Easter art

Jackie Macadam considers how the Easter story has been told through art.

“FOR a teenager visiting Glasgow, seeing the Dali painting of Jesus looking down from the cross onto the world below, was almost a religious experience in itself.

Never had a painting so moved me. I still have a (small) copy of it in my house. Art and religion seem inextricably entwined.

“Throughout the centuries the Easter story has been portrayed in the language of Christian art, speaking to us of suffering and new life, loss and hope.

Our work responds to these same themes, reimagining them in a contemporary context, opening up for the viewer the possibility of a fresh encounter with God.”

The Rev Peter Gardner and his wife, Heidi, run their own art studio in Glasgow. Art has always played an important part in their lives and over twenty years and three ministries, what began as experimentation with visual interventions has developed into an art practice, making temporary site-specific installations, often set within the context of worshipping communities and their buildings. Their work responds to these environments, interacting with light, structure, scale and surface.

“Heidi and I met at the University of St Andrews, where she was studying History of Art and I, Economic and Social History,” says Peter. “We married after graduation and moved to Edinburgh where I embarked on theology training as a candidate for ministry. Having been ordained in 1988, I served as a parish minister in rural Midlothian and then in the city centre of Glasgow. For the last five years I have worked as Pioneer Minister to the visual arts communities of Glasgow. Throughout these years, we have always viewed our practice of ministry as a shared vocation and much of that vocation has found its expression in the visual.

“We share a passion for visual art and design and have always enjoyed spending time visiting galleries and exhibitions. In 1995, one of these visits had a profound effect on us. At the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, we saw Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isles,’ an extraordinary installation that entirely filled the viewing space, with 40,000 tiny, handmade, clay figures all facing towards the viewer. The power of that piece stayed with us and led us to start on a journey of artistic experimentation, introducing visual interventions into worship and in 2000, in order to develop my creative imagination, I embarked on a period of study leave at Leith School of Art.

“Easter of 2020, less than a month after lockdown had first been introduced, was a deeply challenging time for everyone.

“By Good Friday 2020 the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was overwhelming, the number of people affected and the lists of those who had died, heartbreaking. All the normal structures and routines of life had been suspended. Such disruption had taken us all into uncharted waters, which were hard to navigate.

“On April 8 of that year, The Guardian published an article by Shaan Sahota, a junior doctor working in ICU, who wrote: ‘Caring for a Covid+ patient is not what you think, I’m so close to them – dripping eye drops under their lids, so that their unblinking eyes don’t dry out. I may never meet them but I hold vigil over the traces of their breathing for signs they need help. I change bedsheets from under them. I don’t get to meet my patients but what I want to say to them, with all the force of my care is: it’s all for you, everything we have. Your life matters.’

“These compassionate words distilled the overwhelming scale of the pandemic down to two human beings, one person tenderly cared for in an intensive care bed by another. It was these small but significant acts of loving kindness that became the catalyst for ‘Stilled Life’.

“The title came first, referencing the vigils kept at bedsides and the still point within the Good Friday narrative. The medium of a bedsheet hinted at the domestic focus of life under lockdown and alluded to the sheets on intensive care beds across the world.

“Having spread the bedsheet on the floor, we began to gather and fold it, creating a relief sculpture of the figure of Christ stretched on the cross. At first, the action was decisive, a twist of cloth to form a hand, a fold shaping the bulk of the shoulders, the stretched sinews of the arms, the turn of the lolling head, folding the cotton to hint at the ribcage, waist and hips, the contours of the legs, slightly bent knees, wider calves, narrow ankles, the sharp curve of heels, the feet turned to the left. As the figure emerged from within the folds, our actions slowed down, became more careful, each touch an act of devotion, a prayer to the one whose form we were recalling.

“In April 2021, with Church buildings once again closed, we sited our Easter Sunday intervention, ’In a new light’, outside, in a wood, in Pollok Country Park, Glasgow, installing it at dawn,” says Peter.

“The rhythm and repetition of the crisp, white, repurposed communion linen was in stark contrast to the organic detritus of the forest floor. Catching the early morning light, the stiffened and concertina folded cloth introduced a startling, bright horizontal form into the landscape that suggested the transformational hope of Christ’s résurrection.

“Our work is created through a long process of consideration, distillation and paring back, involving elements of contemplation, observation and repetition of action. At the core lies a shared vision and aesthetic, realised with care and precision in the way the work is made, which we see as a spiritual practice.”

If the work of Gardner & Gardner has brought Easter into the modern day and fully publicly accessible art, the same can’t be said of the history of religious art through the centuries.

Professor Jolyon Mitchell is based at New College in Edinburgh. A former BBC World Service producer, he specialises in Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding, with particular reference to the arts at the University of Edinburgh.

Easter Art, for him, has a fascinating history. “The earliest Christian art relating indirectly to Easter is to be found in Rome in the Catacombs. Surprisingly, neither the crucifixion nor the resurrection are depicted explicitly. Instead, there are depictions of triumph over death, such as Jonah being vomited out of the Whale, Daniel unscathed by lions or three men standing safely amidst flames”.

“While probably the earliest representation of Jesus being crucified is to be seen in a rather crude piece of second century graffiti. Scrawled around the image in Greek are the words: Alexamenos worships God. Made at a Roman Slave school and probably intended as an insult to Christians, it shows a man worshipping a crucified human-like figure with the head of a donkey.

“It’s not really until the Middle Ages that you start seeing images relating directly to the resurrection story. These are far more deferential than the Alexamenos graffiti,” he says.

“For me, you can trace different approaches to bringing Easter to life visually by considering three contrasting portrayals.

“The first was created around 400 AD. It’s an ivory carving and simply shows the women and sleeping soldiers by the tomb with Jesus, who is depicted being pulled into heaven. It is noticeable how we are not shown the actual resurrection.

“The second image that springs to my mind is by Piero della Francesco. By contrast to the early simplicity of the earlier piece, ‘The Resurrection of Jesus Christ’ is a marvellous, colourful mural in fresco and tempera.

“Jesus is standing with one foot astride a marble tomb, surrounded by sleeping soldiers or guards and showing the wound in his side.

“That particular fresco has a memorable story attached, which has led to the producing for several documentaries.

During WW2, a British Artillery officer called Tony Cook, who had been horrified by the destruction of Monte Cassino, refused to order his men to shell the town of Sansepolcro where he’d heard the fresco was based. He’d apparently read Huxley’s 1925 essay describing the Resurrection, which states: “It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world.”

“As it turned out, the Germans had already left the town, and it would have been shelled and probably levelled, unnecessarily. The town, along with its famous painting, survived. Clarke was later lauded as a local hero and to this day a street in the town bears his name.

“The third painting I would select to represent the art of its time – because art is invariably reflective –a mirror of the time it is created in – is a 19th century depiction by James Tissot, called ‘The Resurrection’.

“The earliest Christian art relating indirectly to Easter is to be found in Rome in the Catacombs. Surprisingly, neither the crucifixion nor the resurrection are depicted explicitly. Instead, there are depictions of triumph over death, such as Jonah being vomited out of the Whale, Daniel unscathed by lions or three men standing safely amidst flames.

“James was a great painter of society women in his earlier life, but as he got older, his Catholic faith revived and his later paintings tend to be of religious topics and the life of Christ in particular.

“‘The Resurrection’ shows an almost ethereal Christ floating from the tomb, with mounds of sleeping soldiers on the ground as Christ seems to float over them.

“Taken together these three representations reveal how hard it is to capture and portray the resurrection.

While the crucifixion has a long history and myriad of portrayals, resurrection depictions are comparatively rarer, but also worth careful scrutiny. Like the resurrection itself, they are fully of surprises and point towards the hope of triumph over death and new life”.

The Rev Peter Sutton is minister at Edinburgh: St Cuthbert’s, the Mother Kirk of Edinburgh at the foot of The Castle Rock. St Cuthbert’s will be familiar to anyone who has visited the Princes Street Gardens West or attended Heart and Soul during the General Assembly, where the church played an active part.

“St Cuthbert’s is very unusual within the Church of Scotland as many visitors think they have entered a Basilica full of beautiful art and stained glass (including one of the few Tiffany windows in Scotland),” Peter says.

“When I was inducted to the parish five years ago I knew that I would be able to respond to this beauty not just by incorporating it within worship but also by using it as a stepping stone to bring in other artists. I have brought in a video installation by the American artist Bill Viola whose work Three Women, 2007 was part of the Edinburgh International Art Festival in 2018 and received rave reviews. I have also worked with the Scottish artist Adrian Wiszniewski, whose stunning landscape of Lake Tekapo in New Zealand now hangs in the sanctuary; a monumental piece made up of six individual panels. I see in Adrian’s work the Sea of Galilee upon whose shores I once tended an orchard when working as a student volunteer with the Church of Scotland in Tiberias

“It’s a shame but understandable that Presbyterianism historically has never embraced art, relying more on the preaching of the word to engage people’s minds. Individual spirituality has traditionally not been encouraged until perhaps George MacLeod, a former minister at St Cuthbert’s started the Iona Community.

“Beautiful art, I believe, can invoke a sense of awe and wonder. I think that this is an excellent thing and most recently I have seen this in the eyes of the homeless guests we have the privilege of serving a meal to with our partner charity partner ‘Steps to Hope’ every Sunday and Monday night within our sacred sanctuary. They sit at the feet of a life size relief of Leonardo’s Last Supper and for me their eyes light up like the disciples when the bread is broken in Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, 1601 that first Easter.

“For me, possibly the most important piece of religious art is Poussin’s series of the seven sacraments to be found in the National Gallery of Scotland. I often walk to the unique room in which they are displayed to find spiritual sustenance and inspiration. The sacraments lend meaning to life’s joys, trials and tribulation and are rites of passage experienced in their own way by those of faith and none.” ¤