“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’” – Robin Williams
In Western art, the depiction of the Biblical account of Jesus’ Resurrection is an archetype filled with meaning and a sense of hope and promise.
Last week’s celebrations of Christian Holy Week annually overlap with the Jewish tradition of Passover, celebrating freedom from slavery in Egypt. In the Muslim faith, according to the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet (second only to the Koran in Islamic authority), Jesus was assumed into heaven and will return at the end of time in the east of Damascus, his hands resting on the shoulders of two angels.
These sacred accounts all fall into step with Spring’s arrival, when renewal and returning life beckon us to do likewise – to “walk in the newness of life.”
Vincent van Gogh, “Orange Blossoms,” oil (1890) van Gogh Museum
As artists, makers, and creators of all kinds, we get to participate directly in the energy of creation. In a modern translation by Matthew Fox (who calls all of us “co-creators” of the universe), Thomas Aquinas says the following: “The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation, hovers over the mind of the artist at work.” Art can channel forces greater than we know.
In his book Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, Fox proposes that creativity is naturally born in everyone who’s ever leaned into the sense of wonder, particularly wonder at the beauty and mystery of nature. Art, he says, can bring us back to the state of awe and joyful participation we knew as children.
Claude Monet, “Springtime,” oil. 1886. Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK
The strained relationship between humanity and nature certainly could benefit from a renewed sense of integration with, and belonging to, the cosmos. Surely art, in its familiar humble way, can play its part?
“Creativity is the very definition employed by anthropologists for our species,” Fox writes. “We are bipeds who make things. According to Aquinas, the human intellect can ‘conceive an infinite number of things in order to make for ourselves an infinite number of instruments’.”
May we co-create in courage, compassion, and awe. Let art move us beyond fear and doubt to joyful action and the building of a “new creation” and a renewed humanity. Goodness knows the world is hungry for a dash of hope and renewal these days.
‘Send forth your spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” (Psalms 104.30)
Fra Angelico Predella and Altarpiece Reunited
News from Italy proclaims that a “predella” (a painting on the front of a raised shelf above an altar) and altarpiece by Fra Angelico have been reunited. The altarpiece, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, was dislocated from its predella at the end of World War II. They had been kept in separate museums, split between the Uffizi and the San Marco Museums in Florence respectively, for decades. Fortunately, the Uffizi have now sent their altarpiece to be reunited with its predella, for an indefinite period it seems, in the San Marco Museum.
