Painting

An Advent Magnificat

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Jim Janknegt, Joyful Mystery 1

 

Neither the Bible nor history tell us the precise details about the Annunciation to Mary, such as on what day the Angel appeared, or when Jesus was later born. The Angel’s wondrous appearance could have happened on a drab winter’s day. Yet, by virtue of the Angel’s message, it was also like spring. Our Church calendar and holy tradition reckon that the Annunciation was in March. If it was in the spring, the average high temperature in northern Israel would have been in the 60’s. So it could easily have been a season colored by the appearance of emerging flowers and foliage.

Faithful to the pattern of Scripture, Jim Janknegt seeks to portray something beyond literal circumstances. He has more than flowering plants, trees, and shrubs in mind. The decorated edge of the painting is a border of roses, which evoke the mysteries named in the Rosary, of which this scene is only the first. Inside that border are more flowers, and these also play a symbolic role. For we find lilies on Mary’s dress, suggestive of a later-to-be-revealed Easter, and calla lilies in a vase on the table, traditionally associated with the Annunciation to Mary.

Even more dramatically, flowers cover a large part of the angel, which suggest something transcendent and other-worldly. The Angel has come to speak the Word: the Word of Life, which is also a Word of blessing (look at the Angel’s hand-gesture!). Central in the painting, but depicted in a very subtle background way, is a great tree. Surely, it is the Tree of Life, from Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. Surely, the tree also prefigures that toward which everything in this moment is heading ~ the dead wood of the Cross, which paradoxically became a life-giving tree. Yes, it is springtime! But, this is springtime in salvation history.

So this is what we begin to see in Jim Jangknegt’s painting: his portrayal of the Angel’s Annunciation to Mary is not so much about springtime in the world. Instead, it is about springtime for the world.

 

Jim Janknegt’s painting, featured here, is used by permission of the artist. The text of this post is based on my homily for Sunday, Advent IV, of this year, which may be accessed by clicking here.

Allan West: Japanese Culture and Art

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In more than one way, Allan West is an unusual artist. His life and work have been deeply imbued by the spiritual aesthetics of Japanese culture and its traditional art of painting. For over forty years, he has dedicated himself to Nihonga, the less and less practiced method of painting using minerals for pigments, mixed with the liquid medium of a glue made from deer protein. This approach to painting has been practiced consistently in Japan, where luminous paintings from the 11th century can still be appreciated for their original beauty. The closest parallel in Western art is egg tempera painting, in which painters in earlier centuries mixed pigment with egg yolks instead of the modern practice of mixing pigments with oil or an acrylic medium.

Allan West was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., and his sojourn in Japan began in a period of mission work there as a member of the Latter Day Saints. Two factors transformed the vector of his life. He came to realize that he had an affinity with Japanese culture, especially with its artistic tradition, and he was struck by the Japanese sensitivity to living in harmony as much as is possible with the natural world.

More particularly, with his memory of pursuing painting from the time of his childhood, he recalls his own experiments with mixing pigments with various liquids to achieve a more fluid paint medium. This predisposed him to accept an observation offered by a viewer of his early work, who told him that his preferred approach to painting had a long tradition in Japan. As a result, West moved to Japan in 1987, with his wife and children, to learn from that tradition. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, ever since.

In a short video introduction to the artist, released by the Prime Minister’s Office in Japan, Allan West shares the following about his life’s work (screenshot above, and link below):

I use the Japanese painting technique to express the beauty and essence of the natural seasons. It has been 40 years since I moved to Japan, attracted by the traditional pigments and techniques of Japanese painting. Japanese natural materials can retain their clear vibrancy for more than a thousand years. I’m proud to inherit the tradition of Japanese painting and its wisdom that cherishes nature’s beauty and harmony with humankind. Through my art I’d like to convey the appeal of Japanese culture to the world.

With these few words, spoken in a soft and nuanced voice in the video, Allan West is saying much. Having returned to Japan with the intent of learning a method or a technique, he had the sensitivity to realize that he needed to learn the Japanese language and let its culture become ingrained within him in order for him to be able to practice Nihonga painting with some degree of integrity. The photo below contains a number of important cues concerning what West has received and learned from the tradition of which he describes himself as an inheritor.

Allan West paints sitting on the floor in a Japanese way, on mats woven from rice-straw. As has been noted, the paints he uses are made up of ground minerals mixed with a glue-like medium of deer protein, paints which he values for their fluid quality. Hence, the surfaces that are to be painted need also to rest upon the floor, to avoid the paint running. Many of the surfaces upon which West works are large in size, like the sometimes wall-sized decorative folding screens for which he has become known. To be able to paint such expansive surfaces in their totality, instead of panel by panel, the artist designed a narrow rolling platform, allowing him to reach any area of a full-sized screen (as in the image above). This photo also displays West’s use of vibrant mineral-based colors as well as metalic foils and powders, such as gold leaf, some of which are found in the glass containers on the shelves behind him.

Allan West’s present Yanaka, Tokyo, studio

Unlike some artists, both Western and Asian, Allan West welcomes visitors to his studio, and actively encourages those who are curious not only to view his art, but to witness his creative process. To this end, his present studio, much modified into a traditional Japanese-looking structure from its prior use as an automotive maintenance facility, has large and welcoming sliding panels and windows, through which those walking by can view him painting. Through providing this access to his creative work, he hopes to promote a sustainable future for Nihonga, and to persuade Japanese visitors in particular that even an American immigrant can appreciate, learn, and become proficient in an ancient Japanese art form.

The following images provide examples of Allan West’s beautiful work:

The following image displays the interior of Allan West’s attractive and welcoming studio and gallery building:

 

Readers who wish to become more acquainted with Allan West and his work might view the YouTube video mentioned above (the link is here). Allan West’s studio and gallery can also be visited in a virtual way by clicking this link.

The Western Art of Tom Gilleon

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With the Western art of Tom Gilleon, we find another example of a skilled painter trained in the practice of traditional representational painting, whose work has morphed over the years to incorporate some features of Modern Art that are commonly associated with post-World War II American painting and printmaking. Viewers familiar with Gilleon’s paintings will notice his repetitive motif of portraying tipis on the prairie, rendered in multiple ways with varying color combinations. Yet, and in a way reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s numerous print series, the compositional elements of many of Gilleon’s paintings are often the same.

One potential criticism of so-called Modern Art, heard less frequently now, is that many viewers find examples of the genre to be simplistic, perhaps lacking in creativity, and potentially the product of less talented artists. I have addressed that observation before, especially with reference to the work of Jackson Pollock as well as James M. Whistler. In my view, elements of image composition, color choice, and the placement of the colors selected within a given work of art, as well as how color is applied, represent choices made by painters the sophistication of which is easy to overlook. In the case of Tom Gilleon, the artist’s bone fides as a skilled painter can easily be established. Note the following examples of his more traditional representational work.

The image shown immediately above, based on the mesa visible from Gilleon’s studio, provides a reference point for observing the range of his interests as a painter. The same view, featuring much less detail, can be seen in his image below.

While fully capable of portraying a Native American tipi encampment with sensitivity to its geographical and historical contexts, Gilleon over time has come to focus his work less strictly on the representation of scenes he has observed, and has moved toward an exploration of particular elements within those scenes. This has allowed him to focus more directly upon picture composition and the exploration of color. This broadening of his work as an artist can be seen in a number of images shown below. First, we observe two images that are more clearly dependent on physical observation of – or extrapolation from – specific contexts on particular occasions.

In the above two paintings, we can appreciate the artist’s skillful attention to such details as the nature of the weather, varying daylight conditions and the way they are reflected on the surface of water, and how he portrays features of the physical terrain such as a mountainside in evening light, or a mountain range obscured by a rain shower. But then, we can go on to enjoy the artist’s greater attention to the tipis themselves, and to how a common compositional element that is repeated with little variation over the course of a number of images, can give rise to a marvelous series of explorations of differing light conditions. These explorations include renderings of the effects of light both within and around the tipis that he portrays, as well as its effect upon the surfaces of those structures and the terrain in which they sit.

The latter image, so much like the ones shown above it with regard to image composition, as well as attention to color and light, is of interest because of the very subtle shift evident in the directional location of the tipi’s entrance, and the lone bare pole in the far righthand side of the painting. In this same image, the artist has felt free to move away from reproducing a historically accurate representation of various ways that particular Native American communities would apply decoration to the tipi’s surface, so as to be in a better position to attend to the abstract components of color and light in themselves.

At the outset, I alluded to Gilleon’s incorporation of aspects of painting commonly associated with the work of Abstract Expressionists as well as those whose work became associated with the label, Pop Art. The following images provide good examples of Gilleon’s willingness and ability to work beyond the parameters of more traditional landscape and portrait painting.

The artist (below) in his studio, with his view of the flat-topped mesa in the distance

The artist’s studio on his Montana ranch, with a tipi in the foreground

J Louis and the Fusion of Genres in Painting

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J Louis, “Vision in Pinks”

 

On a recent visit to Charleston, S.C., while walking to the Gibbes Art Museum to attend a family wedding celebration, I stopped in at the neighboring Principle Gallery. There, I discovered the remarkably skillful paintings of J Louis, who is only 32. He is a highly gifted painter and draftsman (i.e., he can draw really well), who was trained at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. The Principle Gallery is featuring his work this month following the opening of his show on November 1.

J Louis clearly has a fascination with women and the many forms of a woman’s beauty. Yet, unlike the work of various other artists who share his interest in the female form, nudes seem to be rare among Louis’ works. He has the eye of a fashion photographer, though one with a paradoxically greater interest in the faces and hands of his models than he does in their clothing.

Indeed, the vesture worn by his various models is usually rendered in flat swathes of paint, sometimes muted and sometimes vibrant with color. Louis’ way of portraying that clothing tends to diminish its representational significance, so that it functions somewhat like the background of his paintings. By taking this approach, the artist has the opportunity to further explore and express his regard for other visual aspects of the women who have posed for him.

J Louis at work on a commissioned painting

All of the paintings in the current show feature his characteristic images of elegantly beautiful women, with some of the paintings playful, others mysterious, and many alluring in their sensual presentation of eyes, faces, and hands. As a result, he portrays these women as being more than attractive models, and as people who in some way he has come to know as real persons who have distinct personalities. His depiction of his models therefore includes, but also transcends, careful attention to their appearance, with his skill in displaying an apparent sensitivity to and respect for these women’s character and temperament.

I was struck right away by two aspects of many of Louis’ paintings: his gift for capturing facial expression and the wonder of human eyes, along with his ability to render the power of a gaze; and his adeptness in producing abstract color fields of great beauty. These are two features not generally found together, in my experience. Several of Louis’ paintings bring to mind an unexpected fusion, such as we might find between – for example – Gerhard Richter’s early photo-realist images, and Richter’s more recent abstract paintings. For these reasons, the following image by Louis, titled “Flag,” stood out to me in particular.

More specifically, a number of Louis’ paintings appear to be the result of a merging between two highly differing approaches to painting, on one hand an abstract expressionist’s use of the process of squeegee spreading and melding paint colors, and on the other, the highly refined representative work of a painter whose images rival those produced by an art-oriented photographer.

This juxtaposition of differing approaches to visual compostion, figurative representation, as well as color field and pattern exploration, reminds me of some of the paintings of Gustav Klimt, as if he had been painting in the 1950’s. Several of the various qualities that I have highlighted here, and found in Louis’ paintings, may be discerned in the images of Louis’ paintings shown below.

Sensitive depiction of the human face, dramatic pictorial composition, an eye for vibrant color, and a pattern of setting in tension images of three dimensional figures side by side with visually flat fields of contrasting paint, distinguish J Louis’s large and, in my view, highly successful paintings.

The artist in his New York studio (below)

Roger Tory Peterson’s Art, Helping Us See

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If you wanted to buy a guide to help you identify birds, what would you choose? A book with glossy photographs showing birds as found in nature? Or would you choose an artist’s rendition of those same birds abstracted from their natural setting? Without considering the question closely, I suspect that I am not alone in being one who would choose the former for what seems an obvious reason, that photographs purport to capture reality in what we call an objective way. And when seeking to identify birds, correct apprehension of reality is what we are after. Paradoxically, Roger Tory Peterson’s, Field Guide to the Birds, first published in 1934, has long been valued precisely because his paintings and notes may aid accurate identification of birds to a greater degree than can be obtained by studying photographs.

As we also find in the presumed intent of more recent, photo-based, bird books, Peterson’s aim was to help us see, and then upon seeing, correctly identify the birds we have apprehended in our sights. Yet, Peterson, a much-regarded pioneer in the environmental movement, sought to aid our perception by prioritizing the various unique properties of individual species, and then to highlight those features that distinguish them from other birds. With the aid of his editors and book designers, he helped to achieve these goals by adding small black lines or dashes pointing to various parts of each bird on the color illustration pages displaying his paintings.

These small lines correspond to observation notes in the text, signaling to the reader the principal identification marks and points of difference between various similar-looking species of birds (see below). His creation of this method for the identification of observed field marks in birds has come to be called the Peterson Identification System.

A pre-publication page from Peterson’s Field Guide. Note the small black lines or dashes, explained above.

The paradoxical limitation that may accompany a photographic guide to birds is that a photograph captures an object in only one posture in one moment of time. Photographs are also dependent upon existing light conditions, and where the object of attention may also visually be obscured or overwhelmed by its larger context.

With paintings, Peterson may have been better able to help us see three dimensional aspects of the birds he portrayed while yet employing a two dimensional medium, in part because those birds are presented against a non-distracting neutral background. By painting rather than photographing, he was able to emphasize and enhance certain features of birds, such as subtle areas of color and the impact of light upon them, to a greater extent than would have been possible with the photographic means available to him at the time. In the process, Peterson demonstrated a consistently high degree of proficiency in his work of illustration, while also achieving what are arguably finished works of art that help us perceive beauty in the natural world around us.

The Finches page from my grandfather’s 1959 edition of Peterson’s Field Guide

 

Note: Having featured Peterson’s work, there are many newer bird identification books being published, and they are worth exploring when someone seeks a reliable birding guide. For many people of my generation, Peterson’s work will always be on the shelf, given its art rather than his having employed photo-based images, especially since his books are so widely available. I am proud to have and use my grandfather’s annotated copy (above), with his sightings noted on numerous pages going back to the 1960’s.

I am conscious of the fact that I featured multiple color photos of the Common Nighthawk in my prior post, as well as having offered a substantial amount of information about this particular species. If bird guides were to offer an equivalent kind and amount of coverage of every species commonly observed, they would be immense, and very expensive!

Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996). It is one thing to be serious about one’s life work, and another to be able to laugh about it!

 

 

Pentecost: The Beauty of Unity Amidst Diversity

Peter Warden, Pentecost (1985)

 

Paul’s stirring words to the Ephesians assert an abiding truth: “There is one Body and one Spirit; there is one hope in God’s call to us; One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of all.” Paul was focused on the God-given and true things that unite us, that hold us together, and which give us life. Yet, in contemporary American culture, everything now seems to center on how we differ from one another. How might we hold both insights together?

Some years ago, I discovered Peter Warden’s wonderful contemporary painting about the post-Resurrection Pentecost event, which reflects the presence of such differences among us as people. Warden’s painting is based on the well-know story from Acts, chapter 2. The painter portrays the disciples together in their upper room retreat. But, in this case, the first Christian community is gathered in a 20th Century Scottish attic! The painting seems to capture the disciples just at the moment when the mighty Spirit-wind and tongues of fire appear. In other words, the disciples – as Warden depicts them – are not yet bound together, and not yet ready for mission.

Though they are in the same room, these disciples show few signs of unity. They react against one another, as much as they may talk together. Notice how this is suggested by the alternating warm/cool color palette that Warden has used. We also want to notice the suggestively peeling wallpaper behind the group. Can you see the pattern that the artist has created with the lower part of the rendering of the wallpaper?

If you look closely, you can see how Warden has used his depiction of that scrappy wallpaper to suggest Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting of the last supper. Da Vinci’s painting has also suffered the fate of being on a peeling wall. Peter Warden portrays a group of people with a shared history, who were brought together by Jesus at their earlier supper with him. But now, after his death, they find themselves regressing, regressing to their before-knowing-Jesus identities, and falling back upon their differences from one another.

Yet, as the painting’s title suggests, in just this moment God’s Holy Spirit finds them. Just as, through the Church, God’s Spirit finds us. When God’s Spirit finds us, we are grafted into the Body of Christ. In the process, we come to perceive who we really are. For we receive a new baptismal identity in Christ.

Our new identity builds upon and transforms the uniqueness of our natural, biological-identity. Our baptismal-identity emphasizes a new way of seeing ourselves in relation to others. Now, we also celebrate what we share and have in common, rather than simply emphasize our practical awareness regarding how we are unique and different from others.

Through hearing and reading Scripture, and in our fellowship with others in Jesus’ beloved community, we learn something very important. It has to do with this matter of our identity. We learn that the “Who am I?” question cannot rightly be answered apart from the “Who are we?” question. And, in turn, the “Who are we?” question cannot rightly be answered apart from another question: “Who are we made to be?” Once we ask, “Who are we made to be?”, we are on the threshold of discovering, perhaps for the first time in our lives, who we are meant to be and become, both as individuals, and in community.

Here is the truth of the great feast of Pentecost: God’s Spirit has come down! God’s Spirit has come down upon, and within, people who are sometimes alienated, and who often fall short of God’s mission. Preoccupied with ourselves and our own pursuits, we are gifted with the experience of transformation. We are drawn into relationship. As we are, we find meaning and we find purpose. We discover who we are, as we discern what we are called to be and do together. The mission of God brings both mercy and meaning. In it, we discover a shared life in God’s Spirit-shaped Kingdom.

John Nava, Pentecost, 2012

 

The quote from Ephesians is from the Book of Common Prayer Baptismal Rite adaptation of Ephesians 4:4-6. I have featured Peter Warden’s Pentecost painting once before, though without reflective comment, in a post offering Family Devotions during Covid, on May 30, 2020.

Further note: last week I was fortunate to walk down the same central street in ancient Ephesus upon which Paul surely often walked, while – according to Acts – he was there for two years. In writing the words quoted above, Paul was likely responding to the Ephesians’ devotion to the fertility mother goddess, Artemis, and the great temple they had built in dedication to her.

I Will Take You To Myself

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Fra Angelico, Noli me tangere

 

In the intimacy of his physical embodiment, the disciples and the holy women want to hold on to Jesus. It is the only way they have known him.

Mary is then found by the One she is looking for, in the garden by the tomb, on what becomes the Resurrection-discovery morning.

”Don’t try to cling to me,” he tells her, for he has not yet ascended to where he promises to take us.

We want to hang onto to how we have best known him. He promises to hold us to himself in what will be an even greater intimacy.

It is just beginning. Alleluia!

 

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17)

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3)

Once and For All

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Salvador Dali, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (detail)

 

With his life, and in his death, Jesus offered himself. In accepting crucifixion, he offered himself and the whole Creation to the Father, in the Holy Spirit. He did this once and for all. Yet, in every Eucharist, and for all who remember him on any day, he continues to make present and real in our experience what he did, once and for all.

He acted, once and for all. Yet – and this is the paradox – he still acts for all… for all time, for all places and things, and for all people. What he is still doing now does not in any way signal an incompleteness to what he did then. For he continues to offer the gift of including us in what he did then, when he did what he did, once and for all.

So what does it mean for him to include us now, in what he did then? That is the question for the holy three days of our Paschal Triduum, which begins on Maundy Thursday evening.

One way into the many answers to our question can be found in Salvador Dali’s painting, The Sacrament of the Last Supper. It is not a painting of, or about, the Last Supper. Instead, this is a painting inspired by the Last Supper, and by what it came to mean in the broader context of all that happened during those three days. For the painting is about the sacrament in which the Risen One now makes present the result of what happened on the Cross, in the Resurrection, and with the descent of the Holy Spirit.

The Book of Common Prayer service for Good Friday is in fact not a Eucharist, just as the Last Supper in that Upper Room was not a Eucharist. The Last Supper prefigured the Eucharist, but could not have been one. For Jesus had not yet died, nor yet Risen from the Tomb, and the Spirit had not yet descended at Pentecost. And neither are the sacramental services on Good Friday intended to be Eucharistic celebrations. For in the wisdom and tradition of the Church we do not celebrate the Eucharist on this most holy day, though we may receive the fruit of it, and all its benefits, when Communion is offered to us.

Instead, all our focus is upon Him, who died and rose again for us, once and for all.

These are some of the reasons why Dali paints the disciples as recognizable, physical, and historically-anchored, people. And why he yet paints our Lord as present in his mystical risen glory.

We gather in his name and in his presence on particular occasions, in particular places, at particular times. Yet he is now present at and on all occasions, in all places, and at all times. We – who are rooted in time and place – receive him who transcends and yet is present within all times and places. Grace infuses nature. The timeless One imbues time with glory.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper (full image)

On the cross, Jesus lifted up the whole Creation to his – and now our – Father, once and for all. Just as he lifted up our human nature in his Ascension, which in a sense then became our Ascension. And yet, he continues to lift up the whole Creation – including us, and including all the uncertain and unfinished aspects of our lives. So, the One who is the source of all purpose and meaning continues to bring meaning and purpose to us, and to all that we lay before him, here and now. Time and again, he brings completeness and wholeness to all that is lacking, so that we might live more fully in his glorious fulfillment of what it means to be human. For all this, we offer our deepest thanks and praise.

May these ‘holy three days’ (Maundy Thursday evening — Easter Eve) in the Church’s Christian observance of Passover be a time of blessing for us and our loved ones.

 

This post is adapted from my (2024) homily for Good Friday, which may be accessed by clicking here.

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Rousseau and Wilderness: Redemption in Nature?

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Henri Rousseau, The Dream (detail), 1910

 

What does it mean for God’s grace to be present in nature? Or God’s mission of Redemption to be at work in what Christians view as a fallen Creation? The Gospel for this coming Sunday, with Jesus tempted in the wilderness, might prompt us to think about such things. An unexpected way to do this is to juxtapose Mark’s surprisingly brief ‘temptation narrative’ with Rousseau’s jungle-like images of a state of nature.

How shall we understand Mark’s account of Jesus’ being tested in an inhospitable place? And how does Rousseau conceive of the natural state of what Christians think of as Creation? A painting by Rousseau helps set the scene:

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1907

In light of it, we can consider the two verses that Mark devotes to Jesus’ temptation:

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Only two verses are accorded by Mark to this rather pivotal event, to which Matthew devotes 11, and to which Luke gives 12. The way that Matthew and Luke refer to the wilderness of the temptation suggests that it is a hostile context for Jesus’ encounter with the Tempter. In both of these longer Gospel texts, three principal temptations are identified, which occur following Jesus’ forty days of fasting. The three were: to feed himself, to become a wonder-worker, and to receive the adulation of the world’s kingdoms. Matthew adds that Jesus received the ministration of angels following – rather than during – his period of trial.

Whereas Matthew and Luke present the wilderness as an unpromising environment for Jesus’ challenging encounter with his adversary, Mark’s spare account of the event and its setting allows for a rather different reading. We can pose the matter in the form of two questions shaped by Matthew and Luke’s narratives.

Does Mark present the wilderness temptation of Jesus as being in a difficult place due to the presence of the Tempter and because it is filled with prowling and potentially dangerous wild beasts?

Man Attacked by a Jaguar, 1910

Or, does Jesus’ desert encounter in Mark represent not so much the threatening last gasps of a rebellious and dying world, but the first breaths of a life-giving new one, just now coming to be?

The Waterfall, 1910

Rousseau’s painting of the sleeping woman and the nearby lion, above, provides an image of harmonious coexistence in a place shared by a human being and the proverbial king of beasts (an ‘alpha predator’). In other words, Rousseau – in some of his paintings – portrays an ideal image of the original state of nature, the biblical Eden, before nature became ‘red in tooth and claw.’

A Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest, 1905

If so, then Mark’s statements that Jesus “was with the wild animals,” and also that “the angels were ministering to him,” may reflect what Christians have come to think of as ‘the peaceable Kingdom’ and ‘the New Creation.’ Which then suggests that – in Mark – the wilderness was good place despite the presence of the Tempter.

I am drawn to how Rousseau depicts the natural beauty of what we often describe as ‘wild nature,’ portraying it in both inviting and in cautionary ways. He paints it as a context of harmonious interrelation between human beings and animals in a shared environment. He also paints it as being a context where animals are a threat to one another and to humankind. Rousseau’s painting of Eve hints at both possibilities, where she is charmed by the serpent:

Eve, 1907

In the painting below, which complements his image above, another ‘Eve’ charms the serpent. Rousseau fills the beautiful canvas with a limited color palette, largely green, expressing the same dimension of ambiguity. A woman plays a flute while a serpent is draped upon her shoulders and others hang from the trees or rise up from the ground:

The Snake Charmer (detail), 1907

Looking at Rousseau’s many jungle-like ‘exotic landscapes,’ one notices the evocative presence of mystery. The viewer does not immediately know what lurks in the shadows, beneath and behind dense and dark foliage, in scenes often featuring bright flowers or fruit in the foreground. And upon discerning animals and also humans among all the growing things in the thicket between the trees, we can’t be sure whether what we encounter is friend or foe.

Jaguar Attacking a Horse, 1910

Exotic Landscape, 1910

In these and other scenes, Rousseau portrays an invitingly beautiful world, but one that is not without the possibility of misadventure and harm. I may not want to live in some of these scenes. But I find joy living with their beauty. For they help me appreciate a new way of reading and thinking about Mark’s brief account of Jesus’ temptation ‘in the wilderness.’ Jesus possibly could have repeated the great mistake made by Adam in the old Eden. But in not doing so, ’the second Adam’ became the door to a new Eden, and our ‘ark’ to the New Creation.

 

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Finding Beauty in Adversity

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Henry Sugimoto, Untitled (Sun, Mountain and Clouds, Reflection on the Sea), ca 1965

 

I was delighted recently to discover the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), and their collection of artwork by Henry Sugimoto. Henry Sugimoto was born in Japan in 1900, the grandson of a samurai (Japanese military nobility) who most likely was alive at the time of the opening of Japan to commerce with the West by Commodore Perry in 1854. This fact, coupled with that of Sugimoto’s national heritage, would have made him – along with many others – suspect in American government eyes after Pearl Harbor.

Henry Sugimoto with his parents, before their immigration to the United States

Despite his father’s immigration to the United States before World War I, and their willingness to assimilate into American society and receive citizenship, the Sugimotos, like so many Japanese, found themselves rounded up in by our government in 1942. Henry’s family was sent away with one suitcase each from California to a detention camp in Arkansas. Such forced moves in many cases led to the unexpected forfeiture of family property and possessions. Henry Sugimoto lost a large collection of his artwork, auctioned off without his permission or knowledge while he – as an American citizen – was forcibly detained.

Self-Portrait in Camp, 1943

In JANM’s Sugimoto collection, we find several categories among his artwork. The largest is comprised of his oil paintings, many of which are skillfully rendered. I find some of them stylistically indebted to paintings that he studied in Paris by well-known late 19th and early 20th century Europeans.

Fresno Assembly Camp – Peaches, 1942

Others works, exhibiting a freer style he employed in his drawings and paintings of his fellow camp detainees, seem to reflect more of Sugimoto’s own painterly sensibility. Perhaps this was a visual artist’s equivalent of a writer coming to find his or her own voice.

The Mess Hall, 1942

Another significant body of work in the Sugimoto collection is composed of block prints. They include a few that reflect his travels to Europe and his life in New York City. Notable among his prints are his later black and white depictions of detainee life in the crudely appointed Japanese American ‘relocation centers.’ Gradually freed up from the constraints imposed by other employment, Sugimoto shows himself in his mature work to be an accomplished graphic artist, expressing an authentic personal vision.

Riverside Drive and Church (New York City), ca 1965

Back of WRA Truck, 1960’s

Thinking of Him, 1960’s

Other prints include some beautiful, and to my eyes, very Japanese-looking images with a modernist bent, characterized by an elegant simplicity of composition and color palette. The Sugimoto print shown at the top of a mountain set against the sea shadowed by a setting sun is suggestive of the famed Mt Fuji, visible from the Japanese coast. These later pieces by Sugimoto are my favorites among his artwork, and seem most reflective of an aesthetic sensibility associated with his native Japanese background.

Dawn (undated)

Gate of Yashiro (what may be the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan), undated

Untitled (color block print), undated

Though fully Americanized following his own immigration to America at the age of 18, Henry Sugimoto retained a deep sensitivity to the language, culture, and traditions of the land of his birth. One example of this can be found in another print featuring the setting sun and a mountain, like the image at the top of this page. The print below demonstrates how the Japanese Kanji character, Yama (for mountain, as in Fuji Yama), inspired his portrayal of a peak set against the evening sun, and reflected off the surface of the sea. Sugimoto’s interest in this word and its written form is surely no coincidence given that he was born and lived until he was 18 in Wakayama, Japan. Wakayama is the conjunction of the Japanese words for ‘mountain’ and ‘youthful.’

Untitled (featuring the Japanese pictographic Kanji character for Yama, or mountain), undated

 

These and other works by Sugimoto, along with biographical information, can be found on the website for the Japanese American National Museum (www.janm.org). The museum has an informative documentary video, Harsh Canvas: The Art & Life of Henry Sugimoto, which features his artistic work and introduces viewers to some of his family and to places where he lived and worked. It can be found on YouTube.