NEW ZEALAND BOOKS
Colin McCahon: There Is Only One Direction, Vol. 1 1919-1959
Peter Simpson (Auckland University Press, $75)
Peter Simpson draws on several decades of thinking about, studying and teaching the work of Colin McCahon in this first of two volumes surveying the artist’s career. It is not a biography of the man but a history of his work. Nevertheless, there are details about the life when necessary, beginning with an account of his creative antecedents.
The title refers to the artist’s belief that “for each painter finally there is only one direction and this should be apparent in the painter’s work”. McCahon points the way, and Simpson follows his direction in the themes that drove his creativity: landscape, poetry, art history and his difficult relationship with Christianity.
There is plenty of good, old-fashioned critical explaining. Simpson dares to say what the pictures mean. He is also good at
