Blogging about Australia's religious art has reminded me of two fascinating New Zealand artists; one, James K. Baxter, a poet and the other, Colin McCahon, a painter.
James K. Baxter, to quote from his Collected Poems:
"was a man of contradictions: a fine poet who spent much of his time exercising a concern for society's outcasts; a man with intense loyalty to his country who frequently condemned its institutions; a devout convert to Roman Catholicism whose life did not follow many of the usual practices of the Church. But whether he is remembered as the charismatic figure who founded a community for young people among the Maoris at Jerusalem or as the gifted and complex poet, he is certain to be remembered as a man whose life and work was central to New Zealand experience."
Baxter wrote that:
"Writing, in my case, has proceeded entirely from Lower Learning, learning who one is. And this is not learnt in a lecture-room or library, but in the jails and torture rooms of a private destiny, or conceivably planting potatoes, or conceivably kneeling blindly at the Mass."
God first revealed himself to him, "one day when I had reached the middle of a disused railway tunnel, in the grip of a brutal hangover." He confessed that his own conversion:
"controlled by the Spirit of Love who kindles where he desires to kindle, was founded on the natural ground of that utter lack of credulity, that abyss of scepticism which makes me call myself a modern man. Because I doubted all substantial good, it became possible for me to believe in the Unknown God who is also the son of man ..."
To read a small selection of Baxter's Autumn Testament sonnets, click here.
McCahon is considered New Zealand's greatest artist. This brief description of his life and work comes from the introduction to A Question of Faith, a 2003 retrospective held at the National Gallery of Victoria:
"Colin McCahon was born in Timaru, New Zealand in 1919 and died in Auckland in 1987. Particularly since his death, his activities as a teacher and museum curator have become the subject of much discussion. Central to McCahon’s oeuvre is the investigation of the true nature of faith and his own spiritual experience and development. He was deeply committed to the environment and entered into an engagement with Maori culture. Landscape and religion, in particular the language of the bible, are constant factors in his work."
McCahon's work developed from the early figurative styles of the 1940s to the later abstract works as he sought to give visual representation to the existential issues of the human condition by using and modernising the Western Judeo-Christian artistic tradition. To see a wide selection of McCahon's work, click here.
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Steve Taylor - Jim Morrison's Grave.
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