= Arte - Una Perspectiva Nueva As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I'm starting out on a new, more exciting training programme for my local preacher training within the Methodist Church! For this, one of the "assignments" I've decided to do (I get a choice out of around 5-10 for each module) is a 'Theology in Art' one. Art is one of those things, for me, that I have always thought looks nice, and I have always really enjoyed doing (though I'm not particularly skilled in it!), but not something that I would spend much time "reading". Books are for reading, pictures are for looking nice! But doing this course has challenged that!
I recently saw a painting by Marc Chagall (the painter of the above painting!) on an email or something, of Jesus on the cross. And the accompanying text was telling me about this man, a Hasidic Jew from Vitebsk who moved to Paris through an art school and who, after WW2 had made a series of these crucifixion paintings demonstrating a view of Jewish persecution epitamised in the persecution of Jesus the Jew. And I just loved the way the colours all told the story, even if the shapes they made hadn't! So I decided that for my 'Theology in Art' "assignment" I was going to write about a painting by Marc Chagall. And I have possibly decided on the above one - "Red Roofs"! A review of the Chagall display at Tate Liverpool describes this image as "a dreamlike evocation of Vitebsk, bathed in the blood-red hues of love, the hearths of home and the comforting glow of happy memories, keeping him warm in his old age. Fires that never really abated throughout the artist’s long life." And another blogger has written an interpretive story based on the painting - well worth checking out in my opinion! But me, what do I think? Well... Firstly, it was definitely the colours which grabbed my attention and made me stop at this painting. Red is such an intense colour; sometimes it can be love, sometimes anger, sometimes passion, sometimes warmth, sometimes excitement; but always very intense. And as I was viewing so many works by this same artist, I was overcome with how he uses this colour in particular. The artist is Marc Chagall, and the painting is called ‘Red Roofs’. I came across Chagall when there was a talk at my university about some of his work, and was interested to see more of it! Chagall was a Jew, born in Vitebsk and who moved to Paris for a while as part of an art school. He painted this picture in 1953. Secondly, I noticed the tiny crucified Jesus in the centre, the only thing not red in this section. It reminded me how life is sometimes so intense - there is love, there is anger, there is passion, there is warmth, there is excitement - but in the centre of all that, there is still Jesus. But there is also potentially a story of love and loss here; of the tall man in red, part of the town, but so much more than it, looking down and seeing his world drenched in suffering, the blood shed, overpowering. And the man with the flowers dreaming of the love he lost; the ghostly white woman still a part of him, his face already clothed in that same suffering. Whilst the man in the sun watches on, clutching something, still, that escaped the downpour of red. So to me, it all at once juxtapositions two very different sets of feelings and ideas when I look at this painting. There is the excitement and dazzlement of life, given by the great man of red, for which Christ died to give us; the life we should charge our horses and chariots towards (as the small charioteer is doing at the bottom of the canvas) with full valiance. And there is the sorrow of a hurting world, where loss of what should’ve been is devastating and heart-breaking. How these two come together, I am unable to put into words; I can feel - when I look at it - more than I can say.
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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