Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time

Venus and Cupid
on the easel this afternoon

I just came from the studio, where Trudi Ludwig has been working on her wood-cut adaptation of the mannerist painting, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid by Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo). The original work, now hanging in the National Gallery in London, portrays a nude Venus being kissed by an equally nude Cupid, surrounded by personifications of play, pleasure, fraud, jealousy, and other figures, including Time as an old man with wings and an hourglass. It was painted around 1545, probably as a gift from Cosimo I de’Medici, ruler of Florence, to King Francis I of France.

Dead Bob, Venus, and Cupid

Like Trudi’s visual commentaries on other famous paintings, the image slowly emerging on the large, wooden panel reduces each of these human forms to its essence, the bones. As she is fond of pointing out, the elegant poses are not only improbable, they are anatomically impossible. Cupid is especially odd – we’ve been laughing about the difficulty of connecting his head to the shoulder that tucks under the armpit of Venus, and connecting that shoulder and back to the lower torso and legs. Venus, too, has her own improbabilities – just try, for a moment, to contort your own body into that pose. Yet, somehow, with the help of Dead Bob, the artist’s skeleton, and a mirror that allows her to compare a reproduction of the original with her backwards copy, Trudi makes me believe that a body could, in fact, twist like that.

heads of Venus and Cupid,
in process

It will take many, many more hours to complete this image, drawing, erasing, redrawing each tiny bone in hands and feet, each lobe and opening of pelvis and skull, each juncture of bone to bone, until the angle is right. Then, there will be more hours of careful carving, removing just the right amount of wood so that simple black and white will read as an entire range of grays when it is finally printed. One might say that investing all this time in re-imagining a 500-year-old painting is folly, but there is a profound truth to be discovered in the gradual emergence of something from nothing, a reminder of what lies beneath all our flesh.

Art and Christ

I’ve been going through another round of angst about being an artist in a world that is filled with other expectations. This morning in chapel, the preacher exhorted all of us to feed the poor, clothe the naked, and heal the sick in the name of Jesus. At lunch, a guest speaker told us that following Jesus means standing up in the face of oppression, speaking truth to power, being in solidarity with those who have nothing. As I sit in my comfortable office, surrounded by good art on the wall and typing at a late-model computer with its flat-screen monitor, I am all too aware of the privileged life that I lead. And I find myself wondering – not for the first time – what being called to follow Christ means to me as an artist, a teacher, a leader of something called the Center for the Arts and Religion.

In the chapter on art and the world’s need in my still-unfinished book, I have written,

The world is full of problems: war, homelessness, global warming, domestic violence, AIDS, hunger, drug abuse. The list goes on and on. In a world that seems to be always on the brink of disaster, there is a seemingly endless amount of work to do the help the earth heal from pollution of every kind; to insure adequate nutrition, housing, education, and health care to every person; to bring peace among the nations and in every home and village and city. And yet, if all of this is done, and there is no art, then the world will still be a sad, sorry, joyless place.

I believe this. I believe that I am called to be an artist, to make pictures that hover on the edge of dreams, to teach others how to look and listen, to help students think about the ways that art influences our thoughts and behavior, to help other artists join their faith and their art. I believe that I am meant to use the gifts God has given me – the gifts of thinking, painting, writing, and teaching – rather than reject them as unworthy or squander them in doing other things for which I have no gift and no love.

And yet, I struggle to remember these things in the face of the unrelenting need that is all around me. I forget that I do not need to earn God’s love. I forget that as part of the always-wounded, always-risen Body of Christ I do not have to do it all – I only have to do my part. I forget that grace flutters all around me, like cherry blossom petals on a windy day.

David Jones: Art, Poetry and the Bible, by Kathleen Staudt

Jone, Human Being, 1931 (detail)

I’ve been helping to organize an upcoming conference and exhibition at Washington Adventist University. The conference will feature the visual art work and poetry of David Jones (1895-1947).  Jones is one of those rare geniuses like William Blake, who combines a unique vision as visual artist -- working as a painter, engraver, book illustrator and maker of painted inscriptions-- and poet.  Trained as a visual artist as a young man, he served in the Great War with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and began writing poetry after the war, when debilitating post-traumatic stress symptoms prevented him from painting.  The result was his first long poem, In Parenthesis, which brought together a mythic imagination, a painterly sense of form and texture, and an intimate sensitivity to the human experience of war as seen from those who served.  Widely acclaimed in his time (T.S. Eliot called it “a work of genius”), In Parenthesis has been recognized as one of the great poetic works coming out of World War I.

Jones, Deluge (detail)

Jones was a convert to Roman Catholicism and spent some years in the artist’s and craftman’s community of Ditchling, in England - a community led by the Catholic sculptor Eric Gill in the 1920’s. Jones’s conversations with Catholic artists in those days led him to a highly original understanding of the poet’s and artist’s work as a “sacramental” activity, drawing on the work of Jacques Maritain and other Catholic theologians, but with Jones’s own particular stamp as an artist of the 20^th century, acutely aware of the cultural fragmentation of his time, and deeply connected to his Welsh heritage and to the liturgy and story of his adopted Roman Catholic tradition.

Jones, Everyman (detail)

I have spent many years immersed in what I view as Jones’s greatest work, a long poem entitled The Anathemata, published in 1952 but written largely during the second world war, including the time of the blitz in London.  W.H. Auden called this work “very possibly the finest long poem written in English in this century.”  Winding and circuitous in its form, it centers on the celebration of the mass in a London chapel during the war, at what the poem calls “the sagging end and chapter’s close” of western civilization.  In an internal monologue that opens out layer after layer of verbal allusion, the poem connects the celebration of Eucharist with the last supper and passion, with the mythologies of the west from Greece, Rome, Wales and northern Europe, and with the arc of salvation history.  It is an offering of “anathemata” -- a Greek word that means “the things set apart” for blessing or for curse.  The intersection between “things” and the acts of “sign-making” which Christ performed at the Last Supper and at the Crucifixion widens to a celebration of the “sign-making” activity of humanity, which connects us to the Incarnation and to the Logos, the Creator.  Dense in its texture and allusive in its meanings, the poem belongs to the era of high modernism, reminding one of the allusiveness of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (which Jones admired) and of Eliot’s Waste Land.  Like those works it is challenging but rewards rereading, and it engages themes of theology and culture that are deeply relevant to our own time.  Indeed, there are ways in which Jones is well ahead of his time.  My talk at the conference will be about Jones and .H. Auden and what we can learn from them about a “sacramental poetics” in a post-Christian era.

Jones, Crucifixion (detail)

Jones was very aware of connections between text and image, and he was fascinated with the role of the artist as the preserver of “culture” and what he called “the world of sign and sacrament” in a world where economic and political empires reign, and the artist’s role becomes increasingly prophetic in what he called our “placeless cosmocracy.”  The conference on Jones, entitled “David Jones: Culture and Artifice,” will be held at Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park  March 29-30.  It will  include an art exhibit, academic papers and discussions, a poetry reading, and the North American premiere of the film "David Jones between the Wars: The Years of Achievement" a new feature length documentary by Derek Shiel and Adam Alive.  For full information and registration materials go to the conference website at http://www.wauhonorsprogram.org/davidjones2012.html or contact me at kathleen.staudt@gmail.com.

As if that isn’t enough for this lover of theology and literary art, dovetailing with the Jones conference will be the annual Keogh Lectures at Washington Adventist, featuring distinguished scholar Dr. Leland Ryken.  On Friday evening March 30, Dr. Ryken will lecture on “The Bible as Literary Classic,” and I will be giving a formal response to his talk that evening.  On Saturday March 31, Dr. Ryken will lecture on "What Makes the King James Bible Great." For more information about the Keough lectures, contact Dr. Zack Plantak at zplantak@wau.edu. 

If you’re interested in learning more about David Jones, the proceedings of conferences held in 2010 at Washington National Cathedral are available online at http://www.flashpointmag.com/index13.htm

Christ Paintings

Alexandra Sherman just finished installing a new show, Christ Paintings by Larry Deyab, in the Dadian Gallery.  These paintings are somehow both lush and spare, so raw and powerful that at first I felt physically unable to approach them. For a long, timeless moment, I stood at the door of the gallery as if transfixed, my eyes slowly scanning around the room, trying to take in what I was seeing.

With titles like The Flagellation of Christ, Crown of Thorns, Veronica Veil, and Via Dolorosa, the eleven paintings reference – but do not exactly follow – the devotion known as the Stations of the Cross. But these are narrative paintings only in the broadest sense. In each, there is only a face, a shoulder, the back of a head, the barest suggestion that we are looking at a human being. In swift, sure, broad brushstrokes, Deyab shows the raw anguish of a person who is undergoing some undefined, yet very real, sort of torture.

In several, the face of Christ is seen in extreme close up, with blobs or drips of blood-red paint obscuring the dark stroke signifying a mouth or an eye. We know it is Christ not only because of the crown of thorns, but also because of the calm that somehow pervades these violent, painful paintings. In one, a deep, sky blue seems to support Jesus’ bowed head, as if promising the resurrection to come. In another, gold gleams through what looks like it might be a chain-link fence that separates Jesus’ body from the glory that waits on the other side of death.

These paintings confront us with the reality of human suffering. I do not know if the artist calls himself a Christian, but it is clear both from the works, themselves, and from what Deyab writes about them, that they arise out of some deeply personal struggle. At once painful and beautiful, these Christ Paintings do not glorify violence, but rather invite us to walk alongside Jesus--and by extension, all who suffer--on the way to the cross. This show is a gift, an invitation to keep a holy Lent.

Writing and Art

Many years ago, when I taught in an art department in a state university, one of the catch-phrases was “writing across the curriculum.” The academic community had collectively realized that incoming students had done so little writing in high school that a single, freshman course in English composition did not give them enough practice in writing thoughtfully and coherently.

While professors continued in general to follow the pedagogical practices proper to their disciplines, we were expected to assign at least one research paper, critical essay, or other serious writing project in every class, regardless of whether the subject matter were art, science, mathematics, or anything else. Thus, students in my studio fundamentals course found themselves required not only to develop the manual skills involved in mixing and applying paint, drawing with a wide variety of pens and pencils, cutting mats, and building models out of foam-core; the visual acuity to distinguish subtle difference in color and form; and the aesthetic ability to manipulate the elements and principles of design to evoke meaning and emotion; but also to engage the artworks of others in writing, uncovering significance through careful description of the work in itself and in awareness of the artist’s historical context.

For most of my art students, the discipline of writing was as unfamiliar and as difficult as making an artwork is to most students in theological seminaries.  Accustomed to thinking in images and forms, they struggled with the requirement to put their thoughts into words. This struggle was often rewarded with new insights and understandings. Forced to use the discursive, linear, logical portions of their brains to describe what was intrinsically imaginative, experiential, and expressive, they discovered a unexpected source of creativity in the interplay between the two.

It seems to me that a similar process happens when students in more discursive disciplines are asked to think imaginatively, expressively, and aesthetically about what is typically presented to them in propositional form. By experiencing artworks made by others, they learn about other places, other times, other ways of thinking, experientially, through the evidence of their senses. By immersing themselves in the uncompromising demands and opportunities that working with physical matter requires, they discover that the metaphors they find in scripture or theological writings acquire a deeper resonance, a fuller reality, than when they are encountered simply in words. By trying to embody their intellectual ideas about God, the created universe, or themselves, in poems or paintings or movement they learn certain truths at a level that cannot be approached through propositional statements about things like incarnation, suffering, or joy.

More than Words

On Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, our students, faculty, and staff came together to celebrate the arts with dance, music, poetry, drama, biblical storytelling, and cookies and hot chocolate. For the first hour, people stood in the foyer outside the gallery, in rapt attention as Kathryn Sparks danced the 150^th Psalm; Dana Olson told the story of Hagar and Ishmael; a group from the drama class took on the personas of women that Jesus met; 

Kathryn Sparks, Psalm 100

Ruth Kent danced to “Oh Freedom”; Lauren Blitz recited her original poem, “Communion’s Choir”; Eleanor Colvin offered her monologue, “On My Knees”; a wind ensemble played Alexandra Crabtree’s arrangement of “All Creatures of our God and King; Jeannie Murray danced “Finding Your Voice”; and Tracy Radosevic told how the Aramaen attack was thwarted from the Second Book of Kings.

Eleanor Colvin, Michele Walton,
Annette Morgan, and Mary Bates-Washington,
"Among the Women Jesus Met"

Kyle Durbin and Tim Gouchenour,
"Wittenberg"

Then, everyone moved into Elderdice, where we watched Michele Walton and Vanya Mullinax do a short scene from Michel’s drama, “Jane”; Jesse Holt Jr. sang Donizetti’s “Una Furtiva Lagrima”; Sherri Ellerbe recited her original poem, “A Parable of Creation”; Drew VanDyke Colby performed his original “Ballad of the Gerasene Demoniac”; Dave Stewart recited two of his original poems; Kyle Durbin and Tim Gouchenour reprised a scene from last year’s performance of “Wittenberg”; Kathleen Henderson Staudt read her poem, “Holy Spirit”; Madelyn Campbell told Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus; and Kathryn Sparks returned to dance the 100^th Psalm.

Drew VanDyke Colby,
"Ballad of the Gerasene Demoniac"

Dana Olson, "Hagar and Ishmael"

If it all sounds exhausting, it was. It was also exhilarating, funny, inspiring, touching, irreverent, tender, and moving beyond words to see so many people together, sharing their gifts and receiving one another’s offerings in a spirit of joy. There were both tears and raucous laughter,  as well as jaw-dropping astonishment at the skill and dedication the performers brought to each 3- to 5-minute piece. Like the visual art in the gallery and on the walls of Elderdice that formed a backdrop to the event, this festival of performing arts was a testament to the importance that the arts have in the life of Wesley Theological Seminary, and, ultimately, in the life of the church outside our walls.

Jeannie Murray-Kostryukov,
"Finding Your Voice"

Alexandra Crabtree, Rebecca Torres,
Kay Rodgers, Sean Smith, Paige Wheeler,
"All Creatures of Our God and King"

 

 

 

What people experienced in the Heart the Arts Festival was not sentimental, false, propagandistic “church art.” It was not a talent show. This was the real thing – art that made us think, opened our hearts, and brought us to our feet applauding, grateful for the gifts and talents that God has bestowed on members of our community, and for the hard work and energy that bring those gifts and talents into our midst.

So I want to thank everyone who read or danced or sang or played an instrument or acted a scene; and for everyone who worked behind the scenes to make it all possible. I especially want to thank Alexandra Sherman and Amy Gray, without whose tireless efforts neither the show in the gallery nor the festival would have happened. And I am grateful to everyone whose foresight and support have made Wesley a welcoming place for the arts, a place where everyone knows that the Word of God is more than words.

Heart the Arts

Megan Burd-Harris, 3-in-1 God, wire

Towards the end of 2011, the Luce Center for the Arts and Religion began to dream of Heart the Arts, a festival of the arts encompassing dance, drama, poetry, music, and biblical storytelling as well as highlighting the current show in the gallery, The Seminary Celebrates. On Saint Valentine’s Day, just a few days from now, that dream will be a reality. Not only will the Dadian Gallery foyer and Elderdice Hall be filled with the sounds and sights of performing artists in the late afternoon, but chapel that morning will include many of the same elements.

Why do we do this? Why should a theological seminary care so much about the arts?

I believe the answer is that the arts are an important part of theological education because the Word of God is more than words.

Paula Nesbitt, The Women with the Issue of Blood, mixed media

This is easy to forget, especially in a place that specializes in discursive words about God. Our students – and our faculty – read books, write papers, and give sermons, trying to clarify what we believe about God, ourselves, and the world around us. But it is easy to get so lost in the words that we forget that it is not the words of scripture, but the One is revealed to us in those words who is the true Word, the One who is not mere words, but Jesus, the Christ, the Word who existed even before creation. As those familiar verses from the opening of the Gospel according to John tell us,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being….And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… (John 1:1-3, 14, NRSV)

So when we say, “the Word of God” we already mean something more than just the actual words on the pages of the Bible, something more than the ordinary, literal meaning of the term, “word.” The Word of God is more than the words on the pages, more than the words we read aloud.

The arts help us remember that. The arts help us experience the presence of God in our bodies, in our emotions, in our hearts, in ways that books and scholarly papers cannot. When we feel the rhythm of the song, our hearts begin to beat as one; when the truth of story is embodied in the  actors before us, our eyes overflow with tears; when we feel the pulse of life in the poet’s verse, we know that God is present with us. It is then that we know for sure that the Word of God is more than words, and lives among us and around us and through us.