naturally pleased & hope to correct many ideas by the new work at Don’s gallery.’57 The Ikon was run by Don Wood, Frank Lowe having left the partnership; later the name was changed again to Ikon Fine Arts and moved to Lorne Street. He told O’Reilly about the Ikon exhibition: ‘The paintings for Don Wood are another series – not so related as any of the others – but all on landscape themes & all approx. the same size. Two groups each 24ft x 6ft & other related material. One group [Series A] hills & variations (as the Promised Land) the other [Series B] plain and sky motifs.’58 The persistence of the ‘Promised Land’ motif is worth noting. An exhibition handout stated:

Landscape is an ever recurring theme in my painting and even when the landscape is not directly stated as such it has been implied both in form and light . . . With this new collection, landscape is dominant and is directly stated as such; in a way these paintings represent a return to certain paintings of 1940–50. The subjects then were Nelson and Canterbury. Now the place is not stated, none of these paintings is of any actual landscape. Certainly the landscape is New Zealand but in an amalgam of both North and South. Nor is this the tourist’s landscape we so often see painted. I am dealing with the essential Landscape theme and variations (D), 1963, monotony of this land, with variations on a formal theme, oil on unstretched canvas, 1766 x 938 mm and again, as in the Northland panels of some years ago, a ‘landscape with two few lovers’ . . .59

In A Survey (1972) he called them ‘a true New Zealand environment’:

They were painted to be hung about eight inches from floor level. I hoped to throw people into an involvement

36 with the raw land, and also with raw painting. No mounts, no frames, a bit curly at the edges, but with, I hoped, more than the usual New Zealand landscape meaning . . . I hope you can understand what I was trying to do at the time – like spitting on the clay to open the blind man’s eyes.60

McCahon’s last reference is to the incident in Mark 8:22–25, where Jesus restores sight to a blind man by spitting on his eyes. In his 1963 Little Congress talk, McCahon stated that Gate II and Landscape theme and variations shared an underlying theme. In Brasch’s summary: ‘In [Landscape theme and variations] he says he tried to express the same feeling as the Gate paintings – that there exists a way out of the frightening feeling of enclosure Exhibition invitation, McCahon: or restriction (in NZ). He hopes they haven’t been “quite such A Landscape Theme with Variations, Ikon a flop as the Christchurch exhibition”.’61 This remark and his Gallery, Auckland, 1963. comment to O’Reilly about the ‘Promised Land’ point to a level E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Colin McCahon Artist File of meaning beyond ‘realism’. The grandeur, order and beauty of these magnificent sequences model a world beyond human conflict and obstacles, whether individual, social or political. In addition to Series A and B, each eight panels, there were several ‘extras’, designated ‘C’ to ‘I’, identical in size and medium.

A Retrospective Exhibition: M. T. Woollaston/Colin McCahon, 1963 The Woollaston/McCahon retrospective, a career first for both, at the Auckland City Art Gallery included forty-eight works by each artist; McCahon’s ranged from Otaio Gorge (1938) to three works from 1962: Was this the promised land, Now is the hour and Yellow and black landscape. Almost all the works came from private collections or from the artist himself, only two from public collections (still virtually non-existent in 1963). There were two works from the 1930s, nineteen from the 1940s, twenty-three from the 1950s, and four from the 1960s. In Wellington the retrospective was shown at the Architecture Centre in two parts on successive weeks, having been rejected by Exhibition catalogue, the National Art Gallery. In Christchurch it was rejected by the A Retrospective Exhibition: McDougall (Baverstock strikes again) but shown at the CSA’s M. T. Woollaston/Colin McCahon, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1963. Durham Street Gallery together with most of the Ikon Gallery exhibition. The Ikon works were also shown at the Dunedin Public Library, largely through the efforts of Brasch and Kennedy. One of the best reviews was by Kenny, who had the advantage of seeing both the retrospective and the Ikon show together. He admired the Otago Peninsula paintings of 1939 and 1946–49 but felt that many of the religious paintings of the 1940s showed technical deficiencies and ‘artistic naivety’. On the evidence of his early work, McCahon was, he said, ‘an original but thoroughly provincial artist, hampered by an inadequate means of expression’.

37 with McCahon’s Landscape theme and variations (1963) at Otago Museum, 1963; visible in the foreground are several of the Northland series (1962); series B can be glimpsed on the far wall. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, MS-0996-002/466 [S09186a]

38 For Kenny, On building bridges (1952) was a breakthrough work: ‘a masterpiece still unsurpassed in New Zealand art for large-scale mastery’. He described the Titirangi works as showing ‘the painter at his most serene and joyous . . . The 1956 “French Bay” is a superb painting which uses similar formal themes to the triptych.’ He also noted the post-American shift ‘away from cubist spatial modulation to a bold, emblematic, geometrical style, though figurative elements often remained’. Turning to the Ikon works, Kenny noted the return to an earlier manner:

The canvases are stained . . . with darkly blazing colour that combines with the slow curves and big shapes to make works of great solemnity and power. They typify Mr cCahon’sM attitude to landscape, which he uses as the vehicle for the projection of a complex and intense emotionality whose origins lie elsewhere. These latest works are to a large extent a synthesis of the early pre-bridges period and the later, more geometrical period. But running through all his work and here, reaching a new peak, is mastery of expressive tonality . . .62

McCahon’s strategic retreat was obviously positive as far as this critic was concerned. Another suggestive review was by I. V. Porsolt in Landfall; after describing the early biblical paintings as ‘Neo- Romanesque’ he continued: Exhibition catalogue, Contemporary New Zealand Painting, Auckland City This medievalizing itself is only one of many –izings, Art Gallery, 1963. Mondrianizing, Cézannizing, Picassoizing, and more E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland frankly, Michelangelizing and Titianizing . . . It would Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki be utterly wrong to regard these stylisms as artificial insemination of the imagination. I regard them as deliberate tests of the painter’s own ability to digest influences. He wins the test.63

In Dunedin, Brasch displayed the Landscape series plus extras sent down by Don Wood at Otago Museum and wrote about it for the Otago University Critic. Exhibition catalogue, James Nairn and Edward Fristrom, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1964. Standing among them one was surrounded by powerful bare sombrely glowing forms of hills, plains, waters, skies, great spaces, the elementals of landscape, of visual experience . . . What they give is a god’s-eye-view, as if some divine messenger, leading man here from another planet, were to say: ‘Behold this earth which is prepared for you: do not fail it!’ . . . Whatever the future of painting in this country, I feel sure that these are seminal works . . .64

39 Brasch had not been so enthusiastic about McCahon’s paintings for O’Reilly was also a referee for the Elam job. McCahon was seeking years. Colin wrote to O’Reilly: ‘Charles has sent me pictures of the more time free for painting. He told Brasch: ‘I too hope that it [Ikon] show in Dunedin, quite beautifully hung in vast white space. will be an interesting job and should be from what I have seen of I just wish it had had such a chance here – but then I did paint the school under Prof Beadle. Certainly there will be more time it more or less for Don [Wood’s] room so I have myself only to for painting and a studio provided.’71 Paul Beadle (1917–1993), a blame for overcrowding. I just hadn’t realised the potential impact sculptor born in England, was head of Elam. in greater space.’65 Brasch, who was a recently appointed member By July, McCahon knew his application was successful, telling of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, reported in his journal in his parents: ‘At last I am going to have time to do my own work & August: not only in the evenings.’72 He left Auckland City Art Gallery with some regrets, as he told Brasch: Managed one good piece of work at the Visual Arts Committee . . . yesterday: urged strongly that we should I have the Elam appointment and start on September 1st buy the B Series of Colin’s Landscape Theme . . . said that so am already in the midst of a very active time getting if I were buyer for this year I should be content to buy the eleven years unfinished work to some conclusion. I am B Series & nothing else, & that if it were not bought soon leaving here on August 21, a very typical gallery day. We in the country some Englishman or American might turn open an exhibition in the evening. Fristrom & Nairn – I up & take it away for ever, recalling that an Englishman have been sweating over the catalogue . . .73 I find, too, I had bought twenty works of Colin’s, including another have a certain regret over leaving, but I was determined to series, only a few weeks ago.66 go whatever happened and this good fortune is more than I had expected.74 At last Brasch had found new work by McCahon to which he could give full assent. Mounting such historical exhibitions and preparing the catalogues In a letter thanking Woollaston for praising the Christchurch had been an important part of his work at the gallery. J. C. Hoyte, show, McCahon also described some surprising new works: ‘I’m Frank and Walter Wright, John Kinder, James Preston, Frances now painting a series of skys [sic] again about 3’ x 5 or 6’, some Hodgkins, J. C. Richmond, Mina Arndt and Petrus van der smaller. So far these are in monastral blue,67 red & white, blue Velden were other early New Zealand artists whose exhibitions greys & pink greys implied.’68 He also mentioned them to O’Reilly: and catalogues he worked on. McCahon had been well supported ‘The exhibition seems to have been done proud in Chch. I would by staff at the gallery (especially Westbrook, Tomory, Webb and have liked to see it with so much more space around everything Keith), and had had many opportunities to show his own work . . . meanwhile I am painting skys in blue pink & white. Very there. odd looking things.’69 So unprecedented in its lyricism as almost to seem another ‘heretic’ within his output, Triptych: pink and blue Small Landscapes and Waterfalls, 1964 (1963, p. 62) – the largest of these ‘sky’ paintings – was McCahon’s In July 1964, McCahon told O’Reilly about new paintings and a contribution to the annual Contemporary New Zealand Painting forthcoming exhibition: ‘And have an exhibition at the Ikon on exhibition in 1963. September 13.’75 The exhibition was imminent when he informed Caselberg: ‘have been so snowed under one way and another I’ve Resignation from Auckland City Art Gallery not done a thing other than get paintings wound up – have an In May 1964 McCahon wrote to Brasch about house renovation at exhibition at Ikon as from next Sunday. These have been tough Partridge Street, the resumption of painting after a long gap, and ones.’76 (possibly of greatest moment) a reference for a new job: Opened less than a fortnight after he started at Elam on 1 September, the new exhibition was called Small Landscapes I am applying for a painting lectureship at the Elam School and Waterfalls and included forty-four works priced from 11 of Art. References are not asked for but [referees] are: May guineas (nineteen works), to 50 guineas (two); pricing was largely I please submit your name as a referee? . . . My house by size. Most were titled, simply, Waterfall, but a few had more building is about over and has as planned yielded me up a descriptive titles. Waterfall and grey rock (917 x 913 mm) was 30 studio. Painting has resumed but with little success so far. guineas; Waterfall with overhanging red rock (1361 x 903 mm, p. At least I am at work again after quite a six month break.70 42) was 40 guineas; Waterfall (915 x 915 mm) was 50 guineas.

40 Dates on the paintings indicate that most were painted between June and August. Hamish Keith, who had replaced McCahon as keeper and deputy director at Auckland City Art Gallery, wrote a preview in the Auckland Star describing the exhibition as ‘an extension on a domestic scale of the artist’s enormous landscape panels exhibited last year. The waterfalls have their origin in those of Cook’s draughtsman, William Hodges, at present hanging in the City Gallery’s Wertheim Room.’ The exhibition demonstrated a move from landscape to ‘black, white and brown abstractions – still retaining, however, McCahon’s own powerful hill and headland forms’.77 McCahon repeated this story about the connection with Hodges in his eloquent comments in A Survey:

The waterfalls started flowing in 1964 and there were hundreds of them . . . Hodges and I . . . conversed through paint (about Naples yellow to start with) . . . Hodges is my hero in all these paintings but the Fairy Falls in the Waitakares and Japanese and Chinese painting are the real influences later . . . Waterfalls fell and raged and became as still silent falls of light for a long time. I look back with joy on taking a brush of white paint and curving through the darkness with a line of white.78 The first waterfall, 1964, More than twenty of the works from this exhibition sold, to oil on jute canvas on board, 850 x 747 mm McCahon’s obvious surprise, as he reported to Caselberg: ‘for the first time ever have had a near sell out with my exhibition & it[’]s about the toughest painting I’ve yet done. Have a very few pieces left – and nothing more on the go. I needed a rest up after that lot & am cleaning up my studio & settling in [at Elam]. Now have 2 studios! One at home & this one on the fourth floor of the building with a Grafton Gully outlook.’79 Later in 1964, McCahon painted many more waterfalls both big and small, including the huge Large waterfall (1964, 1683 x 1678 mm, p. 69), later exhibited (along with five other works by McCahon and others) in Ten Years of New Zealand Painting in Auckland 1958–1967 at Auckland City Art Gallery. He sent four small ones to Group 1964 in Christchurch and painted others for Eight New Zealand Artists (the others were Don Binney, Robert Ellis, Tim Garrity, Pat Hanly, Milan Mrkusich, Ross Ritchie and Greer Twiss), shown at the Commonwealth Institute in London in 1965, and later toured through Australia and at Auckland City Art Gallery; it included a large Waterfall triptych (pp. 70–71) and a composite painting, Four waterfalls (1964, p. 68), which was also on the cover of the catalogue.

41 He mentioned two large Waterfall triptychs to Caselberg:

[I’m] in the middle of a huge painting which has taken absolutely all my time for the past few weeks. Three panels each 6’ x 4’, waterfall image again, all black with grey & white, some small red & blue corners. These and a similar 5’ x 4’ set in this year[’]s November N.Z. painting exhibition and are very impressive on the gallery wall.80 In all a pretty good show with the great difference between north & south becoming immediately apparent. There is a much more tough & ‘professional’ look about the northern painting.81

The larger triptych is a challenging work; much use is made of the ‘corners off’ device, sometimes marked by a line, sometimes by a triangle of colour (blue, reddish-brown); these accents of colour (used on nine of twelve corners) relieve the brooding but fecund darkness which dominates all three panels. No clearly identifiable ‘waterfall’ image is present (certainly no ‘curving line of white’), though a vertical band in the central panel may be so identified. Ending in a horizontal band across the bottom of the panel, this form may also be read as an inverted T (Tau) cross. The smallest of three waterfall triptychs of 1964 (the three panels are 600 mm high, pp. 66–67) is a lucid and well-balanced work confined to just three colours: black, white, and the brown of unpainted hardboard. The two outer panels are like mirror images of each other while the central panel mediates between them. Smaller waterfalls were given to friends – O’Reilly, Brasch, Waterfall with overhanging red rock, 1964, enamel on plywood, 1361 x 903 mm Caselberg – for Christmas presents. The Kennedy waterfall drawings (c. 1965–67, pp. 72–73), a late addition to the huge series, are radically simplified acrylics on paper, most of which (numbers three and nine are quite different) reduce the waterfall image to a single pale, mostly vertical line against black. There is an apparent paradox in McCahon’s twice describing the Waterfalls as ‘tough’ and ‘about the toughest painting I’ve yet done’ and yet selling unprecedented numbers of them. Without the Waterfall moniker the paintings tend to read as pure abstracts – a curved white line against dark ground; with ‘Waterfall’ attached they become simple landscapes, a fall of water. The waterfall image is graphically strong and immediately recognisable, as easily identifiable as a logo; that is probably what made them so popular. Meanwhile, McCahon could get on with refining his Exhibition catalogue, Eight New technique, ever-simplifying the elements – size, form, colour, texture Zealand Artists, Auckland City Art Gallery, 1965. – practising the maxim of ‘less is more’. In this series McCahon E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland seemingly resolved the conflict between artist and audience; he Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki communicated but without dumbing down his visual practice.

42 Too much focus on the natural landscape can make the Waterfalls seem somewhat trite and repetitious, but if the focus is more on the abstract elements – the language of edge, line, balance, contrast, tone – they are of endless interest, every one different, and anything but a conveyor belt, though undoubtedly he would have used some sort of production-line technique, as he often did – for example, Northland drawings, North Otago landscapes.

Katsushika Hokusai, Pilgrims at Kirifuri Waterfall in Shimotsuke Province, c. 1832–33, colour woodcut. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1958-151-26, The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1958

43 Gate 1, 1961, oil on canvas on board, 845 x 927 mm

44 Upper corners off, the second large gate, 1961, enamel on hardboard, 1524 x 1218 mm

45 Black diamond, white square, 1961, enamel on hardboard, 1212 x 763 mm

46 Waioneke, 1961, enamel on hardboard, 1812 x 1195 mm

47 The Second Bellini Madonna, 1961–62, The Third Bellini Madonna, 1961–62, oil (enamel) on hardboard, 1218 x 788 mm enamel on hardboard, 1207 x 750 mm

48 How is the hammer broken, 1961, oil (alkyd) on hardboard, 1218 x 905 mm

49 The curtain of Solomon [panels 2 and 4], 1962, enamel on two hardboard panels, each 1220 x 1220 mm

50 The Second Gate Series, 1962, enamel on sixteen hardboard panels, 1: 1207 x 995 mm

51 The Second Gate Series, 1962, enamel on sixteen hardboard panels, 1: 1207 x 995 mm, 2: 1207 x 438 mm, 3: 1207 x 657 mm, 4: 1207 x 598 mm, 5: 1207 x 597 mm, 6: 1207 x 597 mm, 7: 1207 x 900 mm, 8: 1207 x 599 mm, 9: 1257 x 897 mm, 10: 1207 x 598 mm, 11: 1207 x 1205 mm, 12: 1207 x 751 mm, 13: 1207 x 747 mm, 14: 1207 x 905 mm, 15: 1207 x 752 mm, 16: 1207 x 1204 mm

52 53 Was this the promised land, 1962, enamel on hardboard, 600 x 595 mm

54 Was this the promised land, 1962, enamel on hardboard, 609 x 604 mm

55 Now is the hour, 1962, oil on hardboard, 606 x 602 mm

56 Koru, 1962, oil on hardboard, 1220 x 810 mm

57 Yellow and black landscape, 1962, oil on jute canvas on board, 1187 x 946 mm

58 Northland, c. 1961–63, oil on canvas, 1055 x 813 mm

59 Above: Landscape theme and variations (series A), 1963, oil on eight unstretched jute canvases, 1: 1750 x 840 mm, 2: 1760 x 930 mm, 3: 1765 x 930 mm, 4: 1750 x 940 mm, 5: 1740 x 835 mm, 6: 1740 x 935 mm, 7: 1735 x 935 mm, 8: 1750 x 835 mm

Below: Landscape theme and variations (series B), 1963, oil on eight unstretched jute canvases mounted on plywood, 1: 1754 x 935 mm, 2: 1775 x 930 mm, 3: 1761 x 933 mm, 4: 1755 x 925 mm, 5: 1750 x 932 mm, 6: 1762 x 933 mm, 7: 1787 x 933 mm, 8: 1764 x 830 mm

60 61 Triptych: pink and blue, 1963, oil on three unstretched canvases mounted on board, 1: 962 x 476 mm, 2: 964 x 534 mm, 3: 968 x 398 mm

62 Waterfall, 1964, oil on hardboard, 302 x 302 mm

63 Waterfall, 1964, oil on hardboard, 198 x 295 mm

64 Waterfall, 1964, synthetic polymer emulsion on hardboard, 330 x 330 mm

65 Waterfall triptych, 1964, oil on hardboard, 1: 602 x 392 mm, 2: 600 x 399 mm, 3: 600 x 400 mm

66 67 Four waterfalls, 1964, oil, sawdust on four hardboard panels mounted on secondary support, 1: 297 x 295 mm, 2: 297 x 298 mm, 3: 297 x 297 mm, 4: 297 x 297 mm; overall: 632 x 632 mm

68 Large waterfall, 1964, oil on canvas, 1683 x 1678 mm

69 Waterfall triptych, 1964, enamel and sand on three hardboard panels, each 1560 x 1250 mm

70 71 The Kennedy waterfall drawings, c. 1965–67, synthetic polymer paint on twelve sheets of paper, each 770 x 570 mm (approx.)

72 73