The zeal of converts is very impressive. One of the people I instructed some years ago invited me to a bonfire party, prior to his first confession, his wife and I were the only guests. He asked me to bless the fire. He had a serious addiction to pornography, he and his wife threw his entire collection into flames, piece by piece. His collection wasn't just the top shelf magazine kind but the nineteenth and twentieth century etchings and lithographs, they were on his study wall and there books as well and early photographs, all went into fire, thousands of pounds worth of it in todays money. I was edified by the firmness of his purpose of amendment.At the end he asked me to put up a print of the Sacred Heart where these had been.
Among the things that were destroyed that day were some of Eric Gill's erotic etchings.
Since the revelations of Gill's incestuous relationships, I have felt uneasy about his work, his sense of line is enticing but I can't seperate the man from the art. With the first revelations of child abuse by Catholic clergy about 8 or 9 years ago there was a call to remove the Gill stations of the Cross from Westminster Cathedral, I really can't seperate the life of the artist from the art he produced. The same hands and mind that wrought these works also thought and acting in such a way that Christianity regards as mortally sinful. In Gill's case there was no firm purpose of amendment. When I look at Gill's Stations it is not the passion of Christ I see but the suffering of Gill's victims and of others who have been abused. I think they should be removed.
Daniel of the Lion and the Cardinal in a post entitled "On Art and the Artist", questions the relationship of the artist and his work, and Gill in particular.
11 comments:
Thers's a terrible truth here Father. It shows us the limits of our love for our enemies.
That he should have produced the stations is so poigant. One could argue that they should stay, for the very reasons that you think they should go. That they should stay is the better way. This is the awful truth.
Personally, I'd happily put them on a bonfire.
I read this a few days ago. I had a copy of Gill's Holy Trinity- in future I'll stick to Rublev.
And yes, the stations should be removed from Westminster.
But then there's a quite a few things that shouldn't be happening in that Cathedral...
Evelyn Waugh was regarded as a complete &%#! by his in-laws but do we start burning copies of Brideshead? What about Hopkin's (as in the poet) homosexuality? The actors Eric Von Stroheim and Richard Harris both enjoyed irregular life styles but always tried to get to Mass.
I say leave stations and the Cardinal should quit.
I beg to differ. It's true, Father, that Eric Gill was a deeply flawed individual, but a work of art is after all an inanimate object, and every work that comes from the hand of man, whether in denigration of God or praise of him, comes also from hands afflicted by the original sin of Adam to one degree or another. You would probably have to throw out the works of Caravaggio, who was hounded around Europe for his homosexual cavortions (unproved but highly likely), and Bernini's ecstasy of St. Theresa would be deemed highly questionable.
One might say that Gill's religious works, sincere as they are, represent his highest and best spiritual expressions, and as a person he might have sunk lower without making them. Having worked for a long time in the arts, I can say with some authority that you'll never find an artist worth their salt whose significant virtues aren't balanced by some significant vices. It's the result of the excessive concentration required to be expended in the pursuit of concentrated expression, often of a religious nature. Frankly, it isn't natural. But we're all pretty much thankful that they decorate our lives by doing so. So much so that we often take artists for granted.
I think a degree of understanding is required, otherwise we run the very un-Catholic risk of descending into a prudish, protty iconoclasm. I would urge a liberal dose of charity. Some might say "Well, the man who did the painting on my suburban living-room wall wasn't known for any particular vices!" My reply would be, that the man who did the painting hanging wasn't known for anything at all, that what's hanging on your living-room wall isn't hanging in the National Gallery, it isn't hanging in St. Peter's, it isn't Caravaggio, it isn't Bernini, and it isn't Gill. The church deserves the best art available, even sometimes from flawed and unfortunately human artists, whom it encourages, by requiring their best from them, to be better.
Lets leave the sins of the dead with the dead. It is for God to deal with them, not us. Let us remember the better angels of their natures. We could all ask the same for ourselves.
Thank you Fr for this post. At last!!! I know that when the stations were first installed, many Catholics complained at how inappropriate they were.
Gill has done some pretty blasphemous stuff - I remember wanting to vomit after seeing a work of his where Christ is having a sexual encounter with a woman. Shame on Eric Gill.
Err? Anyone thinking of painting over the Last Judgement by Michaelangelo or removing Bernini's Ecstacy of St Theresa from the little Church in Rome? For scandals did arise in their lives too.
As Christians, we believe that God is the source and goal of all beauty. What artists create is a pale shadow of the glory of the Most High, and were they unable to perceive it (however dimly), they would be unable to create.
The beauty that God has created can of course be twisted into all kinds of wickedness. Wickedness would be powerless if there were nothing good for it to twist and corrupt. Should we then be tempted to destroy (or even conceal) all beauty, lest it become a source of temptation? By no means! Because it is not beauty that tempts and corrupts: beauty comes from God, and what comes from God cannot tempt or corrupt.
Let us suppose that a wicked habitual sinner one day is presented with a situation in which he does a "beautiful thing" (Mk 14:6). Because he is a sinner, is this one good deed also to be accounted ugly? Should its memory be wiped out?
Perhaps another way to look upon such things is to see that the power of God manifests itself even (and perhaps especially) in the poorest of lives. 2 Cor 12:9.
I do not agree about the suggested removal of the stations. We are all sinners; would you want your bad points to be the only thing you are remembered for and your good points totally cast aside?
When I was a child, I had a little book of Christmas religious verse. Even into adultthood, I read this book every year. About a year ago though, I learned that the author had been involved in the troubles in Ireland and had been imprisoned at one stage.
For a while, I went off the book. Then I realised that the fact the author had maybe done bad things did not mean that the good things he had done should not be appreciated. None of us are perfect; we all want God to forget our sinful actions and reward us for the good that we have done. Should we not treat others the way we would wish to be treated ourselves?
Regretably my memory does not enable me to name names or even exact places.
About thirty years ago - it could have been longer - a new church was opened in Lancashire and a rather nasty Liverpuddlian (in my opinion) was commissioned to sculpt the Stations of The Cross. He was interviewed on TV. I did see that interview! And he expressed himself as having no religious convictions whatever -(I thought that he had no sculpting talents either) - and he said that had deliberately placed a Spanish peseta as part of the sculpture of a Roman soldier because "Franco is the biggest, Fascist bas....d of them all". I did actually see these "Stations" and thought them horrible. I could never have prayed the Stations in that church ever! I do hope that the passage of time has relieved that church of those monstrosities.
JARay
Father,
Simple rule: Are they fit for purpose?
Keep them if yes. Dump them if not.
Regarding the life of the artist, I think that's a different issue.
I presumed that they were fit for purpose in my first comment. Having looked at them they are not in that they fail to convey any human emotion whatsoever. The art needs to draw you in to the passion. Instead we have cold slabs more fit for a mouseleum, devoid of any humanity.
Get rid of them and pray for the artist.
No educated person would ever consider removing Gill's stations of the cross from Westminster Cathedral. But their removal would not be allowed by law either as they are listed and are inviolable. I am glad other sinful artists with questionable private lives have also been cited in the comments. Could anybody imagine the Sistine Chapel without Michelangelo's east wall and ceiling, despite the fact that it is one of the most homo-erotic works of art in the world?
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