Between: christian science

Showing posts with label christian science. Show all posts

Friday, 31 October 2025

Artlyst - Into Abstraction Meaning Connection And Hope Firstsite

My latest review for Artlyst is on ‘Into Abstraction: Modern British Art and the Landscape’ at Firstsite Gallery:

'Spirituality was a major source of inspiration for many in this period. Nash shared a Christian Science practitioner with Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Sue Hubbard has noted that Hepworth produced her first ‘pierced’ sculpture ‘at the height of her commitment to a religion that denied the reality of material existence’. Piercing her compositions, as here with ‘Mincarlo, Three Curves with Strings’, ‘allowed her to sculpt not only with matter but with space’, to elide the formal with the spiritual. Christianity informed the work of both Sutherland (a Roman Catholic) and Piper (an Anglican), as it had earlier for Constable. Both Sutherland and Piper were inspired by the spiritual landscapes of The Ancients, particularly Samuel Palmer. They went on to receive major ecclesiastical commissions, as also did Hepworth, Heron and Moore. The access to emotion and atmosphere that Abstraction offers was particularly well-suited to spiritual engagement.'

For more on the spirituality of these artists and of abstraction see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mumford and Sons (With Hozier) - Rubber Band Man.

--------------------

Wednesday, 9 June 2021

Artlyst - Barbara Hepworth: Symbols Of Art & Life – Hepworth Wakefield

My latest article for Artlyst is about Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at Hepworth Wakefield:

'The works in this exhibition demonstrate Hepworth’s intuitive and spiritual understandings of form and energy. Form is inherent in the material and needs to be discerned by the artist to be realised. Energy is found in ideas, the imaginative concept that gives life and vitality to the material; and this vitality is its spiritual inner life, force and energy. This is her synthesis of material and idea, the singular and the universal.

Hepworth described the task of the artist in religious terms, saying that an artistic sensibility revealed a ‘vision of a world that could be possible . . . inclusive of all vitality and serenity, harmony and dynamic movement.’ Artists passionately affirm and reaffirm and demonstrate in their plastic medium ‘faith that this world of ideas does exist.’ In an essay for The Christian Science Monitor in 1965, Hepworth concluded: ‘A sculpture should be an act of praise, an enduring expression of the divine spirit.’

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deacon Blue - All Over The World.

Sunday, 15 January 2017

The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement

My latest article for Artlyst is entitled 'The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement' and highlights the influence of Christian Science on the work of Paul Nash and Barbara Hepworth:

'Christian Science does not explain the work of Nash and Hepworth just as surely as their work does not illustrate Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Yet Christian Science and religion more broadly is a factor in their work and one, which if overlooked or disregarded, diminishes our understanding of and appreciation for their actual achievements. This is not the case simply for the religious beliefs of British Modernists, however, but also holds true whether it is, for example, the art of Rothko, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Thek, Serrano, Hirst, Ofili, Wallinger or de Waal that we are exploring.

Religion is a factor in the work of each of these artists; one which needs to be explored more than has often been the case in the past and which should be given substantive weight in understanding their work whilst also recognising that its significance does not exhaust the ways in which their work can be understood and appreciated.'

My other Artlyst articles are:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Switchfoot - When We Come Alive.

Sunday, 23 October 2016

Paul Nash and James Ensor

Paul Nash opens at Tate Britain on 26 October. Paul Laity has an excellent piece in The Guardian on Nash and his work:

'Nash’s transformations of reality were the product of a visionary sensibility that harked back to William Blake and Samuel Palmer; he searched for inner meanings in the landscape, what he called the “things behind” ...

he was caught up, as ever, in looking at the world and seeing patterns and mysterious “things behind”. An artist both full of wonder and wonderful, knowing the end was near, painted pictures that were stranger than ever.'

Paul and Margaret Nash practiced Christian Science, and Paul shared a Christian Science practitioner with Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson were profoundly influenced by Christian Science (a faith that was of great importance to Stanley Spencer’s wife, Hilda Carline).

For Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans at the Royal Academy of Arts from 29 October 2016 — 29 January 2017, Tuymans, a fellow Belgian and admirer of Ensor, will look back at Ensor’s singular career through a selection of his most bizarrely brilliant and gloriously surreal creations.
Astrid Schenk has written that

'It was 1888 when James Ensor began work on his monumental painting Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889. The painting would become one of his most iconic and eagerly analysed compositions, and is now regarded as a milestone in the history of modern art. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it has also encouraged art historians to take a closer look at the representation of religious subject matter in Ensor's oeuvre in general. The focus of this scholarly attention has been mainly on Ensor's various approaches to the Crucifixion (especially the grotesque or sinister elements in some of his renderings), as well as on the series entitled The Aureoles of Christ or the Sensitivities of the Light, which Ensor first exhibited in 1887, and on different versions of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Abbot of Egypt ...

The size of his religious oeuvre, the great variation in religious subject matter, and the fact that he continued throughout his life to produce religious work are strong indications that, to Ensor, religious sources of inspiration were key to achieving his artistic goals. This relevance went well beyond the supposed identification of the artist with the suffering of Christ and the exploration of particular visual effects. Ensor borrowed from the Christian iconography in order to be able to visualise his ideas in a recognisable idiom and to conduct visual experiments in his quest for exaltation.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gungor - You.

Friday, 19 August 2016

Modern Gods: Religion and British Modernism

Great to see that The Hepworth Wakefield is holding a one-day conference, accompanying the exhibition Stanley Spencer: Of Angels and Dirt, that draws on recent research to demonstrate that many influential British modernists, working in a variety of mediums and styles, were motivated by spiritual ideals.

Scholarship on British Modernism has traditionally portrayed artists like Spencer and Eric Gill as religious eccentrics; stalwarts clinging to the fading spirituality of a pre-modern era. ‘Modern Gods: Religion and British Modernism’ will investigate the religious beliefs of a variety of British artists and critics who were active during Spencer’s lifetime in relation to their work.

Clive Bell described art as a point of access to ‘the God in everything’, while Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson were profoundly influenced by Christian Science (a faith that was of great importance to Spencer’s wife, Hilda Carline). Paul and Margaret Nash also practiced Christian Science, and Paul shared a Christian Science practitioner with Hepworth and Nicholson.

Perhaps the greatest champion of British modern art, Herbert Read, reflected at the end of his career: ‘All my life I have found more sustenance in the work of those who bear witness to the reality of a living God than in the work of those who deny God’.

Increasingly we are beginning to discover that, in many ways, British Modernism represents the natural outgrowth of Victorian spiritual idealism, rather than a radical reaction against it. This one-day conference, at which Dr Sarah Turner (Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre) and Dr Sam Rose (Lecturer at the University of St Andrews) will give the keynote addresses, aims to complicate oppositions between ‘modern’ and ‘non- modern’ art by examining the common threads of religious belief that ran throughout twentieth century aesthetic discourse.

Last year I reviewed still small voice: British biblical art in a secular age at The Wilson in Cheltenham which provided an exclusive opportunity to see major works by many of those influential 20th century British artists who will be discussed at this conference, including Stanley Spencer, Eric Gill, Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth, Edward Burra and Graham Sutherland.

That exhibition was based on the Ahmanson collection "which begins with the Nazarene and Pre-Raphaelite styles of William Dobson and William Bell Scott, and continues, with Eric Gill as the bridge between Modernism and the earlier Arts and Crafts movement, through the inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930s, the Second World War, the post-war era, and the later 20th century, into the early 21st century. Its closest equivalent in the UK is the Methodist Art Collection, which, while broader in the range of artists collected, has less depth, particularly in the focus that the Ahmanson Collection has on the middle years of the 20th century, with its renewed interest in religious art."

I suggested then that "if the Ahmanson and Methodist collections were exhibited together with a judicious choice of contemporary work, this would offer a relatively comprehensive review of modern British religious art."

My Airbrushed from Art History and Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage posts also document much that this conference will discuss as it explores the common threads of religious belief that ran throughout twentieth century aesthetic discourse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gungor - Upside Down.

Monday, 19 October 2015

Pallant House: David Jones, Edmund de Waal & Evelyn Dunbar

As if the prospect of a David Jones retrospective was not enough of a draw to Pallant House, the gallery supplements the Jones show with a new work by Edmund de Waal (whose new book The White Road has recently been published) and also has a remarkable collection of lost works by WW2 Official War Artist Evelyn Dunbar.

De Waal's "‘if we attend’ (2015), a white, wall-mounted vitrine with translucent glazing and 16 porcelain vessels, is a new piece produced especially for the David Jones exhibition. It references the calming slowing down effect of these words in the second line of Jones’s poem The Anathemata: ‘We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His groping syntax, if we attend, already shapes…’. The work, displayed alongside two other porcelain works – ‘in the north north east’ (2014) and ‘thirteen circles’ (2014) - will be accompanied by a series of poems by David Jones, creating a contemplative space reflecting the nature of the work."

Evelyn Dunbar [was] "a Christian Scientist throughout her life, and the church’s influence suffuses all her work.

“She held her beliefs to be self-evident,” writes Campbell-Howes on his blog. “The only doubts she had concerned the readiness of humankind to play its part in the Covenant. The Covenant – my term, not Evelyn’s – as she conceived it, was the promise given by the creator to the human race of a fertile and eternally abundant land, in return for mankind’s promise to cherish it, to appreciate it and to care for it through intelligent and devoted husbandry.”

That explains, no doubt, why nature rarely appears untamed in her work. “She didn’t really do landscapes on a grand scale,” says Ro. “She was more interested in hen coops, worked fields, and the business of tending the land.”

Indeed, almost all the art at Pallant House shows her love for mankind’s nurturing of God’s creation." (The Guardian)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emmylou Harris - Every Grain Of Sand.

Sunday, 26 July 2015

Joseph Cornell: Aesthetic experience as a manifestation of spirit

'From a basement in New York, Joseph Cornell channelled his limitless imagination into some of the most original art of the 20th century.'

'Wanderlust at the RA brings together 80 of Cornell’s most remarkable boxes, assemblages, collages and films, some never before seen outside the USA. Entirely self-taught, the independence of Cornell’s creative voice won the admiration of artists from Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealists, to Robert Motherwell and the Abstract Expressionists, with echoes of his work felt in Pop and Minimalist art.

Wanderlust is a long overdue celebration of an incomparable artist, a man the New York Times called “a poet of light; an architect of memory-fractured rooms and a connoisseur of stars, celestial and otherwise.”'

When he was in his twenties, Joseph Cornell learned about Christian Science and became a devout follower of the religion, as he believed it had cured him of recurring stomach ailments.

Richard Vine notes that 'the teachings of Christian Science and membership of the Christian Science church "provided Cornell ... with a clarity essential to his sanity and his art - the certainty, despite everyday trials and confusions, of ultimate cosmic harmony within the all-encompassing Mind of God."'

Sandra Leonard Starr writes that Cornell 'begins with the finite reality of the object, proves the unreality of it and our seeing it as such, and arrives at a statement of aesthetic experience as a manifestation of spirit.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Al Green - How Great Thou Art.

Saturday, 13 June 2015

Barbara Hepworth: linking the numinous with the real

Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World at Tate Britain includes mention of Hepworth's spirituality.

'In 1931, [Barbara Hepworth] made a sculpture in pink alabaster (destroyed in the war), which she pierced for the first time. This “irrational, inorganic piercing of the closed form”, as AM Hammacher describes it, “entailed a literal and spiritual breakaway from the tradition of the closed volume”.

Hepworth said: “I had felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.” The technique became integral to her art, expressing not just her sculptural creed, but – as Lucy Kent points out in the Tate catalogue – giving expression to her spiritual beliefs, allowing her, as a Christian Scientist, to find a way of expanding the inner life of her sculptures beyond their physical limitations, of linking the numinous with the real.' (Sarah Crompton)

Pam Twiss notes that, 'Although Ben [Nicholson] was clearly interested and gained much from Christian Science - and Barbara [Hepworth] toyed with its teachings - neither were fully committed Christian Scientists. Of the three, only Winifred [Nicholson] was a Christian Scientist in the sense of being a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass.(The Mother Church) and active in local branch churches.'

Henry Myric Hughes writes that 'Winifred, whose own talents were considerable, seems not merely to have given Nicholson confidence in his artistic mission, but to have provided him with a rationale for continuing to work. Through her, he came into contact with the teachings of Christian Science, and the author argues, plausibly enough, that these strengthened his belief in the spiritual value of his art and its enduring ability to communicate values of universal significance.'

In an essay written for The Christian Science Monitor in 1965, Barbara Hepworth wrote: `I believe most strongly that any sculpture made now should be valid in its form and ideas a thousand years hence. A sculpture should be an act of praise, an enduring expression of the divine spirit.'

As Chancellor of Salisbury, Moelwyn Merchant acknowledged Hepworth's success in expressing the divine spirit by accepting from Hepworth, his friend, the gift of a large bronze Crucifixion which he controversially had placed near the door of the cathedral. To him it was an important expression of faith by a major contemporary artist; to some conservative Salisbury residents, it was threatening and sacrilegious.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Patti Smith - Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter).