C. Turner. ‘Square World: Claire Turner finds symbolic value in Geoffrey
Clarke’s abstraction’ in Art and Christianity 81 (Spring 2015). pp2-5.
This is a selective
summary of the article by Claire Turner in Art and Christianity 81 (Spring 2015): C. Turner. ‘Square World: Claire
Turner finds symbolic value in Geoffrey Clarke’s abstraction’.
Geoffrey Clarke was born in 1924: he died in
October 2014. An obituary
of Geoffrey Clarke was summarised in
this blog on 10 November 2014. In the
1950s Geoffrey Clarke worked with Basil Spence to rebuild Coventry
Cathedral.
Claire Turner is Priest in Charge of St.Chad’s
Church, Rubery, Birmingham.
Square World: Claire Turner finds symbolic value in Geoffrey Clarke’s
abstraction
St.Chad’s Church, Rubery was built in the
years after the Second World War. One
face of the building includes a regular series of five panels that extend from
above windows formed of glass bricks upwards as far as the eaves of the gabled
end of the roof. It was originally
intended that each panel should hold an artist’s commission, and this was
fulfilled, but only for a few weeks prior to the church’s consecration in
December 1959.
The architect was Richard Twentyman working
with partners Lavender and Percy.
Geoffrey Clarke was commissioned by the
architects to provide five works for the panels on the exterior wall, and the
works that Clarke produced were significantly different from his work up to
that time.
The original commission was to produce five
works that ‘represented, either as life-like reproductions or as symbols, the
Virgin and Child, St John the Baptist, St Nicholas, St Chad and St
Stephen’. The Vicar at the time also
suggested that the panels could represent scenes from the Book of Revelation.
A catalyst for spiritual encounter or a site of transcendental searching
In a catalogue to an exhibition of Clarke’s
work in 1994, Peter Black wrote of Clarke that Clarke was impressed by
primitive pottery because it had been made as an integral part of the life of
the potter and had not been made solely as a commodity: the piece of pottery
and its decoration become an integral part of the ‘celebration of the meal or
ritual associated with it’.
This meaning was of the essence of Clarke’s
work: the integration of his work into the lives of those around him so that
his work could be ‘a catalyst for spiritual encounter or a site of
transcendental searching’.
Clarke was experienced in producing work for
the public domain and he was suitable for the commission.
But at the time of the commission Clarke’s
work was changing. Until the late 1950s
Clarke had used iron and bronze, but in the late 1950s he began to work with
aluminium: he set up a foundry at his home in Suffolk and he cast aluminium in
sand trays that retained marks and indentations. He developed a technique using polystyrene
moulds that were lost as the molten metal was poured into them.
Clarke’s speed of working, and his desire to
realise two dimensional sketches as three dimensional works achieved an
immediacy that seems to have satisfied Clarke but which apparently did not
allow adequate communication by Clarke of his intentions and meanings to
would-be patrons.
Transformation from the tangible to the intangible
The reliefs for St.Chad’s Church, Rubery were
entitled ‘Square World I-V’. They were rejected
by the Diocesan Advisory Committee for Churches which judged that the reliefs
were ‘not considered to convey theological truth and were therefore
inappropriate’. It is known that Clarke
was asked to provide an explanation of the works but it is not known if this
was done.
The symbols in the works are consistent with
those that Clarke had been working with in the previous ten years. Peter Black (1994 – see above) records that
Clarke had written that to achieve perfect symbols is to achieve
‘transformation from the tangible to the intangible’. This appears to have been Clarke’s aim.
Turner refers to the work of Judith le Grove in which she has sought to understand ‘Square World
I-V’. le Grove sees the crosses that are
formed on each panel as the intersection of the earthly and the heavenly:
fractures in the intersections point to disruption of union between the two
realms. Symbols on the panels indicate
Christ’s birth, a serpent, a crook and a cross.
Reaching out of the frame towards something else, something transcendent
‘Square World I-V’ is currently at The
Lightbox Gallery at Woking.
Turner writes that ‘the symbolism isn’t
obvious but there is enough – enough to invite the viewer into a conversation
with the work, to join the artist in his search for understanding’.
Turner argues that contemporary visual art, of
which ‘Square World I-V’ is an example is to a degree ‘visual metaphysics’: an
attempt to understand the world and to present a response to being in the
world. Meaning belongs to both the
artist and the viewer.
Turner concludes that ‘Square World I-V’ is a
‘handmade, humble approach that does not try to pretend; an open aesthetic
where metal lines reach out of the frame towards something else, something
transcendent …... I can’t actually think of anything better to place on the
front of a church’.
A footnote states that a current attempt to have
‘Square World I-V’ loaned to St.Chad’s Church, Rubery has the support of the Diocesan
Advisory Committee.
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