The Cross on Victoria Street – Good Friday Walk of Witness

It was a pleasure to represent Churches Together in Westminster today for The Cross on Victoria Street – Good Friday Walk of Witness. The walk went from Methodist Central Hall Westminster to Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, with the Cross carried by people from The Passage and accompanied by the CEO, Mick Clarke

Reflections were given by The Venerable David Stanton, The Rt Rev John Wilson, Rev Preb Rose Hudson-Wilkin. The Rt Rev John Wilson shared two images. The first being the shimmering cross in the devastation of Notre-Dame; an image of God's love seen in the suffering of the Cross. The second being the sun glinting on an unopened tin of sardines given to torment Magda Elefant in Auschwitz which led to her rescue by the Allies; the instrument of torment become the means of salvation. Rev Preb Rose Hudson-Wilkin said, 'Today must not be a 'Holy Huddle. If the cross is going to make any sense then we must witness to what the cross is about.'

This Walk of Witness is held in association with The Passage, Churches Together in Westminster, and the Ecumenical Society of The Blessed Virgin Mary.

See photographs here and here.

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Graham Kendrick - The Servant King.

London Lumiere 2018 and churches

London Lumiere 2018 launches on the evening of Thursday 18 January and runs over four nights through to Sunday 21 January.

Lumiere first came to central London in January 2016 and wowed visitors with light installations placed across the city centre. This year the show is even bigger with installations on the Southbank and at Waterloo, Westminster, Mayfair, The West End and Kings Cross. Visitor numbers are expected to reach over 2m. The works are illuminated from 17.30 – 22.30 each night.

St Martin-in-the-Fields will be hosting Echelle, by Ron Haselden – a neon pink illuminated ladder that will be attached to the spire. Dreamlike, it will disappear into the ether above like a glowing stairway to heaven. Haselden (France/UK) is an international artist working with light, electronics, sound, film and other materials. He lives and works in London and in Plouër-sur-Rance, France. The work was originally commissioned for the Salisbury Festival in 2000. The Café in the Courtyard will open from 17.00 – 21.00 Thurs – Sat and from 16.00 – 19.00 on Sunday and will be serving homemade soup, paninis, hot drinks, snacks and licensed refreshments. 

Experience a soothing meditation connecting colour, sound, light and texture through UK artist Chris Plant’s Harmonic Portal. In this new work at St James Piccadilly, Plant seeks to piece together our fragmented world. The soundtrack is derived from the frequencies of red, green, and blue light, creating a synesthetic colour organ that explores and magnifies both the inside and the outside of the frame. https://www.instagram.com/harmonicportal/.

See Tracy Emin’s neon work Be Faithful to Your Dreams, in St James’s Churchyard during Lumiere London 2018. London-born Emin is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Since the early 1990s, she has used her own life as inspiration for her art, exposing the most harrowing and intimate details of her personal history through needlework, sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, and of course neon.

Emin (UK) uses neon to illuminate emotions, memories, feelings and ideas in graphic messages, sentences and poems. Translating handwriting and drawings into blown and bent neon tubing presents technical challenges, and the choice of words or images is crucial. As the artists notes: “Neon is light, so, can you live with this thing glowing and the chemicals moving all the time?”

Experience moving tales through My Light is Your Light, a tribute from artist Alaa Minawi (Palestine/Lebanon) to Syrian refugees, in St James’s Churchyard (viewed from Church Place).

This installation pays tribute to Syrian refugees and the terrible conditions they have experienced in their migrations across the world. The work was realised after Alaa Minawi worked for three years as an interpreter for Syrian, Iraqi, Sudanese and Somali refugees. Also see Suspended, an installation artwork by Arabella Dorman inside St James's Church Piccadilly.

He interpreted the final interviews that took place between the refugees and a DHS (Department of Homeland and Security) officer within which they received their final resettlement decisions. In these interviews, the refugees tell their traumatic stories, what they have been through and the reasons behind their displacement. Minawi interpreted interviews for more than 1,000 families and felt the need to express what he had heard. These stories are now embodied in art, the fragile outlines of a family glowing in the darkness.

Minawi says: “I would like people to know that these are not refugees. As an artist, it is important to highlight the fact that we need to view them as people who were forced to leave their homes. That is a much more powerful approach…. We have to go to the real meaning of the word 'refugee' without the fears that are currently stigmatising it.”

See French digital artist Patrice Warrener’s magnificent The Light of the Spirit (Chapter 2), at Westminster Abbey. Warrerner created one of the most popular installations during Lumiere London 2016; and for the second instalment, in 2018, he brings the facade of the abbey’s Great West Gate to life by incorporating sculptural details in his distinctive colourful style.

Bathing Westminster Abbey in colour and light, the projection highlights the architectural mastery of the building, enabling us to witness the glorious statuettes of 20th-century martyrs reimagined. Usually perched unobtrusively on the facade above the Great West Doors, the figures are once again transformed into kaleidoscopic illuminations, a tribute to their lives in technicolour.

Warrener is recognised worldwide for his chromolithe projection system. His polychromatic illuminations on buildings give the impression of a spectacularly bright painted surface. He has designed more than 80 astounding creations and continues to share this unique art form across the globe.

Discover how simple technology is changing thousands of lives across the world with The Rose at Westminster Cathedral. Lumiere London celebrates light in all its forms but for many people access to light is a luxury, and Mick Stephenson's installation with Electric Pedals (UK) highlights how communities can be transformed by light.

A rose window with a difference, this work is made from thousands of recycled plastic bottles transformed into beautiful illuminated art. In another twist, The Rose is powered by bicycles pedalled by members of the public. Join in and work off those Christmas calories!

Artist Stephenson explores issues relating to poverty, sustainability and climate change in his works. Filled with bottles designed during workshops with local school children, The Rose asks us to acknowledge the growing need for alternative technologies to support our everyday lives.

Stephenson’s Litre of Light installation for Lumiere London 2016 attracted thousands to Central Saint Martins. He also created installations for Lumiere Durham in 2015, 2013 and 2011.

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Larry Norman - Shine A Light.

Gill & Manzu at Westminster Cathedral

Eric Gill's Station IV, 1915, at Westminster Cathedral is part of Stations of the Cross 2016:

"Gill’s Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral came at a pivotal time in his spiritual and artistic life. He began work on them just a year after converting from Anglicanism to Catholicism, and they represent one of his first major commissions. As he often did, Gill used himself and those around him as models, representing himself as both Christ and soldier, and using his wife’s hands for Mary. There is little tenderness in this encounter between mother and son. It is as if Jesus has already transcended the earthly plane. He raises his hand in dispassionate benediction, pronouncing in Latin, ‘blessed art thou among women.’ For Gill, who once declared ‘there can be no mysticism without asceticism,’ such reserve increased religious devotion. He also intended his Stations as a support to the downtrodden, as he emphasized in his book of meditations, Social Justice and the Stations of the Cross."

Westminster Cathedral also has a bronze wall panel by Giacomo Manzu, about whose work I have written recently - see here and here. Patrick Rogers writes: "In response to the invitation by the Westminster Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee to Giacomo Manzu that he should produce a low relief bronze wall panel showing St Thérèse of Lisieux for the Cathedral, Manzu submitted a sketch in 1956. This was immediately approved and the commission awarded. Manzu then proceeded to design and produce the bronze in Italy with casting taking place in Milan. The cost was £680, which was defrayed by Miss Janet Howard as a memorial to her sister, Alice Lawrason Howard. Giacomo Manzu, regarded as among Italy’s greatest modern sculptors, died in 1991. We are indeed fortunate to have one of his most sensitive works in Westminster Cathedral."

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Emmylou Harris - Sweet Old World.

Reviews - Giacomo Manzù: Sculptor and Draughtsman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stations of the Cross: Epstein & Gill

Station ​Six, Veronica wipes the face of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross 2016 exhibition is Jacob Epstein's Madonna and Child, 1950-52 at Cavendish Square. This seems an odd choice as this is not a sculpture of Veronica or her veil. However, as my final photograph above show Christ's face is seen against fabric (which does, therefore, imply an equation of sorts to the image of Christ on Veronica's veil).   

The website description for this Station runs as follows: "According to legend, Veronica knelt beside Jesus as he struggled with the cross. After wiping the blood, sweat, and grime from his face her cloth bore the miraculous imprint of Jesus’ face. While Veronica isn’t pictured, Epstein’s Madonna and Child looks unblinkingly towards the events of the Passion. Jesus’ outstretched arms form a cross, while the fabric which surrounds him suggests Veronica’s Sudarium. The garments of the two figures stretch across their bodies like bandages. Maybe it is up to the viewer to play the role of Veronica, lifting a cloth to tend to mother and son. Perhaps Epstein was inspired by the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, for whom he created this sculpture; or maybe the Royal College of Nursing, which sits at the corner of Cavendish square. He didn’t need to look far to find examples of women prepared to come to the aid of the wounded."

When visiting this Station, it is only a short detour to Broadcasting House with its sculptures by Eric Gill and to RIBA and its Architecture Gallery where the current exhibition has significant death and resurrection resonances being entitled Creation from Catastrophe. One of Gill's Stations of the Cross panels at Westminster Cathedral is included in Stations of the Cross 2016.

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Julie Miller - How Could You Say No?

Madonnas and Mad Hatters

'Madonnas and Mad Hatters', an exhibition of sculpture by Peter Eugene Ball, will be in Christ Church Cathedral Oxford from 6 to 24 September 2015.

'Ball's first religious piece, a simple crucifix, was bought in 1974 by a priest at Westminster Cathedral and four years later he obtained his very first church commission: a memorial crucifix at Preston-on-Stour in Warwickshire. However, it wasn’t until 1986, when Birmingham Cathedral commissioned a crucifix and altar pieces, that regular church work became an integral part of his life and over the next few years he began to place major pieces in some of the country’s great cathedrals as well as smaller figures in various parish churches. During this time he continued to exhibit and sell his sculpture, both religious and secular, in galleries and at exhibitions across the UK, Europe and America.

To date Peter’s sculpture has appeared in over 40 exhibitions and he now produces a major one-man show once every two years, which usually takes place in a cathedral setting and brings together some of his transcendent religious figures along with quirky, often witty secular pieces, both of which define his work.

His career now spans more than 50 years and Peter currently has over seventy major works in churches and cathedrals throughout the UK – almost certainly more than any other living artist. He lives in Newark in Nottinghamshire with his wife, Jane, where he works from his garden studio and continues to undertake regular commissions, both religious and secular.'

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Choir of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford - Nearer My God To Thee.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: St Matthew's Northampton

Arriving at St Matthew's Northampton is to arrive at the birthplace for the revival of contemporary art commissions in the UK.

The church is a large late Victorian gothic building built in 1893 for an affluent part of the town. Walter Hussey, the second Vicar of St Matthew's and son of the first, commissioned a Madonna and Child by Henry Moore in 1943 which began a revolution by reviving the tradition of the Church as patron of the visual arts and doing so with modern artists.

Prior to this commission, the primary use of a contemporary artist by the Church had been the surprising choice of Eric Gill as sculptor for the Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral in 1913. As Gill's restrained and elegant Stations were criticised for being 'grotesque and undevotional', 'cold as the mind that produced them' and hideous, primitive and pagan, it is no surprise to find the commissioning of Moore thirty years later was similarly controversial. Negative comment included, ‘the Madonna has elephantiasis’, ‘she would make a good doorstop’ and ‘why is she wearing jackboots?’ That gap in time between the commissioning of one major contemporary artist by the Church and another, appears symptomatic of the disconnect that was felt at the time between the Church, the public, and the modern art avant-garde.

Figurative representation had been the main mode of art utilised by the Church in the West with the direction of travel having been towards mimetic representation and, in Britain in the Victorian period, towards a sentimentality within figurative representation. By comparison, modern art was red-raw expressive and entirely unconcerned with mimesis in its figuration, before then taking a significant turn in the direction of the abstract with the loss of the figure altogether. For all these reasons and more, many in Britain thought modern art unsuitable for churches, while some in the avant-garde saw modern art as a final decisive break with the patronage of the Church.

What Hussey did in a parish church in Northampton was therefore genuinely revolutionary for the Church in Britain and, as we have seen, attracted criticism. The work of Moore continued to attract criticism in a church context with his altar at St Stephen Walbrook, measuring 8ft across and weighing several tons, resulting in a court case as a result of objections which was eventually resolved by going to the highest ecclesiastical court of the land, the Court of Ecclesiastical Cases Reserved, where the judges ruled that the Moore altar was acceptable as an altar for the Church of England. Many of the key commissions of contemporary art in the Church of England - such as those at St Michael and All Angels Berwick and All Saints’ Tudeley - have faced some sort of challenge through the Diocesan Advisory Committee system. Hussey seems to have been particularly adept at guiding his commissions through these processes.

He added a further controversial commission in 1946 with Graham Sutherland's Crucifixion. Subsequently, a third commission has been added, Malcolm Pollard's Risen Christ completing the narrative of Christ's birth and death with his resurrection. It is this image which is first apparent on entering the church. The earlier commissions are hidden from view in the two transepts. The hanging of a Risen Christ or Christ in Glory above or from the chancel arch has become fashionable in church commissioned, with Peter Eugene Ball becoming a particular exponent of this image. Pollard's jetulong wood figure with its raised arms relates visually and theologically to the pre-existing Victorian ironwork cross which remains in place behind it.

Kenneth Clark spoke at the unveiling in 1961 of Graham Sutherland's Noli Me Tangere, another Hussey commission, this time at Chichester Cathedral, and reflected on the situation when Hussey first began to commission contemporary artists: ‘... when in 1944, a small body of artists and amateurs made a bomb-stricken journey to Northampton for the unveiling of Henry Moore's Virgin and Child, Canon Hussey had lit a candle, which is still very far from being a blaze ... The artists commissioned by Canon Hussey were ... little known outside the company of those directly interested in art. I think that even then collectors - both private and public - were shy of their work, and to put it in a church was a wonderful act of vision, courage and persuasive skill.’

It is fascinating to reflect that Moore and Sutherland were little known outside the company of those directly interested in art at the time they were commissioned by Hussey. In view of Sutherland’s landscape-based work Hussey suggested The Agony in the Garden as the subject of the work but Sutherland requested that instead he paint a crucifixion.

While this suggests a need on Sutherland’s part to move beyond the restrictions of his landscape-based reputation, it was nevertheless in landscape that he initially found inspiration for the form of his Crucifixion. Sutherland wrote, in an article for The Listener: ‘I started to notice thorn bushes, and the structure of thorns as they pierced the air. I made some drawings, and as I made them, a curious change developed. As the thorns rearranged themselves, they became whilst still retaining their own pricking space encompassing life, something else – a kind of stand-in for a Crucifixion and a crucified head.’

Sutherland combined this exploration with images of tortured bodies photographed in Nazi concentration camps which ‘looked like figures deposed from crosses’ and with the crucifixions painted by Matthais Grünewald.

Revd. Tom Devonshire Jones has described well the resulting work in Images of Christ: ‘All the elements worked out in the studies are present: the freely interpreted crown of thorns and the debilitated legs from the Concentration Camp photographs. But the real suffering is in the arms and hands. The fingers curl up in agony. The taut arms pull the ribcage away from the rest of the body, as if a dead stag was being torn apart. In this painting Christ is still in the process of dying. Herein lies its original and frightening power.’

The painting shows a bloody and haggard Christ whose body bears witness to the ‘continuing beastliness and cruelty of mankind.’ The expressionist forms and colours essential to the depiction of the agonized death inherent in crucifixion and to its representation as an icon of all who suffer through the inhumanity of human beings one to another, mean that it continues to retain its original and frightening power.

On arrival at St Matthew’s I was made very welcome by the two ladies on duty that Saturday, one of whom later confided that, ‘The Sutherland frightens me because it shows the anguish that Christ must have felt. Also the pain that Sutherland experienced going through the Second World War.’ This lady also shared that she sits where she can look through the first arch at a Crucifixion in stained glass so that when she loses focus in the service she looks up there and finds that it always brings her back to life. It is of interest that it is the less agonized image of the Crucifixion that has this effect for her.

Hussey, as noted in his Pallant House biography, “was responsible for commissioning some iconic works of twentieth century music and visual art, first as Vicar of St Matthew's Church Northampton and subsequently as Dean of Chichester Cathedral, from likes of William Albright, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and William Walton”:

“It was while he was Vicar of St Matthew's that Hussey decided to celebrate the church's 50th anniversary by organising a musical concert. Seizing the opportunity given by CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts), the forerunner of the Arts Council, he invited the BBC Symphony Orchestra to play and commissioned 'Rejoice in the Lamb' from Benjamin Britten. Despite a great many obstacles and in the face of reactionary opposition his tenacity of vision enabled him to get his way. He went on to organise a concert by the great soprano Kirsten Flagsted, and commission Henry Moore's 'Madonna and Child' sculpture, which was unveiled in February 1944, a 'Litany and Anthem for St Matthew's Day' from W.H. Auden in 1945, Graham Sutherland's 'Crucifixion' in 1947 and in 1949 'The Outer Planet' from the poet Norman Nicholson.”

“He then became Dean of Chichester Cathedral, an appointment that may well have been influenced by the fact that the Bishop, Dr George Bell, was also a great patron of the arts, and obviously made the appointment with a view to preserving the artistic continuity. Bishop Bell retired in 1958, but Hussey remained as Dean until his retirement in 1977.”

Hussey was guided by the principle that, ‘Whenever anything new was required in the first seven hundred years of the history of the cathedral, it was put in the contemporary style.’ For his commissions at St Matthews and Chichester Cathedral, Kenneth Clark memorably described him as 'the last great patron of art in the Church of England.'

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Benjamin Britten - Rejoice In The Lamb.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Westminster Cathedral

Westminster Cathedral is modelled on Byzantine styles and was intended to be filled with mosaic and marble. However when John Bentley, the Cathedral's architect, died in 1902 he left no finished mosaics and very little in the way of drawings or designs. The time since has been a voyage of discovery for the Cathedral staff with false starts, controversies and solid achievements along the way.

Commissioning on any scale involves risk, as the commissioner is negotiating  a combination of individual inspiration, church tradition, personal taste, and current fashions. To commission on the scale of a Cathedral and over considerable time with significant financial constraints is no mean undertaking. As with Antonio Guadi's Sagrada Familia, the scale of ambition here is such that the task is never fully complete.

The style and feel of Westminster Cathedral is the reverse of of the open, light expanses found in many Cathedrals - the contrast in my mind on this visit was with St Paul's which I had revisited earlier in the day. Despite its size and scale there is a sense at Westminster Cathedral of being in a subterranean, cavernous expanse; a dark catacomb like space which in some areas seems to absorb the glitter of the gold mosaics into itself while, in others, darkness provides focus to what is central to the life of this place - the sanctuaries and the Eucharist.

The decision to use mosaic as the principal form raised a debate between the arts and the crafts; what is the appropriate balance between technique and inspiration? The history of the mosaics here includes work which is traditional but high quality as well as work which was artistically interesting but was judged inadequate technically and was eventually removed. Use has been made of artists, most recently  Leonard McComb RA and Tom Phillips RA, as well as mosaicists like Boris Anrep who have created work with an artistic sensibility.

Other media do also feature, including painting and sculpture, and it is here that some of those who played a prominent role in the revival of religious art during the twentieth century can be found - Roy de Maistre, Eric Gill and Giacomo Manzù. De Maistre painted Stations of the Cross and a Crucifixion displayed in areas of the Cathedral to which the public do not have access. The altarpiece in St George's Chapel is by Eric Gill, as are the Stations of the Cross in the main body of the Cathedral. A bronze by Manzù can be found in the North Transpet and is of St Theresa.

A continuing source of controversy has come not so much with the mosaics but with the Stations of the Cross and their creator, Eric Gill. Gill was a controversial choice for Cathedral authorities as he was then a radical young sculptor who, together with Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, was among the first to create modern art in Britain. In additional to his emerging and radical reputation, Gill was a very new convert to Catholicism. Although the initiator of the original approach to Gill, the architect at the time, John Marshall thought that the initial Stations produced by Gill showed that his style was 'neither suitable for the peculiar light of the Cathedral nor the Catholic public.' These Stations were variously described as 'grotesque and undevotional', as 'cold as the mind that produced them' and as hideous, primitive and pagan. To these letter writers Gill was, like Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska, a 'wild thing' (as was suggested by a relatively recent exhibition at the Royal Academy on the three sculptors).

Yet despite these factors which seem to have made him a surprising choice, Gill's designs for these Stations, which were directly carved in low relief in Hopton Wood limestone, are seen today as respectful and restrained. Other letter writers at the time argued that they should be seen as 'dignified in conception, superb in outline and restrained in feeling' and as showing 'admirable breadth and simplicity of design.' Fortunately, as Gill wrote, 'there were sufficient people to tell (Cardinal Bourne) the things were good to outweigh those who said they were bad.'


In more recent years a different controversy has developed around these Stations,one which has nothing to do with the Stations themselves but everything to do with the man who made them. His biographer, Fiona McCarthy notes that Gill accused Epstein of being "quite mad on sex" and comments that, if so, Gill himself was even madder, "taking to stone carving as the medium for expressing his most secret thoughts and longings." His sexual proclivities included incest and paedophilia and, within our own day and time, would surely have seen him behind bars. As a result, there have been public protests at the Cathedral from those who argue that Gill is an inappropriate role model for Catholics and that the continued showing of his Stations in the Cathedral is a source of distress to victims of sexual abuse.

This controversy over these Stations, unanticipated by those who commissioned them, raises the issue of the extent to which art, once created, exists independently of the artist. The argument that the artwork should be understood in its own right and as its own entity has been a significant strand within modern art criticism. It has been used to defend the continued use of the Stations at the Cathedral - i.e. that the Stations themselves contain no hint of Gill's sexual preferences or appetites and, as artworks, are now something separate from him - while also being used to generally disparage art commissioned by the Church, as art which conforms to a message in contrast to art which is its own entity.  


For me, this is an argument built on the individualism of modernism which ignores the relational insights of post-modernity. Identity is found and formed in relationship - no one and no artwork is an island entire unto itself - and so the uniqueness of an individual artwork is formed in part by the ideas and practices of the artist, the context in which it was created and the developing viewer reaction and response to it. None of these by themselves, however, form the whole that is the artwork and, for that reason, Gill's sexual appetites should not become the primary lens through which these Stations are viewed while, inevitably, being part of the picture.

All artworks, as post-modern thought has demonstrated, are part of, or become part of, multiple layers of meaning. The controversies over Gill's Stations are now a part of what they are. Yet looking at these Stations now, without this background, one would be hard pressed to identify them as a source of controversy. Those letter writers who saw these Stations as 'dignified in conception, superb in outline and restrained in feeling' and as showing 'admirable breadth and simplicity of design' would seem to have been discerning viewers.

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Gene Clark - Life's Greatest Fool.

Views of London from Westminster Cathedral's Tower

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Blur - London Loves.