Rupert Loydell: The Weight of the World

 

‘The Weight of the World’ by Rupert Loydell is a long poem sequence in two parts, about annunciations, written in response to hat sculptures by Gertraud Platschek.

In 'Dear Mary' (2017) Loydell wrote about art and life and how they intersect. Fascinated by both renaissance and contemporary painting, he reinvented moments of annunciation in today's world, and revelled in the colours and sunshine of Italy. In a world of wonder and surprise, aliens abducted the Virgin Mary, 20th century rock singers found themselves collaged together and singing about her, infinite greys (and grays) blurred together between other greys, Francis Bacon painted angels, and even the weather forecast predicted the future.

Then, in 'A Confusion of Marys' (2020) Loydell and Sarah Cave explored, wrote back to and re-imagined the story of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, in terms of sequential writing, re-versioning, accumulation, variation and ekphrasis. Many paintings, photographs, videos and sculptures depicting the annunciation were used as research and inspiration, including works by Fra Angelico, Andy Warhol, Francis Picabia, Paul Delvaux and René Magritte.

These works are part of an ongoing exploration of annunciation and associated themes such as colour, contemporary art, spiritual / alien intervention and intrusion into the human realm, symbolism and the nature of belief and submission. Loydell has talked about these sequences in terms of “trips to Italy and being mesmerised by a couple of Fra Angelica paintings, and then following through by looking at lots more annunciations and art and photography about angels, about deliberately [mis]reading works of art and events as annunciations, and a vague idea of something from elsewhere intruding into the human realm.”

As an artist-poet, Loydell has frequently written about art and artists and his latest sequence is no exception having been inspired by the work of Gertraud Platschek, a German based architect, sculptor and painter. She says: “While I am an architect I also live in the world of colours. I like to paint on large formats. Painting that means to me throwing, smearing, scratching – with the aim to achieve the impossible.” The latter aim is one to which Loydell responds, particularly in regard to her love of strange and wondrous hats.

Platschek has:

“Made the world into a hat
and the hats into a world
on top of the world.”

There is:

“an annunciation hat
ready for things to come”

and

“a resurrection hat
a small shrine to self”

She has:

“Balanced doubt up on her head
And held her head up high”

Mary “tends toward the meek and mild” but may come to:

“Use all her architectural skills and training
to subvert the iconography, reinvent the halo
as a torn edge of fabric or card, write her own
apochrypha, subvert the idea of religious signs.
She will not be a threshold for holy desire,
will wear her hat into future space and time.”

In these ways Loydell explores how we navigate the world around us, seen and unseen; how we might wonder, explain, and start to understand.

He teaches his students at Falmouth University a text in which “Gabriel Josipovici talks about how stories die unless they are changed, reinvented, argued over and made new.” Similarly, he has spoken of how his original sense of the annunciation “was very much to do with Renaissance art and Italy, as well as colour and ekphrasis.” However, he has come to realise that ‘one can interpret almost anything through the lens of a particular story or event.’ At times the story of the Annunciation has come to feel like “an endless and somewhat ridiculous shaggy dog story, but it's become a real way to think about all sorts of stories and encounters in the world, a way of understanding human beings.” So, he says, “I guess my 'sense of Mary' is not very specific, it's about bewildered, frightened, confused and perhaps empowered humans caught up in strange encounters and activities, sometimes aware they are within a painting, sculpture, film or story.”

As Steve Scott has said Loydell’s words are ‘wrapped around a deeper mystery that invites, but ultimately defies description.’ For Loydell, as Neil Philip notes, everything is “trying to imply ascension”. “Moments of transcendence occur even when ‘We didn’t get to see the angel.’”

‘The Weight of the World’ by Rupert M Loydell, Analogue Flashback Books, 2021.

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Bill Fay - Countless Trees.