Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage: Latest ArtWay report

My latest Church of the Month report for ArtWay focuses on St Michael and All Angels Berwick:

'The murals are, like those of Stanley Spencer in the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, ‘a unique example of war art’: ‘They record the landscape, the people, and the way of life that was under threat. Christ in Glory depicting, amongst the three servicemen shown, Douglas Hemming who was killed at Caen, takes on a war memorial role. Their religious content reflects the belief of their patron that Christianity was the central pillar of a European civilization that was under threat from the despotic forces of evil.’ As with Spencer’s murals, the artist’s love for and use of ‘local people and the local landscape showed how the divine was a part of the everyday’ enabling them to ‘sense the closeness of God to their own lives.’ As Bell put it in his dedication sermon: ‘The pictures will bring home to you the real truth of the Bible story ...help the pages of the New Testament to speak to you - not as sacred personages living in a far-off land and time, but as human beings ...with the same kind of human troubles, and faults, and goodness, and dangers, that we know in Sussex today.’

My Church of the Month reports include: Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

My visual meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton and Anna Sikorska.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe, and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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

The Neal Morse Band - A Love That Never Dies.

Cultural enrichment from outside

For the last day of my short post-Easter break I've been at Tate Britain to see the Migrations and Picasso and Modern British Art exhibitions.
Migrations: Journeys into British Art explores British art through the theme of migration from 1500 to the present day, reflecting the remit of Tate Britain Collection displays. From the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch landscape and still-life painters who came to Britain in search of new patrons, through moments of political and religious unrest, to Britain’s current position within the global landscape, the exhibition reveals how British art has been fundamentally shaped by successive waves of migration.

Picasso and Modern British Art explores Picasso's extensive legacy and influence on British art, how this played a role in the acceptance of modern art in Britain, alongside the fascinating story of Picasso’s lifelong connections to and affection for this country. It offers the rare opportunity to see celebrated artworks by Picasso alongside seven of his most brilliant British admirers, exploring the huge impact he had on their art: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney.

Nicholas Cranfield reviews both in the current edition of the Church Times arguing that they are two mag­nificent shows celebrating the very best of British art, with a strong reminder that it is often foreign-bred or in­fluenced by life on mainland Europe:

"So much cultural en­richment has come from outside that we would be foolish not to recognise its value. In which direction would British art have gone without Holbein and Lely or Kauffmann and Singer Sargent?

Like the exhibition “Migrations”, [Picasso and Modern British Art], too, provides viewers with a new way of looking at familiar art, and in several cases provided a real oppor­tunity for a rethink. It would be unfair to claim that Picasso alone stirred British art from the lethargy of the Edwardian salon, but the effect of his work’s becoming known after 1910, thanks to Roger Fry, is difficult to underestimate."

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

U2 - The Hands That Built America.

Cross Purposes

The Cross Purposes exhibition at Mascalls Gallery in Kent and then in June at Ben Uri examines how and why artists of different religions, or of none, use the crucifixion as a central motif in modern and contemporary practice.

Only five miles away from Mascalls Gallery is one of the UK’s finest examples of religious art and a moving example of the crucifixion as a 'conduit' for a very personal tragedy. The church in Tudeley is renowned internationally as the only church to have all its windows decorated by Marc Chagall which fulfilled a long term ambition of the artist. The windows were commissioned by the family of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid as a commemoration of her tragic and untimely death. Chagall’s drawings for Tudeley Church are being seen for the first time in Britain at Mascalls Gallery courtesy of Centre Pompidou. Chagall’s previously unpublished and haunting ‘Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio’, will also be shown at both Mascalls and Ben Uri.

The 20th century has seen some of the most important and interesting depictions of the crucifixion interestingly in a time when the church’s influence waned measurably. One of the best known religious artists of our time was Graham Sutherland. Images from the concentration camps proved to be a catalyst for some of the most powerful depictions of the crucifixion. This exhibition shows a bloody and haggard Christ whose body bears witness to the “continuing beastliness and cruelty of mankind.”

The two world wars are represented in a number of works within the exhibition as artists look towards one of the few symbols that could contain the potency of their emotions. The 20 artists represented in the exhibition create narratives both of the artistic traditions of the time from Eric Gill to Maggie Hambling, Norman Adams and Tracey Emin and by doing so navigate a way through the major events of the century. The works show the crucifixion as both a symbol of shock and also as an object of contemplation: from the hollowed out scarecrow figure of Christ on the battlefield of Europe by Scottish artist R Hamilton Blyth to a rarely seen, life-size drawing of Duncan Grant’s crucifixion for Berwick Church in East Sussex.

The exhibition is curated by Nathaniel Hepburn. 5 March to 29 May 2010 at Mascalls Gallery, Maidstone Road, Paddock Wood, Kent. 15 June to 19 September at Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art. Other related exhibitions include: Easter Images: Maggi Hambling & Craigie Aitchison, 27 March - 6 April, The Kentish Barn, International Study Centre, Canterbury Cathedral; 1st April to 29th May, Norman Adams RA: Spirit in the Garden at Marle Place Gardens and Gallery; Susan Shaw - Dispersal, 5 March - 25 May, St Thomas a Becket, Capel, Tonbridge, Kent, TN12 6SX; Santiago Bell: Chilean woodcarver in exile, 5 March - 29 May, St Andrews Paddock Wood; From the Darkness ... light in contemporary art at St Peter's Church, Preston Park, Brighton, 1 May – 23 May.

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

Sam Phillips - Where the Colours Don't Go.