Art eclectic

Chris James teaches at Cirencester College. Somehow, he also finds time to paint and sculpt: I met him at the Gardens Gallery yesterday, where he has an exhibition. I liked this colourful take on the Ruskin Mill lake, inspiration for a number of the works in what is a cheerful show. It is more three-dimensional than it looks - a virtual collage.

Chris moaned a little about the scaffolding surrounding the Gallery, which - he surmised - accounted for the small number of visits. Not the problem experienced by The Wilson, so we read in the paper: crowds have flooded in to see round since the reopening three weeks ago. I sat next to the Friends' Chair, Gina Wilson (no relation) last night, who enthused about the transformation.

On my other side was Barbara McNaught, whose art is non-visual: she has just published her second collection of poems, Strings of Pearls.

The art of comedy has also been on public display of late, though Jeremy Paxman's Newsnight interview (viral on YouTube) with Russell Brand was not entirely humorous. Indeed there was a deadly seriousness about Brand's sermon on revolution.

Far indeed from Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII's encyclical, published 50 years ago this year. "His is not a message of revolution," writes Bruce Kent in this week's Tablet. "We exhort our sons to take an active part in public life," wrote that good Pope. Brand, on the other hand, says he has never voted, and has no intention of doing so.

What credit will it reflect on the New Statesman for allowing him in as guest editor I wonder? It's paradoxical that someone so intelligent should wish to be so destructive - of our society. After all, "you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them." I thought Paxman was excellent.

Thomas (b. 1979, so four years Brand's junior) says that he "does seem to be able to articulate a lot of what the youth feel about modern Britain - in that there’s no point being involved in the process. The problem is that he doesn’t present an alternative. There is no alternative. So what next?"

As I see it, the RBs of this world wield immense power through their super ability to articulate. So, when their message is a despairing one, it tends to remove hope from you and me. We can only do right what we can, in the relationships we have. No? Some of the most right will be works of art.

Notgrove

More Gloucestershire Way walking today, from Notgrove to Stow-on-the-Wold. It was a beautiful day for it. The Pulhams bus did what it said in the timetable, and it was an easy walk from the main road into Notgrove village, glistening in the early morning frost.

I mentioned before how I first heard about the Second Vatican Council. Well, tomorrow is the exact anniversary of its being announced by the good Pope John XXIII 50 years ago.

I read in this week's Tablet that one of only two aims set out by the Pope on 25th January 1959 was to issue "a renewed cordial invitation to the faithful of the separated Churches to participate with us in this feast of grace and brotherhood." Rather appropriate therefore that I should be walking with a former ambassador to the Holy See. He said that I, as a Catholic, must find it sad to go into beautiful old churches (like St Bartholomew's, Notgrove), and think that they were "once yours, but no longer." "Not at all," I responded!

I just rejoice that they are well cared for, and that such treasures as this early 14th Century Madonna and child (in Notgrove's vestry) and the even earlier (possibly Saxon?) crucifix in the East wall are available for all to wonder at. We have had our ups and downs along the ecumenical way opened up by the Council. This last decade in particular seems to have seen a stalling in the process, which is sad. But we are in a totally different atmosphere to that which prevailed pre-Vatican II: my mother never went into a non-Catholic church except for a wedding or funeral.

And the good health of specifically Christian organisations such as Pax Christi and Christian Ecology Link demonstrates that we can today work together in areas where we are not in the least troubled by doctrinal differences.

more apples

The then Fr. Patrick Barry, our RI (= religious instruction, sic) teacher, came into class one bright January day just less than 50 years ago and asked us whether we knew what an Ecumenical Council was. Of course, aged 15, none of us had a clue. "Well," he said, "the Pope has just called one." And so began my acquaintance with Vatican II.

There are two schools of thought: did it represent a rupture with the past? Or should it just be seen as an act in the continuing tradition of the Church? I think it's worth copying to a wider (?) public the larger part of a letter to the Editor of this week's Tablet by an Dublin-based Jesuit, Fr. Brendan Staunton.

"May I suggest," he asks, "a small parable as a possible way out of this dualistic impasse? Consider Cézanne, “the father of modern art”, who, having been converted to Impressionism, became dissatisfied with its immediacy and asked himself the question: “How can I create depth without resorting to the traditional means?” By traditional means he meant perspective, a method grounded in projective geometry, the discovery of which had transformed the history of European painting. Now there is depth in a Cézanne, but it is not the same as in a Raphael. Something new has emerged, and Picasso would see the latent Cubism in Cézanne, and push the new out further. Yet Picasso and Matisse are often referred to as “traditional modernists”.

Matisse said he wanted to be a “modern Giotto”, the bridge between the two being light, albeit two different kinds of light. So, could the story of art illuminate the intellectual debates around the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council? Discontinuity or continuity, rupture or reform of tradition. Event or text?

Modern art embodies these notions and this debate and suggests a way out. This could become even more likely to provoke good arguments as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the announcing of the Council, which Pope John XXIII insisted be called Vatican II, implying that he was not interested in continuing the work begun but halted by the Franco-Prussian war at Vatican I. He wanted Vatican II to be new. Which view is more in tune with this, Alberigo or Pope Benedict XVI? Can both be true?

The novelist John Updike wrote:

“Cézanne, grave man,
pondered the scene,
and saw it with passion
as orange and green,
and weighted his strokes
with days of decision,
and founded on apples,
theologies of vision.”

The apples in today's photograph are from the smallest tree we inherited - an orange-flavoured variety, but we don't know exactly which.