caselberg/mccahon—poet/painter
"Those so-called illustrations impress a small world as if by the apparent use of a tarbrush. They are deeply crude, unimpressive and illegible, illustrations with no intrinsic beauty .. . it is time to compare these crude illustrations with the paintings of great artists ."
From a letter to the editor of the Greymouth Evening Star from 'Tarbrush', July 1959.1
When shown at the Symonds Street Gallery in Auckland in 1959, Colin McCahon's illustrations for John Caselberg's poem The Wake were met with a barrage of hostile criticism of which the quotation above is but one example. In retrospect critiques such as this cannot be taken seriously. McCahon is considered by many art historians and lay people to be one of the great artists of the 2oth century and for a country the size of rugby-obsessed Aotearoa/New Zealand , that is quite a coup. The very event of viewing almost any of McCahon's works is something of a miracle as one wonders how an isolated country was able to nurture an artist of McCahon's stature during the 1950s and '60s. Obviously, this was not easy and it seems probable that McCahon was to some extent motivated by opposition.
Today, however, along with artists such as C.F. Goldie and Rita Angus, McCahon's extraordinary paintings hold pride of place in Aotearoa/New Zealand 's major art galleries and museums. During his life-time he was able to achieve a profundity in his paintings that continues to escape most contemporary artists, and even long after his death he remains a controversial figure whose story is the stuff of legend . The theft of his Urewera Mural, 1975, from the Aniwaniwa Visitors Centre, 'to avenge the