After Christmas I took the opportunity to visit some of the exhibitions in London galleries that will soon be closing. I enjoyed Turner at the Tate, but was puzzled and perhaps disturbed by �The Sacred made Real� at the National Gallery. The intention is to present �a landmark reappraisal of religious art from the Spanish Golden Age with works created to shock the senses and stir the soul.� However, even before seeing these 17th century paintings and polychrome wooden sculptures, the title itself raises questions.
In what way can art make something real? I remember an English master who prohibited as clumsy even meaningless, the use of the phrase �it makes it more real� in reviews of poetry or novels. Is art to be judged by the accuracy of it�s representation of reality and if that is the case does reality mean simply that which is out there which presents itself to me through my eyes/senses? And how is something �out there� to be categorized as �sacred�? In that we believe the whole world is made by God then any object might be defined as sacred; but clearly different religions have been responsible for categorizing special persons, events, places (and texts) as sacred. If we had been able to see these persons or events we may or may not have thought of them as sacred at the time, unless something obviously miraculous was involved (though even then according to the thought of the time something demonic rather than sacred could have been involved.) Time, reflection, experience and religious authority all serve to define something as sacred and therefore to be an important part of present reality even though it is not there to be seen. To say therefore that a representation of those �sacred� persons or events is going to make them �real� or perhaps �more real� begs all sorts of questions.
The most disturbing part of the exhibition in this context is that which portrays the flagellation, crucifixion, and corpse of Christ. It shows the way in which painters like Valasquez and Zurbaran may have been influenced by sculptural portrayals of their subject. And as the guide says, �Sculptors often went to extraordinary lengths to achieve greater realism, introducing glass eyes and tears, as well as ivory teeth and human hair to their sculptures. The separate skill of polychroming, performed by specially trained painters, added to the effect with remarkable flesh tones.� And that is what one initially sees; sculptures divorced from their church settings, which go to seemingly bizarre lengths to look like what the dead or dying Jesus might have looked like, though all the time the modern eye notices the materials used to achieve this effect. The gallery provides �dim religious light� to make it feel more like a church but the crowds discussing the artifacts reduce the spiritual tone. Many of these pieces may well have been designed for individuals to kneel in front of in silent contemplation.
Of course if we had been present at the events of the passion our overriding emotion would have been revulsion, the sickness one might feel when seeing any cruelly mutilated body. And if, like the disciples or Mary, we had a special relation to this body we might also have felt anger, despair, and a terrible loss. The purpose of these sculptures and paintings, however, is to induce a more �spiritual� reaction, something which could therefore be said to be at one step away from the reality, a step created by reflection and emotional realignment. So the intention might be that we should be moved by what Christ suffered for us, that we should repent of the sins which this suffering atones for, that we might see our own suffering and loss shared by God in the death of his Son. But all these spiritual reactions would only come about as a result of prior teaching and reflection. Someone seeing these carvings without any prior spiritual training might run away in horror and repulsion that people were wandering around an art gallery looking dispassionately at such awful things.
Such a reaction might be modified by a lecture on �Golden Age Spanish Art� but the discomfort even then might not be entirely dealt with. Such works are of course �real� in a very distinctive, almost unnatural, way; the manner of presentation in the paintings is almost �theatrical� with exaggerated detail, dramatic lighting, unsettling shadows. There is also a curious stillness about both painting and sculpture, like a moment of arrested reality. It is almost as though you are intended to forget the narrative and concentrate on the moment. (Caravaggio�s famous �Supper at Emmaus� has the same effect.) But besides being devotional there is also an ambiguity about this art because though it seems so intensely personal it is based on a detailed set of criteria about how such sacred moments are to be represented. The imagery must be orthodox and strictly Biblical (so someone like Veronese could be hauled before the Inquisition for putting too many of the wrong kind of persons in a painting of the Last Supper). People must not worship what they see or pray to it, but rather venerate the sculpture because in that process they are venerating the original of which it is only a copy, though one imagines you could be punished if you desecrated this copy. The sacred or divine is therefore being presented with a visionary intensity but against a background of ecclesiastical authority which approves or disapproves of the emotions and behaviour that might be induced by the art work. So if the sacred is being made real in this exhibition it is a very complex reality through which we need careful guidance, remembering also that we may be influenced by a culturally Protestant aversion to the style and liturgical use of these statues when processed through the streets in the Spanish celebration of Holy Week or Marian feasts. If the sacred is being made real then this is a reality transmuted through the eye of an artist, and interpreted by the experience and cultural formation of that artist. And if he or she is a great artist, then it will be his or her art which transforms our ability to see reality �out there� beyond the work of art, in ways that are new and profound and more attuned to what is sacred. If the sacred has in some sense been made real by art then reality will thereby become more sacred.
And why is any of this of relevance outside the art gallery? Well partly because we have a group of artists in the congregation working on Stations of the Cross to be displayed in church for Lent; but also because this question of making the sacred real affects all of us whenever we read or listen to Scripture, whenever we come to the Eucharist and receive communion, and whenever we think about how our Church building can be made a better place for people to find God. �Sacred reality� is made present in what might be thought of as �archetypal� or �luminous� events � events which carry significant and universal emotions (like birth or death) � and in events which have been vested with significance by a community searching for God and inspired by experiences and ideas which emerge from those events through subsequent reflection and textualisation (just as Mary ponders what the shepherds tell her and stores it in her heart). However, because �sacred reality� can be so powerful it can sometimes be exploited by authority; and it can also sometimes �go dead� and lose its significance both because of such exploitation and because of a lack of serious and shared pondering. So if the sacred is to be made real in Hampstead Parish Church we need more people to ponder together in study and prayer, we need more people to help present our liturgy and reflect on it, we need people with a sensitive and imaginative eye to look at our building and our styles of communication. If your �sacred reality� is in danger of going dead, what are you going to do to rediscover both the reality and sacredness?
With my love and prayers and good wishes for the New Year,
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker