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.
