Ana Maria Pacheo: Art shows how vulnerable we are

Ana Maria Pacheco is a painter, sculptor and printmaker who was born in Brazil in 1943 and has lived in England since 1973. Her work exhibits a compelling yet disturbing merging of Brazilian folklore, classical myth, mystical Catholicism and political satire. "Mythical and religious themes, usually given a dark edge, figure in much of her work" and she "deals with issues of control and the exercise of power, drawing upon the tensions between the old world of Europe and the new world of her Brazilian birth."

"The variety of Pacheco’s sculptural work is remarkable and with its tough humanist core, her project constantly provokes us to seriously question the true extent of our own humanity, and of our uses and abuses of power. Ana has said that her 'art shows how vulnerable we are'. Large and enduring themes; violence, journeys, death, love, transformation and metamorphosis reflect her high seriousness, but at the same time her work is neither pompous nor devoid of humour. With a cast of characters that are betrayed, tortured, ecstatic, seductive, grotesque, bestial or divine, her work can arouse extreme emotions, a process that some concluded art no longer has the power to elicit."

Four separate but simultaneous exhibitions, in four different Norwich locations, will bring major sculptural work from Pacheco to Norwich for the first time.

Ana Maria Pacheco Exhibitions | Norwich 2015
17 March to 6 September
Norwich Cathedral
Shadows of the Wanderer (Sculpture)

Cathedral of St John the Baptist
Study for Requiem, John the Baptist I (Sculpture)
Study of Head, John the Baptist III (Sculpture)*
*to Sunday 31st May

17 March to 31 August
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
Enchanted Garden (Reliefs)

17 March to 25 April
The Gallery at Norwich University of the Arts
The Banquet (Sculpture) and Prints

Event at Norwich Castle
Friday 27 March | 5.30 – 7.30pm
Norfolk Contemporary Art Society and
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery present
Ana Maria Pacheco and Colin Wiggins in conversation
5.30 – 6.15pm – exhibition viewing
6.15 – 7.15pm – conversation in the Town Close Auditorium
Seating is limited so pre-booking is essential
To reserve tickets please email norfolkart@googlemail.com
NCAS members | £5.00 – Non-members | £7.00 (payment at door)

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Victoria Williams, Emmylou Harris et al - In My Hour Of Darkness.

Art that depicts biblical scenes and art that looks at the world with new eyes

The ArtWay December 2013 newsletter highlights the dilemma or both/and that currently bedevils all Christian Arts organisations. Research into young Dutch Christian artists showed that although "the notion of ‘Christian art’ is often associated with art that depicts biblical scenes, the artists ... investigated turned out to focus mainly on other themes, while the link with their faith [was] present in a more indirect manner':

'As to style, media and approach their works displayed a rich variety. Only some of them, to a very limited extent, worked for the church, or, indeed, for a specifically Christian audience. Their concern is to be present in the middle of society.  They desire to show beauty, inspire, prompt reflection and make people look at the world with new eyes. For these artists art is not a form of evangelism. They welcome the multi-layered character of art and leave room for different interpretations.'
   

ArtWay seeks to encourage churches opening up to art and artists opening up to the church: 'For the more conservative Reformed world in The Netherlands art in the church is a new development, while the mainline Protestant and the Catholic churches are happy to receive a new stimulus in this area.' Yet for this engagement to occur, artists are needed who are willing to work for the church and specifically Christian audiences and to create, at least at times, art that depicts biblical scenes.

 

Most Christian Art organisations end up focussing their attention on one side or the other of this dilemma but, for all of us, both should have real significance and value.

 

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Energy Orchard - King Of Love.

Contemporary Fiction and Christianity

I have several books on order exploring issues of spirituality and faith in modern and contemporary literature.

In The Pen and the Cross: Catholicism and English Literature, 1850-2000 Richard Griffiths examines why some of the most outstanding writers of recent times have been Catholics - often converts, such as Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark and David Jones. Griffiths is concerned also to relate his story to movements on the continent and examines on his way the impact of French Catholic writers such as Huysmans, Peguy and Mauriac on their British counterparts and the influence of British Catholic writers such as Newman, Faber and Chesterton on Europe. Griffiths' book looks as though it should be one of the most comprehensive studies of the modern Catholic novel - a phenomenon about which I've posted here, here, here, here and here.

In Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion since 1960 Amy Hungerford explores the work of major American writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Marilynne Robinson, and links their unique visions to the religious worlds they touch.
While in Contemporary Fiction and Christianity Andrew Tate examines the work of more than a dozen contemporary Anglo-American novelists, including John Updike, Douglas Coupland, John Irving, Michèle Roberts, Don DeLillo and Jim Crace. He shows how the 'sacred turn' in western culture is manifested within the novel from the 1980s to the present, paying particular attention to representations of such theological ideas as the miraculous, the heretical, the apocalyptic and the messianic.

Tate's book, which has arrived, looks to be a genuinely comprehensive survey taking in, in addition to those mentioned above: Sara Maitland - "perhaps the most combatively theological British prose writer of the last 25 years"; Donna Tartt - "a 'constant tension' between her committed Christian faith ... and her 'vocation as a novelist"; James Robertson - his "sensitive and intensely theological novel The Testament of Gideon Mack"; John L'Heureux - "a former Jesuit priest - examines the fragile division between faith and unbelief in The Miracle; Jonathan Coe - "suggests that the sacred is found in the midst of the profane"; David Maine - "The Flood ... the first of his series of biblically themed novels"; Rhidian Brook - "a relatively rare novel of religious conversion"; Yann Martel - "challenges the notion that the journey of faith ... is necessarily detrimental to morally complex, demanding fiction"; Pat Barker - "Christ is a startling, defamiliarizing and unique presence"; Norman Mailer - "curiously reverent The Gospel According to the Son";  Salley Vickers - "rewrites the myth of the angel in disguise"; Bernard Malamud - "reclaimed the tradition of the holy messenger"; Jodi Picoult and David Guterson - "focus on figures who claim to have seen and to have been spoken to by celestial beings"; Nick Hornby - explores miracle healings; Frederick Buechner - envisages a "liberating eternal or kairotic moment"; and Jon McGregor - "a celebration of the miraculous possibilities of the quotidian".

No survey, though, can be fully comprehensive and these don't seem to discuss the following: Tom Davies - "the core of all his books is religious"; Shusaku Endo - "compelling but profoundly flawed Christian protagonists"; Catherine Fox - "an exploration of fanaticism and salvation"; Susan Howatch - "known for ... religious and philosophical themes"; John Grisham - "The redemptive power of faith is a strong theme in The Testament"; P.D. James - "a writer whose work is imbued with deep Christian convictions"; Nicholas Mosley - "novelist whose work [is] often philosophical and Christian in theology"; Morris West - "writer whose deep interest in and commitment to Catholicism provided the central theme for nearly all of his thirty novels", Niall Williams - "takes spiritual issues seriously – and continues to write compellingly about them" or Tim Winton - "'to ignore Winton's Christianity is to ignore the elephant in the room", among others.

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Bruce Springsteen - Land of Hope and Dreams.

Appropriate public thanksgiving?

The exhibition of Mexican miracle paintings at the Wellcome Collection (Infinitas Gracias) got me reflecting on the differences between Latin Catholic expressions of faith and those of Western Protestantism.
Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories, from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence, through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life - lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment - in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.

Votives are gestures of thanksgiving, examples of public gratitude for survival, something that we don't do well in the Western Church where public memorials are either reserved for the wealthy or are controversial when they reflect popular culture. Thousands of these small paintings line the walls of Mexican churches. This, again, would seem to be something that we value in other cultures but which consider as anathema in our own Western churches where minimalism rules and the naïve is undervalued.

The regulations governing churchyards and churches (including the otherwise excellent new guidelines from the Church Buildings Council) would seem to specifically exclude from our churches any local expression of the type of art which is being celebrated through Infinitas Gracias. It may be worth the CBC, DACs and other bodies concerned with the upkeep of churchyards and churches to consider how they would respond to requests for naïve or folk art should these arise.

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Bob Dylan - Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power).