books Whatsoever MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, DIJON · Roger Scruton reflects on the state we’re in...
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books 48 CHURCH TIMES 23/30 December 2016 Seeking evidence in art: The Dijon Nativity by Robert Campin, one of the paintings discussed in Bishop Herbert’s book, reviewed here MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, DIJON Medieval piety on the move Nicholas Cranfield on an anticipation of the Reformation changes Foreshadowing the Reformation: Art and religion in the fifteenth- century Burgundian Netherlands Christopher Herbert Routledge £85 (978-1-138-68744-8) Church Times Bookshop £77.50 WITH Bishop Herbert’s book, we are invited to look closely at Bur- gundian art in the 15th century and to consider it in the light of popular piety, such as liturgical dramas performed as “mystery plays”, and in view of the rise of individuality. Dr Herbert offers convincing evidence for a shift in the relation- ship between God and man three generations before the events of the Reformation itself. Art is one way of expressing the history of ideas, and this book un- folds much of the spiritual dimen- sion of the likes of Robert Campin, Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling, as we might hope. At one point, Herbert follows Philip the Bold in death; the duke died in April 1404 near Brussels. By stages, his body was taken south- wards to Dijon, where it was interred five weeks later. On the sepulchre (which is poorly photo- graphed for the author’s purposes) the duke’s effigy lies on a black marble slab. Beneath, 41 sculpted figures in procession are led by an acolyte with the holy water. As each of the mourning weepers is veiled, it is through the comportment of their bodies that the sculptor Claus de Werve (c.1380-1439) allows us to perceive how each respond to death. This is a strikingly early observation of the individual. Occasionally I differ with the bishop’s closer readings; in the Van Eyck altarpiece, St John the Baptist stands at the left hand of Christ enthroned in majesty simply be- cause he was patron of Ghent, and of the cathedral at the painting’s first commissioning. His book is open at Isaiah 40.1 as he points to the Christ. Vittorio Emanuele is the more usual spelling of the names of both Savoyard kings, while the story that the Prado Deposition by van der Weyden from El Escorial was rescued from a shipwreck was discounted as early as 1604 by Carel van Mander. My clerical colleagues in the deanery will be surprised to learn that the last of the Beguines died in April 2013, as we stayed last June for our annual retreat in the Ghent Beguinage with some very alive members of that household. The Revd Dr Nicholas Cranfield is Vicar of All Saints’, Blackheath, in south London. Whatsoever things are true or lovely . . . Roger Scruton reflects on the state we’re in What is Wrong with Us? Eric Coombes and Theodore Dalrymple, editors Imprint Academic £14.95 (978-1-845-40900-5) WHAT words can encompass the degradation of mass culture in our times, and what policy could poss- ibly reverse it? The contributors to this striking volume have a credit- able shot at answering the first of those questions, but steer clear of the second, partly because they are aware that public policy has, in recent times, merely followed the fashion and given up on the attempt to correct it. The BBC was set up with the purpose of bringing a high-minded vision of culture to the people of Britain. It aimed to be the solution to the problem of mass culture; it is now a state-funded part of the prob- lem. Vulgarity, lewdness, violence, and gross sentimentality have the same opportunities for display as beauty and refinement, and the idea that any authority should intervene in the name of taste is dismissed as a quaint survival from our elitist past. Ours is a non-judgemental culture, and nobody is to be censored other than the one who believes that there is something more at stake than fun. In this way, there has grown in our midst — and not in Britain only — a culture of desecration. Art proves itself by its capacity to shock and disgust, and the wearier the public, the more shocking the pro- vocation must be. The new language of art criticism is built around this phenomenon: works of art must “challenge” our ordinary ways, must “push the boundaries”, must be “transgressive”, “disturbing”, “unnerving”, in the manner of a mutilated foetus or a pile of body parts. The contributors to this volume remind us that there was once an- other kind of culture that filled the channels of communication in our country. They speak the language of criticism as this has come down to us from Coleridge, Arnold, Leavis, and Eliot. They are aware that art has the highest of missions, which is that of ennobling the human con- dition through finding eternal meaning in the present tense. Their exasperation with the ig- norance and folly all around leads to some justified bad temper. But Eric Coombes’s comprehensive demolition of the “Sensation” exhibition, and its perpetrator Norman Rosenthal, is a lesson in what matters in the artistic endeav- our and why. Equally insightful is Duke Maskell’s dismissal of the “British values” supposedly placed at the heart of our national culture by the government of Gordon Brown. Together, these two writers remind us that there was a time, very recently, when we did not speak of “values” because we did not need to, because our hearts were attuned to an aesthetic and moral legacy that guided us through this world in peaceful sympathy with our fellow countrymen. Coombes tellingly compares Marcus Harvey’s vast tribute to the child murderer Myra Hindley, the idolatrous centrepiece of the “Sensa- tion” show, with Paul Nash’s Totes Meer, his invocation of the reality of war in the form of an aeroplane graveyard. The first is a resurrection of horrors; the second a sombre laying to rest of the worst of them. Between them, these two works remind us of the true mission of art in our time, which is not to wallow in destruction, but to redeem us from it. Theodore Dalrymple’s exemplary demolition of the charlatan Le Corbusier reminds us that, while we can avoid the inhuman products of the art schools, we have no defence against the equally inhuman, and equally uneducated, products of the schools of architecture. In an entertaining satire of the celebrity culture, Dalrymple argues that the vandals get away with insulting us because they are also celebrities, targets of a new kind of screen- nourished idolatry. Christians should take note of this; for idolatry means the loss of God. It is godlessness that the writers to this volume are describing and, in their despairing way, they are searching for the way back, as we all are. Sir Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher. new titles just published When in Romans: An invitation to linger with the Gospel according to Paul by Beverley Roberts Gaventa (Baker, £13.99 (£12.60); 978-0-8010-9738- 6). An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans by Michael F. Bird (Eerdmans, £19.99 (£18); 978-0- 8028-6769-8). Being Mindful, Being Christian: A guide to mindful discipleship by Roger Bretherton, Joanna Collicutt, and Jennifer Brickman (Monarch, £12.99 (£11.70); 978-0-85721-729-5). The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas by Dominic Legge OP (OUP, £65 (£58.50); 978-0-19-879419-6). Bartholomew, Apostle and Visionary: 25 years of guiding the Christian East by John Chryssavgis (Thomas Nelson, £18.99 (£17.10); 978-0-7180-8689- 3). Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop. Islam in the village Fiona Hook considers a religious thriller The Islamist of Pepynbridge Peter Morrell i2i Publishing £8.95 (978-0-9933714-4-8) Church Times Bookshop £8.05 PETER MORRELL’s quintessenti- ally English Northamptonshire village of Pepynbridge is a happen- ing little place. Last year it was rocked by scandal when a teenage girl falsely accused the Rector of sexual abuse (Books, 1 January 2016). In his second novel, Ash Malik, born in Pakistan, but appar- ently a thoroughly assimilated British boy, moves to the village with his family, joins the abbey choir, plays cricket, and finds him- self a girlfriend, the daughter of a local farmer. But Ash is not all he seems, as his headmaster and his sister Leela guess. A devout Muslim, he is im- patient with his parents’ relaxed attitude to their religion, and the prayer group he belongs to at school leads him on to dangerous ground. At the same time, new friendships cause him to change his perspective. Only by extricating himself at enormous personal risk can he save the people he has come to love. Faced with a promising first novel, the reviewer always wonders whether the writer will continue to develop, and it’s pleasing to see that this writer has. While this is, first and foremost, a thriller that draws on Morrell’s own background as a deacon and retired judge, he also examines why a bright teenager might be tempted by fundament- alism, and then be drawn to Chris- tianity. While making it perfectly clear in the debates between Ash and the Rector that Christianity, with its message of love and free will, is superior to Islam, with its message of submission, and that blind adherence to any ideology is a terrible evil, he has some pertinent criticisms to make of the C of E. I would have been happier with- out the inept descriptions of teenage sexual intercourse. Ruth Rendell doesn’t need them, and neither do we. If you skip the mucky bits, however, this is a really good book.
Transcript of books Whatsoever MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, DIJON · Roger Scruton reflects on the state we’re in...
books
48 CHURCH TIMES 23/30 December 2016
Seeking evidence in art: The Dijon Nativity by Robert Campin, one of the paintings discussed in Bishop Herbert’s book, reviewed here
MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, DIJON
Medieval piety on the moveNicholas Cranfield on an anticipation of the Reformation changes
Foreshadowing the Reformation: Art and religion in the fifteenth-century Burgundian Netherlands Christopher HerbertRoutledge £85 (978-1-138-68744-8)Church Times Bookshop £77.50
WITH Bishop Herbert’s book, we are invited to look closely at Burgundian art in the 15th century and to consider it in the light of popular piety, such as liturgical dramas performed as “mystery plays”, and in view of the rise of individuality. Dr Herbert offers convincing evidence for a shift in the relationship be tween God and man three generations before the events of the Reformation itself.
Art is one way of expressing the history of ideas, and this book un folds much of the spiritual dimension of the likes of Robert Campin, Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling, as we might hope.
At one point, Herbert follows Philip the Bold in death; the duke died in April 1404 near Brussels. By stages, his body was taken southwards to Dijon, where it was interred five weeks later. On the sepulchre (which is poorly photographed for the author’s purposes) the duke’s effigy lies on a black marble slab.
Beneath, 41 sculpted figures in procession are led by an acolyte with the holy water. As each of the mourning weepers is veiled, it is through the comportment of their bodies that the sculptor Claus de Werve (c.13801439) allows us to perceive how each respond to death. This is a strikingly early observation of the individual.
Occasionally I differ with the
bishop’s closer readings; in the Van Eyck altarpiece, St John the Baptist stands at the left hand of Christ enthroned in majesty simply be cause he was patron of Ghent, and of the cathedral at the painting’s first commissioning. His book is open at Isaiah 40.1 as he points to the Christ.
Vittorio Emanuele is the more usual spelling of the names of both Savoyard kings, while the story that the Prado Deposition by van der Weyden from El Escorial was res cued from a shipwreck was discounted as early as 1604 by Carel van Mander.
My clerical colleagues in the deanery will be surprised to learn that the last of the Beguines died in April 2013, as we stayed last June for our annual retreat in the Ghent Beguinage with some very alive members of that household.
The Revd Dr Nicholas Cranfield is Vicar of All Saints’, Blackheath, in south London.
Whatsoever things are true or lovely . . .Roger Scruton reflectson the state we’re in
What is Wrong with Us?Eric Coombes and Theodore Dalrymple, editorsImprint Academic £14.95(978-1-845-40900-5)
WHAT words can encompass the degradation of mass culture in our times, and what policy could possibly reverse it? The contributors to this striking volume have a creditable shot at answering the first of those questions, but steer clear of the second, partly because they are aware that public policy has, in re cent times, merely followed the fashion and given up on the attempt to correct it.
The BBC was set up with the purpose of bringing a highminded vision of culture to the people of Britain. It aimed to be the solution to the problem of mass culture; it is now a statefunded part of the problem.
Vulgarity, lewdness, violence, and gross sentimentality have the same opportunities for display as beauty and refinement, and the idea that any authority should intervene in the name of taste is dismissed as a quaint survival from our elitist past. Ours is a nonjudgemental culture, and nobody is to be censored other than the one who believes that there is something more at stake than fun.
In this way, there has grown in
our midst — and not in Britain only — a culture of desecration. Art proves itself by its capacity to shock and disgust, and the wearier the public, the more shocking the provocation must be. The new language of art criticism is built around this phenomenon: works of art must “challenge” our ordinary ways, must “push the boundaries”, must be “transgressive”, “disturbing”, “un nerving”, in the manner of a mutilated foetus or a pile of body parts.
The contributors to this volume remind us that there was once an other kind of culture that filled the channels of communication in our country. They speak the language of criticism as this has come down to us from Coleridge, Arnold, Leavis, and Eliot. They are aware that art has the highest of missions, which is that of ennobling the human condition through finding eternal meaning in the present tense.
Their exasperation with the ig norance and folly all around leads to some justified bad temper. But Eric Coombes’s comprehensive demolition of the “Sensation” ex hibition, and its perpetrator Norman Rosenthal, is a lesson in what matters in the artistic endeavour and why.
Equally insightful is Duke Maskell’s dismissal of the “British values” supposedly placed at the heart of our national culture by the government of Gordon Brown. Together, these two writers remind us that there was a time, very recently, when we did not speak of “values” because we did not need to, because our hearts were attuned to an aesthetic and moral legacy that guided us through this world in peaceful sympathy with our fellow countrymen.
Coombes tellingly compares Marcus Harvey’s vast tribute to the child murderer Myra Hindley, the idolatrous centrepiece of the “Sensation” show, with Paul Nash’s Totes Meer, his invocation of the reality of war in the form of an aeroplane graveyard. The first is a resurrection of horrors; the second a sombre laying to rest of the worst of them. Between them, these two works remind us of the true mission of art in our time, which is not to wallow in destruction, but to redeem us from it.
Theodore Dalrymple’s exemplary demolition of the charlatan Le Corbusier reminds us that, while we can avoid the inhuman products of the art schools, we have no defence against the equally inhuman, and equally uneducated, products of the schools of architecture. In an entertaining satire of the celebrity culture, Dalrymple argues that the vandals get away with insulting us because they are also celebrities, targets of a new kind of screennourished idolatry.
Christians should take note of this; for idolatry means the loss of God. It is godlessness that the writers to this volume are describing and, in their despairing way, they are searching for the way back, as we all are.
Sir Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher.
new titles just published
When in Romans: An invitation to linger with the Gospel according to Paul by Beverley Roberts Gaventa (Baker, £13.99 (£12.60); 978-0-8010-9738-6).
An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans by Michael F. Bird (Eerdmans, £19.99 (£18); 978-0-8028-6769-8).
Being Mindful, Being Christian: A guide to mindful discipleship by Roger Bretherton, Joanna Collicutt, and Jennifer Brickman (Monarch, £12.99 (£11.70); 978-0-85721-729-5).
The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas by Dominic Legge OP (OUP, £65 (£58.50); 978-0-19-879419-6).
Bartholomew, Apostle and Visionary: 25 years of guiding the Christian East by John Chryssavgis (Thomas Nelson, £18.99 (£17.10); 978-0-7180-8689-3).
Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.
Islam in the village Fiona Hook considers a religious thriller
The Islamist of PepynbridgePeter Morrelli2i Publishing £8.95(978-0-9933714-4-8)Church Times Bookshop £8.05
PETER MORRELL’s quintessentially English Northamptonshire village of Pepynbridge is a happening little place. Last year it was rocked by scandal when a teenage girl falsely accused the Rector of sexual abuse (Books, 1 January 2016). In his second novel, Ash Malik, born in Pakistan, but ap parently a thoroughly assimilated British boy, moves to the village with his family, joins the abbey choir, plays cricket, and finds him
self a girlfriend, the daughter of a local farmer.
But Ash is not all he seems, as his headmaster and his sister Leela guess. A devout Muslim, he is im patient with his parents’ relaxed attitude to their religion, and the prayer group he belongs to at school leads him on to dangerous ground. At the same time, new friendships cause him to change his perspective. Only by extricating himself at enorm ous personal risk can he save the people he has come to love.
Faced with a promising first novel, the reviewer always wonders whether the writer will continue to develop, and it’s pleasing to see that this writer has. While this is, first and foremost, a thriller that draws
on Morrell’s own background as a deacon and retired judge, he also examines why a bright teenager might be tempted by fundamentalism, and then be drawn to Christianity. While making it perfectly clear in the debates between Ash and the Rector that Christianity, with its message of love and free will, is superior to Islam, with its message of submission, and that blind adherence to any ideology is a terrible evil, he has some pertinent criticisms to make of the C of E.
I would have been happier without the inept descriptions of teenage sexual inter course. Ruth Rendell doesn’t need them, and neither do we. If you skip the mucky bits, however, this is a really good book.
