the year 1976 was one of the last prolific years for colin Mccahon as a painter. Several significant series belong to that year, including two sets of noughts and crosses and rocks in the Sky, several smaller series such as on the road and Scared, and some important one-off pieces, such as Kokowai, and Mondrian’s Last chrysanthemum – altogether more than 50 works are listed on the Mccahon Database for 1976.
Colin McCahon Lot 33 noughts and crosses, Series ii, no. V synthetic polymer paint on Steinbach paper mounted to hardboard title inscribed, signed with artist’s initials C. McC and dated ’76 1095 x 730mm $230 000 – $300 000 Exhibited ‘Colin McCahon: Paintings—Noughts and Crosses, Rocks in the Sky, On the Road’, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 23 August – 3 September 1976, cat. no. 2. ‘colin Mccahon: A Question of Faith’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the netherlands, 30 August – 10 november, 2002 (touring Australasia 2002 – 2004). Illustrated Marja Bloem and Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (nelson, 2002), p. 135. Reference colin Mccahon Database (www.mccahon.co.nz) cM001522 Provenance collection of Kim wright, Auckland. Private collection, Auckland. Private collection, Australia.
During this decade a pervasive motif in Mccahon’s painting was the numbers 1-14, a preoccupation related to the roman catholic ritual of the Stations of the cross, each depicted station representing a stage in christ’s last journey towards crucifixion. By the mid-1970s Mccahon seldom alluded to the Stations explicitly (as he had earlier), but their presence was signified by the sequence of numerals 1 to 14 (or sometimes i to XiV), either transcribed directly onto individual works, as in the Shining cuckoo (1974), teaching Aids (1975), and rocks in the Sky (1976), or by the limitation of works in a series to 14, as in Jet out (1973) and Angels and Bed (1976-77). in noughts and crosses, which conforms to the latter pattern, there are two series, each of seven works, making fourteen in total, an arrangement also adopted in rocks in the Sky. this numerological element points, of course, to underlying issues of faith, doubt, and choice, which inform all Mccahon’s paintings of this period. in noughts and crosses spiritual and existential matters are explored through the medium of a familiar children’s game (also known as tic-tac-toe) usually played with pencil and paper. According to Gordon Brown, Mccahon got the idea of using the grid and the letters X and o as a basis for paintings from watching a grandchild play the game. the appeal to Mccahon is that those letters are amenable to symbolic elaboration. the two series vary considerably in approach, though both are painted in synthetic polymer paints (acrylics) on sheets of Steinbach paper, a whole stack of which had been acquired for Mccahon by his wellington dealer, Peter McLeavey. in the first series, the games are painted black on white, like marks on a slate or blackboard. there are two games on each sheet, one above the other. in all but one instance the crosses ‘win’ (that is by completing a vertical, horizontal or diagonal row of three). the religious implications are underlined by sometimes replacing ‘X’ with the letter ‘t’; that is, one form of cross – a symbol of negation (X) – is replaced by another – a symbol of faith (t), implying the victory of faith over doubt or nihilism (signified by ‘o’). in the second series, of which the present vibrant work – one of the most outstanding of the whole set – is the fifth (V), there is just one game per sheet, and many other variations of colour and form are introduced. Figure and ground are reversed, the grid and letters now being black on white (or often – as here – on yellow/gold). the conventional grid is modified by introducing gaps in the horizontal lines, which changes the grid into a series of christian crosses. Furthermore, in these games nobody ‘wins’ by successfully completing a row of three. in other words, the outcome is dubious, uncertain, a stalemate. Similarly, the background colour is not uniform (as in the first series) but varies in this instance from blazing yellow/gold to total black (as in the bottom left corner). Significantly in the two squares containing Xs the yellow is muddied (though not in the bottom right corner where the cross takes the form of the christian symbol). through these (and other) changes a childish game is brilliantly transformed into a dynamically meaningful painting – a spirited contest between life and death, light and dark, faith and doubt, to the implications of which viewers will doubtless respond differently according to their own predilections. Peter Simpson
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AO590FA Cat 65 Important Paintings 240x340.indd 72
A+o
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