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Summer of Art 2010 – Colin McCahon
Since I’ve been the minister here I’ve been copying a tradition started by a Baptist church in Auckland. In the lead up to Easter each year they get parishioners to present works of art that have moved or inspired their spiritual journey. We do it in summer and this is the fourth year we’ve tried it.
I always do one in the series, and this year, though I am not an art historian and don’t really know what I’m talking about, I wanted to look at the Kiwi artist Colin McCahon – often regarded as the Van Gogh of Australasia and the greatest artist NZ has ever produced.
The painting I want to focus on is this one of his Elias paintings, but the first of his art works that I was ever aware of was this one: it’s huge, it’d probably take up half the back wall, it was painted before I was born in 1970, and it is called “Victory over Death 2.” - Anyone recognise it?
The canvass is black, and if you look carefully you can see on the left a very faint “AM” in capital letters, with a big, bold, white “I AM” on the right. Around it all are words of Jesus from the Gospel of John.
McCahon wrestled with faith and God all his life, and an element of doubt often features in his work. Here I see that doubt expressed as this shadowy “AM I?”, while in contrast to that, faith, light and victory over death boldly proclaim “I AM!” – surrounded by the teachings of Christ. The reason this is famous is because although New Zealanders never really liked McCahon, strangely, some influential Australians did. In 1978 Australia requested a painting by McCahon as a gift from NZ for their 200th anniversary. This was selected. - Does anyone remember that?
Most of the country thought this was an awful painting and a national embarrassment, so PM Muldoon asked his cabinet to vote on whether we should gift it. Only 1 voted in favour, the rest against, but Muldoon sent it anyway. This was seen as a sly insult to the Ozzies, giving them this load of rubbish (which is now worth millions), and McCahon became an object of national ridicule. Naturally McCahon didn’t enjoy that. He got depressed, withdrew, hit the booze, and within 4 years had alcohol induced dementia and was no longer able to paint.
But first, some background to this man.
McCahon was a true-blue Kiwi, born in Timaru in 1919, and raised in Dunedin. He married the daughter of an Anglican vicar, and issues of faith were central to his life and his art. In WWII he failed his physical and couldn’t join up to fight, so instead he spent the war years biking around the Sth Isl (from Dunedin to Nelson and back again several times) doing seasonal work on farms. He fell in love with our country and started painting landscapes. Cameras were coming in while he was young and he decided that paintings could never be as accurate as a photo. Therefore there was no point even trying to paint realistically, so he was always an abstract painter (this is an early abstract painting he did of Saddle Hill in Dunedin).
Being in Dunedin he was there at the same time as the poet James K Baxter. Baxter was trying to explore the Christian faith through his poetry and by putting Bible stories in NZ settings. One account is that it was Baxter who convinced McCahon to do the same with his art. And so we get a painting of an angel appearing over Takaka golf club to announce to Mary that she will bear the Son of God; or we see Jesus being crucified on the Hills behind Nelson – with the curtain being torn in two in the Anglican Cathedral rather than in the Jewish Temple. He also put Christian symbols like candles and jugs of water in his works, and telegraph poles became crosses. Over time he came to paint crosses as a “t” and not the normal cross-shape we use.
1950’s NZ wasn’t a particularly abstract or arty place however, so, just like people thought Baxter was weird, people thought McCahon was weird too! From what I’ve read it seems the fact that people didn’t understand what he was doing bothered McCahon, so he tried to make it easier for people by making his paintings simpler (like this waterfall painting), which actually made them even more abstract, and probably made them harder for the uninitiated to comprehend.
Since people still didn’t get it, he gradually made his work even simpler, using less and less colour, and using more and more words until the pictures began to disappear and only the words remained.
And this brings us to the painting that rocked my world when I first saw a copy of it in Dunedin while I was training to be a minister. It was done in 1959 as part of McCahon’s first series of works dominated by words only. Again none of them sold at the time, in fact Kiwis were beginning to get really offended by his weird depictions of art and faith. Around this time his family started getting abused when they went out on the street, and on one occasion two of his kids were attacked by a man wielding a wooden plank with a nail hammered through it.
Hard to imagine NZ-ers getting that worked up about art these days…
This Elias series was inspired by Mark 15 and the crucifixion of Jesus, and it’s going to be read to us now…
Read Mark 15:33-39 – the crucifixion
McCahon, like everyone in his day, grew up with the King James Bible, but in the late 50’s he found a new modern translation which blew him away and reignited a passion for scripture in his art. The resurrection of Lazarus and the Elias passage were two of his favourite texts, and this is what he said about them…
“Now (Lazarus) this is one of the most beautiful and puzzling stories in the New Testament - like the Elias story this one takes you through several levels of feeling and being. It hit me, BANG! At where I was: questions and answers, faith so simple and beautiful and doubts still pushing to somewhere else. It really got me down with joy and pain … Let be, let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him."
As I said, I encountered this Elias painting while I was in my early days of training to be a minister – I was following a call that I didn’t really want to follow at the time, and that I wasn’t even sure was actually from God. This painting spoke into that situation.
There’s a lot going on in Mark 15, and I’m sure we could meditate on this passage for a year without exhausting it.
1. For on the one hand we’ve got this whisper of a doubt – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
We believe that Jesus was both God and human, but how did the two mix? Jesus believed that he was the Messiah and acted accordingly, but was he certain? Did he know that he was God? He knew he would die, but, when he allowed himself to be arrested, did he really know what would happen to him after death - or was it an act of surrender and trust?
2. On top of this there is a sense of abandonment – “why have you forsaken me?”
It’s as if Jesus can’t sense his Father’s presence any more. He’s dying, he’s in pain, he’s being ridiculed by the crowds: he’s becoming sin for our sakes, and although innocent is suffering the worst of human sin and violence. Where is God in that? Where is God when we suffer?
3. But then! Although there is a whisper of doubt and abandonment in them, these words are actually a powerful affirmation of faith and life, and victory over death. In saying these words Jesus was actually quoting Psalm 22 which we read together earlier in the service.
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. 3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. 4 In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5 They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
- So, although this Psalm starts in pain and suffering, it ends in faith and trust.
- Also, this Psalm is regarded as a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah and seems to match quite closely what happened to Jesus on the cross. (NIV quotations…)
= vv 7-8 All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; "Commit your cause to the LORD; let him deliver—let him rescue the one in whom he delights!"
= vv 15-16 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.
= v 18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
= and v 24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
So, God did hear Jesus’ cry. Christ was not abandoned, he was saved – though his salvation didn’t spare him from death but rather came after death, as victory over death. And so, like the famous and controversial “I AM” painting, there is a shadow of doubt and abandonment in Christ’s words from the cross, but alongside that there is a bold and profound statement of faith, hope, and victory over death here as well.
4. But, one last element here is the misunderstanding.
The crowd didn’t “get” what Jesus was saying (just like NZ-ers didn’t “get McCahon’s paintings). They didn’t recognise the quote from Psalm 22, in fact they thought he was calling on Elijah not God – with their response “Wait (let be, let be), will Elijah (or Elias) come and save him?” This is the pregnant moment in our faith, this is the pivotal point in all of scripture! Will Elias come and save him? They don’t understand, they don’t get it, but yet, all creation waits with baited breath – what’s going to happen now? Will Christ be justified, will God save him? Will God prove that he was right, that he is the King of the Jews?
Jesus had set out on this road of obedience to God’s will, a road his words in the Garden of Gethsemane show us that he didn’t really want to follow. This was a road of ridicule, pain and death – yet he submitted, he followed his call, and he accepted the consequences. Now he’s on the cross, what will happen…? Will he be saved?
When I saw this painting I was also on a road of obedience, following a call that I didn’t really like. At the time I did not want to be a minister! Ministers are supposed to be old and holy, pillars of the community. I just wanted to be a boy, free of responsibility, answerable to no-one. Following this call required crucifying my will. This was a journey that many of my friends did not understand. But there I was, in Dunedin, training. This was the pregnant pause in my life. Would God come and save me? Was this call genuine? Was I in the right place? Would God vindicate my actions and bring me peace and clarity about my future?
And yes… God did!
Our God is faithful, and if we act in obedience to the Spirit’s call, God will not leave us hanging on the cross suffering discomfort and ridicule. God will save us and bring us Victory over Death both in this life and the next. God took Jesus through death and out the other side into new life and resurrection, opening up the way for us to follow; God embraced my reluctant obedience and gifted me contentment and fulfilment in ministry.
To conclude…
All our lives are different, and God calls us each in different directions as the Spirit has prepared good works for us to do – good works that will help bring God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But, I am sure that on many occasions we will all find ourselves in one of those pregnant Elias moments – times when we are struggling to follow a call that we really don’t like, or times when our attempts to be faithful to God’s word has caused us to step out in a way that puts us at risk.
“Let be, let be, will Elias come to save us?” Will God be faithful? Will our obedience be vindicated?
If we do find ourselves in such a time, I would encourage you to remember McCahon
1. Remember his Elias painting, remember the power of these seasons of waiting, and remember that Jesus himself has been there.
2. And remember the “I AM” painting. Remember that a sense of doubt or uncertainty or abandonment is normal; but also remember that faith, hope and victory over death will triumph! Remember that Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, and that God is trustworthy and will eventually save us.