It's a privilege to fall flat on your face , 1969

Record number
cm000543
Title
It's a privilege to fall flat on your face
Date
1969
Medium
conté
Support
paper
Dimensions
1613 x 545 mm
Inscriptions
Peter Hooper / It's a privelege [sic] to fall / flat [illegible] / Colin McCahon Sept 25 69 (pencil, b.l.-b.r.)
Extended inscriptions
It's a privilege to fall flat / on your face
like a mother / pulling away little / stone out of / her child's way / so he won't fall / and hurt himself
if he were mine / I'd select / the largest stone / he could bark his shin on / without too much hurt / and I'd stop his crying / by saying
see how strong you are / not even the stone / could break you / and I'd take his hurt / inside me / and give him / instead a bit of my strength
I think that's how / Christ loved.
It's a privilege to fall / flat
Exhibition history

1969 Written paintings and drawings: Colin McCahon
Barry Lett Galleries
Auckland
6/10/1969 - 17/10/1969

Notes
The text is from Peter Hooper's poem 'It's a privelege to fall flat on your face', from Journey towards an elegy and other poems (Nag's Head Press, Christchurch, 1969).