Roger Wagner: Menorah

Great to see Roger Wagner's work getting some much deserved attention through the purchase of his best known work Menorah by the Ashmolean Museum:

"Menorah is a powerful 20th century depiction of Christ’s crucifixion set against the backdrop of Didcot Power Station, Oxfordshire. Voted Britain’s ‘third worst eyesore’ by readers of Country Life, and invaded twice by climate protesters, the Power Station has often been an object of controversy. However, here in a fusion of Jewish and Christian symbols, the cooling towers and chimney of Didcot become the seven branches of the ceremonial Jewish candlestick, the menorah.

The picture was first seen at the Ashmolean in a retrospective exhibition of Wagner’s work in1994, which was one of the most popular temporary exhibitions staged at the Museum. Since then the painting has continued to attract notice.

"One of the outstanding paintings of the late 20th century”, Former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, The Door 2001.

“The power station at Didcot behind the crucifixion is like the most beautiful cathedral, but the geometry of distance makes it as strange as it is passionate and fresh”, Peter Levi, Oxford Professor of Poetry 1984-89.

“This is very dense imagining indeed, but it manages a representation of the creatively and theologically uncanny that is haunting”, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, The Guardian, 31 January 2004.

“Roger Wagner is one of the more remarkable and original painters working today, and it is especially fitting that a work of such inspired imagination and technical brilliance should mark what is an equally inspired redevelopment of the oldest public museum in Britain”, British Art Journal, Winter 2009.

Born in 1957, Roger Wagner read English at Lincoln College Oxford, and studied under Peter Greenham at The Royal Academy School of Art, London. His paintings have been shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Britain and abroad. He has work in The Ashmolean Museum Oxford, The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and in many private collections around the world."

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