Seen and Unseen: Cathedrals, confessionals, and the strange allure of spiritual fiction

My latest article for Seen and Unseen is 'Cathedrals, confessionals, and the strange allure of spiritual fiction' about the return of Susan Howatch:

'These are novels that are infused with the great Christian themes of sin, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, resurrection, and renewal. They explore the Church of England and their central characters (based as these often are on actual individuals) with great rigour, energy, and creativity, both theologically and sociologically. In these novels, faith and science, mysticism and psychology, are interlinked and interwoven through the device of spiritual direction sessions. The importance to the spiritual life of having an effective spiritual director is put centre-stage in these novels as their characters crash and burn through the unexamined aspects of their life experiences before re-building lives and careers with the support of those able to accompany them with spiritual support.'

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history

My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).

My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.

My 18th article was an interview entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence.

My 19th article was entitled 'Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us'. In the article I highlight alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.

My 20th article was entitled 'Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs'. In the article I highlight folk musicians capturing both the barbaric and the beautiful in the hymn Amazing Grace and Christianity's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade more generally.

My 21st article was entitled 'James MacMillan’s music of tranquility and discord'. In the article I noted that the composer’s music contends both the secular and sacred.

My 22nd article was a book review on Nobody's Empire by Stuart Murdoch. 'Nobody's Empire: A Novel is the fictionalised account of how ... Murdoch, lead singer of indie band Belle and Sebastian, transfigured his experience of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) through faith and music.'

My 23rd article was entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space.

My 24th article was an interview with Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention which explores why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.

My 25th article was about Stanley Spencer’s seen and unseen world and the artist’s child-like sense of wonder as he saw heaven everywhere.

My 26th article was entitled 'The biblical undercurrent that the Bob Dylan biopics missed' and in it I argue that the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey.

My 27th article was entitled 'Heading Home: a pilgrimage that breaks out beauty along the way' and focuses on a film called 'Heading Home' which explores how we can learn a new language together as we travel.

My 28th article was entitled 'Annie Caldwell: “My family is my band”' and showcased a force of nature voice that comes from the soul.

My 29th article was entitled 'Why sculpt the face of Christ?' and explored how, in Nic Fiddian Green’s work, we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.

My 30th article was entitled 'How Mumford and friends explore life's instability' and explored how Mumford and Sons, together with similar bands, commune on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

My 31st article was entitled 'The late Pope Francis was right – Antoni Gaudi truly was God’s architect' and explored how sanctity can indeed be found amongst scaffolding, as Gaudi’s Barcelona beauties amply demonstrate.

My 32nd article was entitled 'This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art' and explored how rehanging the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery revives the emotion of great art.

My 33rd article was an interview with Jonathan A. Anderson about the themes of his latest book 'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art'.

My 34th article was an interview with 'Emily Young: the sculptor listening as the still stones speak'.

My 35th article was a profile of New York's expressionist devotional artist, 'Genesis Tramaine: the painter whose faces catch the spirit'.

My 36th article was a concert review of Natalie Bergman at Union Chapel - a soul-soaked set turned personal tragedy into communal celebration.

My 37th article was based on the exhibition series 'Can We Stop Killing Each Other?' at the Sainsbury Centre. In it I explore how art, theology, and moral imagination confront our oldest instinct.

My 38th article article was 'The dot and the dash: modern art’s quiet search for deeper meaning' in which I argue that Neo-Impressionism meets mysticism in a quietly radical exhibition at the National Gallery.

My 39th article was 'From Klee to Klein, Wenders to Botticelli: angels unveiled' in which I explore how, across war, wonder and nativity, artists show angels bridging earth and heaven.

My 40th article was 'When Henry Moore’s Madonna shocked Northampton' in which I explore how a modernist mother and child stirred outrage, then lasting wonder.

My 41st article was 'Turner and Constable: storms, salvation and the sublime' in which I discussed how Tate Britain reveals how rival visions shaped art and spirit.

My 42nd article was 'When converts cracked open the culture’s polished surface' in which I explored how faith’s outsiders disrupted the scene with unexpected force.

My 43rd article 'The Magdalene we rarely see' was about the painting 'Magdalene at the Base of the Cross' by Chris Gollon.

My 44th article was 'U2’s music shows surrender can still sound like joy' which explores the spirituality of U2

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The Choir of Salisbury Cathedral - How Shall I Sing That Majesty.

Recent exhibitions visited

'Wright of Derby: From the Shadows' at the National Gallery is the first major exhibition dedicated to the British artist’s ‘candlelight’ paintings. The exhibition celebrates and looks again at his most admired works.

Illuminated faces gather around a variety of objects – from classical sculptures and scientific instruments to bones, bladders and animals. Through his unflinching scenes of people watching, Wright of Derby proposes moral questions about acts of looking. The strong light and deep shadows create drama, reminding us of great painters from earlier centuries like Caravaggio.

Challenging the traditionally held view of Wright of Derby as a figurehead of the Enlightenment, this exhibition contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the artist, portraying him not merely as a ‘painter of light’. More than virtuoso scenes of dramatic light and shade, Wright of Derby used the night-time to explore deeper and more sombre themes, including death, melancholy, morality, scepticism and the sublime.

Bendor Grosvenor, who wrote about Wright of Derby in The Invention of British Art (see my review here), has, in an interesting review, challenged some of the curator's assertions. In The Invention of British Art he writes that the essential point to grasp about Wright of Derby's work is that 'pictures like the Orrery, the Air Pump, and The Blacksmith's Shop were not precursors to our modern, scientific and secular world but a reflection of Wright's scientific but still deeply religious world.'

Also at the National Gallery is 'Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse'. In the 1750s, Stubbs spent 18 months in a remote barn in Horkstow, Lincolnshire. Hidden away, he devoted his time to studying and drawing the anatomy of horses. What resulted was the most thorough study on the subject for over a hundred years. 
Incredibly, Stubbs’s pictures of horses are still some of the most accurate ever painted, all while capturing their unique characters.

In this exhibition, you’ll meet one of these horses, Scrub. Painted by Stubbs around 1762, we see Scrub rearing in a landscape backdrop — notably without a rider. In a nearby room is another monumental horse painting by Stubbs, this time of Scrub’s now famous contemporary, ‘Whistlejacket’. Painted around the same time, these are two of the first life-size portraits to depict horses without a human presence in British history. The paintings changed the spirit of equine art forever.

Grosvenor is again well worth reading on Stubbs suggesting he 'has been so identified with sporting art that his role in the development of British landscape painting has been overlooked.'

Where Grosvenor's book has a shortcoming is in its omission of any mention of William Blake and his circle, from which distinctively British forms of Visionary, Symbolic, and Fantasy art derive. Yesterday, 'William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy' opened at the National Gallery of Ireland. Blake, as artist and poet, was a defining force in Romanticism. His imaginative and unconventional works continue to inspire today. This exhibition, curated by Tate in partnership with the National Gallery of Ireland, presents a selection of Blake’s most iconic works of art, alongside paintings and drawings by his contemporaries.

Blake’s world was one of fantasy, imagination, and the ancient past, filled with fantastical creatures and visions of the underworld, expressed through a wide variety of media. By placing him in context - among the artists he admired and those he inspired - the exhibition offers insight into an era of extraordinary originality and innovation in late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century art. Featuring over 100 works, including by James Barry (1741–1806), Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), John Hamilton Mortimer (1740–1779), Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), and J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), the show explores how artists responded to a time of revolution and transformation, pushing the boundaries of their art into new imaginative territories.

The final exhibition I visited in the past week was 'Samurai' at the British Museum. The samurai is an iconic figure, evoking images of formidable fighters possessing ideals of courage, honour and self-sacrifice. Yet much of what we think we know about samurai is invented tradition.

Our concept of samurai today has its origins in medieval reality. A distinct warrior class – known in Japan as bushi – emerged and gained political dominance from the 1100s. But during a prolonged period of peace, beginning in 1615, the samurai moved away from the battlefield to become an elite social class that also included women. Samurai men formed the government, serving as ministers and bureaucrats. Many became leaders in scholarship and the arts, as patrons, poets and painters, in a world where intellectual pursuits were just as important as swordsmanship.

By the late 19th century, the hereditary status of samurai had been abolished and their supposed chivalric values developed into the myth of bushido, or 'the way of the warrior'. This new code, promoting values of patriotism and self-sacrifice, was harnessed during Japan's period of colonial expansion and military aggression. The modern mythology of the 'samurai' emerged gradually across the 20th century through interactions between Japan and the wider world, with idealised images of the historical warriors increasingly consumed by foreign visitors.

The story of the evolution of the samurai is told through battle gear such as the suit of armour sent by Tokugawa Hidetada to James VI and I, as well as luxury objects such as an intriguing incense connoisseurship game. From a Louis Vuitton outfit inspired by Japanese armour, to the popular, loosely historical videogame 'Assassin's Creed: Shadows', the exhibition explores the samurai's enduring legacy in games, fashion and film.

This exhibition was instructive as all I knew previously of the Samurai came from Shusaku Endo's novel 'The Samurai'. Winner of the 1980 Noma Literary Prize, this novel is a darkly absorbing portrayal of the first Japanese voyage across the Pacific. 

In 17th-century Japan, a diplomatic mission sets sail for the West. Among those facing the combined perils of the sea and foreign courts are ambitious Spanish missionary Pedro Velasco, and Hasekura Rokuemon, a disregarded samurai determined to recover his family’s standing. They travel to Mexico City, Rome and back – but Japan’s new rulers are persecuting Christians, and if the men survive the journey, they may not survive their homecoming. This true story of courage and endurance is told with Endo’s signature power and simplicity.

Endo was one of the greatest novelists of postwar Japan. Baptised as a Roman Catholic as a child, his work explores the relationship between East and West from his unique perspective as a Japanese Christian. Endo won the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Literary Prize, was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, and received an Order of the Culture from the Japanese government. Among his other novels are 'Deep River', 'The Sea and Poison', and his masterpiece 'Silence'.

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Kathryn Kluge, Kim Allen Kluge - Only God Can Answer.

Our old story ends and a new one begins

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine's Wickford:

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a famous and talented author who was born in 1821 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and died in 1881. At 27, he became involved in a group of authors who got together regularly to discuss ideas. The ideas they discussed were considered treason. They were all arrested and imprisoned.

At Peter and Paul Fortress, Dostoevsky and his book club were sentenced to execution by firing squad. This was actually a mock execution but they didn’t know that. They were brought out, told they were going to be executed, taken to the spot, blindfolded, their crimes read out, the command was given, and the rifles were raised. Then, at the last moment, the execution was stopped and their sentence changed to four years hard labour in prison in Siberia and then four years in exile. Dostoyevsky writes a lot about this; how life was given back to him, how he had thought he was seconds away from being executed.

He was put in chains, put in a sleigh, as it was winter, and travelled to Siberia. He suffered with severe frostbite and for the rest of his life would have scars from the chains. As he was going into the prison, he was given a little New Testament. So, the only thing he had to read for four years was this New Testament. He read it over and over, especially the gospel of John, especially the story of Lazarus.

He came to believe in Jesus and, in his writings, he compares himself to Lazarus having a chance to live again. All his novels after that contain in some form, his Christian faith. Richard Harries notes that “He wrote that his faith had come ‘through a furnace of doubt’ and was focused on a deep attraction to the person of Jesus Christ.” “He entered deeply into the atheism of his age” so that, as Malcolm Jones has written, “in reading Dostoevskii we are in the presence of a genius wrestling with the problems of rethinking Christianity in the modern age.”

His most famous novel is ‘Crime and Punishment’, a novel written in 1866. People say that ‘Crime and Punishment’ is a poor translation and that the title would be better translated ‘Crime and Consequences’.

The novel centres around the main character – a young man – named Raskolnikov who is a young intelligent, college student, very poor, and living in St. Petersburg. He is an atheist who believes that ‘exceptional men’ are beyond good and evil. Normal laws of morality do not apply to such men. He gives the example of Napoleon; a man who killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, but is regarded a great man because he’s exceptional. Ordinary laws of morality didn’t apply to him. Raskolnikov believes he is an exceptional man and, to prove it, murders two old woman who are sisters. Obviously, he is a very lost young man.

Most of the novel is spent inside his head, as he is “locked up in a mental prison”. Ultimately, though, it’s a book about redemption. In the end, Raskolnikov - the murderer, the atheist, the man who convinced himself that he was beyond good and evil – finds redemption. He finds redemption in a young woman named Sonya, who has been forced into prostitution through poverty and to provide for two orphaned children. She is like Mary Magdalene, having found redemption and meaning in Christ.

In one of the most moving scenes, which is actually “the turning point in the book”, the two are together. Raskolnikov has not confessed his crime to Sonya, but will later. She has a bible laying on her table. Raskolnikov picks up the bible and asks, “Where is the part about Lazarus?” She flips to it and reads him the story of the raising of Lazarus, tears streaming down her face as she reads. Afterwards, he says “Do you believe this?” She replies, “With all my heart.” He’s not asking if she believes in the story, what he’s really asking is: “Do you believe there’s redemption for someone like me, a murderer?”

The closing sentence of this scene reads as follows:

Sonya says “That’s all about the raising of Lazarus.” she whispered. The candle was flickering out and the battered candlestick casting a dim light in this destitute room upon the murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book.

They are two lost souls on the road to redemption reading about the raising of Lazarus.

Eventually, Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonya; that he’s murdered the two older women. One of these women was Sonya’s close friend, Lizaveta. In fact, it was Lizaveta who gave the bible to Sonya. Sonya’s response to Raskolnikov is, “What have you done to yourself?” and she cries. She gives him her cross, which was also given her by Lizaveta, and urges him to confess in public and give himself up for arrest and punishment. Eventually, he wears her cross, goes to the police and confesses. He is convicted and sent to Siberia to prison. Sonya travels with him, to be near him and to visit him in prison. She is a picture of Christ, who doesn’t forsake him.

The closing paragraphs of the book read as follows:

Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took the book out. It belonged to Sonya, it was the same one from which she had read to him about the raising of Lazarus. At the beginning, he had thought she would hound him with religion, forever talking about the Gospels and forcing books on him. But to his great amazement, she never once spoke of it, never once even offered him the New Testament. He had to ask her for it himself.

He had not even opened it yet. Nor did he open it now, but a thought flashed in his mind: “Can her convictions be mine?

Here begins a new account, the account of a man’s gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another. It might make the subject of a new story—but our present story is ended.

So, the “reading of the Lazarus story to Raskolnikov and the wearing of the cross bear fruit as the novel proceeds.” “Raskolnikov’s state is effectively death; and the significance of Christ’s command to Lazarus, ‘Come forth!’ is obvious.” That is what happens to Raskolnikov as the novel proceeds. “The divine words addressed to Lazarus – ‘Come forth’ – have been heard” and Raskolnikov stumbles out of the death of his mental tomb.

Dostoyevsky who became a Christian because of the New Testament, especially the story of Lazarus, then wrote a book about a murderer finding redemption through the New Testament and the story of Lazarus. Neither Dostoevsky or Raskolnikov die physically, but their experiences lead them to a place where they see themselves as having been given new life in Christ. Their old story ends and a new story begins. That is what the story of Lazarus promises; when we’re scared and feel defeated – caught up in our despair, sorrow, anger, guilt, or shame, Jesus comes and brings redemption into our stories. That is what the story of Lazarus is about and that is how we regain balance after trauma, grief, imprisonment, shame, guilt or whatever. Dostoevsky knew this in his own life and described it in depth in the story of Raskolnikov.

I wonder whether you have ever been locked in a mental prison and how you got free.
I wonder what Jesus’ words to Lazarus, ‘Come forth’, mean for you.
I wonder whether there is a story in your life which needs to end, so another can begin.

(Adapted from David Eiffert, ‘The God who bleeds 8: Lazarus and Dostoevsky’ - https://gospelanchor.org/the-god-who-bleeds-8-lazarus-and-dostoyevsky/; with additional quotes from Richard Harries’ ‘Haunted By Christ’ and Rowan Williams’ ‘Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction’)

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Joseph Arthur - Dear Lord.

If love believes in me

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength …

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Corinthians 1.18-31)

Jesus chose Judas to be one of his disciples. What does it mean that Judas was chosen?

In The Last Temptation of Christ, the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis has Judas betray Jesus at Jesus’s own instigation. In our Gospel reading (John 13.21-32) Jesus said to Judas, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do’ which can be understood as an instruction to Judas to betray. In the novel Kazantzakis has Jesus say, “There is no other way for the Kingdom of Heaven to come”:

“You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."

Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"

Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.”

In our Gospel reading, when Judas has gone out, Jesus says, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him’. It is as Judas goes to betray Jesus that Jesus says he is glorified, again showing the necessity of Judas’ betrayal.

If it is necessary for Judas to betray, which seems to be the case, then there may be a place for betrayal. The Irish poet Brendan Kennelly wrote a book called The Book of Judas in which he looks at the Judas of Gethsemane, the Judas in our culture and the Judas in us all. He writes:

Be a knife, bullet, poison, flood, earthquake;
Cut, gut, shrivel, swallow, bury, burn, drown
Till someone senses things ain't as they should be.

If betrayal is a service, learn to betray
With the kind of style that impresses men
Until they dream of being me

On this basis Judas becomes even more fascinating as a betrayer. He and his fate become a yardstick for measuring God’s kindness and forgiveness – does He allow Judas to go to Hell, given Judas was predetermined to betray his master?

In U2’s ‘Until the End of the World’ Judas sings to Jesus. The first verse discusses The Last Supper:

We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time except you
You were talking about the end of the world

The second verse is Judas’s betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:

In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart

The third verse is about Judas' suicide after being overwhelmed with guilt and sadness:

Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you’d wait till the end of the world

In this song, Jesus is there at the end of time for Judas.

Jesus chose Judas as a disciple knowing he would betray and that his betrayal would bring about the salvation of the world. He chose someone who has been seen as foolish, weak, low and despised but in doing so chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Jesus chose Judas to be one of his disciples. We’ve thought briefly about what it might mean that Judas was chosen but, ultimately, as U2 sing in a song called ‘Moment of Surrender’: “It’s not if I believe in love / If love believes in me” and so, we pray, “Oh, believe in me” and give thanks that love does believe in us, as love believes in Judas. Amen.

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U2 - Until The End Of  The World. 

Seen and Unseen: Belle and Sebastian's suffering singer on the struggle and the hope

My latest book review for Seen and Unseen is on Nobody's Empire by Stuart Murdoch:

'Nobody's Empire: A Novel is the fictionalised account of how Stuart Murdoch, lead singer of indie band Belle and Sebastian, transfigured his experience of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) through faith and music.'

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history

My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).

My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.

My 18th article was an interview entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence.

My 19th article was entitled 'Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us'. In the article I highlight alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.

My 20th article was entitled 'Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs'. In the article I highlight folk musicians capturing both the barbaric and the beautiful in the hymn Amazing Grace and Christianity's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade more generally.

My 21st article was entitled 'James MacMillan’s music of tranquility and discord'. In the article I noted that the composer’s music contends both the secular and sacred.

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Belle and Sebastian - Ever Had A Little Faith.

Latest publications from David Miller

With Matrix I & II, David Miller constructs a web of memories, music, birds, colours, images and abstractions into a beautiful, meditative poetic sequence.

Keith Jebb writes that 'Miller’s poetry in Matrix is minimalist, but it is not austere; it is spare, but generous rather than dry. As with his prose poetry, there are buried quotations and allusions, a richness of layering. And there is the balance of repetition, compositions of colour replaced by their words, simple ink drawings.'

‘Miller’s impressionistic world of sight and sound, of memory and desire, is an unforgettable realisation of the movement of age’ - Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence

Matrix I & II constitutes the first part of a trilogy - the other parts being circle square triangle (Spuyten Duyvil) and Afterword (Shearsman Books).

Norman Weinstein notes that 'circle square triangle, David Miller’s autobiography in poetry brings to mind the renewing spiritual force of geometric forms, their haunting presence musically and visually in this poet whose alchemical creativity is as realized in jazz improvisation and visual art as in poetry.'

Afterword can 'be seen as a poem sequence: of memories and meditations, dreams and (for want of a better word) visions. It’s increasingly invaded by images of destruction and desolation: of nature, of animals, of humankind; with those images prefigured by the opening passages... It’s a poem that’s concerned with limits and the possible surpassing or exceeding of limits.'

“David Miller writes: ‘any writing that engages with the spiritual has to be dialogic provisional &open-ended in nature otherwise we’re not talking about an engagement with the spiritual’ – and Miller’s new text does engage with the spiritual. Both learned and lyrical, it creates lyric utterance through a comprehension of the learning. David Miller both guides and follows – in the wisest European tradition. This is an overwhelming accomplishment.” —Tom Lowenstein

Miller has also written recently about the poet Cid Corman and the novelist Isadore Lhevinne. 

Among the Neighbors 25 is an expanded version of Miller's Cid Corman and ORIGIN: A Personal Account, which was originally published in Two Masters. Origin was an American poetry magazine that was founded in 1951 by Corman. The magazine provided an early platform for the work of  important, ground-breaking poets, who collectively created an alternative to academic poetry. Miller was, for a period, an Associate Editor with Origin.

Lhevinne wrote that 'My books are just like my life: I seem to possess the parlous gift of displeasing all groups of readers at all times.' In his Preface to Lhevinne's Ariade, Miller describes him as 'an enigmatic figure—a brilliant Jewish American modernist writer of the 1920s/30s', 'someone with such extraordinary talent' who has, nevertheless, 'slipped into totally undeserved semi-oblivion.'

David Miller is an Australian-born poet, critic and artist currently living in Dorset. His books include Spiritual Letters (Contraband Books), Reassembling Still: Collected Poems (Shearsman), The Waters of Marah (Shearsman) and Stromata (Burning Deck Press). David’s writing is celebrated in At the Heart of Things: the poetry and prose of David Miller (Stride). His influences as a writer include friend and mentor Robert Lax.

My interview with David for ArtWay can be read here and my review of his Some Other Shadows for Stride is here.

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David Miller - A Prepared Reading.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1970s

This is Part 9 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s.

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970) and Heinrich Böll (1972) are awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Ed Rice’s biography of Thomas Merton, The Man in the Sycamore Tree, is published in 1970.
• In 1970, Corita Kent designs the cover for Daniel Berrigan’s The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, his free-verse play about his trial and conviction for burning draft files with napalm at the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board in 1968. In 1971, she completes her monumental Rainbow Swash gas tank design.
• In 1970 Colin McCahon completes Practical religion: the resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha and celebrates his long but intermittent friendship with James K. Baxter in ‘Walk (Series C)’ also undertaking set designs for a festival of four of Baxter’s plays at Wellington.
• Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell are performed for the first time in 1971.
• The Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas, commissioned by Dominique and John de Menil, is completed in 1971 and dedicated in 1973.
• In 1971, Henk Krijger paints The Annunciation. The Institute of Christian Art moves to Toronto, Canada, and the Patmos Workshop and Gallery in Toronto is opened.
• Between 1971 and 1976, Larry Norman releases his album trilogy of Only Visiting this Plant, So Long Ago the Garden, and In Another Land.
• In March 1972, the retrospective Colin McCahon/a survey exhibition opens at the Auckland City Art Gallery before touring New Zealand. The exhibition of 72 works covering the years 1938–1971 is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue for which McCahon writes the commentary. Critical reaction is positive, with the exhibition hailed as evidence that clearly justifies McCahon’s reputation as New Zealand’s pre-eminent artist.
• In 1972, Béla Kondor paints a monumental oil painting entitled 'Procession of the Saints into Town.'
• In 1972 Arvo Pärt converts from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity.
• Sadao Watanabe’s works exhibited in the Modern Print Show at the 1972 Winter Olympics, Sapporo, Japan and holds a one-man show at the Grace Cathedral, San Francisco.
• In 1973, 'The Icon of Divine Light' by Cecil Collins is unveiled at Chichester Cathedral.
• In the winter of 1973/74 Paul Thek is a guest of the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg and his expansive environment Ark, Pyramid – Christmas (The Manger) fills a whole room. It is a development of his installation at documenta 5 in Kassel (1972). Also, in 1972, A Station of the Cross in Essen and, in 1973, Ark, Pyramid-Easter at the Kunstmuseum Luzern.
• In 1976, Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle is broadcast.
• The Alpha Band forms in July 1976 from the remnants of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, with T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, and David Mansfield joining forces to create some unique, intriguing and utterly wonderful music together for three releases before disbanding. Burnett writes brutally honest and, at time, provocative and satirical lyrics deriving from a Christian worldview.
• In 1977, Tony Harrison’s The Mysteries is performed for the first time at the National Theatre.
• In 1977, Riding Lights Theatre Company is founded in York by Murray Watts, Nigel Forde and Paul Burbridge.
• In 1977, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko becomes artist-in-residence for the St Christopher’s Hospice and in 1980 married Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement.
• In 1977, the Perceptions of the Spirit in 20th-Century American Art exhibition is held at LACMA.
• The Nevelson Chapel at St Peter’s Lexington Avenue New York is the only remaining, permanent, fully intact sculptural environment by Louise Nevelson. At the Chapel's dedication in 1977, John Dillenberger, historian, theologian and Union Seminary Professor, wrote of her work: ‘This meditation chapel, however, is the only work in which she has had the opportunity to form the total environmental ambience.’ From its dedication, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd has been heralded as a jewel in New York. An “oasis,” as the artist defined it, providing solitude and respite from the harried pace of the city.
• John Tavener is received into the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.
• Based on interviews with Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, Alexsander Wat’s My Century is published in 1977. A story of spiritual struggle and conversion - describes the artistic, sexual, and political experimentation --in which Wat was a major participant-- that followed the end of World War I: an explosion of talent and ideas which, he argues, in some ways helped to open the door to the destruction that the Nazis and Bolsheviks soon visited upon the world.
• In 1978, Jackson Hlungwani experiences a vision; Christ and two figures appear to him and make three promises: that he would be healed of his then current injuries, that he would see God and that he would become a preacher. This vision becomes the defining moment of his life, and his career as an artist. Hlungwani develops a visual language that integrates traditions of Tsonga-Shangaan wood carving, Southern African spirituality, popular culture and biblical narratives.
• In 1978, the New Zealand Government marks Australia’s Bicentennial by presenting Colin McCahon’s Victory over Death 2 1970 to ‘the Government and people of Australia’. James Mollison, the Australian National Gallery’s first Director, says that Victory over Death 2 is ‘one of the most important paintings to have been made in the southern hemisphere in recent times.’
• In 1978, a stained glass window by Marc Chagall is unveiled at Chichester Cathedral, based on the theme of Psalm 150 '...let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.'
• In 1979, John F. Deane founds Poetry Ireland – the National Poetry Society – and The Poetry Ireland Review.
• Arts Centre Group (1971), Greenbelt Festival (1974), Asian Christian Art Association (1978) and Christians in the Visual Arts (1979) are founded.
• Bill Fay ‘Time of the Last Persecution’ (1971), Marvin Gaye ‘What’s Going On’ (1971), Aretha Franklin ‘Amazing Grace’ (1972), Al Green ‘The Belle Album’ (1977), The Staple Singers ‘Be What You Are’ (1973), Bruce Cockburn ‘Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaw’ (1979), Bob Dylan ‘Slow Train Coming’ (1979), and Van Morrison ‘Into the Music’ (1979) release Christian-influenced albums.
• John Berryman’s Love & Fame (1970), Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat (1970), The Abbess of Crewe (1974) and The Takeover (1976), Heinrich Böll’s Group Portrait with Lady (1971), Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time (1971), Julien Green’s L'Autre (1971), Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns (1971) and Tenebrae (1978), Peter Levi’s Death is a Pulpit (1971) and Good Friday Sermon (1973), George Mackay Brown’s Greenvoe (1972) and Magnus (1973), Alice Thomas Ellis’ The Sin Eater (1977), and Shusaku Endo’s Volcano (1978) are published.

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Bill Fay - Time Of The Last Persecution.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1960s

This is Part 8 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s.

• In 1960, Sainte Marie de La Tourette at Eveux-sur-l'Arbresle by Le Corbusier is completed.
• In 1960, William Kurelek has his first exhibition at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto. It is an immediate success. In 1963, Kurelek paints Dinner Time on the Prairies.
• Around 1960, art dealer Larry Borenstein meets Sister Gertrude Morgan while she is preaching in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He invites her to perform and exhibit work in his art gallery.
• Revelations is the signature work of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which premiers an extended version of the work in 1960, when Alvin Ailey is 29. Set to spirituals, gospel, and blues music and influenced by the choreographer's own Christian upbringing, it presents a vision of the historical African American experience from a church-inspired perspective.
• Igor Stravinsky composes A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961), which is based on biblical texts, and The Flood (1962), which mixes brief biblical texts from the Book of Genesis with passages from the York and Chester Mystery Plays.
• Francis Poulenc’s Gloria is premiered on January 21, 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus Pro Musica under conductor Charles Münch with Adele Addison as soloist. In 1962, he completes Sept répons des ténèbres (Seven responsories for Tenebrae, 1961–62) and writes, "I have finished Les Ténèbres. I think it is beautiful. With the Gloria and the Stabat Mater, I think I have three good religious works. May they spare me a few days in Purgatory, if I narrowly avoid going to hell."
• The Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture is founded in October 1961 by Alfred Barr, art critic and founder of the Museum of Modern Art, theologian Paul Tillich, and Marvin Halverson, an American Protestant theologian and author of a 1951 booklet, Great Religious Paintings. Among the more than 300 Fellows of the Society have been Mircea Eliade, Denise Levertov, Sallie McFague, Cleanth Brooks, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, and John Updike.
• In the early 1960s, Greenwich Village poet Robert Nichols asks Al Carmines if Judson Church can host productions of experimental theatre pieces, including his own short plays. Judson Church becomes a venue from which "Off Off Broadway" develops. The productions are done on a shoestring and admission is by contribution, with most plays presented in the church's balcony space. The first play is Joel Oppenheimer's 'The Great American Desert' in November 1961.
• In 1961, Graham Sutherland paints an altarpiece Noli Me Tangere for the Chapel of St Mary Magdalen in Chichester Cathedral. Kenneth Clark speaks at the unveiling. Leonard Bernstein composes the 'Chichester Psalms' in 1965. John Piper designs a Tapestry for the screen behind the High Altar which is installed in 1966.
• In 1961, after many years of deliberation, George Mackay Brown is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
• In 1961, Elizabeth Jennings’ Every Changing Shape considers, from a Christian poet's perspective, how religious or mystical experience informs the imagination. Christianity and Poetry (1965) considers the influence of religion on literature.
• Nicholas Mosley writes ‘The Life of Raymond Raynes’ (1961) and ‘Experience and Religion: A Lay Essay in Theology’ (1965).
• St Vincent ArchAbbey Library’s ceramic tile mural, measuring 22 feet by 11 feet, is designed, glazed and fired by Roman Verostko, while a monk at St Vincent. The mural is installed in 1961 and dedicated in 1962. In 1966 he begins experimenting with electronics and creates ‘The Psalms in Sound and Image’ consisting of four 15 minute units with collage photos, drawings and brief texts flashed in sequences on two screens and timed with original soundtracks. These audio visual psalms are created as 20th Century songs of praise and wonder of the experience of life. Verostko becomes a pioneer of algorithmic art.
• In 1962, the new Coventry Cathedral by architect Basil Spence is consecrated, with artworks by Ralph Beyer, Elizabeth Frink, Hans Coper, John Hutton, John Piper and Graham Sutherland, among others.
• In 1962, The Crucifixion by Geoffrey Clarke is unveiled during the dedication ceremony for the chapel of the Bishop Otter College. It is later followed by Jean Lurçat's Aubusson Creation tapestry.
• In 1962, F.N. Souza paints The Crucifixion (now in the Methodist Modern Art Collection).
• Eric Smith wins the 1962 Helena Rubinstein Scholarship with paintings which are a return to the structural concentration of his 1955 religious paintings.
• In 1962, Sadao Watanabe holds a one-man show at the Portland Art Museum.
• In 1962, Sister Corita Kent, as a teacher in the art department at Immaculate Heart College, introduces her students to the Los Angeles debut of Andy Warhol’s pop art Campbell’s soup cans. Asked to create a mural for the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Kent produces a 40-foot-long banner updating the Beatitudes, the blessings pronounced by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, with quotes from Pope John XXIII and John F. Kennedy. Kent’s screenprint "Powerup" (1965) melds a sermon on spiritual fulfillment by an activist priest, Daniel Berrigan, with the advertising catch-phrase of the Richfield Oil Corporation. Also in 1965, IBM ask Kent to design the Christmas window display for its Madison Avenue showroom. Kent and students from her lettering and design course at IHC create a display of 725 cardboard grocery boxes adorned with quotations, silkscreens, and photographs focused around the theme of “Peace on Earth.” Kent appears on the cover of Newsweek in 1967.
• Jean Cocteau dies in 1963. At the time of his death, he is preparing to decorate the chapel at Fréjus. He left so many designs and drawings for this work, that his adopted son Edouard Dermit was able to carry out the work in 1964.
• In 1963, David Alfaro Siqueiros paints Cristo del Pueblo and Mutilated Christ.
• In 1963, Doctor Cicely Saunders buys Marian Bohusz-Szyszko’s Christ Calming the Waters for the St Christopher’s Hospice Sydenham.
• Peter Schumann co-founds the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963 in New York City. The theater is named for its combination of puppetry shows with free freshly baked bread. Among the notable Bread and Puppet Theater shows directed by Schumann are "Nativity 1992" and "The Divine Reality Comedy".
• In August 1964 Colin McCahon resigns from the Auckland City Art Gallery to take up a position as a lecturer in painting at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. He teaches there for six years, influencing a generation of artists.
• In 1964, Béla Kondor paints Iron-sheet Corpus. In 1968 his panel painting depicting the legend of Saint Margaret is placed in Margaret Island, Budapest.
• In 1964, Thomas Merton's Message to Poets is read at a meeting of the “new” Latin-American poets – and a few young North Americans – in Mexico City.
• Jazz Vespers starts in 1964 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York. Revd John Garcia Gensel realises that most musicians can’t make a Sunday morning service given that they only get home around 4/5am. The Jazz Vespers service is introduced at 5.00 pm each Sunday.
• Elimo Njau champions the arts of East Africa by founding the Paa-Ya-Paa (‘The Antelope Rises’) Gallery in Nairobi in 1965. As the first African-owned art centre in East Africa, Paa-Ya-Paa becomes a key forum for local artists and intellectuals, hosting exhibitions, workshops and debates.
• Founded by the Church of Sweden Mission, Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre starts producing weaving in 1965. Rorke’s Drift becomes a centre for arts and crafts, including fine art, printmaking, pottery and weaving, located in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It has been described as "the most famous indigenous art centre in South Africa". The Centre produces some of southern Africa's most renowned artists and printmakers, including Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Dan Rakgoathe, and Bongiwe Dhlomo.
• In 1965, the Staple Singers premiere ‘Freedom Highway’, for a live recording at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, a few weeks after the beginning of the Selma to Montgomery marches in the US.
• In the second half of 1965 Colin McCahon begins work on what was to be his largest public commission – the design and painting of clerestory windows in a new convent chapel being built for the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, in Upland Rd, Auckland. It is a project that will prove critical in determining the course of his future career, stimulating a renewed interest in religious subjects and their symbolism. In the windows McCahon uses traditional Christian (Catholic) symbols, both pictorial (the Cross, the dove, a crown of thorns, wheat and the chalice) and textual (IHS, XP), as well as newer symbols of his own devising.
• In 1965, Patrick Pye completes commissions for Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick; Church of the Resurrection, Belfast; Convent of Mercy, and Cookstown, Co. Tyrone.
• Duke Ellington’s first two Sacred Concerts (1965 and 1968), John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965) and Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity (1965), Spirit’s Rejoice (1965) and Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe (1969).
• Olivier Messiaen's La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ occupies him from 1965 to 1969 and the musicians employed include a 100-voice ten-part choir, seven solo instruments and large orchestra. Its fourteen movements are a meditation on the story of Christ's Transfiguration.
• George Seferis’s final collection, Three Secret Poems (1966), is his most mystical work, imbued with his experience of reading and living with the Revelation of St John the Divine.
• Recording since 1966, first as a lead singer for the group People! and then as a solo artist, Larry Norman becomes a pioneer of Christian rock music. In 1969, Capitol Records release Norman's first solo album, Upon This Rock.
• Barnett Newman’s The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani (1958-1966) is exhibited for the first time in 1966 at the Guggenheim Museum.
• In 1967, “An Evening with God” takes place at the Boston Tea Party, a rock music club, and features performances, music, conversation, and an informal communion meal of store-bought bread and wine. The event is planned by Corita Kent, the priest Daniel Berrigan, the musician Judy Collins, and the Harvard professor Harvey Cox.
• John Coltrane’s funeral is held on 21 July 1967 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue and 54th street in Manhattan. The service features readings, including Coltrane’s friend, the trumpeter Calvin Massey, reciting the former’s poem “A Love Supreme”, and musical performances by Coltrane’s saxophonist-peers Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman.
• Arvo Pärt’s first overtly sacred piece, Credo (1968), is a turning point in his career and life; on a personal level he reaches a creative crisis that leads him to renounce the techniques and means of expression used so far; on a social level the religious nature of this piece results in his being unofficially censured and his music disappearing from concert halls.
• Dylan’s Gospel by The Brothers and Sisters, a choir of Los Angeles session singers including Merry Clayton and Gloria Jones, is released in 1969 on Ode Records. This rare and sought-after album finds the California collective covering a clutch of Dylan classics in the era’s revolutionary gospel style.
• In 1969 Henk Krijger moves to Chicago to become Master Artist for the Institute for Christian Art (ICA) — later Patmos Workshop and Gallery (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
• Christopher Fry’s Curtmantle is performed (1962). Dennis Potter’s Son of Man is broadcast (1969).
• Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away (1960), Julien Green’s Chaque homme dans sa nuit (1960), David Lodge’s The Picturegoers (1960) and The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), Anthony Burgess’ The Wanting Seed (1962), J.F. Powers’ Morte D’Urban (1962), Morris West’s The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), Heinrich Böll’s The Clown (1963), Caroline Gordon’s Old Red and Other Stories (1963), Jean Sulivan’s The Sea Remains (1964), Anticipate Every Goodbye (1966), Eternity, My Beloved (1966) and Death’s Consolations (1968), Shusaku Endo’s Silence (1966), Elizabeth Jennings’ The Mind Has Mountains (1966), Michel de Saint Pierre’s The New Priests (1966), Geoffrey Hill’s King Log (1968), Brainard Cheney’s Devil's Elbow (1969), and Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede (1969) are published.

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Arvo Pärt - Credo

Czeslaw Milosz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, Oskar Milosz, and Aleksander Wat

'To Begin Where I Am brings together a rich sampling of poet Czeslaw Milosz's prose writings. Spanning more than a half century, from an impassioned essay on human nature, wartime atrocities, and their challenge to ethical beliefs, written in 1942 in the form of a letter to his friend Jerzy Andrzejewski, to brief biographical sketches and poetic prose pieces from the late 1990s, this volume presents Milosz the prose writer in all his multiple, beguiling guises. The incisive, sardonic analyst of the seductive power of communism is also the author of tender, elegiac portraits of friends famous and obscure; the witty commentator on Polish complexes writes lyrically of the California landscape. Two great themes predominate in these essays, several of which have never appeared before in English: Milosz's personal struggle to sustain his religious faith, and his unswerving allegiance to a poetry that is on the side of man.'

'Critics from many countries, as well as contemporary poets, like Joseph Brodsky, for instance, sweep his literary oeuvre with superlatives. His poetry is rich in visual-symbolic metaphor. The idyllic and the apocalyptic go hand-in-hand. The verse sometimes suggests naked philosophical discourse of religious epiphany. Songs and theological treatises alternate, as in the "child-like rhymes" about the German Occupation of Warsaw in The World: Naive Poems (1943) or Six Lectures in Verse from the volume Chronicles (1987). Miłosz transcends genre. As a poet and translator, he moves easily from contemporary American poets to the Bible (portions of which he has rendered anew into Polish).

As a novelist, he won renown with The Seizure of Power (1953), about the installation of communism in Poland. Both Milosz and his readers have a particular liking for the semi-autobiographical The Issa Valley (1955), a tale of growing up and the loss of innocence that abounds in philosophical sub-texts. There are also many personal themes in Milosz's essays, as well as in The Captive Mind (1953), a classic of the literature of totalitarianism. Native Realm (1959) remains one of the best studies of the evolution of the Central European mentality. The Land of Ulro (1977) is a sort of intellectual and literary autobiography. It was followed by books like The Witness of Poetry (1982), The Metaphysical Pause (1995) and Life on Islands (1997) that penetrate to the central issues of life and literature today.'

Bogdana Carpenter and Madeline E. Levine write that: 'Having experienced in his lifetime all the major convulsions of twentieth-century Europe, Milosz has taken upon himself the duty to bear witness to counter the voices that would obscure the historical facts as he knows them, and simultaneously to challenge the omnipotence of death. For Milosz, it would seem, everyone who survives in his memory has a claim on his pen ... Equally important is Milosz's need for teachers and kindred souls: "I met Tiger in the way a river, hollowing out a bed for itself on a plain, meets a second river; it had been inevitable." The image captures the importance of intellectual friendships in Milosz's life and his need for partners against whom he can try out his ideas or with whom he shares common values. These partners can be friends, but they can also be writers or philosophers from other eras. His essays on Simone Weil, Lev Shestov, William Blake, and Oskar Milosz are good examples of dialogues constructed across time and space. Milosz constructs a private pantheon of philosophers, poets, and thinkers who share his preoccupations and come close to his own solutions, whether it be Shestov's protest against necessity and reason, Weil's praise of contradictions and her unorthodox Catholicism, or Blake's vision of the land of Ulro. They are "other voices," but they accord with his own.'

Oskar Milosz was a distant cousin of Czeslaw Milocsz, who wrote that the questions inspired by Oskar Milosz's Ars Magna and Les Arcanes decided his career. In addition to Cszelaw Milosz's essay on Oskar Milosz, it is also instructive to read Christopher Bamford's introduction in Temenos to the work of Oskar Milosz and to read translations of his poetry by such as David Gascoyne and others. 

Jerzy Andrzejewski (the 'Alpha' of Milosz's essay in To Begin Where I Am) 'was a prolific Polish writer. His works confront controversial moral issues such as betrayal, the Jews and Auschwitz in the wartime. His novels, Ashes and Diamonds, and Holy Week, have been made into film adaptations by the Oscar-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda.'

Finally, 'In My Century the great Polish poet Aleksander Wat provides a spellbinding account of life in Eastern Europe in the midst of the terrible twentieth century. Based on interviews with Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, My Century describes the artistic, sexual, and political experimentation―in which Wat was a major participant―that followed the end of World War I: an explosion of talent and ideas which, he argues, in some ways helped to open the door to the destruction that the Nazis and Bolsheviks soon visited upon the world. But Wat's book is at heart a story of spiritual struggle and conversion. He tells of his separation during World War II from his wife and young son, of his confinement in the Soviet prison system, of the night when the sound of far-off laughter brought on a vision of "the devil in history." "It was then," Wat writes, "that I began to be a believer."'

Alissa Z. Leigh-Valles writes that: 'Milosz was a loyal friend to Wat in his last years (though he describes the friendship as "not particularly ardent," more collegial than intimate) and an important ally to Ola for the two decades after Wat's death.33 As an anthologist, historian and ambassador of Polish literature Milosz also largely created the literary-critical framework within which Wat's work could be placed and to some degree reverberate. With his powerful will to rational order and judgment, Milosz was honest enough to admit (paradoxically) to strong personal and intellectual dislikes that played a part in his critical and editorial work. Milosz's presentation of poets he befriended and translated is an integral part of his argument with Polish poetry, a tradition in which he felt strongly his own unusual status as a poet who placed a higher value on intellectual form than on musical form. These factors had a significant impact on the context he created for Wat in English.'

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David Gascoyne - 'H' by Oskar Milosz.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1950s

This is Part 7 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s.

• Evelyn Waugh’s Helena (1950), Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World of Don Camillo (1950), Nikos Kazantzakis’ Captain Michalis (1950) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series (1950 – 1956), Julien Green’s Moïra (1950) and The Transgressor (1958), Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (1951), Jack Clemo’s The Clay Verge (1951), Heinrich Böll’s And where were you, Adam? (1951), And Never Said a Word (1953), The Bread of Those Early Years (1955), and Billiards at Half-past Nine (1959), David Jones’ The Anathemata (1952), Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952), Elisabeth Langgässer’s The Quest (1953), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954), R.S. Thomas’ Song at the Year's Turning : Poems, 1942-1954 (1955), Muriel Spark’s The Comforters (1957), Brainard Cheney’s This Is Adam (1958), Geoffrey Hill’s For The Unfallen (1959), Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowtiz (1959), Morris West’s The Devil’s Advocate (1959), and Shūsaku Endō’s Wonderful Fool (1959) are published.
• In 1950, black gospel features at Carnegie Hall when Joe Bostic produces the Negro Gospel and Religious Music Festival. He repeats it the next year with an expanded list of performing artists, and in 1959 moves to Madison Square Garden.
• In 1950, Hank Williams begins recording as "Luke the Drifter" for his religious-themed recordings, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox operators would hesitate to accept these recordings, Williams uses this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his name. Most of the material is written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and his son Wesley. The songs depict Luke the Drifter traveling from place to place, narrating stories of different characters and philosophizing about life.
• In 1950, Francis Poulenc composes his Stabat Mater in memory of the painter Christian Bérard. The work is premiered the following year.
• Between 1950 and 1951, the Holy Trinity mural project at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is finished. The project is directed by Selden Rodman and includes work by Philomé Obin, Rigaud Benoit, Castera Bazile, Gabriel Lévèque and Wilson Bigaudalso.
• Nicholas Mosley meets and is influenced by Father Raymond Raynes, superior of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection (1950), and edits the theological magazine Prism from 1958.
• The Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire in Vence is completed by Henri Matisse in 1951.
• An annual exhibition Salon Art Sacré is founded by Marie-Alain Couturier, Pie-Raymond Régamey and Joseph Pichard in 1951.
• In 1951, in preparation for the unveiling of Christ of St John of the Cross, Salvador Dalí writes his Mystical Manifesto.
• In 1951, 'The Baptism of Christ' by Hans Feibusch is commissioned for Chichester Cathedral.
• The Blake Prize for Religious Art is launched in Australia in 1951.
• In 1952, François Mauriac wins the Nobel Prize "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life".
• In 1952, the East Window created by Evie Hone for Eton College Chapel is installed.
• In 1952, Albert Gleizes is commissioned to create a fresco on the theme of The Eucharist for a new Jesuit chapel at Les Fontaines, Chantilly.
• In 1952 Cerf publish Pie-Raymond Régamey's Religious Art in the Twentieth Century.
• ‘Modern Sacred Art’ by Joseph Pichard is published by Arthaud editions in 1953.
• Jubilee, a widely acclaimed Catholic literary magazine published between 1953 and 1967, is founded by Ed Rice, and co-edited by Robert Lax and Thomas Merton with the mission to “produce a Catholic literary magazine that would act as a forum for addressing issues confronting the contemporary church.”
• Alfred Noyes gives an account of his conversion in his autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory (1953).
• In 1953 Andre Girard completes his commission, awarded by Clare Boothe Luce, for the decoration of St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto. Girard develops the technique, which he calls ‘painting on light’, of painting directly on film. These films focus exclusively on religious themes and include the Sermon on the Mount recounted in Matthew’s Gospel, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, and the life of the Patriarch Abraham. In 1959, Girard’s films are initially presented through national broadcasts and later at congregational viewings.
• In 1953, Francis Poulenc begins writing the opera Dialogues des Carmélites, based on an unfilmed screenplay by Georges Bernanos. The text, based on a short story by Gertrud von Le Fort, depicts the Martyrs of Compiègne, nuns guillotined during the French Revolution for their religious beliefs. The opera is first given in January 1957 at La Scala in Italian translation.
• Completion in 1954 of the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier.
• In 1954, Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna is founded by Monseigneur Otto Mauer. There, he creates a platform for artists like Herbert Boeckl, Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky, and Arnulf Rainer to exchange ideas about art.
• From 1954 onwards musicians such as James Brown, James Booker, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson help create soul music by bringing gospel inspired harmonies and traditions from rhythm and blues.
• Biblical themes and religious figures inspired Martha Graham: Seraphic Dialogue (1955; Joan of Arc), Embattled Garden (1958; referring to the Garden of Eden), and Legend of Judith (1962) and abstractions such as Diversion of Angels (1948) or Acrobats of God (1960).
• Completion of commissions in 1955 for Sacré Cœur d'Audincourt, with stained glass by Fernand Léger, mosaic and stained glass by Jean Bazaine, and stained glass (crypt) by Jean Le Moal.
• Canticum Sacrum (1955) by Igor Stravinsky is the first piece to contain a movement entirely based on a tone row. Stravinsky then expands his use of dodecaphony in works such as Threni (1958) and A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961), which are based on biblical texts, and The Flood (1962), which mixes brief biblical texts from the Book of Genesis with passages from the York and Chester Mystery Plays.
• In 1955, Joseph Pichard founds the review Art Chrétien.
• In 1955, W.H. Auden completes Horae Canonicae. This sequence of poems is published in The Shield of Achilles (1955).
• In 1956, Édition Labergerie publish the Jerusalem Bible with more than a thousand of Endre Bálint's illustrations.
• In 1956, at the height of Kenya's Mau Mau war of independence, a young African Christian artist by the name of Rekyaelimoo (Elimo) Njau is commissioned to paint scenes from the life of Jesus in a church being built as a memorial to Christians who had died in the conflict.
• Eric Smith wins The Blake Prise in 1956 for The Scourged Christ, in 1958 for The Moment Christ Died and 1959 for Christ Is Risen.
• In April 1956 Colin McCahon becomes Keeper and Deputy Director of the Auckland City Art Gallery. McCahon assists in the professionalisation of the gallery and the first exhibitions and publications to record a New Zealand art history.
• In 1956, Jim and Helen Ede move into Kettle’s Yard and begin keeping ‘open house’. Among the artists with whom they correspond and whose work they collect are William Congdon, David Jones, and Richard Pousette-Dart.
• In 1956 Alec Guinness enters the Roman Catholic church following experiences while filming a film adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown detective stories in France and the recovery from polio of his son Matthew. As a result, Guinness began to study Catholicism, had long talks with a Catholic priest, went on retreat at a Trappist abbey, and even attended Mass with Grace Kelly while he was working on a film in Los Angeles.
• In 1956 Jean Cocteau finishes his first church murals for the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-Sur-Mer. Murals followed at Notre Dame de France, London, in 1958 and for the church of Saint Blaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt, 1959.
• The Judson Gallery is instituted by Dr. Howard Moody when he arrives at Judson Memorial Church in 1956. The early work of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, Tom Wesselman and Jim Dine sets the tone for theatre and dance at Judson. Other artists include Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, and Red Grooms. The gallery is home to several Happenings, presenting the first Happening in New York in 1958 created by Allan Kaprow.
• "Million Dollar Quartet" is a recording of an impromptu jam session involving Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley made on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ draw on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel, the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism.
• In 1957, Caroline Gordon publishes How to Read a Novel.
• In 1957, Daniel Berrigan wins the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number.
• In 1957, Ernesto Cardenal enters Gethsemani Abbey and is a novice there under Thomas Merton until he leaves in 1959 to return to Latin America.
• In 1957, Sister Gertrude Morgan hears a voice telling her she is the Bride of Christ, following this revelation she adopts her sanctified outfit and begins painting and drawing.
• In 1959, Dominique and John de Menil provide funding for a programme in art and art history at the University of St Thomas, a small Catholic liberal arts college in Houston, Texas. They provide resources for an art library, art collection and an exhibitions budget.
• In 1959, the Louvin Brothers release the album ‘Satan is Real’. The review in AllMusic states: "You don't need to share the Louvin Brothers' spiritual beliefs to be moved by the grace, beauty and lack of pretension of this music; Satan Is Real is music crafted by true believers sharing their faith, and its power goes beyond Christian doctrine into something at once deeply personal and truly universal, and the result is the Louvin Brothers' masterpiece."
• In 1959, Frank and Dorothy Getlein publish Christianity in Art.
• A poem and book based on Salvador Dalí’s painting, The Virgin of Port Lligat by Fray Angelico Chavez is selected as one of the best books of 1959 by the Catholic Library Association.
• In 1959, the theologian Paul Tillich gives a lecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in which he states that “an apple of Cezanne has more presence of ultimate reality than a picture of Jesus by Hoffman.”
• In 1959, Pablo Picasso completes his paintings for the Temple of Peace chapel in Vallauris.
• In 1959, Jean Anouilh’s Becket is performed.
• In 1959, FN Souza paints Crucifixion (now in the Tate).
• In 1959, after a trip to Cambodia, William Congdon returns to Assisi where he is received into the Roman Catholic faith at the Pro Civitate Christiana.

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Million Dollar Quartet - Just A Little Talk With Jesus.