A Question of Faith, Federation Square, Melbourne.
A few weeks ago, after my visit to Canberra, I lamented the absence Colin McCahon’s “Victory over Death II (I Am)” from the National Gallery of Australia. Now I know why. The painting was on tour, on its way to Melbourne, along with many others from all over Australia, New Zealand and collections around the world as part of a the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam’s McCahon retrospective, “A Question of Faith”.
And “Victory Over Death” was worth waiting for. I’ve only ever seen it in small reproductions that simply don’t convey how rich it is. This exhibition allows you to study the themes and styles that, combined in that one painting, were developed separately over time. These are landscape themes, the development of texts and McCahon’s attention shifting towards that dominant “I Am” as seen in this painting, “Practical Religion”.
Time was limited, unfortunately, my visit squashed between a business lunch and a return flight to Sydney. I would have liked to linger. Never mind, the show comes to Sydney in November.
Despite that constraint I saw enough to confirm, as if that was needed, just how great and unique McCahon is. What is really striking is the spiritualism. Now we all know that McCahon was a spiritual guy, but that’s something that is rarely expressed in modern art and especially in Australian modern art. And McCahon doesn’t just express it. He explores it deeply, incessantly, and sets these explorations in wonderful renditions of the New Zealand landscape. These landscapes over time become rendered almost as pure mood, with a severely constrained palette and attention to the subtleties of paint that is reminiscent of Rothko.
Taking the paintings individually the effect is tremendously powerful, but with so many gathered in one place it is overwhelming. One critic here said he found the show so strong he had to leave, take in some of the other exhibitions and then return.
This exhibition has already passed through Wellington and closes in Melbourne on the 7th. But if you do happen though Melbourne there is another magnificent later McCahon in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, “A Letter to Hebrews (Rain in Northland)”, from 1979. I saw this one by chance a couple of years ago when I went to the Gallery to see the Dead Sea scrolls. Somebody had a bright idea of exhibiting paintings featuring text on a mezzanine above the scrolls. McCahon, with his religious themes, was a natural choice.
The painting ambushed me. I confess, I got quite emotional.
Meanwhile, those lefty commies at Time Magazine are trying to undermine President Bush again, with headlines like: “Who Is Losing Iraq? Retreat is not an option, victory is elusive and the cost of staying the course is rising fast. Iraq is our greatest crisis since Vietnam.”
Columnist Joe Klein highlights the limited options the US faces:
“A Pentagon official told me the idea of reactivating the [Iraqi] army is "naive"—which is ironic, given the Pentagon's willful naivete about postwar Iraq. But I suspect that all these options will be attempted in the coming months, lest George W. Bush face the electorate in 2004 as the President who presided over a severe degradation of the U.S. military and the diminution of America's reputation in the world—as the President who lost Iraq.”
Another correspondent, Tony Karon, says Iraq is now pumping around half its pre-war levels of oil and, as we know, supply is continuing to be disrupted by sabotage as guerrilla attacks continue.
A typical day’s incident report: “One U.S. soldier killed and three wounded by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah; another soldier killed in an ambush on a convoy in Baghdad and two of his colleagues wounded, four soldiers wounded in two separate ambushes in Baqubah and Ramadi. The U.S. is facing a guerrilla insurgency capable of mounting multiple simultaneous attacks in different locations, high profile terror attacks that spread panic in the civilian population and systematic sabotage attacks on oil, water and electricity supplies.”
Over here the opposition is reminding Howard that as one of the coalition of occupiers, Australia too has an obligation to ensure security in Iraq. It’s not an argument the government wants to hear.