Art review: Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner at the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham

My latest exhibition review for Church Times is on “Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner” is at the Stanley Spencer Gallery:

'Ultimately, in terms of look and feel, I think that Wagner is closer to his peers, such as Mark Cazalet and Thomas Denny, with whom and others he is part of a loose grouping, than to either Spencer or Blake, although being part of a clear lineage that includes both. Transcendent trees are a significant feature of the work of Cazalet, Denny, and Wagner, particularly in church contexts; and Wagner’s The Flowering Tree is a particularly wonderful example. These are Edenic trees of life, which often, as here, include reference to the tree on which Christ was crucified.

Such reference and focus may place this group of artists closer to the visions of artists such as Samuel Palmer and David Jones than to those of Spencer and Blake. The synergies and contrasts generated by this fascinating exhibition point, perhaps, towards a further and broader exhibition to document the legacy and lineage of British visionary art from Blake onwards, and encompass those mentioned in this review, among others, including Spencer and Wagner in particular.'

Click here to read my Seen & Unseen article on this exhibition and the tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds. The friendship between Mark Cazalet, Thomas Denny, Richard Kenton Webb, Nicholas Mynheer, and Roger Wagner is explored here. My writings on Richard Kenton Webb can be read here and here.

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Roger Wagner - I Saw The Seraphim.

Seen & Unseen: The visionary artists finding heaven down here

My latest article for Seen&Unseen is 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explore a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds:

'Everywhere is Heaven is an art exhibition of work by Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. It’s the English village where Spencer lived most of his life and which he described as a “village in heaven”. ‘Everywhere is heaven’ is also a description of sacramental theology and a theme for British Visionary artists from William Blake to the present day.

Everywhere is Heaven is the gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Wagner has been deeply inspired by Spencer’s paintings, viewing Spencer as being “an artist who seemed to be doing exactly what I wanted to do”...

The work of these two artists has been brought together, in part, because both work in the tradition initiated by the visionary poet and artist, William Blake.'

For more on Stanley Spencer click here, here, and here. For more on Visionary artists click here.

My first article for Seen&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 interview 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

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Clifford T Ward - The Travellers.

Ernst Fuchs: Catholicism, Chapels and Bible

'The paintings and writings of Ernst Fuchs, co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, helped inspire the global visionary art movement. Fuchs directly influenced H.R. Giger, Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa, Brigit Marlin, and dozens of others, but even if they never studied with him, all visionary artists – those who aspire to portray dimensions of visionary inner space - look to him as a superlative master.'

‘He is known mainly for his dazzling draughtsmanship and paintings of psychedelic cherubs or biblical scenes, such as Moses and the Burning Bush, and numerous portraits of Christ. He was also an internationally recognized sculptor, stage designer and print maker, composer and poet. Fuchs was the one of the first contemporary artists able to evoke multidimensional luminous worlds of psychedelics.’ ‘Paintings by Fuchs include bizarre, exquisite, uncanny beings, esoteric religious symbolism and detail comparable to Van Eyck. He revived the traditional mixed (mische) technique, using egg tempera to build forms in grisaille then glaze with oils for luminous depth.’

Fuchs inspired the founding of the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art to train artists of the future. The artist’s villa in Vienna, designed by 19th-century Austrian architect Otto Wagner, is now a museum displaying a vast treasury of his masterworks.

‘In 1947, Fuchs attended an exhibition where he was able to examine Surrealist paintings up close for the first time. Among them was The Lugubrious Game by Salvador Dali - and it had the seventeen year old painter enthralled:

"That was the first Dali - one of the best - so small in scale, but we could all see, from the first, how well these people could draw and paint. This precision, I decided, is something I must have. In Dali I found a confirmation of what I wanted to achieve."

This was the opening of the eye: the desire to portray the inner world of dreams and fantasms with a refined technique. But something more had happened: Fuchs had found in Dali's vision something recognizable, something undefineable, yet betokening kinship and affinity - the tacit recognition of shared vision.’

Ramon Kubicek writes that Fuchs and the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism were the principal exponents of ‘a small tradition of “veristic surrealism,” interested in visionary subjects’ that has continued to this day. The artist Johfra described his works as ‘Surrealism based on studies of psychology, religion, the bible, astrology, antiquity, magic, witchcraft, mythology and occultism’; a description that may have relevance to the broader movement. Although this movement today is primarily representative of esoteric, new age or occult spiritualities, in Fuchs’ work it has a significant Catholic wellspring. For Fuchs, this was another point of synergy with his friend Dali who, he said, ‘always was in a Catholic period.’ Dali and Fuchs became close friends with Fuchs stating that when they met they did not discuss painting, but physics and theology.

Fuchs was born in 1930 in Vienna. His father, Maximilian Fuchs, son of an orthodox Jewish family, had turned down a career as a Rabbi, leaving his theological studies uncompleted. He married Leopoldine, a Christian. When the Nazis occupied Austria in March 1938, Maximilian Fuchs emigrated to Shanghai. His son remained in Vienna together with his mother. Nazi legislation made it illegal for Leopoldine to raise her son. He was deported to a transit camp for children of mixed racial origin and Leopoldine Fuchs then agreed to a formal divorce from her husband, thus saving her son from the extermination camp. In 1942 he was baptised, an event of the utmost significance for him that determined his future life and work.

Fuchs began to draw from an early age. In 1945, after the end of the war and aged 15, he enrolled in painting at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts where his first meeting with Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden took place in the class of Professor Albert Paris von Gütersloh. In 1948, together with Brauer, Hutter, Hausner and Lehmden, Fuchs founded the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Renaissance painting - especially the Danube school - was to be redefined. Alchemy, Christian and Jewish mysticism, but also deep psychology, such as dealing with the pain and suffering of the world wars, determined the thematic worlds of this young artist group. It was an Apocalyptic art, ‘full of grotesque monsters rendered in bright, bold colours,’ with ‘architecture from different periods, from the Tower of Babel to Renaissance palaces and modern cities.’

Johann Muschik later coined the term Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, under which these artists became known worldwide: ‘These Painters are Realists for their attention to detail, fantastic is the juxtaposition, the scene. One cannot call them Surrealists, though they evolved out of Surrealism, because missing is the absurd, the preference for paranoia, trance and hallucination.’

An early painting, the 1945 'Crucifixion and Self Portrait with Inge beside the Cross,' includes fellow artist Inge Pace, whose strong Christian religious devotion made an impact on Fuchs. In 1946 some of this small group held an exhibition in the foyer of the Vienna Concert Hall. Their works, thought of as a branch of surrealism, were removed after a public outcry. ‘Teaching at the Academy focused on the techniques of the Old Masters. Fuchs revived the old mixed technique of underpainting in tempera then adding glazes of oil paint on top. This produced a luminosity to his paintings and also allowed very detailed imagery.’ The lack of any positive response from the Vienna art world and his inability to earn a living from his art led him to follow his friend Friedensreich Hundertwasser - then Fritz Stowasser - to Paris in 1949. He was to spend twelve of his most important creative years there.

In 1956 he was accepted into the Catholic Dormition Monastery in Jerusalem, where he worked for one year on his largest painting, the ‘Last Supper’, in the refectory. He devoted all his energies in this period to furthering Jewish-Christian understanding and to working as a church painter gaining a commission to paint the Drei Mysterien des heiligen Rosenkranzes (Three Mysteries of the Sacred Rosary) for a newly-built church in Vienna.

This triptych, painted between 1958 and 1960, caused a storm of protest. Some of his most vehement detractors demanded that the pictures be removed from the church. Each of the parts measures three times three metres; they are painted on 12 goatskins that were sewn together but left uncut at the edges, and executed in the artist´s special mixed technique. A kind of large-scale parchment painting hung on light metal rods by means of loops and looking like banners floating in free space, they remind the congregation of the central events in the story of Redemption representing the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the rosary.

Fuchs returned to Vienna and subsequent international recognition, opening a gallery that became a meeting point for the supporters of Fantastic Realism. Together with Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer, in 1959 he founds the "Pintorarium", a universal academy of all creative fields. The Pintorarium was concieved ‘not only a school of painting, but also a school of thought and life.’ It was intended as ‘a home for all creative persons without discrimination regarding the arts, art movements and philosophies, architecture, poetry, film, music, etc.’ The key principle was individual autonomy. Emulation was prohibited and there were no role models.

Fuchs ‘drew inspiration for his extravagant imagery from visionary experiences, which he sought to convey in his iconographic works’ ‘laced with religious symbolism and mystical allusions.’ His work over the course of his career increasingly focused on religious symbolism with biblical works including Psalm 69 (1960) and Adam and Eve in front of the Tree of Knowledge (1984). ‘His paintings from the late 50s to the present day have extraordinary visionary power. Babylonian Cherubs, visions of Christ and other mythological subjects explore the roots of middle-eastern religious experience.’

In 1990 he began work on the Apocalypse Chapel at Klagenfurt in Austria. He created oil paintings covering the entire interior of the chapel of parish church St. Egid creating monumental frescos to the Apocalypse of John which took him about 20 years to complete. The Apocalypse Chapel was originally commissioned by Monseignor Marcus Mairitsch. Although the chapel is no more than 40 sq. metres, its arched ceilings and many walls are covered with visions of 'the last days' from Fuchs’attempt to depict the 12th chapter of John's Book of Revelation. It is his Sistine Chapel.

K. Ziegler notes that, with architect Manfred Fuchsbichler, from 1992 to 1994, Fuchs constructed and decorated an extension to the Parish church of St James in Thal. Fuchs wanted to portray the Paradise, the Heavenly Jerusalem, saying: ‘You have to recognize from a distance: this is a sacred place. Wherever the eyes look, there has to be something to see.’

The design of the entire complex combines impressive lighting effects with a fantastic variety of colours and shapes. The exterior of the church was completely redesigned as the church expanded. A pebble path leads around the church and into the building to the altar. It is designed as a pilgrimage route and commemorates St. James, the patron saint of pilgrims. The building is covered with three different-sized gable roof structures that span a trapezoidal plan. The entire building has the character of a pointed crystal, which has been adapted to the roof shapes of the old building. The facade of the new church building is made of hard fire bricks and patinated copper sheets. The walls of the old building are plastered, painted turquoise and partly decorated with gravel applications. On the facade of the apse of the old church there are monograms made of pebbles of Maria (the heart), Jesus Christ (the tree of life), and Joseph (the house).

A canopy with a red beam structure dominates the entrance area. The thick glass doors at the entrance are opened with handles made from ram's horn, the favourite sacrificial animal of the biblical people of Israel. The symbols Alpha and Omega as well as crossed keys and the Christ monogram are attached to the glass doors. Inside you can see an open roof structure painted in rainbow colours that is reminiscent of the desert tent that the Israelites erected in the wilderness. The rainbow symbolises the covenant that Noah made with God. Daylight comes in through seventeen triangular dormer windows of different sizes and over vertical pilaster strips mirrored with crystal glass elements. The rows of seats are wavy and add to the special atmosphere.

A glass window in the apse shows a picture of Maria Hilf, a copy of the famous painting by Lukas Cranach in Innsbruck Cathedral. Images of the calling of the disciples and the Transfiguration can also be found in the apse; both include St James. The symbol of the apostle James, the scallop, can be found on the walls, the holy water basin is shaped as a scallop shell, the backrests of the plastic benches show the same motif. A fossil of a scallop shell, which was found in a quarry in Retznei, is in a glass stele behind the priest's seat. A crystal cross with Svarovski crystals and Murano glass elements draws attention to the central altar, which is also made of crystal glass.

Finally, published in 1996 in an edition of only 20,000 copies, Fuchs considered his leather-bound and gilded Bible, richly illustrated by over 80 colour plates of his paintings, to be his crowning achievement. With his first illustrations of the Bible, he hoped to surpass the heretofore best-known Bible illustrators of this century: his friend Salvador Dali, and painter Marc Chagall. He wanted to create a gold ingot and, in accordance with this design, the Bible was bound in calfskin and covered with a gold folium. This was to emphasize the value of this ‘most valuable treasure of humanity.’ ‘With this, I am transforming the profane covetousness of men for gold into a yearning for what is holy, into reverence for the great Mystery,’ Fuchs explained.

‘Art is nearness to God received without effort,’ he wrote: ‘This is the concise meaning and basis of a theology of art that is age old and has maintained again and again that jubilation erupts when God is near. Through that jubilation, the artist’s nearness to God was brought through creative service without sweat or torment.’ ‘What is religion,’ he asks, ‘if not the relationship of the now to its beginnings?’ As a result, the work of art ‘has its source in the desire to create a means of transcending time, entering eternity.’ ‘Thus the artist, in contemplation, creates both history and eternity.’ (‘One Source: Sacred Journeys – A celebration of Spirit & Art’)

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Larry Norman - Nightmare #71.

Artlyst: 'Hard Beauty' and Helaine Blumenfeld

My latest piece for Artlyst is a review of ‘Hard Beauty’, the first film about the life and work of sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld which premiered on Sky Arts in April 2018:

'If Blumenfeld’s focus on beauty is one factor distancing her from a greater level of recognition in the world of contemporary art, then spirituality may be another. The film emphasises the extent to which Blumenfeld’s natural forms are also visionary. From an early age Blumenfeld has received the forms she now shapes into sculpture through her dreams. Clay is used as her malleable medium in which to capture what remains of these dreams before they fade.'

‘Tree of Life’, a major solo exhibition by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE is at Ely Cathedral until 28 October 2018.

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Polish Art In Britain Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields;
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar;
• Refugee Artists Learning from The Lives Of Others;
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg;
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement;
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition;
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation;
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields; and
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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Gungor - Beautiful Things.

Greg Tricker: Revelation ~ Sacred Art, Sacred Music

Today I had the opportunity to visit Piano Nobile at King's Place which is "presenting a collection of paintings, sculpture and stained glass by contemporary artist Greg Tricker, Revelation ~ Sacred Art, Sacred Music explores moments of divine manifestation and the power of visionary illuminations. A series of inspirational figures upon whom Tricker works in cyclical series, such as Maria, Mother of God, John the Divine, St Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc and Anne Frank, draw us into intimate contemplation, these iconic images become beacons of light and hope.

Tricker's profound and sincere style of work is deeply entwined with the sacred artistic tradition, for which the artist has gained international recognition. Recent series of work have been exhibited at Westminster Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Peterborough Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral and, most recently, Rhiems Cathedral in 2013.

Revelation ~ Sacred Art, Sacred Music runs in conjunction with a series of performances of John Tavener’s compositions as part of the Minimalism Unwrapped musical programme. Like Tricker, Tavener turned to sacred iconic imagery, believing that when an iconic image is seen with the ‘eye of the heart’ rather than the intellect the icon can speak to something deep within us. His compositions in music could at times be seen as creating an icon through sound.

Tricker and Tavener have both been repeatedly drawn to the presence of the eternal feminine. For Tavener, the Mother of God, the inspiration for such masterpieces as The Protecting Veil, is the ultimate representation of the eternal feminine: nurturing, gentle, noble, generous and divinely beautiful. In Tricker’s work, the eternal feminine is revealed through a legacy of reverent and spiritual women; Maria, Bernadette of Lourdes, St Bride, Joan of Arc and Anne Frank embody for Tricker the pure essence of the eternal feminine. It is through these devout figures that Tricker sounds a visionary trumpet-call in a world in turmoil, his works are icons of light speaking of the innate dignity within each one of us."

In my review of Tricker's The Christ Journey for Art & Christianity, I wrote:

"Greg Tricker has described his work as an uncovering of latent images with these emergent images being discovered and freed as he carves or paints. Inspiration, for him, is like “being handed down buckets of fire from above,” that must be passed on. Quietly listening, he sees into his materials sensing the arrival of images as he reaches “a threshold, a possibility point, between what becomes broken and discarded, and a discovery that brings a sense of purpose, shapes reality.”

With these origins it is probably no surprise that his images have been understood as developing the mystical tradition in modern British art pursued by Eric Gill, Cecil Collins and others in the last century. For me, the style and spirit of Marc Chagall and Ken Kiff more readily come to mind."

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Victoria Williams - Why Look At the Moon.

Beyond Airbrushed from Art History: Bronson, Finster and Pass

In his Hyperallergic article Rob Colvin sets out strongly the thesis that, when it comes to art and religion, never the twain shall meet:

'The close relationship that art and religion maintained for several millennia has in recent decades eroded so drastically that it’s difficult to imagine fine arts and contemporary religion having anything in common. Art is, on the whole, a secular enterprise, and religion is frequently more anesthetic than aesthetic in character. The two worlds happily foster vulgar understandings of each other almost to a point of pride. Some might even suggest that adherence to one entails a rejection of, or at least critical distance from, the other.'

Despite this beginning, his main interest in the piece is to do with a place where the two do meet, in this case the Artist AA Bronson and the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice:

'Serene Jones says that the largest population of the US declares themselves to be spiritual but nondenominational. And she says that’s the horse she wants to be riding on; that’s the audience she wants to be able to harness at Union. Because, for the most part those people — a very large number of people — have nothing to feed them spiritually.

I see the art world much the same way, because there are many, many artists who would declare themselves as spiritual but don’t really know what to do with that. As a result of being at Union, I wanted to create some kind of conversation between the two: not only could the art world learn from the theological world but vice versa. It seemed just crazy to me to have this division between the two.'

One place where art and religion have always co-existed has been in Visionary Art:

'The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM)’s 20th original thematic exhibition hails the great dreamers and doers throughout history, exploring the astonishing visions of Hildegard von Bingen and Leonardo da Vinci, to Nikola Tesla and Philip K. Dick, as we pay tribute to the ecstatic “Aha!” and “Eureka!” moments that propel discovery, leaps in consciousness, and cultural renewal. The Visionary Experience: Saint Francis to Finster examines the human impulse to forge a path out of darkness into illumination, as well as the duality and complexity of vision, from radical clarity to unfettered delusion, and the legacy of visionary experiences throughout time.

Guest curator, acclaimed filmmaker and book publisher Jodi Wille, and AVAM founder
and director Rebecca Alban Hoffberger have together assembled a diverse and wildly
transcendent collection of artists, scientists, philosophers, and spiritual pioneers who have
ventured straight to the source of inspiration itself.

In anticipation of his centennial birthday celebration, The Visionary Experience includes a
lifetime of visions in paint, and the process of the most acclaimed intuitive artist of the 20th
century, Rev. Howard Finster. 

The Visionary Experience exists out of and above the influence of time or place, socioeconomic background, age, race or gender. It is a path ancient and modern, futuristic and primitive.
Within this experience, discovery can be found down the road to Damascus, inside the depths
of the cave of Athena, via the power of music, intoxicants, spiritual emergency, meditation or
prayer. The touch of grace, the whisper of the muse and the still small voice beckon, offering the
traveler transportive visions: personal, cultural, and cosmic.'

In addition to this thematic exhibition, AVAM is also showing work by Donald Pass:

'A celebration of the late British visionary artist’s ethereal spirit paintings, inspired by his own
life-changing glimpse into the afterworld. Donald Pass (1930–2010) was a well known painter of
lyrical abstract landscapes until the late 1960s when he experienced a series of spiritual visions
of the Resurrection that radically and forever changed his view of reality, and subsequently, his
artwork. Sir John Rothenstein, late Director of the Tate Gallery in London, described Pass as “a
spark of genius, a very rare talent.”'

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Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street.

Electric Eden and the New Folk Revival

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is an acclaimed history of the evolution of British folk music. Author Rob Young has a fascination with the roots of English folk music and its ties to the British countryside. For the most part the book "is a surefooted guide to the various tangled paths the English folk song has since been taken down by classicists, collectors, revivalists, iconoclasts, pagans, psychedelic visionaries, punks and purists."

The book is in some ways a search for the national psyche which Young notes has been shaped by a "wrestling for possession between competing religious doctrines, heathen, pagan and Christian." Young finds more of interest in folk-rock which is heathen or pagan but, interestingly, he does value the work of Bill Fay, the Biblical references which abound in C.O.B's Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, and also includes a brief survey of '70's Jesus Music noting that "there were a few groups - After the Fire, Caedmon, Canaan, Cloud, Bryn Haworth, Meet Jesus Music, Narnia, Nutshell, Parchment, Presence, Reynard, Trinity Folk, Water into Wine Band and 11.59 - which managed to make a music that has lasting value, a kind of Eucharistic-progressive sound that sits comfortably with the better acid folk of the period." He highlights, as being of particular interest, Caedmon's self-titled 1978 album, the Water into Wine band's Hill Climbing for Beginners, Bob and Carole Pegg's And Now It Is So Early with Sydney Carter, Carter's A Folk Passion, and the Reflection Records compilation Sounds of Salvation. 

Young acknowledges that set against "the Dada venom of punk, the angular edges of post-punk and new wave and the plastic seductions of New Romanticism," the "irrelevant, parlous state of folk music in the late 1970s" was revealed. From this point on the book loses focus as Young indulges his liking for Kate Bush, David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Julian Cope without (except in the case of Cope) demonstrating their links to what has gone before. In doing so, Young overlooks the links between punk's political attack and folk's role as the voice of the common people; a connection that Billy Bragg clearly recognised and utilised.   

More recently, Young was one of those interviewed along with Bragg, for Get Folked: The Great Folk Revival which takes up the story Young told and explores the current resurgence in folk's popularity:

"Something incredible has been happening in the music scene over the last few years. Folk - a musical tradition with roots in the pre-electric world - is now becoming the new 21st-century pop phenomenon. Is it the antidote to manufactured music, the new punk, or simply evidence of the enduring appeal of this age-old musical form? This programme features first-hand testimony and intimate, specially shot musical performances from a cross-generational cast of legends, new and old. Richard Thompson, The Lumineers, Jake Bugg, Frank Turner, Akala, Donovan, Martin Carthy, The Unthanks, Alt-J, Newton Faulkner, Seth Lakeman, Bob Geldof and Ade Edmondson are among the contributors."

In introducing the new Folk Revival, the programme references visually the influence of Communion artists including Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling. Although not included in the documentary per se, some of these artists, such as Mumford and Sons and Michael Kiwanuka, continue to tap the Christian influence which, as Young notes in Electric Eden, can be found as a strand within English folk music.

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C.O.B. - Martha And Mary.

Evelyn Williams R.I.P.

Evelyn Williams was an artist in whom 'From her earliest drawings, vision, dream and reality combined; she characterised her work as "inner thoughts, other worlds".'

John McEwan wrote that 'In his thoughtful and observant essay [Nicholas Usherwood] warns us against the inadequacy of the words commonly used to convey Evelyn Williams’ art: visionary, feminist, Romantic, apocalyptic, expressionist, Gothic, outsider ... Robust generalisation is peculiarly unsuited to an art of such delicacy of feeling, subtlety of tone and exact observation. As he writes: ‘Peel away all those labels however and Evelyn Williams will, I believe, emerge finally, and not before time, as a painter and sculptor, most fundamentally, of ‘people and their attempts to relate to one another’.'

Fay Weldon described Williams' work as ‘awesome’ – 'if we can get back to the true sense of the word. It fills you with awe.' Williams had created, Weldon thought, 'a body of work, imbued by an unmistakable mixture of grace and greatness.'

She spoke of death in typically consoling terms as a space filled with as much energy as the sky is filled with raindrops in a summer storm: ‘As each drop falls and touches the earth seeds of new energy are released to be recycled again and again.’

Read obituaries from The Guardian and Telegraph here and here.

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The Doors - People Are Strange.

Airbrushed from Art History (23)

Wallspace, the exhibition venue in the church of All Hallows on the Wall in the City of London which had as its aim to provide a spiritual home for the visual arts in the capital, closed at the end of February. After four very successful years, like many arts organisations currently, they struggled to secure the stable finance needed to ensure their future.

Wallspace achieved a huge amount in the past four years by highlighting the extent to which spirituality features within the mainstream art world and showcasing the breadth and diversity of those artists who express their faith commitment through their work or engage positively with the Church as a patron. The vision for, and achievements of, Wallspace were developed principally by its Director, freelance curator Meryl Doney.
 
As the email bringing the sad news of Wallspace's demise stated: "There really isn't anything else quite like Wallspace, with its dedicated focus on contemporary art that explored rich and challenging spiritual territory, in its spectacular 18th century sacred setting. We are proud of everything we've achieved since we began in March 2007. From our opening exhibition of Damien Hirst's New Religion, which examined issues of truth and human obsessions, to our final show Commission, which showcased the extraordinary breadth and depth of art in churches across the UK. Wallspace has established a benchmark for quality, variety and vigour."

The highlights from four years of Wallspace exhibitions showcase the breadth of an under-reported rich and challenging exploration of spiritual territory to be found in contemporary art:

• Damien Hirst's New Religion included an altar holding a cedar cross studded with gem-like pills, a child's skull and a heart wrapped in barbed wire and pierced by needles and razor blades, cast in silver, and a large carved marble pill. One complete set of prints and sculptural objects were displayed in a specially constructed devotional case or reliquary. And, so struck was Damien Hirst with the church's interior that he has also produced three large new paintings made specifically to hang behind the altar at All Hallows.
• 
  Sokari Douglas Camp's The World is Richer centred around new work for the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery. The Wallspace exhibition featured a number of steel maquettes representing the artist's thinking towards a major public memorial in London's Hyde Park to mark the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.
• Sam Taylor-Wood's Pietà, Ascension and Prelude in Air brought together three distinctive film pieces that include biblical and religious references, and spiritual resonances. They explored ideas of presence and absence, performance and vulnerability. The first two films made direct reference to traditional, western Christian iconography. The third presented a musician who is totally engaged with the Bach prelude he is playing, but he is performing the work without his cello. The music and the man are palpably present; the instrument that links the two is absent.
• For Epiphany Wallspace gathered together 15 contemporary, traditional iconographers who live and work in the UK for what was the first exhibition to get the work of the very best iconographers in Britain together in one place. All the icons shown were contemporary but nonetheless were produced in the traditional manner, using authentic ancient designs and methods. The exhibition was timely, given the current revival of interest in icons and their increasing appearance in cathedrals and parish churches across the country.
• In Memória Roubada (Stolen Memories) Ana Maria Pacheco, previously Associate Artist at the National Gallery, showed a dramatic 2-piece work for the first time. Her powerful and disturbing painted wooden sculptures Memória Roubada I and II confronted ideas of displaced people and severed cultures - results of the colonisation of Brazil.
• Visionaries: working in the margins was Wallspace's exploration of the work of visionary painters from Stanley Spencer to the Chapman Brothers arranged so that visitors were 'led' through the work from 20th to 21st century. The paintings looked stunning in the church, setting up dialogues between the artists and across a time span of 85 years.
• The Collection showed highlights and new works from the Methodist collection of modern and contemporary art. In the early 1960s John Gibbs, an art collector and Methodist layman, realising that many contemporary artists were concerned with themes from the life of Christ, decided to create a collection of such work. With the help of Methodist minister Douglas Wollen, he acquired paintings and reliefs, which became the core of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art – described as ‘the best denominational collection of modern art outside the Vatican’.
• Commission: An exhibition of contemporary art in British churches took the story of commissioning contemporary art for British churches up to the present day. Starting with Henry Moore’s remarkable, and at the time highly controversial, altar for St Stephen Walbrook, the exhibition highlighted the work of 14 artists who have taken on the challenge of a permanent work for a religious space. Major recent commissions for the Lumen Centre URC church and St Martin in the Fields London, and Tracey Emin’s neon artwork for Liverpool Anglican Cathedral were all represented.

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Low - Weight of Water.

Greenbelt diary (2)

'Visionaries' exhibition

Paintings by Clive Hicks-Jenkins in the 'Visionaries' exhibition

Paintings by Phillipa Claydon in the 'Visionaries' exhibition

Sixpence None the Richer

Sixpence None the Richer

My Greenbelt began, as is often the case (and one of the best reasons for going), by an unplanned meeting with friends and the chance to share some food together as we swapped notes on what we planned to see and do over the Festival.

One of the first things that I did was to visit the Visionaries exhibition and chat with its curators, Meryl & Malcolm Doney from the Wallspace gallery. The exhibition brings together a selection of recent and contemporary artists working in the Visionary Art tradition - which has its roots in the work of William Blake, Goya and Samuel Palmer – i.e. those who explore with passion the territories of the spiritual, the religious and the human condition. This version of the exhibition, which was originally shown at Wallspace, had a slightly reduced range of artists exhibited but this had the positive effect that some of the less well known artists in the exhibition, such Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Phillipa Claydon, Harry Adams and Brian Whelan, could be more fully represented.

Dave Tomlinson spoke about 'Church without borders' by viewing conversion as a process and way of life and churches as the hands, feet and heart of Christ in their communities. His talk seemed to me to be a summary of what I see us being to a limited extent and what I want us to become more fully at St Johns Seven Kings and, as a result, I will post separately a fuller set of notes from this session.

In an aside he spoke about Jesus writing in sand which led on to my writing the following meditation:

You wrote
in sand
impermanent
washed away
in rain
swept away
by hand
You wrote
in speech
unrecorded
no scribes
journos or
dictaphones
at your feet
You wrote
in flesh
crucified
breath hammered
and beaten
from your
lungs

You wrote
in sand
a pregnant
pause
causing stones
to fall
from condemning
hands
You wrote
in speech
everyday
stories
turning our
worlds
upside down
You wrote
in flesh
an emptying
of self
filling
empty lives
with love

Finally Sixpence None The Richer played a great set which included most of their very wonderful Divine Discontent album, some crowd-pleasers in 'Kiss Me' and 'There She Goes', as well as new material for their next album. Matt Slocum and Leigh Nash went their separate ways after making Divine Discontent as Matt explained in the Greenbelt programme: "Leigh and I had been making music together since we were teenagers. As we approached our 30s, there was a bit of restlessness to explore other things, but in the midst of this exploration, I felt a void open up, like I needed to be making music with Leigh." I, for one, am glad to see them reunited and making great music together.

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Sixpence None the Richer - Melody of You.

Visionaries

Visionaries is a sampling of Visionary Art which moves forward chronologically and selectively from Stanley Spencer to Street Artists while referencing Blake and Goya as giants on whose shoulders all Visionary Artists stand.

The exhibition sets up a series of polarities that derive, on the one hand, from Blake’s visions of spiritual reality breaking into the material world and on the other, from Goya’s nightmares revelling in the material reality of death and decay. The two are opposed as twin gateways at the exhibition’s entrance where a Stanley Spencer study for the Betrayal in the Garden, in which the everyday provides the setting for the mythic, faces down two of the Chapman Brothers’ revised and improved etchings from Los Caprichos, in which Goya’s original images of human vice are themselves defaced and destroyed.

The strongest works in this exhibition are those which work with these polarities in place of resolving them in one direction alone. Noel White’s Downland Discourse features three travellers walking between the parallel worlds of flesh and spirit with the central character of the three holding together the polarities towards which his colleagues veer. The Black Madonna of Norman Adams is integrated into the garden in which she stands, her form echoed by the natural geometry of which she is part. Here, darkness and light form one whole.

Crossing the Water to the Promised Land by Albert Herbert depicts turmoil and upheaval as a baptism through which we pass to emerge as children returning home. Peter Howson Legion portrays the violent expulsion of the demonic in the claustrophobic context of a fevered crowd by a Christ who is calmness personified. Adam Neate creates an icon of suffering humanity by transcending his transient materials of cardboard and spray paint, a reversal of iconographic technique and materials.

Meryl Doney, who has curated Visionaries, writes of Visionary Art as existing on the margins of contemporary art yet stubbornly refusing to wither and die. Its place can be that of the unheard, unregarded prophet, the holy fool crying out in the wilderness. Its strength, and that of this exhibition, is the vigour and passion with which the spiritual and material territories of the human condition are explored.

Visionaries is at the Wallspace Gallery, London, 20 May to 10 June and Greenbelt Arts Festival, Cheltenham, 28 to 31 August.

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Bob Dylan - Every Grain Of Sand.

The Painted Word (2)

The Painted Word is a wonderful survey of the Biblical paintings that have been John Reilly's life’s work with the Biblical and other references included revealing both sources of inspiration and the reality that these paintings are explorations of meaning and not illustrations of the passages cited.

The book’s title could suggest illustration but needs, I think, to be understood in the sense that icons are written. Reilly's paintings work as contemporary icons opening windows onto the unity of the material, emotional, intellectual and spiritual that characterises life and our world in their fullest senses.

The most impressive aspect of his paintings is that the unitive vision which characterises his works is revealed through colour and form rather than by content. The imagery of each work is enmeshed in the patterns and harmonies that reveal the way in which all that is depicted is linked in the light emanating from the central source which symbolises God himself.

Examples of Reilly's work can be seen here and here.

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Paweł Łukaszewski - Kolęda Bóg Człowiek.

News from Wallspace

News from Wallspace:

Last chance to see 189 Miles Wool installation by Angela Wright - This has been a great experience and is coming to an end on Monday 13th April, come and take the opportunity to see it over this bank holiday! We're open 11am - 4pm. Over 600 people have come to see the work so far, here are a few of their responses:

• Impressive work. Impressive setting.
• Lovely to see light and shade passing across the work.
• I must admit it was my first time visiting the space and I thought Angela Wright’s installation was just excellent – really worked in harmony with the space, remarkably avoiding any overt religious symbolism which I found fascinating. Beautiful work, and I sincerely hope to visit Wallspace again in the future!
• I LOVE Angela’s piece, found it mesmerizing and fantastical, desperate to touch and stroke it, took supreme effort to leave it alone. Images of Rapunzel, Miss Haversham, and Gabriel kept coming to mind! Ultimately, felt it was about ‘grace’ in some strange way.

Next Exhibition: VISIONAIRIES working in the margins (May 19 – June 11 2009) - An exhibition of works and performance by artists on the edge – visionary artists whose work is set outside or on the fringes of cultural institutions, often offering a trenchant critique of culture.

Visionaries brings together artists working in this honourable and challenging tradition; essentially those who explore with passion the territories of the spiritual, the religious and the human condition.

The exhibition will include works by Stanley Spencer and Cecil Collins of the twentieth century, mid-twentieth-century paintings by Norman Adams, Albert Herbert and Anthony Goble, later painters such as Peter Howson, Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Brian Whelan, and twenty-first-century artists such as the Chapman brothers, Billy Childish and Adam Neate.

The visionary tradition can also be confrontational – evoking the anger and stridency of the prophetic voice throughout history. The artist can be the outsider, the 'voice crying in the wilderness', the holy fool. For this reason, the exhibition includes performance artists whose work references this rich tradition.

The exhibition, curated by Wallspace will be on show at All Hallows from 19 May to 11 June. It will then travel to Greenbelt Arts Festival, at Cheltenham Racecourse, August Bank Holiday weekend, 25 to 31 August.

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Lou Reed & Victoria Williams - Tarbelly & Featherfoot.

Everyday epiphanies

Another book that I found in the RA's bookshop was Betty Swanwick: Artist and Visionary.

Swanwick described herself as "part of a small tradition of English panting that is a bit eccentric, a little odd and a little visionary." This tradition begins with William Blake and Samuel Palmer and continues through Stanley Spencer and Cecil Collins to artists such as Albert Herbert, Ken Kiff, Norman Adams, Evelyn Williams, Carel Weight, Margaret Neve, Roger Wagner, Mark Cazalet, Dinah Roe-Kendall and Greg Tricker.

In the book Paddy Rossmore writes that Swanwick had in common with many other artists in this tradition, "the pursuit of the hidden reality behind appearance or - more specifically in her case - the connection between religious phenomena and psychic (or subliminal) processes." "She talked of 'biblical goings-on' in her late work" and "painted many pictures which relate to the great religious themes and stories from the Old and New Testaments." Rossmore argues that her late work "would seem to belong to that tradition in visionary painting whose strangeness is accompanied by a facility for penetrating spiritual insight and understanding."

The work of many of the artists in this tradition seeks to reveal everyday epiphanies, heaven in ordinary life, and Swanwick was no exception writing that she felt that "many people narrow life much too much" and so in her pictures she tried "to put the real thing, the miracle of it - indefinable because everything is connected."

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The Kinks - Days.

Albert Herbert RIP

Visionary artist Albert Herbert died on 10th May and obituaries can be found at the Independent and Times websites. He had been associated with the England & Co gallery since 1988, who describe him as "a great friend and inspiring artist who will be very much missed."

Gallery owner Jane England wrote the Independent's obituary and says of Herbert:

"Acknowledged for his powerful and original poetic vision, Herbert continued a metaphysical tradition in British art that extends from William Blake to Cecil Collins. His idiosyncratic, mystical paintings used biblical stories and religious subjects, but were not exclusively Christian in their meaning - religion was his way of revealing "the inner world of the collective mind". These universal narratives were drawn from a myriad sources, from the Bible to Buddhism, as Herbert discovered images from stories depicted by artists for thousands of years, and renewed them in a quintessentially modern way."

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Raymond Crooke - Lord Of The Dance.

Revealing the marvellous

Albert Herbert has described art as being not about “meanings but feelings”. His is an art concerned with revealing the inner world, the 'marvellous', feelings, and through these, the collective mind. He has spoken of the way in which, at the age of 16, he found a surrealist magazine and responded immediately to art that “was about revealing the ‘marvellous’ and of the superiority of the inner world to the world of appearances.”

His expression of these ideas involved learning to see and paint as children do. "I learned to draw again as if from the beginning, drawing what I felt and knew rather than what it looked like." A painting usually starts with some idea that could be put into words but when he begins to paint he becomes fully involved in "the struggle to harmonise shapes, colours and textures". This can go on for several months with the original idea becoming lost in the paint only to re-emerge as something quite different. In this way he both draws his images from his subconscious and integrates them into the wholeness of the painting. His approach tallies with that of another contemporary painter, Ken Kiff. Kiff, too, argues that his subconscious images only achieve meaning through the process of shaping and forming the painting. The painting, as a whole, must be discovered, by the artist, bit by bit. This has to happen in order "for the thing to really grow together and be significantly all part of the same growing thing". In this growth there can be a sense of peace, completeness and wholeness despite the presence, at times, of disturbing imagery.

For Herbert, like John Reilly, the stories of the Bible cannot be bettered for revealing universal and timeless truths. “The Bible stories are treated as symbols, metaphors, revealing the ‘marvellous’, an intention”, says Herbert, “which I first discovered in that surrealist magazine long ago.“ "The painting of Moses climbing the mountain and speaking to God in a cloud, is about the incomprehensible; God is beyond understanding, it is the revelation coming from outside the tangible world of the senses. 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."

Sister Wendy Beckett has described Herbert as a “religious painter of genius” while Patrick Reyntiens has said that he is “the most significant religious painter to emerge in England in the 1980’s”. Specialist appreciation is one thing but general acceptance another altogether. When Herbert prepared a series of Stations of the Cross for a London church they were rejected. Herbert’s deliberate child-like style can be a barrier to appreciation but, for those prepared to look, it strips away surface distractions and gets the viewer to real correspondences and motives.

In Jesus is Stripped of His Garments II (1987) the vulnerability of God is clearly shown in the centre of a crowd of nightmarish faces and grasping hands. The best response to make to this work is also a simple descriptive one as the actor Griff Rhys Jones did in writing about Herbert’s Jonah and the Whale in the RA magazine. “This painting is very straightforward. It’s a pictorial respresentation of a woman trapped in one circumstance and a man trapped in another, and the way the colours link together is rather impressive. It’s quite a complicated idea expressed very simply.”

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U2 - Grace.

I too have tried to make sense

Today I've spent my day off at the From Russia exhibition at the Royal Academy and at the Ken Kiff mini-retrospective at Marlborough Fine Art.

From Russia has a strong spiritual strand within its overall theme of exploring ways in which the French avant-garde influenced early twentieth century Russian art. Interestingly, this strand is viewed purely as a Russian phenomenon despite the influence of the Nabi's and, in particular Maurice Denis, on the French art that was purchased by the two principal Russian collectors. This means that the role of Denis and other Nabi's in developing a modern French sacred art is once again overlooked and the opportunity to explore links between L'art Sacre and Russian spirituality is missed. That said, From Russia is a marvellous exhibition with masterpieces from many of the key Modern movements from Impressionism to Suprematicism.

While at the RA I picked up a monograph on the late Norman Adams, produced for his posthumous retrospective at 108 Fine Art last year. Here is Nicholas Usherwood on Adams' achievement: "“I grew up beginning to associate art and religion and political thinking as one great big thing that had to be dealt with as a whole” he once wrote and it is this natural and intuitive linking of political and moral concerns with the sacred which has always given such a sharp edge of contemporaneity to the eternal human values to be found in all of his work. “Probably the greatest mystery of all is Man” he once observed of himself, “and I think that my art is about him, even if it doesn’t depict him, or seem figurative…”, words that bring together in sharp focus all the apparently diverse strands of landscape and still-life, pagan and Christian themes, transcriptions of the Old Masters and re-workings of van Gogh that make up his apparently broad-ranging subject matter." Adams believed that: “The artist should be able to hold his head up in the presence of great priests and be able to say ‘I too have tried to make sense, to be helpful, to be necessary.’”

Finally, this quote from Norbert Lynton really sums up why I like Ken Kiff's work so much: "He was an extraordinary and lyrical colourist, a fine draughtsman and an inventive printmaker. The way he saw the world, its characters and situations, has much in common with the structures of myth and fairy tale. Through symbolic narrative he explored man’s condition, in imagery of great sympathy and subtlety." That, and he hails from Dagenham.

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Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel.

Binding all into one whole

"My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”

For John Reilly the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”.

Using lessons learnt from Orphism and Rayonism, Reilly constructs a pattern of rippling rays emanating from a central source of light. Within this structure he sets objects and figures composed of abstract shapes and colours that are indicative of their spiritual qualities. A picture may include, for example, a rock-like formation, an animal, a human figure and a plant shape held together, underpinned, in eternal circulation by the central point, which some may see as a pictorial device structuring a work of beauty and others as symbolic of God. In Universal Power - The Fourth Day of Creation we are shown a snapshot of creation, of the first reconciliation of shape and form. As Reilly's abstract shapes spiral out from the central point they coalesce into those same fundamental, elemental shapes of bird, plant and human life.

Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and life that God has created. His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.

A similar approach can be seen in the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Cecil Collins where movement, of brush stokes, line, dots, and dashes, indicate a sense of force that informs both the natural world and human beings. Van Gogh describes this as expressing "that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolise".

Such paintings recreate afresh, in modern styles, aspects of Celtic Christian thought. These artists have found a means of applying the Celtic image of the circle, with its message of a perfect wholeness, through modern fragmentary art techniques.

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Check out Iona's Treasure.

The Revelations of Divine Love

Just back from a conference at the St Gabriel's Conference Centre in Suffolk where the chapel contains a marvellous painting by the Australian artist, Alan Oldfield.

A reproduction of the painting The Revelations of Divine Love can be seen by clicking here. The painting is the largest of a series of paintings which are meditations on Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love and was purchased by the Friends of Julian following a exhibition of the series in Norwich Cathedral in 1988.

Oldfield, who was twice winner of Australia's Blake Prize for Religious Art, said that this painting was his way of paying back what he had learnt from Julian of Norwich. The painting can best be summarised as follows: "Through his Passion, Julian sees Christ's glory. It is his love for Creation which brings about the resurrection of a perfected mankind."

Painting like praying

The work of Albert Houthuesen will be on show in London as part of the 20/21 British Art Fair to be held at the Royal College of Art from 11 - 16 September.

Houthuesen is a little known and under valued artist but one who was a wonderfully expressive colourist. Among the works that will be on show in this exhibition are many of Houthuesen's sunsets and seascapes. These are simply saturated with intense colour, as sun or sea fill the artist's vision and the world of his canvas. Houthuesen said that:

"It is a wonderful thing when one is in full swing. The brush in your hand takes over and you don’t even know you’re painting. It’s like praying. Gradually I found that I prayed best when I didn’t know I was praying. And I prayed best of all when I was working, because then I didn’t even think about praying. Whilst you are drawing and painting, you really are on your knees. It is an adoration of the miracle of Nature and the very fact that you happen to be alive."

Towards the end of his life Houthuesen was filmed for a BBC documentary called Walk to the Moon. An extract from this documentary can be viewed on Google Video. In the film Albert's humanity and humour can clearly be seen in the face of great fraility through failing health.

Houthuesen, at the age of eight, witnessed the death of his artist-father at the hand of his mother. The following year, he moved with his family from Amsterdam to London. In the 1920’s, he studied with Moore, Hepworth, Burra and Ceri Richards at the Royal College of Art. National collections holding his work include Tate Britain, The British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Gallery of Wales, and The Ashmolean.

Richard Nathanson, a private Adviser in Impressionist & 20th Century Art and Houthuesen's biographer, will be exhibiting Houthuesen's work at the British Art Fair.