Between: el greco

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Monday, 24 May 2021

Artlyst - Louis Carreon: Sampling Art History

My latest interview for Artlyst is with Louis Carreon. With a background in tagging, rapping, skateboarding and surfing, Californian-born Carreon is a street artist who is currently sampling art history, and its religious iconography in particular. Inspired by Hip Hop, Carreon riffs off imagery appropriated from the likes of El Greco, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Peter Paul Rubens and Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio to disrupt and re-present images of the greats in ways to which young people can relate:

'After years of trial and tribulations and many downfalls, redemption was my only Salvation. Truly at that time believed I had to be in pain to produce, to write poetry and to paint. I didn’t know myself and I didn’t believe I could create while working on positivity, health and wellness and a positive future. So as redemption is tattooed across my chest, the story of redemption is what gives me the light and encouragement to give it all to God and leave it out of my hands and to ride this light on this narrative. I used to be a loser now I’m choosing to win...

I am a student always, keeping it humble. I have had God work in my life and am a true believer in prayer. My prayers do come true but in ways that are different from what I expect, meaning that I have to figure out the difference. I am a different person every day, especially with art, being susceptible to energy and change. Art is a current that comes through people’s bodies in movement and the visualization of memories. Some people can only paint their life or what comes through their bodies and memories. For me, crawling out of addiction and crime, redemption was the only story that had authenticity. I create things that take away pain and give peace. Painting is my redemption and keeps me alive.'

As an exclusive to Artlyst the interview features the first full image of Carreon's new and first sculpture 'David Reincarnated', an 8 ft high, 4,000 lb. contemporary reworking of Bernini’s David in marble, with David dressed for the streets of LA. This piece is both evidence of contemporary religious inspiration and a challenge to museums and galleries to acknowledge that reality.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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Bob Marley - Redemption Song.

Sunday, 7 February 2016

Inspired to Follow: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story is a programme of hour-long gatherings at St Martin-in-the-Fields over three terms covering the Biblical story from Creation to Apocalypse. It uses fine art paintings that can be found on St Martin’s doorstep as a springboard for exploring these two questions - What does it mean to follow Jesus today? How can I deepen my faith in God?

Today's session was entitled Jesus Cleanses the Temple and explored Mark 11 through ‘Christ driving the Traders from the Temple’ by El Greco. I gave the following reflection:
El Greco, which means 'The Greek', was born in Crete, which was then a Venetian possession. He “was trained as an icon painter … before he set about transforming himself into a disciple of Titian and an avid student of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Jacopo Bassano.”

He “moved to Venice in 1567, where he developed his intense, colourful Mannerist style” after first “mastering the elements of Renaissance painting, including perspective, figural construction, and the ability to stage elaborate narratives.” “He was in Rome in 1570 and studied the work of Michelangelo and Raphael.” “By 1577 he had settled in Toledo, Spain, where he lived the rest of his life, executing mostly pictures for local religious foundations.”

His art made a “radical assault on expected ways of depicting the body in space.” “He made elongated, twisting forms, radical foreshortening, and unreal colours the very basis of his art … [and] made these effects deeply expressive”.

In the face of the Protestant Reformation, “the Catholic church sought to reform its practices and reinforce belief in its doctrines. Spain put its vast resources … at the service of the church, and Toledo, because it was the seat of the archbishop, played an active role. The Council of Trent, which met in the mid-sixteenth century to clarify Counter-Reformation goals, explicitly recognized the importance of religious art. El Greco, whose patrons were primarily learned churchmen, responded with intelligent and expressive presentations of traditional and newly affirmed Catholic beliefs.” “In the 16th century the subject of [this painting] the Purification of the Temple was used as a symbol of the Church's need to cleanse itself both through the condemnation of heresy and through internal reform.”

“The most influential mystics of the Counter-Reformation were Spanish: Saint Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross and [Ignatius of] Loyola.” Teresa and John both worked “for the reform of the Carmelite order to bring it back to its primitive roots.” They transmit “to us profound spiritual experience; experience that is shaped by the Word made flesh, the self-emptying of Christ on the cross and his exaltation in resurrection.” They draw on a mystical theology exploring “that hidden state of experiencing God without images or concepts.”

“El Greco's heightened experience in his paintings makes you wonder if he, too, underwent … [similar] contacts with the divine.” “The personality [or emotion] of El Greco's painting is [ultimately] what is irreducible about it … but is the energy that shudders through it love, or anger?” Let’s think about that question in relation to this painting?

“In the time of Christ, the porch of the Temple in Jerusalem accommodated a market for buying sacrificial animals and changing money. Christ drove out the traders, saying, 'It is written "My house shall be called a house of prayer"; but you make it a den of thieves.' (Matthew 20). This episode is known as the Purification of the Temple.”

“Passover meant big business for Jerusalem-based merchants … Since it was impractical for those traveling from distant lands to bring their own animals, the merchants sold them the animals required for the sacrifices—at greatly inflated prices. The money changers also provided a necessary service. Every Jewish male twenty years of age or older had to pay the annual temple tax (Ex. 30:13–14; Matt. 17:24–27). But it could be paid only using Jewish or Tyrian coins … so foreigners had to exchange their money for acceptable coinage. Because they had a monopoly on the market, the money changers charged an exorbitant fee for their services (as high as 12.5 percent)." [F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 74].

“Watching in amazement as their Master dispersed the temple merchants, His disciples remembered that it was written in Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” Jesus’ resolute passion and unwavering fervor was clear to all who saw Him. His righteous indignation, stemming from an absolute commitment to God’s holiness, revealed His true nature as the Judge of all the earth (cf. Gen. 18:25; Heb. 9:27).” (The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel [Reprint; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998], 207)

In the picture, “The scourging figure of Christ stands exactly centre stage. The merchants and traders have been placed to the left, a group of Apostles to the right. A crowd divided [like this] into good and evil halves is liable to bring the Last Judgement to mind. Two stone bas-reliefs in the background reinforce the association of the traders with sin and the Apostles with redemption. The relief above the traders shows the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, while the one above the Apostles shows the Sacrifice of Isaac, traditionally understood as a prefiguration of Christ’s own redemptive sacrifice on the Cross.”

“The figure of Christ … resembles a flame, and perhaps the painting as a whole should be understood in the light of mystical experience – not as a depiction of a physical act, but as an image of a spiritual state, the culmination of prayer and meditation, when the radiance of Christ suddenly floods in on the individual at the moment of illumination.” In the words of St John of the Cross, as “The Living Flame of Love.”

So we have a painting in which elongated, twisting forms, foreshortening and unreal colours are deeply expressive of energies and emotions which inform the fiery expression or reform of the faith, in both institutions and individuals. A painting which seems to depict prayer and meditation culminating in emotions and actions which seek to reform and renew but do so through judgement and punishment.

The painting and the story raise profound questions for us:

• Are love and anger separate emotions or can they be combined?
• Are love and anger primarily emotions or are they also shown in actions?
• Can loving actions include an element of violence?
• Should our passion for God and for the reform of the Church or society involve a degree of anger; in other words is a righteous form of anger possible?

The songwriter John Bell has described Jesus as “A Saviour without safety” who is “inspired by love and anger” in addressing injustice. His hymn wants us to be as “disturbed by need and pain.” Yet, living, as we do, in a time when religious extremism extends to acts of decapitation, we may worry that this kind of ‘righteous anger’ can easily lead to justifying the kind of atrocities perpetrated by ISIS or, through theories of ‘just wars’, to disproportionate or illegal military interventions by the West.

The painting and the story may not fully answer all these questions but they certainly bring them vividly to life. Passion is clearly expressed; but is it love or anger or both that is being shown? Discuss.

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St John of the Cross - The Living Flame Of Love.

Thursday, 27 March 2014

The Greek of Toledo - The Time Gatherer

The commemoration of the 4th Centenary of the death of El Greco will be a landmark for the history of both the painter and the town of Toledo; the gathering of works by the artist programmed for 2014 will get together most of his artistic production, coming from all parts of the world. There will be three big exhibitions showing works by the artist, which are the centre of the wide programme of El Greco Year, set mainly in Toledo.

The Greek of Toledo exhibition will present the Cretan painter within his Toledan setting and milieu, as a leading figure in an artistic and cultural scene of trans-national and plural character, always seeking to explain his work within the context of the activities pursued by the artists who worked for Philip II and Philip III in Toledo or in Madrid.

The El Greco and Modern Art exhibition organised by El Prado Museum aims to highlight the important influence that El Greco's work had on the origins of the most radically modern painting approaches, beginning with Édouard Manet and Paul Cézanne. Of special importance is the analysis of El Greco's influence on Picasso and the origins of Cubism, as well as the decisive inspiration that the Cretan artist's work provided to the different Expressionist movements that emerged throughout the twentieth century in Europe and America.

Between Heaven and Earth aims to explore the way the influence of El Greco can be felt in the work of twelve contemporary artists that are currently creating and that are clear witnesses of the influence of his art, still alive in contemporay art.

Those that love El Greco's work are likely to also likely to appreciate The Time Gatherer by Patrick Pye, which is an extended meditation on the work of El Greco: "Here is a critic who can lead you to a deeper appreciation of El Greco precisely because he himself deeply practices what he writes about." "The essay's depth is enhanced by being written by a practising artist, himself, a man of faith who faces, though in a modern context, precisely the same questions that El Greco faced and an artist who has been admiring and pondering El Greco's work over many years."

The book "explores the way in which El Greco's faith and theological vision becomes real in the context of his painting. It is a beautiful essay, continually illuminating about how an artist resolves that fundamental issue of religious painting: how do I represent a reality, a mystery that ultimately transcends all representation? how do I point to, evoke that reality effectively in paint? how have others so resolved it and how can I?"

Pye writes of El Greco's influence on modern art: "The rediscovery of El Greco did not come from Christians, but from the Romantics, the last people who tried to hold sense and sensibility together. Then he was discovered by the Post-impressionists, who were trying to create a new visual language. They saw in him the Old Master who had the greatest sensitivity to real problems of formal language as the artist understands them. It remains for our generation to place him squarely in the tradition of European Christian art."

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Vangelis - El Greco.