CHAPEL Today I would like to mention three artists in particular. The first is Duccio, a very early Florentine painter. His paintings had tremendous dignity, and one of his Crucifixions has this dignity, because it is so simple, like so much of early Italian Renaissance art. In contrast, Grunewald, working in Germany many years later, produced a crucifixion showing a macabre image of some carcass pegged out to rot. It is horrific in the extreme. Rubens, later again, painted a crucifixion, and I must say it doesn't turn me on in the least bit, in any direction. It looks like an overfed lump of a man with seriously high cholesterol level, more likely to die of cardiac arrest than of being crucified. I would love to hear these artists defend themselves from my bits of criticism. Duccio, being Italian, might well say, "Absolutely right; my paintings are simple". Grunewald, being German, would say, "Ja, mine is without doubt a carcass hanging to rot". But Rubens, being the suave, urbane man that he was, would probably pat me on the head and say "Run along, young man; you're out of your depth". Now I want to turn to my cross. Mine is meant to be thought-provoking. Mine speaks of swirling energy that begins in the centre and explodes outwards towards the extremities. Only then, when you approach the extremities, do I permit myself to hint at identifiable reality, with suggestions of hands and feet. I think that realism puts limitations on expression. One should be able to express an idea through the language of form, in the same way as music can through the language of sound. Mine says very little about death. Mine is concerned with the explosive spread of energetic Christian ideals, sparked off by this man of immense charisma. In the eyes of the establishment of his day he was a nobody, but they must have recognised his threat to their cosy world. Now, a brief word about the actual making of this cross. It is made of small fragments of blue glass, cut from fairly large sheets which came from Jarrow. I stuck these onto perspex, using an adhesive which doesn't actually set perfectly hard: I felt that if the breeze here in Chapel moved it, I didn't want the bits of glass to go pinging off. It wasn't easy to find an adhesive which was compatible with both glass and perspex. There are four threads holding it up, each with a breaking strain of thirty pounds. They are mono-filament, and they are photo-degradable, so I don't know how long it will stay up there without due inspection and possible renewal of the threads. The cross was made and hung up to correspond with the time of a confirmation service. I was not able to attend myself, but I did come in very early the next morning to see if it was still hanging there, because I did have this awful dread that it would come cascading down and possibly decapitate the Archbishop. I wondered whether it would have been put down as an act of God, or merely the fault of J. C. B.
CRUCIFIXION Our colour section shows a picture of the Chapel crucifix, made by John Brown. On March 7th he gave an address at morning Chapel on the subject of the crucifixion: Easter is approaching, and Christians' thoughts turn to the events that happened on Good Friday. Since I made this cross which is hanging up here, it seems perfectly reasonable that I should speak about it, but first I want you to ask yourselves why so many churches do have crosses hanging up in them or fastened to the wall or on rood screens. Why do they have these things? Is it to produce a sense of guilt in people, to make them feel contrite for the murder of an all-forgiving man so long ago? Some people, emotional people in particular, are moved to tears when they see these crosses with a figure of Christ on them. I know, because I have seen them. In the past there have been many sculptures and paintings of this crucifixion, all over the western world. Historically, the Church was the principal patron of the arts, and artists were asked to make these things in order to illustrate the Bible stories, so that people who were illiterate could understand them — a kind of visual aid, if you like.
Crucifixion by Grunewald.
28
