An Arc through Western Andalucia

An Arc through Western Andalucía

Piety and violence are never far apart in Spain. Of course, the relationship holds in many other places at many times. But Spain has its own special place, certainly given the many centuries of conflict that endure between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, and the fierceness of the Spanish Catholic response to the Reformation, let alone the treatment of subject Jews and Muslims, once the Reconquista had succeeded in 1492.

Socialist Realist Painting in Malaga

No Potemkin Village in Malaga- Socialist Realism at the Russian Museum

After securing an offshoot of the Pompidou Centre to grace the City’s redeveloped port-side promenade, the authorities in Malaga have gone to form an alliance with the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and jointly create El Museo Ruso (Russian Museum) in the vast and splendid building that was once the tobacco factory. Does Malaga intend to become the synecdoche of the world’s leading galleries?

The Ousting of Spain's Moors

The Ousting of Spain’s Moriscos

The last Moorish kingdom in Spain was extinguished in 1492 when Granada fell to the Catholic monarchs. Thus ended an era of 7 centuries during which there was Moorish rule over most, or some, of Spain (an increasingly shrinking “some”).

That historical event coincided (not entirely a coincidence) with a marked increase in nationalistic Catholicism – Spain, or its ruling classes, held their country to be a triumphant Catholic nation, becoming the foremost power in Europe. 

Scenes at the British Museum

Scenes at the British Museum

All the great galleries and museums rely on benefactors, who may be very rich, and endow a gallery or wing or two, or just art lovers who stump up a modest but not negligible sum for various “membership” schemes.

Coventry Cathedral and Britten's War Requiem

Coventry Cathedral; “War Requiem”

The middle weeks of November 2018 have been given over to the centenary of the WW1 Armistice. What  sort of commemoration? Sombre pride at worthwhile sacrifice, or sombre bitterness at a colossal waste, or a sombre mixture of contradictory responses?

It was an apposite time to visit Coventry Cathedral, a vast memorial of conflict (the old Cathedral destroyed by bombing in WW2; the new one built adjacent to the former’s ruins). It is also an apposite time to hear Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem,commissioned for the dedication of Coventry’s new Cathedral. The themes of Cathedral and Requiem are different; even somewhat opposed.

The first thought that many people have when visiting Coventry is – why didn’t they rebuild the old Cathedral? Bombing and shelling in both World Wars destroyed countless churches in the UK and Europe. Most have been meticulously rebuilt (for example, Wren churches in the City of London, churches in Germany, the cathedral in Vienna). Coventry Cathedral lost its roof and inner arches, but retained its walls in recognisable shape. Its Tower is intact. It would have been possible to rebuild.

But here starts a journey to a shrine of commemoration. Let the ruins stand as bombed, it was decided – still part of the overall “Cathedral”. Let us build a new, reverently contiguous structure to stand for something new, something hopeful, after the destruction of war.

So up went the new church in the 1950s (architect Basil Spence). It’s a big warehouse shed of a building, in itself without much character, ancient or modern. What it does boast is a couple massive pieces of modern art – the tapestry of Christ by Graham Sutherland and the floor-to-roof stained glass window by Piper. These, each in its own way impressive, don’t really speak to each other (they are set at opposite ends of the building, at right angles to one another).

Although both are huge artefacts, they are also rather forlorn. To one standing at the end of the new Cathedral adjacent to the old, the tapestry is a distant area of colour amidst the gloom, on the wall behind the long concrete High Altar (which reminds one of a very basic railway platform).

The Piper glass is also an irruption into the otherwise utilitarian sombreness of the building.

One wonders what’s serving what: are the spectacular works enhancing the church, or is the church just a container for the works? There is no binding artistic or spiritual relationship between the art and the building, as there is in the best of churches built from medieval times to the C20.

The main purpose of the new Cathedral (and the old ruins) is to preserve and create images and spaces to showcase a concern with forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are virtues not to be disparaged – but there is something relentless in the many ways the message is pushed here: inscriptions and chapels, crosses of charred wood and iron nails, crowns of thorns. 

The ruins of the old are poignant and freighted with meanings that do need to be made explicit.

But the spaces and symbols of the modern Cathedral don’t (as with the

Martin McDonagh- A Very Very Very Dark Matter

Martin McDonagh

A Very Very Very Dark Matter

He is at writerly ease with sociopaths. A typical McDonagh character may be set on extreme violence , or vengeance for violence, or be an intimate bystander to, or victim of, extreme violence; but they mostly all share an acceptance, if sometimes a puzzled acceptance, that this is how things are. (This is the mainspring of McDonagh’s black comedy – from plays like the Lieutenant of Innishmore, to his great films In Bruges and ThreeBillboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.)

Great War Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall

Royal Albert Hall – Great War Symphony

There was a strange concert at the Royal Albert Hall in early October, at times moving but often disconcerting. It was a programme of music marking the end of WW1, including a new choral symphony composed by the conductor for the evening, Patrick Hawes.