Guides to art, culture and faith

I was interested to discover that Paris has an excellent guide to the art in its churches produced by Art Culture et Foi Paris. In the guide Isabelle Renaud-Chamska says that the association seeks to positively value the artistic legacy of the past while also engaging with the contemporary art world:

"... the association aims to encourage and support all the cultural and artistic activities of the diocese of Paris.
Trusting in the capacity of the Church to carry on with the dialogue stated from the very beginning and never interrupted with living artists, it respectfully and admiringly welcomes the heritage of previous generations as testimonies of life and faith of their predecessors. With their own language, their works, which many are exceptional, say something particular at each era. This language has its roots in the Bible and the liturgy ...

Paying attention to the signs of the times and echoing the message of Pope John Paul II, the association wishes to be listening to the artists of today so as to discover the presence of the Spirit working in the world and be able to offer its contemporaries the faith in the living Christ."

Among the churches highlighted are Saint Esprit and Saint Léon. Saint Esprit has sometimes been "called the 'Sistine Chapel' of the thirties ... Roughly 40 artists participated in its decoration (frescoes, paintings, mosaics, sculptures, stained glass, wrought iron ...). Among them Maurice Denis, Georges Desvallières (Stations of the Cross), Untersteller, Sarrabezoles - famous artists of the inter-war period." At Saint Léon "the finest artists of the period were invited to create stained glass (Barillet), sculpture  (Bouchard), wrought ironwork (Raymond Subes) and mosaics, especially those inside (Labouret). The general effect is of a museum to inter-war Christian art."

The story of how some of this art came to be created is told at the Musée Départemental Maurice Denis which is dedicated to the life and work of Maurice Denis, the French symbolist painter and theoretician of the Nabi School. Denis rented the Le Prieure (the Priory), an old hospital in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he converted into his home and studio beginning to work there in 1910. He lived there until his death in 1943. The works from the Nabis school present in the Musée Départemental Maurice Denis include those of Paul Sérusier, Paul Ranson, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton, as well as sculptures by Paul Gauguin.

Together with Desvallieres, Denis founded Ateliers d’Art Sacre in 1919 to teach young artists to create works “that serve God, the teachings of the truth and the decoration of places of worship.” Denis, himself, made canvas paintings and wall murals for over 15 churches across France. He restored and decorated the adjacent chapel from 1915 to 1928 including the painting of a cycle of Stations of the Cross.

In the UK commission4mission has produced a similar guide for the Barking Episcopal Area and this in turn has inspired the Revd. David New to create a leaflet as a guide to stained glass windows created by Thomas Denny for churches in the Three-Choirs area (Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester Dioceses).  

David writes that: "Thomas Denny, born in London, trained in drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art. One day a friend asked him to consider creating a stained glass window for a church in Scotland (Killearn 1983). Thus began a remarkable career that has produced over 30 stained glass windows in Cathedrals and Churches of this country. Tom’s love for painting and drawing, especially the things of nature, is evident in his windows ... All of Tom’s windows express biblical themes and are conducive to silent meditation. Find a seat; feel the colours; give time for the details to emerge; reflect."

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Scott Walker - Montague Terrace In Blue.

Moreau, Rouault and Chagall in Paris

Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote that "Gustave Moreau is an extraordinary, unique artist ... a mystic, locked away in his Paris cell, where the buzz of contemporary life cannot reach him ... Lost in ecstasy, he sees splendid magical visions, the gory apotheoses of other ages."

The Paris cell about which Huysmans wrote is now the Gustave Moreau Museum after Moreau converted his family home into a museum for his work and left it to the State in his will. The Museum opened in 1903 with Moreau's pupil from the Fine Arts School, Georges Rouault, becoming its first curator.
Moreau was a great Symbolist, as Huysman's indicates, and does create wonderfully vivid and beautiful other worlds in his classical and mythic works. It is a moot point then as to what Rouault, the only one of his pupils (which also included Matisse, Marquet and other future Fauves) allowed into his studio during his lifetime, learnt from him. One of the great benefits of the Museum is that it shows the range of his work. His friend and follower George Desvallières described his first sight of Moreau's studio when an inventory was being made for the estate: "The large rooms that are now the museum were crammed with more than a hundred easels, covered with canvases; others were piled untidily about the room. They were feverish sketches, cold preparatory drawings, ornate details meticulously transferred onto delightful paintings, decorating forms jostled by the ardour of a brush stroke or plastered by a palette knife."

In the considerable variety of his work, Moreau was an early expressionist in his preparatory studies (in much the same way that Constable was essentially an early impressionist in his preparatory studies). Rouault, while much of his work developed in opposite directions to that of his teacher, undoubtedly drew on this aspect of Moreau's work in the Fauvist/Expressionist style which he developed.

Although Moreau is known primarily for his classical and historical work, again the Museum's collection shows us a broader picture, which includes many Biblical narratives. Moreau, together with Huysmans, Rouault, Desvallières and others, then needing to be seen in the context of the French Catholic Revival.
Fauvism begins the survey of Modern Art able to be viewed at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris where currently one of Rouault's images of an accused man questions the judgements routinely made in court and where an image of Pierrot suggests that it is in the nature of humanity to wear a mask and play a part. Rouault's compassionate social comment was continued in the Misererie series of mixed-media intaglio prints, a selection of which are on permanent display in a side chapel at Saint Severin Paris (where abstract stained glass by Jean Bazaine can also be seen). 

It has been argued that "Rouault’s representation of the human condition" is as a “human comedy” "marked by uncertainty and misapprehension" where "outward appearances misrepresent and betray deeper realities." The "act of judgment is central in Rouault’s work": "'Who among us does not wear a mask?' he famously asks in one image reproduced several times. 'Are we not slaves ... believing ourselves to be kings?' he asks in another." "Such dark reflections are redeemed for Rouault by the human masque’s qualifier—“mystic”—which points to the centrality of Christian iconography for the artist ... Rouault’s human comedy is simultaneously a divine comedy."

Also frequently comedic while drawing simultaneously on darker strands of human behaviour is the work of Marc Chagall which can also be found at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris as well as the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme. The collection at the latter highlights "the Jewish cultural renaissance in Germany and Russia and also looks at the contribution of Jewish artists, including Chagall, to the art of the early 20th century by painters of the School of Paris: Lipchitz, Soutine, Marcoussis, Krémègne, Kikoïne, Pascin, Chana Orloff, Kisling, Modigliani, etc. By the diversity of their individual artistic development and above all through their confrontation with modernity, this collection suggests that these artists exemplify the transition towards a new, no longer exclusively religious Jewish identity."

"The Jewish artists of the School of Paris came from various backgrounds, rich and poor, orthodox and liberal. They varied in artistic style, and, with the exception of Marc Chagall and Mané-Katz, didn’t paint Jewish themes. But modernist influences did not negate their personal heritage. Most thought of themselves as both artists and Jews. They met at cafés and in studios. A great camaraderie grew among these artists and the vibrant group of poets, critics, dealers, and collectors who converged in Montparnasse.

Chagall explained why he came to Paris: "I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard of from so far away: this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colors, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in a flow of conceived lines. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only on Paris.""
On this trip to Paris, in between the usual sightseeing, I aimed to see artworks that I had not previously seen and, in addition to the Moreau's, Rouault's and Chagall's, particularly enjoyed the radiant Bonnards, vivacious Delaunays, and striking Buffets at the Musee de Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris plus works by Maurycy Gottlieb, and Lesser Ury at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, the abstract stained glass windows by Jean Bazaine at Saint Severin and the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation by Georges-Henri Pingusson on Île de la Cité.

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Francis Poulenc - Suite Francais.

Parisienne scenes

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The Style Council - Paris Match.

Windows on the world (199)

Ilford, 2012

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Tom Waits - Jersey Girl.

Born again: material and spiritual

Here’s a poem about our first birth:

These are your first lessons in living.

To begin we drag you head-first from your shelter,

away from your food, from your warmth.

We cut you apart from your only known friend.

We take you and beat you until strange gases

rush your lungs and pain jerks your frame.

These are your first lessons in living.

They will stand you in good stead. (Steve Turner)

In this poem life is portrayed as something hard and painful. It says that we are being born into a world where, if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will dragged from everything we enjoy and beaten up. And it says that our first lessons in living when we emerge from our mother’s womb, the placenta is cut and the nurse strikes us on the back to get us breathing are important lessons for us in survival. The lesson to learn is that in a world like this we need to put ourselves first, we need to look after No. 1, otherwise someone else will take what we have and hurt us in the process. It is what scientists describe when they talk about us having selfish genes which get us ready to live in a world that is about the survival of the fittest.

Jesus said to Nicodemus that no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3. 1 - 17). He went on to explain that a person is first born physically of human parents. In our physical, material existence we do not have to believe in God. We have a genuine choice, we can grow up choosing to believe only in the material world around us and in our own powers or we can encounter God and grow in relationship with him. The world in which we live can point us to God but it does not provide us with absolute proof of his existence. Therefore, we are free to choose.

Samuel Beckett’s great play, Waiting for Godot, features two tramps who spend the whole play doing nothing except waiting for Godot, who of course never arrives. For Beckett, to wait for Godot is the equivalent of believing in God, both are a waste of time. So Beckett in his plays is describing a world without God and what an unremittingly harsh and despairing place it is. In another of his plays, Endgame, two of his characters spend the whole play living in rubbish bins and the last speech in the play sums up Beckett’s sense of what a world without God is like in these words: “all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all.” Life without God is the equivalent of living in a rubbish bin or of spending everyday pointlessly waiting for someone who does not arrive.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that: “Only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.” Russell, like Beckett, is saying that life without God is despair. If we are here by accident, if we are shortly going to die without there being an afterlife and if whatever we achieve in our short life will also be destroyed soon after our death, then a life without God offers us no hope just unyielding despair.

So, for us to believe in God, to believe that both the material and the spiritual exist and are intertwined, involves us in coming alive to the spiritual. It therefore involves a second birth, an awakening to the reality of the spiritual as well as to the reality of the physical. The physical things around us are easy to believe in because we can see and touch them. The spiritual, though, is like the wind - it can’t be seen, although it can be experienced and felt. It is not immediately apparent in the way that physical realities are and so we have a free choice about whether or not we respond to the signs of the Spirit in our world and when we do we are coming alive, being born again, to the spiritual in our world.

Here are some of the things in my life that have made me come alive to the spiritual:

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,

I come alive.

When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,

I come alive.

When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,

I come alive.

When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,

I come alive.

When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,

I come alive.

When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,

I come alive.

When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,

I come alive.

When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,

I come alive.

I come alive to endurance

when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.

I come alive to pain

when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.

I come alive to patience

when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.

I come alive to injustice

when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.

I come alive to suffering

when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.

I come alive to grief

when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive

when I am touched and see and hear

the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.

The mystery or madness

of the Other in which God

meets and greets me

and calls forth the response

that is love.

I wonder what it is that makes you come alive to the spiritual in life. Jesus came into our world to bring us to life; to wake us up from the despair of living only in the physical and material. He does this, firstly by showing us what life is like when it is lived as God intended and secondly, by the threatened response that we as human beings make to him. To see someone genuinely living by the Spirit is scary, it turns our understanding of life upside down. We often respond to people who live life differently to us by attacking them and that is what we did with Jesus. We focused on the physical, we nailed his hands and feet to a cross of wood. We thought that by killing him physically we were doing away with the threat he posed to our material way of life.

But God is greater than our materialism and he loves us too much for that to be the end and so he raised his Son from death that we might be saved from material existence and come alive to the Spirit of God himself.

We have a choice - the unyielding despair of a rubbish bin existence or the freedom of life in the Spirit. Which will it be for you? Have you come alive to the spiritual in life? And, if you have, have you gone on coming alive to the spiritual on a day by day basis by looking out for all that God’s Spirit is doing in our world and getting involved?

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David Grant - Life.

Jubilee reflections (3)

Queen Elizabeth ll has reigned over the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth countries for 60 years. 2012 and the Diamond Jubilee brings about many opportunities to celebrate, focus and give thanks for her faithful, gracious and devoted service to the nations.

The origin of royal jubilees goes back thousands of years, with the first historical records of a Royal Jubilee taking place 3000 years before Christ in Egypt. The early Pharaohs of Egypt held national celebrations every 30 years of rulership.

Jubilee is also a constant theme throughout the Bible. The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty through- out the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The year of jubilee was also central to the ministry of Jesus. After Jesus had been baptised by John and the Holy Spirit sent him into the desert to be tempted by the devil; Jesus called his first disciples to follow him. His teaching had begun. He went into the synagogue and amazed the people with his teaching, because he taught with such authority yet didn’t have the royal robes, orbs or jewels which granted authority from Kings and Queens, the rulers of the day. No other power or authority can compete with his power and authority.

The people had never heard anything like this before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2. Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19 TNIV). This is the year of jubilee and this is THE example for all leader's to follow.

So, as the Churches Together in England President’s have said, “There can be no better way for the Christian Churches to celebrate the Jubilee than to take the opportunity to dedicate themselves anew to the service of God, and to seek the common good through love for their neighbours near and far.”

The Queen’s personal commitment to her role as monarch, and her service to the people of the United Kingdom, are grounded in a deep faith in Jesus Christ which is an inspiration to countless citizens of nation and Commonwealth. She has said that, for her, “the teachings of Christ” and her “own personal accountability before God provide a framework” in which she tries to lead her life. (Queen and Country BBC1 08.05.02)

Her coronation also made it clear that, as Queen, her first responsibility is to God. In the coronation service she was set apart or consecrated by an Act of Anointing with the words ‘as kings, priests and prophets were anointed’. This is based on the scriptural account of Samuel anointing Saul king in 1 Samuel 10v1, 24, 11v14.

Anointing in the Old Testament was always for a specific person and for a particular role e.g. Prophets (1 Kings 19:16), Priests (Exodus 40:13) or Kings (1 Samuel 16:13). As with the Queen, ordinary people were anointed for extra-ordinary service.

This Old Testament principle flowed into the New Testament, where an anointing for service was extended to all of Jesus’ followers. Joel’s prophecy (Joel 2) was fulfilled in Acts. God’s anointing – the Holy Spirit – falls on every generation, young and old, sons and daughters… so ordinary people such as you and I can have the Holy Spirit at work in our lives to give us the power to serve in today’s world.

In Acts 1:8 Jesus explains what it means to be anointed to serve: the power of the Holy Spirit has been given to us to enable us to fulfil Jesus’ ministry to the ends of the earth. As Christians, we have received the Holy Spirit so that we can live in the power of the Holy Spirit: righteousness, joy, peace and hope for our broken world all overflow from this anointing (Romans 14:17 and 15:13).

So, to receive the anointing, by faith we need to acknowledge the sacrifice Jesus has made on the cross for our sins. We then have the privilege of the indwelling Holy Spirit enabling us to live out Jesus’ ministry in Christian service.

In conclusion, and in application, we need to understand that we are ordinary people but have been anointed for an extra-ordinary ministry that we receive by faith, in simple trust. As a result we know the joy, power and presence of the Holy Spirit overflowing from our lives.

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is a great moment in the life of this country. We celebrate together the life of someone who is clearly very special. She has a special job, is given special powers and has special tools and clothes. Looking at the old film footage of the coronation, I can’t begin to imagine how she must have felt – it was almost as if she was the most important person in the world. But as a Christian I am reminded that this is exactly how God feels about each one of us. I believe that God has made each one of us and that we each have a unique part to play in our community. We all have gifts and talents that can make a difference to those around us. We are valued equally because we are loved equally – I know that because I believe that Jesus came to show that through his life, death and resurrection.

So when you leave this church this morning remember you leave as Kings and Queens, truly special people with a special job to do.

Our special job is to be the servant of others just as Jesus has been servant to us. That is actually also the job of the Queen, she is to be the servant of the people. The new Queen, as Princess Elizabeth, in her 21st birthday broadcast from Capetown, on April 21, 1947, gave this message to the Empire:

“There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors – a noble motto, ‘I serve.’

Those words were an inspiration to many bygone heirs to the throne.

I can make my solemn act of dedication with a whole Empire listening. I should like to make that dedication now; it is very simple.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family, to which we all belong, but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given.

God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.”

Again we are brought back to the words of the CTE President’s, “There can be no better way for the Christian Churches to celebrate the Jubilee than to take the opportunity to dedicate themselves anew to the service of God, and to seek the common good through love for their neighbours near and far.”
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Delirious? - Majesty.

Jubilee reflections (2)

Photos from today's Jubilee garden party at St John's Seven Kings.

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George Harrison - All Things Must Pass.