Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage: Latest ArtWay report

My latest Church of the Month report for ArtWay focuses on Coventry Cathedral.

'Coventry Cathedral was the first major opportunity in Britain to combine contemporary religious art and architecture. [Basil] Spence wanted the cathedral to be, in his own words, “like a plain jewel casket with many jewels inside”—that is, a simple framework that houses a trove of high-quality artworks, which he wanted done in a modern style. His approach to commissioning art for the church was synchronous with that of the Dominican friars Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey, who sought to revive Christian art in France by appealing to the independent masters of their time, as well as that of Canon Walter Hussey in Britain.'

This Church of the Month report follows on from others about Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Lumen, 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 and 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.

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Eric Bibb - Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down.

Reviews - Giacomo Manzù: Sculptor and Draughtsman

The review of Giacomo Manzù: Sculptor and Draughtsman in The Tablet suggests that: "Most visitors barely notice the bronze relief of St Thérèse of Lisieux in the south transept of Westminster Cathedral, and few who stop in front of it would know the name of the artist. The cloaked young woman looking quietly over her shoulder is the work of Giacomo Manzù (1908-1991), an Italian sculptor who in 1950 won a competition to design a new door for St Peter’s."

Westminister Cathedral considers itself fortunate to have one of Manzù's "most sensitive works." The story of how the Cathedral came to have this work by an artist who is "regarded as among Italy’s greatest modern sculptors" is told in Oremus: "In response to the invitation by the Westminster Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee to Giacomo Manzu that he should produce a low relief bronze wall panel showing St Thérèse of Lisieux for the Cathedral, Manzu submitted a sketch in 1956. This was immediately approved and the commission awarded. Manzu then proceeded to design and produce the bronze in Italy with casting taking place in Milan. The cost was £680, which was defrayed by Miss Janet Howard as a memorial to her sister, Alice Lawrason Howard."

The exhibition at the Estorick Collection is a great opportunity, therefore, to see work by a neglected modern master. In my review of the exhibition for the Church Times I argue that: "Perhaps more than any other modern artist, Manzù experienced both sides of the debate within the Church in relation to modern art — a debate that has revolved around the extent to which the best artists of the day should be commissioned regardless of faith commitment."

Commissioning Manzù was an example of the policy advocated in France by Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey and in Austria by Otto Mauer of seeking to revive Christian art by appealing to the independent masters of the time. Curtis Bill Pepper's An Artist and the Pope documented Manzu's sacred commissions and is a fascinating expose of the difficulties encountered, even at the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church and despite the significant support of Pope John XXIII, Don Giuseppe de Luca and Monsignor Loris Capovilla, in pursuing this policy.

Manzù and Pope John 'both came from Bergamo in Italy but there the affinity seemed to halt, for one was the beloved Pope John XXIII and the other was a Communist bereft of his religious faith was the famous sculptor Giacomo Manzù. Yet Pope John, discerning the man beyond the atheist, commissioned Manzù to make his portrait bust, and despite all the artist's misgivings, there developed between them a warm and deeply significant friendship which drove Manzù to achieve the remarkable bronze Doors of Death for St. Peter's in Rome - the first new doors for the cathedral for 500 years.'

The door 'has large modelled panels that depict the deaths of Mary and Christ, as well as lesser panels that show the deaths of saints and ordinary people. Vatican officials were wary of Manzù’s communist politics and criticized his refusal to temper his unflinching depiction of death and human suffering with a more spiritual theme. Particularly shocking was his depiction of a cardinal looking at a man being crucified up side-down, a reference to the execution of fascists after WWII.'

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Graham Parker - Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Report - Part 1

The commissions that I have seen during this sabbatical tell a story of a continuing engagement by the Church with contemporary art from the Post-Impressionists to the present day. This engagement has often been contentious and contested but it has nevertheless been a continuing relationship involving both mainstream artists with a Christian faith and church commissions undertaken by mainstream artists who have not professed the faith.

Benedict Read in his 1998 lecture to the Royal Society of British Sculptors noted that following the Second World War: “Churches were being repaired. New work was being installed in them. There was an expansion of church buildings with works of art in them … There is an alternative world there of the commissioning of art for specific purposes that, with no disrespect to established art historians, simply doesn't feature in our notion of cultural history in the post-war period.” 

Read was speaking of the UK but a similar situation occurred in mainland Europe and in both settings, while the church building programme has slowed somewhat, the commissioning of contemporary art has not, meaning we have and are witnessing something of a renaissance of commissioned art for churches and cathedrals.

Key figures in initiating and then sustaining aspects of this renaissance in its initial phases included the artists Maurice Denis and Albert Gleizes, the philosopher Jacques Maritain, and the churchmen Bishop George Bell, Dominican Friar’s Couturier and Régamey, and Canon Walter Hussey.

Significant thematic developments within this period include:

·       commissions by secular artists or artists of other faiths who have brought alternative perspectives to Christian imagery, beliefs and themes. Artists such as Ervin Bossanyi and Marc Chagall, while using Christian imagery in their stained glass commissions, also recognized the 'profound inspiration' of all the great religions, possessed a 'reverence for life' and longed for a 'new cosmopolitan world order, in which ideological, racist and cultural differences no longer mattered';

·       images of the crucifixion by, for example, Albert Servaes, Germaine Richier and Graham Sutherland which viewed Christ’s sacrifice as emblematic of human suffering in conflict and persecution. These were often controversial as they challenged sentimental images of Christ and deliberately introduced ugliness into beautiful buildings;

·        in England church commissions gave émigré artists – such as Bossanyi (stained glass), Hans Feibusch (murals) and Adam Kossowski (ceramics) - the opportunity to build new careers. In writing about Feibusch, Jutta Vinzent has noted the extent to which this was “a period of intense artistic activity in Britain” which was “stimulated to an inestimable extent by émigré artists”; and

·       a move from storytelling in stained glass by means of narrative figuration (e.g. Chagall) to the creation of spiritual space using abstract colour (as pioneered by Jean Bazaine and Alfred Manessier) has occurred, primarily in France. The concept of stained glass architecture - of a light-filled architectural unit – that we find, for example, at the Chapelle Sainte-Thérèse-de-l'Enfant-Jésus et de laSainte-Face in Hem is an attempt to create spiritual space - a sense of prayer and a glimpse of heaven – through the play of light and colour within the building. In the past churches were centres for the drama of the visual - the drama and spectacle of the liturgy combined with the visual narrative of scripture in stained glass. Now people find their visual stimulation elsewhere - through the media primarily – and, as a result, churches have become centres for the opposite of visual stimulation e.g. centres of visual contemplation, where narrative is less essential than ambience and atmosphere.

This story is not one which has been well told, either by the Church or the mainstream art world. There are many reasons for this on both sides. The Church has often not valued sufficiently the artworks it has commissioned; at times their significance has not been understood or shared, at other times the works have been controversial and may have been banned or not publicized as a result. Often the artworks have been regarded as subsidiary to the liturgy and have not been publicized in order that the focus of the faithful would not be deflected. ‘Christian Art’ has become a contested term and the Church has been unsure whether to continue to use it and, if not, how else to speak of its commissions. There has also been significant debate about the relative values of commissioning artists who are Christians and contemporary ‘masters’ who may not be Christians.

In terms of the mainstream art world, the beginning of the modern period saw art and artists firmly and finally separating from dependence on Church patronage and wishing to maintain that independence. In addition, the speed with which new movements formed within modernism meant that artists engaging with church commissions in their later career could be portrayed as no longer being cutting edge and as having declined in the quality of their work. Many of the media used for Church commissions have not been central to modernism’s movements while the ‘alternative world’ of artists for whom Church commissions are a significant part of their practice tends not to feature on the radar of the mainstream art world.

Each of the above is open to question and critique. Controversy over commissions tends to fade leading to more widespread acceptance. Controversy can also generate valuable debate. The place of icons in Orthodox Churches shows that artworks can enhance rather than detract from worship. Commissions have gone to artists who are Christians and to contemporary ‘masters’ who are not Christians throughout the modern period. There are examples of successful and less successful commissions using both approaches. A mixed economy is the only practical and realistic approach. Commissions should be judged on their own merits and not on the reputation of the artist(s) involved. Reputations change over time meaning that those who are viewed as contemporary ‘masters’ may not be considered as significant by future generations while artists who do not have national or international reputations in their day may nevertheless produce high quality and/or visionary work. The quality of work produced by artists does not necessarily diminish with age or a change of style or when Church commissions are accepted, although the reputation of an artist or the perception as to whether they are or are not cutting edge may be affected by such considerations. The story of the revival of sacred art in the twentieth century can be told as one story among many in modernism and as a means of increasing the historical accuracy within the telling of the standard story of modernism.

My concern in making this story the focus of my sabbatical has been to encourage the Church to tell and to value this story. As both a parish priest and through commission4mission, the group of artists of which I am part, I have seen the value of promoting and publicising the artworks which churches have commissioned. Through the creation of Art Trails locally and regionally, we have provided churches with a means of publicity which has led to events such as art competitions, exhibitions, festivals and talks, community art workshops, guided and sponsored walks, and Study Days. Each has brought new contacts to the churches involved and has built relationships between these churches and local artists/arts organisations.

It is my contention that to tell more fully the story of the engagement which the Church has had with modern and contemporary art could have similar impact on a wider scale and would also have the effect of providing emerging artists from within the Church and the faith with a greater range of role models and approaches for their own developing inspiration and practice. The commissions themselves often speak powerfully and movingly of the Christian faith and therefore also inform the spirituality of those who see them.

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Leonard Cohen - Born In Chains.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Art as worship

In 1919 the French artist Maurice Denis wrote, 'We hardly see any contemporary work in visual arts that matches the vision of a Leon Bloy, a Paul Claudel, a Peguy or a Sertillanges. The indisputable worthiness of the writers I am citing here is proved by their conversions. Their distinctive characteristics and their literary originality served their way of thinking well. Do we have any religious art that endorses the prestige of Catholicism with as much strength and freshness?'

One of those writers Paul Claudel published a famous letter in which he described the contemporary churches against which Maurice Denis and his colleague, Swiss artist, Alexandre Cingria were reacting, as ‘heavily laden confessions.’ Their ugliness, Claudel insisted, was the ‘demonstration to all the world of sins and shortcomings, weakness, poverty, timidity of faith and feeling, disgust with the supernatural, dominations by conventions and formulae ... worldly luxury, avarice, boasting, sulkiness, Pharisaism and bombast.’

Running alongside that situation in the Churches, was a discourse in modern art that distanced art from Christianity. David Morgan has written that, "Moving through the discourse of Modernism in art was a dominant conception of the sacred, one which distanced art from institutional religion, most importantly Christianity, in order to secure the freedom of art as an autonomous cultural force that was sacralized in its own right."

As a result, there was the need for a reconciliation of the Artist and the Church. This is what George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, sought to bring about through his ministry:

‘Whether it be music or painting or drama, sculpture or architecture or any other form of art, there is an instinctive sympathy between all of these and the worship of God. Nor should the church be afraid to thank the artists for their help, or to offer its blessing to the works so pure and lovely in which they seek to express the Eternal Spirit. Therefore I earnestly hope that in this diocese (and in others) we may seek ways and means for a reconciliation of the Artist and the Church — learning from him as well as giving to him and considering with his help our conception alike of the character of Christian worship and of the forms in which the Christian teaching may be proclaimed.’

Bell believed that pictures could bring home to us ‘the real truth of the Bible story’ and ‘help the pages of the New Testament to speak’ to us – ‘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 ... today.’

Bell seemed to have had a deep personal need for things that made him feel ‘human’ in a world of increasing mechanisation. His God was a ‘humanising’ God, expressed most clearly in the life and ministry of Jesus. Art was a vehicle that helped him to feel human and to feel that God was close to him. He was aware of how the church could become a dehumanising system and of how the creativity of the artist could help to rectify this and redeem both individuals and the religion itself.

Bell’s colleague Walter Hussey wrote, in preparation for his final commission that it had been the great enthusiasm of his life and work ‘to commission for the Church the very best artists I could, in painting, in sculpture, in music and in literature.’ He was guided by the principle that, ‘Whenever anything new was required in the first seven hundred years of the history of the cathedral, it was put in the contemporary style.’ Like Bell, Hussey believed that ‘True artists of all sorts, as creators of some of the most worthwhile of man’s work, are well adapted to express man’s worship of God.’ When this is done consciously, he suggested, ‘the beauty and strength of their work can draw others to share to some extent their vision.’

As a result, his aims and work were very similar to that of the Dominican Friars Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey who argued in ‘L’Art sacré’, the journal that they edited that ‘each generation must appeal to the masters of living art, and today those masters come first from secular art.’ Bell, Hussey, Couturier and Régamey took forward the work begun by Denis and Cingria, which by 1933 had improved so much that Denis could write, 'Catholicism is in the vanguard of the modern movement, it has its place in the forefront of arts and sciences alike ... The characteristics of the new religious art are freedom and sincerity.'

Denis, in his work, has been described ‘as a mystic of daily life.' Marc Chagall, one of the great twentieth century stained glass artists, spoke of colouring life ‘with our colours of love and hope.’ He wrote of ‘seeing life’s happenings, as well as works of art, through the wisdom of the Bible’ and of trying to express this sense in works ‘shot through with its spirit and harmony.’

The light which creates stained glass ‘is natural,’ he noted, ‘and all nature is religious.’ Therefore, ‘every colour ought to stimulate prayer’ and, whether in cathedral or synagogue, ‘the phenomenon is the same: something mystical comes through the window.’

Similarly, Alfred Manessier, another great modern stained glass artist, wrote of wanting to ‘express man’s inner prayer’ through his art. ‘The further I penetrated into non-figuration,” he said, “the more I approached the inwardness of things.’ His goal was not to ‘portray a man in his state of suffering’ but to portray ‘suffering itself.’ Similarly, paintings of the Crucifixion by artists like Albert Servaes and Graham Sutherland convey ‘a pure vertigo of grief.’

In these ways, as another stained glass artist Ervin Bossanyi said of his windows at Canterbury Cathedral, the endeavour of these artists was to give their fellow people ‘a visual and a spiritual presence which, by the force of the impact it exercises will long remain with them, just as this Cathedral's views accompany the people and remain in their memory as ever active components of a great living event.’

Basil Spence, the architect for Coventry Cathedral stated that artists create “understandable beauty to help the ordinary man to worship with sincerity.” Bishop Bell also extolled the work of artists, their imagination and their painting, a work of praise. He wrote:

‘With their hearts they are saying it - with their colour and their brushes - ‘We praise Thee, O God: we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord’. The very walls with this new glory on them are singing their praises - and we in the congregation - clergy and people - with our hearts attuned with the subject painted and that the artist created, are stirred afresh and exalted to new heights of adoration as we take our place in the great chorus of praise lifted to the Creator by all creation - man and nature - all that is noblest, strongest, wisest, and swiftest, in heaven and on earth. ‘Every created thing which is in the heaven and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea - all things that are in them - heard we saying ‘Unto Him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb be blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever.’

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Henryck Górecki' - Totus Tuus.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce du Plateau d'Assy

William S. Rubin writes in ‘Modern Sacred Art and the Church of Assy’ (Columbia University Press, New York & London, 1961) that, 'In August 1950, the Dominican-inspired church of Notre-Damede Toute Grâce at Assy was consecrated amid great jubilation and even greater hope that it represented the commencement of a "Renaissance" of sacred art. The appearance there of religious works which, in power and purity, recalled those of the great ages of faith, certainly seemed symptomatic of a genuine religious revival.’

Yet, as my sabbatical art pilgrimage has been demonstrating, a renaissance of sacred art had been underway from the beginning of the century. The decoration of St. Paul Grange-Canal in Geneva by Maurice Denis, Alexandre Cingria and others in 1913 – 1915 had served as a manifesto for this renaissance and led on to the founding in 1919 of the Ateliers d’Art Sacré by Denis and Georges Desvallières as well the Group of St Luke and St Maurice by François Baud, Cingria, Marcel Feuillat, Marcel Poncet and Georges de Traz. Both groups produced significant work for a significant number of churches in subsequent years.

In 1935 the Group of St Luke secured the decoration of the new church of Notre-Dame-des-Alpes Le Fayet in the French Alps by means a tender process assessed by a panel which included the philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Catholic art critic Maurice Brillant and the director of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva Adrien Bovy. The process and the resulting work was therefore set up to be a showcase for the renaissance of sacred art in France and Switzerland during the first half of the twentieth century in which Denis, Maritain and Cingria had played key roles. It was this stage of the revival that was challenged by the commissions for Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce.

Rubin continues, ‘For the first time in centuries, great artists had directed their efforts towards church art. Bonnard, Chagall, Léger, Lipchitz, Lurçat, Matisse, and Rouault had all contributed significantly.’ The Dominican Friars Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey had argued in the journal ‘L’Art sacré’ that they edited that ‘each generation must appeal to the masters of living art, and today those masters come first from secular art.’ Couturier worked with the parish priest at Assy, Canon Jean Devémy, to commission those modern masters who contributed work to the church of Assy.

Interestingly, Couturier himself and the commissions at Assy had begun within the earlier phase of the renaissance of sacred art. On the basis of his work at Le Fayet, Devémy selected Maurice Novarina as architect. Novarina used his regional style at Assy with a chalet-style pitched roof and locally sourced materials. The chalet style is intimate and warm while the wooden carved beams suggest a Nordic hall. The interior is dark, as a result, but this tends to sets off the work well. While appropriate to Alpine setting in terms of aesthetics and practicalities, Novarina was not, at this stage of his career, working in the modernist style first exemplified by Alberto Sartoris’ design for the church at Lourtier and subsequently further developed by Le Corbusier at Ronchamp, La Tourette and Firminiy. Couturier had trained at the Ateliers d’Art Sacré and had worked on schemes of stained glass with artists at the Atelier and others, such as the L’Arche artists. Several of these artists, included Couturier himself, received commissions for the nave windows. Rubin comments that this was Couturier allocating some commissions to the ‘family’ of artists ‘active in modernist circles of Church decoration before the war’ before he then moved on to ‘the more radical aspect of the decorative plan for Assy.’

This ‘radical aspect’ of Couturier’s plan was to prove deeply controversial as commissioning modern ‘masters … from secular art’ meant that ‘Side by side with works of the pious Catholic Rouault one saw those of Jews, atheists, and even Communists - a revolutionary situation that struck the keynote of a new evangelical spirit ...’ As a result: ‘Even before its dedication in 1950, the church had become the center of an increasingly bitter dispute which was to cause a marked rupture between the liberal and conservative wings of the clergy and laity during the following years. The violent polemics on both sides involved not only the French Church, but also the Vatican, usually through the voice of the Congregation of the Holy Office. As its destiny was linked to the fortunes of the entire liberal religious movement in France, the Church at Assy and its decorations were vehemently attacked and defended by an army of critics, most of whom had seen only a few photographs of the works in question.'

The polemic against the Assy commissions was centered on the crucifix created by Germaine Richier but this was used as a focus for a wide-ranging attack by traditionalists on the desire of French Dominicans for a Christianity that was engaged with the secular world. As a result, they argued that priests should not live in ‘Christian ghettos’ but should join with the citizenry ‘to establish a new, spiritually inspired system of social justice’ - the worker-priest movement – and, with artists, to preach a ‘new gospel of sacred art’ that could help these artists come to ‘Christian awareness.’ These initiatives were representative of ‘a new evangelical spirit’ which was concerned with contextualized mission.

Richier’s bronze crucifix resembles ‘craggy and weathered wood’ in its surface and the undefined figure has a cruciform shape, the combination conveying a ‘tortured and sacrificial appearance.’ It is a stunning image of the effect which suffering has on human beings by reducing a person to mere flesh and bone. Couturier related the image to the ‘root out of dry ground’ of Isaiah 53. Richier’s crucifix therefore connects with the strand in modern sacred art, exemplified by Albert Servaes and Graham Sutherland, which viewed Christ’s sacrifice as emblematic of human suffering in conflict and persecution. Works in this vein were often controversial as they challenged sentimental images of Christ and deliberately introduced ugliness into beautiful buildings. The crucifix was described by those who opposed its inclusion in the church as a caricature of a crucifix in which it was no longer possible to ‘recognise the adorable humanity of Christ’ making it ‘an insult to the majesty of God’ and ‘a scandal for the piety of the faithful.’

Servaes and Richier were both affected by decrees from the holy office and saw their artworks removed from the churches for which they had been commissioned. The instruction on sacred art issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1952 was the beginning of two year iniatiatve by the Vatican which severely constrained the modernizing programme of the French Dominicans and represented a victory for the traditionalists within the Church.

Richier’s crucifix has, though, subsequently been returned to its place in the sanctuary at Assy and the church, like many other art sacré churches, is classed by the French Government as a national monument becoming a significant tourist location – the secular state recognizing the value of sacred commissions. As a similar level of acceptance and understanding has also evolved in relation to other controversial commissions, including those by Servaes and Sutherland, it would seem that scandals of modern church commissions, whether the reception of the works themselves or that of their challenging content, are, with time, resolved as congregations and communities live with the works and learn to value the challenge of what initially seemed to be scandalous.

Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce was planned as a showcase for the value of contemporary church commissions with Couturier taking on the primary role of curator but, as most of the commissions included were on the basis of his friendships with the artists involved, the decisions he made or did not make illustrate the tricky balance required to succeed in commissioning. Couturier criticized the Ateliers d'Art Sacré for being a 'world closed in on itself, where reciprocal indulgence, or else mutual admiration, quickly becomes the ransom paid to work as a team and maintain friendship.' Yet Couturier's scheme of work at Assy suffers from the opposite problem, as work by individual masters produced in isolation from each other, with work assigned on the basis of what they could with integrity contribute, results in a decorative scheme with no cohesiveness or focus. Couturier, here, fails to be sufficiently decisive as a curator. As Rubin states, 'the subject was almost as often picked for the man as the man for the subject.'

Too much work was commissioned for Assy from too many artists making the resulting iconographic scheme muddled and esoteric. There are inappropriate clashes of style (e.g. the Lipchitz sculpture dominating the Rouault windows or the different styles used in each of the nave windows), inappropriate positioning of some works (e.g. stained glass by Bazaine and reliefs by Chagall which can barely be seen), commissions which do not work in the space (e.g. the intimiste style of Bonnard is not suited to being viewed from a distance) and central commissions with esoteric symbolism (e.g. the Lurçat tapestry). Couturier, presumably to sustain his friendships with the artists involved, seems not to have exercised sufficient control regarding the overall scheme which therefore means that the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

The overall lesson of Assy would seem to be that simplicity is of the essence. The most effective works are those which are simplest, clearest and most pared back i.e. the work by Léger, Matisse, Richier and Rouault. The Rouault windows, in particular, are luminous, effective translations of his paintings into stained glass combining beauty and sorrow. The floral windows seem a strange choice initially but function as memento mori. Chagall created a wonderful 'Exodus' mural on ceramic tiles which was an inspired choice for the baptistery. He depicts a crucifixion in the top right hand corner; the act of Exodus for Christians which is symbolised by baptism. Although he was uncertain about undertaking this first commission for a church, his work here shows clearly the suitability of his vision and practice for churches and led to many subsequent commissions.

The Lurçat tapestry, by contrast, seems particularly ineffective both in itself and as a central focus. Its imagery is undeniably personal and esoteric. It provides visual focus through its size but, although intended as an apocalyptic evocation of the conflict between good and evil, fails to convey menace or threat. The beast seems funny and friendly in a way which could suit it to a walk on part in Teletubbies or In the Night Garden, while the female figure that opposes it is a non-entity as a realized, dynamic creation. The work of Adam Kossowski at St Benet Mile End and St Mary Leyland provide much stronger examples of apocalyptic imagery put to devotional rather than esoteric use. That said, Lurçat’s work is by no means fundamentally unsuited to an ecclesiastical context as his vibrant ‘Creation’ tapestry for the Chapel at Bishop Otter College ably demonstrates.

The artists Couturier commissioned were his friends but the work of his friends was not always suited to this particular sacred environment and scheme as some were clearly working outside their comfort zones and were not able to solve the inherent issues either of engaging with the space i.e. Bonnard’s intimiste style lost in the space and Lurçat’s esoteric apocalyptic imagery.

As noted earlier, Couturier and Régamey argued that "each generation must appeal to the masters of living art, and today those masters come first from secular art." However fashions and reputations in the art world (as elsewhere) change considerably with time. In their own day and time Pablo Picasso and Matisse were considered unassailable as the giants of twentieth century art while now, in terms of continuing influence on contemporary artists, Marcel Duchamp is generally considered to be the most influential twentieth century artist. Lurçat’s tapestry provides the central focus for the Church at Assy, where those artists commissioned were considered current masters, but his reputation has not been sustained into the current day, and the same is also true of Lipchitz.

The reputations of many of those who were commissioned by the Church in the twentieth century (e.g. Bazaine, Denis, Gleizes, Lurcat, Manessier, Sutherland, Piper, Rouault, Severini) have declined following their deaths. The same is likely to be so for those receiving contemporary commissions (i.e. Clarke, Cox, Emin, Le Brun, Wisniewski). The pace with which modern art moved from one movement to next in the twentieth century quickly and, often unfairly, condemned as passé what had previously been avant garde.

The Church cannot, and probably should not, seek to keep up with the fickle nature of fashion and instead should value both those artists with significant mainstream reputations wishing to receive occasional commissions and artists with less significant mainstream reputations who receive commissions which form a more significant part of their practice. In practice, that combination is what we find at Assy and it also there in the contrast between the commissioning practices at Assy and Le Fayet.

As a result, in my view, setting up dichotomies between artists with significant mainstream reputations versus those without and between secular artists and artists who are Christians represents an unnecessary division often advocated on the basis of subjective quality criteria. The reality is that both have happened simultaneously in the story of modern and contemporary church commissions and both have resulted in successes and failures. What is warranted and rewarded is sustained and prayerful attention to each and every artwork in order to discern what is good and of God in and through it.

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Young Disciples - As We Come To Be.

Musée National Marc Chagall

Nice is described in a Riviera epigram as being ‘rowdy’. Arriving from the Gare Theirs, it appears no more than at best shabby chic. Yet turning away from its immediate centre and climbing streets and steps to the ancient hill of Cimiez takes one quickly to the hidden yet popular gem that is the Musée National Marc Chagall.

A low-slung modernist building by André Hermant set amidst a garden planted with Mediterranean trees - cool colours predominate, which allowed the artist to observe that ‘the colour here is on the inside’ - the Museum sits below the fences and hedges of its boundaries and whispers rather than shouts its existence. Hermant’s conception for the space was that of a ‘house’ in which the balance of forms, natural light, simplicity and serenity of form would provide a congenial setting for the collection of 17 large format paintings inspired by the Bible which Chagall gifted to the French state to found the Museum and which form his Message Biblique.

The combination of Hermant’s house-like conception for the architecture combined with the Biblical content of Chagall’s paintings make this a rather more tangible realisation of a Church-House than the entirely unrealised version which preoccupied Stanley Spencer for many years. Chagall spoke of the museum as a house in his inauguration speech saying, ‘I wanted to leave [the paintings] in this House so that men can try to find some peace, a certain spirituality, a religiosity, a meaning in life.’

These paintings were originally intended for a Calvary Chapel at Vence and were painted between 1958 and 1966. Although the Chapel project eventually fell through, Vence (which was home to Henri Matisse as well as Chagall) still contains a mosaic by Chagall of Moses in the Bullrushes in the baptistry of the Cathedral and the Rosary Chapel designed and decorated by Matisse which he considered to be his masterpiece.

Matisse and Chagall were among leading artists in France involved in the renewal of religious art led by the Dominican Friars, père Couturier and père Régamey. Both had contributed work, at Couturier’s request, to the church of Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce at Assy while Chagall had also been commissioned to create stained glass for several of France’s great cathedral’s as part of their restoration following war damage.

Meditations on religious art had been part of Chagall’s oeuvre from the off due to the place of religion in his Hasidic upbringing in Vitebsk. His commissions for churches, no doubt, also built on discussions about the relations between Judaism and Christianity held when he regularly attended, during his early period in Paris, the Thomist study circle organised by Roman Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain at his home in Meuden.

Chagall conceived the idea for the cycle of paintings which became the Message Biblique while working on the Assy commission, although many of the images he used were based on gouaches he had originally created as maquettes for a series of Bible etchings commissioned by the publisher Ambroise Vollard. He described the Bible as a great, universal book and so eventually decided not to hang the paintings in a building associated with one religion, such as the chapel at Vence. Similarly, when undertaking his first church commission at Assy, he wrote on the ceramic Le Passage de la Mer Rouge, ‘In the name of the freedom of every religion.’

On entering the rooms of the Message Biblique - first, the room of Genesis and Exodus, then the Song of Songs - one is struck first by the colours of the works before their content. For each of the Genesis and Exodus paintings Chagall chose a bold, saturated colour suited to his subject - a luminous green for Paradise, deep red for Abraham and the Three Angels, bright yellow for Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law - and worked in pinks and reds for each of the Songs of Songs paintings. Chagall viewed painting as the reflection of his inner self and therefore colour contained his character and message. In his museum inauguration speech he said, ‘If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope.’ These are paintings which seek to dream, by their colours and lines, an ideal of fraternity and love.

Chagall wrote of ‘seeing life’s happenings, as well as works of art, through the wisdom of the Bible’ and of trying to express this sense in works ‘shot through with its spirit and harmony.’ So, while the Biblical scene illustrated dominates each of these huge canvases, in the margins, and completing the overall composition, are images of other Biblical scenes and characters, including often the crucified Christ, together with images suggesting the later suffering of the Jewish people. Chagall’s art is one that connects and reconciles disparate images of Bible, experience, history, memory and myth on the canvas through colour and composition.

This sense of Chagall drawing disparate images and styles together and reconciling them on his canvases was a key part of my initial interest in his work so, to be surrounded by these massive statements demonstrating - through content and construction - the potential of religion for reconciliation, was a wonderful and moving experience. That said, the Musée Chagall is primarily a gallery space, and a popular one at that, meaning that time and space for the contemplation which best suits these paintings is at a premium among the crowds and cameras that accompany its position as one of the museums with the highest visitor numbers in the region.

One of the benefits of the decision to locate these paintings in a museum rather than a chapel are the related exhibitions that can be set around the core collection. The current show - Exiles, Reminiscences and new worlds - aims to show how exile inspired many artists, particularly in the first part of the 20th century. Exile was initially a founding experience for Chagall as he set off for Paris in the early 20th century before returning to Russia to marry. Following the Russian Revolution exile became a more permanent experience as he felt forced to leave once again returning initially to Paris but then being exiled to the US as a result of World War II before making his home finally in the South of France.
Migration, voluntary or forced but never indifferent, transformed the vision of artists such as Brancusi, Brauner, Kandinsky, Masson, Miró, Hantaï and Picasso (whose work is shown alongside that of Chagall) and, so the exhibition claims, profoundly altered their art. The exhibition seeks to show how their works were affected by the abandonment of their homeland and their investment in a new country.

The exhibition argues that these are artists whose experience of exile, like that of Chagall, remained linked to a tireless search for the past. Yet the works shown do not seem to bear out that contention as, in composition - primarily the then contemporary styles of abstraction (Kandinsky, Léger, Hantaï etc.) and surrealism (Brauner, Ernst, Lam etc.) - and content, they seem primarily focused on their present. So, Andre Masson’s La Resistance was a contemporary encouragement from exile to those participating in the Resistance while Wols and Jean Hélion focused on close-up’s of contemporary everyday objects and Brauner wrote of letting yourself ‘go forward towards a contemplation of the unknown experience’ because there ‘you find the keys to your eternal doubting.’ Generally, those artists featured here seem to have found that their style of creating fitted their experience of exile and often, as in the Artists in Exile show organised by Pierre Matisse in New York in 1942 (of which Chagall was a part) being feted for doing so. Only in more straitened circumstances, such as Kurt Schwitters painting landscapes of the Lake District for economic reasons during exile in the UK, do we see, in this exhibition, artists changing styles as a result of exile.

Chagall’s work, though, is communal in a way that is less true of many of the other artists featured in the Exiles exhibition and, through his Message Biblique and other similar paintings, he engages with his Jewish heritage from the Exodus through the Pogroms to the Holocaust. Thereby, linking past and present together in experience and understanding. In Chagall’s work exodus and exile are the normal state of the Jewish people and the source of their joys, sorrows, inspirations and insights.

Surprisingly, his key symbol of faith in exile is that of the crucified Christ who featuring centrally or tangentially in numerous of the works shown here. Always visually and accurately a Jewish Christ, nevertheless Chagall uses this image in ways that have real synergy with Christian theology. In ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac’, for example, the crucified Christ appears above Isaac as the future sacrificial son. Christ becomes the embodiment in Chagall’s work of Israel as the suffering servant; an understanding which culminates in the ‘Exodus’ of 1952 - 1966 where the crucified Christ embraces both the Jews of the Exodus and of the Holocaust.

In these paintings past and present cohere allowing an experience of exile, where personal sorrow is set within a narrative of ongoing faith, to be experienced and felt. This is exile as pilgrimage and it was Chagall’s hope that a visit to the Musée Chagall would be an experience akin to pilgrimage rather than simply being a tourist destination to be visited: "Perhaps the young and the less young will come to this House to seek an ideal of fraternity and love such as it has been dreamed by my colours and my lines."

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Neil Young - Rocking In The Free World. 

Commission: contemporary art in British churches

Much has been written about the ground-breaking efforts of twentieth century church art patronage, including the work of Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey in France and George Bell and Walter Hussey in England. However much of this narrative, in the UK at least, peters out after the inauguration of Coventry Cathedral some fifty years ago. Commission, the current exhibition at the Wallspace Gallery, and the Art + Christianity Enquiry monograph Contemporary Art in British Churches seek to bring that story up-to-date.

Artists featured in Commission include Tracey Emin, Henry Moore, Craigie Aitchison, Mark Cazalet, Stephen Cox, Chris Gollon, Shirazeh Houshiary, Iain McKillop, Rona Smith and Alison Watt. The exhibition shows a key work by each artist together with installation photographs, drawings, maquettes and other documentation of the commissioned pieces.

The central argument of Contemporary Art in British Churches is that we are witnessing something of a renaissance of commissioned art for churches and cathedrals in this country. Paul Bayley argues that this upsurge of commissioning from the church sees many significant contemporary artists, such as those featured in Commission, creating art for church spaces. The approach underpinning this upsurge is, therefore, synonymous with that of Couturier and Régamey who argued that "each generation must appeal to the masters of living art, and today those masters come first from secular art."

Alan Green has provided a theological underpinning to this approach in the collaborative book by Chris Gollon and Sara Maitland based on Gollon's Stations of the Cross at St John on Bethnal Green; a commission which features in both the exhibition and monograph. In his Afterword Green points out that "Jesus was not afraid to associate with, and be looked after by, those who were not seen as good Jews ... Those who approached Jesus and seem to have got the best responses from him were not the religious elite, but those with no particular religious standing who nevertheless recognised something special in him and presented themselves honestly." As a result, he says "it seemed important to share this project with an artist who could come at the themes without the perspective of a shared faith." Maitland concurs saying, "I have come to think that there are real advantages, when working on themes about the Incarnation, in having an artist who is not an active Christian or, try as we will, the "God-bits" creep back in."

Maitland contrasts Gollon's powerful images with "the innumerable images of a rather soppy-looking Jesus, tidily and gracefully - if non-anatomically - pinned to his cross with not a wrinkle of pain on his forehead." Bayley too sets up a similar opposition between the significant contemporary artists participating in this upsurge of commissioning from the church and "self-styled 'Christian art' that though sincere and well-intentioned" is "often formulaic or decorative" and (tellingly) has "little or no standing within the art world."

There would seem to be here a danger of exchanging a religious elite for an artistic elite - the "loose amalgam of artists, curators, public and private galleries, art consultants and publishers" who, as Bayley notes, increasingly inhabit their own architecture, develop their own hierarchies and language, and expand the borders of their own ecosystem that to the outsider, and many an insider, can be opaque and excluding.

Although this reality is noted in the monograph, many of the criteria used to praise significant contemporary artists and dismiss self-styled 'Christian art' are drawn directly from this artistic elite. Contemporary art, for example, is viewed as 'challenging' and 'difficult' and is therefore a "critical dissenting activity" which changes the way we view the world as opposed to a lot of art commissioned for churches which reinforces the context, being decorative rather than transformative. However, the crowds which throng Tate Modern and other contemporary art galleries have been seen by some as evidence that contemporary art is 'populist' and 'easily understandable.' Conceptual art, it can be argued, is simply the illustration of ideas and once the concept has been grasped there is little left to contemplate. There are also legitimate questions that can be asked about the engagement of the art establishment in capitalism and of the extent to which spirituality in the arts provides a veneer for consumerism. These perspectives seem to rarely be heard within the arts world, and don't feature within this monograph, but dissenting voices should be heard if only to ensure that the current arts establishment does not become complacent.

Generalised and stereotypical oppositions of "significant contemporary artists" and "self-styled" Christian artists have always been characteristic of those who have argued for contemporary art in preference to earlier styles, whether the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or Couturier and Régamey. What changes in these arguments is often simply the object of attack, as the previously avant-garde becomes passé. In contrast to such generalisations, what always truly counts in the visual arts is a sustained and contemplative viewing of works themselves which will realise depth of composition and insight within both the best of what is currently considered contemporary and what is currently considered traditional. This, to my mind, has been one of the strengths of the Wallspace Gallery with its embrace of, for example, conceptual, iconographic and visionary art.

There is a second exclusionary issue with a sole or primary focus on "significant contemporary artists" in church commissions which is that of cost. Much of the upsurge in church commissions of such artists has been publicly funded and Bayley notes that "in the wake of the credit crunch and public spending cuts the new austerity will slow the recent surge of Church commissioning." While the monograph contains some examples of local churches engaging with "the whole twenty-first century apparatus of arts consultants, planning stages and public consultations," such engagement is more suited to and more viable for Cathedrals and City centre churches. Local churches can therefore either feel excluded from or simply not consider the possibility of commissioning contemporary art.

If such churches are to be included in the upsurge of church commissions then they are likely of necessity, for reasons of access and cost, to engage with a different grouping of artists who will predominantly be those with local/regional, as opposed to national/interational, reputations. Generalised oppositions, such as that made by Bayley, are likely to discourage and depress such engagement because of the sense communicated of such commissions being second-rate. However where local churches genuinely take a sustained and contemplative look at the work of such artists creative commissions can result despite the absence of perceived 'significant' contemporary artists.

It is my experience, through commission4mission, that there are significant numbers of contemporary artists who are engaging with both faith and art yet who do not feel included by or engaged by the existing faith and art organisations and therefore lack networks for encouragement, debate, and connection to commissioning churches. It is also my experience, again through commission4mission, that the issues which seem to prevent a widespread involvement of local churches with commissions of contemporary art can be overcome through a different form of engagement to that which underpins the commissions highlighted by the ACE monograph.

I agree with Bayley that there has been a real and exciting upsurge in church commissions which builds on the twentieth century achievements of Couturier and Hussey, among others, and which is well documented by this monograph and Commission. Within this upsurge, I for one, wish to see the active encouragement and development of emerging artists and regional arts networks as another tier of such commissioning and as fertile ground for future creativity. My critique of aspects of the survey found in this monologue comes from this perspective and in this cause.

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Duke Special - Portrait.