Peter Howson
David R L Porter
ministry of C S Lewis - in this case, one of the UK's leading artists.
This is an article I wrote recently following a visit to his exhibition
in London. Note that the paintings I mention are currently viewable on
the web - URL at the end of the article.
Best wishes,
David.
david....@zetnet.co.uk
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Art and Agony: and a Sunlit Cross
In 1970 Angela Flowers founded a London gallery that was to become one
of the leading showcases for British art. It launched many younger
artists, promoted the work of established names, and in due course
expanded into America.
Last month Flowers East, on the edge of East London, devoted its superb
space to an exhibition by Peter Howson. At 43 one of Scotland’s
best-known contemporary painters, he commands six-figure prices and is
collected by the likes of Madonna, Sylvester Stallone and David Bowie.
He has been an alcoholic for many years. After working in Bosnia as the
official UK war artist, it was to alcohol he turned for help when images
of the war returned in horrendous flashbacks. In 2001 he was admitted to
a rehabilitation clinic with alcohol addiction and drug abuse.
There he came across the writings of C. S. Lewis, a major factor in a
journey that was to lead him to Christianity and the Church of Scotland.
In that journey he was helped by Peter White, minister of Sandyford
Henderson Memorial Church, Glasgow, where Howson now regularly worships.
His faith is straightforwardly evangelical.
Street life
Back in the 1970s I had an art-student friend whose tutor was a
legendary art guru. My friend experienced a dramatic conversion one
summer. Full of enthusiasm and deeply concerned to witness for Christ,
he returned to college, where he was carpeted by his tutor for not
producing enough work.
‘But,’ my friend responded, ‘I’ve found God!’
‘Yes,’ replied his tutor. ‘But did you bring any paintings back?’
Peter Howson met God and brought some paintings back. The Flowers
exhibition featured two sequences – one drawings, the other paintings –
of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Other works included ‘The Third
Step’, a painting of a naked man crawling across a ruined landscape
towards a church, over the door of which is a sunlit crucifix.
Howson’s Stations bear the ugliness and pain of his past experiences. He
is famous for his depiction of tough Glasgow street life: coarse-grained
faces, limbs seeming to possess too many muscles, like the figures that
inhabit the work of William Blake. I have found that work somewhat
mannered, as if, having painted one Glasgow brute, the others came
fairly easy – almost, but not quite, formulaic.
First impressions of the painted Stations were that these too are turned
out to a recipe: the scars of the crown of thorns, the whiplash bruises
and the exertion of the cross all lend themselves to Howson’s style, and
the crown of thorns gives Jesus the look of a pagan green man. But no:
these are not formula paintings.
Understanding
They are small, nine inches square, cropped close. Within this small
space Howson packs in huge quantities of meaning. Jesus falls for the
second time; we see only his upturned face, emphasising the cosmic
inversion of the moment – but he is still looking at you. Jesus is
stripped: his face is mutely consenting, all these things are happening
because this bruised and bleeding man wants them to. He is taken down
from the cross: his arm dominates the composition, draped across the one
taking him down as if in some strange way the dead man is carrying his
own body. He dies wide-eyed and aggressive – again, he is firmly in
control. His dead body has a faint smile, as if approving a task well
finished.
The drawings, also nine inches square, have broader compositions. Again,
there is much meaning in the detail. Jesus falls for the second time and
somebody squats on the cross, like a character from Hieronymus Bosch,
crushing him further; the third time, a rat watches from a sewer. When
Jesus is nailed to the cross his executioners pose balletically,
recalling the dance resonances of the violence in A Clockwork Orange. At
every point, Howson’s understanding of what he is painting is clear.
The painting that moved me most is of Jesus’ third fall. A soldier’s
hand aims a truncheon at his head, his face is pressed to the ground. A
soldier’s boot is inches away. But by some sleight of brush, the boot is
a serpent. Its leather has become snakeskin, an ornament a baleful red
eye, the seam of the sole its curling mouth. Jesus is looking at the
serpent/boot with an expression of obsessive victory: it seems as if
Jesus is wielding the truncheon. On the soldier’s wrist a spiked
bracelet looks like a real crown, contrasting with the lacerating thorns
Christ wears. But the whole sequence is about inversion: who is really
in control? Who is really making all this happen?
At this point theology and art may be said to become the same thing. The
effect is riveting. Those who like their Christian art to be always
pretty and comforting would do well to consider these works. A more
powerful exposition of Philippians 4:8 you won’t easily find.
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The exhibition has now ended. A book of the Stations is available (£10)
from Flowers East, 82 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP, and both series can
be seen on the gallery’s web site, www.flowerseast.co.uk.
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Best wishes,
David
david....@zetnet.co.uk
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