RELI 489 Supervisor: Dr Anna Gade Aaron Frater 300002540

Images of Jesus Christ in New Zealand 1800s - Now. Introduction.

New Zealand is often seen as having no real religious history. Nichol says that there is a culturally influenced form of Christianity in New Zealand, and we can see where it has come from and how the teaching and ritual practices of the past have led to the pluralistic Christianity of contemporary times.1 The focus of this essay is primarily on British, European, and American Christ imagery as it came to New Zealand and became part of, and was shaped by, New Zealand culture. The short history of Christianity in New Zealand makes it relatively straight forward to survey, but the sheer volume and variety of imagery makes it a large field. This is paper is a selection of imagery, to demonstrate the progression from imported traditional images to the variety of locally created contemporary imagery which illustrates the processes of production, teaching, and response. The progression from overseas traditional imagery to local contemporary imagery shows that the production of, teaching functions of, and response to, depictions of Christ embody the personal and cultural beliefs, desires, needs, projections, and learned expectations of the producers, and the responses of the viewers.2 Production and mass production of images of Christ for

Christopher Nichol, James Veitch, (eds) Christopher Nichol Introduction Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: Victoria University, 1988) p 10 2 David Freedberg (in) David Freedberg, Oleg Grabar, Anne Higonnet ,Cecelia F. Klein, Lisa Tickner, Anthony Vidler The Object of Art History The Art Bulletin 76:3 (Sept, 94) pp 394 / 395

pedagogical and devotional use began in New Zealand as British, European, and American imported imagery. Initially the imagery from the old world of British and European Christianity shaped New Zealand culture, only to be shaped themselves in contemporary times to reflect a more New Zealanders imagery of Christ in stained glass, paintings and sculpture.

The churches and art objects, of the mostly Protestant Christianity of the 19th century in New Zealand, are a primary source of images of Christ. Settler homes and Maori embodiment and adoption of Christianity are another source. Early ecclesiastical art was mostly stained glass, a very religious art form, that teaches by embodying texts and traditional iconography. In the early 20th century William Holman Hunts Light of the World came to New Zealand with a message of the culture and piety of the Britain, arriving at a time when New Zealand was beginning to form its own identity. It is a work that left its legacy in stained glass windows, mass produced copies, and as a feature in Christian education of its time. Warner Sallmans 1940 Head of Christ shows how an American image of Christ translated into mass produced versions that became Christian pedagogical and ritual icons in its own right.

Artists of the later 20th century took images of Christ from primary in the ecclesiastical world, into their own expressive outputs and personal quests. This modern work shifted the pedagogical, commemorative and ritual functions from church based to individuals, galleries and the commercial world of the wider culture. The artist Colin McCahon and Tony Fomison were painters who put Christ in the

New Zealand landscape, and broke from the traditional images of their times. In the early 21st century some contemporary artists such as: Richard Lewer, Jeffery Harris, and Brett ACourt, continued the legacy of the artists who combined New Zealand imagery with traditional Christ imagery. They draw on the post modern secular art world as much as the traditions and forms of the ecclesiastical world. As OGrady says, mages of Christ have:

(t)hrough the centuries inspired (Christians) ,and (have) continued to invite new responses in artistic form. (They are a) reminder that Christian believers from every generation and all cultures are being led to express their own confession of Christ.3

He also points out, most people think of an image, of an embodiment, rather than words from a sacred text when thinking of Christ.4

An art work has a power to bring the intangible within or realm of understanding in our highly visual culture.5 Images of Christ, artistic theology, are constructed to encode teachings and modes of worship.6 They interact with the beholder and are reinterpreted in light of the beliefs, desires, needs, and projections of the viewers.7 This is a Visual Culture way of looking at both sides of an artwork, its production and reception.8 The interaction between audience, image, and often
3

Ron OGrady (ed) Introduction Christ for All People, Celebrating a World of Christian Art. (Auckland: Pace, 2001) p 7 4 Ibid p 27 5 Aidan Nichols O.P. Preface The Art of God Incarnate, Theology and Image in Christian Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980) p 1 6 John A. Walker, Sarah Chaplin The Concept of the Visual (chpt 2) Visual Culture, An Introduction (New York, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997 ) pp 27 28 7 David Freedberg (in) David Freedberg, Oleg Grabar, Anne Higonnet ,Cecelia F. Klein, Lisa Tickner, Anthony Vidler The Object of Art History The Art Bulletin 76:3 (Sept, 94) pp 394 / 395 8 S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 54 55

setting,9 is where the sacred and the profane meet.10 It is a space where the spiritual and the material world are perceived to come together.11 This sacred space where layers of meaning12 are made between physical image and viewer is a key factor in the power of images of Christ. As the American Christian Painter Daniel Bonnell says, My work is only completed by the viewer.13 He sees his paintings as, tools to a deeper devotion with the Christ.14 Art is a language that can help us to make sense of the faith (in) Christ, who is central to Christianity.15

Early New Zealand, settler communities and stained glass.

Most colonists were adherents of Christianity to one degree or another.16 They sought to replicate the ritual and imagery of the faith of the homeland, without replicating the political connections and control over daily life and faith of England and Europe.17 The need for a spiritual centre for settlers and a connection to the
9

Leslie Brubaker Conclusion, Image, Audience, and Place: Interaction and Reproduction (in) (Eds) Robert Ousterhout, Leslie Brubaker, The Sacred Image East and West (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) p205 10 S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) p 60 11 Alan Morinis (ed) Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Connecticut, London: Greenwood press, 1992) p 4 12 Leslie Brubaker Conclusion, Image, Audience, and Place: Interaction and Reproduction (in) (Eds) Robert Ousterhout, Leslie Brubaker, The Sacred Image East and West (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) p205 13 Daniel Bonnell, Returning Art to the Church, Images on Christ Project : http://iconproject.com/artist.php accessed 08 Feb 2009 14 Ibid 15 Aidan Nichols O.P. Preface The Art of God Incarnate, Theology and Image in Christian Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980) pp 1 2 16 Ian Breward Conclusion Oxford History of the Christian Church, A History of the Church in Australasia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p 424 17 Geoffrey Thornton, Worship in the Wilderness, Early Country Churches of New Zealand (Auckland: Reed, 2003) p 10

religion of the English and European Christianity they had come from is attested to by the number of churches, and the imagery they house, built in the then harsh rural country areas of New Zealand. That the reception of these images and teachings within sacredly charged space, (which) provide(s) a complex symbolic arena within which social identities and forms of knowledge were displayed, negotiated and reproduced,18 is important is shown by the large number of churches. In the Christianity that came to New Zealand with missionaries, settlers, and pioneers, images of Christ were primarily in stained glass, alongside some sculptural and painted imagery. Stained glass windows were produced, and reproduced, primarily to teach the faithful.19 It was the religious art that showed gospel stories in times of few or no books, and limited literacy. Churches were the books of the layman.20 Eade and Sallnows idea of looking at a sacred site through the concepts of: person (Jesus Christ), text (the New Testament) and place (church), is a way to look at these devotional practices.21 The production and importation of this imagery would have been primarily under church control. The selection would have been used to support their agenda of bringing Christ and Christianity to the new land to teach the indigenous population and replicate the Euro-centric Christianity of the early pioneers. Thornton says the early settlers were such a mixed and diverse group that missionary work did not find initial acceptance, but this did not stop Christianity spread to all sectors of 1800s New Zealand.22 Maori had had contact with all the

18

Simon Coleman and John Elsner, The Pilgrims Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual Movement at Sinai World Archeology 26:1 (June 94) p 75 19 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 16 20 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and a Suspicious Church (chpt 3) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 27 21 John Eade, Michael Sallnow (eds) Contesting the Sacred, The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London, New York : Routledge, 1991) p 9 22 Geoffrey Thornton, Worship in the Wilderness, Early Country Churches of New Zealand (Auckland: Reed, 2003) p 9

denominations of Christian missionary. It was largely the power of learning the English language, and what it could do for them in terms of trade, that attracted Maori to the missionaries. This focus of the power of language rather than Christian belief did not alter the fact that, as Johnston writes:

the missionaries message held logical contradictions, for example, proclaiming one God but promoting a variety of competing denominations. Such intellectual doubts, combined with the inability of the missions to prevent widespread confiscation of land, led to a rejection of Pakeha Christianity and the establishment of new Maori versions of it23

In a book on one of the architects responsible for many of the churches we have both in cities and the country of New Zealand, there is an image of a seemingly freshly built church surrounded by recently felled trees. This house of God appearing to have been built alongside the first clearing of the land by settlers suggests the importance to, and the determination of, the settlers and missionaries to create theses vessels of their own faith to allow the teaching and ritual practices, that often centred around an image of Christ, to continue in the new land.(fig1)24 The, mostly British, early settlers still wanted to establish a familiar Church in their new homeland, but without the English connection to the state.25 Despite this desire to keep faith separate from politics, the political and ecclesiastical elites that developed in early New Zealand exercised power through shaping much of daily and most of ritual life of the colonists.26 Part of these elite was Samuel Marsdens Anglican Church
23

Alexa M Johnston,. Christianity in New Zealand Art (in) Headlands, Thinking Through New Zealand Art (ed) Marry Barr (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992) p 100 24 Susan Maclean, Architect of the Angels, The Churches of Frederick De Jersey Clere (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2003) p 54 25 Brian James Thomas, Christchurch Cathedral New Zealand (1946) p 31 26 Ian Breward Conclusion Oxford History of the Christian Church, A History of the Church in Australasia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p 424

Missionary Society (CSM), first arriving in New Zealand in 1814.27 This Evangelical Protestant form of Christianity was fairly iconoclastic, which was one reason for the paucity of imagery in early New Zealand Christianity. The CSM did establish a link between church and political control as that was an accepted part of the Anglican way.28 Anglicanism and politics were close in the old country, and continued to be as much as possible so in the new country. Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, and other forms of Christian missionary movements and church groups followed over the next 20 or so years. All added to the diversity of imagery, teaching and ritual practice in the denominational and sectarian Christian landscape of early New Zealand.29

British and European forms of Christianity made a huge impact on the early development of New Zealand; missionary contact with Maori also left a legacy. This legacy of a form of Christianity that was seen as fully Christian, but fully Maori was aided by Roman Catholic Christianity, which arrived some 20 years after Protestant Christianity. Davidson says that Catholicism was more icon and image centred, allowing a more syncretic Maori Christianity to form from elements of church controlled imported doctrine and imagery as well as indigenous Maori belief and imagery.30 These Maori Christianities produced their own systems and images. Johnston shows examples of Maori Christian imagery dating from 1890 and 1840 respectively. The first is a woven tukutuku image of a cross, the second is a Madonna

27

Allan Davidson Christianity in Aotearoa, A History of Church and Society in New Zealand (3rd ed) (Anglican Theological Education by Extension Unit) pp 1 - 5 28 Ibid pp 2 - 6 29 Ibid pp 7, 16, 50 30 Allan Davidson Christianity in Aoteroa, A History of Church and Society in New Zealand (3rd ed) (Anglican Theological Education by Extension Unit) pp 15 -16

and Christ Child in the style of a traditional tekoteko (carved figure). (fig2)31 The Maori Madonna and Christ Child can be seen as a unification of spiritualities and a way for Maori to make Christian imagery there own in the tumultuous time of contact with Christian missionaries and settlers. This is an early example of the production of an image of Christ which is fused with indigenous New Zealand art. The fact it was rejected as pagan by the church it was originally gifted to shows the time was not right for the reception of such a radical thing a Maori Christ image.32This appropriation of Christianity and its images and texts, and using them as a way of defining Maori spirituality as opposed to Pakeha Christianity is somewhat akin to The Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. The situation was different in early New Zealand; the wars over land were not to come until the 1860s, some 45 years after missionary contact, whereas in Mexico the missionaries came with the soldiers. For the indigenous population of Mexico, Harrington says Guadalupe was a way for them to wrest back some control of their world taken from them by Spain.33 Spanish decedents and peoples of mixed blood born in the New World aspired to create a new nation (Mexico) out of the colony of New Spain used Guadalupe as a symbol. Guadalupe, as a syncretic deity, was like them part Spanish and part Indian, and became a national symbol to unite people to the cause of nation building.34

31

Alexa Johnston, M. Christianity in New Zealand Art (in) Headlands, Thinking Through New Zealand Art (ed) Marry Barr (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992) p 100 32 Ibid p 100 33 Patricia Harrington Mother of Death, Mother of Rebirth: The Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56:1 (Spring,88) 26 34 Jeanette Favrot Peterson The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation? Art Journal 51:4 (Winter 92) 40

The 1830s and 1840s were a time of settler influx to New Zealand, and an unparalleled population movement from the old to the new world in general.35 This population change, the 1840 treaty of Waitangi, followed by the land wars of the 1860s; meant Maori and Pakeha continued to have divergent agendas for some long time to come, so too Maori and Pakeha Christianities.36 There was, however, always some cross over of ideas and imagery. Many years on from early contact between indigenous and colonial peoples, there has been a more explicit recognition of Maori Christian imagery. An example was the 1999 Maori Christian Art exhibition at the cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Wellington,37 which includes reference to the Maori Madonna and child carving. This exhibition also contained paintings by Julia B. Lynch (1896 1975), also known also as Sister Mary Lawrence. The paintings in the catalogue are of The Young Christ and The Risen Christ. In both works Christ is depicted as Maori,38 although they more resemble traditional stained glass window iconography and images of her time rather than anything as radical or un-Eurocentric as the carved Madonna and Child. These are some of the few depictions of a Maori Christ by a known artist in a catalogue, let alone in an ecclesiastical space like a cathedral. Another Maori Christ is a stained glass window, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in a Catholic Church in Waihi Village, Lake Taupo.39 Like Lynchs paintings this image also conforms to standard stained glass iconography, a haloed Christ looking full frontally out at the viewer, but with Maori features and colouring.

35

Paul Hudson, English Emigration to New Zealand, 1839 1850: Information Diffusion and Marketing a New World The Economic History Review, 54:4 (Nov, 01) pp 36 Allan Davidson Christianity in Aoteroa, A History of Church and Society in New Zealand (3rd ed) (Anglican Theological Education by Extension Unit) pp 16 - 18
37 38 39

Catalogue Maori Christian Art March 28 April 4 1999, Sacred Heart cathedral Wellington Marist Messenger (Aug: 07), inside cover

Stained glass windows were produced mostly as a way to teach the faithful.40 They are an art form that portrays the approved story of the life of Christ to church goers.41 The earliest British and European representations of Christ in New Zealand are primarily stained glass and some sculpture in churches, mostly dating from after the 1840s immigration surge. Many of the churches housing these images were rebuilt several times on the same site. Some of them retained original stained glass through phases of reconstruction; others have numerous artistic and architectural additions. The earliest windows were imports, presenting only values and images of the old world. One example is in the church of The Holy Passion in Amberley is Canterbury, New Zealand,
42

that replicates imagery found in windows in Canterbury Cathedral,

Kent, England.43 Much of this information comes from Fiona Ciarans extensive catalogue of the stained glass of Canterbury churches.44 According to Ciaran, the earliest stained glass windows installed in this part of New Zealand is a Guardian Angel, one of a series of windows put into the Barbados Street Cemetery Chapel in 1863.45 A later window in this series, The Risen Christ (fig3) was installed in 1868.46This Risen Christ image is one of the earliest dateable images of Christ still in existence in New Zealand. It is of a haloed, beared white man in three quarter profile. This is somewhat unusual as a full frontal representation with halo predominated at that time. The facing forward looking out style of Christ image common in that time was a way of depicting Christ that can be traced back to early Christianity. Temple
40

Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 16 41 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and a Suspicious Church (chpt 3) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 27 42 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 30 43 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 33 44 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) 45 Ibid p 29 46 Ibid p 89

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writes of The Sinai Christ, an icon painted in around AD 600.47 This icon is one of the earliest of its kind, and it influenced both Eastern icons and Western Christ images across many media, including stained glass. The Sinai Christ has the halo with cross that was one of the markers of Christs special holiness. This too dates from early in the Christian era, originating around AD 400 and persisting into Gothic art in the 18th and 19th centuries.48 It is only natural then that The Risen Christ in Canterbury should have this, as much early New Zealand imagery was Gothic Revival, a style popular in the mid 1800s. Another feature originating around 500 years after Christ, that has remained fairly consistent, was the depicting of Christ as bearded and long haired. Porter links this to the influence the bearded images of Christ in the acheiropoietic, or not man made images, of the Veil that Veronica used to wipe Christs face, the Mandylion, and the Shroud of Turin had on artists in early Christianity supplanting very early clean shaven Christ imagery.49 The Sinai image is not too dissimilar to many haloed Christs looking out at the viewer, a style which persists down the ages.

In a similar style to The Risen Christ, the Holy Trinity Church in Littleton has a large three panel window, The Risen Christ with St Peter, St Paul and St John the Baptist, c.1865.(fig4)50 These two windows and The Pieta in the church of The Holy Passion in Amberley, 1864 65 (fig5), 51 are in the Gothic Revival style. They draw from English and French influences and having essentially no New Zealand input.
47

Richard Temple The Sinai Christ (chpt 9) Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity (Dorset: Element Books, 1990) pp 92 93 48 J. R. Porter, Jesus in Art (chpt 5) Jesus Christ, The Jesus of History, The Christ of Faith (London: Duncan Baird. 1994) pp 208 209 49 J. R. Porter, Jesus in Art (chpt 5) Jesus Christ, The Jesus of History, The Christ of Faith (London: Duncan Baird. 1994) p 214 50 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 93 51 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 33

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These kinds of images in churches are traditionally illustrative of gospel stories, or are images of Christs celestial power.52 The Pieta is an image of Christ just taken down from the cross before he has risen. It is an image that teaches a piety of care for the suffering Christ, owing its inspiration to a traditional depiction of Christ, the Stations of the Cross.53 The Pieta in Canterbury, New Zealand, has some imagery in common with windows in Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, England.54 This demonstrates a link between the established imagery from the home countries and the imagery the church selected for churches in New Zealand. These images of Christ from the old countries would reinforce the link to the Christian traditions of Europe and England, maintaining a connection to, and spiritual authority from, the old world in the colonised new world of pioneer New Zealand. Also, all three windows were designed and made by London firms. There is a progression of different eras of imagery of Christ in early New Zealand stained glass, and church art, coming with the various denominations and waves of migration.55 In Canterbury, and New Zealand in general, these eras are initially Gothic Revival of the early churches, to Art and Crafts Movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the work of contemporary artists in both ecclesiastical and secular image production and display.56

St John the Evangelist church in the Canterbury area was built by a wealthy landowner to be the spiritual focus of the community he wanted to build for his
52

Heather Child, Dorothy Colles Christian Symbols, Ancient and Modern (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1971) p 64 53 Ibid p 74 54 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 30 55 Allan Davidson Christianity in Aoteroa, A History of Church and Society in New Zealand (3rd ed) (Anglican Theological Education by Extension Unit) pp 30 - 50 56 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) pp 23 - 41

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employees.57 Thornton writes of how John Cathcart Wason planted trees, made a town centre to create a functional village environment, while deliberately having the church as a main focus of the settlement, showing again how important a sacred space for ritual, worship, and, the teaching of Christianity through texts and images was to the early settlers.58 This small country church was finished in 1877, and consecrated in 1882. The main image of Christ is a stained glass window of Christ The Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd is a traditional image with a long history. It is an early Christian image of caring and salvation. Child and Colles write of it being one of a number of images found in one of the earliest known Christian churches, the church at Dura Europos dating from around AD 230.59 Early Good shepherd images were beardless, but became bearded as most Christ imagery did after around the middle of the first millennium. A church of a similar era to St John the Evangelist is St Michaels Anglican church in the Nelson region. It was originally built in 1842 by local land owners.60 The original was, Wells says one of the first Anglican churches in Nelson, and possibly the South Island.61 The second version, built in 1866 has a window of The Ascending Christ, with his upraised arms and attendant angles;62 this is similar to other Ascension images in Ciarans survey of windows in Canterbury churches.63 The St Michaels window was a later addition that was designed in New Zealand, but manufactured in England in the 1920s. It has some New Zealand inspiration in its iconography but is still a design and a physical product of the old
57

Geoffrey Thornton, Worship in the Wilderness, Early Country Churches of New Zealand (Auckland: Reed, 2003) p 118 58 Geoffrey Thornton, Worship in the Wilderness, Early Country Churches of New Zealand (Auckland: Reed, 2003) pp 118 119 59 Heather Child, Dorothy Colles Christian Symbols, Ancient and Modern (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1971) p 106 60 Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) p23 61 Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) p23 62 Heather Child, Dorothy Colles Christian Symbols, Ancient and Modern (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1971) p 81 63 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 214

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countries. There was some shift by this time to New Zealand design of images of Christ to be used in churches in New Zealand.

Wells writes of another church in the Nelson area and its imagery with a lifespan similar to St John the Evangelists and St Michaels. This is the Lutheran church of St John. This church contains a centrally placed crucifix that is unusual in having its head to the left, rather than the more traditional right. 64 Sculptural images like this are less prominent than stained glass windows in most church imagery. Carvings and metal work are often seen as a lesser art form, on the boundaries of craft art and fine art and as such tend not to be as written about as often as paintings and stained glass.65 Despite this fact, they are often central to altars, which are a main focus of ritual and teaching in Christian churches. Sculptural works are primarily crucifixes which generally portray Christ upon the cross, bearded slim and pain wracked. There are examples where a crucifix stained glass image, rather than a sculpture, is a central focus. One example is: the church of St John the Evangelist near Marton in the lower North Island,66 designed by Frederick de Jersey Clere, who was known as a builder of churches mostly in the North Island from the 1880s till near his death in 1952.67 The window is placed centrally behind the altar, or sanctuary end of the church, elevated and within an architectural structure that focuses the gaze upon the crucified Christ. As with many windows and sculptures, its placement suggests its power as much as the text it refers to, or the fact that it is an image of the person of Jesus Christ. Old
64 65

Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) pp 55 - 58 Mark, Stocker Angels and Roses, The art of Fredrick George Gurnsey (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1997) p 12 66 Geoffrey Thornton, Worship in the Wilderness, Early Country Churches of New Zealand (Auckland: Reed, 2003) pp 93 96 67 Susan Maclean, Architect of the Angels, The Churches of Frederick De Jersey Clere (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2003) pp 7 - 27

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Saint Pauls in Wellington also has a Christ Crucified window as its main focus in its sanctuary.68 The Crucifixion image of Christ is a traditional image. It dates from a medieval form of piety reflecting a relationship to Christ that focuses more on his suffering as his way to redeem humanity, than on the more caring, nurturing redemption of the Good Shepherd and The Ascending Christ imagery.69 Stained glass imagery of Christ has always been a central focus of the physical church in or near its central altar. This applies to the crucifix, whether sculptural or two dimensional, as well. Both are tangible markers of the sacred. They convey the idea that here is the place of Christ, the place to commune with the divine.

The crucifix, while present in the Anglican churches of Nelson, does not seem to be a central focus as it does in the Lutheran churches, and even more so in the Catholic churches. Troughton says the crucifix was a principle ornament in Catholic churches, and that this devotion to Jesus suffering was central to Catholic understanding of Christs message.70 In the Catholic approach to images of Christ an emphasis on the sacrifice and suffering of Christ, which was how he showed his love for humanity was taught. Revering depictions of the Crucifixion and similar imagery was seen as the correct way to engage with images of Christ. Another ubiquitous Catholic image is the Sacred Heart of Christ. This is an image where he bares the symbolic heart / cross / fire symbol on his chest, which represents the spirit of Christs love.71 The Sacred Heart image has been in New Zealand as long as Catholics have. Bishop Pompallier, celebrated the first Catholic mass in New Zealand in January
68 69

Inner cover, Heritage New Zealand 102 (Spring 06) Heather Child, Dorothy Colles Christian Symbols, Ancient and Modern (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1971) pp 74 75 70 Geoffrey Troughton, Jesus in New Zealand c. 1900 1940, Thesis (Massey University, 2007) pp 44 46 71 Geoffrey Troughton, Jesus in New Zealand c. 1900 1940, Thesis (Massey University, 2007) p 46

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1838. One panel of his travelling alter was a depiction of the Sacred Heart of Christ.72 The first Catholic church in Murchison, St Peter Chanels,73 has a picture of Jesus with the flaming Sacred Heart, next to a silver and wood crucifix atop a carved wooden alter, as its central focus.74 These and other artworks in the church of St Peter Chanels, such as a statue of Mary standing on a serpent, using her good to stop the spread of evil, show the more iconic and complex nature of Catholic imagery. The reception of Catholic imagery depended to a large extent upon being taught to read the images, to get the full message in them. This is more so in Catholic than Protestant imagery.75 The interplay between viewer and physical art work tends to be a more overt thing in a Catholic setting. Catholicisms richer iconographic tradition are a legacy of their long history reaching from the fall of Rome till around the 16th century and the rise of the more iconoclastic Protestant traditions.76Catholicisms more user friendly approach to imagery meant there was always more imagery of Christ in their early churches. This kataphatic tradition of Catholicism,77 the using of images as analogies to teach the faithful how to relate to Christ, holds to a large degree up to contemporary times.

Another church of a similar era to St Michaels and St Johns in the Nelson area is the Lutheran church of St Pauls. St Pauls has a crucifix centrally placed on its altar, this one with head to the right; it also contains a celebrated painted image of
72

Michael King, Gods Farthest Outpost, A History of Catholics in New Zealand (Aucklan: Viking, 1997) p 46 73 Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) pp 157 - 160 74 Ibid pp 159 - 160 75 Ibid pp 159 - 160 76 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and a Suspicious Church (chpt 3) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 27 77 Barbara Mujica, Beyond Image: The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Avila Hispania 84: 4 (Dec: 01) p 741

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Christ.78 The painting is the Crown of Thorns, 1875 by Gottfried Lindauer (1839 1926). Lindauer came to New Zealand in 1873 and is best known for his accurate renderings of Maori life in his time.79 Before coming to New Zealand he was a painter of religious themes for Catholic churches in Poland and Russia.80 His Crown of Thorns and his association with things Maori and New Zealand in general are a precursor of sorts to McCahon and Fomison in their associations of Christ with things native to New Zealand. The Crown of Thorns painting is akin to the harsher, piety of the Crucifixion. The Crown of Thorns is a treasured possession of the church, and was at one time a central image of devotion to parishioners. (fig6)81 The painting of the person of Christ in his suffering is an illustration of the telling of (a) gospel story,82 sited within the vessel of the sacred, a church. It is where worshiper and image come together. This way of looking at the person of Christ and the text it depicts to teach the viewer and the place it is shown are factors in the power accorded to Lindauers work,83 and as I will argue so to in The Light of the Worlds success as a religious icon. This work shows the idea that, producers of images often have specific agendas to promote through images of Christ, but that those messages are received in a variety ways some intended some not.

The Light of the World and 20th century stained glass.

78 79

Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) pp 59 - 64 Stewart Bell MacLennan, http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/L/LindauerGottfriedOrBohumir/LindauerGottfriedOrBohumir/en accessed 24 May 09 80 Bernard John Foster, http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/L/LindauerGottfriedOrBohumir/LindauerGottfriedOrBohumir/en accessed 24 May 09 81 Annette Wells, Nelsons Historic Country Churches (Nikau Press, 2003) pp 63 - 64 82 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 16 83 John Eade, Michael Sallnow (eds) Contesting the Sacred, The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London, New York : Routledge, 1991) p 9

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The Light of the Worlds message was intended to be both a religious, and a Durkheimian social unifier and moral regenerator84 from the Protestant home lands to the colonies.85 The Light of the World (fig7), and its subsequent use in stained glass windows, post cards, newspaper reproductions,86 etc is a good example of a Christ image of its time that was produced with a specific agenda, was received and responded to as intended by some, but not all. It shows how the teaching agenda of the work, and the ritual like viewing of it, helped create the sacredness accorded to it by many.87 It was an image that engendered social and religious identity negotiation akin to the process of contestation Eade and Sallnow describe for sacred spaces (which are often themselves vessels for sacred images). They say: the sacred powers of a shrine are constructed as varied and possibly conflicting representations by the different sectors of the cultic constituency as well as those outside it.88 The Light of the World had an effect on its intended constituency, as well as the culture in general, both as an artwork that toured New Zealand just over 100 years ago as well as reproductions that permeate the landscape of Christian imagery in New Zealand to the present day.

84

John Eade, Michael Sallnow (eds) Contesting the Sacred, The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London, New York : Routledge, 1991) p 3 85 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 5 86 Ibid p 12 87 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) pp 1-2 88 John Eade, Michael Sallnow (eds) Contesting the Sacred, The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London, New York : Routledge, 1991) p 5

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The painting was billed as both a masterwork of British, great art, and a sermon in oils.89 Holman Hunt was a Pre-Raphaelite painter, and the work had the idealisation and commitment to meaningful art that the Pre-Raphaelites espoused as being the only good art.90 This is akin to Romanticisms focus on the holy, or meaningful, in humanity and nature.91 Both idealised humanity and nature feature in the image. Others saw The Light of the World more as an example of mawkish piety,92 being too idealised. The image was legitimated before it arrived in New Zealand by both Ruskins famous letter to the Times lauding the work,93 and the idea of the time that British art was inherently superior.94 Keith writes of the 1906 07 Christchurch International Exhibition, where The Light of the World was exhibited for its longest stretch in New Zealand, as one of the markers of when the buying of primarily British art was cemented in the early gallery and museum culture of New Zealand.95 These artistic institutions, as The Light of the Worlds showing in halls and galleries demonstrated, would become places where images of Christ would be seen, almost as much as churches. Up until the mid to late1900s it was primarily British imagery like The Light of the World that was seen, until this dominance was challenged by New Zealand artists.

89

Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) pp 4, 10 90 Ibid p 2 91 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) pp 17 - 20 92 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 7 93 Mark Roskill Hollman Hunts Differing versions of the Light of the World Victorian Studies 6: 3 (Mar, 63) p235 94 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 4 95 Hamish Keith, The Big Picture, A History of New Zealand art from 1642 (Auckland: Random House, 2007) p 96

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The figure of Christ looks remarkably like the painter himself in the first two versions of The Light of the World, of 1851 - 53 and 1857.96 Consciously or unconsciously he seems to be making Christ in his own image. The paintings were spurred, in the first instance, by Hunts religious awakening or conversion,97 so it seems only natural he would place something of himself in his image. The third version that came to New Zealand seems to resemble the artist less than the first two. This last version of the work, produced near the end of the artists life, was made more to be accessible to the public at large, rather than as a statement of personal piety. This is possibly why it resembles the artist less than the first two paintings. Christ was still depicted as white, bearded, and radiant, a perfect human male, idealised, and marked as divine in many ways. The Christ in this image is haloed, robed, emanating divine light and love. The Light of the World was a visual presentation of a human Christ, but still an idealised Christ, not to dissimilar to the beatific risen Christs of earlier stained glass windows.98 Temple says external sources of light represent the inner / divine light, a concept so taken for granted that it is more a visual clich or convention than an emblem of divinity.99 Light and light sources were often used to indicate the grace of divinity in Christian artwork.100 This seems to be the case in Hunts work. The lamp and the glow it casts as the Christ figure knocks on the door of the human is integral to the image.

96

Mark Roskill Hollman Hunts Differing versions of the Light of the World Victorian Studies 6: 3 (Mar, 63) fig1 and fig2 97 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 2 98 Mark Roskill Hollman Hunts Differing versions of the Light of the World Victorian Studies 6: 3 (Mar, 63) p 238 99 Richard Temple The Sinai Mother of God: an Image of Celestial Light and Spiritual War (chpt 10) Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity (Dorset: Element Books, 1990) pp 98 - 99 100 Alexa M. Johnston God talk McCahon and Theology (in) Colin McCahon, Gates and Journeys (Auckland: Academy Press, 1988) pp 64 - 65

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This image was of a Christ freed somewhat of tradition, but still linked to scriptural legitimacy.101 The painting drew its imagery from Revelation 3:20, so its textual link was obvious to the faithful.102 As well as this teaching of scripture, it was intended to be of a personal Jesus for all individuals. This appealed to the largely protestant Christianity of New Zealand, with its focus on individual religious experience, rather than on the communal worship within a vessel like a church.103 Protestant piety was more centred on individuals relationship to Christ, so this kind of human Christ of The Light of the World appealed more to Protestant Christians.104 A communal form of worship would have been more the norm in settler times amongst most believers. Amongst the Catholic form of Christianity in the early 1900s, communal worship would still have been the norm as communal piety was emphasised in Catholicism. The human Christ or Son of Man fitted the trends of humanism and Darwinianism at the time, with its focus on individual knowing and individual relating to the world.105 OGrady says the changes and loosening of social bonds in the secularisation and industrialisation of the 19th and 20th centuries led artists to depict a Christ who the people could identify with, a human Christ.106 This Jesus, as manifested in Hunts image, was no pioneer, nor social reformer, nor Christ on the cross suffering for humanity, but a gentle, pleading saviour seeking redemption and reconciliation in the domain of the middle class.107 Early 1900s New Zealand was a
101

Stephen Prohero, American Jesus, How the Son of God Became a National Icon, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) pp 11 -13 102 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) pp 10 - 11 103 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 11 104 Ian Breward ConclusionOxford History of the Christian Church, A History of the Church in Australasia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p 425 105 Stephen Prohero, American Jesus, How the Son of God Became a National Icon, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) pp 11 -13 106 Ron OGrady (ed) Christ for All People, Celebrating a World of Christian Art. (Auckland: Pace, 2001) p 25 107 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 8

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time of change, secularisation, urbanisation, industrialisation and more immigration.108 There was a rise in white collar work, and a reorganising of blue collar labouring and farming work.109 The rise of a middle class would certainly allow more people the leisure to go to an art exhibition for their religion, rather than just to churches. The early settlers would likely have only had time to go to churches, and even then most likely only on Sundays and special events, given the rigours of the pioneer life. Going to see The Light of the World, which came to colonial New Zealand from the mother country like a prophet, was akin to a pilgrimage for many.110 Viewing such an image in galleries and halls was for most in some way a religious experience. Of the comments recorded from the New Zealand tour, many are of religious and spiritual uplift, showing its power as a piece of material piety.111

The sentimental piety of this image and the largely positive reception it received gave it great power and mystique as an icon. Dianna Hollman Hunt describes her grandfathers work as the Protestant icon ... (e)ven during the Second World War. (B)ut Van Goghs Sunflowers had taken over in the thirties (from The Light of the World as) the most popular picture in the world after the Mona Lisa.112 Not everyone perceived the work and its message in such a rapturous manner in New Zealand. Most notably Wellington did not receive the religious mission of the tour

108

Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) pp 15 18 109 Errik Olsen, Tom Brooking, Brian Heenan, Hamish James, Bruce McLennan, Clyde Griffen Urban Society and the Opportunity Structure in New Zealand, 1902-22: The Caversham Project Social History 24:1 (Jan, 99) pp 40 - 43 110 David Freedberg, Image and Pilgrimage Chpt 6 (in) The Power of Images, Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989) p 92 111 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) pp 6 - 11 112 Dianna Hollman Hunt Introduction Anne Clark Amor William Hollman Hunt, The True Pre Raphaelite, (London: Constable, 1989) p 8

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as well as other centres did. Wellington was regarded even in 1906 as a more secular city than most in New Zealand.113 Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin recorded huge attendance rates at its showings in halls and galleries.114 This diversity of response showed the relaxed attitude to religious practice in New Zealand of the 1900s.115 The veneration accorded the painting, despite the fact that not everybody saw it as an image of piety, showed that Jesus still had a central place in the culture of the time.116 Jesus was still an important focus for: popular religious sentiment and a locus of moral authority. Jesus was upheld as the archetype and symbol of true religion, and represented societys yearning for all that was noble and true.117 This dynamic seems to have played out in The Light of the Worlds time in New Zealand, as Morgan says images teach and shape the thinking and feeling of those who use them by giving visual presence to the institutional structures that configure the public and private worlds in which they live.118 Reception theory puts meaning making in the hands of the audiences interpretation, rather than the creators intention.119 Both the intention of the maker and reception of an audience still largely culturally Christian, is important in an image like The Light of the World. Troughton citing Colleen McDannell in reference to the tour of Light of the World says Protestant religiosity utilises material culture, despite its theologically ambivalent attitude toward it.120 The work was seen by its owner and the funder of tour, Charles Booth (1840 1916), and

113

Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 6 114 Ibid p 3 115 Ibid p 12 116 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 12 117 Ibid p 7 118 David Morgan, Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman Religion and American Culture 3:1 (Winter, 93) p 30 119 Jack Ayers Reception Theory, Literacy Theory Dr. David Jolliffe http://jolliffereadingtheory.blogspot.com/2009/05/reception-theory.html Accessed 04 July 09 120 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 2

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in much of the commentary on it its reception in New Zealand, as the exemplar of British Protestantism that Hunt intended to be.121

The legacy of The Light of the World was seen then, and still to a degree today, in reproduction. Its popularity both in its homeland and New Zealand meant it was widely reproduced in England and here in New Zealand.122 It is found within church culture as stained glass windows. In stained glass, Ciarans catalogue lists seventeen windows based on The Light of the World image.123 A number of these pair The Light of the World image and The Good Shepherd image as windows, many being memorials to dead soldiers.124 The Good Shepherd images, she says were based on various different artists interpretations of this traditional image.125 These were mostly from catalogues, mass produced images from England, Europe and Australia, and later from studios in New Zealand. One of these paired Christ images is listed as the first New Zealand made window installed in Canterbury c.1897-98.126 The Light of the World of this pair would have been based on one of the two previous versions of the painting, rather than the image that toured New Zealand.127 Churches in the North Island, in Auckland and Cambridge had Light of the World windows installed from the late 1920s onwards.128 After World War One there was a general rise in the use of this image, alongside a rise in memorial windows.129 Ciaran says that the function of
121 122

Ibid pp 4 -5 Mike Harding, A little Book of Stained Glass (London: Atrum Press, 1998) p 30 123 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 12 124 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) pp 22, 35 125 Ibid p 22 126 Ibid p35 127 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 12 128 Ibid p 12 129 Ibid p 12

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the windows in Canterbury, and nation wide, were commemorative as much as devotional and educational.130 Images of Jesus Christ used to commemorate fallen heroes, founding fathers, wealthy patrons, etc, are a strong statement.131 This commemorative function adds to the layers of meaning. In the space where such images are viewed, there is the acknowledgement of the hurts of war as well as the layers of tradition of the window form, the iconography of Christ, and any text or moral the image may be teaching.

The Light of the World became one of the most recognisable, widely spread, and deeply entrenched images in New Zealand religious material culture in its day.132 The power of reproduction is important in reception of images of Christ in the modern age, as it allows for mass dissemination of images and their messages. It allows them a life within ecclesiastical and secular worlds that pure original ecclesiastical art does not have. Ernest Sheas postcards were a good example of this. They were widely sold and allowed the image to enter private houses, shops, etc. Major newspapers Like the Canterbury Times printed reproductions of the painting for mass consumption.133 Brubaker writes that: although the sacred is culturally defined, the participation of the audience creates its layers of meaning.134 The Light of the World had the Christian symbology and multi layered connotations to its viewers that created a

130

Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 22 131 Michael W Jennings,. Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y Levin,. (eds) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media (Massachusetts, London: Belknap Press, 2008) p 15 132 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) p 11 133 Ibid p 11 134 Leslie Brubaker, Conclusion, Image, Audience, and Place: Interaction and Reproduction (chpt) 11( eds) Robert Ousterhout, Leslie Brubaker, The Sacred Image East and West (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) p 205

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sacredly charged image. This image had a large impact on its many of its viewers.135 Colleen McDannell writes of the need to look at the production, distribution, and use of material religious culture to understand religious practice and meaning making.136 This is the crush zone of the tectonic plates of individuals, culture, religion and images. As well as in stained glass, The Light of the World would have been found in Sunday school images, postcards, and prints. To this day these reproductions can be found in churches as framed prints, reredos panels, as well as stained glass windows.137 It is perhaps less known as a Protestant icon, a gentle humanist saviour, that toured New Zealand in the early 20th century and more like the next example, Sallmans Head of Christ, as an overseas made, image with a message, amongst many found in churches of all denominations in New Zealand.

Head of Christ, Protestant imagery and ideology.

Of American origin, the image of the Head of Christ, 1940 (fig8) by Warner Sallman is an iconic image of Christ that can be found in churches, religious institutions, and homes in New Zealand. It is found not quite to the same extent as in the United States, but nonetheless it is a mass produced image of Christ that has a presence in many contexts. Like The Light of the World, the Head of Christ is said to have a quality that gives the beholder an immediate experience of Christ, 138 it is said
135

Simon Coleman and John Elsner, The Pilgrims Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual Movement at Sinai, World Archeology 26:1 (June 94) p 75 136 Robert A.Orsi, George Marsden, David W. Wills, Colleen McDannell Forum: The Decade Ahead in Scholarship Religion and American Culture 3:1 (Winter, 93) pp 24 , 27 137 Geoffrey Troughton. The Light of the World At the end of the World, 1906 The Journal of New Zealand Art History 28 (2007) pp 11 12 138 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) p 34

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to resemble the real Jesus. It is an image responded to as iconic, both personally and in its teaching capacity, by many Christians. The Head of Christ, along with images like The Light of the World, and the Catholic Sacred Heart of Christ are images that have teaching aspects, inspire reverence, and cross boundaries, to Christians of all kind, and Western culture in general.139 The plural sectarian nature of Christianity in New Zealand made this crossing of boundaries easier than it may have been in cultures where one form of Christianity dominates. 140 Also, modern mass production made it possible for both believers and the ambient culture to own texts and images of Christ by this time.141 Images of Christ had become more accessible to all, and not just in the teaching and ritual spaces of the church. The images teach the faithful, as much as the beholders project their ideas onto the images. In the general culture, even the most atheistic person has a reaction of some kind to images of Christ. Freedberg says an image has power derived from its relations with those who behold (gaze) at them.142 The power attributed to the Head of Christ has lead to it being: placed in the sanctuary of Protestant churches, (as it) is so highly regarded as a compelling portrait of Jesus.143 Predominantly Protestant New Zealand has prints of the Head of Christ in its Christian material culture. One of these being a large framed reproduction of the Head of Christ is, opposite the sanctuary in the CCCS church, Newtown, Wellington.144 In this church it is not quite as central as the American example but it hangs prominently over the entry way, being the last thing seen as worshipers file out

139

Nicholas Lobkowicz, Christianity and Culture The Review of Politics 53:2 (Spring, 91) pp 373 389 140 Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) p 9 141 Ibid p 9 142 David Freedberg (in) David Freedberg, Oleg Grabar, Anne Higonnet ,Cecelia F. Klein, Lisa Tickner, Anthony Vidler The Object of Art History The Art Bulletin 76:3 (Sept, 94) pp 394 / 395 143 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) p32 144 Betty Kathleen Duncan, A Hierachy of Symbols: Samoan Religious Symbolism in New Zealand, thesis (University of Otago, 1994)

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in a heightened state after a church service. This would guarantee a strong reaction to, and connection with the image for the congregation of this church.

Morgan says that this image does not offend protestant iconoclastic sensibilities in that it is a highly legible image that conveys an essence of Christ, and what it is to be a Protestant American, which should inspire all to follow its example.145 It is an image of what was central to the American Protestant life of its time, a primarily middle - class private affirmation of the everyday Jesus who should be central to Christian life.146 This is akin to The Light of the World imparting a British ideal of Protestant piety some half a century previously. America had become as important, if not more so, on the world stage over the time between the two images. Prothero writes of the rise of Jesus in the 19th and 20th centuries as the central icon and focus of veneration in American Protestant Christianity.147 In a way similar to The Light of the World, Head of Christ showed and taught a Jesus focused, American, Protestantism to the rest of the world. Despite the Protestant focus on text and suspicion of icons as artefacts of Catholicism and Eastern Christianity, the Head of Christ was seen as an acceptable image. An Eastern or Catholic icon traditionally mediated between the human and sacred worlds; it was seen as transparent.148 Miles describes this transparent translation, using unique religious art works, from mortal to spiritual worlds, as being primarily a way of describing humanities relationship to God

145

David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) pp 40 - 41 146 Ibid pp 32 -33 147 Stephen Prohero, American Jesus, How the Son of God Became a National Icon, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) pp 80 82 148 Leslie Brubaker, Introduction, The Sacred Image (chpt) 1(eds) Robert Ousterhout, Leslie Brubaker, The Sacred Image East and West (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) p 4

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through Christ. 149 In contemporary times of mass produced images, of which the Head of Christ is an example, it is as much the viewers knowledge of what came before and what will come after as any traditionally taught function of the image that affects how it is read.150 The fact that this image has a nearly 70 year history of reception and reproduction, allows it to be both a part of Christian culture and the general culture with connotations from both. Mass production and dissemination allow both of these aspects of the image.

Detractors of the Head of Christ had similar objections as there had been to The Light of the World, that it was too sentimental, sweet, and un-manly.151 In its teaching function, Head of Christ is an image like Hunts that is seen as compassionate, romantic, somewhat feminie and slightly suspect to some. Despite this it is seen as manly in by enough Christians (men) to be acceptable to most.152 Morgan writes that, the majority of male Christians see the Head of Christ as: a Jesus who is both manly and accessible.153 This suspicion of the softer Jesus, Morgan calls a rejection of the domestic Christianity of Women.154 The fact that the image has this connotation of intimacy and inclusion, of the feminine and the domestic, maybe one reason the image is so widely accepted. As well as gender barriers, the Head of Christ also
149

Margaret R. Miles, from Image (in) S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 64 - 65 150 Ibid pp 64 - 65 151 David Morgan, from Would Jesus have sat for a Portrait? The Likeness of Christ in the Popular Reception of Sallmans Art (in) S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 82 - 84 152 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) pp 34 - 35 153 David Morgan, from Would Jesus have sat for a Portrait? The Likeness of Christ in the Popular Reception of Sallmans Art (in) S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) p 86 154 Ibid p 85

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transcends denominational and Catholic Protestant boundaries to some extent. Troughton says that the centrality of Jesus Christ to Christianity has been used to endeavour to unify Protestant sectarianism, and Protestant and Catholic differences.155 An example of this denominational boundary crossing is in the soup kitchen run by the Catholic order of The Sisters of Mercy in Wellington which has a print of the Head of Christ on its walls. Sallmans work in its mass production and dissemination as a print is as ubiquitous as the Catholic Sacred Heart of Christ image, which is also to be found in the Catholic institution of the Sisters soup kitchen.

Other boundaries this image transcends are those of the categories of uniqueness and genius that art history usually relies on.156 Sallmans work is unknown to the art elite, but there are over 500 million reproductions of the Head of Christ as objects of devotion in churches and homes world wide.157 Morgan talks of images creating a sacred space in the secular world of the home of ordinary everyday believers, and how this appeals to Protestant individual and family focus.158 He says it is an example of a low art, mass produced image that has an enduring life and influence due to its reception and the response of those who use this image for supplication, veneration, and the other ritual uses it is put to by believers.159 It does not have the aura of the unique work of art Benjamin wrote of. Benjamin did, however, say that while mass producing images does dissipate their unique aura; it can also substitute a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the
155 156

Geoffrey Troughton, Jesus in New Zealand c. 1900 1940, Thesis (Massey University, 2007) p 13 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) P 31 157 Ibid P 31 158 David Morgan, Domestic Devotion and Ritual: Visual Piety in the Modern American Home Art Journal 57:1 (Spring, 98) pp 45 - 47 159 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) P 29

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recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced.160 The power of a reproduction of popular religious imagery does not lie in its original intent, according to Morgan; it is the subsequent reception and patterns of response.161 It is the reception of the produced image, as being in effect the real Jesus Christ: an image of Protestant Christianity within the church, but available to all, which is one reason it stays so potent.

Jason Knapp, writing about the collection of Sallmans work that Anderson University and Warner Press maintain, says that in his first year as curator of this collection, he was astonished by the number of requests from individuals and groups wanting to view works. He also notes how many requests were phrased in the language of a pilgrimage.162 A Christian pilgrimage site is a place that has a link to the divine, in the form of a miracle, a relic, or an image. It is a place of mediation, where the earthly, ordinary realm meets the heavenly, divine realm. 163 Freedberg writes of the miracles that images believers make pilgrimages to, are said to perform.164 The images can be copies, as the Schone Maria at Regensburg which he uses as an example of this aura of power that copies can contain. Not only was this pilgrimage image a copy of an original, but it spawned many thousands of pilgrimage badges, small reproductions of the copy that were said to have some of the power of

160

Michael W Jennings,. Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y Levin,. (eds) Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media (Massachusetts, London: Belknap Press, 2008) p 22 161 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) p 29 162 Jason Knapp, MFA Warner Sallman Collection http://www.Warnersallman.com/ accessed 24 May 2009 163 Alan Morinis (ed) Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Connecticut, London: Greenwood press, 1992) 5 164 David Freedberg, Image and Pilgrimage Chpt 6 (in) The Power of Images, Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989) p100

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the original. 165 The Head of Christ has a similar life, as the huge number of reproductions attest to. Morgan records numbers of instances of the images power to protect and comfort travelling Christians and intercede for believers with Christ. 166 The enduring comforting power of this image is seen in a 1994 National Geographic image of a flood survivor in America clutching a print of the Head of Christ as a prized possession saved and as a source of comfort and strength in a time of disaster.167 Morgan also notes the image was (and still is) used to teach Christian children how to relate to Christ. As an image of the real, American Protestant, Jesus, it was seen as an acceptable peadagogical aid in Sunday Schools.168

A ramification of New Zealands sectarian Christianity was the 1877 Education Act that made schooling secular, to avoid conflict over which form of Christianity was the correct one to teach children.169 Teaching children how to be Christians was still seen as important in the changing religious and political landscape of the 1930s and 40s, where there was a fear Christianity was loosing its importance in society.170 Teaching through Sunday school used much American teaching material. The teaching material contained: bible lesson pictures in which reproductions of Sallmans work featured strongly. This is another way this protestant Christ imagery would have been disseminated in New Zealand. Breward says that Protestant Christianity was highly involved in Sunday school teaching up till the 1960s in New

165

David Freedberg, Image and Pilgrimage Chpt 6 (in) The Power of Images, Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989) p103 166 David Morgan, Domestic Devotion and Ritual:Visual Piety in the Modern American Home Art Journal 57: 1 (Spring 98) p 47 167 Riding Out the Worst of Times National Geographic 185: 1 (Jan 94) p 86 168 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) p 34 169 Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) p 10 170 Geoffrey Troughton, Jesus in New Zealand c. 1900 1940, Thesis (Massey University, 2007) p 5

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Zealand.171 The American bible lessons went to Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other commonwealth countries according to Morgan.172. Morgan also points out that the Salvation Army; a bastion of conservative Protestantism used Sallmans imagery regularly on the cover of their main publication The War Cry, and doubtless in their teaching material as well.173

The Catholic cathedral of the Sacred Heart, in Wellington, has a set of paintings depicting the Stations of the Cross. The Stations are a journey through the Passion of Christ; the representations of it facilitate a close relating to it in the beholders reception.174 Despite being Catholic, the paintings in the cathedral of the Sacred Heart seem remarkably similar to Sallman in they way they are painted and their depictions of the Caucasian Christ.175 They are also similar to the Stations of the Cross painted by Julia B. Lynch, originally for a church in Wellington, which now reside in the Good Shepherd Theological College, Auckland.176 Both these depict the bearded, slim, beatific Caucasian Jesus, both have imagery that could be equally at home in the Protestant inspired work of Sallman. Another depiction of The Stations, in the traditional medium of low relief carved panels, 1926 27, by Frederick George Gurnsey (1868 1953), shows Christ in a three dimensional form. Despite having been made 13 or 14 years before Sallmans painting they bare a remarkable
171

Ian Breward ConclusionOxford History of the Christian Church, A History of the Church in Australasia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p 425 172 David Morgan, The Lure of Images, A History of Religion and Visual Media in America ( London, New York: Routledge, 2007) p 94 173 David Morgan Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman, Religion and American Culture, 3: 1 (Winter, 93) p 36 174 George Cyprian Alston, The Way of the Cross The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 15 (New York: Robert Appelton Company, 1912) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15569a.htm accessed 24 May 2009 175 Michael King, Gods Farthest Outpost, A History of Catholics in New Zealand (Aucklan: Viking, 1997) pp 152 -153 176 Julia Lynch Good Shepherd Theological College, http://www.gsc.ac.nz/lynch.htm accessed 25 May 09

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resemblance to Sallmans imagery.177 This and the two previous examples show the commonality of iconography of Christ in the traditional Stations format. All these images are culturally of Western Christianity. This Christ imagery is definitely of a white man, not an Eastern icon Christ, nor a Maori or Polynesian Christ. They are embodiments of how Christ was seen in the time they were made, as well as being images made to explicitly teach of Christs passion. Like the Head of Christ they are histories of their time as much as a pedagogical tool. The time and context of the viewer and the maker are embedded in the image. The visual cultural approach that tries to look at both sides of an image, its production and its reception apply to these sallmanesque stations.178 The preconceptions of the viewer will colour the meaning taken from the viewing, as much as the image influences the viewers experience itself. This dialectical process can feed back into contemporary image making, which embodies the past in the time of its production, as will be seen in more contemporary artists use of such traditional forms and ideas as the Stations.

Images like the Stations and Head of Christ show interplay of internal personal and socially culturally valued ideas in the presence of an image.179 The space between meaning and physical art works is the zone Coleman and Elsner call the the recursive relationship between material culture and religious experience,180 and as a theology fixed in a space. This relationship between internal, social and textual realities is a big part of the more traditional imagery of Christ in early New Zealand, and the fairly
177

Mark, Stocker Angels and Roses, The art of Fredrick George Gurnsey (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1997) pp 33 - 34 178 S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 54 - 55 179 Alan Morinis (ed) Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Connecticut, London: Greenwood press, 1992) 4 - 6 180 Simon Coleman and John Elsner, The Pilgrims Progress: Art, Architecture and ritual movement at Sinai, World Archaeology 26:1 Archaeology of Pilgrimage (June 1994) 73

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explicit teaching functions of them. Artists of the mid to late 20th and early 21st centuries in New Zealand tended to express private conviction, and take Christ into their personal space and image use. As images of Christ moved into the fine art world and fine artist moved into the ecclesiastical world, what was being taught, commemorated, and the forms of ritual around these images continued to diversify and multiply, in the artists taking Christ imagery into their personal, internal journeys and out of the more collective spaces of the church. This is very much the mindscape idea, the internal sacred space that is visited when relating to, or imagining, a scared image as an alternative to a physical visit in the material world to see an image.181 Hegel writes that most of what is valuable in Western art and culture comes from Christianity, but that Christianity is superfluous in any thing other than expression of mere private conviction in the modern world.182 In light of this appraisal of the place of things Christian, OGrady says the role of the Christian artist is to challenge, expand, and refresh the churchs ecclesiastical views.183 This challenge to church based imagery, within the multi - culturalism, pluralism and secularism of New Zealand culture, was a fertile ground for images of Jesus Christ to move into the sphere of fine art.

McCahon and Fomison: the search for a New Zealand Christ in modern art.

181

Alan Morinis (ed) Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Connecticut, London: Greenwood press, 1992) 4 - 6 182 Nicholas Lobkowicz, Christianity and Culture The Review of Politics 53:2 (Spring, 91) p 377 183 Ron OGrady (ed) Christ for All People, Celebrating a World of Christian Art. (Auckland: Pace, 2001) p 26

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The personal quest using traditional Christian and modern New Zealand imagery, seem to be the zone where images of Christ in New Zealand were in the mid to late 20th century. A quest orientation to religion is seen by Bateson as an open minded searching for meaning.184 Kojetin et al. say it is more an effect of personal distress over religious questions.185 Both of these apply to a number of artists from around the 1950s. This seeking, informed by a Modernist perspective of optimism in human progress,186 was the teritory that Colin McCahon, a pivotal figure in that he is one of the first fine arts practitioners in New Zealand to put Jesus in a New Zealand landscape, worked in. McCahons work also helped move the production and reception of images of Jesus Christ from ecclesiastical control to the realm of the individual artist, and into galleries rather than churches. As fewer churches were being built in the early 20th century, and new stained glass windows less common, windows were no longer so pre-eminent in depicting Christ. As complete church environment making was less, works going into existing churches and works in other formats like paintings became more common. Fomision even more than McCahon moved images of Christ in New Zealand into paint and from church to gallery.

Despite McCahons personal exploration of his religious and spiritual beliefs in his daily life through his art, Hunter says the commission for a set of windows for the Convent Chapel of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Auckland was of great importance to him.187 She says that he saw that this art work was for an audience
184

Brian A. Kojetin, Danny N. McIntosh, Robert A. Bridges, Bernard Spilka, Quest: Constructive Search or religious Conflict? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26: 1 (Mar, 87) pp 111 - 112 185 Ibid pp 111 - 112 186 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art in a Post-Modern Age (chpt 1) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p5 187 Alexa M. Johnston Christianity in New Zealand Art (in) (ed) Marry Barr Headlands, Thinking Through New Zealand Art, (Sydney: museum of contemporary art, 1992) p 105

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with the requisite knowledge to recognise and respond to the religious symbols in his work.188 This shows how important the reception of his Christian message was to McCahon, and awareness on the artists part of how an audiences prior learning affects the message they receive from an image. This desire for people to understand his imagery was a constant quest it would seem. The artists son William writes that his father:

sought to engage his public in a visual dialogue about himself and his relationship with God. His paintings reflected a commited Christian perspective and his entire oeuvre is the narrative of his life of spiritual and emotional discovery.189

Ian Wedde sounds a note of caution, asking was McCahon wrestling with religious faith, or is it just that such things as faith are more openly discussed now? 190 Poetry, music, and art are often used in the way faith, religion, and spirituality traditionally have been by more secular people. This brings up the debate of is an artist truly a spiritual seeker, or is the art world trying to find something trendy in their work.191 Both are probably true. In asking how religious was McCahon?,192 Johnston, rather than debating the issue says looking at McCahons work in light of theology shows The artists faith in Christs historical and continuing example of what it is to be the best human one can be.193 This humanistic type Christ is central in
188 189

Ibid p 105 Marja Bloem, Martin Browne, Colin McCahon, a Question of Faith (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, Craig Potton Publishing, 2002) p 29 190 Ian Wedde McChaon, A Question of Faith Making Ends meet, Essays and talks 1992 2004 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005) pp 295 - 296 191 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 16 192 Alexa M. Johnston God talk McCahon and Theology (in) Colin McCahon, Gates and Journeys (Auckland: Academy Press, 1988) p 57 193 Ibid p 61

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much of his imagery. Maybe it follows on from the humanistic Protestant Christ of The Light of the World and the Head of Christ, merely being updated by McChaon for the times he found himself in. Maybe images of Christ served to enable him to best show the thoughts and emotions he sought to express. In an interview in 1980 (7 years before he died), he said that he was painting beauty and serenity, that he was painting Christ.194 Much like Vincent Van Goghs desire to be a missionary before he turned to art,195 McCahon had originally wanted to be an evangelist. This suggests that no mater how much of his art was pure self expression, McCahon had a religious / spiritual nature he explored, and sought to expressed.196 Yule writes of McCahon in terms of a prophetic, evangelistic artist producing a spiritual and artistic answer to the secularity of New Zealand culture of the mid to late 20th century, whose message was perhaps not received as the artist intended.197 These again show that a message may be interpreted by its audience in ways the producer did not necessarily intend and that we may not necessarily know the artists intention fully. A prophet creates newness from, and challenges, the established order. Johnston, writing of Brueggemanns ideas of a prophets role in a modern society says a prophet: challenges public certainty with a personal drive for a deeper, more spiritual, reality.198 In this way McChaon could be said to be the prophet many have called him.

194

Murry Ball, I Am (in) Marja Bloem, Martin Browne, Colin McCahon, a Question of Faith (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, Craig Potton Publishing, 2002) p 50 195 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 20 196 Murry Ball, I Am (in) Marja Bloem, Martin Browne, Colin McCahon, a Question of Faith (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, Craig Potton Publishing, 2002) p 46 197 Rob Yule, How the light gets in, The Christian art of Colin McCahon Chrysalis Seed Arts 31 (Oct 08) pp 16 19 198 Derek Johnston, Walter Brueggemann and the Biblical Imagination (chpt 15) (in) A Brief History of Theology, From the New Testament to Feminist Theology (London. New York: Continuum, 2008) p 258

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McCahons religious paintings were first shown seven years after Sallmans work was produced in 1947.199 Three of the works from that time specifically of Christ in a New Zealand setting are: Crucifixion (for Rodney Kennedy) (fig9), with its lamp that seems to reference The Light of the Worlds lamp, as much as Christs divinity grace, or inner radience. Another is Crucifixion according to St Mark (fig10), which has Christ in a very New Zealand landscape. Finally Crucifixion with Lamp (fig11). Keith talks of these works as: both shifting the focus from British Landscape art which had been the preeminent scenic art in colonial New Zealand to a New Zealand landscape, and that landscape as providing a backdrop for biblical stories and a context to rest the Pakeha imagination (in).200 As Panoho says, in reference primarily to the work Crucifixion the apple branch (fig12) of 1950 with its depiction of the family in differing locations looking for guidance and strength, but also McCahons work in general, raises the issue of our profound (human) need to engage with Christs claim to divine right over our lives.201 This was a Christ in a New Zealand setting, designed and created by a New Zealander to fulfil an agenda both personal and cultural, but received in its time with less understanding than the artist seemed to have desired. Unlike the familiar structure of church iconography and imagery, paintings in the art arena were able to be interpreted in various ways by many different sectors of society. This diversity of interpretation in differing contexts applies to McCahons religious imagery.

199

Peter Simson, Answering Hark, McCahon / Caselberg, Painter / Poet (Craig Potton Publishing, 2001) p 12 200 Hamish Keith, The Big Picture, A History of New Zealand art from 1642 (Auckland: Random House, 2007) pp 156 157, 167 - 172 201 Anaru / Andrew Panoho Two exhibitions one people CS Arts 31 (Oct 08) p 29

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In the process of looking back on artists from the present to try and determine what they were trying to say there is room for interpretation. As most of the artists and their commissioners, especially in the 19th and early 20th century are dead, there is necessarily an element of guess work in figuring out why images were produced as they were. What the reception was can be ascertained to a greater degree, but is can still be obscure. The complexity of a local artist, rather than the more anonymous and traditional stained glass window making firms from America, Britain, or Europe, creating an art work for a church is illustrated also by Bill Suttons Transfiguration of Christ 1979. This window was designed for the Northern transept in the Anglican cathedral of Christchurch. There was dispute over, and changes made by the artist to the depiction of the face of Christ.202 The conflict of donor, church, and artists visions led Sutton to describe the process as one of the best commissions an artist could get, but one of his biggest disappointments.203 This difference between the various parties desires and agendas during a process like this shows the complexity of the process a seemingly simple request like creating a window depicting Christs image, to commemorate a member of the donors family, can be. The artists and donor had differing ideas about imagery in this case, showing how important agreed ideas of what imagery to use is. This is akin to McCahons desire for his work to be seen in as much a theological, as an art world context, typified by his pleasure at creating a work that went into a church environment where people should be able to relate to the work from a shared set of ideas.204 Again, it is debatable that this was the outcome, but shared Christian knowledge which itself would have come from traditional images

202

Colin Brown Vision and Reality, Christchurchs Cathedral in the Square (Christchurch: Christchurch cathedral chapter, 2000) pp 125 130 203 Ibid p 130 204 Alexa M. Johnston Christianity in New Zealand Art (in) (ed) Marry Barr Headlands, Thinking Through New Zealand Art, (Sydney: museum of contemporary art, 1992) p 105

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and writings, should make the secular art of McCahon and Sutton easier to interpret to Christians viewers.

A secular response to a resurgence of church commissioned art in the 1950s and 60s was the exhibition of religious work, the Christian art show at the New Vision Gallery, Auckland in 1967.205 This was a group show, which contained work by McCahon amongst others, which was of religious art and not just images of Christ. Christian art did show the moving of images of Christ from exclusively sacred environments of churches to the secular marketplace of gallery walls was continuing despite the resurgence of art in churches. The upsurge, after a lull in church commissioning, was due to such things as the Second Vatican Council opening the Catholic faith to a wider world, and the ecumenical movement within Protestant churches world wide endeavouring to renew faith in Christ as a unifier amongst the denominations.206 This was a spur to artistic production, as well as to religious writing and mission.207 Other factors in post World War Two era New Zealand to this heightened production of Christian art were that it was both a time of memorial creation and of economic boom in much of New Zealand. Also trade restrictions in the 1960s and 70s virtually halted the importing of English and European made stained glass. 208 This led to local work being designed and produced in all media by New Zealanders for New Zealand ecclesiastical and secular markets.

205 206

Ibid pp 105 - 106 Ibid p 103 207 Alexa M. Johnston Christianity in New Zealand Art (in) (ed) Marry Barr Headlands, Thinking Through New Zealand Art, (Sydney: museum of contemporary art, 1992) p 103 208 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 37

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An almost Asian looking Christ dates from this period, Christ Seated in Majesty.209 (fig13) This image shows some of the crossing of English and European to New Zealand control of images of Christ in the mid to late 1900s. Ciaran writes of how this image was produced by the Miller Studios, Dunedin. As part of Presbyterian Otago, Dunedin based artisans met resistance in Anglican Canterbury Even more than this denominational suspicion, the idea of New Zealanders designing the image of Christ was still resisted. Millers solved this by having the work designed by an English artist, Kenneth Bunton.210 This meant the image still had the traditional legitimacy of being designed in the home country, but was made in New Zealand. A 1958 window, made in England has a similar almost Asian looking Christ as Good Shepherd with a Pioneer Family. (fig14)211 The striking feature of this window is it is one of the first church windows to show New Zealand symbolism overtly.212 It is more of an add on than McCahons completely New Zealand sited Jesus, but shows the trend of its times. This window and its imagery come from Canterburys centenary of settlement, and the rise in prosperity at the time.213 Ciaran notes, illustrated by a 1957 Ascension window, that (a)fter World War Two, British stained glass studios either tried or were requested to use more New Zealand symbolism., with mostly accurate depictions resulting of New Zealand flora, fauna appearing in stained glass windows for the first time.(fig15)214 This shows that images of Christ began to be linked to things New Zealand in ecclesiastical art around the same time as McCahon was doing this in the more secular fine arts world.

209 210

Ibid p 49 Ibid pp 49 - 50 211 Ibid pp 8 - 9 212 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998 p 8 213 Ibid p 8 214 Fiona Ciaran, Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998) p 81

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Bett writes of McCahon, and a group of artists who followed him in expressing the spirit of an era,215 the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Amongst artists she lists are Jeffrey Harris, Nigel Brown, Philip Clairmont, and Tony Fomison.216 All of whom have depicted Jesus Christ in New Zealand contexts, and as Bett puts it: (all) have a moralistic, aggressive view of life and seek the spiritual uplifting of society through their art.217 This Modernist, humanist type sentiment of the individual seeking the ultimate can be seen in their work. Fomison and McCahon both had a prophet like personal appearance and message in their work. Both artists and their near contemporary the poet James K. Baxter who wrote of a Christ centred in New Zealand218 shared not only an interest in spiritualty, (Catholicism in the case of McCahon and Baxter) but lives affected by alcoholism and drug addiction. These all add to the mystique of the outsider, the lone prophetic artist. Like McCahon it is hard to say how much of these later artists work is driven by veneration of Christ, a quest orientation to life, and / or just using a symbol that has power and is common in Western visual culture, or if it is a mixture of both. After his death, McCahons mantle falls on Fomison Bett says. Bett says that Fomison:

has followed an uniquely individual and solitary way in his monochromatic handling of a low-key palette and depiction of the human figure. ... (he is) speaking a new and prophetic tongue. Whearas McCahon offers hope, however, Fomison is existential. (with an) eschatology (that is) of New Zealand.
215

219

Elva Bett, The expression of an era chpt 9 New Zealand Art, A Modern Perspective (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1986) pp 94 102 216 Ibid pp 94 102 217 Ibid pp 95 -96 218 James K. Baxter The Body and Blood of Christ The Flowering Cross (Dunedin: The New Zealand Tablet Company Ltd, 1969) pp 175 182 219 Elva Bett, The expression of an era chpt 9 New Zealand Art, A Modern Perspective (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1986) pp 96 - 97

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Even though Fomisons figures are set in New Zealand landscapes, his Christ figures are mostly renditions of European master works, or quirky self portraits.220 Study of head of Christ by Morales, 1969 (fig16) resembles the Christ of Lindauers Crown of Thorns. Another, (Untitled) Study of Holbeins Dead Christ (fig17)is an image Fomison painted more than once in the early 1970s.221 It is almost a return to the dead Christ of such earlier images like The Pieta in the church of The Holy Passion in Amberley, or the traditional, near dead figure of the crucifix image. It harks back to a worship of the Christ who has died for humanity, a move away from the sentimental Christ of The Light of the World, and even McCahons minimally detailed Christs, like Crucifixion the apple branch, where Christ, although central, is similarly rendered to and less aloof from the human participants. Brunt says McCahon clearly said Jesus was the answer to the problems of human life, whereas Fomison sought a wider answer of which Jesus was just part.222

Fomisons monochromatic Christs in New Zealand do have an eschatological, end of times feel.223 Brunt says New Zealand of the 1970s was a nation with a liminal kind of culture.224 A nation, like a shrine or image, 225 can be seen as being a

220

Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) pp 25, 28 221 Ibid p 28 222 Peter Brunt Framing Identity (in) Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) p 65 223 Elva Bett, The expression of an era chpt 9 New Zealand Art, A Modern Perspective (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1986) pp 96 - 97 224 Peter Brunt Framing Identity (in) Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) p 65 225 John Eade, Michael Sallnow (eds) Contesting the Sacred, The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London, New York : Routledge, 1991) p 9

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complex site of multiple meanings, especially in times of social change.226 Fomison produced paintings that are, according to Brunt, images for a liminal nation negotiating change, with his images of caves that could be tombs or wombs, nakedness that could be death or birth, Christ dead ready to be reborn, all images of transition.227 Turner says the liminal is the phase between well-defined states (and) unprecedented, even antithetical conditions.228 New Zealand was in a time of great change when Fomison was making art. Such things as the decline of the welfare state, the beginnings of liberal economics, and the shift to multi-culturalism were hallmarks of the 1960s 70s.229 This great shift in New Zealand cultural space may be why Fomisons Christs are dead, bemused, or closed eyed. The Christ of 1979 is a combination of all Fomisons preceding images of Christ, (fig18) it could also be taken for a Maori, or Polynesian Jesus, it is a complex yet simple image. During says Fomisons images of Christ became more autobiographical, like Christ, 1976(fig19) which is essentially a self portrait, this blend of artist and Christ is akin to Hunts seeming self portrayal in The Light of the World. Like McCahon, Fomison seems to have died still seeking and expressing that search to his last artistic output. In a photograph taken in the studio in 1989, a year before Fomisons death, Brunt says the artist is seen as still not having escaped the liminality of his state between trying to produce some kind of solution to the world he experienced, and the chaos of life, as he lived it.230 This dialectal interplay of worldly and spiritual life becomes more

226

Peter Brunt Framing Identity (in) Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) p 65 227 Ibid pp 63 - 65 228 Victor Turner, Edith Turner, Introduction: Pilgrimage as a Liminoid Phenomena Image And Pilgrimage In Christian Culture, Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978) p 2 229 Simon During Heres Trouble: some comments on Tony Fomison and his work (in) Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) pp 42 43, 48 49 230 Peter Brunt Framing Identity (in) Ian Wedde (ed) Tracing Tony Fomison What shall we tell them? (Wellington: Wellington City Gallery, 1994) p 71

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pronounced in the imagery of contemporary artists. The post modern openness to multiple meanings and pluralism allows for a greater cross over of secular and sacred imagery.231 Images of Christ in New Zealand have become the province of the artist, as much as the church.

Contemporary images of Christ.

Contemporary imagery of Christ such as: Station to Station, The Way of the Cross at the Auckland city art gallery in 1994 shows how production of images of Christ is the domain of both the secular and religious worlds in contemporary society. The depth of penetration of words and images of Christ in Western culture are shown by this exhibition and Stations of the Cross, Auckland 2008.232 This later exhibition was a show in a private gallery in Auckland that contained almost as many well known New Zealand artists as the 1994 Auckland city art gallery show.233 In both shows a number of the artists were practicing Christians, a number were not. Those inside the church culture234 and those without were both responding to an example of a devotional ecclesiastical form, The Stations of the Cross, and then showing the results in the secular gallery world. This moves a traditional depiction of Christ into a more contemporary, modern, abstract context. In the contemporary post - modern world, grand narratives like the Christian creation, fall, redemption235 story was
231

Derek Johnston, Walter Brueggemann and the Biblical Imagination (chpt 15) (in) A Brief History of Theology, From the New Testament to Feminist Theology (London. New York: Continuum, 2008) p 261 232 Esther Hansen Stations of the Cross, Group Exhibition CS Arts 31 (Oct: 08) pp 40 - 41 233 Ibid pp 40 - 41 234 Ibid p 40 235 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and an Integrated Worldview (chpt 8) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p67

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once the province of the ecclesiastical world and its churches, rituals, and images. They are now seen as open to all forms of depiction and interpretation.236 This appears to be so in such exhibitions as these. Brand and Chaplin point out that post modernisms insistence on no grand narrative is in fact a grand narrative, or world view, itself. It is a world view that allows for plural narratives. The secular world holds mostly rational scientific beliefs, Christians hold to their grand narrative, of which stories and images of Christ are a central part.237

The Stations is a way to see multiple images of Jesus and as such is a good way to see, on mass, how contemporary versions differ from older, more traditional depictions. The ubiquity of The Stations in ecclesiastical, folk, and fine art contexts shows the enduring power of Christ and his life, death, and resurrection as a force in Western, artistic culture. Even in the Catholic Cathedral of The Sacred Heart in Wellington, there is a contemporary, fairly abstract low relief sculptural version of The Stations of the Cross underneath each of the more traditional painted images. The curator of Station to Station, William McAloon cites Freedberg in saying the Passion is a paradigm of the empathic response to visual images the potential of (the Passions) visual representation to incite in the viewer an emotional response.238 McAloon says that the contemporary artist has the power to move modern day viewers with the mysteries depicted in The Stations, much as:

236 237

Ibid p 5 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art in a Post-Modern Age (chpt 19) Art as a Twenty-First Century Calling, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 180 238 Station to Station, The Way of the Cross, 14 Contemporary Artist. (Auckland: Auckland City Art Gallery, 11 March 8 May 1994)

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medieval devotees of the Stations responded, (to) images of the Stations, that is, depictions of suffering death, (and) mystery of the resurrection. (And that they) might recreate for a contemporary audience the effect of the Stations, without actual representation.239

Artistic projects in New Zealand are numerous. There is an on-going artistic project called the Stations Collective that stage regular contemporary art events using the Passion as inspiration and stimulus over Easter in Hamilton.240 Richard Lewer, an award winning New Zealand artist, did a Stations of the Cross series while artist in residence in the residency in Auckland that bares McCahons name in 2008.241 Lewer cites his Catholic upbringing as having contributed to his way of looking at life, and as motivation for his work.242 Lewers Stations reference the traditional iconography in the position of Jesus and the cross, but the figures are very abstracted and in blank white backgrounds, rather than being situated in landscapes and around architecture. They are still unmistakably images of Christs Passion despite being pink and red slashes with a brown cross; one knows what one is looking at. This shows how imagery of Christ is legible to people from within and without church culture.243 Another contemporary Stations of the Cross is from an exhibition at the Anglican cathedral of St Pauls in Wellington. This exhibition shows that Anglicans do use the stations as a teaching and ritual device, just in a series of 15 rather than the 14 traditional to Catholicism,244 and that amateur, as well as professional artists still see

239 240

Ibid www.stations.org.nz accessed 24 May 2009 241 Dan Chappell Weather watch in the Waitakeres Art News New Zealand, (summer, 08) pp 112 114 242 Ibid p 112 243 Esther Hansen Stations of the Cross, Group Exhibition CS Arts 31 (Oct: 08) p 40 244 George Cyprian Alston, The Way of the Cross The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 15 (New York: Robert Appelton Company, 1912) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15569a.htm accessed 24 May 2009

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Jesus Christ as a bearded white man on the whole.245 There are some abstract and multi cultural images in this show, but predominantly the white Jesus features in this Anglican presentation by amateur and professional artists.

The artist Jeffrey Harris also produces contemporary depictions of Christ in New Zealand. Harris uses the image of Christ in ways both very personal and referencing art and ecclesiastical history.246 Harris Head and Cross, 2008 has a Christ on a cross that is very similar to Lewers abstract figures, with a McCahon type landscape and a self portrait looking out at the viewer.247 (fig20) Jesus has become an abstract symbol, a signpost almost. The artist is almost his own icon, in the traditional form of self portrait, in a landscape which is also traditional but in this instance references McCahons acknowledged spiritual seeking. This self portrait icon, with symbol of Christ, in a McCahoneaque landscape is perhaps a seeking for place and purpose. Bett calls to Harris work as a personal and emotional narrative of his strivings for self-knowledge.248 She sees Harris work as integration between influences of European art and the antipodean experience.249 This is similar to McCahon and Fomisons siting of traditional European imagery of Christ in their native New Zealand, in pursuit of a personal quest. There are a number of earlier works of Harris that are of a cross on its own, a figure and an empty cross, and more traditional crucifixion images.250 The 2008 image seems to combine much of his past
245

Stations of the Cross Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, http://cathedral.wellington.net.nz/index.php/Stations_of_the_Cross accessed 24 May 2009 246 Biography, Jeffrey Harris http://www.nz-artists.co.nz/harris/harris.htm accessed 14 April 2009 247 Jeffrey Harris, Art News New Zealand, (Autumn, 09) p 65 248 Elva Bett, The expression of an era chpt 9 New Zealand Art, A Modern Perspective (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1986) pp 100 - 101 249 Ibid p 101 250 Jeffrey Harris, painter. NZ artists, an independent guide to contemporary New Zealand art, http://www.nz-artists.co.nz/harris/harris.htm accessed 14 April 09

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imagery. It seems to be a personal meditation on the self and Christ, whether acknowledging Christs dominion as McCahon is said to have, or as part of a solution to a crazy world as Fomision seemed to be looking for is hard to say. Harris possibly draws on both influences. This combining of past and contemporary ideas and imagery in a personal spiritual quest in the world can be seen in other contemporary artists work.

One such contemporary image of Christ that combines different times and cultures in an image of Christ is by Nigel Brown, one of the artists linked to McCahon by Bett, is a modern stained glass window commission for the Holy Trinity cathedral Auckland in 1998.251 It is described as: a Resurrected Christ inspired by Renaissance art and set in front of a blaze of Pacific-inspired colour (with) a theme of racial harmony.252 As well as this cultural fusion of imagery, the window also has a wounded soldier, linking it to commemorative war memorial windows of the past.253 MaGuire says the commemorative and narrative form of the window link it more to the 19th century stained glass, rather than 20th century, more contemporary New Zealand Christian art as seen in exhibitions like the various Stations shows and the more post modern Christian work of artists like Brett ACourt.

ACourts contemporary Christian mysticism in paint sites him in the prophetic heritage of McChon and Fomison according to Crothall.254 ACourt explores his
251

Hugh Macguire All Things Bright and Beautiful, Nigel Brown and Glassworks at Aucklands Holy Trinity Cathedral. Art New Zealand 90 (Autumn: 99) pp 45 47 252 Ibid p 45 253 Ibid p 45 254 Peter Crothall Presence, not pictures CS Arts 30 (June: 08) p 14

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personal beliefs in his art, using images of Christ and McCahon like landscapes He also uses the Sacred Heart image, and more traditional depictions of a bearded Caucasian Christ, essentially the same as any settler church stained glass window, in his work.255 This shows the persistence of such old images along with contemporary and personal ways of using them in depicting Christ. ACourt says he is looking at the place where post modernisms openness to all which can be an:

unstable & insincere .. position (is contrasted with the) sincerity belief & use attached to certain (more traditional) religious images (which) issues a challenge. I have not wanted to divorce, the use of emotion being the window to a deeper level of power. I have wanted to explore this with the personal element of struggle & doubt, which is part of human existence, & anchor it within a contemporary context.256

ACourt says he has found that religious art can produce the miraculous,257 but the image should not be propaganda, as much early imagery of Christ in New Zealand can be seen as. ACourts collage type approach and use of traditional imagery in 2009, is a fusion of traditional with contemporary imagery and process. Collage as an art form is strongly linked with post modernism by Derrida.258 ACourt works with this very post modern technique and process to find sincerity, which is more akin to the Modernist focus on the authentic, on human progress, he does seem to bridge the gap of older traditional imagery and contemporary image use quite effectivly.259 Two of ACourts images visually, if not theologically, bring the nearly 200 year history of
255

Satellite Gallery Brett ACourt http://www.satellitegallery.co.nz/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=86&Itemid=109 accessed 14 April 09 256 Ibid 257 Peter Crothall Presence, not pictures CS Arts 30 (June: 08) http://www.cs.org.nz/index.cfm/Magazine/June-08/BaCourt (accessed 14 April 2009) 258 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art in a Post-Modern Age (chpt 1) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 15 259 Ibid pp 8 - 9

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Christs image in New Zealand from first missionaries to contemporary artists together well. (figs 21, 22)

A different blending of imagery that a contemporary post modern, anything goes, world view, allows is a recent work by Sister Annette Hanrahan. Her work, Cor Unum, (fig 23) is a combining of iconographies. It is a:

figure of the Risen Christ, holding up a transperant cross, painted in an eastern posture for prayer, and his features have a hint of the South Pacific an indication that, in Christ, all things are one.260

This is similar to the collage pick and mix approach of post modernism typified by ACourt. It seems, however to be a more painterly and wide ranging solution to meaning making, collecting up the Christian great story alongside others, like Buddhism, and presenting it as a unified image for all in New Zealand. Like ACourts imagery, and perhaps even more so, it is an unexpected return to overt reference, iconography, and symbolism work for which narrative may be a key formal term.261 ACourts imagery is presented and received in the gallery world, Hanrahans in the ecclesiastical world. Both show aspects of contemporary Christ imagery, and how it has changed from narrowly defined ecclesiastically dominated sources of teaching how to be uplifted, in awe, relate to life; to personal expressions of faith, life, etc, through images of Christ. Geering writes of how God and Christ have become symbols for human aspirations, goals and values in the secularised,

260 261

Personal communication from the artist. 13. May. 09 Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art in a Post-Modern Age (chpt 19) Art as a Twenty-First Century Calling, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 177

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contemporary, Western world.262 Veitch and Nichol ask where to for Christ as the embodiment of Christianity in secular New Zealand?263 One answer may be in Christ as saviour in the contemporary world through art, as much as through the church.264

Conclusion.

. Images of Christ in New Zealand started as imported phenomena and up until the time of McCahon and Fomison, continued to arrive with specific, overseas set, agendas in their production. The progression from imported to New Zealand contemporary imagery involves production, teaching, and response. The ritual, commemoration, and teaching function these images have been made and used for is always a two way thing, both influencing believers and societies ways of being, and being changed to meet the needs of the culture. 265 The fact that the intentions of makers and commissioners and the end users are not always the same, has added to the complexity and deeply entrenched nature of images of Christ in New Zealands visual culture. These images came to New Zealand with Christianity, and as the first non-Maori religion of New Zealand Christianity and its imagery, ritual, and doctrine, had a huge impact on the religious and political scene as New Zealand developed as a nation.

262

Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) p 21 263 Christopher Nichol, James Veitch (eds) Religion in New Zealand (Victoria University, 1983) pp 10 11 264 Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) pp 22 23 265 S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 54 55

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The importance of churches to early settlers was as a stable reminder of old country values and history, as much as spiritual centres. Both worldly and sacred needs were served by the spaces and their imagery. Over time examples of British, European, and American value laden icons such as The Light of the World, and the Head of Christ came to New Zealand to teach their message, but became part of the visual culture in church circles, as well as the secular art world. Imagery of Christ in New Zealand gained emancipation from ecclesiastical control with the likes of McCahon. As images of Jesus Christ have become part of the fine arts culture and artists personal quests, and as the traditional forms of Christianity have waned imagery of Christ has become a contested space, 266 where meaning is constructed and debated within the varieties of denominations, sects, and cults within New Zealands pluralistic secular culture. Visual culture is part of every day life in the 21st century.267 It is part of the wider culture, and thus is open to many different interpretations. This diversity of New Zealand culture both religious and secular and the fact Jesus Christ has always been in both, allowed this crossing of boundaries. Physical, material images of Christ are related to in many ways, as reminders of the spiritual, as teachings, as a spur to being a better human, in almost as many ways as there are viewers. As Christianity becomes part of the religious supermarket, alongside secular ideologies, New Age religions, Eastern religions, etc,268 images of Christ are found in traditional and contemporary art, in churches, galleries, homes, and shops. Images from stained glass, to Head of Christ, to the modernist Christ in the landscape
266

S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) pp 54 55 267 Paul Duncum How are we to understand art at the begingin of a new century? (chpt 2) (in) Paul Duncum, Ted Bracy (eds) On Knowing Art and Visual Culture (Christchurch: Canturbury University Press, 2001) pp 15 16 268 Lloyd Geering, 2100: A Faith Odyssey. The Changing Face of Religion in New Zealand (Wellington: St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, 1995) p 28

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of McMahon, to Harris Christ as symbol, to the post - modernist personal mysticism of ACourt and Hanrahan all function to bring the intangible within or realm of understanding, or at least our realm of relating to, in our visually oriented culture.269

Images of Christ, as a theology fixed in a space,270 encode teachings and modes of worship.271 Art communicates Gods word as much as any clergys sermon. An image demonstrates a readily understandable form of the sacred presence.272 The interaction between audience, image, and often setting,273 is where the sacred and the profane meet.274 This meeting place is akint to a pilgrimage, in which a journey to the image is often undertake, it is the image that is central, that is regarded as effective and treated as if it were perpetually and transcendently capable of remaining so. We travel to the painting or sculpture they mediate between ourselves and the supernatural275 The relationship between the material culture and religious experience means the image becomes internalised in mindscape of personal and cultural human psychology,276 as much as it is a real image in the material world.277 Real world and internal pilgrimage and worship was controlled by the church in early
269

Aidan Nichols O.P. Preface The Art of God Incarnate, Theology and Image in Christian Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980) p 1 270 Simon Coleman and John Elsner, The Pilgrims Progress: Art, Architecture and ritual movement at Sinai, World Archaeology 26:1 Archaeology of Pilgrimage (June 1994) 73 271 John A. Walker, Sarah Chaplin The Concept of the Visual (chpt 2) Visual Culture, An Introduction (New York, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997 ) pp 27 28 272 Cynthia Hahn, Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints Shrines, speculum 72:4 (October 1997) 1080-1081 273 Leslie Brubaker Conclusion, Image, Audience, and Place: Interaction and Reproduction (in) (Eds) Robert Ousterhout, Leslie Brubaker, The Sacred Image East and West (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995) p205 274 S. Brent Plate (ed) Section Two Icon: The Image of Jesus Christ and Christian Theology (in) Religion, Art, And Visual Culture, a cross cultural reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002) p 60 275 David Freedberg, Image and Pilgrimage Chpt 6 (in) The Power of Images, Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989) p 92 276 Simon Coleman and John Elsner, The Pilgrims Progress: Art, Architecture and ritual movement at Sinai, World Archaeology 26:1 Archaeology of Pilgrimage (June 1994) 73 277 Alan Morinis (ed) Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Connecticut, London: Greenwood press, 1992) 4 - 6

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New Zealand in the images chosen and places (churches mostly) they were displayed. Images of Christ and how the faithful were to relate to them were controlled in early settler times.278.In Modernist and Post Modern contemporary times, the quest orientation to religion, and personal search for meaning seem to predominate.279 This brings the more controlled and regulated form of pilgrimage type relationship believers have with images of Christ into the more personal and eclectic form of contemporary art that allows for a much more internal image relation and creation. Where ever in time and place, a central theme of Christianity is the relationship to Christ.280 Images are one way this has always been done, and still is in all cultures that Christianity has helped shape, New Zealand is no exception.281

278

Hilary Brand, Adrienne Chaplin Art and the Quest for the Spiritual (chpt 2) Art and Soul, Signposts for Christians in the Arts, ( Carlisle, Illinois: Piquant Editions, and Intervarsity Press, 2007) p 16 279 Brian A. Kojetin, Danny N. McIntosh, Robert A. Bridges, Bernard Spilka, Quest: Constructive Search or religious Conflict? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26: 1 (Mar, 87) pp 111 - 112 280 Geoffrey Troughton, Jesus in New Zealand c. 1900 1940, Thesis (Massey University, 2007) p 1 281 Ibid p 1

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