Commissioning
contemporary art for the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, the seat of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, is always going to be a tall order. Those who
take on the task - deans, architects and artists - require strong constitutions
to deal with the inevitable criticism when such an iconic building sees change.
Some of the modern commissions have, therefore, been relatively small
interventions in larger and earlier works such as the bronze Christ by Klaus Ringwald in the Christchurch Gate or the continuing series of stained glass commissions for the Cloister.
In addition, the fabric of the building requires very significant maintenance
and repair - Brian Sewell, with his usual hyperbole, has described the building
as 'parting at the seams' - which is understandably the primary focus of Canterbury Cathedral's fundraising programme.
As
Sewell states: 'The
building is a great corporate work of art, of architecture, sculptural
monuments and stained glass. Its foundation reaches back all but a thousand
years, to the Norman Conquest, and it is part of the "and all that"
of 1066, when plans were laid to replace the much smaller and simpler cathedral
buildings that had stood and fallen since the seventh century. The first stage
of the current building took a century or so to complete; a second stage began
two centuries later, in 1376; the great central tower, Bell Harry, was
undertaken in c. 1495 when the first of the Tudor dynasty, the seventh Harry,
was on the throne; and the north tower of the West Front was built in the later
1830s, concurrently with the greatest of Gothic Revival monuments, the Houses
of Parliament. A little less than eight centuries under construction, the
victim of fire, collapse, reconstruction, stylistic revision and the
desecrations of Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell, it is now parting at the seams,
its ancient stones — from massive buttresses to delicate tracery — friable,
and, after a dozen decades of exposure, shrinking, expanding, oxidising, the
sheets of lead that cover the acres of its many roofs let in the rain'.
In
between such extreme pressures the scope for significant new commissions has
been less than in other settings. There is one window in the style of the Arts
and Crafts movement which was created by Christopher Whall. Whall was the
influential designer in this style and made this window in 1902 together with
another, once in St Andrew’s chapel, that was lost during World War II. The surviving
window shows the Resurrection in the centre of the top register with the
archangels Uriel and St Michael on either side. In the centre register is the
Agony in the Garden, with the figures of John the Baptist and St John the
Evangelist flanking. In the bottom register of the window is the Nativity with
St Bartholomew and St James. Whall created the jewel like quality of intense
colours by the use of thickly moulded ‘slab glass,’ known as ‘Early English,’
although it had been recently developed at that point.
A further modern stained glass commission was for the St Anselm’s Chapel. This came when Harry Stammers, a well-known stained glass designer from York, replaced the glass lost in World War II with new brightly coloured glass in 1959. St Anselm was the second Norman archbishop between 1093 and 1109, a great theologian and initiated the building of the major extension of the earlier Norman church of Lanfranc. The main five lights show the five people important in his life and beneath a story connected with each.
Giles Blomfield, while architect at the Cathedral
created the Beckett altar in the
Martyrdom (1986) with the 'Swords Point' sculpture above (where two metal
swords and their shadows form the four swords which did for Thomas Becket).
Blomfield also added the Compass Rose (symbol of the Anglican Communion) to the
floor of the Nave's east end in 1988, when it was dedicated by Archbishop Robert Runcie during the final eucharist of that year's Lambeth Conference.
.
The
Beckett altar was the first new altar in the Cathedral for 448 years but was
rather more swiftly followed in 2005 by the St Anselm's altar which is the work
of sculptor Stephen Cox. The
altar was a gift to Canterbury Cathedral from the people of the Regione Autonoma Valle d'Aosta, the birthplace of Saint Anselm. Created in Aosta
marble, the altar's dark symmetric simplicity lies in stark contrast to the
pale, curving stone of the chapel. In selecting the stone, Stephen Cox ensured
that the beauty of the colour and unique markings told the story of the majesty
of the mountainous region that is Aosta and honours Anselm, both as Archbishop
and Theologian.
Cox is interested in ‘the ‘transformational’ that occurs in art i.e. that
mundane materials through a sequence of actions are transformed into a whole
different area of understanding.’ In the same way, he states, his altars have
been subjected to the ritual of consecration and are, in consequence, changed.
Earlier
plans for a St Anselm’s altarpiece involving the Hungarian born sculptor Andor Mészáros seem to have gone unrealized, although his 14 bronze medallions of the
‘Stations of the Cross’ together with a 15th made by his son Mikhael
were completed and can be seen in the Cathedral’s Treasury.
A further version of ‘The Canterbury Series’ was made for the Chapel at Trinity College in Melbourne.
Mészáros came to England in 1949 but returned to Australia the following year. The
medallions were made between 1942 and 1970.
Another
Hungarian born artist, Ervin Bossanyi, was to have a rather better experience
of a commission for Canterbury. Bossanyi’s experience illustrates some of the
reasons why caution is often applied to commissions in a setting like
Canterbury Cathedral but also reveals the benefits of trusting the vision of
the artist commissioned.
Bossanyi
was a Hungarian Jew who arrived in Britain in 1934 having gained a significant
reputation for himself in Hamburg across the disciplines of ceramics, murals,
paintings, sculpture and stained glass. His most significant commission to that
point had been stained glass windows for the Ohlsdorf crematorium, which had
been designed by Fritz Schumacher. However when the Nazi's gained power shortly
after this commission was completed, Schumacher was suspended as Chief Architect
of Hamburg and Bossanyi's promising career there was ended. He came to Britain
with a reference from Schumacher but that counted for little and Bossanyi
struggled initially to find commissions.
There
were two turning points. First, he gained the support of Charles Holden, an
architect who had championed the early work of Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and
Henry Moore. Holden helped Bossanyi gain commissions for Goldsmith's Library
and Uxbridge Station. Second, was the creation of a window for the Tate Gallery
which was eventually installed in 1948. Bernard Rackham from the V&A was
among those who had supported Bossanyi over the Tate window. He also introduced
Eric Milner-White, who became Dean of York Minster, to Bossanyi's work by means
of this window. After repeated viewings Milner-White was convinced of
Bossanyi's genius and recommended him to the Revd. C.T. Wood, Director of the
South African Church Institute, who commissioned Bossanyi for windows at
Michaelhouse School in Balgowan, Natal. Wood was a friend of the Archdeacon of
Canterbury and, when the Cathedral was planning to re-glaze windows in the
south-east transept, took the Venerable Alexander Sargent to meet Bossanyi.
Rackham, who had authored two books on Canterbury's stained glass, also
commended Bossanyi, who in 1935 was invited to meet the 'Red Dean' Hewlett Johnson. The two men hit it off immediately and the subsequent commission
explored themes to which both were deeply committed; peace, salvation, faith and action.
In the
first window, dedicated to unity and peace and conceived throughout in radiant
colours, the ascended Christ welcomes children of all races. In the second,
four prisoners are raised up from the leaden hues of darkness and despair into
a glittering freedom where butterflies and birds take flight. Above these two
are smaller upper windows; 'to the east is 'Christ Walking on the Waves",
with Christ walking on stormy waters, representing faith, and to the west 'St
Christopher', representing action' (Ervin Bossanyi: Vision, Art and Exile, ed.
J. Bossanyi and S. Brown, Spire Books Ltd, 2008).
As
Paul San Casciani notes in ‘Ervin Bossanyi: Vision, Art and Exile’, the windows
were controversial with some complaining ‘that the scale of the transept has
been altered by these striking works.’ The biography of Bossanyi on the British
Museum website agrees that these windows divided the critics: ‘On the one hand
his Romanesque figure of Christ in the eighteen foot high window
"Peace", was considered sublime, one of the most majestic images in
Western Europe. On the other, by those who did not understand the spiritual
message and symbolism of the work, as an intrusion, out of scale with the other
Cathedral glass. As always the colour was a revelation, and the artistry beyond
criticism’.
In her
guidebook, published by the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, Dagmar Hayes says:
‘The Dean and Chapter decided courageously to entrust the creation of the new
glass to a contemporary artist who would refurbish these windows so that they
would stand as a monument to 20th-century artistry and craftsmanship, rather
than be a meaningless imitation of past doctrinal style.’
Bossanyi
is similar to Marc Chagall in that, while his stained glass commissions often
required the use of specifically Christian imagery, he recognized the 'profound
inspiration' of all the great religions, possessed a 'reverence for life' and
longed for a 'new cosmopolitan world order, in which ideological, racist and
cultural differences no longer mattered' (Ervin Bossanyi: Vision, Art and
Exile). Where his work differs significantly from that of his peers is in the
influence of Asian, and in particular Indian, art on his own designs.
The
Canterbury windows, which Bossanyi considered to be among his finest work, led
to further major projects including commissions for the National Cathedral in
Washington DC. On my sabbatical art pilgrimage I have greatly appreciated the
opportunity to see work by Bossanyi at St John's College Chapel in Oxford, the
Stained Glass Museum in Ely Cathedral and the Sacred Silver and Stained GlassGallery at the V&A.
At
Canterbury, as Casciani notes, ‘Bossanyi was given that rare thing for a
stained-glass artist – a free hand to interpret his own themes – and for
Canterbury he chose those dearest to his heart: peace and salvation.’ The
obituary for Bossanyi published by the Daily
Telegraph summed up his work well in saying that he had ‘brought a flood of
colour to the world’ (Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1979).
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Sabrina Johnson - Peace.
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