The Weight of Objects

In August 1964 Colin McCahon resigned from his position as Keeper and Deputy Director at the Auckland City Art Gallery to become Lecturer in painting at the Elam School of Fine Arts. Over the next seven years he was an influential and inspirational teacher, leading by example as a practising artist, and instilling in his students the need for a dedicated and professional approach to painting.

Direct observation and analysis were fundamental to McCahon’s teaching philosophy, and encouraged by means of a series of standard exercises. The best-known of these, and routinely set for first-year students, was the challenge of depicting a pair of eggs on a white saucer on a white base. McCahon’s own student days in Dunedin may have provided a precedent for this approach; at Saturday-morning art classes, from around 1933, his tutor Russell Clark required students to draw a pile of chalk boxes, their dusty surfaces providing a challenging array of tonal variations.

The aim of McCahon’s set exercises was not the production of masterpieces, but rather the development of a personal approach to the understanding and rendering of the real world. At the outset students were advised that these were not paintings that they were likely to want to keep, but were to be regarded as experimental and learning aids. They were likely to be