Glesca Culture

[f4f3]

Two for the price of one.

Salvador Dali's "Christ of St John of the Cross" was recently voted top of a public poll of Scotland's best loved paintings. It has hung in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries for around 50 years, and every time I see it I feel like I've revisited an old friend.




I've always wondered about Dali's choice to exclude the suffering of Christ from the painting.

Edwin Morgan is probably Glasgow's best loved poet (pace Liz Lochead), and he seems to share my love and confusion.

Edwin Morgan
Salvador Dali: Christ of St John of the Cross
It is not of this world, and yet it is,
And that is how it should be.
Strong light hits back and the arms
Coming from where we cannot see,
Ought not to see, another dimension
For another time. At this time, we
Share the life of bay and boat
With simply painted fishermen
Who give no Amen
Even if clouds both apocalyptic and real
Made them look up and feel
What they had to feel
Of shattering amazement, fear,
Protection, and a wash of glory.
Was it an end coming near?
Was it a beginning coming near?
What happened to the thorns and blood and sweat?
What happened to the hands like claws the whipcord muscles?
Has the artist never seen Grünewald?
'I have to tell you John of the cross called,
Said to remind you light and death once met.'

Comments

[happybat.livejournal.com]

"light and death once met"

I would give my eyeteeth to write a line like that.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It's the genius of putting it in conversation that I love. And the first couplet is perfectly balanced.
This is a new poem, by the way, collected this year. What is he now, 87 years old? The man is a treasure.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

The Dali painting I grew up seeing (on the wall of my aunt's bedroom) was his Sacrament of the Last Supper, so I come to this painting through the lens of that one. The Last Supper is clearly an out-of-body experience, and I see St. John of the Cross in the same way. Given John of the Cross' own predilection for the mortification of the flesh, I see the absence of apparent suffering as an emblem of the ecstacy of surrender, the calm that comes with letting go. It also represents to me the existence of Christ's life on Earth as both within and outside of time; while he participated in our linear existence, he continues to exist in eternity, so everything he did or does is always happening and always accessible.

Erm. Didn't mean to come over quite so thinky as all that, but I appreciate the prompt to consider it. And the poem is lovely, capturing the meta qualities of the depiction and its observation in truly beautiful language.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I'd never seen the Sacrament of the Last Supper before. I can see why it would echo for you in the other painting. I first saw that one when I was four or five, and I've been revisiting it ever since. Back then it sat for me alongside the other stylised representations of visions - Fatima, Lourdes, St Cecelia, and I was perfectly happy that it should be idealised.
When I was round about 12 the picture was hung alongside some of Dali's preparatory sketches, and I found out about his intention to mirror atomic structure in the composition.

Years later I began to wonder what had influenced him to leave out the blood and bone. I'm more or less sure it's to help focus on that elemental, or pre-elemental composition, but I still wonder.

And Eddie Morgan is almost the definition of poet to me. We studied his early fumbling (if you'll pardon the pun) poems about homosexuality at school in the '70's, I met him in pubs in the '90's, he was Glasgow's first official poet, and the Scot's parliament awarded him the title of "Makir", or Maker, linking him explicitly with an oral tradition that goes back centuries.
He's quite a man.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Since I wasn't especially familiar with this painting, I did a bit of Googling and read that, in addition to the atomic stuff, it was inspired by a vision that John of the Cross described (and possibly illustrated). I think there is probably a whole dialogue there about "Spanishness," as John of the Cross is apparently considered a major poet in Spain, beyond his specific spiritual insights.

On the "Spanishness" side, I also see a lot of El Greco in the chiaroscuro treatment. When I went to the Prado and saw all that El Greco and Bosch, I got a whole new viewpoint on Dali's inspirations, knowing that he had spent a lot of time there. (I also discovered that the whole Prado goes a lot faster if you just ignore Velasquez, but that's a different discussion.) I'd never really grokked El Greco until I saw that particular exhibit and was able to appreciate his work without feeling that taste of velvet Elvis that sometimes lurks within it.