COLIN McCAHON'S PICTURES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 7

COLIN McCAHON'S PICTURES

in Australia, and visiting Sydney and Melbourne. I naturally enough visited their art galleties, to see what had happened in the last decade or so. In Melbourne the Felton Bequest had bought thd usual hundred thousand pounds’ worth of European paintings; but the exciting thing in both places was the collection of contemporary Australian art. It was really contemporary and exciting art-no more the acres of dull vulgarity by Norman Lindsay, no more the rather mechanical shine of Elioth Gruner, no more the competent academicism of Edwardian England, but a real burst of distinct and individual talents, seeing things and painting things with fresh and énormous vitality. It is evident that not merely has Australia the painters, but the galleries have highly intelligent directors. And then, turning my thoughts to New Zealand, I felt a little depressed. But why be too depressed? I am convinced that, given the director, a thoroughly interesting and exciting collection of contemporary New ‘Zealand paintings could be assembled. Oh for the director! \ BOUT three months ago I was

Oh for the council or the trustees that would back him up! Really we should "not need to hang our heads in shame. Names I need not list, but, as often before, I had this conviction and these yearnings when looking at Colin McCahon’s_ exhibition at the Wellington Public Library. the other day. McCahon is not a brilliant technician, in the academic sense; there are men in New Zealand who can run rings around him in ease and speed of output and slickness of finish; he is deliberately all too primitive all too often, he is gauche, self-willed, violent. Yet for us he is one of the important people. He is a serious artist. His pictures are open to criticism, but they can take criticism-the best of them stand up to real critical study as very few of the too numerous exhibits in our too numerous annual shows do. He is a serious artist because he takes painting seriously, as something to be thought about and worked at; he knows the importance of construction, of the architecture of ‘a picture, and while he works in colour, he also works in form; and he is experimental. In other words, there is an individual mind coming out in his pictures. There is no easy mastery of a perpetual pattern; the influ-

ences have been permeated with McCahon, and McCahon is a process of development. The old sombre landscapes have given place to a frequent blaze of colour, and to figure studies both strong and moving. It is important that this development should go on. I wish there

were a Church in New Zealand alive enough to buy the Annunciation or Deposition paintings. A Religious Drama Society we have..A Religious Art Society

seems indicated.

J.C.

B.