Prints

The Challenge Posed by Eric Gill

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Eric Gill, Christ Crowned

 

To my mind, some of the most beautiful work in the area of graphic art was created by the British artist and craftsman, Eric Gill. The intractable problem posed by Eric Gill is not a legacy of his artistic output, but of his personal life. Largely unknown to those outside his family until about 50 years after his death, Eric Gill – by admission in his own unpublished writings – had engaged in personal behavior of a kind that most people would find not only abhorrent but, increasingly, as also criminal.

This is related to the larger problem posed by the work of artists, musicians, and architects whose work is seen as having been collaborative with tyrannical regimes (eg., the Third Reich, the Soviet Union). How do we view beauty in art that either depicts or is simply associated in some way with sin or with evil? (This is a matter I have previously tried to understand in relation to Picasso’s great painting, Guernica.)

To cite Scripture to the effect that “all have sinned,” may help us begin to locate the terrain upon which we need to address the problems stemming from Eric Gill’s biography, but it is not in any way to excuse his conduct. Though all sin is bad, and equally problematic in the eyes of God, not all sin is equal in its damaging effect upon others, and upon ourselves. The traditional distinction in moral theology between mortal and venial sins provides one way to try to parse some of these differences, while not excusing any forms or examples of sin, whether in ourselves or among others.

My purpose here is to invite reflection upon how we might appreciate Eric Gill’s religious art, as many did for several generations, without having our view of the merit of his work diminished by our moral evaluation of troubling ethical choices he made, and the lapses from good moral judgment they represent. In other words, and as an amateur student of the arts while also being a retired parish priest and former professor of moral theology, I wish to present some examples of Eric Gill’s art, letting his work speak for itself apart from ethical consideration of his personal life, and without ignoring the problems associated with the latter.

Perhaps my theme here can be summed up in this way: I invite you to benefit from the beauty of what Eric Gill created without asking you to overlook what we have learned about his private life. And I offer this invitation aware that some will not find it possible to accept.

A sculpted carving by Eric Gill above the altar of the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, Westminster Cathedral, London
Eric Gill, Crucifixion
Eric Gill, sculpted relief panel from a series of the Stations of the Cross, Westminster Cathedral, London

As we consider some of his art, we should not overlook Eric Gill’s impact, at least indirectly, upon much of the daily life of the population of Great Britain (and elsewhere), in the form of three type faces he created. The most well-known is Gill Sans, named after its designer, and evident at almost every Tube stop in London. An effort to erase his work from the public eye, and replace it with alternatives, would require removing virtually every train station sign in Britain. It could be done. Should it?

Three fonts designed by Eric Gill

To put the problem I have raised here most bluntly, how can we appreciate the beauty in the holy art created by someone who behaved in a way most people would describe as sinful? I do not have a ready answer to this question. Note that, in what I have written above about Gill’s behavior, I have not gone into detail. Would that make a difference? If so, in what way?

And even if we refuse to give any amount of attention to Eric Gill’s artwork, we must still grapple with a timeless question: are there any unforgivable sins? Is anyone, because of his or her behavior, beyond the power of God’s redeeming love? Is it not likely that someone having Gill’s religious inclination also possesses a glimmer of moral awareness such that he or she might be open to repentance when – at the end of life – the person faces the awesome and undiminished light of God’s truth-seeking love?

Here is one thing that we can do: pray for the repose of the soul of Eric Gill, and for God’s Providential mercy.

In beginning to approach the questions I have raised here, I would start with some of the distinctions I shared above. I do not think we can deny this reality – that we, as people who are created in the image and likeness of God, and who have lost that likeness through the Fall and human sin, still bear God’s image however marred it may be by the corruption resulting from our sins. And, that we are still capable while in this life of acts and works of uplifting beauty.

Fully Alive: The Beauty of Human Nature

A photo of a print given to us years ago

 

Those familiar with my writing and ministry may not be surprised by how I choose to address the theme of beauty in relation to the human nature we all share.

My response is captured in a quote with words I have long loved and have frequently cited. The quote is from the second century Christian theologian and Bishop of Lyons (in present-day France), Irenaeus. “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” To which he added, “and to be alive consists in beholding God.”

What an audacious statement! I believe that the fundamental insight here, latent within Irenaeus’s words, stems from the Gospel of John, with whose author Irenaeus likely had a personal connection. That would have been through Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (presently, Izmir, Turkey), the city where Ireaneaus was born. One writer has described Irenaeus as the spiritual grandson of the apostle John.

Another calligraphy print, this one featured on the website of Holy Cross Monastery

What does it mean for any one of us to be ‘fully alive’? I believe that the Gospel writer, John, would respond by echoing words from Paul, whose letters frequently employ the phrase, “in Christ.” Through Baptism, we come to be in Christ. Through Baptism, we are re-born in Christ; we live in Christ – and he in us – and we will leave this mortal life in Christ. Indeed, in John’s  compelling witness to Jesus’ teaching, we are told that those who believe in Jesus have already died, and now, will never die! All of the Gospel readings appointed for funerals in The Book of Common Prayer are from John. This is the Gospel that is so centered upon the themes of God’s incarnation within our shared human nature, giving us God-given light, and eternal life.

Words found in the daily pattern for Morning and Evening Prayer, as well as in the Eucharistic pattern used on most Sundays in Episcopal Churches, help amplify this point but in a subtle way. These several patterns for corporate and individual prayer include forms for confession. Using these forms, and after we acknowledge our sin, we pray that we may delight in God’s will , and walk in God’s ways. In the absolution that follows, we hear these remarkable words:

Almighty God, have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

In words that may be easy to overlook, we pray that by Holy Spirit power, God will “keep us in eternal life”! Being fully alive involves delighting in God’s will, walking in God’s ways, and being kept by God in eternal life.

Christians believe that the beauty of our human nature was and is found in the Gospel Jesus, and as the Risen Christ comes to be found in us. Our human nature, created in the image and likeness of God, and transformed to become an icon of Christ, is therefore all about the fulfillment of our divinely-given and imbued potential. When by grace we see it happen in people’s lives, it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Yet, human nature, being still what it is, prompts us to look for beauty in outward terms when we view others, as well as ourselves. Jesus, as the Gospels imply, always looked for beauty within – the kind of beauty it was his vocation to share and re-enable in us. This is what we should be looking for, both within ourselves and in others.

The archetypal biblical example of the glory of God beautifully manifest in human nature is found in the Gospel Transfiguration stories. James Tissot, one of my favorite painters, offers us glimpses of Jesus manifesting this same glory on several occasions, a glory that was otherwise often hidden within him.

James Tissot, Jesus Goes Up Onto A Mountain to Pray

Tissot, Jesus Being Ministered to by the Angels

Paul’s remarkable words to the Corinthians bring these themes together nicely. For we want to be among those who are:

seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God… For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

And, by God’s generous grace, the same may be seen in our faces, as well.

 

Note: Kenneth Kirk, the esteemed 20th century Bishop of Oxford, and former Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the historic university in that city, titled one of his still-used books (The Vision of God) based on the Irenaeus quote, featured above. Kirk presents Irenaeus’ words in this (now dated) way: “The glory of God is a living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.”

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.

The Beauty of Alex Katz’s Realism

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Alex Katz and his portraits of Ada, January 3, above, and of Vivien, in Black Hat, below.

 

At the age of 95, Alex Katz is still painting! Having created a huge portfolio over decades of work he continues to explore the visual possibilities inherent in capturing a three dimensional world in the two dimensions on large surfaces. He has consistently demonstrated his gifts as a painter by his focus on representational art, and succeeded at this when many of his contemporaries succumbed to the widespread public appeal of abstract art, while others then began to mimic public and commercial print media in what we now commonly refer to as ‘Pop Art.’

Underlying the power of much of Katz’s work is his undeniable ability as a draftsman, the technical term for one who can draw and, in his case, draw well. Yet Katz has said that drawing is not a natural gift, but that it is a skill acquired through practice. “You learn how to draw, you are not born with it, the techniques you have to learn. So it’s a repetitive thing to keep doing it but you finally get good at it, and better.”

These observations are worth bearing in mind when Katz’ work is considered alongside that of his contemporaries, some of whom employed photography and graphic printing techniques with which to reproduce images that may remind viewers of commercial art such as we find in glossy magazines. Katz’ attainment of proficiency in drawing is demonstrated in his many portraits, not only of his wife, Ada, but also of his relatives and friends.

Blue Umbrella 2, with another portrait of Ada

  

Alex Katz, Portraits of the artist Philip Pearlstein (above), and the poet, Ted Berrigan

The visual composition of his paintings and prints, as well as the compelling quality of his representation of people and places within them, is evident. Critics commend Katz’ work for his use of color and the relatively ‘flat’ appearance of the way he tends to depict his subject matter. This may account for the apparent affinity between this artist’s paintings and his work as a print maker.

Yet, Katz’ attention to the play of light and shadow upon what he chooses to represent adds a surprising element of three dimensionality to his images. Further, though at a distance many of his paintings seem to employ strong linear demarkation to define the edges between fields of color, the artist is also adept at suggesting texture and depth in a painterly way by using subtle brush strokes that have a shading effect. The following two images help illustrate these points.

Good Afternoon, depicting a favorite summer place to visit

Blue Umbrella 2, detail

In addition to the many solo portraits of Ada and others, Katz enjoyed portraying groups of others in various situations.

Thursday Night 2

Summer Triptych

Alex Katz’s many works of art, and particularly his paintings, have grown on me. At first I tended to undervalue his representational approach to portraying people and places, not taking sufficient account of his attained gifts for drawing in his compositions as well as his sometimes arresting attention to contrasts between light and dark areas. His astonishing longevity coupled with his abiding creativity lead me to return to his work with growing appreciation. His book, Looking at Art with Alex Katz, featuring reflections on many of his favorite artists, poets and architects, reflects the wide range of his artistic awareness and sensitivity. Yet, I also admire his almost single-minded willingness to pursue his own vision for his art despite the challenging influence and popularity of many of his contemporaries’ artwork, which often headed in very different directions.

Alex Katz at work on what may be another portrait of Ada

Celebrating the 12 Days

Brother Martin Erspamer, OSB

 

Having driven through my neighborhood yesterday and seeing two Christmas trees already put out onto the road edge, I am once again mindful of how the traditional Church calendar observes the Feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, or Christmas, for a full 12 days. I am therefore especially appreciative of the above image by Brother Martin Erspamer.

Martin Erspamer is a member of the Benedictine community at St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana. His evocative black and white prints, sometimes referred to as ‘clip art,’ have been widely used on worship bulletins and in Sunday school materials.

The popularity of his images, and their widespread use in media such as Sunday bulletins, should not lead us to devalue the beauty of his handiwork, which evidences a studied sensitivity to medieval imagery as much as it does to the possession of a modern graphic artist’s temperament.

I especially like his image of Abram counting the stars, based on Genesis 15 (below). The image and its theme arises from God’s challenge to Abram to go out into the dark of the night and count the stars in the heavens – if he can. For one of God’s promises is that, while Abram is despairing of being without an heir, he will eventually have as many descendants as he can count the stars in the night sky.

Genesis presents three covenants between God and Abram, in chapters 12, 15, and 17, each of which is relevant to our celebration of these 12 Days of Christmas. In various ways, God promises Abram many descendants, a new land for him and those that would follow, and that through him a blessing would come to all the people of the world. This third promise, fulfilled for us in the child born in Bethlehem, is the most relevant to our observance of this holy time of the year.

From Psalm 147:

1 Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God! * how pleasant it is to honor him with praise!

2 The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem; * he gathers the exiles of Israel.

3 He heals the brokenhearted * and binds up their wounds.

4 He counts the number of the stars * and calls them all by their names.

5 Great is our LORD and mighty in power; * there is no limit to his wisdom.

6 The LORD lifts up the lowly, * but casts the wicked to the ground.

 

For those able to visit the Abbey, St. Meinrad’s has an exhibit of art by Brother Erspamer in the Archabbey Library Gallery until January 15:

Hokusai and Mt Fuji

 

Hokusai (1760-1849), Fine Wind, Clear Morning (or Red Fuji), as it may appear at sunrise

 

One of the most well known Japanese wood block print artists, Hokusai, has left a large legacy of much admired prints almost as well-known in the West as in Japan. He was a master of the medium and could produce some incredibly detailed images. Hokusai may be best known for his series of prints, Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, several of which I am featuring here. Having grown up in Japan, in Tokyo and Yokohama, seeing Fuji-San, as the Japanese refer to the (inactive) volcano, was a frequent and pleasing sight in good weather.

Among his Mount Fuji series, Hokusai’s image of The Great Wave off Kanagawa (below) is perhaps his most famous.

What strikes me about many of Hokusai’s prints was his willingness to produce a graphic simplicity that now looks distinctly modern, especially when depicting Fuji, even though many of his prints are 200+ years old. Unlike his Red Fuji (top image) he often decided to portray the mountain in a diminished scale or in a secondary way relative to the wider context depicted in some of his prints.

Here, above, is an example featuring a graphically simple rendering of the volcano. It is titled The Inume Pass, from the same Mount Fuji series. The image below is another from the set, once again illustrating his juxtaposition of attention to sometimes complex visual details alongside an appealing, almost flat or two dimensional simplicity when depicting Fuji. Hokusai’s portrayal of the contrast between white snow cover and the dark volcanic rock of the mountain is just how I remember it, with the dappled overlap between its upper and lower regions.

One of my favorite prints captures what appears to be an evening view of men in a boat (below), afloat above wind or current-stirred waves, with a great arching bridge and Mount Fuji again standing serenely in the distant background. With the sun having set in the west, the foreground of the mountain is in shadow – in this, the land of the rising sun.