The young art critics looking for answers

Whether whacking sculptures or asking questions, there’s a lack of pretence.

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a content producer at University of the Arts London.

A large outdoor sculpture of a round child-like head sits on a dark plinth.

Yoshitomo Nara, Ennui Head.

Freize Art Fair.

Children will always tell you what they think about a piece of art.

London recently hosted the Freize annual art fair. It’s where galleries sell contemporary art and old masters. Alongside the ticketed fair, there was a free public art installation of sculpture in Regent’s Park.

The “public-ness” of the art is crucial here. While the major art fairs around the world primarily attract those “in-the-know” - the experienced gallerists, art journalists and wealthy buyers - the installation in the park attracts a wider range of Londoners. They are the art curious who aren’t committed enough to buy a ticket, the young families looking for free Saturday activities, and those who wandered into the park unplanned, perhaps on their way to a picnic or frisbee toss, all come to grapple with the art before them.

Stood in front of one sculpture, comprising tree bark branches rising into the mythical face of a sea creature, a child remarked “that’s too scary” to her mother. Elsewhere in the park, children ran up to the works, giving bronze pieces anything from a playful tap to an aggressive bang to hear what sound it would make. They wandered up to brightly coloured pieces, quickly walked past things they didn’t like, and always spoke their mind. “That’s too scary.”

The brutal honesty of children is not a contemporary phenomenon formed by permissive parenting self-help books or new-age educational theories. Even in ancient times, children were known for their lack of pretence.

In the Bible’s book of Matthew, Jesus was approached by a group of parents and their rambunctious children. When his disciples tried to rebuke them, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

It is the same lack of pretence that causes children to run up to sculptures and whack them to see what noise it makes and that caused the children to run up to Jesus. Children aren’t scared to “miss the point,” they look for answers and vocalise their confusion to anyone willing to listen.

Anyone who walks into one of London’s typical “white cube” galleries can sense a real exclusivity in the art world. Even those on the inside can fear taking a dislike to a piece they’re meant to like. Or worse, not understanding a piece everyone is speaking about. For some, religion can feel similar.

But God doesn’t call us to have the right opinions. Creation is not a test to be answered correctly or an art investment to weigh the risks of. The Christian view of the world is far closer to children wandering along that Regent’s Park sculpture trail. We are called to explore, to know what we don’t know and to try, in humility, to look for the answers. The end of our lives won’t bring a group of high-minded gallerists checking to see if we have informed opinions or good connections. It will bring a God excited to show us the work of his hands, welcoming all in to share in its glory.

Article

Belief

Creed

Monsters

26 September 2024

5 min read

Which dragon does St Michael need to slay today?

Explore the cultural impact of the dragon killer.

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

A patch depicting a angel in armour, wielding a sword, on camoflague uniform.

Thomas Tucker on Unsplash.

St Michael is everywhere. But only if you have eyes to see him. He’s probably somewhere in your town. He may even be hiding in your wardrobe in one of your jumpers. Retailer Marks and Spencer trademarked the ‘St Michael’ brand in 1928. It was inspired by their best-selling hosiery brand – St Margaret. The name Michael came from the founder of M& S, Michael Marks. But the logo they used, a winged angel holding aloft a sword, was a reference to the archangel St Michael mentioned in the Bible.

Even in the pages of that book, however, St Michael is a little elusive, being named only a handful of times. Perhaps that was his mystique. Less is more. But whatever St Michael was doing worked really well in the Middle Ages. A tradition arose around him, culminating in a feast day known as Michaelmas on 29th September. This feast day had extra significance as it become a ‘Quarter Day’.

In days gone by, the year was divided into four, bookended by quarter days. Michaelmas was one, at least in England. The next is Christmas Day, followed by Lady Day (March 25), and Midsummer (June 24). Rents were traditionally due on quarters days. Legal and financial contracts were to be settled. Michaelmas was particularly associated with the domestic servants moving around. You will hear it referred to Michaelmas along those lines in Chapter One of Pride and Prejudice.

Dragon sightings may have declined sharply since the seventeenth century, but they have come roaring back in the last few decades.

Many schools called their autumn term ‘Michaelmas’. Mine did, although no-one ever explained what it meant. As schools began to dominate British life, the calendar year ceased to be broken into four but three. Now our lives are regulated by school holidays, ‘back to school’ days and half term, when it is traditional to double the cost of your holiday rental. Christmas remains. Lady Day morphed into the end of the tax year. (I’m sure the Virgin Mary would be thrilled). And Midsummer Day has vanished almost completely.

St Michael had a good run. He had been a wildly popular figure from Anglo-Saxon times and Michaelmas a firm fixture in the calendar. Many churches founded in that period were named after him. Over 800 of those churches dedicated to St Michael remain in England, scattered across the counties. (I walked around one on Sunday afternoon in East Coker, Somerset where the ashes of TS Eliot have been interred.) Only the Virgin Mary, St Peter and All Saints are more popular in the church dedication charts.

In short, St Michael was a big deal. Why? Because he was a dragon killer.

In fact, Michael was not just ‘a killer of dragons’ but ‘the killer of the dragon’. That dragon is the silver-tongued serpent, Satan himself. The final reference to Michael in the Bible reads thus – and yes, it sounds better in the King James Version:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

St Michael is the defeater of evil itself. This is a comforting figure when boatloads of Vikings could appear in your shire at any minute in order to destroy, steal, rape and pillage. The fact that these longboats had a dragonhead on the prow served only to reinforce this image that the enemy were representatives of Satan himself.

Dragon-slaying was a staple of heroic tales. Beowulf naturally fights a dragon. Merlin is mixed up with a dragon called Kilgharrah. There are also dozens of accounts in which dragons are slain, often presented in a prosaic and serious way, like a report of pest control. Not far from me in the woods near Wells, the Bishop Jocelyn killed a dragon in 1320s. The latest account like this is in 1614 , reporting a “strange and monstrous serpent” living in St Leonard’s Forest near Horsham in Sussex “to the great annoyance and diverse slaughters both of men and cattle, by his strong and violent poison”.

Dragon sightings may have declined sharply since the seventeenth century, but they have come roaring back in the last few decades. Dragons are everywhere. Our TV screens are constantly invaded by insatiable fire-breathing serpents. Bookshops bulge with titles about dragons.

When you see those efficient, bloodthirsty killers jumping off their dragon-headed longboats, good and evil don’t seem like relative concepts.

Has the time come for St Michael to return? Surprisingly not.

St Michael has not been summoned because he is a dragon killer, and we don’t want to kill dragons. Not anymore. We want to tame them. We want to understand them. We want to harness their power.

That’s what happens in Game of Thrones. Daenerys Targaryen wishes to assert her claim to the throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros using the dragons that she has hatched. But can she use those dragons to bring about justice or ‘the greater good’ without being consumed by them or becoming dragon-like herself? It is an eternal question, played out in the Cold War with nuclear weapons and in Middle Earth with a powerful ring.

We are seduced by the allure of the dragon all too easily. It’s there at the very beginning of Western Culture in the Bible: Eve is approached by a persuasive snake who tempts her to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She falls for it. But throughout the Bible, the one blamed for the sin is not Eve, but Adam.

But how is it Adam’s fault? Adam failed to give the serpent the Archangel Michael treatment. Adam should have killed the serpent or chased it out of the garden. He didn’t because, well, things were just starting to get interesting. And the rest is theology.

St Michael is the extinguisher of evil. But we don’t want to destroy evil. We just want to see it diminished. A bit. In fact, the talk of Good and Evil is rather embarrassing. We don’t do Good and Evil. We do ‘values’. We don’t condemn sins. We seek to re-educate those with ‘anti-social behaviours’.

We have the dubious luxury of speaking this way because we aren’t about to be attacked by Vikings any times soon. When you see those efficient, bloodthirsty killers jumping of their dragon-headed longboats, good and evil don’t seem like relative concepts. Evil is very real. That’s when you might need some clean pairs of Marks and Spencer’s famously excellent underwear.

Scroll the news and you will find that millions around the world live with the reality of Viking-like terror right now. For them the virtues of St Michael might be more apparent.