Sacrifice for saintliness

Inevitably, the landscape is used symbolically in Colin McCahon's On Building Bridges.

Why McCahon? Colin McCahon has been elevated in New Zealand to the status of Old Master and, in many eyes, almost to the status of saint.

He encountered opposition in his early years and recognition came too late. And he retains a reputation as a difficult painter.

Two exhibitions give insight into the nature of his singular achievement.

The exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery (until December 17), called Towards Auckland: The Gallery Years, is curated by Hamish Keith, who was on the gallery staff at the same time as McCahon, from 1953 to 1964, when these paintings were done.

The second exhibition, at Lopdell House until October 8, is called The Titirangi Years 1953-1959 covering the time when McCahon lived there. It is curated by Peter Simpson.

At the city gallery the strength of McCahon's earlier work is evident in the big ambitious painting that brought him to the attention of Eric Westbrook, the first professional director of the gallery who, coming from England, recognised the spectacular quality of On Building Bridges.

This painting, with the monumental rhythms of Canterbury in the background, has the forms of bridges and steel construction in the foreground. It shows how our empty land is claimed by works of engineering.

As in all McCahon's work, it uses the landscape for symbolism. He broke away from the simple representation of places to make works that were true to the nature of the landscape but were also images of search - whether for enlightenment or national identity is left for the viewer to decide.

The smaller works in the Auckland Art Gallery exhibition emphasise again and again not only the strength McCahon bought to his images but the way in which each touch that builds the image is meditated upon before being made part of a whole.

Two large series of paintings are the great strength of the exhibition. One is a series of hangings called Landscape Theme and Variations. These unframed hangings are strongly influenced by his travels in Northland and his knowledge of Nelson. They have the rounded hills and wide horizons of New Zealand and in their solemnity they suggest the dark seriousness of our landscape. But over some of the ridges and beyond the horizons there is light which is a feeling and spirit that invites a quest.

The other great series of paintings is the second Gate Series - views of skies and urban roofs, and glimpses of light, based on looking out of city windows. This work is profoundly prophetic. It was done in 1962, when a whole generation was troubled, almost disabled, by the thought of nuclear disaster and thought nothing would last.

McCahon launches himself with words: "How is the hammer of the whole world cut asunder and broken?" Then he moves through a world of darkness and fire with only gleams of light dominated by rectangular shapes like the opposition of some gigantic magnet.

Only in the last panel is there a gate, an opening that leads to the light and the possibility of hope.

There is another work of monumental power at Lopdell House. These hangings, called the Wake Series, use the words of a poem by John Caselberg.

These paintings have a great deal of writing on them, but it has never been unusual for painters to associate text with their work. The great English painter Turner exhibited his paintings accompanied by poems he wrote.

Like Turner, McCahon had a great command over light. Caselberg's poem is an elegy for the death of his great dane. But McCahon's subject is the way we transform what was living into inspired memory among the stars.

This one death inspires a meditation on all death and memory. It is set among the tall kauri of Titirangi and leaps from there to the firmament and indicates the way we may think the spirit lives on among the stars.

Many of the paintings at Lopdell House evoke McCahon's meditative touch. Notable is the jewelled brilliance of French Bay, reminding us that McCahon - although renowned for his work in black and white - was also a splendid colourist.

These great paintings were achieved at the cost of sacrifice of self, family and spirit. Look in all the work for those touches of red that are the blood of sacrifice.