Table of Contents

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1 SOUTHERN BEGINNINGS, 1919-36
2 DUNEDIN, NELSON, WELLINGTON, 1937-46
3 TAHUNANUI, 1946-48
4 CHRISTCHURCH I, 1948-49
5 CHRISTCHURCH II, 1950-53
6 TITIRANGI I, 1953-58
7 TITIRANGI II, 1958-59
CONCLUSION
LIST OF ARTWORKS
EXHIBITION RECORD, 1940-59
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

About the Author

Peter Simpson is a former associate professor of English at the University of Auckland. He is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books including Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years, 1953-1959 (AUP, 2007) and Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953 (AUP, 2016). He has also curated three significant exhibitions of McCahon's work. He received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (non-fiction) in 2017.

Reviews

`With a generous regard towards his subject, a magisterial command of the material, and scrupulous attention to detail, Peter Simpson has crafted an indispensable work of art-historical scholarship. Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction draws upon diaries, letters and other contemporary sources to document the artist's life from 1919 until 1959, alongside a magnificent selection of his works, many of which have not been reproduced before. It is a remarkable achievement.' - Martin Edmond; `New Zealand's foremost artist Colin McCahon is many things to many people: modernist, visionary, environmentalist, shaman, preacher, rustic provincialist, bicultural trailblazer, painter-poet, graffiti artist, teacher, maverick . . . Peter Simpson's account interrogates as well as accommodates all of these possibilities. Guiding us year by year through the artist's career, he offers a ground-breaking overview of the life's work of a tenacious, brilliant and endlessly fascinating figure.' - Gregory O'Brien