Seen and Unseen: Blake, imagination and the insight of God

My latest article for Seen & Unseen is '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:

'This exhibition demonstrates that many of great Romantic philosophers and writers were seeking just such a spiritual regeneration and national revival. In our own time of war, revolution and political turbulence, it may be that this is a prescient exhibition bringing us artists who, as [Lucy] Winkett said of Blake, have ‘a distinctively Christian voice for our time’.'

See also my article for Seen and Unseen on 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explore a tradition of visionary artists beginning with Blake whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds. 

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'.

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Michael Griffin - London.

Czeslaw Milosz, Oscar Milosz and Simone Weil

Czeslaw Milosz was a Polish poet, 'who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts.' He was influenced particularly by his distant cousin Oscar Milosz and also by the writings of Simone Weil. In his Nobel Prize speech he spoke about his relationship with Oscar Milosz:

'... Like all my contemporaries I have felt the pull of despair, of impending doom, and reproached myself for succumbing to a nihilistic temptation. Yet on a deeper level, I believe, my poetry remained sane and, in a dark age, expressed a longing for the Kingdom of Peace and Justice. The name of a man who taught me not to despair should be invoked here. We receive gifts not only from our native land, its lakes and rivers, its traditions, but also from people, especially if we meet a powerful personality in our early youth. It was my good fortune to be treated nearly as a son by my relative Oscar Milosz, a Parisian recluse and a visionary. Why he was a French poet, could be elucidated by the intricate story of a family as well as of a country once called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Be that as it may, it was possible to read recently in the Parisian press words of regret that the highest international distinction had not been awarded half a century earlier to a poet bearing the same family name as my own.

I learned much from him. He gave me a deeper insight into the religion of the Old and New Testament and inculcated a need for a strict, ascetic hierarchy in all matters of mind, including everything that pertains to art, where as a major sin he considered putting the second-rate on the same level with the first-rate. Primarily, though, I listened to him as a prophet who loved people, as he says, "with old love worn out by pity, loneliness and anger" and for that reason tried to address a warning to a crazy world rushing towards a catastrophe. That a catastrophe was imminent, I heard from him, but also I heard from him that the great conflagration he predicted would be merely a part of a larger drama to be played to the end.

He saw deeper causes in an erroneous direction taken by science in the Eighteenth Century, a direction which provoked landslide effects. Not unlike William Blake before him, he announced a New Age, a second renaissance of imagination now polluted by a certain type of scientific knowledge, but, as he believed, not by all scientific knowledge, least of all by science that would be discovered by men of the future. And it does not matter to what extent I took his predictions literally: a general orientation was enough.

Oscar Milosz, like William Blake, drew inspirations from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a scientist who, earlier than anyone else, foresaw the defeat of man, hidden in the Newtonian model of the Universe. When, thanks to my relative, I became an attentive reader of Swedenborg, interpreting him not, it is true, as was common in the Romantic era, I did not imagine I would visit his country for the first time on such an occasion as the present one.

Our century draws to its close, and largely thanks to those influences I would not dare to curse it, for it has also been a century of faith and hope. A profound transformation, of which we are hardly aware, because we are a part of it, has been taking place, coming to the surface from time to time in phenomena that provoke general astonishment. That transformation has to do, and I use here words of Oscar Milosz, with "the deepest secret of toiling masses, more than ever alive, vibrant and tormented". Their secret, an unavowed need of true values, finds no language to express itself and here not only the mass media but also intellectuals bear a heavy responsibility. But transformation has been going on, defying short term predictions, and it is probable that in spite of all horrors and perils, our time will be judged as a necessary phase of travail before mankind ascends to a new awareness. Then a new hierarchy of merits will emerge, and I am convinced that Simone Weil and Oscar Milosz, writers in whose school I obediently studied, will receive their due.'

Simon Leys has written about Milosz and Weil:

'For Milosz, the discovery of Simone Weil's writings, as it had for Camus, gave new direction to his inner life. The traces of this revelation are found throughout his essays, his correspondence, and even his teaching (he gave a course on Manichaeism, directly inspired by Simone Weil's thought; and furthermore he edited, and had published in Polish, a thick volume of her selected works).

Milosz's religious posture seems to be both symmetrical with, and the inverse of, Simone Weil's. The latter's reflection on naturally Christian pagans, and on naturally pagan Christians, could be taken to sum up their respective positions quite well. Simone Well, though inhabited by a great desire to enter the Church to be able to partake of the sacraments, nevertheless denied herself that happiness, and deliberately stayed on the threshold, sharing in the destitution of the neo-pagans. Milosz, by contrast, born and educated in the Church, often wished to leave it; he wanted to escape the chauvinist and political Polish Church of his childhood, just as much as he wished to escape the depressing caricature of Protestantism into which he saw Western post-Council Catholicism sinking.

Milosz defined himself as an "ecstatic pessimist," and perhaps it is in this that he is closest to Simone Well. In the face of the mystery of evil, there is little room in their faith for Providence (which would alleviate suffering) or for the communion of saints (which would give it meaning). Is a consoling religion a baser form of religion? "Love is not consolation, it is light"--this phrase of Simone Well's is admirable; but why would light not bring some consolation? In any case, that is what simple souls naturally perceive when they piously go to light a votive candle before an image of the Virgin or some saint.'

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Bruce Cockburn - The Light Goes On Forever.

The Greek of Toledo - The Time Gatherer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Vangelis - El Greco.