McCahon's Cubism

A DigitalNZ Story by Courtney Johnston

Colin McCahon was a wonderfully clear and articulate writer, and produced carefully considered stories of his own development as a painter. ‘Some time, I don’t quite know when, out for a Sunday visit with the family, I discovered Cubism,’ he wrote in 1966, describing discovering modern art as a child in the pages of the Illustrated London News. (McCahon wasn't averse to a little legend-building.) Exposure to first the work of Mary Cockburn Mercer in Melbourne in 1951, and then painters like Henderson and Mrkusich after moving to Auckland in 1953, rekindled McCahon's interest in the style, which he applied to the novel Auckland landscape and light. Writing about Henderson's work, McCahon made an observation that easily extends to his own paintings: ‘space is no longer tied to the brief Renaissance heresy of lines running back from the picture frame, but is freed from these ties to reach out in all directions from the painted surface of the picture.’

auckland, colin mccahon, art history, french bay, cubism, titirangi, broken planes of colour light and space