Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1910s

This is Part 4 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s.

• In 1910, Georges Rouault has his first works exhibited in the Druet Gallery. His works are studied by German artists from Dresden, who later form the nucleus of expressionism.
• Wassily Kandinsky publishes Concerning the Spiritual in Art in 1911, the year that he painted his first fully abstract work.
• The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton is published in 1911, as is Saint Matorel by Max Jacob. Horace Blake by Mrs Wilfrid Ward is published in 1913.
• From 1911, Alexandre Cingria, Maurice Denis and Marcel Poncet collaborate on the decoration of Saint Paul à Grange-Canal in Geneva. The decoration of the church causes a sensation in French-speaking Switzerland and abroad when completed in 1926, because its creation and design make clear—contra popular opinion at the time—the religious possibilities of modern art and its compatibility with the demands of tradition, liturgy, and doctrine. The architect Alphonse Guyonnet builds and restores several churches in Switzerland—in Corsier, Carouge, and Tavannes—working with artists from the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice (Group of St. Luke and St. Maurice), which he joins in 1926 but with whom he first worked here.
• In 1911, the Society of Saint John (for the development of Christian art) organizes at the Pavillon de Marsan a first "Modern Christian Art Exhibition", followed by many others, such as those presented at the Galliera Museum in 1934 and 1939.
• Natalia Goncharova's St. Michael of 1911-1912, recalling a popular image of the archangel from a 1668 religious lubok, the Virgin and Child of 1910, and the multi-panel work entitled The Four Evangelists of 1911, which show the influence of Orthodox icons, are among dozens of religiously themed paintings she creates in the years preceding the Russian Revolution. Goncharova’s works of 1910 to 1914 continually rely on the Russian icon, biblical imagery, and spirited Russian country life.
• Charles Péguy’s poetry - Le Porche du Mystère de la Deuxième Vertu (1912), La Tapisserie de Sainte Geneviève et de Jeanne d'Arc (1913), La Tapisserie de Notre-Dame (1913), Ève (1913) – and plays - Le Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d'Arc (1910) and Le Mystère des Saints Innocents (1912) – are published. An earlier play, Jeanne d'Arc, had appeared in 1897. When the first world war breaks out, he becomes a lieutenant in the French 276th Infantry Regiment and dies in battle in 1914.
• Paul Claudel publishes poetry, including Cinq Grandes Odes (1910) and Corona benignatis anni Dei (1914), and plays, including L'Annonce faite à Marie (1910), the trilogy L'Otage (1911), and Le Pain dur (1918).
• In 1913, a delegation led by SPAB member Lord Curzon lobbies the Church of England to take its wealth of architecture seriously. This results in the establishment of Diocesan Advisory Committees (DACs).
• Eric Gill is 31 and had been a sculptor for just three years when, in August 1913, he is approached by John Marshall, the architect-in-charge at Westminster Cathedral, to create Stations of the Cross. Gill works on the Stations between 1914 and Good Friday 1918, when they are dedicated.
• Adya van Rees converts to the Roman Catholic church in 1914.
• In 1915, Augusto Giacometti receives his first public commissions in Switzerland: a mosaic for a fountain at the University of Zurich and a tempera canvas portraying The Morning of the Resurrection for the church of San Pietro in Coltura. It is one of the first paintings to be displayed in a Swiss protestant church.
• In 1915, Louis Rivier completes the decoration of the church of Saint-Jean de Cour in Lausanne. As a Protestant artist, Rivier manages to break the mistrust of his church. His work is found in Protestant churches as frescoes or stained glass, notably in Mex, Bercher, Denezy, Bottens or in the Lausanne churches of Terreaux, and de Villard. He is the creator of 17 stained-glass windows in the cathedral of Lausanne and also decorates the Greek Orthodox Church of Lausanne Agios Gerassimos.
• Following two visions of Jesus, Max Jacob is baptised in 1915 into the Roman Catholic church, with Pablo Picasso as his godfather. He recounts his conversion in poetic prose works including Saint Matorel and La Defense de Tartufe.
• Kazimir Malevich unveiled his Black Square at the The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10 held in St Petersburg (which had been renamed Petrograd) in December 1915. He was keen to showcase suprematism, his new idea, and Black Square was placed high up on the wall across the corner of room in the same sacred spot that a Russian Orthodox icon of a saint would sit in a traditional Russian home. Malevich wanted to show the Black Square to be of spiritual significance.
• In 1916, Conrad Noel and Gustav Holst create the Whitsun Festival, a four-day musical festival at Thaxted. The first festival includes St Paul’s Girls’ pupils and adults from Morley College, in London where Holst also teaches evening classes to people catching up with their education. They say it was “a little bit of heaven they went to Tuesday nights.” By the second Whitsun festival in 1917, Noel had discovered the words of a mediaeval carol 'This have I done for my true love'. He pins this up on the church door. Someone complains to the bishop about Noels' use of secular lyrics in church and the bishop reproaches Noel, who is able to reply that the carol has been sung since mediaeval times. Holst sets the words to new music, and the result is one of Holst best-loved sacred works, second-only to 'In the bleak mid-winter'.
• In 1916, the Cabaret Voltaire present a performance of Hugo Ball’s Krippenspiel (Nativity Play), a simultaneous poem and bruitist “noise concert” that corresponded to and accompanied readings from the Gospel accounts of the birth of Christ. During the Galerie Dada in 1917, Ball gives a lecture about Wassily Kandinsky in which he speaks about the social and spiritual role of the contemporary artist.
• Christian Rohlfs’s intense Expressionist prints reveal the impact of the First World War, yet his response to this conflict also leads him to the redemptive biblical themes seen in Return of the Prodigal Son (1916) and Mountain Sermon (1916). 
• The theologian and philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, in The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916) and again in The Destiny of Man (1936) sees "art as an important force standing against and calling into question the cultural powers of objectification".
• In 1917, a performance of The Mystery of the Epiphany by B.C. Boulter is staged at the church of St Silas-the-Martyr, Kentish Town, in 1917. By 1928, the critic of the Sunday Express thinks that plays of some sort have been produced in as many as 100 churches.
• Georges Rouault begins his Miserere series of 58 black and white engravings (1917-27), many of which are re-workings of his paintings. The series is a kind of summary expression of the artist’s concern for inward and ultimate truth.
In 1917, Maurice Storez founds L'Arche with the painter Valentine Reyre, the embroiderer Sabine Desvallières, the goldsmith Luc Lanel, the architects Jacques Droz, Maurice Brissart and Dom Paul Bellot, and the sculptors Fernand Py and Henri Charlier.
• In 1917 Alexandre Cingria publishes a manifesto La Décadence d'art sacré, which, in the opinion of William S. Rubin, ‘constituted the first serious confrontation of the problem of modern religious art’ and ‘elicited considerable interest throughout Catholic intellectual and artistic circles’. Paul Claudel responds with a famous letter in which he describes the contemporary churches against which Cingria was reacting, as ‘heavily laden confessions.’
• Piet Mondrian publishes his theory of neoplasticism as ‘De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst’ in twelve instalments over 1917 and 1918. Neoplasticism involves horizontal and vertical configurations of squares and rectangles. He was influenced by M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, a Theosophist and mathematician, who wrote in a 1915 essay: ‘The two fundamental and absolute extremes that shape our planet are: on the one hand the line of the horizontal force, namely the trajectory of the Earth around the Sun, and on the other vertical and essentially spatial movement of the rays that issue from the center of the Sun... the three essential colors are yellow, blue, and red. There exist no other colors besides these three.’ Mondrian moves to Paris and begins work on the grid-based paintings for which he has become best known, with gray or black lines as structure for blocks of white, gray, and primary colours.
• Despite a 'revelation' at Pelham, near New York, in 1918 when he is converted to belief in God, and despite his admiration for the Western Christian tradition, Albert Gleizes does not formally enter the Roman Catholic Church until 1941-2.
• On July 29, 1918, Hilary Pepler, Eric Gill, his wife Mary and his apprentice Desmond Chute join the Third Order of the Dominicans.
• Robert Bridges publishes Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1918.
• In 1919, Max Jacob publishes La défense de Tartuffe, which explores his philosophical and religious thinking.
• In 1919, a commission for Stations of the Cross is given to Albert Servaes for the church of the Discalced Carmelites in Luythagen, a suburb of Antwerp. In 1921, a decree from the Holy Office based on Canon 1399.12, which states that images may not be ‘unusual’, results in first the Stations and then the altarpiece by Servaes being removed from the church. In an effort to support and explore Servaes' spiritual vision, Dutch Carmelite friar Titus Brandsma has the images published in Opgang, a Catholic cultural review. Alongside each image, Brandsma adds his own meditation.
• During the 1914-1918 war, Georges Desvallières lost a son in action. From that moment, he devotes himself to religious painting. The flag of the Sacred Heart created in 1919 recalls the death of this child. Maurice Storez places the canvas in Notre-Dame de Verneuil church, above the monument to the dead of the Great War.
• Maurice Denis and George Desvallières found the Ateliers de l’Art Sacré in Paris in 1919. In the same year Alexandre Cingria and Georges de Traz jointly found the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice to “develop religious art.” Les Artisans de l'Autel is  also founded in 1919 by Paul Croix -Marie, sculptor. Up to 1940 Denis and Desvallières carry out together major plans for church decoration, and other religious projects in which their pupils participate actively: Pavillion de Marsan (1921), the religious section created by Desvallières at the Salon d’Automne (1922), the Church of the French Village at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs (1925) for which Desvallières painted La Sainte Face (The Holy Face), the Eglise du Saint Esprit (Church of the Holy Spirit in Paris: 1935) and the Pontifical Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale (1937).

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Gustav Holst - This have I done for my true love.