Brian Clarke R.I.P.

Renowned stained-glass artist, Brian Clarke, died on July 1, 2025 at the age of 71. In my Church Times review of “Brian Clarke: A Great Light” at Newport Street Gallery in 2023, I wrote that: 

'I FIRST encountered the work of Brian Clarke at the Swiss Museum of Stained Glass at Romont. I visited the Museum as part of my Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage and discovered that work by Clarke and another stained-glass artist, Yoki — neither of whom was previously known to me — could be seen in the town, as well as at the Museum.

The Cistercian Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu on the edge of Romont commissioned Clarke in 1996 to create windows for its renovated and reordered chapel. Clarke says that stained glass “can transform the way you feel when you enter a building in a way that nothing else can”. I would concur, especially after arriving at l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu in time for a memorable service of vespers, followed by silent contemplation in the still onset of darkness falling. Clarke’s modern, abstract windows were designed to unify fragments retained from previous phases of the building’s life and offer both nuns and visitors a “warm and vibrant atmosphere”, which is “conducive to meditation and prayer”.'

Church commissions helped establish Clarke as a stained-glass artist in the early stages of his career, and later works, such as those at Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu and Linköping Cathedral, Sweden, confirmed his ability to bring together technical skill, creative vision and sensitivity to place. His engagement with aspects of spirituality and contemplation also appeared in his work for secular spaces.

He said: "I think there is an extremely powerful argument to be made today for art to actually bring beauty and something of the sublime into the banality of mundane experience. So often now, art is limiting of that kind of encounter. I believe people respond to beauty both in nature and in art. When it involves the passage of light, it is uplifting in a way that is incomparable".

Read my review here and my visit report to Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu here.

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The Trees Community - Psalm 45.

Church Times - Art review: Brian Clarke: A Great Light at the Newport Street Gallery, London

My latest review for Church Times is on 'A Great Light' by Brian Clarke at Newport Street Gallery:

'I FIRST encountered the work of Brian Clarke at the Swiss Museum of Stained Glass at Romont. I visited the Museum as part of my Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage and discovered that work by Clarke and another stained-glass artist, Yoki — neither of whom was previously known to me — could be seen in the town, as well as at the Museum.

The Cistercian Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu on the edge of Romont commissioned Clarke in 1996 to create windows for its renovated and reordered chapel. Clarke says that stained glass “can transform the way you feel when you enter a building in a way that nothing else can”. I would concur, especially after arriving at l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu in time for a memorable service of vespers, followed by silent contemplation in the still onset of darkness falling. Clarke’s modern, abstract windows were designed to unify fragments retained from previous phases of the building’s life and offer both nuns and visitors a “warm and vibrant atmosphere”, which is “conducive to meditation and prayer”.'

For more on Brian Clarke see here. See photos of Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu here. Read about my Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage visit to Romont here and read about by Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage here.

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Dillard & Clark - I Bowed My Head And Cried Holy.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu, Romont

Brian Clarke says that stained glass ‘can transform the way you feel when you enter abuilding in a way that nothing else can!’

I would concur, especially after arriving at l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu in time for a memorable service of Vespers followed by silent contemplation in the still onset of darkness falling. Tomas Mikulas, the architect on the restoration of this Cistercian Abbey, has stated that the overall goal of the restoration was to offer both nuns and visitors an ‘atmosphere conducive to meditation and prayer.’  Mikulas suggests that it is the ‘warm and vibrant atmosphere’ created by Clarke’s windows ‘with the changing light of day’ that ‘makes a decisive contribution’ to the space and to the restoration as a whole.

Being unable to take photographs during the service or in the silence which followed I returned the next day and therefore experienced the space both in the fading light of eventide and in the blaze of the early morning’s sunshine. As a result, I was able to experience at first hand the transformation of which Clarke speaks in the changing light of the building that Mikulas describes.

There are several reasons why this is a surprising outcome in this context. First, as Charlotte Cripps has written, early on in his career Clarke realised that he had to ‘shake off the ecclesiastical image’ of stained glass ‘if he was going to make any impact in the medium’: ‘When I started working in the medium of stained glass, it was a dying art. I knew from a very early age that the future of the medium would only be assured if it had an application in public buildings and was not limited to ecclesiastical architecture. I looked for opportunities in all kinds of public buildings and declined opportunities in the church. I fought for that and continue to fight for that. It's a lifelong pilgrimage’.

Instead, since the early 1970s, Clarke has: ‘worked on over two hundred stained glass projects in collaboration with some of the world’s most prominent architects and artists. Some of Clarke’s most notable “art-in-architecture” projects include: ... the stained glass and painting for Apax Partners Headquarters in London, UK; stained glass for the Pyramid of Peace in Astana, Kazakhstan (with Foster and Partners); the design for the Great South Window at Ascot’s New Grandstand in Ascot, UK; the façade for Pfizer Inc. in New York, USA; a suite of 26 stained glass and mosaic ceilings for Norte Shopping in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the design for stained glass in Chep Lap Kok Airport (with Foster and Partners) in Hong Kong, China’.

Not only then do we have an artist who has actively declined ecclesiastical commissions but within the Abbey a group of nuns actively opposed Clarke’s designs on the basis that they were too colourful for a Cistercian chapel. This group was concerned that the strong presence of the windows would overpower the building and that the colour of the windows would reduce the visibility of the murals (dating from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) which have been preserved through the restoration.

Mikulas insisted on Clarke and was supported by the Abbess, Mother Hortense Berthet, who ‘loved and encouraged’ the stained glass project. Mikulas writes that she was always far-sighted and, where others could be entrenched behind their ‘achievements and habits,’ she would always ‘promote and encourage projects and renewal’. In this instance, the choice of the artist was not made ​​on the basis of a competition but began with visits that the nuns had with various artists. Alongside these contacts, the nuns were accompanied by a small working group, consisting of two architects (A. Page, T. Mikulas), Stefan Trümpler from the Vitrocentre Romont and Canon Gerard Pfulg from Freiburg.

The restoration work here, including Clarke’s windows, provides an object lesson in such projects due to the depth of understanding of the history and context developed by Mikulas, initially in a thesis written in 1986, and the sensitivity of both his designs and their realisation. Mikulas has written about the restoration in terms of the significance of the site, the complexity of the issues involved and the human encounters it has spawned. For him it has been a creative and human adventure; one involving listening, collaboration and perseverance in the service of a historic monument and a contemporary community of nuns. Ultimately, this has meant searching for the presence of Christ and the acceptance of others in the great Cistercian Trappist tradition.

Mikulus sought to work within the framework provided by the Venice Charter of 1964. His overall goal was the creation of a new and coherent building which was respectful of the buildings’ history while also servicing its use as a place of worship. The concept Mikulas developed was therefore based on several key assumptions which seek to balance contemporary use with past history. These included:

• history seen as a process in time which cannot be fixed in a particular period in the life of a building; 
• restoration involves choices because it is not possible to fully conservation all contributions which have been made to a building throughout the course of its history; 
• the cultural function of the building (in this case, worship) affects its architectural treatment and the choices made during restoration; 
• a building is not only an historical story in stone but also evidence of creative artistic design in the choices made by earlier generations; and 
• restoration will therefore engage more with some layers of the history of the building than others, and will always result in a new and original condition for the building. 

In the end the view which prevailed was that modern windows could bring a new dimension to the building which could unify the fragments retained from previous phases of the building’s life, in particular to showcase the murals from the fourteen, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while also ensuring optimal lighting conditions for the building’s liturgical uses. Clarke’s ‘practice is built upon using light to explore the essential link between art and architecture’, so the composition of the windows aims to ‘recognize the spatial and formal structure of the building, its rhythms, its highlights.’ Clarke has used richly textured opaque glass painted with either ceramic or matte paint and often acid etched to create diffuse effects even in low or artificial light.

The windows use a regular grid of consistent colours over which more amorphous, fluid coloured shapes are placed. The dynamic contrasts that derive from this superimposition are inspired by the natural world where, Clarke suggests, we find many examples; ivy leaves on a trellis, birds flying against a background of buildings, spilt water on a pavement. When these juxtapositions occur, the grid is dramatized, the free forms take their place and an amazing balance is created. The oculus reverses this format with a grid on plain glass superimposed by a dove form. The non-figurative design of each window has been considered not only as its own design but also as ‘part of an overall composition, with its own highlights, axis and rhythm. Trümpler has written that the colour of the windows refers to the path of movement of the sun, ‘from the mystical and blue morning in the sanctuary, to warm tones in the nave’ later in the day. In this way, the stained glass creates ‘an atmosphere of a highly relevant "spiritual" nature’.

Clarke is part of a significant movement within contemporary ecclesiastical commissions involving the commissioning of abstract windows which create shafts of ever-changing colour that fall within the space to provide a atmosphere which is mystical and spiritual. This move from storytelling in stained glass by means of narrative figuration (the Biblia pauperum, exemplified in the twentieth century by the figurative windows of Marc Chagall) to the creation of spiritual space using abstract colour (as pioneered by Jean Bazaine and Alfred Manessier) has occurred, primarily, in France. The concept of stained glass architecture - of a light-filled architectural unit – that we find, for example, in the baptistery at Sacré-Cœur in Audincourt or the Chapelle Sainte-Thérèse-de-l'Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte-Face in Hem is an attempt to create spiritual space - a sense of prayer and a glimpse of heaven – through the play of light and colour within the building. In the past churches were centres for the drama of the visual - the drama and spectacle of the liturgy combined with the visual narrative of scripture in stained glass. Now people find their visual stimulation elsewhere - through the media primarily – and, as a result, churches have become centres for the opposite of visual stimulation e.g. centres of visual contemplation, where narrative is less essential than ambience and atmosphere.

At Vespers in l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu there was a powerful sense of being caught up in a heavenly space and the great corporate song of heaven as the wondrous harmonies of unified plainsong responses combined with the mystical light of Clarke’s windows.

Since l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu Clarke has taken on other ecclesiastical commissions at Linköping Cathedral, Sweden, and the Papal Chapel at the Apostolic Nunciature, London. He say, ‘Now I'm able to call the shots more. Churches only call on me if they want me to do something challenging and exciting. As a consequence, with a long history behind me of substantial secular and public works, I feel now that I can re-engage occasionally, working in the church and giving it my best on a level that it deserves and I demand’. Additionally, by commissioning an artist like Clarke who understands stained glass and ecclesiastical contexts but does not profess a faith himself, the Church is continuing the tradition begun by Marie-Alain Couturier and Walter Hussey of commissioning contemporary ‘masters’.

Stained glass can transform the way we feel when we enter a building like l‘Abbaye de la Fille Dieu is, as Clarke has said, because of the sense of beauty and sublimity that such art brings: "I think there is an extremely powerful argument to be made today for art to actually bring beauty and something of the sublime into the banality of mundane experience. So often now, art is limiting of that kind of encounter. I believe people respond to beauty both in nature and in art. When it involves the passage of light, it is uplifting in a way that is incomparable".

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Elbow - This Blue World.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Romont

My sat nav didn't register the address I had for the Swiss Museum of Stained Glass (Vitromusée) at Romont. However, as a major tourist attraction in a stunning location on a hilly island in a sea of green, it was simple to find.

The Vitromusée is housed in Romont Castle which, together with the medieval church and houses surrounded by the old town walls, ‘shapes the distinctive silhouette’ of the small, historic and attractive town that is Romont.’  The hill on which the castle stands extends to an altitude of 780m (approx. 2,500 ft.) meaning that ‘the square in front of the castle opens onto a magnificent panorama of the Alps, with the majestic Mont Blanc visible to the right on a clear day.’

‘The keep and the main part of the castle - which today houses the Museum’s stained-glass collection - were built in the 13th century under Pierre II of Savoy. In the 16th century, the new governors from Fribourg built a further wing - now home to the Museum’s collection of reverse painting on glass. The entrance gate to the courtyard and the well (depth 40m) also date from that period. The huge wooden draw-wheel for the well (18thC), the parapet walkway, and some lovely old trees lend the courtyard a particular cachet. In the course of time, the buildings were converted to suit various purposes (barn, garage, prison etc.); until in 1981 the Vitromusée and in 1988 the Vitrocentre were installed.’

‘The Museum has a marvellous collection of stained glass and reverse painting on glass plus temporary exhibitions. The fascinating history of the development of stained glass is presented in a permanent exhibition of key works. The visitor follows a path leading past archaeological fragments from the 5th century AD, via masterpieces of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Historicism and Art Nouveau right up to the most recent modern glass art … Although the names of the artists who designed the oldest pieces of stained glass are generally not known, later works often bear the hallmark of well-known workshops or artists: among them, to name but a few, the workshops of Dirk Vellert (16thC), of Gustav van Treeck (19thC), or of Louis Comfort Tiffany; or the artists Alexandre Cingria, Léon Zack, Alfred Manessier, Yoki, Augusto Giacometti or Brian Clarke’. Of particular relevance to my sabbatical art pilgrimage was a piece by Konrad Vetter entitled 'Canticle of the Sun' inspired by the Song of Praise of St Francis of Assisi and, through his reduction of leaded glass to its most essential, a pure hymn to light.

A stained glass fragment by Marc Chagall has recently been purchased and is on display together with a film discussing his stained glass work with Charles Marq. ‘While he was finalising the stained glass for Mainz Cathedral, Marc Chagall gave a small stained-glass panel to the master glazier at the Simon Marq atelier in Reims with whom he had worked for many years. This glass bouquet by Chagall is one of the rare stained-glass panels by the artist that was not designed as part of a building.’ It occupies the central place in a special exhibition of the latest importantacquisitions by the Museum.

The Groupe de St Luc et St Maurice became based in Romont when its leader Alexandre Cingria settled there in 1937. This group was founded in 1919 and brought together artists, architects and intellectuals (including François Baud, Fernand Dumas, Marcel Feuillat, Adolphe Guyonnet,  Marcel Poncet and Georges De Traz, among others) whose aim was to breathe new life into church art in French-Switzerland. Group members restored, refurbished and built numerous churches, often designed as integrated works of art. In 1924, a counterpart, Rot-Blau (red-blue), was formed in German-speaking Switzerland, led by Hans Stocker and Otto Staiger, which is still active today.

Cingria had a significant involvement in the cultural life of Switzerland - literary, musical and artistic – bringing an approach of ‘nonconformity and rebellion in an environment marked by the Puritan reserve’. He was involved in the creation of ‘Les Cahiers Vaudois’ founded by Paul Budry, Edmond Gilliard and Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. In addition, he participated in journals such as ‘L'Oeuvre’, ‘Nova et Vetera’, ‘Aujourd'hui’ and ‘Ars Sacra’. From the 1920s onwards, Cingria created sets and costumes for popular theatre shows in Switzerland while in 1936, he founded the Compagnons de Romandie with Jo Baeriswyl with the purpose of promoting masterpieces of Catholic theatre.

In 1917 he published a manifesto 'La Decadence d'art sacre', 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’ (‘Modern Sacred Art and the Church of Assy’, Columbia University Press, New York & London, 1961). Paul Claudel responded with a famous letter in which he described the contemporary churches against which Cingria was reacting, as ‘heavily laden confessions.’ Their ugliness, Claudel insisted, was the ‘demonstration to all the world of sins and shortcomings, weakness, poverty, timidity of faith and feeling, disgust with the supernatural, dominations by conventions and formulae ... worldly luxury, avarice, boasting, sulkiness, Pharisaism and bombast.’

These artists and other French-speaking ecclesiastics were in touch with and inspired by the writings of Jacques Maritain and the practice of Maurice Denis. It was Maritain who put Cingria in contact with Gino Severini which led to many ecclesistical commissions in Switzerland for Severini, often together with the St Luke Group. Denis first worked with some of these artists when he was commissioned to work on the renovation of Notre-Dame Geneva and also became artistic director for the construction of Saint-Paul Grange-Canal, also in Geneva. Together they dreamed of "creating a movement of rebirth of religious art in France and in all Catholic countries." This ambition resulted in 1919 in the formation of the St Luke Group and also of the Ateliers d'Art Sacré by Denis and Georges Desvallieres in Paris.

Although having support from the likes of Claudel and Maritain and racking up significant commissions between them, these groups by no means had it all their own way. The reactionary Catholic critic Charles Du Mont, for example, reproduced works by Denis and Cingria side by side in his booklet 'Ou en est notre art religieux?', using them as examples of ‘free and wild artistic expression, whose dynamics have led the world to catastrophe.’

Endowed with a vivid imagination and full of poetic realism, Cingria’s style was similar to folk and naïve art. His painting and stained glass is lyrical, seemingly spontaneous and full of both sensuality and mysticism. The iconography that inspired his work has its roots in the early Christian tradition.

At the Vitromusée I discovered that the area has a Stained Glass Art Trail featuring work by Jean Bazaine, Alexandre Cingria and Brian Clarke, among others. On this trail I was able to visit Collegiale Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, the Gothic church in Romont, and Notre-Dame de l'Epine in Berlens to see work by Bazaine.

Collegiale Notre-Dame de l'Assomption has so many stained-glass windows it is a veritable museum of stained glass itself; the oldest dates back to the beginning of the 14th century, while others date from the 16th and 19th centuries. Modern windows have been created by Henri Broillet, Sergio de Castro (north side-aisle), Cingria (the Twelve Apostles in the clestory) and Yoki (Chapel of our Lady of Portail). The ancient and contemporary coexist, although the contrast between the works of different styles and eras is striking.

Yoki Aebischer Emile, who hailed from Romont, was an innovator of modern geometric and expressive techniques in religious art. Yoki was born in 1922 and, as a child, cycled through the countryside to marvel at the stained glass windows of Cingria in Siviriez. After various jobs, including that of a worker in a glass factory, he became a draughtsman in an architectural office. As a result, in 1938 he met Fernand Dumas, the highly prolific church architect, and through him, Maurice Barraud,  Emilio Beretta, Cingria, Severini and other artists of the St Luke Group. In the 1940s, he discovered the art of the Nabis and, after the war, he attended the Academy of French painter André Lhote in Paris. He went on to create more than a thousand windows for churches in England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy and Switzerland,. He was also involved in the repair of war-damaged monuments in Britain, France and Germany. As well as frescoes and stained glass, he produced many paintings, lithographs, mosaics and tapestries.  In 1981 he co-founded the Museum of Stained Glass, which is now the Vitromusée.

Also on the trail is the Cistercian Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu which commissioned Brian Clarke in 1996 to create windows for its renovated and reordered chapel. Arriving to see these windows I chanced to arrive for Vespers followed by silent contemplation in the still onset of darkness falling. The flakiness of some of the lead nun's vocals, before being caught in the wondrous harmonies of unified responses, only added a sense that our individual fallabilities are accepted and swept up together in the great corporate song of heaven. As participation in the service did not facilitate the taking of photographs I enjoyed an overnight stay at the Hotel du Lion D'Or before returning in the morning for a photographic session in the early morning light.

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Van Morrison - Into The Mystic.