Contents
5 A Guide to the Book of Revelation
6 The Great Tapestry as a Maze
7 The Great Tapestry as A Space/Time Model
8 The Great Tapestry as a Picture Gallery of Form in Nature
People entering a place of worship move into a unique notional space. Once inside, our every thought is initiated and reflected from surfaces and objects created from spiritual ideas turned into blueprints for craft and art. What makes such spaces sacred and ageless is that the material structures have been designed to help us make sense of questions about being human which still haunt people today. Walls become a kind of 'stone tape' for us to replay answers from the past to questions such as:-
What is life all about?
What are we here for?
Where is it all leading?
What happens after death?
When we think about these questions in church, temple or mosque, we are meditating. The outcome may simply be to reinforce answers we have already discovered. But sometimes ideas seem to bubble up from nowhere. These inner voices are the language of meditation. They are the mental processes of spiritual revelation. As far as we know, these are also the same mental processes, which, when focused on practical problems, power both artistic creativity and scientific invention.
The process of spiritual appraisal, which we call meditation, takes a world view that is rooted in the imagination and passes beyond the limits of ordinary life. Meditations start from the postulate that the material cosmos in some way manifests a deeper spiritual reality, expressed through human consciousness. We can actually meditate anywhere that offers space for thinking off the mainstream of everyday life. Some people in busy offices are finding that 'spiritual websites' give them space for contemplation. It is not necessary to have physical prompts. Prayer is an activity where words can clear a mental space, no matter where we are. A physical space provided in a purpose-built sacred building is often more effective because it contains objects which have been specially designed, not only to focus the questions, but provide encoded messages which may give convincing answers.
Because most people today are ignorant of the biblical codes at the core of religious stories and objects, it cannot be expected that very much will sink in without providing some kind of interpretation to get them started. In this sense an educator has to start from where people are. They are perhaps seeing an object for the first time, and not as part of the complex doctrine of which it may form only a tiny part. The part then becomes a point of reference from which more signposts may lead to an appreciation of the greater whole.
Graham Sutherland's great tapestry, which covers the entire wall behind the altar of Coventry Cathedral, was designed to focus meditation on Christianity's answers to the big questions of life. It was hung in 1962, the year the new building was consecrated. Although the tapestry has received much critical attention as a major work of art, it was only in 1995 that it was presented in book form as a focus for meditation. The text was written by a Christian believer, Michael Sadgrove, a member of the cathedral's clergy. His text, 'A Picture of Faith', was conceived as being a meditation on the tapestry as a process of Christian self-discovery; "of knowing God and knowing myself"
Seated before the tapestry, he set the scene as follows;
".... the tapestry has much to do with what I experience as I sit quietly in the nave and try to be open to truth, and to God. It is that elusive quality I can only call presence that I am meaning."
This presence he identified first with the tapestry's "restful, all pervasive, green that seems to want to flood into my being, with all that it promises of healing, renewal and growth".
Then, he considered the figure of 'Christ in Glory', 'at once strong, and gentle, noble yet tender' which through the human face tells of an eternal love, and a glory that is accessible, and within reach.
Other images then follow into focus:-
"the swirling energies of the four living creatures as they gyrate, it seems, around the still centre of Christ haloed at the heart of the tapestry"
"the 'high window' above Him, through which pours light from some far-off place, with its Dove descending as if on a sunbeam"
"the human figure dwarfed at the feet of Christ"
"the mysterious chalice with its serpent rising out of its depths"
"the archangel Michael wrestling with Satan"
Underneath all this, at the very bottom of the tapestry there is the partly hidden crucifixion panel, "ashen-hued, the tragic antipole to the glory above it"
Overall, he was aware of the tapestry's 'transparency' as an invitation to a new way of 'seeing'; the way to himself and to God.
His journey proceeded through contemplation, one by one, of the tapestry's eight major visual features. Each prompted the author to set out to explore particular notional highways and byways via digressions into personal experiences, and his past responses to other works of art. He finally took his leave of the tapestry after contemplating the signatures of the tapestry's artist/creator and its weavers. He was metaphysically signing up to a new cosmic understanding. It is the love that flows out of Christ in Glory which empowers him, as man and priest, to be a bridge to communicate that love. He has become a "point of connection to enable heaven and earth to touch"
The tapestry certainly made a spiritual traveller out of Michael Sadgrove. He put it this way, "It is a journey only I can make. As a human being, as a Christian, the voyage is mine alone. No-one else can make it for me, and I cannot make it for anyone else."
In this sense we are all potential travellers in the realm of the mind. To Sadgrove conversion 'is a long process, a lifelong one. At various points on the road, we pass milestones and know that there is movement'. He says in his meditation that he owes much to Graham Sutherland's tapestry, which he thought 'opened. or began to open, what Blake calls the doors of perception'. In this sense the tapestry was more than a picture to Michael Sadgrove; it proved to be an icon in the way it activates the imagination. It became 'a presence, a gateway to another world, a sacrament of divine love. He says:-
'Attend to it with loving imagination, and it draws me into its life, changing my perspectives, clarifying my goals. It speaks to me of God'
Time and again it drove him to make lateral excursions into other works of art to explore reinforcements of the "great human themes of death, judgement, hell and heaven; of life and suffering and love." Through these journeys he picked up 'travelling companions', such as Dante, Dickens and Benjamin Britten, who helped him reinforce his Christian mind-set on Sutherland's imagery.
To others, nature imagined in a picture, poem, a quiet place or viewing wide landscape can become an icon with quite different messages about life and eternity. Nature and art support the atheisim of Ludovic Kennedy, which he explains in this way:-
"Before he died, the Victorian poet Walter Savage Landor wrote this:
'I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,
Nature I loved and next to Nature art,
|I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.'
Ignoring the first line which is a little patronising, the thing that strikes me most about the poem is that there is no mention of religion among the things that Landor loved, only nature and art. It does not surprise me. The Church has always assumed that they alone are the guardians of the spiritual, and that a sense of the spiritual plays no part in the make-up of non-believers. They are wrong. Like Landor I have gained more spiritual refreshment from nature and from art than any other single source".
He then goes on with examples of the "benison that nature has to offer" from moments which have become spiritual icons in his own life, and quotes from the work of poets and writers who do not place their experiences in a religious context.
Similar pantheistic notions about nature run through the writings of Mary Webb. She tells of the spiritual fusion of the elements people and nature which blend human passion with the fields and skies in experiences that are greater than religion. Mary Web's rustic character Prue Sarn, narrator of 'Precious Bane' describes the 'powerful sweetness' that came to her when, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the countryside, she knitted quietly in the apple store under the cottage eaves.
Nevertheless, Sutherland's tapestry was created as an icon of the Christian religion which is centred on the worship of God and the surrender of our God-given free will, through Christ, to a divine purpose. The tapestry's aim is to focus the Christian message for Christians which begins with the fact of human sin and the need for individual repentance. However, these days, many visitors to Coventry Cathedral are unlikely to be fervent Christians and may well be followers of another faith, which makes it difficult for most people to contemplate what is essentially a work of art dominated, at least on the surface, by Christian symbolism. On the other hand, most people viewing the great tapestry are likely to be searching for answers to the 'whys' and 'hows' of our origins, social relationships, and destiny as groups and individuals. From this aspect, religions still provide the only answers to important questions about being human which people face today:
· Why was the world made?
· Why do innocent people suffer?
· What is right and what is wrong, and how can I develop the social skills to make moral judgements?
· Is history just a meaningless sequence of events, or is it leading somewhere?
· Will a Creator listen responsively to my anger, my doubts, my questions as well as my worship?
· What should be my attitude towards a consumer society which is ravaging the Earth's natural resources?
For example, Christians today have a great capacity for identifying the political and moral passions of the moment as essential practical responses to religious teaching. This is also a capacity of nominal Christians who assess the faith simply as part of received Western culture. Although stripped of the demands and sacrifices which authentic religious belief imposes, about the exclusivity of God and the immanence of judgement, Christianity is a powerful socialising force none the less.
The tapestry also offers its viewer access to a vast panorama of early peoples. In terms of its historical scope, the tapestry stimulated Michael Sadgrove to muse on 'creation' the 'big bang', and the mystery of evolution in a natural world 'constantly in the making'. The tapestry offered him windows into the cosmos, where astrophysics, although moving rapidly away from speculative mathematics, is still unable to get beyond a specialised kind of semi-mathematical mysticism at the interface with Creation.
As a work of art, the tapestry throws light on the history of human creativity and its mental imagery. The symbols of the Christian evangelists which support 'Christ in Glory' stem from tenth century European sculpture and ornamentation. As notional icons they are very much older. They are embedded in the Hebrew prophetic culture of the Old Testament, and the polytheistic nature worship of the contemporary agrarian super-power civilisations in the 'fertile crescent'.
Sutherland's art which produced the tapestry is rooted in what he termed the 'reservoirs of the mind'. From this notional mental charge emerged all kinds of emotions and impressions whereby natural forms were amplified and transubstantiated as paraphrases of the unity of earth and people. In particular, through swirls of thread and colour in the tapestry we may be transported from Coventry to the deeply cut rocky estuaries and bays of Pembrokeshire where he painted, turning landscapes into ambiguous mysteries of nature.
Sutherland's great tapestry is therefore a notional inventory of ideas about our being a special chemical entity in a Universe where we are part of nature in everything we do, from painting a house, to offering a prayer. There is therefore a window into the tapestry for everyone.
What follows is an attempt to put down some markers as invitations to personal voyages into notions which unify us as social beings with planet Earth and its cosmology. Sutherland helps us because he has clearly separated the main symbols of the tapestry from the green background. These provide conceptual boxes, frames and openings which in an educational or exploratory context are all windows into deeper meanings.
The great tapestry is then a home for the spiritual traveller- a home whose doors and windows swing freely both in and out- a base from which to journey forth and return, only to hit the road again in study and imaginings.
The idea for a tapestry to be the dominant visual feature of the cathedral came to the cathedral's architect Basil Spence in response to the colourful interiors of European churches, where the aesthetic and spiritual effects result from a combination of stained glass windows and mosaics. As realised in Coventry, the impact of the tapestry is due to the unification of the notion of a colourful altar, illuminated through coloured glass, with Spence's main structural concept. The latter seems to have been inspired by the Cathedral at Albi, where the external walls rise as sheer as cliffs. The idea of colouring the interior through glass appears to have been inspired by Chartres.
The tapestry idea itself was a transcription of the internal impact of the east end of S. Apollinare-in-Classe at Ravenna;
"the exterior is a quiet invitation to enter but the impact of the interior is staggering. Outside simple brick, inside marble and mosaic with a half dome of glorious mosaic over the High Altar. These churches turn a casual visitor into a worshipper- here is architecture that functions."
Spence therefore planned a very simple exterior of pinky-grey stone similar to the original Cathedral, and a rich interior with a huge tapestry covering the full height of the walls behind the High Altar.
The need for the tapestry to be dominant over the walls which enclose its approach was reinforced by a dream in the dentists chair! This subsequently changed the plans so that the walls became subordinate to the tapestry.
Spence's first plans for the bays of the Cathedral walls were to have them curved "to give a feeling of great niches in the interior walls, with stained-glass windows in these niches. He relates how the walls came to be 'zig-zagged' as follows:
"I was working extremely hard during the winter of 1950. The Festival of Britain with which I was engaged had many crises and I was working late every night on the Cathedral designs after my day's normal work. I found solace and contentment working quietly on the design between 9 o'clock in the evening and into the early morning. The competition was a testing time for me for several reasons, and as usual in periods of stress and overwork, something went bad- I got an abscess on one of my upper teeth.
My dentist advised immediate extraction with a local anaesthetic. I hate injections and at best I feel queer, but now I was run down and exhausted and I passed out.
My dream was wonderful. I was walking through the Cathedral and it looked marvellous, with a light like Chartres. The altar looked tremendous, backed by a huge tapestry, but I could not see the windows until I went right in and turned half back- the walls were zig-zagged!
When I came to (I had been 'out' for quite a few minutes; the dentist had perspiration pouring from his brow) I told him of my dream. All he said was, 'I will send in a bill for that idea.'
As far as the present-day impact of the tapestry is concerned, the zig-zag design, which has the windows of the nave facing south-east and south-west, unifies altar and tapestry with subtle streaks and shafts of coloured light.
In Michael Sadgrove's meditation colour is the starting point. Under the influence of this large-scale directional lighting the interior glows and comes alive, prompting notions of 'clothing for the soul divine', magic flying carpets and a coat of many colours.
About the time the cathedral's design competition was announced, there was an Arts Council exhibition of tapestries created by famous British artists, all woven at the Bute family's Edinburgh Tapestry Company. Basil Spence was impressed by the brilliance of the colours and the intrinsic non-reflective quality of the tapestry medium, which he felt would have the effect of it being soaked in light from the windows. He was particularly attracted to the exhibit 'Wading Birds' by Graham Sutherland. He was already an admirer of Sutherland's work, particularly his 1946 painting of the Crucifixion at Northampton, which had made a long-lasting impact upon him.
On his first visit to the old Coventry Cathedral, Spence decided that if his bid were successful, he would ask Graham Sutherland to design the great tapestry behind the altar to be the biggest in the world, and invite the Edinburgh Tapestry Company to weave it. At this time the subject was to be 'Resurrection through the Passion', composed of the Crucifixion surmounted by the Risen Christ surrounded by the four beasts representing the gospels. In the latter stages of the competition this was changed, on a suggestion from the cathedral's Provost, to 'Christ in Majesty', This brought the tapestry in line with the site's main architectural messages. The Charred Cross was to be left as the dominant feature in the apse of old St Michael's. The ruin would represent the Sacrifice, and the new building would stand for the triumph of the Resurrection. Incidentally, the title of Basil Spence's book recounting the history of his project is 'Phoenix at Coventry'.
Spence's final input to the tapestry was a meeting with Graham Sutherland at Villefranche-sur Mer where he confirmed that the tapestry was to hang behind the altar to the full wall height of about 70 feet, and it was to be about 44 feet across
Together, they read the relevant passages of the Book of Revelation (Chapter IV, verses 2, 3, 6 and 7. And Chapter XII, verses 7, 8 and 9:)
"And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald.
And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne were four beasts .. . and the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast has a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle".
This extract became the main theme of the tapestry.
The following extract Chapter XII, verses 7, 8 and 9 refers in the tapestry to St Michael hurling down the devil:
"And there was a 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."
Later, a third extract of Revelation was brought into the picture; Chapter XII, verses 3, and 10, which refers to the chalice under Christ's feet
"Then another sign became visible in the sky and I saw that it was a huge red dragon&ldots;.
Now they have conquered him through the blood of the Lamb"
These biblical references were in fact the theological specifications for Sutherland to design the tapestry.
In retrospect Spence wrote in his book:
"I observed that in the traditional representation of the Beasts they are often shown without the many characteristics described in the Scripture- 'Full of eyes, before and behind', 'six wings', for example. I still feel that the representation of the Beasts in the final design is the most imaginative in the history of this subject in any medium, painting, sculpture or mosaic".
Even today, five decades after its conception, Sutherland's great tapestry presents an obscure imagery, despite the fact that 'modern art' has penetrated most corners of everyday life. Sutherland's images remain unique to his particular attitude to natural forms. They have not been adopted or developed as a 'school', and stand, like fingerprints, as personal testimonies to the power of the human imagination.
It is clearly not a picture as most people would define works of art in the European tradition. It is basically a sign saying 'Christians meet here to pray!'. However, with regards its complex interconnected imagery, it is also a powerful learning scaffold. With regard to possible starting points for meditation, some useful interconnected metaphors are that it is a guide to the spiritual world described in the biblical Book of Revelation; a maze encouraging the viewer to embark on quests for its centre; a model of space/time; and a picture gallery for contemplating the diversity of form in nature.
5 A Guide to the Book of Revelation
In terms of its specification as a commercial commission to a particular artist, the tapestry is an illustration of the Book of Revelation. The viewer cannot really disregard this specific biblical origin, even though Christians have difficulty with its interpretation.
No other writing in the New Testament is so intentionally mysterious as the Revelation to John, also called the Apocalypse. Within its pages one reads of a scroll eaten from the hand of an angel, a woman clothed with the sun pursued by a great red dragon, a beast with ten horns and seven heads. Exotic symbols and riddles abound. All these are part of a vision that John says he saw "in the Spirit." Because of its complex, and sometimes its apparently contradictory messages for most people, this 'end game' of the Bible has been consigned to a scriptural limbo.
Revelation is in fact a vast pageant set on a visionary stage spanning heaven and earth. Its message of hope was directed to Christians who were faced with persecution by the Roman state, and it gave them a vision in which the powers of the world were measured by a new divine scale.
For example, the mighty Roman Empire, which presented itself as the keeper of ancient values, the fountainhead of order and law, appears in the vision as nothing more than a beast or a harlot, or the demon-filled ruin of a once awesome city: "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!" (18:2). By contrast, the church becomes "a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne" (7:9). It is not seen as it in fact was- a tiny and mostly poor minority within a hostile or indifferent society. The narrative is intended to thrill and captivate its readers as it circles about its central vision of a world transformed by God's power.
This main subject of the tapestry, the throne of God and the Glory surrounding it (Revelation 4:1-11), was revealed to the prophet of the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos, when he was summoned through "an open door" into heaven . There, John saw "four living creatures" surrounding God's throne, each creature had a different face. The first had a face like a lion, the second an ox, the third a man, the fourth an eagle (4:6-8). In his right hand God held a scroll, sealed with seven seals. This vision, which eventually led to the tapestry episode of St Michael and the Devil, or Satan, centres not on the content of the scroll, but on the opening of its seven seals. No one was found worthy to open the seals but Christ, who was introduced enigmatically as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" and also as a "Lamb standing, as though it had been slain." The Lamb was acclaimed by the heavenly court and proceeded to open the seals as a demonstration of his universal authority.
The four creatures are also an example of the ancient mystical use of the category 'four' as a representation of cosmic order, as in the four phases of the moon, the four cardinal points of the earth, the four rivers of Paradise (Genesis 2:10), the four guardians of the throne of God. But the number can also represent the adversaries of order- for example, the four Horsemen who bring calamity on the earth (Revelation 6:1-8) and the four sore Acts of Judgement with which God threatens the idolators of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 14:21). The creatures first make their appearance in Ezekiel's visions whilst he was a Judean exile in Babylon. Although one aspect of the creatures was human, Ezekiel described them all as divine winged apparitions, termed 'cherubim' or 'angels'.
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north-an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The centre of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
The opening of the first four seals reveal the thundering vision of the famous "four horsemen: conquest, war, famine, and death. The opening of the fifth seal rang with the cry of martyrs. With the sixth seal the overthrow of earth and sky was revealed, and all the people of earth, even the most powerful, were reduced to scurrying among the rocks like rodents before "the wrath of the Lamb."
At this point, John paused to reveal "the seal of the living God," a vision that depicts the salvation of the faithful.
The opening of the seventh seal brings visions of the Roman state as the enemy of God and his people. Forces of evil are judged and punished and God and Christ triumph.
Central to one of the notions represented in the tapestry is the description of how John saw a woman in heaven, who evidently represented the people of God. She was "clothed with the sun" and about to bear a child. A "great red dragon" identified as "that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan" pursued her, ready to devour her child at birth. When she bore a son, "who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron," he was caught up to God, but she fled to the wilderness of earth, still pursued by the dragon.
This is represented in the tapestry by the, cup or chalice containing the snake-like dragon. The shed blood of the Lamb is usually depicted as flowing into a cup, which in the tapestry is overwhelming the dragon who is Satan.
The dragon then empowered two beasts: one that rose from the sea and a second that rose from the earth. The sea beast represented the anti-Christian evils of the contemporary Roman State, and the second beast represented evils of the Emperor, and the Emperor worship, that was common throughout the Empire. John evidently saw the rebirth of the evil embodied in the late emperor Nero, who is represented by the number of the beast, 666 (13:1-18), also described as Anti-Christ.
John's vision describes a total conflict between a new church and the Roman Empire and its ruler cult. The vision of seven plagues shows God's punishment of this "great Babylon" just as he had sent plagues on Egypt long ago. John portrays opposition to God as the dragon and beast gather "the kings of the whole world" for battle "at the place which is called in Hebrew Armageddon" (16:13-16). This site has been identified with the fertile valley below the ruined Hebrew mountain-top city of Megiddo, where many battles described in the old testament were fought, and where the prophet Zechariah predicted the place of the 'last battle'
Thus John's visions return with new emphasis to Satan's defeat and the supremacy of Christ's rule. The cry of the martyrs that had been heard in the opening of the fifth seal was finally answered. Satan is bound and the resurrected martyrs reign with Christ for a thousand years. As the great white throne of God opens to John's sight, all the dead stand and are judged before the throne "by what was written in the books, by what they had done." The "book of life" records the names of the faithful; anyone not there is condemned to the lake of fire.
John's last chapters breathe a sense of exhilaration and peace as he sees a new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem. God is tenderly present with his people to "wipe away every tear from their eyes" (21:4). Paradise has been regained in a visionary city of "pure gold, clear as glass," and everlasting life in a perfect communion with God.
Although to modern tastes Revelation, with its exotic images, may seem bizarre, it was in fact following a common pattern within Jewish literature of its time, and owes everything to the Old Testament where numerous examples of such writings have survived. These include the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible and 2 Esdras in the Apocrypha. Scholars call these works "apocalyptic literature" after the Greek word apocalypsis which means "revelation."
John introduced his book as "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John." It is addressed to the seven founder churches of Christianity. The Book of Revelation is structured around the number seven, a number that in the ancient world usually symbolised completeness and perfection. The words that begin John's strange journey come to him from a "voice like a trumpet" that says, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches" (1:10-11). The seven churches he targeted formed the early Christian community of western Asia Minor, and are symbolised by seven lampstands. The churches have seven angels symbolised by seven stars, and each is sent a highly stylised letter. These are addressed not from John to the church but from Christ- with his face "like the sun shining in full strength"-to the angel of the particular church. The letters are specific and direct in dealing with problems in the churches, and they suggest that all is not well.
Christ praised some of the congregations for faithfulness and endurance under persecution, but others were beset by idolatry and heresy. He rebuked the congregation at Ephesus because it had "abandoned the love" they had at first (2:4). He harshly told the church at Sardis, "you have the name of being alive, and you are dead" (3:1). And the church at Laodicea was so "lukewarm," he said, "I will spew you out of my mouth" (3:16). These were clearly churches that needed a vision to lift their eyes above their struggle. The message was for all: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (3:22).
Apocalyptic literature often described the way in which the present evil age of human history would be overthrown by God, who would then create a new, perfect age from which evil would be banished. The visions in this literature were ascribed to many of the ancient figures of the Bible: Adam, Abraham, Moses, Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra, and others, though almost all were written from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200. These great men of earlier centuries were typically said to have received a revelation that either took them on a visionary journey or symbolically laid out the course of human history until its end.
To Christians of John's time, Revelation must have been startling but recognisable. Though John never expressly quotes the Scriptures, Revelation is full of biblical images and language. He depended on his readers' knowledge of the Scriptures to catch these resonances. For example, John's readers would hear echoes of Ezekiel's vision of God's throne, in which Ezekiel also saw four creatures, each with those four faces (Ezekiel 1:5-10). The Beasts of Coventry are therefore a direct visual route, deep into the heart of Old Testament beliefs. To boost the flagging spirits of his small community of beleaguered churches., John focused their minds on the belief that eventually, when Jesus returned, Christians would take-over Jerusalem.
6 The Great Tapestry as a Maze
For Christians the tapestry is not a puzzle. Michael Sadgrove's quest metaphor was a certain and sure 'long march towards the vision of God', which he chose because 'I am a human being and a Christian. Starting from any point in the tapestry he returned, reinforced in his basic Christian beliefs. The way this prior commitment literally bound him to a belief in the divine ordering of life may be illustrated through his meditation on the tapestry's 'golden bands'. Starting from the idea that the word root 'religio' means attachment, the purpose of religion is to tie him back to God, and provide an ordering impact of the word of God to bond an otherwise chaotic Nature. In this context, a Christian's meditation on the tapestry is likely to go round in circles. Each circumnavigation has a chance of picking up new meanings as reinforcements to an original commitment of faith. The main visual elements of the tapestry are there to provide routes to the belief that God became man. However, for non-believers, and many nominal Christians, the tapestry is a maze; where is the start, what are its goals?.
In one of his early sketches for his tapestry, Graham Sutherland set up a basic structure of squares to guide the placing of the various pictorial features. The rectangular framework underpins the map-like appearance of the finished tapestry with its orderly arrangement of circular lines, boxes, spaces and criss-cross ribbons or bands. This suggests a board game idea for questing. Pictorially, there are eight starting points each with a possibility of reaching a different personal destiny. People playing this game have to travel visually along the golden bands, and across the emerald sea, choosing each starting point in turn. A great difficulty is that they have to set their own goals.
Success in navigation is measured according to whether or not a player finds fulfilment through the transformation of old habits of thinking with new notions about his or her place in society and the cosmos. Whether starting from the centre, or from the sides, maze walkers are bound at some stage to leave the 'board'. Also, the high chances of discovering lateral connections in their thought processes makes it likely that a player will regain the board close to another starting point. These flexible and highly personal rules make it unlikely that a maze walker will come up against many dead ends. The spiritual jackpot for those who commissioned the tapestry would be the discovery by an unbeliever that life's meaning resides in the image of the risen Christ.
The following section flags up some ideas as guides and travelling companions to help viewers of the tapestry define and navigate its main landmarks.
7 The Great Tapestry as A Space/Time Model
Sutherland, as painter and designer, built various graphic devices into the tapestry to give it virtual depth within a dominant green 'cosmos'. An illusion of depth is created by the subtle mix of colours other than green, the texture of the weave, and the wrinkles in the fabric. Several visual planes above and below the green ground may be discerned by following converging lines and tracing the relative positions of superimposed objects. They provide clues to define positions above and below the plane of the green cosmos, which can take the discerning viewer from the cathedral through the tapestry into notional space where the various elements of the tapestry have meaningful virtual positions. For example, there are three openings in the green cosmos which reveal darker voids behind. The main opening into this dark cosmos is delineated by the central oval, called the mandorla. In painting and sculpture a mandorla is an almond-shaped area usually surrounding the resurrected Christ ,or the Virgin at the Assuption.
Finally, there is a smaller rectangular opening above the mandorla defined by a bird motive, and an even smaller one, containing the head of Satan, superimposed on the frame depicting St Michael's struggle with Satan.
The main planes of the tapestry's virtual space may be defined as follows:-
· Plane 1 Within the green cosmos, the element nearest the viewer is the panel of the Crucifixion, in front of two broad golden ribbons at the foot of the tapestry. From the nave the panel seems to be extended into the cathedral by the silver cross on the altar. This illusion is produced because the altar cross partly obscures the tapestry panel and seems to be an outward projection of it. The altar cross was not part of the original design, but from the nave it now makes it difficult to tell where the virtual space of the tapestry meets the real space of the cathedral .
· Plane 2 Going further back into the tapestry we encounter the virtual space containing the four creatures described collectively as the tetramorph.
· Plane 3 The next spatial plane contains the chalice.
· Plane 4 Then comes St Michael on the edge of the opening to the dark cosmos that delineates the inner space of the mandorla. The figure of Christ, with Man between his feet, is situated within this opening.
· Plane 5 The head and breast of Christ seem to have been drawn in a special vibrant plane. This plane is superimposed on a cluster of interlocking swirls which produces an illusion that the upper part of Christ floats above the two rectangular objects behind it. This dynamic image is reinforced because one of these objects is transparent.
· Plane 6 The beams of gold which illuminate one side of Christ's face emanate from the rectangular opening of a tunnel, or chute, above the mandorla. This opening provides another virtual access point to the dark cosmos.
· Plane 7 This space is the dark cosmos from which Christ seems to have emerged. Curved golden ribbons trailing from the boxes of the tetramorph indicates that they are tethered to a position somewhere in this void.
The concept of notional planes was an effort to make a structure which anchored the tapestry in the real world. There also seems to be a need for meditators to break up its vast time-scale into more meaningful segments. The concept of a tapestry time-line covering three notional epochs emerged to meet this need. This division appears to be useful in that it provides a history menu to direct more detailed studies. The three epochs define:-
- the development of Christianity from Judaism, which covers the period from the Last Supper to the adoption of the Cross as the focus for Christian liturgies (Epoch 1);
- the Hebrew lineages of the Old Testament up to the death of Jesus (Epoch 2);
- the astronomical time of the developing cosmos after Creation (Epoch 3).
Time of the Chalice
The 'time of the Chalice' represents an historical period in which was defined the Lamb of God and the adoption of the Eucharist.
Jesus is often depicted as a lamb, a symbol probably derived from the Passover lamb of Exodus 12. The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, and refers to the Crucifixion of Jesus as a parallel to the ceremonial killing of the lamb eaten at the Jewish Passover. The chalice became the centre of the Christian Eucharist because it symbolises Jesus' last meeting with his apostles at the Passover supper. There, according to St Paul, Jesus explained that the wine they shared should be understood symbolically by proclaiming "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" He then enjoined them to "drink it in remembrance of me" Legends rapidly developed in the growing church around the idea of 'The Holy Grail', an icon which, for example in British legends of King Arthur, initiated quests for the actual chalice of the Eucharist, or the dish of the paschal lamb, used by Jesus at the last supper.
Time of Revelation
The 'time of Revelation' refers to the period when the Christian church began to take root in countries of the Eastern Mediterranean. This was a period when the main task of its prophets was to buttress the church's missionary outposts. However, it deals through prophecy with time to come, and particularly with the signs and events that will lead to the second coming of Christ. In this context, Revelation influences the thoughts and actions of many of today's Christians, who live their lives in anticipation of the immanent realisation of the prophecies.
The Book of Revelation is closely related to ancient Jewish literature but differs in that this text was not attributed to a figure from ancient times. Its author seems to have been a Christian named John, who was probably known to his readers. Most scholars have concluded that this John was not the apostle John, but was a Christian leader living near the end of the first century after the birth of Jesus.
Some authorities place the writing toward the end of the reign of the emperor Domitian (A.D. 81-96), when John had been exiled to the small island of Patmos in the Aegean, as he says, "on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (1:9). Although we know little about John, the churches to whom he was writing knew him. In other words, they realised that the document was composed in their own time, with direct importance for them.
John wrote Revelation for a community of people struggling to survive against the threats of a hostile empire. Its message was for them to take heart in their conflict against the political power of the day. Despite their strangeness, the visions were clear in their message. Satan and his Roman beasts would continue to war, but not a single faithful heart would be lost. Thus they could be confident in Jesus' second coming, expressed in the last lines of the Bible as:- " 'Surely I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!".
These struggles of the early Christian communities are symbolised in the combat of St Michael and Satan. Sutherland placed their battle in the plane of the mandorla where he positions Christ in Glory. This realised his main design specification for the tapestry. The graphic images summarise the Book of Revelation and its textual imagery, which had evolved from ancient Middle Eastern imagery of conflict between supernatural powers
This particular panel, like that of the Holy Ghost originated in 'off the cuff' discussions. The idea seems to have been compatible with Sutherland's long held feeling that he wished to have something in the plane of the mandorla. In his conversation with Eric Newton, Sutherland recalled that there had been a lot of talk about incorporating St. Michael and the Hosts of Heaven, with possibly a sort of traditional Last Judgement, with a lot of figures, in the area which is now blank on either side of the mandorla. He eventually abandoned this idea because it would have added far too much pictorial complexity, and would detract from the impact of the central figure.
The selection of the Revelation episode involving the Archangel Michael is an obvious reference to the patron 'saint' of the Cathedral. In the tapestry, both Michael and Satan are given human forms. In particular, Sutherland did not attempt to depict Satan as a dragon as described in Revelation. Nevertheless, the faceless head of the archangel is a pointer to the apopoclyptic connotation of the great celestial supernatural battle between good and evil. Both contestants are posed naked, locked in violent conflict. This humanisation of the composition may be a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man that had released the destructive forces responsible for the ruin of old St Michael's. The conflict is reflected again with two interlocking human forms in the Jacob Epstein's sculpture on the external wall of the building.
We must assume that Sutherland was realising an important idea in every pictorial feature he positioned on the green field of the tapestry. What therefore are we to make of the plane above the battle window which contains the reptilian beaked head of Satan? It places Satan's declared destination, which is our own earth, in the plane of the Evangelists, but also gives a view through the green cosmos into a dark abyss. Is this a reference to the source of the great beast of the 'second woe', referred to in the previous chapter of Revelation, which overpowers God's Two Prophets in preparation for their Ascension to Heaven and the eventual resurrection of all Christian believers ?
A representation of the darker side of the Book of Revelation in the tapestry is a reminder that Sutherland's specification confined him to a relatively small selection of images from part of the Bible, which, because of its distinct apocalyptic genre, some Christian leaders over the ages would have liked to remove completely. There can be little doubt that the Book of Revelation is a hunting ground for Christian fundmentalists in search of divine authority, to support their deeply held beliefs in the reality of global disasters that will precede Jesus' Second Coming. For example, with the Book of Revelation in one hand and a copy of today's news in the other Christians are able to discover 'proof' that John predicted the coming of tanks, battleships, and the atomic bomb. Further, these are going to be Satan's instruments which will, at the battle of Armageddon when West confronts East, destroy all those who have not been born again in Jesus. Parts of Revelation are also being used in mainstream Christian thinking, to support the belief that Jerusalem will become the capital of a Christian world government from which Jesus will rule for a 1000 years with a rod of iron.
Only a minority of Christians believe in the literal truth of everything written in the Bible, and live in the expectation that Domesday could come in their lifetimes. However, the Second Coming is a central belief of Christianity. In all of these respects the tapestry image of St Michael and Satan represents only the tip of the notional iceberg that is Revelation. Beneath the 'water' nature confronts the supernatural.
Time of the Evangelists
The images of the time of the Evangelists denote the beginning of Christianity when the faith was spread beyond Judea through the four Gospels;
The Gospel writers are represented in countless works or art. But it wasn't until the close of the fourth century, hundreds of years after Revelation, that their iconography was fixed. Their symbols were derived from Ezekiel's Old Testament vision of the four winged cherubim, each of which had four facial aspects. This vision occurred when Ezekiel was an exile from Judea, in Babylon, when its message was to reform the Hebrew community in Babylon. As described in Revelation the vision has been transformed into four separate creatures. This group came to be described as 'the tetramorph' and symbolic of the four evangelists, Christianity's main carriers of the gospel. This symbolism seems to date from the fifth century when each of the four evangelists was allocated one of creatures to be a symbol of the opening passage of their Gospel. Mathew's symbol is a winged man, because he traces Christ's genealogy; Mark's is a lion, because he begins by likening John the Baptist's message to a lion's roar. Luke's is an ox, which recalls Zechariah's sacrifice at the Lord's altar. John is shown as an eagle, a reference to the soaring inspiration of his prose. In Sutherland's tapestry, the ribbon linking the four boxes, which together define 'the tetramorph', trails away through the mandorla into the dark cosmos, may be taken as a reminder of the ancient link of these symbols with the work of the visionary Hebrew prophets such as Ezekiel.
Time of the Crucifix
The time of the Crucifix marks the adoption of Christianity as an official state religion. Centuries after the death of Jesus, Christians sought to keep some direct contact with the physical remains of Jesus' life or that of the martyrs. As early as the second century, the veneration of relics became popular.
For the first three centuries after the Crucifixion the cross was rarely used openly in public devotion. In the fourth century, Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity, and used the cross on his coinage. His devotion is said to have come from a vision before a successful battle of the entwined letters Chi and Rho (CH R ist).
By the fourth century it was widely accepted that the cross on which Jesus had died had been found in Jerusalem. Three legends of early Christianity tell how Constantine's mother, St Helena found the True Cross and crucifixion nails at Golgotha and identified the Cross by restoring a corpse to life by its touch. Another relates how Empress Protonica found it in the first century after seeing St Peter perform miracles. These stories strengthened the cross as both a religious and political symbol. Throughout the Empire the cross promulgated devotion to the risen Christ as a state religion. The Roman Empire and its successors inevitably became the authorised source, and, in the name of Christianity, the transmitter, of human and moral meanings throughout Europe.
The Spirit of God
When Sutherland delineated the beams of light streaming into the green cosmos from a dark opening at the top of the tapestry, he was fulfilling one of the design specifications of his commission. He was, somehow, to represent the Glory of God without depicting God himself. This idea was eventually merged with that of the 'Holy Spirit'. The source of the light cannot be seen, but he introduced the bird symbol, a dove, to indicate the nature of its biblical message. The biblical reference to the connection between Spirit-Dove-Christ is at Jesus' baptism (Mark 1:10). Here Sutherland was following a long artistic tradition connected with representations of the apostles gathered in Jerusalem after the Crucifixion. A dove is usually placed in the centre of a blaze of light from above representing the Holy Spirit- Jesus' closest followers became a 'church' for the first time. This event is celebrated by the festival of Pentecost occurring on Whit Sunday.
Pentecost is sometimes taken in a more general sense as sudden intellectual 'illumination'. A new understanding arising from meditation on the symbolism of Sutherland's tapestry may be regarded as a 'Pentecostal event'. Laurens van der Post has said that great symbolic art bears 'witness to the Pentecostal nature of all art. In this context he was referring to the imagery of the Portuguese poet Camoes in his epic Lusiad, in which he develops a metaphor of the Cape of Good Hope as a symbol of the failure of European culture to deny love to the subjected peoples of its empires (7.001).
A representation of the Holy Spirit was not part of the committee's written design specification for the composition of the tapestry: The idea seems to have been suggested by word of mouth, and Sutherland thought its depiction as a surge of spiritual energy would look well emanating from an opening in the green background at the top of the tapestry. The actual inspiration was a childhood memory of seeing pigeons released through a hole high in a church wall at Easter. He felt this would give a certain element of space- the green ground was a wall yet not a wall. Nearly everything in the design of the Holy Spirit element was calculated to be in a sense ambiguous. Reading the background as a wall, it seemed to Sutherland not a bad idea to make an opening in the wall through which, far beyond the opening, there might be something visible. The design of the bird, particularly compared with that of the eagle of the tetramorph, is the most simple expression of a natural form in the entire tapestry, although carries its most complex spiritual message.
God's Covenant With Mankind
The flood/dove episode conveys many messages to reinforce human relationships, such 'hope', 'love', and 'fidelity'. However, as a time marker, it connects the viewer to events related in Genesis when, ten generations following the creation of Adam and Eve, God gave mankind a fresh start after the Flood. When the dove returned with its message that the world had become habitable once more, God established a covenant with Noah and his progeny. This provided a social framework to resolve any post-deluvial problems of corruption and violence, and a guarantee that the Flood episode would not be repeated. However, anyone guilty of breaking His moral law in future would be punished individually for the crime.
From this point, the Old Testament follows the trials and tribulations of the blood lines of the ancient Israelites through the offspring of Abraham to the coming of Jesus. During this long period, God attitude to humanity began to be perceived less than of a vengeful tribal deity, concerned only with the survival and moral welfare of a small group of Middle East communities, and more as a giver of moral law devoted to the well-being of all humanity. The epoch of the Old Testament provides the common history from which the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have developed. It has been said, in this respect, that Monotheism is therefore either the greatest delusion of the human mind, or a genuine path of the advance of universal moral wisdom.
Echoes From Israel
Sutherland chose not to take John's Revelation vision as his model for Christ in Glory, which incorporated thrones on which sat twenty-four elders, dressed in white with crowns on their heads. This was a break in tradition because from the ninth century, John's imagery was sculpted above church portals, and also incorporated the another important notion of Revelation of a coming time for God to judge the dead. Instead, Sutherland took as his model for the central figure, with its supporting cherubim, from the Old Testament vision of Ezekiel (1:26-28). This was the source of John's Revelation image of Christ in Glory and its illustrations of a vengeful God of Christians. According to Ezekiel:-
There came a voice from above the expanse over the heads of the tetramorphs as they stood with lowered wings. "Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD".
The central Christ figure at Coventry is a less dramatic version of this Hebrew Lord of pre-Christian times. Also, by incorporating a small human image at His feet Sutherland establishes links with the religious imagery and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, where dwarf human figures stand below their immense God-rulers and spiritual mediators. He introduced further ambiguity by adopting a naturalistic style for the facial features, neck, and shoulders of the central figure, but gave the bulk of its body a more non-human, yet biological, character. In this figure we are therefore situated not only on the cusp of the development of Christianity, but also at the outer edge of continuity in the evolution of natural forms.
Cosmic Evolution
In trying to make a virtual pass through the Tapestry's mandorla into its dark cosmos, we have to deal with notions about the ultimate mysteries of humanity and the universe. In biblical terms we are at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, but the time scale of creation of planet Earth, as it is now scientifically established, is too vast for our comprehension in relation to the relatively minuscule solar cycles that we use to measure our earthly span, as individuals, nations, and even a species. During recent years, science has made staggering progress in mapping the universe. Cosmologists are no longer short of data. Fundamental laws of physics describe the structure of matter and the way planets and stars were formed after the explosion of a dense mass of 'quarks and gluons', 12 billion years ago. By applying these laws to information that is pouring in from telescopes of ever increasing power, it is now possible to extrapolate a sequence of events, from the present, back to within a second of the formation of the universe. This is the Big Bang theory, which says that the universe has been expanding since a single 'genesis event' was initiated. Cosmology is now concerned with answering the questions: 'How is the universe expanding?' and 'How was the space formed into which it is expanding?'
The purpose of cosmic evolution may be the emergence of some form of conscious relationship between a spiritual entity and particles of the material cosmos, the whole process working on space-time scales much different from our own. Science is not irreligious. It does not entail that there is no spiritual reality, no God, and no purpose in the cosmos. Many of the greatest scientists were strongly motivated by their religious beliefs. The sort of highly ordered and emergent universe that science discloses is compatible with, and almost overwhelmingly suggests, the existence of a creator of enormous wisdom and power. Religious myths depict the way in which that reality makes itself known in the material universe. Religious rituals establish appropriate responses to that reality. Religious symbols express its fundamental character.
Some religious thinkers take the view that modern science can help to clear away some elements of literalism, ignorance and myopia which still disfigure religion by providing a new and better understanding of the material universe. Spiritual notions extend this scientific world view through ideas that define a realm of spirit from which the material cosmos emerges, and to which it will return. Religion has an irreplaceable role to play in relating human life to that wider spiritual context. Our age offers the possibility of relating the scientific and religious perspectives in a mutually enriching way.
Taking Christianity as an example, from the beginning it attempted to present a cosmic vision of a spiritually ordered universe, whose purpose would be somehow completed by a future full knowledge and love of the creator. The myths of Christianity show:-
- how God ordered the universe and produced a conscious moral agency;
- how God expressed the essence of divine nature as self-giving in the life of a particular human, Jesus;
- how God disclosed the ultimate goal of the universe in the resurrection of Jesus.
The cosmic vision of the first Christians was that the spirit, who was the creator of the cosmos, had acted in human history to initiate the liberation of human lives from pride and egoism, and their union with the divine essence of selfgiving. In other words, we are part of the whole cosmic process from the Big Bang, and have emerged as conscious agents who can consciously unite the material to God, its spiritual source and goal.
The Big Bang theory says nothing about what set the conditions for the expansion of the primary fireball in the first place. There is still room for the will of God as Creator, and a spiritual viewpoint that the universe is as it is, and we exist, because a Creator established the initial conditions of the sub-atomic 'seed' in the ultra-early universe to make it so. This 'argument from design' type of thinking has supported Christian reasoning about creation for at least two centuries. At this point we face a division amongst cosmologists as to whether Creation can ever be a legitimate problem of astrophysics.
Some believe that a cosmological God operating scientific levers is the only answer. To call cosmos out of chaos, and produce 'tapestry meditators', a beneficent God would first have to fine-tune at least six independent physical factors in order to allow a 'fertile' universe unfold. If any one factor were un-tuned there would be no stars.
Finally, there is the intriguing question about where, in our tiny planetary system circling an insignificant sun, does the feedback come from to keep we humans on a pre-ordained track in a God-driven cosmos. Religion flows, interacts between us and the cosmos, and the cosmos as a whole is as yet hyperscientific. However, its truths are not limited by any culture. There is yet no line of enquiry that could conceivably gather material evidence to implicate such a deity. To some scientists this is an admission that the question cannot be investigated by science, and it is therefore irrelevant.
The cosmos, and all life in it, will eventually cease to exist. But the Christian view has always been that the fulfilment of God's purpose lies beyond this space-time, even though it must be approached through it. God's goal for the cosmos is that everyone who has ever lived will have the opportunity to share in a trans-historical knowledge and love of God in a 'new creation'. From a Christian viewpoint, this Cosmos is the place where souls emerge in the material and temporal realm. Their ultimate fulfilment is in the eternal realm, which is the spiritual reality of God. This was the good news of the gospel, which should be clear without reference to a prior conviction about the reality of God. However, some churchmen, such as Hugh Montefiore as Bishop of Birmingham, feel that it is now necessary to find God in the development and nature of the world from its origins. Having traced for himself this 'natural theology', through the formation of the atmosphere and the oceans, the emergence of life, the evolution of animal species and man, to global civilisation, Montefiore concludes that the creation of the world by a God, still concerned for humanity, is the most probable explanation of it.
Evolution of Meditation
The tapestry, in the vast time scale symbolised by its images and their visual planes, certainly has the power to place the viewer in communion with the time scale of evolution, and its extrapolation back through millions of light years, to the origins of the universe.
Apart from giving us the notional space to meditate on issues of cosmology and religion, Sutherland's images are not really expressive of this universe of atoms, primary chemicals, radiation energies and dark matter. It is his animal pictures of the tetramorph that take us into the space/time relationships of stars and their planets. In particular, his efforts to symbolise species behavioural characteristics through their particular forms, raise questions about the evolution of animal behaviour, and our own capacity for meditation. This problem was but a footnote to Darwin when he saw the future opening of fields of research into the origin of 'each mental power and capacity by gradation'. Most biologists are now able to appreciate that a meditation on a wall-hanging is an example of a human mental characteristic which has been handed down through natural selection.
With respect to the evolution of life on planet Earth, biologists are well on the way to demystifying the question of how atoms assembled themselves into living beings with behaviour patterns intricate enough to ponder their own origins. Like present day apes, our primate ancestors started with an ability to make tools and integrate them into social relationships which boosted survival. Our capacity to foresee the consequences of our actions evolved from this basic primate mental trick of being good at solving the 'how questions' of survival. Further evolution of frontal lobes in the brain improved our skills in predicting relationships between cause and effect. Scientific behaviour is a refinement of this ultimate method of solving how questions'. Questions about why the universe began, requires spiritual thought. This allows us to create beliefs in the existence of supernatural forces that do not require scientific proof to become credible, and are therefore helpful as aids to social survival. But is there anything in common between the mental processes we call 'scientific', and those we define as 'spiritual'?
There can be no doubt that behaviour patterns which reinforce communities, have a strong selection value in social animals. In our own species, the development of cultural cohesion through patriotic attitudes has been underscored consistently by banners, flags, medals and other commemorative paraphernalia, statues and a variety of monuments, buildings and dedicated spaces. Notional values about neighbourhood are also expressed personally, in many ways, through landscape paintings, poetry, patriotism, homesickness, and the vernacular creative work of all people serving a local need, who make everything from pictures to cathedrals, furniture to homes, jewellery to statues.
Each culture, or society, produces personal images and forms, which are unique and peculiar to itself. Even when similar images or forms are common to more than one culture or society, they almost invariably have different meanings or values attached to them. Personal images, such as Sutherland invented to depict his chosen natural habitat of the Pembrokeshire coast, constitute not only an embodiment of a society's attitudes, values and beliefs, but are also a major means by which values and beliefs are actually formed and realised. These individual and group notions have an important, and an as yet unexplored potential for identifying, and teaching, the crucial values of moral, aesthetic and humanistic concern. In particular, through a formal creative process of environmental appraisal similar to Sutherland's, they could be coupled to the design and application of neighbourhood values, to help root communities and counter the placelessness of people who have no spiritual reason for being anywhere.
As far as we can see, a desire to be in touch with great unseen powers has always been a feature of human settlement, and was often realised through attaching spiritual meaning to rocks and water. This is integral with the Christian belief that such divine channels for communication are opened by God, and that it is also His will that we should have mental powers to read divine messages of redemption in visual symbols, such as those created by Sutherland. However, to some evolutionary biologists, the gift to live symbolically was a useful piece of evolutionary cell biology, and came as part and parcel of brain mechanisms that allow us to predict the practical results of our actions. The debit side of this gift of natural selection was that we could also imagine, and worry about, the disastrous consequences of natural forces beyond our control. Therefore, the concept of God developed as an innate mental adaptation to allay fear in a hostile world, and was passed on through social evolution. Behavioural patterns we term 'appeasement' and 'reverence', were necessary to get a notional battery of supernatural powers on our side. In Darwinian terms, they may be viewed as a partial compensation for our lack of claws and muscle power. Thus, there was fixed early in the evolution of the human brain, a complementary survival package of 'spiritual thought' to be activated for our psychological protection in an uncontrollable world full of unpredictable dangers. Malevolent forces were to be seen everywhere in Sutherland-like paraphrases of gnarled trees and weathered rocks.
After the first anthropological stage of spirit worship, this social and cultural survival kit stabilised settled societies when religions adopted common ideals, standards, and fixed moral rules with their associated noble sentiments. In this biological sense, a present day belief that Revelation is literally true may be seen as the workings of a biological adaptation built into the brain's structure and chemistry. This 'spiritual centre' gives people belief in imagined supernatural powers so they feel part of a system that can control political forces which are really beyond their control in the everyday world. Like the Coventry tapestry, the Book of Revelation from which it was derived, is a cultural artefact resulting from the exercise of this kind of mental adaptability. Both are graphic and literary tools produced through the symbolising centre of artist and author. Their aim is to help us seek causes and explanations, and produce a mental action plan to be at the controls, and cope with day to day situations, and life after death, where science cannot provide answers. This aspect of what used to be termed scientific humanism says that it is we humans who create Gods, and not the other way around.
This was the thesis of Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) who assembled a vast collection of facts about fertility rites, human sacrifice and other symbols and practices from across the globe. His belief is that humankind progresses from magic, through religious belief, to scientific thought (7.002). Through his masterpiece, which appeared in twelve volumes between 1890 and 1915, Frazer is regarded as one of the founders of modern anthropology.
Religions meet human needs and through a system of shared symbols which reinforce a long social memory. At one extreme this can bolster fundamentalism which is resistant to change. Nevertheless, from a Darwinian viewpoint it appears that religion has permanence because it is part of an evolved cultural adaptability. Its truths are not limited by any culture and the cultural adaptability of religion has been, and will be, the key to its survival; fundamentalism defies religion.
Development of spiritual thought
One God- many religions?
Michael Sadgrove, meditating on the greenness of the tapestry, was pointed towards the vast time scales of creation, and caused to ponder on Christ 'calling cosmos out of chaos'. He entered a realm of green spirituality, where the colour drew him into communion with trees, grasses and a God-intended oneness with nature, where he felt part of an organism greater than himself. The tapestry is described as a marvellous celebration of the 'mystery of evolution&ldots; summoning all the works of the Lord to praise him and magnify him for ever'. But it also stands in his mind as a silent rebuke to mankind for 'our relentless soiling of creation..' He was helped in this phase of his meditation by the tapestry becoming a metaphor for the intellectual weaving of ideas about the cultural development of green spirituality in the world of native Americans, the Celtic form of Christianity, and medieval mystical writers, exemplified by Hildegard of Bingen, and Mother Julian of Norwich.
Mass research and communication is responsible for this throwing together of ideas about nations and individuals, which a century ago could only be juxtaposed through difficult and time-consuming work by scholars in obscure libraries. Also, humankind has been mentally and physically catapulted onto a small world stage at the speeds of electrons and jet-propulsion. We are faced every day with the restlessness of minds impatient to learn of ways that differ from their own. Intolerance is a closer and more disruptive by-product of this spread and intermingling of peoples. For the first time in human history, nations, races and creeds are being asked to take one another seriously by the cross-cultural assimilation of human social values which are mostly derived from the worlds great living religions.
In all of the above contexts the Coventry tapestry may help transport people into the heart of the world's great living faiths to the point where they might see, and even feel, why, and how, they guide and motivate the lives of those who live by them. Here, Sutherland's ability to depict Christ within an object inspired by the shapes of leaves and eggs, is helpful in bringing forward the mysterious notional realism which is the centrepoise of all religions. The artist's only commentary on the world-wide communion of faiths is the small group of motives he took from Egyptian art- an art which was inseparable from the religious beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians. Nevertheless, these are powerful metaphorical cross-links and bindings. They are particularly evident in the yellow ribbons and bands which hold together the various elements of the tapestry, and give them a notional depth. Sutherland says he developed this unifying structure from seeing pictures bound by tape to coffined mummies. In their original context, mummy bindings were used to carry messages into the hereafter. These are metaphors for the ultimate binding of all spiritual notions to an eternal cosmos.
It is a big step to move from the tapestry to consider the question of the relation between religions. However, this was an issue built into the cathedral's master plan, and expressed physically in the space of its Chapel of Unity. Clearly, we will not find all religions saying the same things, although unity in certain respects is both striking and impressive. If one is aiming for unity there must be assumptions that all important truths cannot be found in one tradition, and that differences between faiths are but dialects in a single spiritual language that employs different words but expresses the same ideas. At this point we may return to Sutherland's task in composing the great tapestry, which was the bringing together of many stimuli through symbolism into a compact whole with a personal inner meaning.
Development of an ecological conscience
Humanists such as Julian Huxley have seen an apparent progress in cosmic evolution towards increasing consciousness and control. That is to say, we are part of a development from the unconscious simplicity of the 'Big Bang', with which our universe was created, to the conscious, diverse and complex carbon-based life-forms of the planet earth. Our unknown future carries the possibility of understanding and controlling the cosmos itself.
Attempts to provide biological explanations of consciousness are far from convincing, and are certainly not established by scientific study. In fact, the ultimate personal expressions of conciousness are through the arts. The author Henry Rider Haggard, for example, in his imaginings, kept returning to the possibility that the material universe does express a spiritual reality. In this he was influence by the mind-set of Ancient Egypt where the fruits of the land were fed through a kingly priesthood to support the cosmic system.
In this respect, Haggard was one of several Victorian polymaths, also exemplified by Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin. Their lives span a crucial period of world development when the findings of biological science first began to ruffle the waters of religious certainty. A Victorian knowledge system cannot avoid incorporating spiritual notions about nature which provided the 19th century drive and justification for social change. In particular, the Victorians found themselves caught within a Biblical world view of the origins and purposes of human existence. In this sense, religious belief was at the heart of all environmental problems, issues and controversies.
Haggard was a rural reformer, who wrote with personal experience about land conflicts in the colonies, and the drift of people from the land. His diary of 1898 is a vivid month by month account of the life of a progressive farmer involved with the social problems of village, county, and the national scene. His stories reveal the mind-match that is possible between individuals of different lands, usually through a potent atmosphere of intrigue, violence and romance. Kingsley was an urban reformer, very much concerned in his novels, lectures and tracts, with relieving the ills of the urban masses who had migrated from the countryside. He was a Darwinian and enthusiast of applied science. Ruskin was a powerful educator who, in his writing on social reform, deplored the crushing influence of industrialism on art, morality, and the natural world. He saw the 'land question' as a matter of rapid population growth.
John Ruskin's writings are what we would now describe as a cross-curricular attempt to encompass the notional, utilitarian, and academic ideas about how we should value and use natural resources. His personal synthesis of religion and natural resources exemplifies the unusual breadth and depth needed to clarify and deepen our values and actions to meet today's challenges of sustainable development. Ruskin's standpoint was to interpret God's plan for humanity, as set out in the Book of Genesis, in terms of the Creator giving Earth substance and form. God willed functions into natural resources so that they may be used by His people to fulfil their divine destiny. He embedded in nature a divine blueprint for a natural economy which organises the uses of nature for production in conjunction with a local political economy. The necessary materials and energy were provided, as physical and biological resources, through planetary and solar economies. The former produces episodes of mountain-building associated with Earth's molten core; the latter governs weather and climate. These flows of materials and energy were set in motion following God's 'command that the waters should be gathered', which produced the planet's land-sea interactions. At this point Ruskin, envisaged the Creator's blueprint being realised through the denudation of mountains by rainfall. Starting from this divine 'gathering of waters' the human natural economy was dependent on the God-given 'frailness of mountains'. He put it as follows:
The first, and the most important, reason for the frailness of mountains is "that successive soils might be supplied to the plains . . . and that men might be furnished with a material for their works of architecture and sculpture, at once soft enough to be subdued, and hard enough to be preserved; the second, that some sense of danger might always be connected with the most precipitous forms, and thus increase their sublimity; and the third, that a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the human mind in observing the changes of form brought about by time on these monuments of creation".
This quotation may be taken as an example of Ruskin's philosophy that environmental features produce ideas, which are then confirmed by studying the features themselves. Ruskin's holistic knowledge system relates human spiritual values of the Bible to inbuilt attitudes to, and use of, the land, and its biological resources. He wrote to a friend-
"what do you think that a man- candidly and earnestly looking into his own heart, will find there. He will find I think- first- selfishness- an instinct of choosing his own good rather than anyone elses. & secondly- such a degree of sympathy and love of other animated creatures that he has pleasure in seeing them happy & would willingly part with some portion of his own good- to secure theirs- not with all his own happiness- but with a portion of it, provided he could secure a larger portion to them. By yielding to all his sensual passions, he may in time blunt these feelings of benevolence- eradicate them- but the animal man, as born into the world, is, I believe, much as I describe, a creature preferring its own good to that of others where uncomfortable with it- but yet having delight in the good of others & and ready to make certain sacrifices to advance it"
Other Victorian thinkers tended to slot into this framework of links between human behaviour and the origins and destiny of nature. Kingsley and Haggard differed from Ruskin by giving more value to the processes and fruits of science, particularly as applied to industrialism. Rider Haggard was personally involved with the more efficient use of land for agricultural production and forestry, subjects on which Ruskin had little to say. All three made practical proposals for social change to improve the lot of artisans and their families. Charles Kingsley, was one of the first to articulate the science of ecology. He also probed into freshwater and marine biology, and was deeply involved with public health issues concerning the supply of clean water to disease-ridden towns and cities. 'The Water-Babies', which has achieved the status of a children's classic, presents environmentalism in its entirety. The narrative rests firmly in an overview of Nature's many worlds, and presents their respective scientific 'ologies' in an entertaining fashion. The setting is a quest for sustainable behaviour, and a future, characterised by restraint on consumption, kindness to others, and care for the ecosystems which support our global economies. Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By is the magical figure who delivers these messages of offers redemption. Today she could be described as the good-fairy of 'sustainable behaviour' helping to develop a collective 'ecological conscience'. In more recent times this theme was taken up by Henry Williamson who projected his imagination into the minds of otters and salmon in an effort to tie them into a human world, where deeply felt humane values were against cruelty to non-human creatures. His books 'Tarka the Otter' and Salar the Salmon' bring out the beauty and the harshness of river ecosystems in unsentimental stories about the day to day joys and tribulations of rare animals that were once common.
8 The Great Tapestry as a Picture Gallery of Form in Nature
In everything he produced as artist/designer Graham Sutherland was trying to communicate the deeper meanings he discovered in natural forms. To enter this highly personal world of rocks, wildlife, and people, we have to discard any notions derived from popular images of beauty. We need to accept that works of art depicting nature need not look 'natural' in a photographic sense. Indeed, to Sutherland this conventional interpretation makes it impossible to create our own visual vocabulary, either as artists or viewers, and get to the spiritual heart of places and objects. To fully understand his Coventry tapestry, viewers need to appreciate his stylistic 'alphabet', and the visual codes he invented to depict natural forms so that he could unlock their doors to original ideas. An awareness of these symbolic keys enables us to trace his pictorial elements back to their origins as real objects out of doors, which for some reason arrested his attention. He was already wedded to this symbolic approach to reality when he took on the tapestry commission. It was therefore inevitable that he would use it as an artistic vehicle to express his established conviction that we are as much a part of nature as our features are part of us. He therefore set out to humanise the tapestry's design specification by stretching it beyond the strictly religious rules to include an important parallel message, that reality is a dispersed and disintegrated form of imagination. That is to say, imagination is required to assemble truly meaningful pictures- of darkness and light- of decay and life- of natural and supernatural.
Sutherland was situated historically in the mainstream of European art, which by his time had discarded photographic realism. When trying to recreate landscapes of symbols, Sutherland was in the realm of world-class symbolic artists such as Gauguin, although his major influences came from a pair of more obscure English artists, William Blake and Samuel Palmer, who worked between the 18th and 19th centuries. Even further back in time, painting in symbols had been the self-imposed task of medieval artists of the fourteenth century. Sutherland's sympathy with the symbolism of Blake, who saw 'a world in a grain of sand', and Palmer, who discovered Paradise in an obscure Kentish valley, was really to revive and reinterpret many long-standing spiritual notions about nature.
Most of medieval art, of which Christ in Glory carved over church portals is a common example, may be classified as open symbolism. That is to say, its pictorial elements are presented in a language that every educated person was expected to understand. Thanks to his or her conventional attribute, each saint could be instantly recognised. Most people today are illiterate in this respect, and are bewildered by the very icon that was intended to enlighten them. To make it even more difficult for us to read the tapestry, Sutherland's art is in the class of closed symbolism. That is to say, each symbol in the composition is expected to resonate in the mind of the viewer, and become amplified by highly personal, open-ended, mental associations.
The fact is that the impact of a work with closed symbolism, such as the Coventry tapestry, is much more that the sum total of the symbols it contains. Any art described as symbolist has, behind the shapes and colours on the picture surface, something else, another realm of nature, probably with another order of meaning. In the case of Sutherland, the creative process of visual abstraction applied to a cliff of stratified rocks could reveal spires and domes of cathedrals; a tree-trunk cast up on the foreshore became a horned beast; the meeting of water and land became an altar on which was placed a bowl of burnished metal containing a massive chain. This basic process is not a rare gift. We are all able to take the first mental steps with Sutherland when we look hard at any natural object. Faces, and strange embodied creatures appear as if by magic. Sutherland's talent is to detach what he termed these 'figurative elements', and assemble them on canvas as a uniquely balanced blend of lines, curves and colours. So, a small group of sea-eroded rocks becomes a landscape of immense hills, full of drama. Because of this unique stylistic signature, Sutherland's pictures yield more from concentrated mental effort than was originally required for him, or us, to follow one form to another in the real location.
Graham Sutherland's methods of seeing fascinating things in nature, and then trying to understand the principles of what he saw, may be used as educational metaphors about how to establish human relationships with nature, in a spiritual, if not a Godly, dimension. We have the tapestry as his blackboard, and his own words to help us in this interactive meditation. Further, we may cross-reference his images to those of Blake and Palmer, which he adopted and made his own. Unlike Blake, Graham Sutherland, although he felt strongly enough about the place of God in his life to become a convert to the Catholic Church, has said very little about his religious motivations, but this is an advantage in providing a neutral background for us to use his interpretations of nature to focus our own wonder.
In religious art an oval shape, polarised with acute angles, is frequently used as an icon of human fertility. Its ancient origin is the shape of the nut of the almond tree, which also has a form resembling the human womb. In outline the almond delineates the shape of the secondary sexual characteristics enclosing a female vagina. Its conventional use as the mandorla to enclose 'Christ in Glory' symbolises the birthing font of Christianity. In similar contexts, the shape has been frequently encoded in pictures where the artist feels it necessary to emphasise the power of sexual reproduction. Notably it occurs several times in Botticelli's 'The Birth of Venus'. Graham Sutherland used all devices available to him to personalise the concept of 'Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph' with the main objective of creating a figure "of great contained vitality. However, it is clear from other works that Sutherland's imagination was tuned to see the mandorla motive in almost everything- in the soft folds of rock formations sliced across in sea cliffs,- in the rounded shapes of eroded fossils projecting above the softer sediments in which they had been deposited. The detection of sexual connotations in shorelines must have been an immemorial pastime of sailors longing for the next harbour. Occasionally, this metaphorical pre-disposition has been written into maps. 'Deborah's Hole is an otherwise meaningless label for an inaccessible cleft in the hostile Gower coastline of South Wales, which can only be seen from a passing boat. The 'Grand Teton' in North America was a comforting sexual metaphor for a forbidding mountain range seen by the first French colonists.
Within the mandorla is another icon of fertility symbolised in the strange egg-shape of Christ's body below the waist. In Michael Sadgrove's, meditation the mandorla triggered him to develop the notion of 'the great world-egg in primitive mythology which when hatched becomes the living universe". Sutherland appears to have selected this egg-shape as a paraphrase of the fecund abdomen of insects, notably members of the order Hymenoptera, the bees and wasps. The selection of this entomological group, defined by their 'hymen-like' wings may be a reinforcement of the birth-message of his basic imagery. Applying Sutherland's method of contemplation to his own Christ figure as a whole, transforms it into a gigantic Phasmid. These are insects in the entomological Order Orthoptera which includes the Praying Mantis or Soothsayer. Laurens Van Der Post relates in his account of the spiritual world of the hunter gatherers of the Kalahari, that talking to a Praying Mantis was a way for them to communicate with their deities.
In his famous 1945 picture of the 'bee-lady', entitled 'Woman in a Garden', who's lower body is also modelled on an insect's abdomen, Sutherland has placed a grid of hexagons in the background symbolising a honeycomb. Cross-links made to other works by Sutherland with the insect paraphrase take us back to Exodus with the evocation of a 'land flowing with milk and honey'. In other words, Sutherland's clever and powerful treatment of the mandorla has the potential to elicit a multitude of notions, many of which transport us to other works, times, gods and meanings. For example, when his Christ is viewed as an insect, Man at His feet becomes an abdominal appendage- an ovipositor through which man may reborn in, and through, Him. Sutherland's basic idea of placing a man at Christ's feet appears to have been primarily an aesthetic one. But there were spiritual overtones of Man's relationship to Gods derived from Egypt's complex pantheon.
In all of these aspects Sutherland has reached his stated goal of wanting the Christ figure and its immediate surroundings to be "something slightly ambiguous: a human form, but with overtones of a nature form" "
When it comes to the symbols of the evangelists, Sutherland's own idea about the Beasts of the tetramorph was that they were to be representatives of created things and objects- men, animals and plants. In this context, most of what we know about the artist's creative impulse emerged in conversations with Eric Newton. Here he states that his aim was to give each animal its own character and avoid any traditional symbolic messages coming from say, heraldry. He had in mind that each animal should have its own special character displayed through its personal vitality. Only through the "demonstration of their nature do animals pay unconscious tribute to the power which created them; by their violence or their softness, their eagerness or their predatoriness".
There are many plant, or flower-like forms in the tapestry, but the only one which expresses its own vital plant-like attribute in the same way as the animals do, is the Yucca. This is the prominent secondary object of the lion's box, or frame. As a member of the palm family the Yucca may also symbolise Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, and the inevitable chain of events that it triggered which turned a small Jewish sect into a major world religion.
Graphically, the Yucca turns the lion's space into a picture in its own right. In fact all of the beasts are framed and composed as self-contained landscapes. All contain examples of the icons Sutherland created, to put physical and biological structure into his landscape paintings. A search for symbolic landscapes in Revelation which could provide a model for the Lion/Yucca landscape is found in the account of the river of life. This may be visualised in the symbolic tract of water, flowing from a fractured rock above the lion window, which separates the lion's face from its mane. Thereby, we can see the Yucca as the tree of life, beside the water of life, whose leaves are for the healing of nations (Rev:22). This particular section of Revelation, which tells of the triumph of good over evil, has, over the ages, been a potent source of Christian music, poetry, and drama.
According to Sutherland, trees are like people in a landscape that can be moved around by an artist to introduce drama:
"Trees have extraordinarily beautifully varied and rich shapes which detach them from their proper connotation as trees; one doesn't think of them as trees really; rather as figures&ldots;ready to lead a separate identity"
We occasionally get glimpses, within the tetramorph of Sutherland's idiosyncratic preferences in posing, and characterising his objects. He is on record as saying he has 'little enthusiasm' for eagles but 'loves' the form of the eagle owl, which was the species he actually used as a template for this icon. He was trying hard to escape from heraldic conventions when he finally decided to make the bird as if it had alighted. This gives it the certain strangeness and potency he was apparently seeking.
The human image in Matthew's window evolved from the artist's idea of producing a figure expressing a tense eagerness to come out of a confined space into the realm of God. The artistic conception is of Man worshipping, eager to understand, eager to feel, eager to see. To the Old Testament visionaries this humanised part of the tetramorph was actually only a quarter of a complex winged cherubim, which had the combined attributes of ox, lion and eagle, and moved on wheels. Revelation separates out the attributes into four angel creatures, and omits the wheels. In medieval tetramorphs Mathew's symbol was an angel, and the other creatures were also winged. We can only muse on why Sutherland chose to present 'angel as man'. Sutherland made great graphic play with wing-like forms. This was also a trademark of Blake, and a Blake enthusiast can immediately detect his signature in the tapestry. The eagle's wings express a raptors superb breaking power when coming into land. The calf has a tuft of feathers on the end of a long arm bone. It could not possibly fly. The man has a flame-wing. The lion has no wings. All boxes have flickering flames rising through the upper margins, which is probably a reference to the prophet's descriptions of the divine energy of the tetramorph.
In contrast to the vital tension in the other figures, there is a calm bovine quality in the calf, which he wanted to depict as 'slightly hysterical, very easily afraid'. Nevertheless, its contorted limbs recall the herbivores depicted in Palaeolithic cave paintings. We may contemplate on the existence of this bovine quality in art which is 35,000 years old, and may conclude that since then there has really been no fundamental development in our imaginative and technical abilities to represent natural forms that are close to us practically, emotionally, and spiritually. Sometimes the whole body of an animal is contained in the shape of the rock. It was the rock which revealed its animal 'spirit'. We are very close to Sutherland's metaphors. Their common mental ground is specific material features, such as cracks and smooth, rounded surfaces, which are used to enhance animal features in the mind of the artist.
Although the animal forms of Palaeolithic art have a high aesthetic profile, they are usually found together with abstract shapes, such as circles, spirals, and grids. These shapes emerge in the trances of modern spiritualists, and people with certain sight defects, where they are generated from particular regions of the brain. These findings have led to the belief that the rock faces played a spiritual role in the social life of prehistoric peoples. Beyond the rock face is was their spirit world; the rock wall is a spiritual place where shamans sought power in a personal interaction at an important interface between the living and material worlds. Trances have a practical purpose- healing people who are sick. In other words, in making art against stone, a spiritual healer was trying to make sense of what the brain makes us feel. We are essentially human when we use graphic ways of portraying other realities and the Palaeolithic artist deep in a cave, or balancing on a rocky mountain side, was expressing a mind identical to our own.
Of course, Spence, when he had the idea of clothing the sheer stone face of his cathedral with soft graphics was not consciously following these particular ideas, which are relatively modern. Their juxtaposition gives Sutherland's art a remarkable timeless resonance nevertheless.
Those observers who are tuned in to Sutherland's style will recognise his signature in many other natural forms woven into the tapestry. For example, there are two such elements on either side of the Cross in the Crucifixion panel. They have gentle curves found in the logarithmic spiral of a rose, and the arms of a crescent moon, but also exhibit extensions resembling sharp blades and thorn-like weapons of cruelty. Reference to Sutherland's work before he took up the tapestry commission reveals the curved orbits of animal skulls and water worn chalk. Connections through thorniness may be made with windswept gorse and blackthorn, the only plants able to survive the salty storm winds sweeping in off the Celtic Sea. They dominate his early landscapes of tunnel-like lanes and windswept coastal rock-strewn slopes of Pembrokeshire. Sutherland had made a whole series of thorn paintings before he came to the tapestry, and while on a walk in Pembrokeshire during the 1940s he reflected on the great implications of the Crucifixion:
"My mind became pre-occupied with the idea of thorns and of wounds made by thorns- on going into the country I began to notice thorn bushes and the structure of thorns, as they pierced the air in all directions, their points establishing limits of aerial space. I made some drawings and as I did so a curious change took place. While still retaining their own pricking space encompassing life, the thorns re-arranged themselves and became something else- a kind of paraphrase of the Crucifixion and the crucified head- the essential cruelty."
The form to the right of the Cross, is a paraphrase of the entangled vegetation at the entrance to a lane. It may be traced to the preliminary sketches he made of an overgrown opening which provided access to Sandy Haven in Pembrokeshire. The actual picture 'Entrance to Lane' was completed in 1939.
Thorns are also horns. Horns become giant claws. Claws become cruel beaks. Blackened, twisted branches of burnt gorse lying on a path, become serpents- and so it goes on. The structure and evolution of the natural forms was a vital aspect of Sutherland's art. His flights of fantasy in paraphrasing nature were only checked by his desire to market his canvases to a public that, on the whole, could not join him at the frontiers of his mind.
Sutherland's mission was to discover a way of making quite ordinary natural forms, which we see, but do not look at, available as extended ideas in paintings.
" If one duty of painting is to explain the essence of things and emotions, may not it also be a duty, sometimes, not to explain- but to accept? Do we need an explanation of the flight of a bird, or a flash of lightening? Do we need to be told why a rose is shaped thus? Coleridge said that poetry gives most pleasure when generally and not perfectly understood. These lines of Blake are possibly obscure:
My spectre round me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way:
My emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.
but it may be argued that their mysterious music is actually enhanced by that obscurity. So in painting it might be argued that its very obscurity preserves a magical and mysterious purpose. It could be said, on the other hand, that much contemporary work, which is thought to be obscure, may be merely suffering the time-lag in appreciation which has so often operated against painters in their lifetime."
It is possible that Sutherland came to Blake because his work unites the timeless with the timely, the sense of destiny with the sense of present. Blake certainly had an ear which caught the whisper of the Everlasting Gospel in the everyday passions and objects round him. This was evident in his artistic responses to his time; the move to factory work and the enclosure of common land was putting the worker in a different place in his economy and in the living world. Much of this imagery was drawn from the texts of the Old Testament but positioned in the teachings of the New. In this perspective it covers, in one sweep of thought and symbol, from the crucifixion to the resurrection, and can be thought of as his personal book of revelation.
Taking the view that Sutherland's mind set was in tune with Blake's, and firmly embedded in the world of nature, it is not surprising that he accepted the Coventry commission which offered him the Book of Revelation, the most powerful visionary book in the Bible, as a thematic menu. These days, Revelation is usually reduced to a literal timetable of events. Sutherland, particularly by his resistance to depicting the Last Judgement, saw it as something to catch his imagination and activate him as an individual stylist and inventor. We may therefore see his handiwork as a poetic and inspiring expression of real events in human history positioned in the vast time-line of notional eternity. By meditating through his natural symbols and imagery we may, whatever our beliefs, respond like the isolated and fragile congregation of John of Patmos, and seek to fulfil our desires for peace, freedom, and security in a world where we are part of nature in everything we do.
A group 6th form meditators said their most significant learning experience came from reading Chapter 4 of Michael Sadgrove's book'. The chapter is entitled Image and Presence', and explains how the tapestry is an icon that 'speaks' to him of God, which is what his book is about. In particular he tells how inner meanings may come to individuals thinking about inanimate objects. He exemplifies this, first by his personal encounter, as a tourist, with Russian religious icons, then by a biblical reference to a letter in Revelation of John the Divine who was writing to boost the confidence of the early Christians.
He explains the happening in Moscow's Arbat street, famous for its street market, as follows:
".. as I stopped by an icon stall, a young man came up, and prostrated himself in front of the icons piled up higgledy piggledy on the trestle table. After a minute or two, he began, infinitely carefully, to pick up the icons in turn, kiss them and then replace them on the table so that no icon obscured the image of the ones below. Then, once again, he knelt on the pavement and worshipped silently. The tourists gaped; but this worshipper was oblivious to us, just as I had been oblivious to the crowds on my first encounter with the tapestry. It was as if he inhabited a reality of his own; and I dare to think that it was he, and not the rest of us, who were closest to reality just then. It was a kind of transfiguration amid a City street.
This is what I mean when I call the tapestry an icon: not technically, but in the way it functions. Unlike my icon at home, the tapestry is consciously art, and art of a high order. But it seems to me that it is more even than great art. When visitors who have never seen it before and who may in fact find it perplexing, say that the face of Christ follows them round the Cathedral, it is this icon-like aspect of it they are experiencing. The tapestry is more than a beautiful decoration: it is a presence, a gateway to another world, a sacrament of divine love. Attend to it with loving imagination, and it draws me into its life, changing my perspectives, clarifying my goals. It speaks to me of God."
The next point Sadgrove makes is that once an artist lets go of what he has produced, it can go on 'living' and 'speaking' to people with many voices and messages.
"The icon deals personally with each of us. It is not a question of whether what I see is what the artist intended one to see. It is simply what is there for me; what, if you like, is God's gift to me through it; and that is as unique to me as the artist's or painter's vision was to him or her.
Strangely, the tapestry was an outcome of Sutherland's mental captures of the shapes and emotions he spied in the scenery of Pembrokeshire. Meditation produced the tapestry's icons in the first place. This kind of 'mental recycling' of icons, each passage adding new or deeper meanings, seems to be the essence of imaginative thinking and its social communication
In art, the 'objet trouve is any ordinary object considered from an aesthetic viewpoint. One of the students, Marcia Gontesi, produced a long list of symbolic artists who have time and again followed this path. Notably, the Jewish painter Marc Chagall repeatedly assembled a limited range of human and animal figures to express the powerful human emotions of melancholy and love. The sculptor Henry Moore often started with stones.
Chagall's iconography derives from the spiritual world of the community of Russian Hassidic Jews in which he grew up. Marcia feels that Chagall's notions about people and nature make good comparisons with the tapestry's Christian iconography, particularly with regards the power of love in bonding people to a God. A good starting point is that they both painted the Crucifixion, but their messages were for different audiences. More importantly perhaps, Chagall's dominant iconography of love has roots to the Song of Songs, a book of the Old Testament which has been an inspiration and support to the faiths of both Jews and Christians.
With reference to stones as icons, Michael Sadgrove introduced some lateral dreamy connections to the psychoanalyst Jung's ideas of 'soul stones'. He also brought out the great potential of stones as metaphorical blank sheets for meditation in the following biblical context.
"In the letter to the church at Pergamum, one of the seven churches of Asia to whom John the Divine wrote, there is a lovely personal touch that I relish: 'To everyone who conquers . . . I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no-one knows except the one who receives it' (Rev 2:7). That is how it is when I meditate on the tapestry, or admire a Picasso or read the Bible, or listen to Mozart. There is that unique, personal meeting between it and me, that gift with my own name upon it."
In other words we should surrender ourselves to pictures, or pebbles on the beach, as William Blake's personal doors of perception, and not worry too much about what we are expected to see.
As can be readily imagined, an innovative project such as this, which has progressed slowly over several years as an extra-curricular activity, and involved students of different ages, cultural backgrounds and interests, has elicited more questions than have been addressed in this edited presentation. Also, there was little free involvement of those with interests in science, which tended to produce a much deeper debate on subjects close to the humanities. The following questions highlight some of the loose-ends left hanging from the tapestry sessions.
Why are there not more species?
Do all living things have rights, and if so how should we should respect them in our day to day lives?
Are genetic engineers 'playing' at being God?
Do souls evolve?
How can we manage nature sustainably based on the different values of its many features?
Can religions evolve?
How did life on planet Earth begin?
Why can't we have a school subject that integrates all the important issues we have to deal with in our everyday lives as adults?
This is a list of books that surfaced as points of reference or sources of ideas. They were not read by everyone, and many contributers read nothing special.
Alexander D & P (eds) 'Handbook to the Bible' Lion Publishing (1973)
Anon 'The Bible: New International Version' Hodder & Staughton (1994)
Bronowski J 'William Blake and the Age of Revolution' Routledge & Kegan Paul (1972)
Dawood N J 'Translation of The Koran' Penguin (1990)
Guiness A E (ed) 'Mysteries of the Bible' Readers Digest Association (1988)
Hume B 'Footprints of the Northern Saints' Darton Longman & Todd (1996)
Kennedy L 'All in the Mind: A Farewell to God' Hodder & Stoughton (1999)
Knapp C 'The Old Testament: Studies in Teaching and Syllabus' Thomas Murby & Co (1926)
Lucie-Smith E 'Symbolist Art' Thames & Hudson (1972)
Rees R 'Just Six Numbers: the Deep Forces that Shape the Universe' Weidenfield & Nicholson (1999)
Sadgrove M 'A Picture of Faith' Kevin Mayhew (1995)
Smith H 'The Religions of Man' Harper Row (1958)
Spence B 'Phoenix at Coventry' Geoffrey Bles (1962)
Sutherland G 'Sutherland in Wales' Alistair McAlpine (1976)
Thomson Davies J B 'The Heart of the Bible' Allen & Unwin (1933)
Thuillier R 'Graham Sutherland: Inspirations' Lutterworth Press (1982)
Wheeler M (ed) 'Time & ?Tide: Ruskin and Science' Pilkington (1996)
Whitewell R 'The Apocalypse' H T Hamblin
Zarnecki G 'Romanesque' Herbert Press (1989)
Extensions
Laurens van der Post. 'Yet Being Someone Other' p346 William Morrow (1983)
Frazer James George The Golden Bough 1922 Wordsworth Reference 1993
Webb Mary 'Precious Bane' (1924) Jonathan Cape
Kennedy Ludovic All In The Mind: A farewell to God (1999) Hodder & Stoughton
Montefiore Hugh (1985) 'The Probability of God' SCM Press Lymington
Vermes, Geza (2000) 'The Changing Faces of Jesus' Penguin Press