Between

Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Artlyst: My Art Diary And Other Thoughts February 2022

My latest article for Artlyst is my diary piece for February with exhibitions involving Rachel Feinstein, Lakwena Maciver and Susan Rothenberg:

"Living through the pandemic and re-reading an article from 2003 by Steven Vincent on her Crucifixion sculpture, fashioned as a response to 9/11, made Rachel Feinstein want to use religious iconography in her work again. The result is Mirror, her current art exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery.

Vincent’s article is entitled ‘The Plywood Intercessor’ and toys with the possibility that Feinstein’s Crucifixion ‘can be understood as apotropaic-or an object that petitions a divine agency to put demons to flight and defend the believer from harm.’

For Mirror Feinstein has taken images by Tilman Riemenschneider and Gregor Erhart that represent Christ, the apostles, saints, and Mary Magdalene as symbols of compassion, suffering, and love, and reproduced these with oil on mirrored glass as historical and religious symbols embodying worldwide anxieties of the unknown during the time of COVID. The unpainted passages within these pieces – eyes and edges – enable the viewers to see themselves in or alongside the Biblical characters, an act of identification or empathy. Feinstein says she has found ‘inspiration and energy from drawing these universal images.’"

For more on Lakwena Maciver, see my Artlyst interview here, a visual meditation here, and an article about emerging religious artists here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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Gram Parsons - In My Hour Of Darkness.

Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1940s

This is Part 6 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s.

From 1940-42, T.S. Eliot publishes Four Quartets. He is awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948.
W.H. Auden returns to the Anglican Church in 1940 after seven years of thought about the moral content of Christianity, about what it means to love—or not to love—one's neighbour as oneself.
In 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born To Be King is broadcast on the BBC. The Mind of the Maker, which explores the analogy between a human creator and the doctrine of the Trinity in creation, is published.
Murals are commissioned in 1941 from Duncan Grant, Vanessa and Quentin Bell for St Michael & All Angels Berwick representing a fulfilment of George Bell’s vision to be a catalyst for promoting the relationship between the Arts and the Church.
In 1941, Sándor Nagy completes frescos in Pesterzsébet St. Elisabeth Church.
Dominique and John de Menil meet regularly with Marie-Alain Couturier in New York from 1941 until his return to France after the War.
Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) is first performed in January 1941 to an audience of prisoners and prison guards, with the composer playing a poorly maintained upright piano in freezing conditions. The title's "end of time" alludes to the Apocalypse.
Simone Weil writes her Letter to a Religious to Marie-Alain Couturier at the suggestion of Jacques Maritain in 1942 when both Weil and Couturier are in the United States.
In 1943, David Gascoyne publishes Poems 1937-1942 with illustrations by Graham Sutherland. In these mystical poems Gascoyne writes as an agonized Christian seeker desperate for a transcendent realm beyond the mortal world. Sutherland and Francis Bacon, friends at that time, work on crucifixion-inspired images which drew on photos of the recently liberated Nazi death camps and took inspiration from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Picasso’s crucifixion drawings. Sutherland paints a Crucifixion for St Matthew’s Northampton (1946) and Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944).
In 1943, José Clemente Orozco paints Cristo destruye su cruz.
In 1943, the artist Colin McCahon and poet James K. Baxter first meet in Brighton, New Zealand.
Albert Gleizes writes Spirituality, Rhythm, Form at the end of 1943 for a special edition of the Lyon-based journal, Confluences, devoted to 'Les Problèmes de la Peinture'. A Benedictine monk, Dom Angelico Surchamp, still at the time only a novice, came on the strength of Spirituality, Rhythm, Form to study with Gleizes. In 1951, the publishing house Zodiaque was established by Surchamp at his monastery, l'Abbaye de Ste Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire, becoming well known for its large and impressive collection of books on Romanesque art.
On a three-day retreat in 1943 with the writer Camille Bourniquel, Alfred Manessier experiences a profound religious conversion at the abbey of Notre Dame de la Trappe de Soligny (Orne).
In 1944 André Girard has the first of several solo shows featuring his religious work at New York’s Bignou Gallery. In 1948 Girard is commissioned by Saint Vincent Archabbey to execute a triptych depicting St. Bernard of Clairvaux for the Archabbey’s crypt. In 1949 he visits Blessed Sacrament Church at Stowe to install his paintings of the Way of the Cross and offers to decorate the entire church, painting 36 windows plus large-scaled murals on the outer walls of the church.
Henry Moore's 'Madonna and Child' sculpture (1944) and Graham Sutherland's 'Crucifixion' (1946) are unveiled at St Matthew’s Northampton. 'Litany and Anthem for St Matthew's Day' is commissioned from W.H Auden (1945) and 'The Outer Planet' from Norman Nicholson (1949).
Max Jacob is arrested by the Gestapo in France in 1944 and dies at the Drancy internment camp en route to Auschwitz. Meditations Religieuses a volume of the artist’s devotional writings from the time of the Nazi Occupation is published posthumously.
In 1944, the poet Kathleen Raine converts to Catholicism.
The literary and arts review Orígenes is founded in 1944 by José Lezama Lima and José Rodríguez Feo.
In 1944, Thomas Merton publishes his first poetry collection and, in 1948, The Seven Storey Mountain. He writes his first letters to Evelyn Waugh, who was editing The Seven Storey Mountain. Until his death in 1968, Merton corresponded with writers around the world, developing an ever-widening circle of friends including Czeslaw Milosz, Henry Miller, Walker Percy, Boris Pasternak, and others.
In 1944, Religious Art Today and An Exhibition of Religious Art Today at the Dayton Museum of Art in Ohio and the Institute of Modern Art in Boston respectively features contemporary American and European painters known for their interpretations of biblical themes.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1945 hit ‘Strange Things Happening Every Day’ is the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard "race records" chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll and has been called the first rock and roll record.
Bill Monroe, with his band the Blue Grass Boys, creates the bluegrass music genre. The classic lineup of the band comes together with the addition of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in December 1945. Gospel-themed numbers are credited to the "Blue Grass Quartet", which featured four-part vocal arrangements accompanied solely by mandolin and guitar – Monroe's usual practice when performing "sacred" songs. Monroe's performing career spans 69 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader.
In 1945, Romare Bearden exhibits his Passion series at G Place in Washington D.C.
In 1945, Arthur Boyd paints The Mockers and The Mourners.
In 1945, E. Martin Browne takes over the 150-seater Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and devotes it for the next three years to the production of modern verse plays, with first productions of plays by Christopher Fry, Ronald Duncan, Norman Nicholson and Anne Ridler, all directed by Browne himself.
In 1946, Hans Feibusch’s Mural Painting is published.
Nikos Kazantzakis writes Zorba the Greek (1946) and Christ Recrucified (1948).
In 1946, The Dixie Hummingbirds sign a record deal with Apollo Records, a growing New York based label. Apollo Records also sign Mahalia Jackson. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduce more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style Black Gospel.
Nationwide recognition comes for Mahalia Jackson in 1947 with the release of "Move On Up a Little Higher", selling two million copies and hitting the number two spot on Billboard charts, both firsts for gospel music.
In 1947, Arnold Schoenberg writes his memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, A Survivor from Warsaw.
In 1947, Alfred Manessier receives a visit from Georges Rouault, who advised him to take up stained-glass design. Stained glass windows created by Manessier in 1948 for the church of Sainte-Agathe des Bréseux are the first non-figurative designs to be incorporated in an ancient building.
On November 24, 1947, Caroline Gordon converts to Catholicism. Gordon is a friend and mentor to Brainard Cheney, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy. Influenced by Gordon, the Cheney’s also convert to Catholicism. Gordon introduces the Cheney’s to Flannery O'Connor, with whom they became close friends.
In 1947 Sadao Watanabe wins the first prize from the Japan Folk Art Museum; and the Kokugokai Prize in 1948.
In 1948, Jacques Le Chevallier organizes the Centre d’Art sacré in collaboration with Maurice Rocher.
In 1949, Pál C. Molnár creates a winged altar in the parish church of the Inner City in Pest, Hungary.
Completion of commissioning in 1949 for Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce du Plateau d'Assy, bringing together works by Braque, Matisse, Bonnard, Lurçat, Rouault, Léger, Bazaine, Chagall, Berçot, Briançon, Richier. Subsequently, Germaine Richier’s Crucifix was removed from the church and an instruction on sacred art issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1952 was the beginning of two year initiative by the Vatican which severely constrained the modernizing programme of the French Dominicans and represented a victory for the traditionalists within the Church.
In 1949 Salvador Dalí creates the first version of The Madonna of Port Lligat. He presents it to Pope Pius XII in an audience for approval, which is granted. Dalí creates a second painting in 1950 with the same title and themes.
Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940), The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The Heart of the Matter (1948), Francois Mauriac’s A Woman of the Pharisees (1941), Norman Nicholson’s An Anthology of Religious Verse Designed for the Times (1942), George Bernanos’ Monsieur Quine (1943), C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (1942) and The Great Divorce (1945), Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945), Jack Clemo’s Wilding Graft (1948), Heinrich Böll’s The Train was on Time (1949) are published.

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train.

Monday, 7 February 2022

Poetry for Amethyst Review and Stride Magazine

My two newest poems are to be published by Amethyst Review and Stride respectively. 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages' will appear in Amethyst Review on 8 April while 'The twin poles of Rouault and Girard' will be in Stride on 21 April.

In 2020 two of my poems 'Are/Are Not' and 'Attend, attend' appeared in Amethyst Review. I also had three poems appear in Stride magazine that same year. All those poems concerned other poets beginning with the artist-poet David Jones, continuing with Dylan Thomas and ending with Jack Clemo. The third of these poems featured in a Stride series entitled 'Talking to the Dead'. These poems can be read at http://stridemagazine.blogspot.com/search?q=evens.

Amethyst Review is a publication for readers and writers who are interested in creative exploration of spirituality and the sacred. Readers and writers of all religions and none are most welcome. All work published engages in some way with spirituality or the sacred in a spirit of thoughtful and respectful inquiry, rather than proselytizing.

The Editor-in-chief is Sarah Law – poet (mainly), tutor, occasional critic, sometime fiction writer. She has published five poetry collections, the latest of which is Ink’s Wish. She set up Amethyst Review feeling the lack of a UK-based platform for the sharing and readership of new literary writing that engages in some way with spirituality and the sacred.

Stride magazine was founded in 1982. Since then it has had various incarnations, most recently in an online edition since the late 20th century. You can visit its earlier incarnation at http://stridemagazine.co.uk.

I have read the poetry featured in Stride and, in particular, the work of its editor Rupert Loydell over many years and was very pleased that Rupert gave a poetry reading when I was at St Stephen Walbrook (an event that Sarah Law, editor of Amethyst, attended). As one or two of my early poems featured in Stride, I am particularly pleased to be published there once again.

Rupert Loydell is a poet, painter, editor and publisher, and senior lecturer in English with creative writing at Falmouth University. He is interested in the relationship of visual art and language, collaborative writing, sequences and series, as well as post-confessional narrative, experimental music and creative non-fiction.

He has edited Stride magazine for over 30 years, and was managing editor of Stride Books for 28 years. His poetry books include Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone (both published by Shearsman), and The Fantasy Kid (for children).

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Rupert Loydell - Boombox.

Sunday, 6 February 2022

Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and the Brand New Day

The New Year brings new opportunities, in this case new opportunities to write. I've recently started writing on faith and music for Deus Ex Musica, with my first piece being a reflection on Taylor Swift's hymnlike lockdown song 'Epiphany'.

In my second piece, which has just been published, I share two songs that explore spiritual and redemptive themes by being songs of immense joy and hope. For Van Morrison in ‘Brand New Day’, joy and hope are found in the transition from living under dark clouds while feeling ‘lost and double crossed’ to the sun beginning to shine so that freedom can be seen, and life is lit with love. In ‘New Morning’, Bob Dylan is to be found fully in that moment where life and love bring happiness.

If you are looking for encouragement, inspiration, joy, and hope now that 2021 has transitioned into 2022, you can’t do better than these two songs with their shared hopeful themes and vibe. To pray that in 2022 the dark clouds roll away, the sun begins to shine, and, in its light, we might be happy just to be alive seems to me to be a great New Year prayer and one that many of us – whether in or out of church - might be willing to pray.

For more on faith and music, see the Rock of Ages website where Delvyn Case of Deus Ex Musica shares his research into Jesus and Popular songs. Additionally, I am co-author of ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief.

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Bob Dylan - New Morning.

Saturday, 5 February 2022

Verses versus Viruses

VERSES VERSUS VIRUSES is a collection of 28 ‘crafted prophetic’ poems written by Timothy Harrold during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

They chart a personal voyage through that spring and a response to the shifting spiritual atmosphere over that period. As an itinerant preacher with a semiotic eye, Tim had already anticipated the sense of what was about to happen and, as the pandemic took hold, how what was meant for evil, God was using for good.

What emerged are images of profound challenge and change, of pause and process, of chrysalis and catalyst. Tim interprets the signs of the times through pictures and portraits of a world being shaken and shifted, and the church being reimagined and realigned, recalibrated and reset, revived and refreshed.

VERSES VERSUS VIRUSES can be used as a four-week series for daily meditation. Each poem is accompanied by a pen and ink illustration by Tim.

LOOK INSIDE BEFORE YOU BUY

Read my Church Times review of Tim Harrold's 2016 exhibition at the Wellhouse Gallery here.

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The Grays Lives Project: Tim Harrold.

CTiW Newsletter No. 23 Winter 2021/22

Churches Together in Westminster are pleased to announce that Issue No. 23 Winter 2021/22 of our Newsletter is now available on http://ctiw.london/wp-content/uploads/Newsletter-23.pdf

We trust you will find it of interest, and please feel free to make copies for your congregation or include the link in your own newsletters.

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Karen Peris - I Would Sing Along.

The Ways Contemporary Art Reaches Churches

In 2019, the Lewben Art Foundation presented an exhibition "In Art We Trust" at the international contemporary art fair ArtVilnius’19 . The exhibition included works of Christian iconography from the Lewben Art Foundation collection varying from the 18th century to the works of contemporary artists.

Vilius Kavaliauskas, collector and chairman of "Lewben Group" and the Lewben Art Foundation, said:

"The artworks that interpret Christian iconography are full of history, mystery and symbolism, which I find quite fascinating. Earlier in history the church was the main sponsor and commissioner of art, therefore, one of the main themes among the old masters was religion. In our collection we have artworks by the old Lithuanian-Polish masters, such as Wladyslaw Niewiarowicz or Szymon Czechowicz. It was really interesting to see the interpretation of contemporary artists, especially that of Lithuanian contemporary artists, on this theme. At first it seemed that artists tended to avoid the theme and that only a few painters, for example, Sigita Maslauskaitė-Mažylienė or Patricija Jurkšaitytė, are not afraid of it. However, after conversations with several young artists I understood that the theme is not quite alien to them, but that it is not that topical either. Thus, we decided to cooperate and commission several pieces of artworks on the theme. The cooperation resulted in the large-scale works by Andrius Zakarauskas The Thursday and Adomas Danusevičius The Kiss of Judas that we see displayed as part of the Lewben Art Foundation’s exposition ‘In Art We Trust’."

Also from 2019 in Lithuania, was an exhibition at the Church Heritage Museum in Vilnius entitled The Ways Contemporary Art Reaches Churches: 1990–2019:

"Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the Church Heritage Museum continues its mission to discuss Christian heritage with the public and help people discover and understand its richness and significance to Lithuanian culture. Contemporary sacral art is the least recognised and valued kind of such heritage. The situation is problematic: neither creators nor fans of contemporary art tend to look for it in churches, while in the eyes of the faithful, new artworks in the houses of worship often appear to be challenging the Church tradition. Because of such tension, since the restoration of Independence (1990), it has been difficult for quality contemporary art that expresses the deep intentions of both the artists and the commissioners to find its way into Lithuanian churches. It seems that it was all down to just a handful of enthusiasts, and that artworks would only reach church spaces and stay there if the intentions of the author and the commissioner happened to luckily coincide.

The exhibition showcases the initiatives of parishes, monastic communities, priests and lay commissioners that have made it possible for contemporary art to get into Lithuanian churches and chapels. The artworks on display have come into existence when such initiatives coincided with the artists being open to commissions of sacral nature or having a personal desire to work within the subject of Christianity. The brief biographies and memoirs provided next to the artworks, sketches and models make it possible to grasp the goals and experiences of the artists. The exhibition is not aimed at showcasing all the sacral artworks that have been created in Lithuania in 1990–2019. Instead, it comprises exhibits that are representative of certain “cases”, showing the variety of ways in which contemporary art got to churches, the complex histories of cooperation between artists and commissioners; items that stand out thanks to their artistry and quality of execution, as well as their unique ways of expressing traditional Christian themes and ideas.

What preceded the period presented in the exhibition was a revival of Church cultural life upon celebrating the 600th anniversary of the baptism of Lithuania and the beatification of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis (1987). These events allowed the faithful to once again feel as a significant part of the Universal Church, after having been pushed out to the margins of public life by soviet repressions and anti-church policy. The sentiment of the revival was echoed by the enthusiasm of Christian communities when rebuilding and decorating the houses of worship that had previously been taken over by the soviet state, and by the need to build new churches. When Lithuanian independence was restored on 11 March 1990, the freedom of religion and creativity was regained as well. Unsurprisingly, religious life soon prospered and there was a sudden increase in the number of new churches being built. The restitution process that began at that time guaranteed the Church its right to take back buildings it had owned before the Second World War, where parishes and returning monastic communities were now able to settle in. This meant that there was a need to appropriately fit out the houses of worship, yet achieving this goal was often hampered by a lack of theoretical and practical knowledge as well as funds.

The number of commissions of artworks for church spaces decreased in the beginning of the 21st century. At the time, sacral art was being created by finishing works that had already been started previously, under the initiative of either individual clients or the artists themselves. The most recent change (and therefore most difficult one to evaluate) is the new wave of images of the blesseds and saints that emerged towards the end of the 2010s. Between 2014 and 2019, the images of John Paul II, St Mother Teresa, Bl. Jurgis Matulaitis, Bl. Mykolas Giedraitis, Bl. Teofilius Matulionis adorned many Lithuanian churches. The creation of these sacred images would often be entrusted to foreign painters, but the exhibition also includes interesting pieces by local artists.

We like to view contemporary art from 1990–2019 as a question of what the development of present-day sacral art tells us about the Lithuanian society. The question is open for debate, awaiting the attention of researchers."

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Violent Femmes - Sweet Worlds Of Angels.