FROM SEEING TO BELIEVING ? - GRAHAM HOWES

‘Can then our college chapels be made still more useful for the spiritual advancement of ourselves and our pupils ?’ asked the Reverend C.A.Swanson,Fellow and Tutor of Christs in 1850.

“Although posed over a hundred and sixty years ago (as part of an eccentric and intemperate attack on Great St Mary’s,the University Church,as a rival attraction) his question has equal resonance today. It raises not only caveats concerning the precise role of nominally Anglican college chapels within an increasingly pluralist,post-Christian, culture,but also larger questions concerning the relative marginality of Christianity within the communal and credal life of all Oxbridge colleges. In the college which nurtured John Milton,Charles Darwin and Rowan Williams,both questions remain especially acute. Put differently,should the chapel itself primarily embody the institutional presence of the Established Church,continuing to act as a locus for minority ritual practice,or should it serve primarily as a ‘space’ for personal reflection and renewal? Such questions are hardly novel,but they re-present themselves with especial relevance when,as at Christs,in 2010,new art work is now incorporated into the existing fabric.

Here,the track record of most Cambridge chapels has been an uneven,and at times unhappy one. For example, at Emmanuel,Sidney Sussex,Clare and Trinity Hall,artistic input and architectural settings have been satisfactorily elided ,with Mannerism and Rococo encountering Neo-Classicism with varying degrees of success. At Queens,however, the re-setting of a mid- 15th century German triptych in a late Victorian reredos is surely a mixed blessing,while at King’s,Rubens ‘ quintessentially Baroque ‘Adoration’ remains in uneasy,even dissonant,juxtaposition to its High Perpendicular setting. A tourist attraction can also harbour visual discord. Perhaps only at Robinson,where Piper’s glass glows numinously amid austere russet brickwork,does an artwork really seem to resonate within its own sacred space.

At Christ’s the current challenge is especially daunting. Not only is the original chapel’s ‘dim religious light’,- that once dissolved Milton ‘into ecstasies’ – still further diffused and absorbed by the heavy-duty panelling (Austin,1701-4) that now dominates both chapel and ante-chapel. Equally intimidating is the powerful post-Restoration reredos,adorned not only with coupled Corinthian columns,but topped with ‘UNUM CORPUS ET UNUM SPIRITUS’ on its cornice,itself surmounted by a large green and gold cartouche dutifully inscribed ‘SURSUM CORDA’. Rarely has the primacy of Word over Image (so integral to post-Restoration Protestant aesthetics ) been visually articulated with such potent specificity. A third visual complication is the ‘presence’ (in two senses !) of the extravagant,and eye-catching double memorial of 1684,in black and white marble,to Sir Thomas Baines and Sir John Finch. This not only abuts the reredos,but its relatively overt statement of male amitie amoreuse provides a uncomfortable counterpoint to the unadorned chastity of the reredos itself. Finally,the ante-chapel,through which one enters,provides a rather disconcerting contrast between its highly ordered,near- rectangular, space,staked out with four Corinthian columns on panelled pedestals,and the comparative disorder of its contents – which include a concert piano, a large wooden chest,and a small,undistinguished,modern icon. A homely,,cluttered,communal memory bank.

Hence both spaces seem,in some ways,uninviting,indeed unlikely, sites for additional artwork,and they clearly present serious visual challenges to any contemporary artist. Yet against these odds,something almost miraculous has taken place. Both segments of the chapel are now transformed by two distinctive,yet subtly interactive, neo-Mannerist statements for a decidedly post-Mannerist generation. In the ante-chapel Anthony Caro’s immensely powerful ‘Deposition’ immediately confronts one directly across the crowded rectangle. Its strong trace elements, drawn from both Rubens’ majestic,theatrical ‘Descent from the Cross’in Antwerp,and Rembrandt’s tender,haunting,’Deposition’ now in Munich,effectively project a dramatized Christology which somehow never topples over into gratuitous melodrama. Its power and physicality are both corporeal and subliminal. In the main chapel the two,formerly blank,panels of the reredos now contain Tom de Freston’s own reworking of two core components of Christian iconography – one (shared with Caro) of Christ’s deposition,the other of His (and our) baptism and regeneration. If one stands at the epicentre of the ante-chapel,both works can be viewed either simultaneously,or sequentially. The effect is extraordinary. Both artists not only give new dynamism (one is tempted to say new life) to what was hitherto a rather static,underpowered,almost de-sacralized space.The latter is now totally transformed,as is our own experience of it. Both artists also re-invoke two of the most highly charged narrative and symbolic images in the entire repertoire of Christian iconongraphy. Although with,one suspects,very different mindsets and using differing,yet complementary media (the solid bronze and brass of Caro,and the delicate tempera of Freston) they take the viewer far beyond mere nostalgia prompted by an evocative temporal narrative,and towards a confrontation with something potentially eternal. In this sense both works relate to each other not merely by re-envoking a shared mythology,but by seizing and creating a renewed opportunity (for believer and non-believer alike) to transform an overtly aesthetic experience into a potentially religious one. The Reverend Swanson would surely have been delighted!”

Graham Howes is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall,a Trustee of ACE (Art and Christianity Enquiry),and author of ‘The Art of the Sacred’ (I.B.Tauris,2007)