Practical religion: the resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

Practical religion: The resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha is the largest in a series of six paintings including Victory over death 2 (National Gallery of Australia) which Colin McCahon painted at his Muriwai studio over the summer of 1969–70. The painting is based on chapter eleven of John’s Gospel and describes an event in which Jesus, in the face of doubt among his followers, brings back to life a man who has recently died. The miracle announces Jesus’ divinity, and prefigures his own death and resurrection. McCahon had recently reacquainted himself with the story. As he recalled in 1972, ‘I got onto reading the New English Bible and re-reading my favourite passages. I re-discovered good old Lazarus. Now this is one of the most beautiful and puzzling stories in the New Testament — like the Elias story this one takes you through several levels of feeling and being. It hit me, BANG! at where I was: questions and answers, faith so simple and beautiful and doubts still pushing to somewhere else.’1

With its dramatic structure and vivid symbolism, John’s Gospel held understandable appeal for McCahon. Its opening line, ‘In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God’, no doubt had special meaning for a painter of words. The words flicker against a black background, unfolding across the painting as a narrative of voices, akin to an oratorio or theatrical reading. McCahon’s description of the combination of image and text was somewhat less grandiose: ‘To be honest it was a bit like drawing a Mickey Mouse cartoon.’2 While considerable care has been given to the placement, shape and tonality of each word and letter, the texts are meant to be read for their meaning. That meaning is expressed physically along the length of the painting. McCahon wrote of the ‘importance of pictures for people to walk past’.3 That importance is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in Practical religion: The resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha, as it moves from darkness to light, from doubt to faith, from the clamorous voices of the crowd to the clear certainty of Jesus’ words and, ultimately, from death to resurrection.

William McAloon

1 Colin McCahon: A survey exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, 1972, p. 36.

2 Ibid.

3 Colin McCahon, letter to Anthony Green, 12 February 1975, cited in Anthony Green, ‘McCahon’s visit to the United States: A reading of letters and lecture notes’, Bulletin of New Zealand Art History, vol. 3, 1975, p. 41, n. 3.