Index to 'Airbrushed from Art History'
1 - Introduction I
2 - Introduction II
3 - Traces du Sacré
4 - Symbolism I
5 - Gauguin and Bernard
6 - Vincent Van Gogh
7 - Maurice Denis
8 - Symbolism II
9 - Jacques Maritain
10 - Albert Gleizes
11 - Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes
12 - Couturier, Régamey, Bell and Hussey
12a - Victor Kenna, Moelwyn Merchant and Bernard Walke
13 - Expressionism I
14 - Expressionism II
15 - Reconciliatory art
16 - Australia and Poland
17 - Abstract art
18 - Ireland and Malta
19 - Divisionism and Futurism
20 - Contemporary artists
21 - Africa and Asia
22 - Icons
23 - Wallspace
24 - Albert Houthuesen
25 - Stained Glass
26 - Self-Taught artists
Comments on the series can be found here, here, here and here. Related posts can be found here, here, here, here and here.
This post brings the 'Airbrushed from Art History' series to a conclusion with some reflections on what I feel I have learnt through the series.
"Sooner or later, if you love art, you will come across a strange fact: there is almost no modern religious art in museums or in books of art history. It is a state of affairs that is at once obvious and odd, known to everyone and yet hardly whispered about ... a certain kind of academic art historical writing treats religion as an interloper, something that just has no place in serious scholarship ... Straightforward talk about religion is rare in art departments and art schools, and wholly absent from art journals unless the work in question is transgressive. Sincere, exploratory religious and spiritual work goes unremarked. Students who make works that are infused with spiritual or religious meanings must normally be content with analysis of their works' formal properties, technique, or mode of presentation. Working artists concerned with themes of spirituality (again, excepting work that is critical or ironic about religion) normally will not attract the attention of people who write for art magazines ... An observer of the art world might well come to the conclusion that religious practice and religious ideas are not relevant to the art world unless they are treated with scepticism."
So writes James Elkins at the beginning of On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Yet, as Elkins also notes, these attitudes are odd, because there is a tremendous amount of religious art created. Similarly, Erika Doss has argued that "issues of faith and spirituality were very much a part of modern art in America as artists of diverse styles and inclinations repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety." It may be this paradox which leads Timothy Potts to suggest, in Beyond Belief: Modern art and the Religious Imagination, that, “the pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art may at first seem to stand in contradiction to the secularization of so many aspects of life and culture during our times.”
The pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art can be demonstrated by means of an alternative history of modern and contemporary art focusing on artists, movements and themes that utilised broadly Christian imagery and themes.
The catalytic encounter of Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin in Brittany in 1888 resulted in Post Impressionist paintings exploring the Catholic soul of Breton peasants. Bernard and Gauguin shared their new style with Paul Sérusier who, together with fellow art students including Maurice Denis, formed the Nabis. Denis became one of the most significant artists in the French Catholic Revival, being prominent in the Nabis, as a Symbolist, and, through his Studios of Sacred Art, contributing to a revival of French Sacred Art. Denis’ influence was felt among Symbolists and Sacred Artists in Belgium, Italy, Russia and Switzerland, in particular.
A second circle of influence within the French Catholic Revival gathered around the philosopher Jacques Maritain. His book Art and Scholasticism was influential and he organised study circles for artists and others including the Expressionist Georges Rouault, the Surrealist Jean Cocteau, the Futurist Gino Severini, the Dadaist Otto van Rees and abstract art promoter Michel Seupher. His writings were also significant for the community of artists which formed around the sculptor Eric Gill at Ditchling, which included the artist and poet David Jones.
A third circle of influence gathered around cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes, including Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone (who played significant roles in the development of modern art in Ireland) and Australian potter Anne Danger.
A fourth circle of influence developed around the Dominican Friars, Marie-Alan Couturier and Pie Régamey, who insisted that the Roman Catholic Church call for the great artists and architects of their day to design and decorate its churches. The involvement of artists such as Marc Chagall, Férnand Leger, Le Corbusier, and Henri Matisse in churches such as Assy, Ronchamp and Vence was proof of the effectiveness of their approach and ministry. A similar approach was taken in the UK by George Bell and Walter Hussey which saw artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Hans Feibusch and Cecil Collins decorating churches.
Expressionist artists such as Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs and Albert Servaes painted biblical scenes with an emotional intensity that was often more than the institutional churches at the time could accept. Georges Rouault added to this expressionist intensity with a compassionate Christian critique of contemporary society. Italian Divisionism and Futurism also included a strong strand of sacred art through artists such as Gaetano Previati, Gerardo Dottori, and Fillia.
Wassily Kandinsky created abstract art by abstracting from apocalyptic biblical images and felt that abstraction was the best means available to artists for depicting an unseen realm. Kasimir Malevich was not only influenced by the tradition of Russian icon painting but also by the underlying principle of icons – the presence of an Absolute in the world – to develop the Suprematist aim of self-transcendence.
Daniel A. Siedell writes that “for these and many other avant-garde painters well into the twentieth century, including Russian immigrants John Graham and Mark Rothko, modern painting functioned like an icon, creating a deeply spiritual, contemplative relationship between the object and viewer.” The influence also went the other way too, as Abstract Expressionist William Congdon converted to Roman Catholicism and used this style to create deeply expressive crucifixions.
Iconographer, Aidan Hart, notes that a revival of traditional iconography occurred in the twentieth century; led in Greece by Photius Kontoglou, in Russia by Maria Sakalova and Archimandrite Zenon, and in Europe by Leonid Ouspensky and Fr. Gregory Kroug. More surprisingly, a Lutheran tradition of iconography has also developed in Scandanavia led by Erland Forsberg.
Evangelicalism found artistic expression through the folk art of the American South with artists such as Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan gaining significant reputations. Such artists have often been both naive and visionary in their style, an approach that also characterised the work of New Zealand artist Colin MaCahon and British artist, Albert Herbert. Other significant visionary artists using Christian themes and imagery have included Stanley Spencer, F.N. Souza, Betty Swanwick, Norman Adams, Roger Wagner and Mark Cazalet.
In response to the growth of Christian Art on the Asian continent, the Asian Christian Art Association was founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. Australia encouraged contemporary religious art through the establishment of the Blake Prize in1951. From that date until the present, its judges have reflected the move in Modern Art from the figurative to the abstract. One special aspect of Polish Art in the 1980s was its links with the Roman Catholic Church. Martial law forced the entire artistic community to boycott official exhibition spaces and instead places of worship hosted exhibitions. This period was marked by a profound interest in the whole question of the sacrum in art characterised by the work of Jerzy Nowosielski with its thoughts on the nature of religious art.
More recently, there has been extensive use of Christian imagery by BritArt artists such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Mark Wallinger, and Sam Taylor-Wood. In their work, Christian iconography and narrative is often use as a frame for the artist’s critique of contemporary life including politics and culture.
Although not comprehensive, by giving a significant number of specific examples of artists of diverse styles and inclinations from a variety of eras, movements and nations who have repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety, this alternative story demonstrates that issues of faith and spirituality have been and continue to be very much a part of modern art. This alternative story involves several of the key modern art movements and artists that were at the forefront of those movements plus artists who played key roles in the introduction of modern art to their nations, as well as including artists and movements that were tangential to the main developments of modern art. Histories of modern art are impoverished by overlooking this story.
Awareness of this hidden history - which has effectively been airbrushed from art history - has led curator and author Daniel A. Siedell to argue, we need "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." However it should be noted that, while an alternative history of modern art could be written which tells this story and sets it in context thereby adding necessary texture to any history of modern art, it is not suggested that the telling of that story would radically alter the trajectory and arc of modern art history.
There are several perspectives to be considered in establishing the reasons why religious contributions to the history of modern art have effectively been airbrushed from art history.
The first perspective has been articulated recently in articles on art and faith published in freize and Modern Painters. Tyler Green's Modern Painters article demonstrated the art world’s indifference toward religion and concluded: "Given that the American people are conflicted about religion, it shouldn’t be a surprise that our artists and art institutions are too." Dan Fox in his freize editorial wrote “contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions are usually regarded with the kind of suspicion reserved for Mormon polygamists and celebrity Scientologists.” Similarly, Erika Doss has argued that, "Until recently, issues of religion were largely overlooked in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century American art because of critical misunderstandings of an assumed separation of modernist avant-garde from religious inquiry and of modernism in general from religion." The more recent statements by Green and Fox indicate that this separation continues to exist and to influence response.
Such attitudes lead both to a downplaying of the input and influence of artists with a religious affiliation and to a reluctance among artists to declare a religious affiliation unless working primarily within a religious context. This feeds directly into the way in which histories of modern art are often written, as the religious work or motivations of many of those artists highlighted above are routinely downplayed by, for example, ignoring their religious work altogether or suggesting that their religious art comes late in their careers after their more radical work has been completed. Given that this has been and to some extent continues to be the case, it is surprising the extent to which issues of faith and spirituality have been very much a part of modern art as artists of diverse styles and inclinations have repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety. Countering the suspicions which Green and Fox note is one significant reason for telling this alternative story of modern art.
A second perspective involves the difficulty of defining 'Christian', 'religious' or 'sacred' art. Do we mean by these terms the use of religious iconography or an engagement with the essential themes that lie at the heart of a specific religion or the (un)expressed faith of the artist or are we simply reading our own faith into the artworks we view? “The religious underpinnings of so much Western art before [the twentieth] century – from its subject matter to its sources of patronage and its devotional purposes – are obvious and uncontentious,” Timothy Potts has written, but with the art of the twentieth century the religious dimension becomes “altogether more subtle, often more abstract and inevitably more personal.” Spirituality, while continuing to be pervasive, becomes less obvious and the perception grows that it is “not relevant to the art world.”
These questions of definition often come coupled to an ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ understanding of the artwork which, in its purest form as articulated by the art critic Clement Greenberg, “rejected the notion that there is any higher purpose to art, or any “spiritual” point to its production”:
“Art only does what it does: its effect is limited and small. It is there to be aesthetically “good.” Only the “dictates of the medium” – pure paint and the flatness of the picture plane – were held to be worthwhile concerns for painting. The very idea of content was taken to be a hindrance and a nuisance, and looking for meaning was a form of philistinism. The work is a painted surface, nothing more, and its meaning is entirely an aesthetic one.”
On this basis, the artwork is simply itself, the embodiment of its media, and all discussion of content, religious or otherwise, is interpretation which is extrinsic to the work itself.
A third perspective highlights the confusions and conflicts within Christian or religious responses to modern and contemporary art. W. David O. Taylor has posted that there is a whole ton of arts and faith related initiatives happening but it is "ad hoc and isolated", "parochial, even in the best sense of the term", and with "divergent views of how we should go about promoting the arts" (leading to fierce fights). Responses to the two perspectives above tend to divide along doctrinaire lines which mitigate against understanding between those on either side of the divides. The kind of divides which are commonly found include: local or regional reputations vs national or international reputations; art for the church’s sake vs art for art’s sake; traditional iconography vs contemporary iconography; figurative realism vs abstract or conceptual; popular culture vs high culture; technique vs concept; sentimental or unoriginal imagery vs ambiguous or obscure imagery; popular approval vs academic or establishment approval.
There is essentially no means of arbitration in these debates or in resolving the issues raised by the three perspectives above because there are no universally agreed quality standards for the visual arts, either in or outside of the Church. The technical qualities which underpinned figurative realism have been by-passed by the development of conceptual art and its consequent infinite expansion in the materials and media of art. Similarly, much that was formerly considered ‘outside’ of the fine arts - such as folk art, self-taught art etc - has in more recent years been brought in to the mainstream of gallery and museum exhibitions. Current reputation also offers no sure fire guide to long-term significance within the broader sweep of art history. The story of art is littered with those who were lauded in their own day, either by the establishment or the people of their time, but are considered of minor significance today. Within the Church, priests and theologians have often argued that artists working in and for churches should be subservient to Christian doctrine as understood by its priests but many effective commissions have come through artists resisting such pressure and challenging received understandings and iconography through their personal vision.
In Has Moderism Failed? Suzi Gablik poses the question, ‘Art for Art’s Sake, or Art for Society’s Sake?’, a question which neatly juxtaposes the two key opposed aesthetic arguments of late modern and contemporary art. This is a question which, in a Church context, could be rephrased as ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ or ‘Art for Churches Sake?’ Gablik, in addressing the opposed positions of Socialist Art and aesthetic formalism, suggested that what “is required is some sort of reconciliation – not a fixture at either pole”; in other words, to “find a position of equilibrium between the two extremes.” One such ‘position of equilibrium’ could be found by applying a Trinitarian aesthetic to visual art.
Conceptions of the Trinity have often been expressed in artistic terms and Trinitarian conceptions have been helpfully applied to the Arts and other aspects of society. Both C. S. Lewis and Stephen Verney, for example, have written of the inter-relations within the Trinity as being a kind of dance. Dorothy L. Sayers, within The Mind of the Maker, described the creative act itself in the Trinitarian terms of Idea (Father), Energy (Son), and Power (Spirit). A similar approach - in terms of Plan (Father), Do (Son), and Evaluate (Spirit) - was later adopted by Christian Schumacher for his creative consultancy work of restructuring workplaces.
A different approach to understanding and applying the concept of inter-relations within the Trinity was developed by Colin Gunton in The One, the Three and the Many. Gunton used his theology of creation to identify three concepts that he called (drawing on the thinking of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) ‘open transcendentals’. That is, “possibilities for thought which are universal in scope yet open in their application.” Gunton’s three open transcendentals are: relationality (“all things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation”); perichoresis (“all things are what they are in relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things”); and substantiality (all things are “substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in the face of their relationality to the other”).
Gunton argues that these open transcendentals “qualify people and things, too, in a way appropriate to what they are.” In sum, he suggests, “the transcendentals are functions of the finitely free relations of persons and of the contingent relations of things.” These are, therefore, notions which are “predicated of all being by virtue of the fact that God is creator and the world is creation.” As such “they dynamically open up new possibilities for thought” enabling Christian theology to make “a genuine contribution ... to the understanding and shaping of the modern world.” If this is so, then art criticism would be one arena in which the concept of open transcendentals could be explored.
Exploring the substantiality of an artwork could involve describing and assessing its distinct and particular existence; what it is as, for example, pure paint and a flat picture plane. We could talk, for example, in terms of ‘truth to materials’, a phrase that emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement through its rejection of design work (often Victorian) which disguised by ornamentation the natural properties of the materials used. The phrase has been associated particularly with sculptors and architects, as both are able to reveal, in their way of working and in the finished article, the quality and personality of their materials; wood showing its grain, metal its tensile strength, and stone its texture.
Henry Moore wrote in Unit One that, “each material has its own individual qualities … Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh … It should keep its hard tense stoniness.” Juginder Lamba is an example of a contemporary sculptor for whom ‘truth to materials’ is significant. Many of his works began as he searched through piles of joists and rafters looking for salvaged timber that would speak to him of its creative potentialities. His sculptures retain the personality and characteristics of the salvaged wood even at the same time as they are transformed into characters and forms of myth and metaphor.
Exploring the substantiality of an artwork is to recognise that an artwork is an object in its own right once created and, as such, has a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended. Artists sometimes express this sense themselves when they talk about seeing more in the work as they live with it than they were aware of intending during its creation. For some, this is an indication of a spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.
Exploring the relationality of an artwork could involve describing and assessing the many and various forms of relation by which the work was constituted. Among these could be the relationship of the artwork to: the artist who created it; other artworks formed of similar materials or with similar content; the space in which it is being exhibited (both the physical and social space); and those who come to view it.
Artists have their own intentions when creating and are aware of and use (play with) the associations and emotions evoked by the materials and images used in the making. These associations and emotions are as much a part of the work of art as the materials and images (this is particularly so in conceptual and symbolist art, as both begin with the idea or concept) and are present whether the viewer or critic responds to them or not; in the same way that Biblical allusions exist in Shakespeare's plays whether contemporary students recognise them or not. Just as Andrew Motion has argued, regarding Shakespeare, that our understanding and appreciation of the plays is reduced if we don't recognise the allusions, so our understanding of visual art that uses or plays with associations, emotions and ideas is diminished if we fail to respond.
The reality of the art work as an object in its own right once created and, as such, with a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended also hands a creative role to those who view it. Accordingly, Alan Stewart has written:
"An artist will of course set out to say something particular, but once their work becomes public, it assumes its own life. Therefore each fresh encounter will produce a new conversation between the art and the viewer, resulting in a whole host of possible interpretations, none less valid than the other. Appropriating our own personal meaning from another person’s work doesn’t diminish it, if anything it enlarges it. We might even want to say that in re-imagining and re-investing something with new meaning, we may in fact in some cases redeem it or re-birth it."
Interpretation, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself. Richard Davey has a marvellous phrase for the network of relationships which form around any artwork; “respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Exploring the perichoresis of an artwork could be to recognise what the artwork is in its relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things. Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics - art which takes “as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space” - is particularly helpful here in suggesting that “Art is a state of encounter” and that the role of artworks is that we learn “to inhabit the world in a better way” through participating in “arenas of encounter”, created by the artworks themselves, in which momentary micro-communities are formed:
“Today’s art, and I’m thinking of [artists such as Gonzalez-Torres, ... Angela Bulloch, Carsten Höller, Gabriel Orozco and Pierre Huyghe] as well as Lincoln Tobier, Ben Kinmont, and Andrea Zittel, to name just three more, encompasses in the working process the presence of the micro-community which will accommodate it. A work thus creates, within its method of production and then at the moment of its exhibition, a momentary grouping of participating viewers.”
What such artists produce, Bourriaud argues, “are relational space-time elements, inter-human experiences ... of the places where alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out.” In other words, such artworks create “relations outside the field of art”: “relations between individuals and groups, between the artist and the world, and, by way of transitivity, between the beholder and the world.”
Critiquing artworks in terms of substantiality, relationality and perichoresis could create a means of reconciling formalist and relational aesthetics. It could form a position of equilibrium between the two extremes and the conflicts/oppositions noted earlier both within and without the Church. It could also form a fascinating and distinctively Trinitarian approach to art criticism acknowledging, as it does so, the spirituality inherent both in work which makes use of religious iconography and that which does not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Innocence Mission - You Chase The Light.
Showing posts with label divisionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divisionism. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Airbrushed from Art History (19)
Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.
However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.
Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist sacred art.
Gaetano Previati, "the most traditionally religious of the Divisionists," sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. His first major work using these motifs is entitled Motherhood and depicts a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. "Previati sought to suggest the religious mysticism of his subject through the evocation of light, which radiates non-naturalistically from the figure of the Madonna in a diffused aureole" (Lara Pucci in Radical Light).
This image stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love. "Previati's reinterpretation of Christian iconography and his efforts to reassign a spiritual meaning to art had a significant influence on the next generation [the Futurists]."
Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. Segantini's transcendent mountain scenes were often imbued with religious references while his "typically Symbolist dialectic of holy mother and fallen women" used "female characters who often represented the binary opposition of Mary and Eve" (Vivien Greene in Radical Light).
"Guiseppe Pellizza da Volpeda was able to sustain his passion for socially conscious subjects while also using Symbolist imagery that was imbued with Christian motifs and was based on Italiam medieval and Renaissance prototypes." The Procession "re-enacts the powerful rituals of Catholicism" while The Mirror of Life "suggests biblical passages in which sheep symbolise the followers of Christ" in order to conceive the sheep of the scene as a metaphor for humanity. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.
Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.
Gino Severini in The Life of a Painter tells the story of his development as a futurist and cubist artist. Severini reconverted to Catholicism in the 1920s. He claimed that his thinking on this decision began prior to the conversions of the poets Jean Cocteau and Pierre Reverdy and before meetings with Maurice Denis and Jacques Maritain. He highlighted the writings of the Benedictine Desideratus Lenz as an influence of the direction of his work but not his conversion. The most significant influence on his decision seems to have been the Abbé Sarraute who Severini met at Denis' home and who conducted the Severini's marriage ceremony.
Severini was, therefore, a part of the French Catholic Renaissance, in which Denis and Maritain played major roles. Severini says of Maritain that he "effected the transformation of a number of somewhat atheist poets into Christian artists, chief among them Jean Cocteau, who was baptised in Maritain's private chapel in Meudon." Maritain played a part in the next stage of Severini's career by suggesting that the Swiss painter Alexandre Cingria visit Severini and encourage him to enter a competition for the decoration of a Church in the Fribourg Canton of Switzerland. Severini did so, won the competition and went on to work on several Swiss churches over the latter period of his career. So much so, that Denis spoke of him as "the most famous decorator of Swiss churches." Cingria who, together with Denis dreamed of "creating a movement of rebirth of religious art in France and in all Catholic countries", could also lay claim to that status, as the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice which he founded, built, restored and decorated more than 70 churches in Switzerland during the interwar years.
Severini also played a part in the development of a Futurist sacred art. Between 1928 and 1930 the futurist artist Fillia spent time in Paris with Severini. During this time he also saw Severini's work in the Swiss churches of Semsales and La Roche. The end of 1930 then saw a decisive reorientation of Fillia's work towards sacred art which culminated in 1931 with the publication of the 'Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art' on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Modern Christian Sacred Art in Padua, which had a Futurist section of twenty two works by thirteen artists.
By these means the anti-clerical art of the Futurists inspired a flowering of religious painting that constitutes one of the most unexpected episodes in the history of that movement. Futurism eulogised the beauty of speed and the energies and machines that produced it. Futurists saw themselves as “immersed in the chaos of an old, crumbling era” but “partaking of the vibrations of a new epoch in the process of formation.” They embraced continual progress and viewed Catholic priests as fatally associated with old order hating “the fleeting, the momentary, speed, energy and passion.” Not fertile ground for a flowering of religious art, one would have thought.
Yet Marinetti, the great theorist of Futurism, maintained a significant distinction between Christ and the Catholic Church that led to the explosion of Futurist religious art which appeared in the 1930s. The “precious essence of Christ’s morals,” he argued, “accorded every right, every pardon and every sympathy to the impassioned fervour, to the fickle flame of the heart.”
Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art’ appeared in 1931 and further exacerbated the movement’s conflict with the Catholic Church by stating that “only Futurist artists … are able to express clearly … the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith, such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Calvary.” Pope Pius XI responded in a speech of 1932 by saying that ”Our hope, Our ardent wish, Our will can only be … that such art will never be admitted into our churches …”
Marinetti had argued that only Futurists could express the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith because only they had “addressed the complex matter of simultaneity” in their art. Accordingly, a key feature of Futurist sacred art is the bringing together within the same picture frame of key events from the life of Christ. The convoluted titles of many of these works, such as Fillia’s Madonna and Child / Nativity / Nativity-Death-Eternity, indicate clearly the telescoping of events that can be found in these works. This work sets an semi-abstract/cubist Madonna and Child in front of a sky-filled cross in front of a mountain in front of a rock in front of a globe ringed by the outlines of churches as seen through the ages. Marinetti described this work as “an impressive amalgamation of the concrete and the abstract; a synthesis of the long development of Catholicism through the centuries.”
It is, when set alongside other works by Fillia, an example of a set of identikit symbols – saint, cross, globe, mountain, churches – that several Futurists juggle in works that sit uncomfortably between the later cubism of Gleizes and the surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. Not all Futurist sacred art is of the poster book style and imagery of Fillia however. Giuseppe Preziosi, for example, also used simultaneity in his Annunciation-Nativity-Death but here the subtler harmonies of his colours combine with the interpenetrating planes of his subjects to integrate Christ’s birth and death within the work.
Gerardo Dottori, known as the ‘mystic’ Futurist, made use of similar techniques to create in his Crucifixion of 1928 one of the genuine masterpieces of Futurist sacred art. His crucified Christ is picked out in a heavenly spotlight which also surrounds the two Mary’s grieving at his feet. Light also emanates from the upper half of Christ’s body and outstretched arms illuminating the darkened sky that has thrown the landscape of Calvary into turmoil. Dottori’s stylistic use of light symbolises both Christ’s obedience to God’s will and the light of salvation that his death brings into a world darkened by sin.
Dottori also makes use of a second key theme in Futurist sacred art; that of flight as a symbol of transcendence. His Annunciation in an Aerial Temple sees Mary literally caught up in her spirit by the news that Gabriel brings (an anticipation of her own Assumption, perhaps) and gives us an angelic perspective on the event. Aeropainting was a major strand of Futurist art and this interest in flight became a symbol firstly of physical liberation from the earth and then of spiritual ascent. The Trinity, the Madonna, as well as the expected Angels, all appear winged and in flight within the works collected here.
One of the most striking of all the flight images is Nino Vatali’s Ascension where Christ ascends on the cross in stop-frame images that build a Jacob’s ladder ascending to the heavens. Whether the imagery of the cross as a ladder from earth to heaven was consciously in Vitali’s mind as he painted or whether he was simply transposing a Futurist technique with a sacred theme, the image and imagery remain powerful.
Only Futurist aeropainters, Marinetti argued, “are able to express in plastic terms the abyssal charm and heavenly transparencies of infinity.” Again, his rhetoric tends to exceed the resulting works but, for all that, their art forms a fascinating subject that extends our understanding of the influence of sacred themes and imagery in early twentieth century European art even where artists and the Church were conflicted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Siobhan Maher Kennedy - When You Go Away.
However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.
Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist sacred art.
Gaetano Previati, "the most traditionally religious of the Divisionists," sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. His first major work using these motifs is entitled Motherhood and depicts a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. "Previati sought to suggest the religious mysticism of his subject through the evocation of light, which radiates non-naturalistically from the figure of the Madonna in a diffused aureole" (Lara Pucci in Radical Light).
This image stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love. "Previati's reinterpretation of Christian iconography and his efforts to reassign a spiritual meaning to art had a significant influence on the next generation [the Futurists]."
Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. Segantini's transcendent mountain scenes were often imbued with religious references while his "typically Symbolist dialectic of holy mother and fallen women" used "female characters who often represented the binary opposition of Mary and Eve" (Vivien Greene in Radical Light).
"Guiseppe Pellizza da Volpeda was able to sustain his passion for socially conscious subjects while also using Symbolist imagery that was imbued with Christian motifs and was based on Italiam medieval and Renaissance prototypes." The Procession "re-enacts the powerful rituals of Catholicism" while The Mirror of Life "suggests biblical passages in which sheep symbolise the followers of Christ" in order to conceive the sheep of the scene as a metaphor for humanity. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.
Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.
Gino Severini in The Life of a Painter tells the story of his development as a futurist and cubist artist. Severini reconverted to Catholicism in the 1920s. He claimed that his thinking on this decision began prior to the conversions of the poets Jean Cocteau and Pierre Reverdy and before meetings with Maurice Denis and Jacques Maritain. He highlighted the writings of the Benedictine Desideratus Lenz as an influence of the direction of his work but not his conversion. The most significant influence on his decision seems to have been the Abbé Sarraute who Severini met at Denis' home and who conducted the Severini's marriage ceremony.
Severini was, therefore, a part of the French Catholic Renaissance, in which Denis and Maritain played major roles. Severini says of Maritain that he "effected the transformation of a number of somewhat atheist poets into Christian artists, chief among them Jean Cocteau, who was baptised in Maritain's private chapel in Meudon." Maritain played a part in the next stage of Severini's career by suggesting that the Swiss painter Alexandre Cingria visit Severini and encourage him to enter a competition for the decoration of a Church in the Fribourg Canton of Switzerland. Severini did so, won the competition and went on to work on several Swiss churches over the latter period of his career. So much so, that Denis spoke of him as "the most famous decorator of Swiss churches." Cingria who, together with Denis dreamed of "creating a movement of rebirth of religious art in France and in all Catholic countries", could also lay claim to that status, as the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice which he founded, built, restored and decorated more than 70 churches in Switzerland during the interwar years.
Severini also played a part in the development of a Futurist sacred art. Between 1928 and 1930 the futurist artist Fillia spent time in Paris with Severini. During this time he also saw Severini's work in the Swiss churches of Semsales and La Roche. The end of 1930 then saw a decisive reorientation of Fillia's work towards sacred art which culminated in 1931 with the publication of the 'Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art' on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Modern Christian Sacred Art in Padua, which had a Futurist section of twenty two works by thirteen artists.
By these means the anti-clerical art of the Futurists inspired a flowering of religious painting that constitutes one of the most unexpected episodes in the history of that movement. Futurism eulogised the beauty of speed and the energies and machines that produced it. Futurists saw themselves as “immersed in the chaos of an old, crumbling era” but “partaking of the vibrations of a new epoch in the process of formation.” They embraced continual progress and viewed Catholic priests as fatally associated with old order hating “the fleeting, the momentary, speed, energy and passion.” Not fertile ground for a flowering of religious art, one would have thought.
Yet Marinetti, the great theorist of Futurism, maintained a significant distinction between Christ and the Catholic Church that led to the explosion of Futurist religious art which appeared in the 1930s. The “precious essence of Christ’s morals,” he argued, “accorded every right, every pardon and every sympathy to the impassioned fervour, to the fickle flame of the heart.”
Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art’ appeared in 1931 and further exacerbated the movement’s conflict with the Catholic Church by stating that “only Futurist artists … are able to express clearly … the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith, such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Calvary.” Pope Pius XI responded in a speech of 1932 by saying that ”Our hope, Our ardent wish, Our will can only be … that such art will never be admitted into our churches …”
Marinetti had argued that only Futurists could express the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith because only they had “addressed the complex matter of simultaneity” in their art. Accordingly, a key feature of Futurist sacred art is the bringing together within the same picture frame of key events from the life of Christ. The convoluted titles of many of these works, such as Fillia’s Madonna and Child / Nativity / Nativity-Death-Eternity, indicate clearly the telescoping of events that can be found in these works. This work sets an semi-abstract/cubist Madonna and Child in front of a sky-filled cross in front of a mountain in front of a rock in front of a globe ringed by the outlines of churches as seen through the ages. Marinetti described this work as “an impressive amalgamation of the concrete and the abstract; a synthesis of the long development of Catholicism through the centuries.”
It is, when set alongside other works by Fillia, an example of a set of identikit symbols – saint, cross, globe, mountain, churches – that several Futurists juggle in works that sit uncomfortably between the later cubism of Gleizes and the surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. Not all Futurist sacred art is of the poster book style and imagery of Fillia however. Giuseppe Preziosi, for example, also used simultaneity in his Annunciation-Nativity-Death but here the subtler harmonies of his colours combine with the interpenetrating planes of his subjects to integrate Christ’s birth and death within the work.
Gerardo Dottori, known as the ‘mystic’ Futurist, made use of similar techniques to create in his Crucifixion of 1928 one of the genuine masterpieces of Futurist sacred art. His crucified Christ is picked out in a heavenly spotlight which also surrounds the two Mary’s grieving at his feet. Light also emanates from the upper half of Christ’s body and outstretched arms illuminating the darkened sky that has thrown the landscape of Calvary into turmoil. Dottori’s stylistic use of light symbolises both Christ’s obedience to God’s will and the light of salvation that his death brings into a world darkened by sin.
Dottori also makes use of a second key theme in Futurist sacred art; that of flight as a symbol of transcendence. His Annunciation in an Aerial Temple sees Mary literally caught up in her spirit by the news that Gabriel brings (an anticipation of her own Assumption, perhaps) and gives us an angelic perspective on the event. Aeropainting was a major strand of Futurist art and this interest in flight became a symbol firstly of physical liberation from the earth and then of spiritual ascent. The Trinity, the Madonna, as well as the expected Angels, all appear winged and in flight within the works collected here.
One of the most striking of all the flight images is Nino Vatali’s Ascension where Christ ascends on the cross in stop-frame images that build a Jacob’s ladder ascending to the heavens. Whether the imagery of the cross as a ladder from earth to heaven was consciously in Vitali’s mind as he painted or whether he was simply transposing a Futurist technique with a sacred theme, the image and imagery remain powerful.
Only Futurist aeropainters, Marinetti argued, “are able to express in plastic terms the abyssal charm and heavenly transparencies of infinity.” Again, his rhetoric tends to exceed the resulting works but, for all that, their art forms a fascinating subject that extends our understanding of the influence of sacred themes and imagery in early twentieth century European art even where artists and the Church were conflicted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Siobhan Maher Kennedy - When You Go Away.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Airbrushed from Art History (11)
So far in this series of posts we have examined the circles of artists and influence which formed around Maurice Denis, Jacques Maritain, and Albert Gleizes, each in turn making a distinctive contribution both to the development of Modern Art and of the French Catholic Revival. Before examining the final circle of influence which affected both movements, that which formed around the Dominican Friars Couturier and Régamy, we turn to a quest which linked artists involved in the three circles of influence we have explored to date.
That quest was for an objective, scientific approach to art. This search began with Georges Seurat, who was widely believed to have developed a scientifically based understanding of colour known as Neo-impressionism or Pointillism in conjunction with the mathematician Charles Henry. This style spread across Europe with the Italian Divisionists becoming strong proponents and paving the way for the development of Futurism.
Peter Brooke, writing in the ‘Afterword’ to The Aesthetic of Beuron and other writings, notes that Paul Sérusier, a member of the circle around Denis, was “dissatisfied with Seurat’s solution, mainly because he felt it did not offer an adequate account of form in painting.” Sérusier found the science he was seeking in the work and writing of Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz:
“who as painter and sculptor in the late nineteenth century anticipated many of the ideas associated with twentieth-century art – the rejection of naturalism and perspective and an insistence on ‘abstract’, geometrically based principles for painting. The artistic school he founded in his monastery at Beuron in Southern Germany had a great influence on ecclesiastical art and gained admirers among the European avant-garde, including Alexei Jawlensky, Alphonse Mucha and Paul Sérusier.”
Dutch artist, Jan Verkade had joined the circle of Denis and Sérusier, the Nabis, on
his arrival in Paris in 1891. He studied with Sérusier in Brittany where he converted to Roman Catholicism. After time spent in Italy, Verkade “joined the Beuron monastery as an artist-oblate in 1894.” He “worked under Lenz on St Gabriel’s in Prague in 1895 and on the refectory in Beuron in 1897” before becoming a priest in 1902. Sérusier and Denis were introduced to the Beuron School by Verkade. Sérusier visited Lenz in Prague in 1895 and becoming Lenz’s champion in France publishing his translation of Lenz’s essay The Aesthetic of Beuron in 1905 (with an introduction by Denis), on, as Brooke notes, the eve of Cubism.
Sérusier claimed to have been ‘the father of Cubism’, a remark which has generally been treated as far-fetched, but which, Brooke suggests, is understandable in the light of Lenz’s essay:
“Sérusier (and Lenz) pose the problem of form in painting. They believe it is a problem to be tackled objectively. Which is to say that the characteristics of form (straight line, curve, circle etc) interact with the human sensibility in a way that is predictable, almost, one might say, measurable ... Particular importance is attached to the most elementary geometrical figures (square, triangle and circle), to elementary symmetry and to the Golden Section.”
Brooke notes that “all these characteristics are clearly relevant to the general history of Cubism” and that when Sérusier’s later book ABC de la Peinture (setting out ideas which are very similar to those of Lenz) was published in 1921, it was “quite clearly part of the same intellectual world” as Gino Severini’s Du Cubisme au Classicisme (also published in 1921), Albert Gleizes’ Du Cubisme et les moyens de la comprehendre (1920) and La Peinture et ses Lois (1922 or 23), “and the arguments constantly repeated in [Amédée] Ozenfant and [Charles Edouard] Jeanneret’s publication L’Esprit Nouveau.” He concludes that “it would be very easy to see Sérusier as the father of the Cubism of the 1920s, or at least as the oldest participant in that particular debate.”
Brooke writes, in his introduction to Du Cubisme au Classicisme and La Peinture et ses Lois, that:
“Both Severini and Gleizes ... believed that there were objective principles behind the act of painting analogous to the laws of musical harmony; that these had been lost or had become obscured; and that Cubism was an attempt to recover them. Both were responding to one of the most dramatic moments in the history of modern painting – the moment when Cubism seemed to be losing its impetus, to be yielding the ground to other ideas.”
Severini had “turned to a numerically/geometrically based figurative painting, arguing that painting had been discovered as a science at the time of the Renaissance and that this was a progress which could not be negated by a return to the Egyptian or the Romanesque.” Severini writes in his autobiography The Life of a Painter that “many artists liked to discuss geometry and mathematics” but that he found their discussions insufficient thinking “that artists should apply, and would benefit from, strictly observed rules of geometry and mathematics which had value “beyond their constructive value” through “something strictly innate to artistic creativity.”
Severini writes that he “glimpsed the path leading to the infinite, towards absolute purity, superhuman poetry and perfect harmony, in numbers”:
“In fact, somewhere beyond a painting, a statue, a poem or a symphony, lies the art and poetry contained therein. Poetry and art belong to a profound stratum of being, common to all forms of expression, and therein is the pure source that animates everything, holds everything together, that is, the artist to the universe, the work to the cosmos, the individual to the collective soul; the measurement of all this is in numbers. This accounts for its metaphysical value, beyond human values ...”
Severini “confirmed that clear and precise rules had dominated artistic creativity in ancient times” and saw that there was, therefore, “a whole metier to be restored”, a vocation was being ignored by the academies and that only some of the artists of his generation had envisaged. Of these he specifically mentioned Denis and his references to such laws in the book Théories where he writes of the Beuron School. Severini had also read The Aesthetics of Beuron and noted that their aesthetic could be summarized in these few lines: “The simple, the clear, the typical, whose roots are in numbers and the simplest of measurements, remains the basis of all art, and measuring, counting, weighing are its most important functions. The aim of all great art is the transmission, the characteristic application of fundamental geometrical, arithmetical, symbolic forms, originating in Nature, to serve great ideas.”
Brooke notes that “soon after writing Du Cubisme au Classicisme, Severini entered into relations with the Roman Catholic Church, initially in the person of Jacques Maritain, the Thomist philosopher who had a particular talent for presenting Roman Catholic doctrine in such a way as to appeal to the intellectuals of the cultural avant garde.” Severini wrote of Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism that he “was amazed at the extent to which it agreed with the most modern goals, and at the profound sense of freedom, from what supreme heights of intelligence, the author could observe, put in order, and clarify, everything related to art.” Maritain recommended Severini for commissions as a mural painter for churches in Switzerland and Severini went on to become particularly successful at obtaining commissions for the painting of religious works.
Brooke also writes that:
“Gleizes had converted in 1918 to a belief in God which he expressed in terms of the Christian and Roman Catholic tradition, though he initially made little effort to enter into contact with the church itself ... He took the view, which he expresses in La Peinture et ses Lois, that Christianity had manifested what was great in it in the period we now characterise as the ‘Dark Ages’, from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries, in Western Europe ... But, from the twelfth century, this Christianity, which had given rise to the art we call ‘Romanesque’, is in decline. The early Renaissance – the period Severini has indicated as the moment when painting became known as a precise science – is a symptom of this decline. Thomism – the basis of Maritain’s philosophy – is another. In this period, an understanding orientated towards time (immeasurable, immaterial, of the nature of consciousness) gave way to an implicitly materialist understanding based on space. In other words the quality that had been possessed in the early period was precisely the quality which had been rediscovered in Cubism. To go back to the Renaissance as Severini was proposing was to deny what was essential and truly (indeed, literally) revolutionary in the Cubist achievement ...
La Peinture et ses Lois represents the moment when Gleizes began to see [this argument] clearly, very probably in reaction to Severini’s book.”
Brooke notes that:
“In opposition to Thomas Aquinas, Gleizes saw Augustine as the philosopher of the Benedictine spirit ... In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the conflict Gleizes saw between this Augustinian spirit and the Thomist spirit took the very acute form of a public quarrel between Gleizes and Fr Pie-Raymond Régamey, a Dominican, director of the journal Art Sacré, and leading champion of the efforts to engage leading modern artists in the service of the Church ... Régamey’s hostility to the influence of Gleizes was an extension of the hostility he already felt towards the influence of the School of Beuron. And ... it was a matter of principle.”
Thomism, Brooke argues, “draws a sharp distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’, and argues that there is no passage between them.” For the Thomist, humanity “lies wholly within the sphere of the natural” where the “highest faculty is reason, and reason cannot aspire to the supernatural, which can only be known by revelation.” Therefore, for the Thomist, it is impossible “that an artist should come to a knowledge of the divine through the practise of his craft.”
However, “in the early Christian writings of Augustine admired by Lenz and Gleizes ... continuity [between the human and the Divine] is stressed [by means of the spirit, the ‘noetic’ faculty, which is the means by which we enter into union with the Divine and the ‘supernatural’ becomes included in human nature in all its fullness], and the manipulation of numbers – the business of the poet, the musician, or the artist – is presented as part of it.”
Brooke, although a promoter of the issues and ideas that preoccupied Lenz, Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes, is not unaware of the weaknesses in their arguments. Each insists that “there are objective laws that are appropriate to liturgical art”, each insists that “they have found these laws, or at least elements of them” but “their laws are different” and none “succeeded in compelling those around them to accept their findings.”
So while Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes were each at the forefront of a Modern Art movement – Post-Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism – and in their explorations of geometrical and mathematical rules for art were engaging in current debates and teasing out the implications of Cubism in particular, eventually their practises and arguments became more about theology and liturgy than the continuing development of Modern Art and the balance that was held initially between faith and art became subsumed by faith. The result was that Modern Art developed in alternative directions through different movements and the work undertaken by these artists and those around them has been overlooked, dismissed or treated as a footnote to their earlier work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francis Poulenc - Ave Verum Corpus.
That quest was for an objective, scientific approach to art. This search began with Georges Seurat, who was widely believed to have developed a scientifically based understanding of colour known as Neo-impressionism or Pointillism in conjunction with the mathematician Charles Henry. This style spread across Europe with the Italian Divisionists becoming strong proponents and paving the way for the development of Futurism.
Peter Brooke, writing in the ‘Afterword’ to The Aesthetic of Beuron and other writings, notes that Paul Sérusier, a member of the circle around Denis, was “dissatisfied with Seurat’s solution, mainly because he felt it did not offer an adequate account of form in painting.” Sérusier found the science he was seeking in the work and writing of Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz:
“who as painter and sculptor in the late nineteenth century anticipated many of the ideas associated with twentieth-century art – the rejection of naturalism and perspective and an insistence on ‘abstract’, geometrically based principles for painting. The artistic school he founded in his monastery at Beuron in Southern Germany had a great influence on ecclesiastical art and gained admirers among the European avant-garde, including Alexei Jawlensky, Alphonse Mucha and Paul Sérusier.”
Dutch artist, Jan Verkade had joined the circle of Denis and Sérusier, the Nabis, on
his arrival in Paris in 1891. He studied with Sérusier in Brittany where he converted to Roman Catholicism. After time spent in Italy, Verkade “joined the Beuron monastery as an artist-oblate in 1894.” He “worked under Lenz on St Gabriel’s in Prague in 1895 and on the refectory in Beuron in 1897” before becoming a priest in 1902. Sérusier and Denis were introduced to the Beuron School by Verkade. Sérusier visited Lenz in Prague in 1895 and becoming Lenz’s champion in France publishing his translation of Lenz’s essay The Aesthetic of Beuron in 1905 (with an introduction by Denis), on, as Brooke notes, the eve of Cubism.
Sérusier claimed to have been ‘the father of Cubism’, a remark which has generally been treated as far-fetched, but which, Brooke suggests, is understandable in the light of Lenz’s essay:
“Sérusier (and Lenz) pose the problem of form in painting. They believe it is a problem to be tackled objectively. Which is to say that the characteristics of form (straight line, curve, circle etc) interact with the human sensibility in a way that is predictable, almost, one might say, measurable ... Particular importance is attached to the most elementary geometrical figures (square, triangle and circle), to elementary symmetry and to the Golden Section.”
Brooke notes that “all these characteristics are clearly relevant to the general history of Cubism” and that when Sérusier’s later book ABC de la Peinture (setting out ideas which are very similar to those of Lenz) was published in 1921, it was “quite clearly part of the same intellectual world” as Gino Severini’s Du Cubisme au Classicisme (also published in 1921), Albert Gleizes’ Du Cubisme et les moyens de la comprehendre (1920) and La Peinture et ses Lois (1922 or 23), “and the arguments constantly repeated in [Amédée] Ozenfant and [Charles Edouard] Jeanneret’s publication L’Esprit Nouveau.” He concludes that “it would be very easy to see Sérusier as the father of the Cubism of the 1920s, or at least as the oldest participant in that particular debate.”
Brooke writes, in his introduction to Du Cubisme au Classicisme and La Peinture et ses Lois, that:
“Both Severini and Gleizes ... believed that there were objective principles behind the act of painting analogous to the laws of musical harmony; that these had been lost or had become obscured; and that Cubism was an attempt to recover them. Both were responding to one of the most dramatic moments in the history of modern painting – the moment when Cubism seemed to be losing its impetus, to be yielding the ground to other ideas.”
Severini had “turned to a numerically/geometrically based figurative painting, arguing that painting had been discovered as a science at the time of the Renaissance and that this was a progress which could not be negated by a return to the Egyptian or the Romanesque.” Severini writes in his autobiography The Life of a Painter that “many artists liked to discuss geometry and mathematics” but that he found their discussions insufficient thinking “that artists should apply, and would benefit from, strictly observed rules of geometry and mathematics which had value “beyond their constructive value” through “something strictly innate to artistic creativity.”
Severini writes that he “glimpsed the path leading to the infinite, towards absolute purity, superhuman poetry and perfect harmony, in numbers”:
“In fact, somewhere beyond a painting, a statue, a poem or a symphony, lies the art and poetry contained therein. Poetry and art belong to a profound stratum of being, common to all forms of expression, and therein is the pure source that animates everything, holds everything together, that is, the artist to the universe, the work to the cosmos, the individual to the collective soul; the measurement of all this is in numbers. This accounts for its metaphysical value, beyond human values ...”
Severini “confirmed that clear and precise rules had dominated artistic creativity in ancient times” and saw that there was, therefore, “a whole metier to be restored”, a vocation was being ignored by the academies and that only some of the artists of his generation had envisaged. Of these he specifically mentioned Denis and his references to such laws in the book Théories where he writes of the Beuron School. Severini had also read The Aesthetics of Beuron and noted that their aesthetic could be summarized in these few lines: “The simple, the clear, the typical, whose roots are in numbers and the simplest of measurements, remains the basis of all art, and measuring, counting, weighing are its most important functions. The aim of all great art is the transmission, the characteristic application of fundamental geometrical, arithmetical, symbolic forms, originating in Nature, to serve great ideas.”
Brooke notes that “soon after writing Du Cubisme au Classicisme, Severini entered into relations with the Roman Catholic Church, initially in the person of Jacques Maritain, the Thomist philosopher who had a particular talent for presenting Roman Catholic doctrine in such a way as to appeal to the intellectuals of the cultural avant garde.” Severini wrote of Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism that he “was amazed at the extent to which it agreed with the most modern goals, and at the profound sense of freedom, from what supreme heights of intelligence, the author could observe, put in order, and clarify, everything related to art.” Maritain recommended Severini for commissions as a mural painter for churches in Switzerland and Severini went on to become particularly successful at obtaining commissions for the painting of religious works.
Brooke also writes that:
“Gleizes had converted in 1918 to a belief in God which he expressed in terms of the Christian and Roman Catholic tradition, though he initially made little effort to enter into contact with the church itself ... He took the view, which he expresses in La Peinture et ses Lois, that Christianity had manifested what was great in it in the period we now characterise as the ‘Dark Ages’, from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries, in Western Europe ... But, from the twelfth century, this Christianity, which had given rise to the art we call ‘Romanesque’, is in decline. The early Renaissance – the period Severini has indicated as the moment when painting became known as a precise science – is a symptom of this decline. Thomism – the basis of Maritain’s philosophy – is another. In this period, an understanding orientated towards time (immeasurable, immaterial, of the nature of consciousness) gave way to an implicitly materialist understanding based on space. In other words the quality that had been possessed in the early period was precisely the quality which had been rediscovered in Cubism. To go back to the Renaissance as Severini was proposing was to deny what was essential and truly (indeed, literally) revolutionary in the Cubist achievement ...
La Peinture et ses Lois represents the moment when Gleizes began to see [this argument] clearly, very probably in reaction to Severini’s book.”
Brooke notes that:
“In opposition to Thomas Aquinas, Gleizes saw Augustine as the philosopher of the Benedictine spirit ... In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the conflict Gleizes saw between this Augustinian spirit and the Thomist spirit took the very acute form of a public quarrel between Gleizes and Fr Pie-Raymond Régamey, a Dominican, director of the journal Art Sacré, and leading champion of the efforts to engage leading modern artists in the service of the Church ... Régamey’s hostility to the influence of Gleizes was an extension of the hostility he already felt towards the influence of the School of Beuron. And ... it was a matter of principle.”
Thomism, Brooke argues, “draws a sharp distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’, and argues that there is no passage between them.” For the Thomist, humanity “lies wholly within the sphere of the natural” where the “highest faculty is reason, and reason cannot aspire to the supernatural, which can only be known by revelation.” Therefore, for the Thomist, it is impossible “that an artist should come to a knowledge of the divine through the practise of his craft.”
However, “in the early Christian writings of Augustine admired by Lenz and Gleizes ... continuity [between the human and the Divine] is stressed [by means of the spirit, the ‘noetic’ faculty, which is the means by which we enter into union with the Divine and the ‘supernatural’ becomes included in human nature in all its fullness], and the manipulation of numbers – the business of the poet, the musician, or the artist – is presented as part of it.”
Brooke, although a promoter of the issues and ideas that preoccupied Lenz, Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes, is not unaware of the weaknesses in their arguments. Each insists that “there are objective laws that are appropriate to liturgical art”, each insists that “they have found these laws, or at least elements of them” but “their laws are different” and none “succeeded in compelling those around them to accept their findings.”
So while Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes were each at the forefront of a Modern Art movement – Post-Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism – and in their explorations of geometrical and mathematical rules for art were engaging in current debates and teasing out the implications of Cubism in particular, eventually their practises and arguments became more about theology and liturgy than the continuing development of Modern Art and the balance that was held initially between faith and art became subsumed by faith. The result was that Modern Art developed in alternative directions through different movements and the work undertaken by these artists and those around them has been overlooked, dismissed or treated as a footnote to their earlier work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francis Poulenc - Ave Verum Corpus.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Airbrushed from Art History? (8)
Symbolism was an international movement and as a result the many Christian influences found within it also have strong international dimension.
In Belgium, Gustave van de Woestyne, Valerius de Saedeleer, George Minne and Alfons Dessenis formed the first 'generation' of the Latem School, which was followed shortly by a second group of artists - Albert Servaes, Frits van den Berghe, Constant Permeke, Léon de Smet and Gustave de Smet. Robert Hoozee writes in Belgian Art 1880 - 1914 that the "central idea of the little artists' colony was to search for a meaningful, spiritual art."
Like Maurice Denis, who was an influence on his work, van de Woestyne has been viewed as associating "the biblical message with the reality of an idealized rural world cut off from industrial society" (Cathérine Verleysen in Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise). His work mixed "profound religious devotion with a realistic, sometimes mystical sensibility." George Minne was referred to on more than one occasion by critics as having a 'Gothic soul'. He drew inspiration for themes and forms from the Middle Ages and his entire oeuvre is imbued with religious feeling. Hoozee writes in Impressionism to Symbolism that Minne's work "captured perfectly the introverted spiritually expressive concerns of Symbolism, enclosed as they were within the elegant forms of Art Nouveau."
James Ensor is the greatest of the Belgian Symbolist painting truly visionary scenes and seeing himself often "in the midst of a hostile crowd, as a rejected Christ figure." This is an identification made by modern artists from Ensor and Gauguin onwards which can reflect both the isolation of artists in their suffering rejection or the sense of the god-like power to create possessed by artists. Ensor's biblically themed works such as The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, in addition to their celebration of the artist as creator and unappreciated redeemer, also "create a grand, synthetic critique of contemporary politics, religion and society" which denounces "colonial policies, religious dogma, materialism, oppression, and deceit." (Michelle Facos, Symbolist Art in Context)
Jan Toorop was the oldest and most prominent of the Dutch symbolists and had many links with the Belgian movement. Robert Goldwater writes in Symbolism that the "mysticism of Toorop and [Johan] Thorn-Prikker" was a significant aspect of the "brief flowering of Dutch Symbolism." Toorop's early paintings are in the style of Ensor, he then works in a neo-impressionist style before his symbolist orientation begins to take hold. He draws on an eclectic range of iconography, including Javanese puppet figures, the flowing tresses of the Pre-Raphaelites, and Celtic interlace. All these elements come together in The Three Brides where Michael Gibson writes in Symbolism that:
"The central fiancée evokes an inward, superior and beautiful desire ... an ideal suffering ... The fiancée on the left symbolises spiritual suffering. She is the mystic fiancée, her eyes wide with fear ..." The bride on the right has "a materialistic and profane expression ..." and stands for the sensual world."
Gibson writes that "Thorn Prikker took Toorop's formalism a step further; the garland worn by The Bride echoes Christ's crown of thorns." He explained that "his basic intention [is] to fix ... the essence of things contained in general abstract concepts such as life, purity, mysticism, but also in the emotions of love, hate, depression." Goldwater writes that "his subjects are Christian, but like Maurice Denis, the best of whose early work has the same serene and lyric mood."
In Italy Symbolism was combined with Divisionism, the application of "pure colours directly onto the canvas in small dots, lines and threads" (Aurora Scotti Tosini in Radical Light). Giovanni Segantini's transcendent mountain scenes were often imbued with religious references while his "typically Symbolist dialectic of holy mother and fallen women" used "female characters who often represented the binary opposition of Mary and Eve" (Vivien Greene in Radical Light). "Guiseppe Pellizza da Volpeda was able to sustain his passion for socially conscious subjects while also using Symbolist imagery that was imbued with Christian motifs and was based on Italiam medieval and Renaissance prototypes." The Procession "re-enacts the powerful rituals of Catholicism" while The Mirror of Life "suggests biblical passages in which sheep symbolise the followers of Christ" in order to conceive the sheep of the scene as a metaphor for humanity.
For Gaetano Previati, "the most traditionally religious of the Divisionists," the Madonna and Child was a preferred theme realised most famously in Motherhood. "Previati sought to suggest the religious mysticism of his subject through the evocation of light, which radiates non-naturalistically from the figure of the Madonna in a diffused aureole" (Lara Pucci in Radical Light). "Previati's reinterpretation of Christian iconography and his efforts to reassign a spiritual meaning to art had a significant influence on the next generation [the Futurists]."
Yevgenia Petrova in From Russia portrays Mikhail Nesterov as one of "Russia's subtlest Symbolist artists":
"Nesterov devotes many of his paintings to people of the Church, remote from worldly vanity, immersed in the mysterious and rich world of spiritual quest. As a rule, the personages in Nestoerov's canvases are not portrait-like, having no concrete prototypes. They are symbols of the existence of a way of life, which rejects vanity and worldliness."
Petrova then describes the works of Mikhail Vrubel as "exhibiting a completely different kind of religiosity, rebellious in character, in keeping with the spirit of the Symbolist age":
"The thinking being tormented by good and evil, pride and sorrow, condemnation and revolt, strength of will and resignation to fate: this is the main theme of the mature Vrubel ... In his later years, Vrubel embodied his obsession with repentance in another masterpiece on a religious theme, Six-Winged Seraph."
This latter work "is perceived as an inner vision of the artist, to whom an angel has appeared to remind him of his high mission as one of the chosen, calling him to "inflame the hearts of people throughout the world", to arouse their spirits "from the trivia of the everyday, through sublime imagery"" (Valentina Knyazeva in From Russia).
Similarly, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's Virgin of Tender Mercy to Evil Hearts is "permeated with an energy of great spiritual force" which "acquires a special significance as the artist's heartfelt response to the tragic events taking place at the time [the First World War]" Galina Krechina in From Russia).
National identity was a significant element within Symbolism, particularly in Eastern Europe. For example, Piotr Kopszak and Andrzej Szczerski writing in Symbolist Art in Poland suggest that:
"At the turn of the twentieth century the debate arose among artists concerning the search for a distinctive Polish national style. Hopes for an assertion of national identity found their expression in paintings and sculptures related to Polish history and national myths, and the Romantic idea of Polish messianism. These works implied that the sufferings of Poles had a deeper, spiritual meaning and served to redeem Europe. Poland appeared as the 'Christ of Nations', modelled on the symbolism of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ: in Romantic literature for example, contemporary Poland was compared to the crucified Jesus Christ, especially by [Adam] Mickiewicz. In the fine arts, the religious iconography of crucifixion appeared in works dedicated to national uprisings, and the sacrifice of national heroes, or in visionary works, such as [Stanislaw] Wyspiański's Polonia."
Jósef Mehoffer was a "major representative of the Polish art scene around 1900" who "throughout his life turned to the Roman Catholic religion as a source of inspiration, and his profound knowledge of Christian iconography was unique among his contemporaries." "His works were particularly well known for their attractive aesthetic qualities, based on colour harmonies and ornamental arabesques." He executed numerous church decorations but these were "a source of intense debate, with traditionalists considering the boldly modern works of Mehoffer to be inappropriate." Kazimierz Sichulski was another whose diverse output "often conveyed deeper Symbolist and religious meanings" (Julia Dudkiewicz in Symbolist Art in Poland).
In Hungary two artist communities had great significance, as Gyöngyi Éri and Zsuzsa Jobbágyi write in A Golden Age. Károly Ferenczy became the leading figure of the Nagybánya Artists' Colony and painted "a series of Biblical paintings exemplifying his love of nature." The lyrical approach to nature of the Nagybánya Artists and their semi-religious attitude to art "were both features of international Symbolism and a comon aspect of the Central-European Stimmungsmalerei." It was Ferenczy "who first painted the type of harmonious compositions where colours dominate the design, and the atmosphere is full of tender lyricism" (Ilona Sármány-Parsons in A Golden Age).
The Gödöllő Colony was inspired by the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy by simplifying their own lives and popularising his teachings for the common good, seeking happiness in unity:
"The painting Ego sum via, veritas et vita (1903) by Aladár Körösföi Kriesch is one of the most perfect expressions of the purity of this Christian faith. It displays a mentality that sought and found the fullness of life in family togetherness. Körösföi painted it after the premature death of his first child. The composition (on the right side of which members of the Gödöllő settlement are recognizable) illustrates Christian compliance with the Divine will."
"Sándor Nagy's paintings and drawings also reflect the Gödöllő striving for the purification of the spirit ... Ave Myriam (c. 1903) ... is part of a series depicting the development of the artist's own life in its progress towards beauty and perfection. At the beginning of the cycle, the artist discovers the evangelical tenets then, finding a wife, experiences the joyous beauty of life and reaches fulfilment with the birth of a child."
Finally, Tivandar Csontváry Kosztka was a "strange, obsessed genius" who following a vision aged twenty-seven indicating that he would be greater than Raphael "painted huge, visionary works in such a subjective style that they were inaccessible to the general public." The Praying Saviour "with its depiction of Moses in the background and the rather spectral presence of the apostles at the bottom of the picture, belongs to a ... visionary period, as do Cedars of Lebanon (1907) and Riders on the Seashore (1909), in which the freize-like procession of figures enhances a sense of enchantment." With similar nationalistic tendencies to those of the Young Poland movement, Csontváry "believed that a national art would serve to legitimize the history of the Hungarians as a separate and independent people in the heart of Europe."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arvo Part - Magnificat.
In Belgium, Gustave van de Woestyne, Valerius de Saedeleer, George Minne and Alfons Dessenis formed the first 'generation' of the Latem School, which was followed shortly by a second group of artists - Albert Servaes, Frits van den Berghe, Constant Permeke, Léon de Smet and Gustave de Smet. Robert Hoozee writes in Belgian Art 1880 - 1914 that the "central idea of the little artists' colony was to search for a meaningful, spiritual art."
Like Maurice Denis, who was an influence on his work, van de Woestyne has been viewed as associating "the biblical message with the reality of an idealized rural world cut off from industrial society" (Cathérine Verleysen in Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise). His work mixed "profound religious devotion with a realistic, sometimes mystical sensibility." George Minne was referred to on more than one occasion by critics as having a 'Gothic soul'. He drew inspiration for themes and forms from the Middle Ages and his entire oeuvre is imbued with religious feeling. Hoozee writes in Impressionism to Symbolism that Minne's work "captured perfectly the introverted spiritually expressive concerns of Symbolism, enclosed as they were within the elegant forms of Art Nouveau."
James Ensor is the greatest of the Belgian Symbolist painting truly visionary scenes and seeing himself often "in the midst of a hostile crowd, as a rejected Christ figure." This is an identification made by modern artists from Ensor and Gauguin onwards which can reflect both the isolation of artists in their suffering rejection or the sense of the god-like power to create possessed by artists. Ensor's biblically themed works such as The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, in addition to their celebration of the artist as creator and unappreciated redeemer, also "create a grand, synthetic critique of contemporary politics, religion and society" which denounces "colonial policies, religious dogma, materialism, oppression, and deceit." (Michelle Facos, Symbolist Art in Context)
Jan Toorop was the oldest and most prominent of the Dutch symbolists and had many links with the Belgian movement. Robert Goldwater writes in Symbolism that the "mysticism of Toorop and [Johan] Thorn-Prikker" was a significant aspect of the "brief flowering of Dutch Symbolism." Toorop's early paintings are in the style of Ensor, he then works in a neo-impressionist style before his symbolist orientation begins to take hold. He draws on an eclectic range of iconography, including Javanese puppet figures, the flowing tresses of the Pre-Raphaelites, and Celtic interlace. All these elements come together in The Three Brides where Michael Gibson writes in Symbolism that:
"The central fiancée evokes an inward, superior and beautiful desire ... an ideal suffering ... The fiancée on the left symbolises spiritual suffering. She is the mystic fiancée, her eyes wide with fear ..." The bride on the right has "a materialistic and profane expression ..." and stands for the sensual world."
Gibson writes that "Thorn Prikker took Toorop's formalism a step further; the garland worn by The Bride echoes Christ's crown of thorns." He explained that "his basic intention [is] to fix ... the essence of things contained in general abstract concepts such as life, purity, mysticism, but also in the emotions of love, hate, depression." Goldwater writes that "his subjects are Christian, but like Maurice Denis, the best of whose early work has the same serene and lyric mood."
In Italy Symbolism was combined with Divisionism, the application of "pure colours directly onto the canvas in small dots, lines and threads" (Aurora Scotti Tosini in Radical Light). Giovanni Segantini's transcendent mountain scenes were often imbued with religious references while his "typically Symbolist dialectic of holy mother and fallen women" used "female characters who often represented the binary opposition of Mary and Eve" (Vivien Greene in Radical Light). "Guiseppe Pellizza da Volpeda was able to sustain his passion for socially conscious subjects while also using Symbolist imagery that was imbued with Christian motifs and was based on Italiam medieval and Renaissance prototypes." The Procession "re-enacts the powerful rituals of Catholicism" while The Mirror of Life "suggests biblical passages in which sheep symbolise the followers of Christ" in order to conceive the sheep of the scene as a metaphor for humanity.
For Gaetano Previati, "the most traditionally religious of the Divisionists," the Madonna and Child was a preferred theme realised most famously in Motherhood. "Previati sought to suggest the religious mysticism of his subject through the evocation of light, which radiates non-naturalistically from the figure of the Madonna in a diffused aureole" (Lara Pucci in Radical Light). "Previati's reinterpretation of Christian iconography and his efforts to reassign a spiritual meaning to art had a significant influence on the next generation [the Futurists]."
Yevgenia Petrova in From Russia portrays Mikhail Nesterov as one of "Russia's subtlest Symbolist artists":
"Nesterov devotes many of his paintings to people of the Church, remote from worldly vanity, immersed in the mysterious and rich world of spiritual quest. As a rule, the personages in Nestoerov's canvases are not portrait-like, having no concrete prototypes. They are symbols of the existence of a way of life, which rejects vanity and worldliness."
Petrova then describes the works of Mikhail Vrubel as "exhibiting a completely different kind of religiosity, rebellious in character, in keeping with the spirit of the Symbolist age":
"The thinking being tormented by good and evil, pride and sorrow, condemnation and revolt, strength of will and resignation to fate: this is the main theme of the mature Vrubel ... In his later years, Vrubel embodied his obsession with repentance in another masterpiece on a religious theme, Six-Winged Seraph."
This latter work "is perceived as an inner vision of the artist, to whom an angel has appeared to remind him of his high mission as one of the chosen, calling him to "inflame the hearts of people throughout the world", to arouse their spirits "from the trivia of the everyday, through sublime imagery"" (Valentina Knyazeva in From Russia).
Similarly, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's Virgin of Tender Mercy to Evil Hearts is "permeated with an energy of great spiritual force" which "acquires a special significance as the artist's heartfelt response to the tragic events taking place at the time [the First World War]" Galina Krechina in From Russia).
National identity was a significant element within Symbolism, particularly in Eastern Europe. For example, Piotr Kopszak and Andrzej Szczerski writing in Symbolist Art in Poland suggest that:
"At the turn of the twentieth century the debate arose among artists concerning the search for a distinctive Polish national style. Hopes for an assertion of national identity found their expression in paintings and sculptures related to Polish history and national myths, and the Romantic idea of Polish messianism. These works implied that the sufferings of Poles had a deeper, spiritual meaning and served to redeem Europe. Poland appeared as the 'Christ of Nations', modelled on the symbolism of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ: in Romantic literature for example, contemporary Poland was compared to the crucified Jesus Christ, especially by [Adam] Mickiewicz. In the fine arts, the religious iconography of crucifixion appeared in works dedicated to national uprisings, and the sacrifice of national heroes, or in visionary works, such as [Stanislaw] Wyspiański's Polonia."
Jósef Mehoffer was a "major representative of the Polish art scene around 1900" who "throughout his life turned to the Roman Catholic religion as a source of inspiration, and his profound knowledge of Christian iconography was unique among his contemporaries." "His works were particularly well known for their attractive aesthetic qualities, based on colour harmonies and ornamental arabesques." He executed numerous church decorations but these were "a source of intense debate, with traditionalists considering the boldly modern works of Mehoffer to be inappropriate." Kazimierz Sichulski was another whose diverse output "often conveyed deeper Symbolist and religious meanings" (Julia Dudkiewicz in Symbolist Art in Poland).
In Hungary two artist communities had great significance, as Gyöngyi Éri and Zsuzsa Jobbágyi write in A Golden Age. Károly Ferenczy became the leading figure of the Nagybánya Artists' Colony and painted "a series of Biblical paintings exemplifying his love of nature." The lyrical approach to nature of the Nagybánya Artists and their semi-religious attitude to art "were both features of international Symbolism and a comon aspect of the Central-European Stimmungsmalerei." It was Ferenczy "who first painted the type of harmonious compositions where colours dominate the design, and the atmosphere is full of tender lyricism" (Ilona Sármány-Parsons in A Golden Age).
The Gödöllő Colony was inspired by the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy by simplifying their own lives and popularising his teachings for the common good, seeking happiness in unity:
"The painting Ego sum via, veritas et vita (1903) by Aladár Körösföi Kriesch is one of the most perfect expressions of the purity of this Christian faith. It displays a mentality that sought and found the fullness of life in family togetherness. Körösföi painted it after the premature death of his first child. The composition (on the right side of which members of the Gödöllő settlement are recognizable) illustrates Christian compliance with the Divine will."
"Sándor Nagy's paintings and drawings also reflect the Gödöllő striving for the purification of the spirit ... Ave Myriam (c. 1903) ... is part of a series depicting the development of the artist's own life in its progress towards beauty and perfection. At the beginning of the cycle, the artist discovers the evangelical tenets then, finding a wife, experiences the joyous beauty of life and reaches fulfilment with the birth of a child."
Finally, Tivandar Csontváry Kosztka was a "strange, obsessed genius" who following a vision aged twenty-seven indicating that he would be greater than Raphael "painted huge, visionary works in such a subjective style that they were inaccessible to the general public." The Praying Saviour "with its depiction of Moses in the background and the rather spectral presence of the apostles at the bottom of the picture, belongs to a ... visionary period, as do Cedars of Lebanon (1907) and Riders on the Seashore (1909), in which the freize-like procession of figures enhances a sense of enchantment." With similar nationalistic tendencies to those of the Young Poland movement, Csontváry "believed that a national art would serve to legitimize the history of the Hungarians as a separate and independent people in the heart of Europe."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arvo Part - Magnificat.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Radical Light
Italian Divisionist painters of 1891-1910 suggests fairly estoteric fare and yet this modest exhibition (Radical Light: Italy's Divisionist Painters 1891-1910, National Gallery, 18 June - 7 September 2008 ) yields much that will be of interest both to those who seek to express faith through art and those who are appreciative of art that is expressive and symbolic.
Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.
However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.
Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built, as this exhibition demonstrates, on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist Sacred Art.
Gaetano Previati sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. The exhibition includes his first major work using these motifs entitled Motherhood and depicting a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. This image, which now appears to verge on the sentimental, stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love.
Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.
Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.
The Italian Divisionists therefore provide contemporary artists with an example of how to be on the cutting edge of society with an art that is both socially engaged and spiritually uplifting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lou Reed - Strawman.
Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.
However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.
Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built, as this exhibition demonstrates, on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist Sacred Art.
Gaetano Previati sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. The exhibition includes his first major work using these motifs entitled Motherhood and depicting a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. This image, which now appears to verge on the sentimental, stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love.
Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.
Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.
The Italian Divisionists therefore provide contemporary artists with an example of how to be on the cutting edge of society with an art that is both socially engaged and spiritually uplifting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lou Reed - Strawman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)