Book Design

I should be finishing up my first dissertation but I keep reading and this continually opens up new angles. Over the past few days I have been following up a few ideas about the significance of fully-integrated book design in Jones' poem The Anathemata. Part of my argument is that the physical book of The Anathemata becomes a sign in itself, an object which the reader uses to perform an 'anamnesis' , like the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. It suddenly occurred to me that treating the book as a utile sign in itself has its roots in a far deeper history. Gill and Jones were involved with the private printing presses of Hilary Pepler and Robert Gibbings; The St. Dominic's press at Ditchling and The Golden Cockerel Press. Anyway this has led me down the criss-crossing history paths of further research. This further 'research' mostly involves requesting the most beautiful books from the stacks and absorbing every minute detail of its design. I have been reading about the history of these two presses, feeling the quality of its paper choices beneath my fingertips, seeing carefully selected typefaces which have been handset, and perhaps best of all admiring the specially commissioned wood cuts and engravings which revived a dying art.

Eric Gill, Four Gospels

There are two masterworks I have been studying. The first is Eric Gill's Four Gospels for the Golden Cockerel Press. Gibbings gave Gill the typeface as a framework and the engravings grew from this. As I looked through the pages I could sense the perfected unity which this process of working had produced. The letters are interwoven with the designs, so that story and illustration are an integrated and fluent whole.

I am very tempted to take this page and head my dissertation with it, at the moment I have a simple quotation 'In the beginning was the Word [...] The Word made flesh.' but perhaps this invokes so much more?

It is clear from these pages and excerpts the extent to which Gill was experimenting with typography, layout and the relationship between visual and linguistic arrangements of meaning. This is one of the side effects of my dissertation, that suddenly I have this overwhelming appreciation for typography. Typography which once seemed the most incidental of things has become this vessel of resonant meaning.

I read somewhere that copies of Gill's The Four Gospels now sell for around £5000. This moment in the University Library, touching vellum and hand-pressed paper, is the closest I will ever get to such essential perfection!

For David Jones' masterwork of Book Design I looked to the Chester Play of the Deluge which he produced woodcuts for in 1927 for the Golden Cockerel Press. The collaboration with Robert Gibbings on this project enabled him to take more of an interest in layout and to produce woodblocks of an even greater complexity. The engravings are dark, compact knots of energy. They capture the chaos and power of the biblical story of Noah. My attention was directed towards The Deluge mostly because of a scholar called Thomas Dilworth who writes that Jones's Anathemata takes its spatial structure from an artistic development that Jones made in these same woodcuts.

The Deluge, David Jones

Building the Ark, Jones

After the Deluge, Jones

While I agree with Dilworth's description of the spatial structuring in these woodcuts, the point I want to make about David Jones' and his involvement with book design is something very different. But I'm not going to give anything away in that regard...

This remains as a glimpse in to my afternoon of discovery, I hope you have a feel for something significant and exciting in this.

The architecture of dreams

I am up and out of bed but struggling to feel like I am awake, and therefore struggling to begin writing my essay. I am hoping that an informal post about my ideas might help to navigate me out of my blurry haze and into the realms of essay. Comparing the architecture of dreams to the architecture of Gothic Cathedrals to assert the centrality of contemplative culture to Medieval religion, if I didn't feel so tired I would be very excited about my essay. In other words, the dream vision in the medieval period was not the privileged experience of saints, martyrs and starving mystics but was the universally encouraged experience of the masses. The design of Cathedrals, as George Henderson writes, is a manipulation of our senses which comes to define our religious experience. Incense, hymn, prayer, the taking of the Eucharist; religious practice is rich in sensory material which engages the participant but the space in which scents, sounds and thoughts echo is also important.

‘The mental associations, liaisons, meanderings to and fro, ‘ambivalences’, asides, sprawl of the pattern, if pattern there is- these thought-trains (or, some might reasonably say, trains of distraction and inadvertence) have been as often as not initially set in motion, shunted or buffered in to near sidings or off to far destinations, by some action or word, something seen or heard, during the liturgy.’ David Jones

Notre Dame, Paris

'The ambivalence of late-Gothic architecture is immediately obvious in the silhouette of buildings. Long since conditioned not to commit themselves to any formal accent unless they can balance by its opposite, Gothic architects even attempted a fantastic and ingenious compromise between the two poles of being and non-being. A Gothic building cannot simply stop, it has to fade away. Hence the familiar flurry of curves and spikes, by which the physical presence is gradually withdrawn and the dense material mass is dissolved into the empty air.' George Henderson, Gothic

Contemplating the facades of Gothic cathedrals we have our own sense of fading in to the air, of rising up from our corporeal bodies and receding in to the heavens. The facade guides viewer and dreamer in to the realms of 'non-being'. It introduces us to a sensation, which once inside, will overwhelm us.

St Vitus Cathedral, Prague

I was recently speaking to an architectural photographer who taught me something that I didn't know. To take photographs of buildings you need a special focusing lens which prevents the strange receding angles that your average digital camera struggling with the enormities of architectural perspectives resorts to. However in the contexts of Henderson's remarks the effect becomes entirely appropriate.

St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

'the triforium itself is glazed, so that the whole area above the arches of the main arcade and between the shafts which rise uninterrupted from column base to vault springs becomes a shimmering sheet of glass, articulated by the slender vertical mullions , and impregnated with sunlight.' Henderson

Describing a particular cathedral, Henderson captures the effect of combinations of light and highly articulated design to provide revelation. The vaulting of cathedral ceilings leads us upwards in to the heavens of the religious construction. The dream, just like the cathedral, has a complete architecture which encloses us and encompasses us within the meditation. As we enter the portals and arches of Cathedrals we move in to a different level of consciousness. The design of entrances which tell stories Purgatorial, Hellish or Heavenly and are inscribed with warning such as that of Dante's Inferno 'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch' intrate', facilitate the movement between exterior and interior and the reflexive states.

Stained glass window, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

Stained glass 'had to appear to be weightless and shot through with visible energy,' writes Henderson describing the window in terms comparable to the dream vision; a sensation of weightless energy. Looking through the window we are drawn in to an alternative visionary world where things are expressed in image, type and symbols, where tableau are familiar and yet strangely vivid. Countless medieval visions begin with a light through a window, an illumination which opens up a parallel perspective.

Cave church, Budapest- particularly interesting for ideas about mystics and affective piety.

In the Revelation of St. John, Chapter 21 the Holy city of Jerusalem, a vision of heaven, is described:

'and had a great wall and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon [...] and on the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates...and the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth...And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits...And the building of the wall it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.'

This description of Jerusalem reads like an architectural plan; offering measurements and the construction along an axis. The specificities give the architect an ideal to aim for, so that the emulation of Heavenly Jerusalem in Cathedral plans became a genuine possibility. Paradise, etymologically, is a walled garden and so religious buildings themselves become gestures towards paradise, or at least spaces in which the contemplation of paradise is sensorily encouraged. Each Cathedral becomes a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem brought down to earth.

Anyway there is an outline of a few ideas, time to actually write the essay!

Reading the Workshop

Finally! My photographs, slightly grainy and far too few, of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop are up. Despite the quality they excite me because they are richly literary. I think I described the workshop as a palimpsest, everywhere there is material to read; alphabets, quotations, rubbings, postcards and stone languages.

This is a sculpture by David Kindersley in the style of Eric Gill, in fact it could easily be mistaken for Gill. The whole body is in a taut balance of sensuality.

Above the mantelpiece examples of Kindersley alphabets can be seen climbing the white walls.

In this photograph you can see a print of one of David Jones' inscriptions which they brought down for me to see, I love its positioning in tension with the 'word made flesh' beside it, Kindersley's sculpture.

Behind the work of inscriptions are collected treasures gathered on the shelves. There are letters in the most surprising places.

Glass bottles on the shelves collect light from the high windows, filling the space with light and concentrated peace.

The attitude to work is intense, perhaps only 2 or 3 letters are inscribed in a day so an entire inscription is a work of weeks. An apprenticeship as a letter cutter is a decision of passion and dedication, three years at stone on the minimum wage, but as Lida points out it is also an inclusion in to a family.

For one morning I flirt with the idea of my own apprenticeship, is this the passion and spirituality of working practice I have been looking for? But while I am welcomed, given tea and gifts, I recognise that I am essentially an interlocutor.

Cardozo Kindersley Workshop

Quotation from John Donne- letter-cutting is literary as well as visual

There is nothing like discovering discovering that something exciting and useful has been right under your nose all this time, unnoticed. I was making a passing comment to somebody about how perfect a location Cambridge was for my dissertation; there is Kettle's Yard, David Jones's letters to Jim Ede, a Divinity Fellow with a secret stash of relics from Ditchling and then the resources of the UL. She agreed, but didn't mention any of these things, just the Kindersley workshop.

In 1934 David Kindersley was apprenticed as a stone-cutter to Eric Gill at Pigotts. Eventually, frustrated by the religious strictures of Gill's working practices, he left to start his own workshop. Now located in Cambridge (a five minute walk from me, who knew?) the workshop is passed between generations as it takes on dedicated new apprentices who have fallen in love with letters. The Kindersley workshop produces headstones, memorial plaques, street signs and a whole range of commissioned work which at times moves towards being (although 'Art' is a dangerous word for Lida) lyrical, inscribed sculptures of immense poetry.

A quotation from Salvador Dali, which comes with a story Lida is keeping alive. 'Making is breaking' she says, this is what their work is all about. In order to make an inscription they break the surface of a stone that has existed for thousands of years. The minutest of errors destroys the work.

I have just returned from my visit to the workshop, gifted with books and postcards and thoughts and ideas, which my head is brimming and swimming with. I have a love and respect for Lida Cardozo Kindersley (David's widow) who currently the runs the workshop with passion and precision but also with the spirituality of alphabets; of lines, forms and characters which have a relationship amongst themselves, with stone and with the environment they are eventually placed within. She takes me to see a headstone which will be laid out on the ground, with a sweeping gesture and the reflection of sunlight in her eyes she explains how the light of the day will change letter and stone surface, bring everything to life.

The surface of the rock already has the sea, the beach, the sky and its birds written on it.

The whole workshop is a visual palimpsest (photos will have to follow) of tablets, sculptures, rubbings, words which are pure poetry or those that become doctrines for work, postcards, drawings and a whole collage of materials collected to form a part of the workshop's atmosphere, its creatively focussed energy. I sit at a great wooden table in the centre of the workshop as coffe break begins, biscuits are passed around, everyone is reading newspapers or books, there is light chatter. Then the break is over and the whole workshop is filled with the chippings of chisel on stone, the hum of deep concentration. Lettering is a language, Lida asserts, each letter has its own character, and she goes on to talk about the joy of the letter 'Y'.

The Eric Gill Pilgrimage

The Eric Gill pilgrimage turned out to be providential. I had planned out my landmarks but was unaware how close they were together; Oxford Circus, Victoria and South Kensington formed a tightly bound prism on the tube map. Then there was the Itsu (www.itsu.com) opposite Portland Place which provided the perfect lunch and the unexpected Gill sculptures which greeted me as I entered the V&A. When I emerged from the underground at Oxford Circus I could already see the beacon of broadcasting house beckoning from just behind the lines of Christmas shoppers.

In 1932 Gill produced the Prospero and Ariel sculptures which still furnish the exterior of BBC broadcasting house. The BBC chose Shakespeare's The Tempest as a theme in order to make a cultural statement. Prospero was an 'airy' spirit who represented the airwaves of broadcasting. However Gill adapted the sculpture to his own beliefs about culture. And so Prospero and Ariel become God the Father and God the Son. When I arrive at broadcasting house in the flesh all I can see is Eric Gill's big joke on the BBC.

I assume that Gill's sculptures are details hardly noticed as commuters, businessmen and shoppers pass them by. However they are beautiful. I particularly like the detail of the wave that rides the building round as a trimming. I have seen so many photographs of these recently that I don't know what it means to have a set of my own, whether it will mean anything? Nevertheless I get in to the road and flutter about the steps of Langham church making a fool of myself with my camera.

‘Had not Prospero power over the immortal gods? At any rate it seemed to be only right and proper that I should see the matter in as bright a light as possible and so I took it upon me to portray God the father and God the son. For even if that were not Shakespeare’s meaning it ought to be the BBC’s’ Eric Gill

For Eric Gill the light of religion illuminates all creation.

My second stop, and what I assumed was my final, in the short pilgrimage was Westminster Cathedral. In the bitter cold as Christmas is nearing The Stations of the Cross with a little Catholic liturgy thrown in for good measure, seemed satisfyingly appropriate (probably more suited to Easter, but as a heathen I only have a gentle feel for these things). As a raging Catholic sculptor, although relatively unheard of at the time, Gill was asked to furnish the Cathedral's pillars with carvings of the Fourteen stations of the cross. This is Gill's 'Epic' just as The Anathemata is David Jones's; it communicates the whole history of a people and culture even if this history is uniquely that of Religion and the Passion. Mounted on pillars in Westminster these succeed in being epic.

Only one photo for you as the angles were awkward, although I did get some beautiful postcards so perhaps I will share those as a treat eventually. Red lettering and Gold details add subtle decoration, to a stark but beautifully conceived sculpture.

The final joy of the day was arriving at the V&A believing I had, had my warm cosy fill of Gill, only to be confronted by a preparatory carving for Prospero and Ariel in an alcove. I had unwittingly stumbled upon a new landmark in my pilgrimage.

To supplement my endless reading on lettering and typography there were framed tablets of Gill's typefaces. He donated them so that they could be studied by the V&A's legacy. You have no idea how often I have consulted black and white reproductions of these, now I am the student poring over them.

Gill's sculpture Mankind is a female cipher for the power of his sculpting. She is a luxurious decapitated monument to sexuality and the sensuality of stone. Gill admired tradition with such fervour but he commands a space in the centre of it all. I spent a long, long time absorbing buttocks, indents, curves and Gill's own deep admiration of the female form. Here she is for your enjoyment.

You can deny Eric Gill many things, but not this appreciation. In the V&A Fiona McCarthy's biographical revelations are irrelevancies, Eric Gill is a modern British sculptor whose influence stretches across the exhibition hall from Robert Gibbings to the student of lettering.

If only Ben Nicholson would design my curtains

You may remember me writing that one of my highlights at Kettles Yard was Ben Nicholson's print on fabric which the Ede's appeared to have used as a bathroom blind. Here it is!

Letters and numbers, c.1933

Nicholson's linocut is an energetic algorithm speaking an abstract language. His letters and numbers appear to jump in their repetitions across the fabric avoiding direct meaning and communication. There is a framed version of the print in the corridor but it is the version in the bathroom which I like the most. I might be leaping to wild imaginative conclusions but it's display on a curtain rail makes it look like a blind. I think this speaks volumes about the function of art (something which David Jones and Eric Gill are always discussing); giving Nicholson's print a function imbues it with all kinds of richness and locates it firmly within the house. Anyway these are the nasty curtains I have to contend with in my college bedroom instead:

If only Ben Nicholson would design me a set of curtains!

The David Jones Pilgrimage

I agonised over the scans of these images. The scanner was continually auto-correcting, filling Jones's flowers with brighter colour and making everything else black and white. I had to change it to professional mode so that it would just pick up what was there, and do justice to all of the subtle inflections of Jones's work. But this isn't the point, the scans only give you a glimmer of an idea of what the work really is. Today my David Jones Pilgrimage reminded me why seeing work in the flesh is a breathtaking, tear-inducing and necessary part of appreciating the artists that you love. For Jones, not being widely read meant that the printing costs of his books were problematic. Most of the reproductions of his paintings, drawings and prints are poor quality, in black and white and often underwhelming. In Kettles Yard, guided by the women who work there, the importance of Jones's art was brought back in to sharp focus.

Vexilla Regis, 1948, Graphite and Watercolour on paper

This might just look like a tangled and wooded work of chaos, but behind the door in Jim Ede's bedroom you can take a moment to look a little deeper in to the tangle. New dimensions and perspectives buried in the branches shift in to focus. We discover Stone Henge embedded on a hill in the distance, mythic horses charging the break and sculpted angels mounted on deteriorated plinths. There is a connection between Jones's paintings, his inscriptions and his poetry; here is all of mythology actively present in the landscape, here is the wooded quarry of Jones's imagination made manifest.

Flora and Calix light, 1950, Graphite and watercolour on paper

Jones's Chalice painting provides an alternative window out of the house. It is a celebration of the wild detritus of a fading bloom. Once again all perspectives exist in tandem so that the floral fireworks and transparent chalice give way to the frame of the window. Often mistaken for a simple vase, the chalice holds imaginative potential and symbolism as a mystical object.

Quia per incarnati, 1953, watercolour on paper

I have already used a scan from this inscription in my post about 'the field between poetry and painting', but the copy was from The Anathemata and was already a grainy black and white reproduction. When I walked downstairs to find 'Quia per incarnati' in the house of the Ede's I had the real revelatory moment of my pilgrimage. Within the pages of the book it is easy to fall in to the fiction and imagine the words carved in stone and to see the inscriptions as a separate genre of work entirely. But this is very much a David Jones painting, the letters finely carved with watercolour and brush, inflected with light touches of colour are a development of visual languages.

I have decided that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life being a super geek and working in the Kettles Yard house. First of all it is just a beautiful space to work in and secondly everybody just kept telling me stories; about Dai (David Jones) dropping sculptures when he came to stay, recalling things they had read in the books (including Jim Ede suggesting Jones was assertive and slept with Petra), and remembering the reactions of visitors to his work.

My new work station amongst the art books!

It would be a pleasure to be adopted in to the small circle of adoring Dai Greatcoat fans. Perhaps stalking Kettles Yard is the way to do it!

Kettles Yard House- 'The Louvre of the Pebble'

On a sunny afternoon with the light streaming in through the windows of Helen and Jim Ede's former home you find yourself washed up on the pebbled beach of Cambridge. It doesn't matter that it's winter and you had to don five layers before you left the house, close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on your face and its summer, with the gentle roar of the waves in the distance.

Remnants of the beach brought home and a small version of Brzeska's bird swallowing a fish made to be carried around in your pocket!

The Ede's were clever to fill their house with so much magic; whitewashed walls and scrubbed pine furniture, the paintings of seascapes and boats on the water all begin the transformation of interior and exterior. There is driftwood in the fireplace ready to burn, shells and swirls of pebbles, beach detritus and greeny blue glass floats hanging in alcoves and cabinets and resting on wooden tables. You can take the house away from the sea, but you can't take the sea from the house. Decorated with the spoils of a morning's beachcombing, it is this metamorphosis of surroundings and location which makes me love the Kettles Yard house.

In the top picture you can see a Joan Miro and in the bottom, Brzeska's Redstone Dancer leading us to the piano.

The house represents the private collection of former curator of the Tate Gallery, Jim Ede, and his wife Helen. With the bookshelves and pebbles left untouched as if the couple had just gone out for an afternoon walk, we are left to make intelligent guesses about who the works are by, or else ask intelligent questions. The collection includes work by Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, David Jones, Christopher Wood and the attic is a treasure trove of Gaudier-Brzeska drawings, prints and sculptures. For me the highlights include; Brzeska's duck swallowing a fish beached on a great amputated tree trunk, Ben Nicholson's print of numbers and letters on fabric which the Ede's appear to have turned in to a bathroom blind, and the great oak table which serves as a library for visitors to plunder expensive and rare art books.

As I leave the woman tells me to come back tomorrow, a little earlier, so that the light will be better. Your visit should be all about the light. At what time will the light through the windows best illuminate the paintings and sculptures? When will rainbow sparks fly through perspex glass discs and inscribed glass panels? When might the pink stretches of sunset imbue the whole visit with the perfect atmosphere? This is why it is best to return to the house again and again, to read the books and spend quiet minutes sitting in chairs in the changing light of the day and the seasons.

Today I went on a David Jones Pilgrimage to see the paintings, drawings, prints and inscriptions which I hadn't given much time to before I discovered Jones this summer, but I will write more on that later.

'between poetry and painting'

More reflections on the Dissertation, I hope they seem interesting. These are inscriptions from David Jones' long poem The Anathemata, they are all made by a similar process using watercolours, gouache, ink and sometimes crayon. With quotations from the Latin Mass, Rome and even Finnegan's Wake they represent the breadth of the referential network, of the 'vast wooded Quarry' from which Jones takes inspiration and direction.

'For by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of thy brightness has shone anew into the eyes of our mind Minerva has sprung from the head of Jove.'

The Inscriptions appear to us as relics which the poet may have unearthed from a burial site or discovered and done a rubbing of. They are just one of the material forms which the poem takes in an attempt to collapse the boundaries and distinctions between the literary and the visual, between the word and its physical manifestation. Ultimately the poem moves towards this action of making 'the Word flesh'.

This inscription is taken from Joyce's Finnegan's Wake; the highlighted words link 'thing' with 'place' so that every object is tied with its locality but also every object embodies its 'place'.

The Letters do not follow a strict pattern or formation but are separate entities in themselves, designed by an artist to fit their purpose, their meaning, their place within the word and in order to communicate their particular message.

‘To my parents and their forebears, and to all those indigenous, the whole family for the fair island of the Britons.’

They are the stone markers in our journey through the history of our culture, through the history of the world; suggesting direction and our own stumbling upon significance.

Text from a lost inscription put up by Pope Leo IV over a gate in the Vatican Wall, ‘Rome head of the world, its splendour and hope, golden Rome.’ –‘

Really what these show is the scope of literature to be more far more active than just words on a page. These words have physical presence and they also begin to map out a typography of reference and cultural foundations.

My Dissertation- summarised in pictures

This is my dissertation pinboard. Whatever it may suggest, my subject is not Art or Art History, but Literature. The exciting thing about the dissertation is that I am exploring the ways in which literature and art are interconnected, that words themselves can be material objects, can be individual works of art.

From top left to bottom right, a list of the dissertation ephemera;

*A postcard from the Fitzwilliam museum Cambridge of a Neolithic female (David Jones explores the first examples of art in his poem The Anathemata)

*Leaflet from an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts where I first saw work by Eric Gill.

*A post it note reminding me that 'Neo-romanticism' might be an important idea.

*A postcard of the Kettles Yard house, where there are archives of David Jones' letters.

* A quote from Eric Gill 'Beauty is independent of ethical association', to remind me that Gill can still shock me!

*A postcard of Eric Gill's Ecstasy, it is going to be impossible to avoid the subject of sex in my dissertation when it comes to Gill.

*A quote from Paul Klee which expresses a similar theory of Art to that which Jones and Gill preach (I just happened to pick this up in library, but it is excitingly relevant)

*A picture of the Willendorf Venus, another example of early art, early sensual art to be more precise. Jones alludes to the Willendorf in his epic poem...

*A painting by Paul Nash, (the postcard is from the Fitz again) Nash belongs to the same school of artists as Jones, he is using watercolours and the perspective has been flattened.

*An inscription by David Jones...I should have more inscriptional work on my pinboard as this is the heart of the dissertation, 'The word made stone!'

*Another painting by Paul Nash...purely for decorative purposes!

*And finally another quote found in the library from Ralph Waldo Emerson, he also agrees that words can be material objects.

Of course there is a lot more to my dissertation than meets the eye in my collection of images, but the pinboard begins to map out some of my thinking and some of my inspiration!



I am sorry about picture quality, I have been using the camera on my blackberry which is fast, efficient and easy but the photos don't turn out as beautiful as they would with a little more effort. Still they are only here as a little visual aid.

Religion and Art

My dissertation has tangled me in all kinds of circuits and knots when it comes to the subject of Religion and its relation to or with Art. David Jones and Eric Gill; Artists, inscriptors, writers, both claim Catholicism as an important part of their background or what Gill would call his 'autopsychography'. I don't have an issue with religious art or religion informing or inspiring art, but I am unsure of how the topic of religion can be negotiated when it comes to these figures. My first problem comes from Gill's fruity (which amounts to a whole crop of fallen apples) sex life, as illuminated by Fiona Macarthy in her biography. It isn't simply that Gill's attitude towards sex is morally dubious (partner-swapping, incest and voyeurism are all included in his list of pleasures) but also that this sensuality infects and informs, what we appears to be, his religious work. 'We are all fucked by Christ' claims Gill, and this unexpectedly crude phrasing halts me in my tracks and begins to corrode my sense of Gill's genius.

Last weekend, at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge, I stumbled upon a sculpture of Saint Sebastian by Gill. Its sensuousness lulled me back in to new contradictions. Before me was pure piety of form, the simplest of curvatures describing a Saint. Suddenly it seemed that Gill was merely the advocate of, what we all recognise deep down inside, the inherent sensuality of religion. For me the revelation of Saint Sebastian was that sex is an intrinsic part of religious iconography. The smoky incense which snakes in to the cold air of the cathedral, the echo of hymns in the vaults and caverns of the church, the ultimate consolation of Christ; all this is evoked in Gill's sculpture, not invoked. We aren't 'fucked by Christ' but perhaps within us all there is a hysterical Margery Kempe, asking to be, Bride of Christ.

In a recent episode of True Blood the blonde-girl-next-door-cum-leader of a fanatical Christian group, recalls the story of the Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ and then drying them with her long hair. 'Isn't that lovely?' she asks Jason in an attempt to justify her seduction whilst arousing him. It is more than lovely, it is an act which is both tender and sensual but at the same time human, instinctively natural. If we want a justification for our sexuality that is cohesive with our religion, the story of the Mary Magdalene seems the most potent. If we want to have intimacy with Christ, it is here in the Bible that it seems finally to be humanly possible. I'm not suggesting that the story of the Mary Magdalene can be used to explain away sexual indiscretion, but I'm pointing out that it is a story which is imbued with the kind of sensuality and sexuality which people often claim religion is against.


At 16 my Aunt took me to the palace of El Escorial just outside of Madrid and I remember being perplexed by her excitement and interest in a sculpture of Christ it housed, the only Christ with a penis. The Museum had attached a handy loin cloth to cover Christ's dignity, fabric which seemed utterly incongruous and facile when juxtaposed with the unblemished white of the stone. I remember my embarrassment as my Aunt desperately leant over in the hopes of getting a glimpse at that rare thing, Christ's phallus. But why? Why should it be embarrassing? If our prelapsarian state is one of unawareness, unconsciousness, then why shouldn't Christ wear his genitalia and still be allowed that same innocence? The problem is that Christ automatically becomes sexualised; he is feminised and given an androgynous status for the exact purpose of allowing us to write our own sexuality upon him.

As I had to reiterate to my curious Chinese students, sex is a natural thing, there is no need to mystify it with the status of religious revelation. Sensuality in religious art should be embraced as one of our natural ways of understanding Christ and God, it is an attempt to approach the kind of intimacy which God offers us in his human terms.