Ineffability. Loss of sense of self is when a person’s own priorities weaken
and those of others grow.
Domenikos Theotokopoulos settled in Spain but was origionally from Crete.
He was given the name El Greco which means ‘the Greek’. He was born in
1541 in Candia.
A painting by El Greco called ‘Laocoön’ consisted of naked figures, one of
these was a woman with two heads. After his death in 1614, the second head
was painted over and the front naked figures were given loin clothes. Years
later the painting was restored to it’s original state.
The naked bodies remind us of nature. There are also serpents in the painting
which seem somewhat small and feeble especially compared to the macho
and muscular men. It may seem slightly confusing as to why the men do not
seem to be able to overpower these snakes. This is seen as a metaphor for
evil and temptation working to takeover the unprotected or naked bodies of
mankind.
This mirrors a story in The Bible of Adam and Eve. The serpent tempting Eve
to eat the forbidden fruit.
It seems that much of El Greco’s work was influenced by biblical references.
Another example of this is Mount Sinai which was painted in 1570-72.
The unnaturally long figures in his paintings create a haunting image for
spectators of his work. The painting shows the peaks of Mount Sinai, a place
sacrosanct to Judaism and Christianity, of special importance for Eastern
Orthodoxy, and revered by Muslims. At the centre is Mount Horeb, where
Moses received the tablets of the Ten Commandments from God.
El Greco was asked if he would paint a picture for the king of the Martyrdom.
Unfortunately it was not gruesome enough for the king and he turned it down.
El Greco refused to paint it how the king wanted and lost out on a lot of
money. This gives the indication that he didn’t just paint to earn money, but
because he felt that art in religion was so important. By not painting what the
king wanted, he risked his reputation which could have cost him further jobs.
El Greco in "The Adoration of the Name of Jesus" includes Heaven, Hell, and
Purgatory as well as members (all male) of the Church on earth. This may
have been seen to be controversial as Purgatoy is a Catholic idea and other
denominations would not have agreed with it.
Stanley Spencer was born on the 30th of June 1891 in Cookham-on-Thames
and was the eighth surviving child of his family. He studied art at Maidenhead
Technical institute before becoming a student at the Slade school of Art. His
contemporaries included Paul Nash, Roberts, and Bomberg. He got married
to Hilda Carline in 1925 and had two daughters, Shirin and Unity.
He did the first one-man exhibition at Goupil gallery and created a lot of
controversy with his painting of The Resurrection.
In 1935 he resigned from the Royal academy after two of his paintings were
rejected. In 1937, Spencer’s marriage to Hilda ended and he married Patricia
Preece four days later, but separated almost immediately. In 1945 he painted
the Port Glasgow Resurrection series. He died on the 14th December 1959
having been knighted 6 months earlier.
Spencer’s work can be seen to be very contradicting, as his paintings may
seem naive and knowing, spiritual and sexual, realistic and archaic,
buoyant and pessimistic, all at the same time.
Spencer is often compared to Lucian Freud who was an artist after him
although spencer is seen as the more daring and inventive of the two.
His eccentricity makes it so that his paintings are not easily understood on
first viewing.
Spencer has much in common with Benton in the disconcerted, exaggeratedly
baroque twists of form, which in Spencer's hands, suggest mental and
emotional torment, spiritual aspiration and visionary adoration, linking him
very closely in spirit, if not in style, to William Blake, Matthias Grunewald and
El Greco.
Picasso seems an important concealed element, as Spencer, too, seeks to
stretch the boundaries of matter, to rise above the restrictive conditions of
existence and mankind's predictable monotony of awareness, which fails to
see the incredible in the mundane.
Following his World War I experiences as medical corpsman and infantryman
in the British army, Spencer felt that he had lost the feeling that
no matter how humble or ordinary, all things in life, were full with spiritual
significance and religious strength.
Spencer didn’t just paint but had religious experiences in the process. Talkin
of the procedure of one of his paintings, he says "Before the War, the
drawing or painting of the thing was the experience of heaven; it would have
been unthinkable that I would or might find snags or hitches.”
When Spencer married Hilda, despite being in his mid-thirties, it was said to
be his first sexual experience. While their marriage was not without
differences, it was the one satisfying relationship within his life. Even after
their divorce in 1937, his unfortunate short-lived second marriage to Patricia,
and Hilda's death, Spencer continued to write long, unmailed letters to Hilda,
and paint images of remembered, idealized domesticity.
Spencer's "The Resurrection," (1923-27), reminds us that outdoor
representations of praying figures in Western Christian culture are most often
found in cemeteries. Some of the figures are rising from their tombs in the
posture of prayer in which they have been stuck for centuries
Visual imagery is one part of the Christian imagination and has been
expressed in a multitude of forms. Throughout the Christian past, visual
imagery has served a variety of purposes and has primarily proven to be a
powerful tool for spreading the Christian message. furthermore it has
prompted followers to imitate Christ while embracing a moral life almost
literally in the image of Jesus.
Some people believe that there is a dual meaning to Christian art. On one
hand, images serve to bring past events into the present. On the other hand,
images provide hope for the future.
