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The Dean Mgr Peter Cookson Letter, an explanatory text for ‘Eight Crucifixions’. The Cathedral Dean The Rt. Rev. Mgr Provost Peter
Cookson, 7th of May 2OO3 The Metropolitan
Cathedral of Christ the King Liverpool ‘Eight Crucifixions’ A gift to the Fabric of the
Cathedral in Trust for the people of Liverpool
Dear Rev. Mgr. Cookson, |
Liverpool and I - the Project in Context I
have a long emotional association with Liverpool and with the Metropolitan
Cathedral in particular, and I can justly say it is Seminal in the foundations
of my Art. On the 1st of May 1984, when I had just turned 17, I
was on a visit with my 6th form to Liverpool University. I was
however tempted away by the Ultramodern Metropolitan Cathedral close by and
spent the entire day there. In truth that was the reason I came. I was
excited by modern Architecture, then as now, and I was already beginning to
draw in a Geometric style. Once inside the church, I was transfixed by the
Elegance, of the colours, and the Form. I was struck particularly by Ceri
Richards’ altarpiece, in his chapel of the blessed sacrament. That
I can say, was the moment I knew,
that Art could be my life, and that I wanted someday, to have a Work of mine
in this building. Two years later
during my first exhibition, at the Green Lane Gallery in Derby, I received an
invitation to show in Liverpool, but by then I was seriously ill with the
Cancer that would devastate my life
for many years to come. So to have now placed this work of mine, permanently
in this Monumental space, is an honour for which my respect and Gratitude, to
all these wonderful people here can knows no bounds. |
Concept and the Work As
a contemporary Artist I have recently held solo exhibitions in London and
Berlin, and in 2OO2 I was invited to show 7 large pieces, the
‘Liverpool Pictures’, in the Liverpool Biennale. Whilst here
in the city I visited again the
Wonderful Metropolitan Cathedral, on of my very favourite places. I had been
working on a series of works based on the groundplan Geometry of the
cathedral, called Sacred Circles, with a nod toward the medieval Idea
of ‘sacred Geometry’ found [allegedly] in much ancient church architecture. I
asked ‘Cathedral House’ Manager Ms Claire Halon if I could give a work
to the Cathedral. She was delighted by the Idea and I promised to do so. As I
was leaving the building the title ‘Eight Crucifixions’ suggested
itself to me. I am sure the name is reminiscent of a suite for piano, by he
French Composer Olivier Messiaen entitled ’Vingt regards sur
I’enfant-jesus’ - ‘Twenty looks
at the infant Jesus’, I
agonised over the possibilities and the difficulties this posed. Normally I would name a piece on its
completion but here I had a title, insisting itself upon me beforehand.
Composing to a title, is much like a commission in that I have to cut my
cloth to a given space, but first I had to weave that cloth. That it would be
a member of my Series ‘Sacred Circles’, a set of pieces built upon the
groundplan of the Cathedral itself, then numbering 6, was another given, as I
had promised something from this set. I Created them for the 2OO2 Biennale
but had not used them, the series remained unfinished and I didn’t know then
where I was going with it. The ‘Sacred Circle’ series ascends in complexity
but it is not a set of Variations with a consistent theme, that I could pick
up and run with. I sketched out several possibilities, trying but failing to
satisfy the title in my head. The solution was revealed to me whilst I
produced a Work for my brother’s new house. This new picture become ‘Sacred
Circles Seven’ and in it I saw the technical basis for the Tracery I
would use in ‘Eight Crucifixions’, by coincidence now to be No.8 in the
series. I have not, nor did I intend to represent or depict the Crucifixion in this work. It is not a rendering of it in abstracted form, there is nothing hidden in it, everything that it is, is there to be seen. It does not have Literary or Philosophical interpretations to be vainly rolled out, straining your credulity and my credibility. Rather the ‘Language’ of my work, its syntax, is one of pure shape. The Language of Shape, beneath even Colour (which is not itself a spacial property), is geometry. Geometry is the Elemental understanding of Space, underpinning representation, and hence underpinning Art, in an Elemental aesthetic. Thus we can imagine an Elemental Art, as an Art won from this Elemental aesthetic, an Art of pure Shape. Visually our time has been about this, witness this fabulous Cathedral. One analogy of this type of abstraction is Music. Music is so constructed that you can compose with it and in it; it is infinitely malleable. In terms of its fundamentals it too has an Elemental Aesthetic, that is, it it’s is built up from a syntax of simple parts . The title Eight Crucifixions is a cue, for a piece of music, perhaps a juttingly Modern Organ solo, or for string Quartet, or for unaccompanied Geometric shape. If you add now, the ‘Accompaniment’ of the Ground plan Montage and its Geometry, then you can understand how I understood the making of this piece. If you asked Hans Werner Henze to write his ‘Eight Crucifixions’, what you would get is his Necessity of Vision, his aesthetic. This Geometric adoration of the Cathedral my ‘Eight Crucifixions’ my aesthetic, an Elemental Aesthetic. |
This Elemental Aesthetic My
works, are an exploration, of the technical possibilities of a fundamentally
Geometric Art; taking as a premise, the Geometric figure as an Element,
hence Elementalism, and I am then an Elementalist. My work
concerns the mechanics of construction in a purity of shape and with that the
perception and deception of the eye, I am in that sense an OP artist.
My works however range wider than that, encompassing tenets of Architectural
drawing, techniques from printing and montage. I search for the realisation
of Beauty in Form, in this Elemental Aesthetic. I Call this
realisation Elegance and to find it Closure. I produce these
Works normally as standard sized panels, on which I print one off
Enlargements of my Drawings and Montages. The
ultimate content of ‘Eight
Crucifixions’ is rigorously Geometric, I invite people to contemplate the
Form, as when we listen to music.. The work is in essence an adoration of
the Cathedral. It was made for this and only this space and it reflects
the Aesthetics of the Cathedral. Geometry is itself revealing of the nature
of our World. The 5 pointed star, for example, has a glorious and profound
Sharpness and aggression, that no other shape has. It is insistent and
triumphant, small wonder it is favoured by so many cultures as a National
sign. It has become a very familiar compositional device in my recent work. I
use it to impress rigour and certainty, and pain, perfect then for a
crucifixion.
The
cross is by contrast a simple and natural Geometric figure and you can
easily create one from this particular star. When a 5 pointed Star stands
with one thorn pointing directly upwards, it projects two further
points left and right giving a straight line parallel with the edge of the
picture. If we then rule this line across the shape and then rule another
vertically, to bisect the Star from its tip, we have the figure of a cross.
This compound figure is the basic
unifying motif of the whole piece. I followed My Master Ceri Richards, in his
Panel for the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, by nominating it as an
Altar piece. To my mind it has a spirituality, principally in that a
meditation on pure shape is always a revealing, perhaps a spiritual act. We
might call the multi-layering of stars ‘Crowns of thorns’. The delight
of the artist in a technical innovation will not necessarily interest those
who will come to view the work. As an artist I don’t believe It is my place
to tell people how interpret the Crucifixion, or what to believe of it, I
merely invite them to contemplate it, multiply. If I can do that, then I have
succeeded. |
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Eight Crucifixions The Work itself |
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The
piece itself began with the Architecture of the Cathedral, which I regard as
geometrically profound, in that it is a circle. The elemental shape of ritual
sites, in Britain at least, for thousands years, witness Stonehenge: and now
the Great church of Rome sits on a circle, most Perfect and primary of all
shapes. I
began the work with a Montage of 3 copies of the Architectural Ground plan
set over one another on a set of Transparencies, carefully setting up an
interference fringe. These are the ‘Sacred Circles’ in the title I
gave to the initial Series of 7 Works, which led up to this, the 8th
, now called (coincidently) ‘Eight Crucifixions’.
Structurally ‘Eight Crucifixions’ has the intellectual quality
of being a set of variations. Not in the Classic sense of ‘Variations
on a given theme’, such as I have explored many times before in my Works, but
as a set of variations on an Ideal Them. The Ideal Theme in this case
being a series of rules, governing the possible Transformations of the
Elements, constituting the Form, of the 8 subject constructions within the
piece. From that point of view then they are Variations ‘within a given
Form’, they are variations on each other, and have no hierarchal reading
order. Their Ordering on the page, however, whilst being equal amongst
themselves, is far from random.
There are Eight Constituent Groups or ‘Variations’, the Eight
Crucifixions of the title. They are closely worked Formal Variations, in
two distinct groups, one group of 4 on each side of the work. Thus the
work falls into two subsections. If you could think of it in terms of a
piece of music, in two ‘Movements’ that run together. In sets of Musical Variations,
a theme, a set of Musical Elements of time, pitch, rhythm, key etc are the
parameters varied from one piece to the next. Geometrically the principle is the same, the given notes,
intervals etc translating as given shapes and their possible relations
of size and position in respect to oneanother. These individual geometric
Forms, the Star, the Square & the circle, are the Picture Elements,
constituting this particular Elemental Aesthetic. In the Eight variations
I deliberately placed sweeping restrictions on how, to what end, I could vary
these Given Elements. |
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For
each of the eight Groups, or Variations, I took a Montage of the Cathedral’s
Ground plans, and inscribed in its Circles, its Sacred Circles, a Geometric
Group or Tracery, using that tight set of Formal rules to govern each constituent Element. I Drew the right hand Set of Four
variations first, so the left hand set, had both to react to it and to follow
on consistently from it, making the search for each new compositional
solution harder than the last. X
Within each group of 4, the constituent variations relate to each
other in different ways. In the Left hand group the relation is in 2 columns
of 2, whereas in the right hand group it is in two pairs by the diagonal. The primary Visual division of the piece is along the column 2nd
from the Left where the Stars are noticeably larger than the rest. The idea
is that the eye should be drawn here, and perceives that there is a division,
clearly into two unequal halves.
The eight traceries are organised along the varied integration of two
primary Stars opposed at 90 degrees parallel to the picture’s edge, such that
one has a thorn pointing directly Vertical and one directly horizontal to the
picture. Within these are smaller Secondary Stars, in a lighter line, in some
cases mirroring the primaries. A square completes the set posed for the most
part as a lozenge on the Vertical, countering the general Angle of lines,
from the multitude of stars. |
‘Eight Crucifixions - The Material Work Materially Eight Crucifixions is a printed panel
about twice the size of that which I usually build. Technically it was
printed on an industrial inkjet by John E. Wrights ltd of Derby; Who
also Dry Bonded it to a huge piece of plastic Based Mounting Board and Matt
sealed it. They generally Produce all my work this way, with great patience
and skill. The frame was built from, specially imported black lacquered
Spanish wood, with a classically Modern Moulding, by Masterframer Darren
Waldron, at the Friargate Gallery. He is my bespoke framer and quite the
best framer in the region. Old friends GT Couriers brought it to the
Cathedral Tuesday April 22nd.
Thursday April 24th, with the distinct hindrance of Central
Trains, I arrived in Liverpool, several Hours late, to meet the Liverpool
Daily Post. I was warmly Greeted by Dear Sister Anthony Wilson, the
Cathedral Curator, whilst two uniformed guards and a lovely guy called Bob, carried
the Work around, like an honour guard, for the Daily post and myself to take
our photographs. As an Artist I have never felt more Wanted or rewarded.
Today I broke a Glass ceiling, I have made a tiny Mark on England. Yours sincerely, julian Broadhurst - Drowningcircle May 2OO3 |
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8 Crux Liverpool 2OO3 - The Cathedral Set |
The Apse Provisional Hang |
‘Eight Crucifixions’ - A Visual Analysis |
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