Van Gogh - poems by John Caselberg

Colin McCahon, Van Gogh, poems by John Caselberg, 1957. Collection of Museum of New Zeland Te Papa Tongarewa. Purchased 1982 with New Zealand Lottery Board funds. Courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust 

None

Sophie Bannan, No title (from the Waiuta series), c-type print, 50 x 60cm, 2018

Sophie Bannan

Artist

With my head currently in my thesis, deviating into thinking about McCahon has felt traitorous.  

As a teenager, McCahon’s large scale paintings in the Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection resonated with my moodiness –  I named my own ‘dark’ paintings and sketches ‘Tomorrow will be the same but not as this,’ and in art history essays claimed these encounters to be experientially poignant. 

Later I wrote a university art history essay about the Northland Panels. My memory of this essay is that it was probably the best thing I had written to date and was granted a measly B from a tutor who ‘didn’t understand me’ – (lingering inner teenager). I managed to track the essay down thinking it might be useful for this text but in reality it’s… mediocre. 

When Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū reopened following years of earthquake repairs I got a job as a visitor host and crossed paths with McCahon again. The luxury of time with the works in the gallery was not lost on me, but by autumn the boredom of standing in empty galleries on quiet weekdays was getting me down and so was the weather. Over summer I had fallen in love and my lover had since left for Sydney. Peter Vangioni had curated ‘McCahon/ Van der Velden,’ which was a small and unsuspecting show tucked away in an upstairs corner gallery. Here I was again, moody with ‘Tomorrow will be the same.’ A series of small scale works held the space against a few large paintings; ‘Northland’ ink washes, dusky and marshmallowy on brown paper, and a series of lithographs depicting John Caselberg’s series of ‘Van Gogh’ poems. The poems had been published in The Sound of the Morning (1954) and as Caselberg’s publisher wouldn’t release copyright of the poems, McCahon’s lithographs could not be sold and weren’t exhibited until 1970.  

What I like about the Northland ink works and Caselberg lithographs is how they challenge my own (limited) mental narrative of McCahon and his work. This thesis I’m writing is attempting to develop methodologies for art making in and of landscape that is radically democratic, inclusive, and subversive of dominant narratives. So this is where the treachery sits for me. The company I am keeping in my reading and thinking is the work of women, mostly, artists and ancestors, and compared to an art historical heavy weight like McCahon their work is softly spoken and largely left in the undercurrents; it’s the presence of the most visible players that I’m trying to move aside. 

Amongst what little writing I have tracked down on the work of Christchurch photographer Rhondda Bosworth is a thorough and tender survey piece written by Peter Ireland in response to her exhibition Booklet 1 (McNamara Gallery,  2014) that, more so than addressing the exhibition itself, explores Bosworth’s covert practice and somewhat unfashionable art world status (a ‘result of a complex dynamic of perceptions, judgements and promotions that, perhaps surprisingly, can exist outside of what long-term value the actual work might have.’) In discussing Bosworth’s use of archival and autobiographical text in her work, McCahon’s ‘grand and notional’ text works are used antonymously, but Bosworth’s photographs of her father’s poems converge with McCahon’s imaging of Caselberg’s poems so amicably.  

It’s a coincidence really, that I was surreptitiously thinking about McCahon while researching Bosworth then find myself reading about them both in the same sentence. I’m certainly not making any sort of suggestion that McCahon’s work set a precedent for the use of text in artwork as a feminist strategy, only that I find these coincidences pleasing, and softening, too, in that contributing to this project has challenged my own narrative of McCahon and, most surprisingly, has brought back some big teenage feelings about artworks that were, at different times, my companions. 

CONNECTING CULTURAL LEGACY WITH CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE

Index
Person image/svg+xml Group Copy 2 Group Copy 2 Created with Sketch.
Artwork image/svg+xml Group Copy 2 Group Copy 2 Created with Sketch.
Bridget Riggir-Cuddy
The House Protects the Dreamer
Naomi McCleary
Kauri
Séraphine Pick
Northland Panels
Brian Sweeney
The view from the top of the cliff
Rudi Fuchs
North Otago Landscape
Rex Butler
I Considered All the Acts of Oppression
Donna McDonald
The Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Harold Jones
Muriwai no.7
Ted Spring
On Building Bridges
Areez Katki
The Three Marys at the Tomb
Rosanna Raymond
Jet Out
Rufus Knight
Waterfall
Megan Tamati-Quennell
Black Landscape
Nick Mitzevich
Victory over Death 2
Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern
Victory over Death 2
The Governor General The Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy
Gate III
Grant Banbury
I Paul
Sir Bob Harvey
Dark Landscape
Young Old Girls Christchurch Girls’ High
North Otago Landscape 19
Sophie Bannan
Van Gogh - poems by John Caselberg
Linda Tyler
Urewera Triptych
Emily Karaka
Tangi. Muriwai
Robert Gardiner
Are there not twelve hours of daylight
Thomas Crow
Are there not twelve hours of daylight
Jude Rae
Victory over death 2
Brent Harris
The Family
Cora-Allan Wickliffe
15 Drawings Dec '51 to May '52
Salome Tanuvasa
Landscape
Yona Lee
Landscape theme and variations (series B)
David Kirk
Kaipara
Priscilla Pitts
Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Ruth Watson
This day a man is
Tessa Laird
Keep New Zealand Green
Nell
East window
Nicola Farquhar
Kauri trees
Hon Grant Robertson
Otago Peninsula
Jane Macknight
Untitled (North Otago Landscape)
Karen Walker
Titirangi
Wystan Curnow
The Green Plain
Philip Clarke
Necessary Protection (IHS)
Mary Kisler
A candle in a dark room
Ayesha Green
I AM
Matthew O'Reilly
Muriwai
Bettina Bradbury and Kararaina Rangihau
A poster for the Urewera no. 2
Al Keating
A Grain of wheat
Cushla Dillon
Entombment (after Titian)
Hamish Coney
Here I give thanks to Mondrian
Stephen Wainwright
As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land
Sue Gardiner
Landscape theme and variations (series A)
Robert Leonard
Numerals
Judy Darragh
Clouds 1
John Coley
AS THERE IS A CONSTANT FLOW OF LIGHT WE ARE BORN INTO THE PURE LAND
Shannon Te Ao
Ka pōraruraru ahau. I am troubled.
Helen Beaglehole
GATE III
Ralph Paine
Jump E9
Judy Millar
Muriwai: Necessary Protection
Fiona Pardington
Waterfall
C.K. Stead
All mortals are like grass
Gretchen Albrecht
As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land
Martin Edmond
Cross (1959)
Lisa Reihana
Urewera mural
Peter Simpson
Jet out to Te Reinga
Christina Barton
Gate III
Dame Jenny Gibbs
I Considered All the Acts of Oppression
Zoe Black
Ruby Bay
Jim Barr and Mary Barr
Oaia and clouds
Vivienne Stone
Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is
Kate Sylvester
Northland Panels