Reflections on the National Art Gallery

Laura wants a slow day.

‘I‘d be happy just to putter about,“ she said „“We‘re going out tonight“.

We have tickets to the Royal Opera House to see The Royal Ballet perform Swan Lake. With Russia invading Ukraine we are lucky it‘s not been cancelled as the music of Tchaikovsky is Russian. 

I truly loved the National Gallery of Art yesterday. I was touched by the religious art but inspired most by the Impressionist works.  

When I was in Instanbul I was blessed to visit the KARIYE CAMII the Byzantine church restored. The Muslims had painted over all the ceiling and walls where the whole story of the life of Jesus was represented. I realized then that as services were Latin and the people certainly didn‘t speak Latin and few read, the paintings were like a comic strip depictions of Biblical themes and stories.  

One of the most remarkable paintings in the National Gallery ofArt was the Leonardo DaVinci of Virgin on the Rocks with  baby Jesus and infant St. John the Baptist. As we might go to a movie and discuss the ideas represented after over coffee Leonardo da Vinci in this painting expresses controversial ideas around theological concepts. 

I loved the explanation and discussion of the Virgin on the Rocks and Immaculate Conception.

The art of Kariye CamII was a bit like a comic strip whereas now Leonardo da Vinci is using art for explaining  the stories deeper theological consideration.

Religion began as superstition. The fundamental religious experience is awe. Awe is a mixture of fear and humility.  The original dictators of ancient times saw their leaders as ‚gods‘ as in the Egyptian pantheon.  Then Gods were everywhere , water spirits and wood spirits, and tribal and totem.  Diamond in Traditional Societies discusses the fear based ideas of conformity and religions and superstition of the tribal people.

Yahweh, I am that is who I am, was the name God gave to Jacob. The sense that the holy is being itself.“In the beginning is the WORD“ is the Gospel of John.  We live in the dream of God. The Hindus call the world Maya or illusions. We know that Energy and Matter are related only by time, energy as fast matter or matter as slow energy.  God is omniscient.

I wanted to know God more nearly and more dearly on this trip. I felt distant from God at home. The lockdowns ,the despair, the constant fear, the depression the loss of faith in government and media with constant news of lies and corruption.  I am struggling with meaning and purpose in my life. So long ‚serving‘ was all that was necessary. As a physician I was serving. As a psychiatrist I was untying the knots of confusion. As an addiction medicine specialist I was helping free people from the ‚bondage‘ to addiction.  The false god of booze or drugs or whatever.

I considered stoicism and monasticism a lot these last years.  Older I‘d done my service and now in the last phase of life should be looking at soul salvation, preparing for death and passing over to another dimension.  Yet I was enjoying my connection with the carnal and wondering if this gift of life wasn‘t to be enjoyed to the hilt.  The epicurians and epicurianism seemed more attractive to me that more stoicism.  As a doctor ,one kind of balances the calls of God and nature with the notion of ‚moderation/. Everything is okay in moderation.  Given that Christians closest to God were routinely martyred in this life and S&M had absolutely no appeal to me., despite what Aurelius says , stoicism taken to the extreme of martyrdom doesn‘t particular appeal to this old guy.

Gerri van Honthorst (1592-1656). Saint Sebastian 

- the Roman soldier martyred for his Christian faith 

By Emperor Diocletian 288

Saint Sebastian was seen as one of the principal protectors against plague 

and a Symbol of steadfastness in face of persecution

I know Buddha taught Desire is the root of suffering. I certainly didn‘t desire pain but then desiring to be pain free is desire. I‘ve had increasing pain in the last couple of years. The latest precursor was the flipping of my quad going up a ravine after I‘d shot an elk, quartered it and spent the day dragging it a half mile back to the road only to flip the quad when I tried to use it to get up to the road above.  Thankfully I didn‘t die but after plane crashes and car crashes, truck crashes and motorcycle crashes my back was naturally fed up with the abuse.

I now find myself asking what is the meaning of this psychosomatic pain of aging.  Man as the beast of burden.  Hero - a word meaning Her O,  Women weep, men die as we romantically celebrate them and carry more loads for them who are supposed to produce children for us. I cared for everyone else and everyone else‘s children even leaving early from home.  Now I‘m popping ibuprofen and naproxen and asa and even tried some panadol. The uneven cobblestone and the excess walking have had a strain on my back and feet. Mostly it‘s the Covid Sofa belly I’m hauling about.  I should have delivered twins a year ago. I‘m quite out of shape and older. This trip with hours of walking in exhibits and around cities and across fields to castles is just what the doctor ordered. Exercise is good. I‘ve even pretty much worked in my new boots which are a mixed blessing having great soles but tight on one arch.  Clearly the whole idea of S&M is lost on me.  Jesus was crucified and died for my sins. Great, let God carry me. I‘m a big one for 911 prayers, calling on God all the time to help and ease my life.  Show me the Way.    Emperors and Kings and now Government Leaders of all kinds let the young take the pain for their gain.  

I‘m soft. I freely admit it.  I‘m not ready to crawl back in the womb but I‘ll gladly lie beside my voluptuous naked friend enjoying her softness and sweetness of scent.  

The religious art challenges me to think about ‚chastity‘ and other ideas. I‘m naturally not big on chastity but getting old for lust.  Gluttony and sloth are very popular in my age group.  Others revel in Avarice.  The great joy is ignoring one’s own sins in church and pointing and mocking someone else’s.  

The Trinity is fundamental to Christianity.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

In 1410 an unknown artist painted this image of God the Father, holding up the Crucified Christ with the Dove as the Holy Spirit between them.  The trinity is central to ideas of being and becoming and the very essence of the DNA   

Yet while I appreciate religions art of medieval and Byzantine times I‘m uplifted most by the Impressionist works.  Here the holy has entered the daily.  God is not outside human creation but immanent and transcendent.  Jesus Christ literally means God within and God will come again.  

At Christ Church Cathedral Oxford the sermon was on ‚knowing God beginning with having the choir boys look into a box where a mirror sat showing them that God is us.  The impressionists celebrated life. We‘ve come full circle.  The simple life of family and community, of the rest activities of every day people are the subject.  This is not new but somehow it culminates here.  The sacred is in our being.  Even now I‘m holy in thinking and writing like the ‚thinker‘ of Rodin.  The art of Henry Moore searching for the form within the form, hinting and suggesting.  

Seurat‘s the Bathers and Renoir‘s the Skiff celebrate the holy or best or most in the simpleres of  ‚relaxation.‘.  Art is no longer the order of the rich and richest but rather a thing of the people.  

I loved the Blue Boy because I grew up with him as my mother‘s favourite painting in the sun room where she would sit with my grandmother who came to live with her in her final years.  It‘s a celebration of refinement, good clothes and good manners. Every epicurean indeed. But Gainsborough also painted the sisters ‚ who were singers. Not queens or duches or wives.    

Later Degas would paint the circus people.  Renoir painted family and young women. I loved Renoir for he captured that sense of ‚love‘ and beauty I know, the desire for physical communion with the object of love the essence of romance.  Not the unrequited love from which it began but the desire and the joy in the process. For romance isn‘t the ‚deed‘ but rather the entirety of the becoming and coming.  The impressionist era speaks to time. People and artists have for  this love leisure ..  The artist celebrates the leisure and encourages contemplation. 

Manet, Corner of a Cafe

Renoir



Degas


Van Gogh crabs

Van Gogh, Sunflowers

I feel we now identify with the feeling of the artist, joining their mood and sense of peace.  The songs of the sixties were like the impressionist art, celebrations of love and ‚peaceful easy feelings‘.  Such a shift from painting of God above to the god within. The immanence of transcendence. I love walking through a gallery and being washed through and through with the celebration of these subtlest and most revealing emotions

Monet, Thames 1871

Today we take pictures and selfies and even video and tick tock individually.  We are the picture. The Matrix. The sense that it really is ‚perception.  Today God is .  At it‘s simplest.  A consumer society.  The consumer society is more about acquiring, less the process.

Later Laura and I having left the Gallery and taxied  to the  the modern museum of clothing called Harrods,   we  walked through without buying.  Later we  sat having coffee and sandwiches at an elegant cafe discussing labels.  Once a thing that was greatest raised a label like Gucci or Nike but now the corporation endeavours to make the cheapest product and attach the old ‚label‘ that is marketed.  Of course we know folks who go to second hand stores simply to steal the label.  The whole idea of ‚quality‘ and truth and such are being mocked in the superficial. it‘s all marketing.  I loved that William Gibson had a character in his futurist book who became sick at the experience of cliche marketting.  She was ‚allergic‘ to this.  It made her invaluable to advertisers looking for something ‚new‘ .  

What a wonderful day. I enjoyed the pictures I took from the taxi and the pictures we took together. The last one is of Laura and I at Boots where we bought perfume and cologne because ‚„

I can wear them here., she said, In Canada everyone is intolerant and demanding that spaces be ‚scent free‘.  

Personally I don‘t like amplified music in public spaces.  I imagine the girls and guys  with loudspeakers insisting that others listen don‘t eat meat or fart or wear cologne.  

We like being here in London where the competing tolerances and intolerances are still occurring ‚civilly‘.  

Laura and I both love the smells of perfume and cologne as beautiful people pass by  their presence enriched by the scents they chooser  There are those who would cover the human form which of course is good for the ugly.  The men without chins who used to depend on beards are rebelling against the mask laws being banished.  

I‘m reading about the censorship movement in museums and art galleries and the difficulties artists face escpecially now the ‚cancel‘ culture is gaining power with the social credit system.  Mostly the people who claim to represent ‚diversity‘ are the most fearful and demand that everyone be like them .  The idea that God is complete in each is not something that appeals to those who would be god.  Im thankful that the National Gallery of Art has provided such a beautiful offering.