Tag Archives: museums

April 18, 2012 · 10:50 am

A Strange Trip: From the Coffin to the Bookshelf

Last evening while watching BBC World News I caught a report on the 1,300 year-old St. Cuthbert Gospel, which recently became the property of the British Library in London.  The story of how the earliest, completely preserved European book came into the collection of the Library is an extremely interesting one, as you shall see.  However it is also a rather sad, contemporary example of how many of the Christian art objects we enjoy in museums today have lost their original, intended purpose.

Last summer the British Library began a campaign to purchase the book known as the “St. Cuthbert Gospel” from the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College in England, who have owned it since the 18th century; the book is a beautifully handwritten, simple manuscript of the Gospel of St. John in the New Testament dating from the 7th century.  The Library announced yesterday that, with the assistance of Christie’s auctioneers and other experts on valuation, since the book was not actually on the open market, they had finally raised the agreed-upon $14.7 million price tag for the volume, through a combination of public grants and private contributions. The Library has been in possession of the book since the late 1970′s, when it was loaned by the Jesuits for exhibition and study.

St. Cuthbert (c. 634-687) is one of the most revered of the early English saints. He was born in the Kingdom of Northumbria, in the north of present-day England, and discerned a religious vocation after spending part of his youth as a shepherd and then as a soldier. He subsequently became a monk, and was eventually ordained the Bishop of Lindisfarne, one of the most important centers of Christianity in Britain during this period.

The process for canonization of saints as we understand it today had not been fully formalized at the time of St. Cuthbert’s death, but according to St. Bede, the great chronicler of the early Church in Britain – whose superb “An Ecclesiastical History of the English People” is a must-have for any serious student of history – when several miracles were attributed to St. Cuthbert’s intercession and his coffin was opened, his body was found to be incorrupt. This led to his popularly being declared a saint, and he was re-buried in a beautifully decorated coffin in about 698 A.D., behind the main altar at his cathedral in Lindisfarne. The Gospel copy which is now the property of the British Museum was a gift from a neighboring monastery, which created and donated it to be buried with St. Cuthbert when he was re-interred.

From there the travels of this book, and indeed St. Cuthbert himself, become exceedingly strange. The coffin had to be moved multiple times due to invasions by the Vikings, until in the 10th century it finally came to rest at Durham Cathedral. During construction of a shrine to house the saint’s remains, his coffin was opened and this volume was re-discovered. It was then removed from the coffin, and kept in the cathedral priory for select visitors to examine and use as an aid to prayer; it remained there for the next 500 years.

When Henry VIII decided that he was not disgusting enough already, and decided to destroy the monastic communities in Britain so he could take their wealth and possessions for himself and his cronies, many books such as this were lost. Fortunately, someone managed to preserve this little volume from destruction, and it eventually came into the possession of the Earls of Lichfield.  The 3rd Earl, in turn, presented it in the middle of the 18th century to the Reverend Thomas Phillips who, in most of the news articles I have read in researching this story, list him as a “Canon”, meaning a priest attached to a cathedral.

However it turns out that Thomas Phillips was not a Protestant dressing up and playing Catholic in property stolen from Rome, but rather the real thing: a Catholic priest. He was private chaplain to the recusant Berkeley family, who were instrumental in getting the remaining English Catholic nobility and gentry together to petition King George III for his support of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. This Act was the first, small step toward the emancipation of Catholics following the Reformation, who up until the passage of this Act could be prosecuted, for example, for being or housing a Catholic priest, or teaching the Catholic faith in a school. Catholics were forbidden from buying or selling land, and they could in fact lose their property if a Protestant relative wished to take possession of it. Of course, legally enshrined prejudice against Catholics is still in fact part of English law today, but we will save that for another post.

For his part Father Phillips was the first English biographer of Reginald Cardinal Pole (1500-1588), the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, and published a two-volume study of this rather interesting prelate at Oxford in 1767. As an aside, Cardinal Pole was perhaps not always a saintly bishop, but he and I share a mutual dislike for Machiavelli and a preference for Count Castiglione, who is of course the patron of this blog. Cardinal Pole once described Machiavelli’s “The Prince” thusly: “I found this type of book to be written by an enemy of the human race. It explains every means whereby religion, justice and any inclination toward virtue could be destroyed”.

In 1769, Father Phillips presented the St. Cuthbert Gospel as a gift to the English Jesuit College in Liège, Belgium, where many of the English Jesuits who had been killed by Elizabeth I received their education. It then traveled back across the Channel, after the Jesuits were suppressed in Catholic Belgium and, ironically, found refuge in Protestant England in 1794. The book had remained at their school, Stonyhurst College, until it went on loan to the British Library, which now owns the well-traveled and ancient volume.

As interesting as all of this history is, I cannot help but think it a shame that this book is not still resting with the relics of St. Cuthbert. Of course it was not a book which he personally owned, since it was created several years after his death. Yet it was a mark of love, gratitude, and respect from his fellow monks, in recognition of how much he had done for them, and indeed for all early Christians in the north of England.

It also demonstrates yet again something which I have talked about periodically in these pages over the years. As much as I love things like beautifully made, historic paintings, statues, illuminated books, and other Catholic religious objects, there is something very tragic about seeing said objects in secular hands. I am of course not naive on this point: no doubt they are being better cared for than they would be if they were kept in regular use, or if they were simply gathering dust in some ancient and leaky church.

However when these things stop being ways of giving glory to God, and become little more than pretty baubles to be looked at, or remains like fossils or pottery shards to be studied scientifically, there is a type of sadness that arises for those of us who not only appreciate these things aesthetically, but also as spiritual expressions of the Catholic Faith made tangible. They were created by Catholic artisans for Catholic communities, but have been removed from the practice of the Faith, never to return.  I cannot walk into the National Gallery for example, and kneel down in front of the tranquil, meditative, and magnificent 15th century Perugino altarpiece of the Crucifixion to pray and reflect on Christ’s suffering. Well, I suppose I could, but then I would probably be chased away or arrested.

In the end it is certainly a good thing that more people will be able to study this remarkable book – which by the way has been digitized and will be available to examine online – and that it will be preserved for future generations.  However in isolation from its context, i.e. the shrine of a great Catholic saint, it loses some of its impact.  It is no longer an ex-voto, as it was originally intended to be, but an ex-ex-voto.  And for those of us who are aware of this fact, we cannot help but be a bit disappointed that it is not remaining in at least some kind of a Catholic setting.

Beginning of the Gospel of St. John from the St. Cuthbert Gospel (c. 698 A.D.)
British Library, London

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January 27, 2012 · 4:38 pm

American Realist Jenness Cortez Puts Art Where It Belongs

One of the ongoing goals for this blog is to try to encourage my readers not to be afraid of art, but rather to learn about it, because it is a reflection of our history and civilization.    For many people the term “art”, when used in the sense of paintings, sculpture, prints, and so on,  actually denotes two very different things.  We might define the first as art with a capital “A”, meaning the sorts of things one sees in museums and galleries, and the second as art with a lowercase “a”, meaning things one picks up at the local home furnishings emporium or department store to hang over the sofa.  The former is considered to be something intimidating and out of reach – or in the case of much contemporary art, utterly incomprehensible – to the average person, while the latter is often chosen not for merit, but because it matches the carpet or the upholstery.

So it may please you to learn of a very interesting contemporary artist, Jenness Cortez, whose 9th solo exhibition has just opened in Naples, Florida.  Cortez’ new show, “Homage to the Creative Spirit 2012″, features her paintings of imagined present-day interior spaces, where famous works of art are part of the scene.  As Cortez herself explains, she wants to celebrate the creativity that goes into the creation of art:

Every painting begins with a vision seen in the artist’s mind. Sometimes the finished piece appears in the mind full-blown, and at other times it is amorphous–yet with some beguiling character that begs to be developed. In either case, between that first inspiration and the finished painting lie hours of research, thousands of choices and, of course, the great joy of painting. The process is organic. Even with a well conceived composition in place, the painting has a life of its own and the best ones surprise even the artist with twists and turns that outshine the most clever of plans. It’s as if the creative spirit insinuates itself into the work, wanting to serve its own best interest with solutions that far exceed the artist’s original, limited vision.

Cortez’ work also hearkens back to a long-standing tradition in Western art, where painters would produce views of the interiors of homes or museums displaying the art collections contained therein. Among my favorite examples of this particular type of painting is a group portrait by Zoffany entitled “The Tribuna of the Uffizi” from 1772-1778, now in Windsor Castle, which shows a group of well-known art connoisseurs of the day enjoying some of the wonderful works of art in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. One can identify not only many of the people shown in the painting, but also the paintings and sculptures they are discussing as they pose for their portraits.

One can also appreciate the fact that Cortez will often make clever allusions to art history in her paintings. These bring a smile to those who immediately “get” what she is referencing, and encourage those who do not immediately see the point of the juxtaposition to do a bit of homework. It is as if she is encouraging the viewer to learn more about the wonderful world of art history, in a way far more effective than mere words such as mine could possibly hope to do. And nowhere is this desire more evident, I believe, than in her still life paintings.

Take for example Cortez’ still life entitled “Vermeer’s Amaryllis”, which is painted on a mahogany panel, rather than canvas. The painting hanging on the wall is the great Dutch Old Master Jan Vermeer’s “Lady With A Balance” of about 1664, now in the National Gallery of Art here in Washington. In the original Vermeer which Cortez has reproduced, in part, the lady in question is shown in a room where a painting of the “Last Judgment” is displayed. In a parallel to that painting, where the good and the bad of each soul is being weighed in a metaphorical balance, Vermeer has his subject engaged in weighing items in a literal balance.

In the foreground of Cortez’ work, we see several objects on a table, which itself is covered by an oriental rug. Those familiar with Vermeer’s work know that he often did this as well, in his own painting. In fact, the same Turkish carpet often appears on the floor or draped over furniture in many of his portrait-interior works.

On the right in the Cortez painting, we see a grouping of ripe fruit, making reference to the great Dutch still life paintings of fruit and flowers that were produced during the 17th century, i.e. the same time period that Vermeer himself was working. On the left, we see an Amaryllis bulb bursting into flower, and which is, in fact, the pink “Vermeer” cultivar for this type of lily, botanically speaking. The bulbs are growing in a wonderfully observed and technically very difficult to represent combination of materials. Cortez paints a hand-thrown, shallow pot made of terracotta, of the type normally used for growing bulbs, which we can see is hosting some green mold or moss growing on the bottom. The humble pot sits in a perfect, gleaming copper dish or tray, which reflects the carpet on which it sits, and serves to prevent both the carpet and the tabletop from getting wet when the plant needs to be watered.

On a personal level I feel Cortez’ work draws attention to the fact that works of art ought to be part of our lives, not simply objects to be studied as if they were historic artifacts or scientific specimens. For Catholics such as myself, for example, visiting a museum or a gallery where works of art originally commissioned for churches or for private prayer are on display is always something of a mixed bag, emotionally speaking. We are glad that such things are preserved for future generations to admire, but at the same time a bit saddened by the fact that they are not being used for their original, intended purpose.

Jenness Cortez invites us to consider that great art is something we can enjoy around us all the time, as we sprawl on the couch reading the newspaper, or as we get the dog ready to go out for a walk. It is not something we ought to be afraid of, but rather a connection to our history and culture which we ought to celebrate. I hope she continues to use her considerable talents to not only draw admirers to her own work, but also encourage people to really get to love and appreciate the history of Western art in the same way which she herself clearly does.


The artist at work in her Upstate New York studio

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August 11, 2011 · 2:08 pm

Bad Taste Old and New at Versailles

Last evening I watched a piece on France24 about the annual summer contemporary art show at the Palace of Versailles. In the gardens and inside of the château itself, various pieces of contemporary art are juxtaposed with the splendid rooms and vistas created for the Bourbons, who of course were turned out of their home during the French Revolution. The reporter went through the palace and stopped to ask several visitors what they thought of the contemporary art installations. Several visitors – all French – said they enjoyed the pieces, which were displayed in and around the grand residence of Louis XIV and his descendants.

However one visitor – clearly an American, and one possessing more than a little common sense – said she was appalled. “I haven’t liked any of it,” the lady commented, as we were shown a shot of a glass cabinet containing an installation piece of what appeared to be bandages and crutches. She noted that while some of the art on display might not be bad in the proper setting, what annoyed her most was that it was blocking many of the interior views of the magnificent, historic rooms of the palace which she and others had come to see.

This regrettable practice of placing the detritus of diseased minds in the home of the Sun King began in 2008 under the director of the palace museum, Jean-Jacques Aillagon: a man of many words and little taste. When interviewed by the France24 reporter, M. Aillagon repeatedly stated, in a parrot-like justification of the exhibition: “Art is always art,” presumably because sometimes the viewer may mistake art for being his breakfast, or a rubbish tip. M. Aillagon went on to explain that in displaying art, “we ask questions about form, material, and the artist’s perspective and intelligence.”

This is all nonsense, of course.

Rather than questioning the artist’s intelligence in such displays, I question that of M. Aillagon. You can read more about his poor taste and clichéd, art-speak blatherings in this interview. [WARNING: Some of the art described in the interview is a bit graphic.] He is clearly a figure who should be held up for public ridicule and dismissed from his post.

That being said, let not the rabidly conservative or monarchist among my readers think that my rejection of M. Aillagon’s efforts stems from a belief that Versailles itself is such a wonderful thing: it is not. It is, in fact, a monstrosity, and one of the tackiest, megalomaniacal, and overwrought buildings ever constructed. It has become the model for nouveaux-riches the world over, and for good reason, because it is simply too much.

Indeed, when we consider much of the self-promotional and titillating art commissioned for Versailles, I have to disagree with Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme, one of a number of French aristocrats who have tried to stop these shows at the château through the court system over the years. Most contemporary art which is displayed in shows such as this is rubbish. Yet ironically, most of it is also self-promotional and titillating,
in keeping with the attitudes of those who built and decorated Versailles in the first place.

As a matter of fact, I found myself surprised to be agreeing with American artist Jeff Koons – whose work I cannot abide – during the course of last night’s program. In an interview with the France24 reporter, Koons mentioned his inspiration for the pieces he showed there, when the first Versailles contemporary art exhibition opened in 2008. He thought about Louis XIV waking up in the morning, commanding his staff to build him some sort of giant, kitschy folly, and when he would come home from hunting that evening, there it would be. Those of you who have read books like Nancy Mitford’s classic, superbly researched and illustrated “The Sun King”, or seen films such as “Vatel”, will recognize that as much as one may not like Koons’ art, he certainly got into the spirit of the thing.

The real failure here is that of treating Versailles as if it is some sort of blank canvas, which it is not. It is a place crammed with history, and one which has nothing to do with Japanese manga or clunky malformations of scrap steel. One would have thought that the French would have better taste and a better appreciation of their own history, but of course when you place the dog in charge of the birdcage, this is what happens.

Therefore, please: let us leave the rubbish art to the rubbish art venues, like the Pompidou, and to those who want to see such things, and leave the Bourbons to the Bourbons, and to those who want to get some sense of the world they lived in.

Is it contemporary art, or is it curbside collection day at Versailles?

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July 20, 2011 · 2:34 pm

On Museums, Vandals, and Idolatry

You may have spotted news reports yesterday, gentle reader, regarding vandalism which took place over the weekend at the National Gallery in London. For those who missed it, two works by the 17th century French old master, Nicolas Poussin, were attacked on Sunday for reasons which still remain unknown. A man took a can of red spray-paint to Poussin’s paintings “The Worship of the Golden Calf” and “The Adoration of the Shepherds”, which portray these events from the Book of Exodus and the Gospel of St. Luke, respectively. The man was subsequently arrested, though as of this writing there have been no reports on what any charges would be. Fortunately, the conservation department of the museum managed to remove all of the red paint and no permanent damage was done to the paintings.

Reading about this event quite literally made me sick to my stomach, as I am sure it did many in the art world. A proposed solution which seems to be gaining traction among journalists and the commentariat is that there ought to provide greater security and screening, as well as an admission charge, both at the National Gallery and other British institutions where there are currently no such barriers to free entry. However these methods, while the intent behind them may be at least somewhat laudable, will ultimately prove ineffective at stopping those determined to engage in vandalism. They also reflect, ironically, how like the Israelites worshiping the golden calf, sometimes museums can forget that they are meant to serve others, not to worship idols.

Art history is full of examples of people who try to destroy works of art, whether because they are mentally ill, or politically motivated, or both. Pieces like Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica, for example, have been attacked by individuals who are not quite compos mentis. Large-scale, politically motivated instances range from Savonarola ordering a bonfire of the vanities in Renaissance Florence, to Chairman Mao and the violent iconoclasm of his so-called Cultural Revolution, to the Taliban blowing up statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.  However as it happens, perhaps one of the most famous of all acts of art vandalism ever committed took place at the National Gallery in London almost a century ago.

On March 10, 1914, Suffragette Mary Richardson approached the “Rokeby Venus” of 1614-1615 by the great Spanish old master painter Diego Velázquez, which is the only one of his female nudes known to still be in existence, and smashed the glass that covered it. She then hacked at the canvas at least seven times with a meat cleaver before she was pulled off by a docent and by a policeman who happened to be in the museum. Ms. Richardson claimed that she took this action because one of her suffragette colleagues, Emmeline Pankhurst, had been arrested the previous day.

Subsequently in court, Ms. Richardson explained that

I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs Pankhurst seeks to procure justice for womanhood, and for this she is being slowly murdered by a government of Iscariot politicians. If there is an outcry against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other beautiful living women, and that until the public cease to countenance human destruction the stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and hypocrisy.

Ms. Richardson subsequently spent six months in prison as a result of her act of vandalism, which was the maximum sentence at the time. Richardson later went on to join the Labor Party and run unsuccessfully several times for Parliament. Later still, in the 1930′s, she left the Labor Party and went on to head the women’s division of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), where I am sure she felt very much at home.

One of the unfortunate fallout results of Ms. Richardson’s actions, and copycat attacks by colleagues of hers at the National Portrait Gallery and other British museums, was that for a time, women were actually barred from visiting public museums. They would only be permitted to enter a museum if they were accompanied by an adult male, who could also vouch for their trustworthiness, i.e. that they would not try to vandalize any of the art on display. This humiliating and deeply insulting result was the only way people at the time, nearly a century ago now, felt that they could protect works of art from the more radical elements of the feminist movement. The powers that be at the time determined that it was more important to protect the art in public collections than it was to protect the dignity of those who sought to visit and study those collections.

In the wake of the Poussin attacks over the weekend, there is practical fallout for the National Gallery regarding future exhibitions. The planned lending of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” to the National Gallery for an upcoming exhibition was going to be a sensation, as one of the few paintings by da Vinci comes from Krakow to London. The Polish foundation which owns the painting has expressed concern that the work may be vandalized or worse, given recent events at the National Gallery, and that there will be meetings to debate what to do, and whether the planned lending should proceed. No doubt other public collections and private collectors are going to do the same, before they will confirm that the lending of their pieces to the National Gallery will proceed.

However a more personal concern for those who visit public collections ought to be the question of whether, because of the bad acts of one person, they ought to be treated as guilty until proven innocent. Putting in greater security at public museums is not a bad idea, of course – particularly if you have borrowed someone else’s property for a show, and you do not want to be held liable for any damage it may suffer while in your care. Yet ultimately, greater security will do nothing to deter those who are determined to deface or destroy a work of art.

At the National Gallery here in Washington, for example, bag checks have been the norm for years. The guards look through your packages at the various entrances, and you are directed to a cloak room where you must leave your items. Yet despite these measures, quite recently a deranged woman still managed to attack one of the paintings at the Gauguin exhibition, by trying to pry it off the wall.

Ironically, when a work of art is placed into public hands, it often runs a greater risk of being damaged or destroyed, unless of course the work in question happens to be by Goya and finds its way into the hands of the repulsive Chapman brothers. The more people who have access to a painting like a Poussin, for example, the greater the chance that some crackpot will – ahem – take a crack at it. The best a museum can hope for is to reduce the risk that a work of art will be damaged or destroyed by certain methods of preventing disaster, such as through the use of bag checks and mandatory cloakrooms.

A public institution cannot, for the sake of protecting a work of art, forget that its mandate is one of public service rather than the adoration of idols, in the form of art objects. Art is fragile because it cannot fight back or run away when it is physically attacked; no matter its size or the composition of its materials, because of its static nature art relies on human beings to protect it from time, the elements, and indeed other human beings. Yet it is important for the museum to remember that, although works of art must be protected, the museum is losing sight of its purpose as a public institution if it views and treats everyone who comes to see a work of art as a potential criminal.

The National Gallery is fortunate that no lasting damage was done to the Poussin paintings, and the adoption of policies such as bag-checking would certainly be prudent.  However, no matter how good its security, vandalism cannot be completely prevented in a public institution. Rather than taking a misanthropic view of human nature, it would be more logical for the National Gallery to accept the fact that this type of crime will happen again at some point, since prevention is not a panacea for the preservation of objects in public collections. Taking that into consideration, hopefully the practical solutions which the museum adopts as a result of this event will be tempered by reason, keeping foremost in consideration its role as a public institution, and the end result will not cause the public to abandon a National Gallery which becomes as unpleasant a place to visit as a TSA checkpoint.

Detail of damage to “The Worship of the Golden Calf” by Nicolas Poussin (c. 1633-34)
National Gallery, London

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