Thought for the Week: Looking Up

Here's my Thought for the Week written for the newsletter of St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld has a major exhibition at Canary Wharf that opened shortly before lockdown.

When I interviewed Helaine, as part of an exhibition review for Church Times, I expected major disappointment, yet she has taken the setback in her stride.

This is, in part, because lockdown demonstrates the timeliness of the exhibition. Over recent months she has felt increasingly concerned that society was moving towards a precipice caused by isolation, lack of empathy, the breakdown in trust, and absence of leadership. Many of the works in the show depict broken edges, reflecting this.

But the show is both warning and antidote, as the majority of pieces show connection and relationship. That is how we can come out of this, she thinks; through community, spiritual values, and acknowledgement that we are all human. We will have to learn to look at the world in a different way. By looking up – the title of the exhibition - we can see a spiritual dimension.

This is, she says, an incredibly important time when we will either learn to empathise, cooperate and connect or we will have failed the challenge in front of us. Through her words and her works, she is picturing resurrection for us.

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

Victoria Williams - Why Look At The Moon.

Review: To See Clearly: Why Ruskin matters

My latest piece for Church Times is a review of  To See Clearly: Why Ruskin matters, by Suzanne Fagence Cooper.

In this exquisite book, 'Suzanne Fagence Cooper gives a masterclass in how to write well about a subject who was as expansive as she is concise and as florid as she is focused, while sensitively — even poetically — summarising the many insights imparted by her subject.

Her focus is on John Ruskin’s belief that sight is fundamental to all insight, whether poetry, prophecy, or religion. So, this is a book about a purveyor of words who encourages in those who listen or read the discipline of attentive looking.'

Earlier this year I reviewed, also for Church Times, “John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing” at Two Temple Place:

'Ruskin was a man of many words, who believed that, through drawing, one had the power to say what could not otherwise be said. He built his reputation on the power of his words as an art critic, author, and lecturer, but his subject was the power of seeing, because, for him, the teaching of art was “the teaching of all things”. He believed that the “greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way”. “To see clearly”, he said, “is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one.”

Art, then, is an expression of “the love and the will of God” to which we gain access primarily by looking closely at the splendour of nature.'

Click here to also read the earlier review.

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

Antonio Vivaldi - Gloria.

Ordinary things that I found wondrous

"I guess I have been interested in the spiritual side of things since I was very young. But the form it took was me, in a very quiet way, simply looking with great focus at the ordinary things around me that I found wondrous. I still do today." Bill Viola

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

Bill Viola - Emergence.

Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking

"The main corridor is decorated with small egg tempera panels encased as if modern day icons, except rather than images that command worship these are quiet, contemplative, incidental observations of everyday life. They quietly request us to slow down and appreciate the world, and that, ultimately, is the role of art according to Julie Caves." (Lisa Freeman)

Julie Caves says: “I am very interested in the push-pull of visual space and the polarities of ideas - object and ground, positive and negative, good and evil. I have always looked at both sides of the coin, seen the hare and the duck. I’m interested in the structure of the painting and my own kind of balance. Often my method of closing-up, searching for rightness and negotiating each mark results in a complexity nearly hidden in the final simplification, a subtle activation.”

"London-based American artist Julie Caves’ first major solo exhibition has taken over two years to create, with work celebrating beauty and its many juxtapositions: work and play, nature and synthesis, life and death.  Housed in the peaceful and contemplative 19th-century Crypt Gallery in Kings Cross, Caves has sensitively curated a largely site specific show comprising of Colourist painting, sculpture and installation."

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

Curiosity Killed The Cat - Ordinary Day.