Between: dali

Showing posts with label dali. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Artlyst: Surrealism Outside The Usual Story – Tate Modern

My latest review for Artlyst is on Surrealism Beyond Borders at Tate Modern:

'Surrealism rejects oppressive rationalism by seeking to liberate the mind from outdated modes of thought and behaviour. As poet Urkhan Muyassar explained, the Surrealists sought to free the ‘mysterious moments’ of human creativity from a ‘superimposed’ reasoning to reach repressed thoughts, or ‘what lies behind reality. Surrealism aims to travel beyond reason and therefore contains a substantive body of work exploring spirituality, mysticism and religion in all their many and varied forms ...

These works – fascinating in their own right and profoundly absorbing when brought together – demonstrate that a deep dive into the spirituality of Surrealism would prove to be a revelatory exhibition, particularly when one also remembers the spiritual imagery and influences in the work of others included here, such Jean Arp, Joseph Cornell and Salvador Dalí.'

Check out also my Artlyst piece on Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

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Francis Poulenc - 5 poèmes de Max Jacob.

Thursday, 21 January 2021

Artlyst: Made in USA - Ed Ruscha, An American Perspective

My latest piece for Artlyst previews Ed Ruscha: OKLA at Oklahoma Contemporary focusing in particular on the Catholic influences found in Ruscha's work:

'Dual associations, blends and juxtapositions are, I think, at the heart of the influence that Ruscha believes Catholicism to have had on his work. He has said that there is a connection with his work and his experience with religious icons: the cross and the Church’s stations. He has spoken of this connection in terms of flavours that come over, ‘like incense used in the Church, benediction … the ritual … a deeply mysterious thing that affected me.’ More than that, however, is the dual nature of religious icons and Church rituals through which the ordinary becomes extraordinary; pigment on board becoming a window to the divine and bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ.'

In the article I note that this exhibition is part of a growing trend to take seriously the religious influences found in the work of many contemporary or modern artists:

'This is not to claim such artists for the Church – Ruscha is a confirmed atheist – but acknowledges the reality of religious influences in work in ways that in earlier periods of modernism either went unacknowledged or were dismissed. Additionally, as I have sought to do in articles for Artlyst about Salvador Dali, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson and Andy Warhol, among others, this acknowledgement of influence fills out our understanding of art history in the modern period whilst also creating a clearer picture of the continuing impact in a changed and changing cultural landscape of religious practices and theological ideas.'

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

Articles:

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Woody Guthrie - Oklahoma Hills.

Sunday, 19 April 2020

Ernst Fuchs: Catholicism, Chapels and Bible

'The paintings and writings of Ernst Fuchs, co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, helped inspire the global visionary art movement. Fuchs directly influenced H.R. Giger, Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa, Brigit Marlin, and dozens of others, but even if they never studied with him, all visionary artists – those who aspire to portray dimensions of visionary inner space - look to him as a superlative master.'

‘He is known mainly for his dazzling draughtsmanship and paintings of psychedelic cherubs or biblical scenes, such as Moses and the Burning Bush, and numerous portraits of Christ. He was also an internationally recognized sculptor, stage designer and print maker, composer and poet. Fuchs was the one of the first contemporary artists able to evoke multidimensional luminous worlds of psychedelics.’ ‘Paintings by Fuchs include bizarre, exquisite, uncanny beings, esoteric religious symbolism and detail comparable to Van Eyck. He revived the traditional mixed (mische) technique, using egg tempera to build forms in grisaille then glaze with oils for luminous depth.’

Fuchs inspired the founding of the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art to train artists of the future. The artist’s villa in Vienna, designed by 19th-century Austrian architect Otto Wagner, is now a museum displaying a vast treasury of his masterworks.

‘In 1947, Fuchs attended an exhibition where he was able to examine Surrealist paintings up close for the first time. Among them was The Lugubrious Game by Salvador Dali - and it had the seventeen year old painter enthralled:

"That was the first Dali - one of the best - so small in scale, but we could all see, from the first, how well these people could draw and paint. This precision, I decided, is something I must have. In Dali I found a confirmation of what I wanted to achieve."

This was the opening of the eye: the desire to portray the inner world of dreams and fantasms with a refined technique. But something more had happened: Fuchs had found in Dali's vision something recognizable, something undefineable, yet betokening kinship and affinity - the tacit recognition of shared vision.’

Ramon Kubicek writes that Fuchs and the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism were the principal exponents of ‘a small tradition of “veristic surrealism,” interested in visionary subjects’ that has continued to this day. The artist Johfra described his works as ‘Surrealism based on studies of psychology, religion, the bible, astrology, antiquity, magic, witchcraft, mythology and occultism’; a description that may have relevance to the broader movement. Although this movement today is primarily representative of esoteric, new age or occult spiritualities, in Fuchs’ work it has a significant Catholic wellspring. For Fuchs, this was another point of synergy with his friend Dali who, he said, ‘always was in a Catholic period.’ Dali and Fuchs became close friends with Fuchs stating that when they met they did not discuss painting, but physics and theology.

Fuchs was born in 1930 in Vienna. His father, Maximilian Fuchs, son of an orthodox Jewish family, had turned down a career as a Rabbi, leaving his theological studies uncompleted. He married Leopoldine, a Christian. When the Nazis occupied Austria in March 1938, Maximilian Fuchs emigrated to Shanghai. His son remained in Vienna together with his mother. Nazi legislation made it illegal for Leopoldine to raise her son. He was deported to a transit camp for children of mixed racial origin and Leopoldine Fuchs then agreed to a formal divorce from her husband, thus saving her son from the extermination camp. In 1942 he was baptised, an event of the utmost significance for him that determined his future life and work.

Fuchs began to draw from an early age. In 1945, after the end of the war and aged 15, he enrolled in painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts where his first meeting with Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden took place in the class of Professor Albert Paris von Gütersloh. In 1948, together with Brauer, Hutter, Hausner and Lehmden, Fuchs founded the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Renaissance painting - especially the Danube school - was to be redefined. Alchemy, Christian and Jewish mysticism, but also deep psychology, such as dealing with the pain and suffering of the world wars, determined the thematic worlds of this young artist group. It was an Apocalyptic art, ‘full of grotesque monsters rendered in bright, bold colours,’ with ‘architecture from different periods, from the Tower of Babel to Renaissance palaces and modern cities.’

Johann Muschik later coined the term Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, under which these artists became known worldwide: ‘These Painters are Realists for their attention to detail, fantastic is the juxtaposition, the scene. One cannot call them Surrealists, though they evolved out of Surrealism, because missing is the absurd, the preference for paranoia, trance and hallucination.’

An early painting, the 1945 'Crucifixion and Self Portrait with Inge beside the Cross,' includes fellow artist Inge Pace, whose strong Christian religious devotion made an impact on Fuchs. In 1946 some of this small group held an exhibition in the foyer of the Vienna Concert Hall. Their works, thought of as a branch of surrealism, were removed after a public outcry. ‘Teaching at the Academy focused on the techniques of the Old Masters. Fuchs revived the old mixed technique of underpainting in tempera then adding glazes of oil paint on top. This produced a luminosity to his paintings and also allowed very detailed imagery.’ The lack of any positive response from the Vienna art world and his inability to earn a living from his art led him to follow his friend Friedensreich Hundertwasser - then Fritz Stowasser - to Paris in 1949. He was to spend twelve of his most important creative years there.

In 1956 he was accepted into the Catholic Dormition Monastery in Jerusalem, where he worked for one year on his largest painting, the ‘Last Supper’, in the refectory. He devoted all his energies in this period to furthering Jewish-Christian understanding and to working as a church painter gaining a commission to paint the Drei Mysterien des heiligen Rosenkranzes (Three Mysteries of the Sacred Rosary) for a newly-built church in Vienna.

This triptych, painted between 1958 and 1960, caused a storm of protest. Some of his most vehement detractors demanded that the pictures be removed from the church. Each of the parts measures three times three metres; they are painted on 12 goatskins that were sewn together but left uncut at the edges, and executed in the artist´s special mixed technique. A kind of large-scale parchment painting hung on light metal rods by means of loops and looking like banners floating in free space, they remind the congregation of the central events in the story of Redemption representing the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the rosary.

Fuchs returned to Vienna and subsequent international recognition, opening a gallery that became a meeting point for the supporters of Fantastic Realism. Together with Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer, in 1959 he founds the "Pintorarium", a universal academy of all creative fields. The Pintorarium was concieved ‘not only a school of painting, but also a school of thought and life.’ It was intended as ‘a home for all creative persons without discrimination regarding the arts, art movements and philosophies, architecture, poetry, film, music, etc.’ The key principle was individual autonomy. Emulation was prohibited and there were no role models.

Fuchs ‘drew inspiration for his extravagant imagery from visionary experiences, which he sought to convey in his iconographic works’ ‘laced with religious symbolism and mystical allusions.’ His work over the course of his career increasingly focused on religious symbolism with biblical works including Psalm 69 (1960) and Adam and Eve in front of the Tree of Knowledge (1984). ‘His paintings from the late 50s to the present day have extraordinary visionary power. Babylonian Cherubs, visions of Christ and other mythological subjects explore the roots of middle-eastern religious experience.’

In 1990 he began work on the Apocalypse Chapel at Klagenfurt in Austria. He created oil paintings covering the entire interior of the chapel of parish church St. Egid creating monumental frescos to the Apocalypse of John which took him about 20 years to complete. The Apocalypse Chapel was originally commissioned by Monseignor Marcus Mairitsch. Although the chapel is no more than 40 sq. metres, its arched ceilings and many walls are covered with visions of 'the last days' from Fuchs’attempt to depict the 12th chapter of John's Book of Revelation. It is his Sistine Chapel.

K. Ziegler notes that, with architect Manfred Fuchsbichler, from 1992 to 1994, Fuchs constructed and decorated an extension to the Parish church of St James in Thal. Fuchs wanted to portray the Paradise, the Heavenly Jerusalem, saying: ‘You have to recognize from a distance: this is a sacred place. Wherever the eyes look, there has to be something to see.’

The design of the entire complex combines impressive lighting effects with a fantastic variety of colours and shapes. The exterior of the church was completely redesigned as the church expanded. A pebble path leads around the church and into the building to the altar. It is designed as a pilgrimage route and commemorates St. James, the patron saint of pilgrims. The building is covered with three different-sized gable roof structures that span a trapezoidal plan. The entire building has the character of a pointed crystal, which has been adapted to the roof shapes of the old building. The facade of the new church building is made of hard fire bricks and patinated copper sheets. The walls of the old building are plastered, painted turquoise and partly decorated with gravel applications. On the facade of the apse of the old church there are monograms made of pebbles of Maria (the heart), Jesus Christ (the tree of life), and Joseph (the house).

A canopy with a red beam structure dominates the entrance area. The thick glass doors at the entrance are opened with handles made from ram's horn, the favourite sacrificial animal of the biblical people of Israel. The symbols Alpha and Omega as well as crossed keys and the Christ monogram are attached to the glass doors. Inside you can see an open roof structure painted in rainbow colours that is reminiscent of the desert tent that the Israelites erected in the wilderness. The rainbow symbolises the covenant that Noah made with God. Daylight comes in through seventeen triangular dormer windows of different sizes and over vertical pilaster strips mirrored with crystal glass elements. The rows of seats are wavy and add to the special atmosphere.

A glass window in the apse shows a picture of Maria Hilf, a copy of the famous painting by Lukas Cranach in Innsbruck Cathedral. Images of the calling of the disciples and the Transfiguration can also be found in the apse; both include St James. The symbol of the apostle James, the scallop, can be found on the walls, the holy water basin is shaped as a scallop shell, the backrests of the plastic benches show the same motif. A fossil of a scallop shell, which was found in a quarry in Retznei, is in a glass stele behind the priest's seat. A crystal cross with Svarovski crystals and Murano glass elements draws attention to the central altar, which is also made of crystal glass.

Finally, published in 1996 in an edition of only 20,000 copies, Fuchs considered his leather-bound and gilded Bible, richly illustrated by over 80 colour plates of his paintings, to be his crowning achievement. With his first illustrations of the Bible, he hoped to surpass the heretofore best-known Bible illustrators of this century: his friend Salvador Dali, and painter Marc Chagall. He wanted to create a gold ingot and, in accordance with this design, the Bible was bound in calfskin and covered with a gold folium. This was to emphasize the value of this ‘most valuable treasure of humanity.’ ‘With this, I am transforming the profane covetousness of men for gold into a yearning for what is holy, into reverence for the great Mystery,’ Fuchs explained.

‘Art is nearness to God received without effort,’ he wrote: ‘This is the concise meaning and basis of a theology of art that is age old and has maintained again and again that jubilation erupts when God is near. Through that jubilation, the artist’s nearness to God was brought through creative service without sweat or torment.’ ‘What is religion,’ he asks, ‘if not the relationship of the now to its beginnings?’ As a result, the work of art ‘has its source in the desire to create a means of transcending time, entering eternity.’ ‘Thus the artist, in contemplation, creates both history and eternity.’ (‘One Source: Sacred Journeys – A celebration of Spirit & Art’)

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Larry Norman - Nightmare #71.

Artlyst: Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith

My latest article for Artlyst explores the enigmatic faith of Salvador Dali:

'Amidst these confusions and contentions, Salvador Dalí created some of the most popular yet controversial religious paintings of the twentieth century; ‘The Sacrament of the Last Supper’, from 1955, being one example. Theologian Paul Tillich considered the work’ junk’ and said he was horrified by the depiction of Jesus as ‘A sentimental but very good athlete on an American baseball team.’ By contrast, both Paul Myhre and Michael Novak identified the Eucharistic character of the painting as an answer to the many theological critics who have reviled it. Novak claimed, ‘Dalí gives us the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.’

How to understand this degree of contestation and confusion? I want to suggest that Dalí himself provides a means to understand through his two key concepts of the paranoiac-critical analysis method and Nuclear-Mysticism.'

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

Articles:

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The Blind Boys of Alabama (featuring Justin Vernon) - Every Grain Of Sand.

Saturday, 28 July 2018

Alfred Lichter and Shaun Gagg

The painter and sculptor Alfred Lichter, born in 1917, lived and worked in Mallorca for almost 30 years. He died at the age of 95 years on November 1, 2012 in Alaró.

His mature understanding of the meaning of art was that it opened windows to the spiritual world – an alternative concept to our materialistic and conflict-filled earthly existence. He wrote that:

'Capriccio is the result of my lifelong search for the essence of art.

Capriccio is the name for an artistic approach that places special emphasis on nature’s inexhaustible energies and the logic of chance.'

In 2001 he exhibited a collection of Ecce Homo images.

The Sorrows Of Steel is a welded steel nail sculpture by Shaun Gagg which is a life size Jesus Christ from over 15,000 nails welded together. Gagg says that he doesn't consider himself particularly religious but for many years has had the Idea of a 'Jesus from Nails' at the back of his mind. He thinks it must have something to do with the painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali which he first saw as a teenager and has fascinated him ever since.

The sculpture is now the focal point for the newly-refurbished Lady Chapel of Holy Cross and St Francis Catholic Church, Walmley.

Parish priest, Father Neil Bayliss, said: “I thought the sculpture should be in a church where Christians can see it, reflect on it and get inspiration. It is an amazing sight and one which I want many others to share in. Many parishioners have taken the chance to see the artwork whilst it has been on display in a local art gallery, and were fully supportive of my proposal to buy it. Art plays a huge role in the church and this was a great opportunity for us to add something extra special to the redevelopment of the Lady Chapel.”

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Linda Perhacs - We Will Live.

Wednesday, 19 October 2016

The Shadow of Angels

In 2010, the Brazilian artist Kim Poor emerged from a period of creative hibernation as a result of reading The Glory of Angels by her friend and mentor, Edward Lucie-Smith.

Angels, such as her Watcher of the Skies, had featured in her work previously but the exquisite classical and contemporary illustrations of the power of angels in art found in The Glory of Angels catapulted Kim back to life again. She wrote that “these powerful bridges to the unknown have been present throughout mankind’s history to help us and guide us” while, in his book, Edward Lucie-Smith explored how angels guide us by protecting and warning us of danger, healing and comforting us, and urging us to follow God′s path.

It is, therefore, appropriate that Edward has curated Kim’s current exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook, the church where I am Priest-in-charge, as the exhibition entitled The Shadow of Angels focuses exclusively on Kim’s angel paintings.

Kim Poor’s art consistently plays with veils of light and colour to evoke mystical atmospheres. This is particularly so with her diaphanist paintings which use ground glass on steel that is fired countless times until the delicate layers of opaque and transparent glass achieve depth and colour. Salvador Dali thought that to look at these paintings was as if to 'look through coloured gauze', which inspired him to coin the term 'Diaphanism' for her style.

The veiled distortions of poetic dreamscapes that she creates are perfectly suited to the depiction of angels; creatures which may or may not be there, the subjects of belief rather than of sight. Among them we find The Angel of The Hour, where time is vanishing from the clock which the angel holds. Is this an indication that the angel wishes to draw us into the timelessness of eternity or is it an indication of the speed with which we feel our days go by? These ambiguous angels represent our need for reassurance, an illusion or reality in a very unstable world, a manifestation of life and death or the true bridge to the Divine. The Good Samaritan, however, shows us unambiguously that the face of compassion is angelic.

The range of different angels depicted – the Angel of the Stigmata, The Healer, The Messenger - explores the universality of angelic mythology; iconography which is a unifying force throughout time and a connection in all religions and cultures. At the same time, these are also very English angels, whimsical and magical, drawing on the Victorian influences in Kim’s work; the Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin, Richard Dadd and Lewis Carroll.

While there is much in these paintings that seems to depict a beautiful otherness – one of flowing curves and circling flourishes – there is nevertheless also an engagement with the shattered, splintered experiences of tragedy. Rosa de Hiroshima is an image of resilience drawn from reflection on Vinicius de Moraes’ poem of the same name. Here the angel representing the Rose of Hiroshima stands with an indomitable spirit. Themes of healing and guidance abound implying a world in need of both, while Indomitable finds similar strength in adversity to that of Rosa de Hiroshima in an image of a horse’s head.

Tragedy is sensed again in the installation by Sacha Molyneux and Kim Poor which greets visitors at the entrance to this exhibition. Human misunderstandings and envy lead to the Flight of Cupid from Psyche causing her to wander the earth in search of her lost love. Ultimately, as Edward Lucie-Smith notes in The Glory of Angels, angels, and these images, challenge us with ‘a degree of perfection’ that our human nature, ‘chained to the material sphere, can never fully attain.’

The Shadow of Angels, St Stephen Walbrook, 39 Walbrook, London EC4N 8BN, until 29 October, weekdays 10.00am – 4.00pm (Weds, 11.00am – 3.00pm).

The exhibition has featured as a news item on Brazil’s Globo TV -
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r8nxa6gy3rqv3sj/EXPOSICAO%20FINAL%20GNE.mp4?dl=0.

Edward Lucie-Smith's talk can be heard at https://www.instagram.com/p/BLHQ_xNgTxq/.

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Katya DJ - Speak The Truth.

Saturday, 16 July 2016

Artists of the last century artistically wrestling with the Crucifixion

The latest ArtWay meditation is by Sandra Bowden who has organised an exhibition centred on the work she explores in her meditation, Modern Crucifixion by Frederick Wright.

She write: "For centuries artists have imagined the crucifixion not only as a biblical narrative, but also as an event happening in their own historical context. This strategy of depicting the crucifixion in contemporary terms, both makes Christ more directly present in the time and place of the contemporary viewer and employs the crucifixion as a point of reference for critically understanding modern life. Working in the early 1930s, Frederick Wight imagined the crucifixion as happening in Chatham, MA, USA with the sea-faring folk of the town that he knew."

In the exhibition Bowden explores other modern crucifixions noting that:

"By the end of the 19th century, artists viewed the Crucifixion through the lens of the Academy and many of the works had become banal, lacking the intensity that it merited. Thomas Eakins’ Crucifixion, painted in 1880, was seen by many as an academic exercise to portray Christ as realistically as possible, but with little religious feeling. Also in the late 19th century, Gauguin’s Yellow Crucifixion places the event in the countryside of Brittany. Three women near the cross are wearing the typical peasant dress and the entire scene, including the body of Christ, are cast in yellow tones of the season’s harvest. Time and again artists have placed the crucifixion and those present at the event against a local background and dressed in the apparel of the day.

The Crucifixion continues to appear as a theme during the 20th century, but with a renewed perspective. German Expressionist artist Emil Nolde was fascinated by the expressive intensity of the Isenheim Altarpiece and created his own version with a stylistic fusion of primitive forms and the exaggerated colors of the Fauves. Salvador Dali famously painted his Crucifixion representing the cross as a hypercube. Marc Chagall, a Jewish artist, broke with his religious tradition to paint several crucifixions, one of which is in this exhibition. Stanley Spencer, an English painter, set his biblical stories in his home village with local people filling the scene much like Frederick Wight has done in his Modern Crucifixion."

This exhibition has similarities to the Cross Purposes exhibition organised by Mascalls Gallery and Ben Uri Gallery which included Santiago Bell, Susan Shaw, Maggie Hambling and Craigie Aitchison. Centering on Chagall's drawings for the windows of Tudeley Parish Church, this exhibition explored the uses of the crucifixion by a broad range of artists featuring the work of many artists including Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, and Eric Gill. The exhibition addressed both meditative religious works as well as more horrific secular works and thereby demonstrated the breadth of modern treatments of the crucifixion.

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James Macmillan - Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.

Monday, 30 December 2013

The more than (sur-) real

The sur-real (or more than real) seems to suit some artistic mediums better than others. Surrealism's incongruous juxtapositions (whether satirical or transcendent) seem to work best in instant impact formats like comedy, paintings or songs as opposed to sustained, unfolding narrative-based forms such as films and novels. Here I mean instant in the sense that the incongruity is immediately apparent and acts as a teaser generating a confusion or curiosity which can lead to deeper examination. The surreal looks great visually (i.e. Dali, Magritte et al), is hilarious as alternative comedy (from The Goon Show to Another Case of Milton Jones) and, as documented by Bob Dylan from Bringing It All Back Home to John Wesley Harding, is powerfully affective as images of a "strange, alternate, subterranean America".

I've been particularly enjoying more of Milton Jones' surreal comedy this break, so here are some great examples from the line of absurdist comedy of which he is part:

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Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland - The Mock Turtle's Story.

Wednesday, 17 September 2008

Art interviews - Bishop of Barking (1)

The Rt Revd David Hawkins was consecrated bishop on 17 October 2002 and began his public ministry as Anglican Bishop of Barking in the Diocese of Chelmsford in January 2003. He has special responsibility for mission and parish development.

JE. You use a lot of visual imagery in your public ministry where most of your sermons or talks contain at least one acted out parable. I can remember seeing you stand on your head (after a number of attempts!); release doves; cook a meal; wash and iron clothes; and hang ‘L’ plates around your neck and those of confirmation candidates. Why is the visual of such importance to you in communicating with people publicly?

DH. For me it is instinctive. I think visually, it is the way I am wired. I am fired by visual images because of my interest in and practice of art. The visual is the most instinctive tool I have. After all, a picture says more than a thousand words. All through history people have been educated and informed primarily through visual images. Jesus also used visuals in his very concrete teaching, so I feel I’m in good company in using everyday objects to make connections for others. I love to use surprise, shock, mirth and amusement in order to make what are hopefully memorable spiritual and theological points. In Church, in spite of centuries where the Church has been a patron of the Arts, the primary means of communicating faith is our insistence on using far too many words which often go right over people’s heads.

JE. Where does your interest in the visual come from originally and how has that interest been developed over the course of your ministry?

DH. I think of myself as an artist first and a clergyperson second. Chronologically, I have been painting and drawing since my colouring book days. Art has been a lifetime pursuit. I was ordained aged 24 but have had a calling to paint since childhood. Therefore, it is natural for me to use visual imagery in communication. It has never been a self conscious decision for me; a trying out of this, that or the other.

Early memories for me, as a child, include seeing Rene Magritte’s Time Transfixed and Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone which are bizarre juxtapositions of everyday objects. Now, when I think of the resurrection, I think of a washing machine in front of a communion table. Such juxtapositions help to make familiar preaching themes fresh and to make connections for those who listen. In recent sermons, I have placed in the sanctuary a bath and, a few weeks before seeing the Helter Skelter slides at the Tate Modern (Carsten Holler’s Test Site 2006), I used a children’s slide. I also use a wall of 8 x 4 whiteboards on which to paint stories, which I find works well with All-Age audiences. I feel nervous relying solely on words.

JE. Who or what has influenced in that development? Are there particular artists, periods of art or theologians who have heightened your appreciation of the visual?

DH. There are a large number of artists and periods that I find absorbing, for example, Rembrandt’s religious paintings or the work of Van Gogh. However, what fires me most are contemporary artists such as Terry Frost, Sam Francis, Ivon Hitchens and Howard Hodgkins. The emotional landscapes of Hodgkins are startlingly memorable and I love the iconic impact of his colours.

I am also fascinated by the prophetic influence of so many artists that people would seldom consciously recognise but to which they unconsciously respond. The work of Mark Rothko, which can now be found on calendars and tea towels, seems to be speaking into a longing for a contemplative or mystical expression in people’s lives. Less people now experience this sense in Church leading to a spiritual void in many people’s lives. On Sunday mornings the Art Galleries in London are jammed with people and Art seems to be filling something of this void in people. The prophetic and spiritual vocation of artists is, therefore, more important than it has been for a long time.

The remarkable success of the Tate Modern and, in particular, the Turbine Hall installations, is evidence of this phenomenon. The Weather Project left people awestruck by the everyday phenomenon of the weather. Contemplating our atmosphere and weather in a gallery providing us with a way of reflecting on experiences that are bigger than our individual lives. Embankment contained thousands of cardboard boxes in their emptiness – icebergs of discarded emptiness – which reflected the experience that many people have in their lives. Now, there are the helter skelter slides. In each case these installations are formed from everyday phenomenon but they provide the opportunity for reflection and contemplation. In this way, the Turbine Hall is like a well-filled modern Cathedral.

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Noah and the Whale - Give A Little Love.