Religious images in a secular age

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Harries’ introductions and insights are very useful for anyone wanting to focus on Christian art, as Vivien Hornby Northcote explains

The Image of Christ in Modern Art by Richard Harries

Richard Harries discusses most of the more important artists who have addressed the challenge of depicting Jesus Christ and more general Christian images in the 20th and 21st centuries. He begins with a discussion of the artists who were working just before the start of the First World War  in 1914, introducing artists from Europe as well as Britain. These include Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix,   Sir Jacob Epstein,   Georges Rouault and Mark Chagall. All these were prolific artists but Harries concentrates almost entirely on Christian images.

Each artist is given a short biographical introduction followed by a critique of their work as it pertains to the Christian faith. There is no bibliography at the end of the book so the reader who wishes to follow up these brief introductions must rely on the footnotes. Harries provides a good overview of modern art made for Christian commissions for churches and chapels or art produced as a result of the individual artist’s own Christian faith or their response to that faith if they are not themselves believers. The middle section of the book includes interesting insights into the work of Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland,  Elisabeth Frink   and Craigie Aitchison.

One of the better-known artists discussed is the sculptor Anthony Caro (1924–2013). He was commissioned to create sculptures for the niches in the neglected chapel in St Jean Baptise, Bourbourg, France. These images illustrated here  are now in the Chapel of Light and depict a theme of ‘Creation’. Caro’s work is abstract and illustrative rather than figurative and here provides a dramatic and thought-provoking response to a fundamental part of the theology of the Old Testament. Caro’s background is Jewish but the Creation ideas are, of course, common to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

It is when he is dealing with artists who are still working that Harries’ introductions and insights become very useful to anyone wanting to focus on Christian art, because many of these artists are not well known outside limited circles. Harries has supplemented his analyses for this group with information from interviews he has had with the artists, thus giving a good view into their motives and the spiritual background to the artworks.

Nicholas Mynheer paints from the perspective of a Christian vocation. His images are powerful and dramatic and often are both reflective of a Christian story and a more modern meaning as in The Flight into Egypt (Fig 3). This represents both the flight of the infant Jesus with his parents to Egypt, seeking safety from Herod, and the plight of refugees today. Also very symbolic is The Harvest (Fig 4) where Mynheer says that the ‘basket of apples represents Christ as the fruit of the tree’.

Roger Wagner is a very interesting current artist who uses Renaissance techniques to paint images that have modern settings for traditional symbolism. Thus we have Abraham and the Angels (Fig. 5) showing the three angels to whom Abraham gave hospitality when they came to him as human strangers. They are sitting in front of the smoking chimneys of a cement factory representing the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah (Genesis chapter 18 in the Old Testament). This image is in the tradition of the 14th-century icon by Andrei Rublev, which is often used to denote the Christian doctrine of The Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. A clearer image by Wagner is The Road to Emmaus (Fig. 6) which is a typical Palestinian scene describing the road where two disciples were met by the resurrected Christ.

None of the artists illustrated here show the face of Christ. There are, however, many examples of direct figurative depictions of Christ in the book by artists both well known and probably new to many readers. Some of these – such as the angry, carved wood sculpture of a crucifix called the Outraged Christ by Charles Lutyens or Helen Meyer’s apparently tranquil Stations of the Cross: Jesus Falls for the First Time – give the reader a chance to consider for themselves what they mean by Christ. This book is a very good introduction to the whole question of what is known as Christology (the study of the nature of Jesus Christ) as expressed in modern art. The book is clearly written and easy to read but does require a working knowledge of the details of the Christian faith to make all Harries cogent arguments and illuminating insights into the images discussed as relevant as possible.

The Image of Christ in Modern Art by Richard Harries is published by Ashgate Publishing 2013. 176pp., 82 colour illus. ISBN 9781409463825 (pbk) 9781409463818 (hbk)