Between: ruskin

Showing posts with label ruskin. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Artlyst: The Victorian Radicals And Other Related Exhibitions

My latest exhibition review for Artlyst is on The Victorian Radicals at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and other related exhibitions at Wightwick Manor:

'The key works of Ford Madox Brown from the late 1840s provided a link between the Nazarenes, who formed a quasi-monastic brotherhood first in Vienna and then in Rome, and the early Pre-Raphaelites. A journey to Rome in 1845 exposed him to the work of the Nazarenes and the hard-edged, crisply drawn outlines that pre-figured the linear precision of early Pre-Raphaelite drawing. While not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), his work was consistently admired by its artists and synergistically used the same approaches and similar content, as is apparent here in ‘Pretty Baa-Lambs’, ‘Walton-on-the-Naze’ and ‘Work’. Alongside the brushwork’s scientific precision and brilliant colours are contemporary moral and spiritual themes expressed figuratively and through naturalistic symbolism. That precision of observation and depiction was also found in the work of John Ruskin, who first influenced and then actively promoted the PRB.'

See also my Artlyst review of The Rossetti's and my Church Times reviews of John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing and To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters.

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Violent Femmes - Two People.

Sunday, 9 July 2023

Come as a child

Here is the reflection I shared in today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

The poem called ‘Song of Childhood’ by Peter Handke which features in the film Wings of Desire captures, for me, something of the openness of childhood when the world lies open before us and we encounter it without cynicism or prior knowledge. The big questions of life are in front of us but we have yet found answers or the pretence that we can know all the answers.

In the poem the child has retained that openness to life and existence as she or he has grown but in our gospel reading (Matthew 11. 25-30) today we hear of people who have not. When Jesus speaks about the wise and the intelligent, he is speaking of those who think they already have knowledge of what God wants. They are those who cannot receive the new thing that God wants to give because they think they already know all there is to know. As a result, they are closed off to what God wants to share.

Jesus says that those able to receive are like children. They are not worldly wise or information wise and, as a result, they are open to what is new and what is revealed. This is how we need to be if we are to receive what God has revealed to us in Jesus.

Tom Wright says this: “Jesus had come to know his father the way a son does: not by studying books about him, but by living in his presence, listening for his voice, and learning from him as an apprentice does from a master, by watching and imitating. And he was now discovering that the wise and learned were getting nowhere, and that the ‘little people’ – the poor, the sinners, the tax collectors, ordinary folk – were discovering more of God, simply by following him, Jesus, than the learned specialists who declared that what he was doing didn’t fit with their complicated theories.”

Sister Corita Kent has described the way in which children look and learn:

“Ask [a] child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child’s eyes won’t leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery.

It does not matter that his is all familiar territory – the same house, the same rug and chair. To the child, the journey of this particular day, with its special light and sound, has never been made before. So the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.

The child is quite right.”

Sister Corita went on to argue that through practice adults can learn once again to see as children do. She suggested that the kind slow looking practised by children, like prayer and art, enables us to view life without being distracted and allows us to put all our attention on a special area for a time. When we slow ourselves and focus our attention in this way we begin to receive what the world around has to show us; we notice things that others don’t and come to see that ordinary things are wondrous. The art historian John Ruskin claimed that the power of seeing in this way is ‘the teaching of all things,’ and that ‘To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.’

This is a form of prayer taking us to a place and space full of delight and wonder; prayer, poetry and prophecy. Children naturally see this through the attention that they pay to the world around them, until we, as adults, teach them otherwise. Like the poet Thomas Traherne, we need to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

Unless you come,
come as a child,
not grasping but trusting,
not arrogantly but humbly,
not resisting but accepting,
not feebly but vigorously,
not giving but receiving,
not self-centred but God-centred,
not teaching but feeding,
not gaining life but losing life,
not leaving but returning,
not closed, but open.

Unless you come,
come as a child,
you cannot enter
the kingdom of God.

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Van Morrison - Song Of Being A Child.

Friday, 31 December 2021

Church Times: Young Poland at the William Morris Gallery

My latest review for Church Times is of the Young Poland exhibition at the William Morris Gallery:

'The French artist Maurice Denis, in an address on “New Directions in Christian Art” published by the Revue des Jeunes in February 1919, referred to “the sumptuous glass windows of the Pole Mehoffer in Fribourg” as one example, among others, giving hope of a post-war revival in Christian art.

Józef Mehoffer was a collaborator with Stanisław Wyspiański in Young Poland (Mloda Polska), an Arts and Crafts movement with strong stylistic and philosophical affinities to the work of William Morris, John Ruskin, and their followers in Britain. These affinities were strong within Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to their exploration through the “Young Poland” exhibition at the William Morris Gallery, these affinities also feature currently at the Hungarian National Museum in “The Beauty of Utopia. Pre-Raphaelite Influences in the Art of Turn-of-the-Century Hungary”, which focuses on the Gödöllo artists’ colony founded by Aladár Körösfoi-Kriesch. Denis noted a further influence in the conversion of the Belgian art critic Bruno Destrée, in part through the influence of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones.'

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here.

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Henryk Gorecki - O Domina Nostra.

Tuesday, 31 August 2021

Arts and Crafts influences within Britain, Hungary and Poland

Several exhibitions this autumn explore the unexpected example of cultural exchange between Britain, Hungary and Poland through the influence of John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

The Beauty of Utopia. Pre-Raphaelite influences in the Art of Turn-of-the-century Hungary at the Hungarian National Gallery is a complement to Desired Beauty, their exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate Collection. Art in nineteenth-century Hungary was primarily shaped by Austrian, German, and French influences. However, the British-Hungarian relations that developed at the turn of the century facilitated the productive effect of Pre-Raphaelite art, the Arts and Crafts movement and numerous English artists on Hungarian literature, fine and applied arts as well as in architecture. The most notable influence of the Pre-Raphaelites was manifest in the ars poetica of the Gödöllő artists’ colony and the early period of Lajos Gulácsy’s oeuvre, but other Hungarian artists also drew inspiration from their English contemporaries.

The exhibition documents the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in Hungary in four thematic groups: the works made by the Gödöllő artists’ colony, the paintings of Lajos Gulácsy’s “Pre-Raphaelite period”, the English influences in Hungarian art at the turn of the century, and also Pre-Raphaelite prints and drawings that are of major significance in the history of the museum’s collection, including pieces by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane.

Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch founded the Tolstoyan, Symbolist – Art Nouveau artist colony in 1901, after settling in Gödöllő. The art theoretical writings of the art critic John Ruskin, who was of great importance for the Pre-Raphaelites, also fundamentally shaped the ars poetica of Körösfői, and his book on Ruskin and the English Pre-Raphaelites was published in Budapest in 1905. Laura Kriesch (Mrs Sándor Nagy), Leo Belmonte, Rezső Mihály, Árpád Juhász, István Zichy, Ödön Moiret, Jenő Remsey, Tom von Dreger, Ede Wigand Toroczkai, Ferenc Sidló and Mariska Undi were among the members.

The oeuvre of the Gödöllő artists’ colony is also presented with its antecedents harking back to the romantic historicism of the English Pre-Raphaelites, as well as to the work of William Morris, who revived handicraft traditions and initiated the Arts and Crafts movement, and also in the art and activity of Walter Crane. In the spirit of all the artistic aspirations of the period, works were made in many branches of fine and applied arts in Gödöllő: paintings, murals, graphics, sculptures, furniture, embroidery, textiles, tapestries, glass windows, costume designs, book illustrations and art books.

Lajos Gulácsy spent most of his narrow creative years, almost a decade and a half, in Italy. During this time, he lived and worked in numerous Italian cities. Moving away from space and time, he created a unique literary and pictorial atmosphere. The subject of his admiration between 1903 and 1908 was primarily early Renaissance painters; Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi and Botticelli, and Dante’s writings, artists who previously had a great influence on the English Pre-Raphaelites. In Italy, at the turn of the century, the Pre-Raphaelite artists had been worshipped, so Gulácsy could have been influenced simultaneously by the paintings of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, as well as the original Italian works that inspired the British artists.

The inspiring knowledge, as well as a kinship in style, subjects, and motifs with English art, can be presumed in the case of a great many Hungarian artists. These connections are demonstrated at the exhibition through works by József Rippl-Rónai, Károly Ferenczy, Ferenc Helbing, Ferenc Paczka, Aladár Kacziány, Lajos Kozma and Attila Sassy.

The prints of Rossetti and his pupil, Burne-Jones, were donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1934 as outstanding pieces of Pál Majovszky’s large-scale collection of drawings.

By the turn of the century, like in other European countries, the art of the island country had become popular in Hungary. The English connection of the Hungarian art scene is reflected in Walter Crane’s exhibition in 1900 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. In Hungary, a real cult developed around the artist at that time, for the reason that Crane, like the group of artists organised around Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch, encouraged the discovery of folk art motifs. Numerous works by Crane from this exhibition got into the collection of museums; many of his graphic works have enriched the British material of the Museum of Fine Arts. And of particular interest, our exhibition also includes the masterpiece by the English artist, entitled Abduction of Europa (1881), which entered the collection of the Hungarian National Bank in 2020 from a private collection in Hungary.

Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) at the William Morris Gallery from October is the first major exhibition to explore the decorative arts and architecture of Young Poland (Młoda Polska), an extraordinary cultural movement that flourished in response to Poland’s invasion and occupation by foreign powers.

Originating in Kraków and the nearby village of Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, Young Poland sought inspiration in local folk traditions, wildlife and craftsmanship while collapsing the distinction between the fine and applied arts. Developing themes explored in a critically acclaimed book by its curators (Lund Humphries, 2020), the exhibition is the first in the world to position Young Poland as an Arts & Crafts movement, revealing strong stylistic and philosophical affinities with the work of William Morris and John Ruskin.

While the diverse visual language of Young Poland was created autonomously, in search of a distinctive cultural style and identity, it simultaneously looked outwards to the rest of Europe including Britain. The exhibition explores unexpected examples of cultural exchange between both nations: for instance in 1848 the members of the newly-founded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood included the Polish fighter for freedom, Tadeusz Kościuszko, on their list of ‘Immortals’ (inspirational heroes). While Stanisław Witkiewicz developed the Zakopane Style—which draws on the vernacular traditions of the Tatras—before he became aware of Ruskin and Morris, he later said that he had unknowingly fulfilled the theories of these British reformers.

From furniture to Christmas decorations, intricate textiles to delicate paper cuttings, this landmark survey spans five galleries and brings together over 150 works, most of which have never travelled outside of Poland. Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) examines the ideas that propelled the movement and introduces the artists, designers and craftspeople whose decorative schemes and objects came to define it.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Józef Czajkowski, Zdzisław Gedliczka, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Karol Kłosowski, Józefa Kogut, Bonawentura Lenart, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Józef Mehoffer, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Henryk Uziembło, Stanisław Wyspiański and Stanisław Witkiewicz.

Influences between Hungarian and Polish art, as well as that of Austria, Czech, and Croatian painting, were explored in 2017 in The First Golden Age: Painting in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Műcsarnok, an exhibition for the 120th anniversary of the Műcsarnok in Budapest. The Hungarian Review has an extensive article that also explores these influences in the light of the 2017 exhibition.

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Bela Bartok - Hungarian Sketches.

Friday, 1 January 2021

Seeing is Receiving: The art of contemplation (2)

1. Slow

I’m in St Paul's Cathedral. It’s a vast echoey expanse. Like most cathedrals it is designed to overwhelm our senses in order to engender a sense of awe and wonder. Writing this paragraph I refer to the cathedral’s website which clearly directs me towards the desired effect by sprinkling superlatives – iconic, awe-inspiring, imposing, rich, unique, and spectacular. Once through the entry queues, my gaze inevitably ascends within the heights of the rising dome and is attracted by the glitter and glint of the mosaic which archly fill the v-shaped spandrels of the cathedral crossing. There are many moving within the space viewing art and architecture, reading guides and information, following guides, queuing again to ascend higher, even praying. The sound of their movement reverberates.

However, within such a vast and cavernous expanse, it is possible to find silence, space and time, away from tours and schedules and, even, services. I’m in search of the experience that Susie Hamilton enjoyed during an artist residency at St Paul’s in 2015. She spent a fortnight sitting in the cathedral painting those who passed by. By scrutinising individuals from the side lines, Hamilton saw a pattern in individual expressions and actions which revealed a big picture focusing her work on the wider mission of God. She said that ‘the main idea behind these little works was the contrast between the small and finite figure and something huge, St Paul’s, and the something more than huge that St Paul’s represents: something infinite, unknown, boundless.’[i]

To survive and thrive in the expanse of St Pauls artworks must either compete or complement the size and scale of the space, as with Gerry Judah’s two giant white cruciform sculptures at the head of the nave, or be hidden, like Hamilton, for personal discovery and contemplation.

I’m looking for Bill Viola’s two video artworks which are located at the East end of the Cathedral as far from the entrance as it is possible to be. Consequently, the numbers of people at any one time in either the North Quire Aisle, where Mary is installed, or the South Quire Aisle, where Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) can be found, is generally less than in other parts of the building. The relative quiet and distance of their location encourages the lingering and giving of time to my looking in a way that enhances contemplation and seeing.

The four colour vertical plasma screens of Martyrs show four individuals each enduring martyrdom by one of the four classical elements while Mary is concerned with birth and creation, the mystery of love’s strength in birth, relationship, loss and fidelity. The sequence is, therefore, one exploring birth and death. Viola makes significant use of slow motion in his films to the extent that at points I wonder if anything is happening. Slow motion combines with anticipation to ensure that I focus on every nuance, every detail.

I’m reminded of the saying, ‘Every Christian needs a half-hour of prayer each day, except when he is busy; then he needs an hour’ which has been attributed to St Francis de Sales. These video installations encourage just such an approach and attitude because they are predicated on an assumption that we will slow ourselves in order to give them time and attention. The story or sequence of images could be viewed much more quickly than Viola allows; in effect he’s saying to me that these images need an hour of contemplation rather than a half-hour because I’m busy and won’t otherwise see what is in front of me.

He knows that as I approach there’s too much on my mind and too many others around for me to be still of my own accord. There’s too much static, too much fuzz, too much activity, too many distractions – just as there are when we come to pray – to be still. Therefore he builds in to the creation of these artworks the practice which he wishes to encourage in me, his viewer – slow contemplation. The question he asks of me, therefore, whatever the content of his works is that of de Sales, can I, will I, build time to be still into my busyness?

This makes Viola’s videos particularly appropriate to houses of prayer and not just, as in this instance, because they utilise Christian imagery. In welcoming these installations at St Paul’s the then Canon Chancellor, Mark Oakley noted that: ‘Viola’s art slows down our perceptions in order to deepen them.’[ii] My experience is that when I am slowed down by Viola’s works, just as is the action in his films, I enter a state of contemplation in which I receive the images more deeply; allowing their emotions to impact me and their symbolism to resonate within me. It’s easy, very easy, to get the impression from church services that prayer is about all that we wish to say to God. The reality is that it is far more about what God needs to say to me and the way to receive God’s communication in prayer is to be still and know.

The Parish Church of St Cuthbert, at the foot of Edinburgh Castle, was fortunate to show another of Viola’s videos in 2018 for Edinburgh Festival and beyond. As St Cuthbert’s is part of the HeartEdge network – churches that see their mission spanning culture, compassion, commerce and congregation – I was able to attend and present a paper in a HeartEdge event exploring art and contemplation. That paper was a stage on the way towards this book.

Three Women is a segment of silent film footage that lasts for no more than a few seconds - a fragment of HD film – but, as with the installations at St Paul’s, slowed markedly to create this moody work. St Cuthbert’s is an unusual Church of Scotland building inspired by the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance with copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper from Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan and Michelangelo’s marble Bruges Madonna which is in Notre Dame Cathedral in Bruges. Appropriately, Viola’s work was in the company of the ‘greats’, even if not the originals.

The video was located to the right of the sanctuary, opposite the pulpit with its relief panel of the Angel of the Gospel and alongside the font, creating a new balance to the rich warmth of the basilica layout with its use of the subtle colours of its stones. The font supports the copy of the ‘Bruges Madonna’ which linked to Viola’s video featuring a mother and two children.

The three women in this installation ‘walk slowly and deliberately toward the viewer until they pass through an invisible screen of water,’ crossing the boundary ‘in order of age and experience, like a rite of passage, reborn in glistening technicolour.’ The women seem ‘unperturbed but slightly alienated by their new surroundings, observing and slowly turning to re-merge with the darkness’ in movements which ‘are considered and deliberate’.[iii] The youngest of the three seems most reluctant to return but eventually all three do so.

This experience of crossing a threshold is emblematic of the experience of prayer I have been describing. Our deliberate stilling – putting to one side the frantic activity in our minds and around us in our homes, communities or workplaces, is the journey towards the threshold. It is a monochrome journey because we have not yet learnt to receive the ravishing beauty of God and of God’s creation. The point of stillness in which we begin to receive, rather than contribute, is the crossing of the threshold into a world where we see more fully and more deeply – the world of glistening technicolour in which these women are reborn.

Yet, in this world, we cannot remain in the place of revelation and return to our regular existence. However, like the children in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories we are able to return, and more and more frequently as we learn to practice slowing down for contemplation and prayer, whether for a half-hour or an hour.

The Biblical image used most frequently for this experience is that of climbing the mountain of God. Albert Herbert said that his painting of Moses ‘climbing the mountain and speaking to God in a cloud’ was about ‘the incomprehensible’; God ‘beyond understanding’, a ‘revelation coming from outside the tangible world of the senses’. Herbert suggested it cannot be ‘put better than in this Biblical image of something hidden from you by a cloud; and you going upwards with great difficulty, away from the ordinary world, and looking for something hidden from you’.[iv] In my opinion, Viola creates an equivalent with Three Women.

I wonder what your mountain-top or crossing the threshold experiences been? Whatever they were and however wonderful they were, we inevitably, as did Moses, come down from the mountain-top or return through the threshold to experience regular existence. We cannot live on the mountain-tops or beyond the thresholds (at least, not in this life) but those experiences sustain us when we are in the valleys or on the monochrome side of the threshold. Viola’s Three Women is a looped video meaning that the women approach, cross and return though the threshold repeatedly. This aspect of the work holds out the possibility that the threshold can be crossed multiple times and it is as we remain looking intently at this work that that understanding comes.

Viola has said that the form his interest in the spiritual side of things has taken has been, in a very quiet way, to simply look with great focus at the ordinary things around him that he found wondrous. Lingering in this way, by definition, takes time. We need to remember that God exists in eternity and we will draw us into that existence, so to slow ourselves in order to attend and wonder is a practice that prepares us for eternity. As the hymn reminds, God has been working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. He is not hurried and harried as we often are and so we need to learn patience from the one who exhibits ultimate patience. We can also reflect on the experience of lovers who linger over what it is that they love. As Sam Wells has described in discussing the concept of Being With, a developing relationship might begin with one making a meal for the other, then both sharing together in the making of the meal; but, ultimately, the meal will cease to be the primary focus of the relationship as the two come to simply enjoy spending time in each other’s company.

That is the process of prayerful development that we have been exploring in this chapter. It is the process of moving from prayer as a set of requests to prayer as place to rest and wait in God’s presence to enjoy God and receive God’s love. Crossing that threshold is one that the practice of slow looking at art can support.

Such time-consuming concentration and attention is fundamental to our ability to comprehend life and underpins all true learning and experimentation. The stillness I have been describing awakens our imaginations and enables exploration of new possibilities. If we still the part of our mind that is focused on activity then we gain access to other aspects of our mind that are to do with creativity, possibility and connection. By slowly attending to the present moment we intentionally give ourselves fully to that moment in order to receive the gifts it brings.

Being still also places us in a right relation to God because, as Paul Tillich noted in a sermon entitled Waiting, the prophets and apostles ‘did not possess God; they waited for Him.’ Many Christians, Tillich suggested, give the impression that they possess God yet, when we do so we have actually replaced God with a created image of God. Our true relation to God begins in waiting on God in a state of ‘not having, not seeing, not knowing, and not grasping’.[v]

Building on such understandings, W. H. Vanstone argued that it is only to human beings as we wait that ‘the world discloses its power of meaning’ and we become ‘the sharer with God of a secret – the secret of the world’s power of meaning.’ For many of us, because we don’t stop and reflect, the world exists for us simply as a ‘mere succession of images recorded and registered in the brain’ but when we do stop, wait, look and listen then we ‘no longer merely exist’ but understand, appreciate, welcome, fear and feel.[vi]

Explore

The average person looks at an artwork for fifteen to thirty seconds.[vii] In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist’s name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician, and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician and that was because the art historian paid real attention to the painting. The brevity with which the average person looks at art equates more to those who saw The Annunciation at the Tokyo National Museum rather than the art historian who saw The Musician.

Slow Art Day is an opportunity provided by museums and galleries to look in the way that the art historian looked at The Musician. In June 2008, Phil Terry experimented with looking slowly at a few artworks instead of breezing past hundreds of artworks in the usual 15-30 seconds of inattention. For the first Slow Art Day, he decided to look himself at Hans Hoffman’s Fantasia, Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, and a few other pieces of art hanging as part of The Jewish Museum‘s 2008 Action/Abstraction exhibition. As expected, he loved it thinking it a much better way to see the exhibition.

A year later, in the summer of 2009, he continued the experiment by asking four people to join him at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and look at another small set of works, slowly. Then, in October 2009, he organized a third test, only this time it featured 16 museums and galleries in the US, Canada and Europe. People loved the experience of looking slowly and the host’s job as facilitator couldn’t have been easier: all they had to do was pick a few pieces of art and get out of the way.

After that third test, Terry launched Slow Art Day as an annual global event with now hundreds of museums and galleries around the world participating. Slow Art Day has a simple mission: help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art. When people look slowly at a piece of art they make discoveries.

Slow Art Day works in the following way - one day each year people all over the world visit local museums and galleries to look at art slowly. Participants look at five works of art for 10 minutes each and then meet together over lunch to talk about their experience. That’s it. Simple by design, the goal is to focus on the art and the art of seeing.[viii]

Sister Corita Kent was a nun who taught art creatively at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and who created her own Pop Art. She argued that through practice we can learn to see as artists see and, if we truly learn to see, then we too will be artists.

She suggested that slow looking, like prayer, is best done alone and that special equipment, such as a framing device - a camera lens, viewfinder or magnifying glass - is helpful. These enable you to view life without being distracted by content as the lens or finder frames a section of reality ‘allowing us to put all our attention on that special area’ for a time.[ix] To really see, she suggests, ‘implies making an appraisal of many elements’ because there are ‘many styles and ways of seeing.’ We have many words for these different styles of seeing, such as discerning, perceiving and beholding. Then, when ‘we finally comprehend and understand a situation our response is often, I see!’ Connections have been made and truth revealed.[x]

When we slow ourselves and focus our attention in this way we can begin to receive what the artwork or the world around has to show to us. Like the art historian who took time with the art work, we must all learn to linger. Like St Francis de Sales, we all need a half-hour of prayer each day, except when we are busy; then we need an hour.

John Ruskin claimed that the power of seeing was ‘the teaching of all things,’ as the ‘greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way.’ ‘To see clearly,’ he said, ‘is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.’[xi]

We access the power of seeing by slowing ourselves down to look attentively, to notice things that others don’t, to simply look with great focus at the ordinary things around us that are wondrous, to allow art, the world and God to reveal themselves to us. This is prayer. Slow looking, like Slow Art Day, takes us to a place and space full of delight and wonder, prayer and poetry and prophecy. This is a space – an attitude, a practice, a prayer - in which we will wish to remain for a long time.

Wonderings

I wonder what slowing down might mean for you given your current commitments.

I wonder when you have experienced the crossing of a threshold or a mountain-top experience and how that came about.

I wonder what you have noticed which has surprised or intrigued you in the last day or week.

Prayer

Creative God, the world you have made is one of wondrous abundance; so much breadth and depth that I will spend all eternity exploring and never exhaust your wonders. Help me now to notice a little more and reveal ways and means to slow myself to rest and, in that rest, to pay attention to your creation. Amen.

Spiritual exercise

Choose a simple household chore (e.g. ironing or hoovering etc.) that it is feasible for you to do more slowly than would normally be the case. As you undertake this task in slow motion, observe your movements and the effect they have more closely that would normally be the case. Use your movements and your impact to fashion a prayer.

Art activity

Attend a museum or gallery on Slow Art Day - https://www.slowartday.com/

Make a cardboard viewfinder in the way suggested by Sister Corita Kent and use it to look at patterns and shapes in your locality in order to see the wonder in your surroundings – ‘We have no art’ is a short film of Sister Corita with her students - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VjtvgCGrWg&list=PLPsZ3_J-JClKgIOm0Y1rLgTqQx4RjV7JO&index=5

Click here for the other parts of 'Seeing is Receiving'. See also 'And a little child shall lead them' which explores similar themes.

[i] S. Hamilton, Talk: “Here Comes Everybody”, given for ACE: Artists’ Residencies in Churches and Cathedrals, June 2017 - http://www.susiehamilton.co.uk/article/talk-here-comes-everybody-residency-at-st-pauls-cathedral-artists-residences-in-churches-and-cathedrals-organised-by-ace-june-27th-2017/

[ii] https://www.stpauls.co.uk/news-press/latest-news/bill-violas-major-new-work-for-st-pauls-cathedral-2

[iii] G. Sutherland, Art Review: Bill Viola: Three Women, St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, The Times, 30 Jul 2018 - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/art-review-bill-viola-three-women-st-cuthbert-s-edinburgh-665w5cqjw

[iv] A. Herbert, ‘Introduction’ in Albert Herbert: Paintings and Etchings, England & Co, 1989, p.4

[v] Tillich’s sermon ‘begins by noting that both Old and New Testaments emphasize the aspect of ‘waiting’ in human beings’ relation to God. Tillich comments, ‘The condition of man’s relation to God is first of all one of not having, not seeing, not knowing, and not grasping. A religion in which that is forgotten, no matter how ecstatic or active or reasonable, replaces God by its own creation of an image of God’ (Tillich 1949, pp. 149-50). Unfortunately, he continues, most Christians give the impression that they think they do possess God in one way or another. ‘The prophets and apostles, however, did not possess God; they waited for Him.’ G. Pattison, Crucifixions and Resurrections of the Image: Reflections on Art and Modernity, SCM Press, 2009, p.78

[vi] W. H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982, p.112

[vii] https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-long-people-spend-art-museums

[viii] http://www.slowartday.com/about/

[ix] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, p.26

[x] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart: teachings to free the creative spirit, Allworth Press, 2008, p.33

[xi] J. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III, pt. 4, ch. 16 (Knopf, 1794)

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The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus - Before The Ending Of The Day.

Friday, 25 December 2020

And a little child shall lead them

Here's my sermon for Midnight Mass at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

What does Christmas look like today? Artist Nicola Ravenscroft has given us a vivid portrayal in her installation ‘With the Heart of a Child.’ It's on display below us in our crypt. The crypt is currently closed, so I'm going to describe the sculpture to you. It shows us seven life-size bronze children - one from every continent on Earth. Each one is simply dressed in soft silk. Each is leaning forward hopefully as if poised to dive into the future. Their eyes are closed as if they are dreaming into their future, anticipating things unseen.

Nicola writes that, as mother, and artist, she has agonised at the sight of our fractured society, our impending climate catastrophe, and our collective fear. She sees a desperate need for creativity and togetherness to arrest this. Her belief is that children can quietly lead us into recognising the truth of our ‘universal ONENESS, our oneness with each other and our oneness with the Earth’. So, her response to the challenges we currently face, especially this Christmas, has been to create this international group of little leaders pointing us towards understanding and TOGETHERNESS. They are an encouragement ‘to do whatever it takes to find solutions, to heal our broken planet, and so, to save our future.’

The prophet Isaiah promised a child born for us who would establish endless peace upheld with justice and righteousness: ‘For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Isaiah also told of a little child who shall lead. He described a time when the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom was centred on a child born to be the Prince of Peace. When that promised child came among us, he said: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs’, ‘Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’, ‘Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’

So, the child born for us in Bethlehem leads us to become like children. Why is this so? I want to suggest two reasons. The first is about a vulnerability revealing the interdependence of which Nicola speaks and the second, a way of looking revealing our connection with creation.

First, vulnerability. The Christmas story is that the God we think of as an all-powerful protector chose to become wholly dependent on human beings for his own protection. As a human baby God was wholly dependent on other human beings, primarily Mary and Joseph, for his protection and, as we hear regularly on the news, human beings don’t actually have a very good track record when it comes to treating children well. God was willing to take the risk of coming into our world; a world in which genocides occur and in which innocent children are abused and die - as happened with the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem and beyond, a world in which he, though innocent, was tortured as a criminal and strung up on a cross to die:

“And the word became … / Wordless / Flesh / A baby with no words / And the voice of the maker became a hungry voice / A cry for food / A cry for milk / The voice that made gravity cried out for fear of falling / The voice that made women cries for a woman’s breast and screams with disappointment when it is denied …

Then now God is this small thing / Is a baby / Is a baby that can be dropped or hurt or left unfed, left unchanged, left wet and smelly / Or be child-abused.” (‘Image of the Invisible,’ Late, Late Service)

That was the reality of the incarnation and of the Christmas story. That is what it meant for Jesus to be born. It is the ultimate identification. God became flesh and blood and moved into our neighbourhood with all that that involves, not just at the beginning of his life but throughout. Why does this matter? It is when we are vulnerable that we are most aware of our need of others; that intrinsic interdependence that Nicola suggests is revealed to us by our experience of birth and childhood.

The sense of vulnerability engendered by the pandemic originally brought us a sense of community like never before as neighbours left notes offering help to those in their streets, as food banks supplied those in need, as we stood on our streets to applaud NHS and care workers, and as those same workers give sacrificially to care for those in need. If we follow the little child who leads we will see more community connection because, if we develop the heart of a child, our sense of vulnerability will reveal our interdependence and need one of another.

The second path to connection through childlikeness is about looking. As a baby Jesus was wholly dependent on others, as a child he began to explore the world around him using his sight, because sight precedes speech. We know from his parables and teaching that his learning was firmly rooted in the natural cycles of sowing, growing and reaping combined with deep appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, including the lilies of the field, and the value of each creature, including sparrows that cannot fall without God knowing. This understanding and appreciation derived from the attention he paid as a child to the natural world around him.

Artist and nun Sister Corita Kent once described a child’s journey from the front of the house to the back to illustrate the way children see the world, the attention they pay to it, and the wonder that they find. That short journey would ‘be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape’, ‘every object along the path will be a new discovery’ because ‘the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.’

Sister Corita went on to argue that through practice adults can learn once again to see as children do. She suggested that the kind slow looking practised by children, like prayer and art, enables us to view life without being distracted and allows us to put all our attention on a special area for a time. As would have been the case for the child Jesus, when we slow ourselves and focus our attention in this way we begin to receive what the world around has to show us; we notice things that others don’t and come to see that ordinary things are wondrous. The art historian John Ruskin claimed that the power of seeing in this way is ‘the teaching of all things,’ and that ‘To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.’

This is a form of prayer taking us to a place and space full of delight and wonder; prayer, poetry and prophecy. In this prayerful space and attitude we see the peaceable kingdom into which the child born in Bethlehem wishes to lead us. For many of us that was part of our original lockdown experience, as we walked in green spaces and, in the silence, heard the birds sing like never before.

Children naturally see that peaceable kingdom through the attention that they pay to the world around them, until we, as adults, teach them otherwise. That is why the children are our future and can lead the way into a better future. Like the poet Thomas Traherne, we need to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

Nicola Ravenscroft intuitively understands these truths and, as a maternal sculptor, creates children that through their connection to nature grant us a vision of the peaceable kingdom toward which they wish to lead us. In words taken from the novelist Joseph Conrad, her urgent prayer is that the children she has sculpted, ‘shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders, that feeling of unavoidable solidarity: of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds all to each other, and all humankind to the visible world.’

These are the children the adult Jesus called us to welcome, the children we are to become, the children to whom the peaceable kingdom belongs. They stand together peacefully in our Crypt as friends, vulnerable and strong, silently singing out their call to change. These little bronze children lead with trusting feet, plump and bare. The Prince of Peace is with them and calls us to let them lead the way saying the kingdom of heaven belongs to children, and anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

Our world with its current catastrophes, fractures in society, and collective fears is crying out for change and hope. The baby born at Bethlehem remains the sign that we, too, need to be born again if our world is to know new life and fresh hope. That is the Christmas we need today and so, together with Nicola, my prayer is that we let the baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger lead us to become like children ourselves; open to vulnerability, embracing interdependence, paying prayerful attention to the world and thereby entering Christ’s peaceable kingdom.

I will be continuing to explore the themes of the sermon in a new series of posts called 'Seeing is receiving: The art of contemplation', the first of which will follow this post. Click here to read the first post in this new series.

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Randall Thompson - The Peaceable Kingdom.

Friday, 28 June 2019

Review: To See Clearly: Why Ruskin matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to also read the earlier review.

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Antonio Vivaldi - Gloria.

Friday, 15 March 2019

Review - John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing

My latest review for Church Times is of “John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing” at Two Temple Place:

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

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

In a review for ArtWay of Adrian Barlow's book Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe I noted that:

'The legacy and reputation of many significant Victorians is complex and contradictory because their often great achievements were fashioned on the oppression of Empire and the superiority and arrogance which fuelled aggressive expansion presenting exploitation of others and their natural resources as being the introduction of civilisation.'

In addition to the Kempe review, my exhibition review for Church Times covering 'Edward Burne-Jones: Pre-Raphaelite Visionary,' at Tate Britain and 'Seen & Heard: Victorian Children in the Frame,' at Guildhall Art Gallery also explores the complex legacy left by the Victorians.

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Florence and the Machine - Big God.

Thursday, 10 August 2017

John Ruskin: Brantwood and the Ruskin Cross

Today's place of pilgrimage was to Brantwood, home of John Ruskin, and to the Ruskin Cross at St Andrew's Coniston.

Brantwood offers a fascinating insight into the world of John Ruskin and the last 28 years of his life spent at Coniston. Filled with many fine paintings, beautiful furniture and Ruskin’s personal treasures, the house retains the character of its famous resident. Displays and activities in the house, gardens and estate reflect the wealth of cultural associations with Ruskin’s legacy – from the Pre Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement to the founding of the National Trust and the Welfare State.
"Ruskin was one of the most important art critics and social thinkers of the nineteenth century. He championed the art of J. M. W. Turner and exercised a profound influence on the Pre-Raphaelites. When he came to write his famous architectural history of Venice entitled The Stones of Venice, he began to contrast mediaeval craftsmanship with modern industrial manufacturing."

"Ruskin believed that, to achieve the highest artistic ideals, the artist must understand the God given laws of nature by paying attention to minute details as well as spectacular effects."

"His ideas inspired William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement but also had profound political implications. When the first Labour Party MPs were elected in 1906, the book that they said had most influenced them was Ruskin’s Unto This Last. Much of the second half of his life was spent defending his ideas that industrialisation and free markets were doing terrible damage to the ability of people to live fulfilling and meaningful lives. Gandhi and Tolstoy are amongst those who found his writing deeply compelling."

Tolstoy said that, ‘Ruskin was one of the most remarkable men, not only of England and our time, but of all countries and all times. He was one of those rare men who think with their hearts, and so he thought and said not only what he himself had seen and felt,but what everyone will think and say in the future.’

"After his death Ruskin’s ideas found expression in the welfare state, the National Health Service, and widening access to education. His analysis of gothic buildings made a direct contribution to the development of modernist architecture."

"Standing by his grave," as W. G. Collingwood wrote, "one cannot but think what we owe him. He was not a mere successful man, but a great pioneer of thought. He led the way to many new fields, which he left for others to cultivate. It is from him chiefly that we, or our teachers, have learnt the
feelings with which we look nowadays at pictures or architecture or scenery, entering more intelligently into their beauty and significance, and providing more consciously for their safe keeping. Nobody for many generations understood so clearly and taught so fearlessly the laws of social justice and brotherly kindness; no one preached councils of perfection so eloquently and so effectively. There are few of us whose lives are not the better, one way or another, for his work."

My appreciation of Ruskin's significance came as a result of the writing of the art critic Peter Fuller. Fuller wrote that:

"When, in the early 1980s, I wrote the essays, later gathered together in Images of God, I felt that I was being tremendously daring and even perverse in reviving the idea that aesthetic experience was greatly diminished if it became divorced from the idea of the spiritual. What I responded to in Ruskin, above all else, was the distinction he made between ‘aesthesis’ and ‘theoria’, the former being a merely sensuous response to beauty, the latter what he described as a response to beauty with ‘our whole moral being’. My book, Theoria, was an attempt to rehabilitate ‘theoria’ over and above mere ‘aesthesis’; I also tried to communicate my feeling that the spiritual dimensions of art had been preserved, in a very special way, within the British traditions."

"I became interested in the links between ‘natural theology’ and the triumphs of British landscape painting. I am still convinced that there is a close correlation between British ‘higher landscape’ and those beliefs about nature as divine handiwork which were held with a peculiar vividness and immediacy in Britain."

Such views seem to have little place in the contemporary art world and, as Jonathan Jones has written, "this fierce defender of figurative painting and enemy of the avant garde has now been almost erased from the history of British art. His legacy has been reduced to the career of his protegee Sister Wendy Beckett and the annual Peter Fuller Lecture ... Even Modern Painters, the magazine he founded in 1987, officially abandoned his editorial policy ... to become broadly sympathetic to conceptual art ... Fuller has disappeared from the story of British art because that story has been mythicised and thinned out."

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Creed - With Arms Wide Open.