Review

Art

Culture

13 January 2024

7 min read

The visionary artists finding heaven down here

Jonathan Evens explores a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An angelic figure meets a human above a cornfield beyond which is a power station.

Roger Wagner, Abraham and the Angels, 1986.

Everywhere is Heaven is an art exhibition of work by Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. It’s the English village where Spencer lived most of his life and which he described as a “village in heaven”. ‘Everywhere is heaven’ is also a description of sacramental theology and a theme for British Visionary artists from William Blake to the present day.

Everywhere is Heaven is the gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Wagner has been deeply inspired by Spencer’s paintings, viewing Spencer as being “an artist who seemed to be doing exactly what I wanted to do”.

The work of these two artists has been brought together, in part, because both work in the tradition initiated by the visionary poet and artist, William Blake.

Both artists have been described as “visionary geniuses”, each seeking to evoke the mystical in everyday experience. Spencer depicted Cookham as ‘heaven on earth’ writing that “After steeping myself in the Bible I began to realise certain things equally inspiring to love, outside the Bible”.

This was the point when the holiness of things began to strike him meaning that he “became extremely busy, first at the front door and then at the side and back entrance of the Kingdom of Heaven, a place long familiar to me, but not in this new and significant way”. This was because “art seemed the only thing which revealed Heaven”. Similarly, Wagner, in paintings such as Abraham and the Angels or Walking on Water III, also evokes biblical happenings in contemporary settings. Exhibition curator Amanda Bradley Petitgas writes that “Wagner’s very human, sympathetic, biblical figures … inhabit our own modern world; we find Peter walking on the water in front of Battersea Power station, or Abraham quietly contemplative in front of Sizewell A nuclear power station”.

Stanley Spencer: John Donne arriving in Heaven 1911.

A painting of a group of figures in long vestments.

Oil on canvas, 37 x 40.5 cm. Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.

Both are united by a love of “metaphysicals”, as Spencer described the metaphysical poets, with John Donne and Thomas Traherne, a theologian who wrote with a visionary innocence and found mysticism in the natural world, being particular influences. The title of the exhibition references Spencer’s own words about his painting, John Donne arriving in Heaven, and his description of the four figures facing in all directions because “everywhere is heaven so to speak”. Bradley Petitgas writes “that both Spencer and Wagner’s visionary innocence and the ability to find mysticism in the natural world” echo that found in the work of Traherne. While also noting that Wagner’s “deeply Christian paintings are founded on iconographical orthodoxy, each one a balanced expression of quiet beauty and accessible humanity – ‘heaven in ordinary’, to cite George Herbert”, another metaphysical poet who is key to Wagner’s vision.

Figures hover on a river foreshore against the background of a dock and power station chimneys

Roger Wagner, Walking on Water III 2005, oil on board, 76.2 x 101.5 cm. Private collection.

Roger Wagner, The Harvest is the end of the World and the Reapers are Angels, 1989, oil on canvas, 154.9 x 188 cm. Private collection.

Three angels figures converse wiithin an open furnace of a factory.

Roger Wagner, The Burning Fiery Furnace, 1989, mixed media on blue paper, 53.4 x 38 cm. Private collection.

The visionary tradition

The work of these two artists has been brought together, in part, because both work in the tradition initiated by the visionary poet and artist, William Blake. As Anthony Mould writes, “These are two painters that combine a type of Englishness to be found in William Blake’s ‘ancient time’ within a ‘landscape’ of their own familiarity”. The artist Betty Swanwick once described being part of "a small tradition of English painting that is a bit eccentric, a little odd and a little visionary". This is a tradition that begins with Blake and continues through Spencer to contemporary artists like Wagner. In briefly exploring this tradition further I shall introduce some of the other artists who also engage with their ideas and approaches.

A recent exhibition William Blake: Prophet Against Empire argued that Blake “responded to the tumultuous times he was living through as he witnessed the expansion of the British Empire, American Independence and the French Revolution” with “imaginative images and texts that resonated with this changing world” and which took a “critical stance against the Age of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on science and reason”. “Drawing on his deeply felt religious beliefs, Blake criticised empire, slavery and social inequality through his work” in order to create “an alternative universe that celebrates the imagination and communal kindness, where we can also rekindle our connection with the world around us”.

Blake’s visions were of spiritual reality breaking into the material world, so Christopher Rowland writes that the turbulent years of Blake’s life informed “his prophetic understanding of history”. His prophetic images and texts “were ‘prophetic’ not because Blake sought to predict what was going on—indeed they were written following these events”, rather, “he sought to plumb the depths of the historical and social dynamics which were at work in them”. Blake was “part of a tradition of radical non-conformity in English religion, with different ways of reading the Bible” which linked “the personal and the political”. Blake’s vision ultimately was one of building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.

Samuel Palmer knew Blake and was part of a group of artists known as ‘The Ancients’ who were his followers. Simon Court writes that as “deeply religious man, Palmer understood himself to be using his heightened perceptions to reveal (at least partially) a divine reality in nature” so that the Kent landscape of Shoreham, where ‘The Ancients’ were based for ten years, “becomes a little heaven on Earth”. David Jones, a contemporary of Spencer, spent his life creating poems and paintings that re-call before God events in the past so that they become here and now in their effect on us. He wrote of the Mass or Eucharist as being to do with the re-calling, re-presentation and re-membering of an original act and objects in a form that is different from but connected to the original act or object that is being recalled. His poems and paintings mirror the action of the Mass and so create a world that is a Eucharist. Fiona MacCarthy suggests that Jones combined the visual and verbal with a “creative intensity not seen in Britain since the time of William Blake”.

Among contemporary artists working within this tradition is Greg Tricker whose profound and simple style of paintings follows in the mystical and sacred tradition of art akin to the work of Georges Rouault and Cecil Collins. Qualities of myth, echoes of the Folk Art Spirit and elements of the circus feature in his work, which he often presents in themes; notably Paintings for Anne Frank, The Catacombs, and Francis of Assisi.

In understanding the ideas and approaches of artists in this tradition, including Spencer and Wagner, we need to turn to sacramental theology. Sacraments are things of the Church which are set apart and made holy. A sacrament is a pledge of God's love and a gift of God's life. Jesus took earthly things, water, bread and wine, and invested them with grace. A sacrament is therefore an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. As a result, each day can be a sacrament if we practice a way to live life by recognising that God is present in each and every moment and with a selfless abandonment to God as a means of achieving grace and conquering pride and ego.

The Celtic Christians had this sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary events and tasks of home and work. They also sensed that every event or task can be blessed if we see God in it. As a result, they crafted prayers and blessings for many everyday tasks in daily life. The French Jesuit priest and writer Jean Pierre de Caussade spoke about 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment' which, as Elizabeth Ruth Obbard writes: “refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane.” The philosopher, Simone Weil, stated that this kind of looking, which is the way in which artists such as Spencer and Wagner look, is prayer: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” “Absolutely unmixed attention”, she claimed, “is prayer”.

When we pay attention to life in this way, we are, like Spencer, Wagner and other Visionary artists, looking with expectancy for a revelation of the divine in the ordinary sights, events, tasks and people that surround us. We are, in essence, praying the Lord’s Prayer, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven”. Indeed, not just praying it but living and being the Lord’s Prayer. That is sacramental theology, and it is what characterises the vision of Spencer, Wagner and other Visionary artists; as a result, in their eyes, everywhere is heaven.

Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer & Roger Wagner, until 24th March 2024, Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham.

Column

Character

Confession

Culture

Psychology

18 September 2024

8 min read

‘Yet All Shall Be Forgot?’ Saying sorry has never been more difficult

Acknowledging wrongdoing is vital for any society to flourish. So why do we find it so difficult to apologise, especially online?

Roger Bretherton

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

On a street, two men confront each other face to face.

Darwin Boaventura on Unsplash.

People in the UK don’t like to apologise. At least that’s what a recent poll reported by the Daily Mail claims. Of a thousand British people surveyed, about forty percent of them claimed they didn’t like to apologise because they were never wrong! At least that’s what the headline said. When you actually look at the survey itself, things get a bit more nuanced. 18 per cent don’t feel ‘comfortable’ making an apology. 15 per cent don’t like admitting they’re wrong. 23 per cent feel embarrassed at the thought of apologising. Sorry does indeed seem to be the hardest word. And Elton John seems to be the hardest person to avoid quoting whenever these things come up. Which they do - a lot!

We shouldn’t really be that surprised by the findings of this study. Contrary to the popular belief that the world is divided between goodies and baddies, upstanding citizens and immoral rotters, the ethical picture is much more complex than that. The line between good and bad, as Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted, runs through people not between them. Many moral qualities like kindness, forgiveness, gratitude, humility and so on, are trait-like. There are relatively few pure saints and absolute villains, most of us linger in the muddy moral middle, neither exceptionally good nor reprehensibly evil. And this is what the survey indicates. Despite all our reservations about apologising, the average 20 to 50-year-old says sorry about three times a week, totting up an annual total of 150 apologies per year. We may not like apologising, but we get there in the end.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as all that. Because while we may apologise, we don’t always mean it. If the need to apologise is a spectrum it not only includes those who NEVER apologise, but also those who ALWAYS apologise. If the non-apologisers sit at one extreme, the super-apologisers dwell at the other. These are the people who over-use apology, who never stop apologising for their existence. According to this survey, 41 per cent of us are first to apologise whether or not we think we are in the wrong, and 38 per cent apologise without meaning it. Ever found yourself inexplicably blurting out a sorry to the person who bumped into you at the supermarket? or gratuitously apologising for your emotions in an attempt to appease the workplace bully who caused them? I have. If that’s you, please pull up a chair and join me at the table of compulsive and unnecessary apologies- assuming you can sit down without apologising for taking up the air space.

With the wisdom of age most of us will learn to let things lie. Which is to say we will learn to forgive. Which is also to say we will learn to accept apologies.

It does seem, from this survey at least, that people are a bit confused about the nature of apology. ‘Sorry’, is a necessary part of the social vocabulary that makes community life possible. To say sorry is to acknowledge that we are embedded within a rich social network upon which we rely for our existence and without which human life would be untenable. It belongs alongside other basic words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, that recognise our social dependence. This applies everywhere: at home, at school, in the office, down the high street, at church. When we say Please, we acknowledge that there are things we cannot do and cannot know without the help of others. When we say Thank You, we accept that even our greatest achievements were team efforts, not wholly down to us. And when we say Sorry, we accept that this community of trust, this web of promises and fulfilments, is fragile. We can act in ways that fray or even break the threads that connect us to others. Sometimes we don’t show up when we said we would. Sometimes we lie to avoid shame. Sometimes we take far more than we should from those who can’t afford to give. Sometimes we are rude, hurtful, even hateful. Saying sorry is the way we recognise, renew and repair our damaged connections to the people on which our lives depend.

One of the most interesting findings in forgiveness research is that as people get older they generally become more forgiving. Now we can all think of exceptions to this - we all know people who seem to have become bitter rather than better with age - but that’s not the rule of it. Most of us will mellow and become more tolerant as the years pass. Partly because the passing of time diminishes our energy for grudges and plotting petty retaliations. But mainly because the older we get the fewer friends we have left. If young adulthood is awash with weddings, then later life is filled with funerals. To put it bluntly, as we get older more people we know have died. We increasingly realise that our connections to family and friends are priceless and irreplaceable and hardly worth severing over minor grievances. With the wisdom of age most of us will learn to let things lie. Which is to say we will learn to forgive. Which is also to say we will learn to accept apologies.

Why say sorry if there is no hope of social connectedness? This seems to be the zero-sum game played out in our digital lives.

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This by contrast sheds some light on why it might be that some people (the maligned 40 per cent of the survey) simply do not apologise. Admittedly it is likely that the tendency to offer apology varies alongside other personality traits like Agreeableness- our general tendency to get along with people. Those high in Agreeableness are more sensitive to ruptures in their relationships and therefore more likely to resolve these with a well-timed apology. And given that women tend to score more highly than men in measures of agreeableness and social intelligence, it seems equally likely that the league of super-apologisers who say sorry too often (like me) is predominantly populated by women (unlike me). By contrast those who do not apologise are likely to be at the tough-minded end of the personality spectrum, more ferociously individualistic, less emotionally aware, and not particularly sensitive to the fabric of social life into which they are inescapably stitched.

The apologiser and the non-apologiser then inhabit different universes. If apology belongs to a social network that needs to be tended, then the refusal to ever apologise is to deny the relational fabric of human life. Why say sorry if there is no hope of social connectedness? This seems to be the zero-sum game played out in our digital lives. Anyone can trawl the elephant’s graveyard of our online history and find things we said or did in our least thoughtful moments. And if they do, no amount of apology seems sufficient to rectify the mistake. Online apologies cannot erase online offences. It’s hard to imagine a better system for teaching us the futility of saying sorry.

There‘s a timing issue too. Quite often people who do not like to apologise assume their apology will result in humiliation. If they admit to being wrong, they will be publicly shamed, not restored to connectedness but excommunicated. As a result, if they ever do get round to apologising, they do so reluctantly or halfheartedly or under duress or just way too late, and consequently receive exactly the kind of vicious reaction they assume apologies usually receive. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we believe our apologies will be met with hostility, we tend to apologise in ways that make hostility more likely. It’s no wonder some people don’t see saying sorry as a viable social strategy.

To confess is to acknowledge and turn from our self-absorption, distraction, ignorance, inconsistency and whatever else detunes us from this heavenly wavelength.

It is a pity, because for those who care to look apology can address the deepest needs of the human soul. Apology restores us to the human community, reweaves the threads of trust that connect us to family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours. It assumes there is an invisible world we can rely upon, in which we can place our faith, and to which saying sorry can restore us. This is not just the logic of social apology but also the logic of spiritual apology, or to use the more traditional term, confession.

Just as we seem to be confused about apology, we are also pretty confused about confession. For many of us it belongs to movies where gangsters seek forgiveness for heinous acts through the screen of a confessional booth. Or even worse to the humiliation of being forced to publicly reveal our most shameful character flaws. But these are caricatures.

Confession, like apology, ultimately belongs to a benevolent view of reality. A view suggesting that, at all times and in all places we are in the presence of an utterly attentive, absolutely constant and unfailingly loving God. A God who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. A God who cannot help doing whatever it takes to close the distance between us, whose gentle presence hugs the contours of our lives the way the sea hugs the shore. And this divine reality is so permanent, so consistent that, like white noise, we live in complete ignorance of it most of the time. We tend to think that we are here and God is elsewhere, but actually it is God who is here and we who are absentmindedly elsewhere.

In this universe we don’t confess in the hope that our abject humiliation might possibly eke out a morsel of compassion from an otherwise indifferent deity. No. When we confess we acknowledge that while God may be unfailingly aligned with us we are less so with Him. We don’t seem capable of flying in formation with Him. If He moves in straight lines, our lines waver. To confess is to acknowledge and turn from our self-absorption, distraction, ignorance, inconsistency and whatever else detunes us from this heavenly wavelength. If apology restores us to a wider social reality than confession restores us to the deepest reality of all.