Sculpted Intricacies... The Nigg Pictish Cross

My last visit to the V&A museum found me back in the Cast Court, gazing in wonder yet again at these incredible 19th century plaster reproductions of originals from centuries past! Standing against the wall, surrounded by the towering casts of sculptures, architectural features and monuments from across Europe, was a relatively discreet sculpted cross slab, dating back to the late 8th century AD. The Nigg stone is one of several fascinating carved stones of early medieval western Europe, created by the Picts who were a people formed by a confederation of tribes from the lands north of the Firth of Forth in what is today Scotland. The Nigg cross is Pictish Class 2 work ie cross slabs and free-standing crosses bearing Christian iconography as well as symbols in relief used by the Picts, as opposed to 'Symbol stones' (Class 1) and crosses without Pictish symbols ( Class 3). The work on the stone is so intricate that it was mind-boggling!

Nigg - from the Scottish Gaelic word meaning 'notch' - is a reference to the indent in the surrounding hills that are found on the north shore of the entrance to the Cromarty Firth. The Nigg cross once stood in the grounds of the 8th century Christian site to be occupied by the parish church of Nigg some thousand years later, in the 18th century. The stone was damaged in the 1700s, with a section lost from the top part of the cross, yet recovered from a nearby stream in 1998 and reattached to the disfigured work. The sculpted design and detail on the cross bear similarities with other Pictish works from the era, including free-standing crosses on Iona, the St Andrews Sarcophagus and the illuminated manuscript; the Book of Kells. The stone is composed of an elaborately decorated great cross in high relief on the front, set against an asymmetrical background of interwoven serpent forms that create raised bosses. On the pediment above the cross is a scene depicting Saint Anthony and Saint Paul being fed by a raven, as recounted by St Jerome. Looking at the sculpted detail, I find myself in awe at the skill from over a thousand years ago, yet charmed by the quirky figures and forms that seem somehow relatable.

Bonnard... Japonard

My visit to the exhibition Bonnard et le Japon in the Villa Caumont, almost a year ago, left a strange and lasting impression on me. The beautiful setting, in the bright early summer light made the display of the work of the ‘painter of happiness’ all the more striking. Yet although this artist is lauded for his stunningly colourful paintings, his art goes far beyond his choice of colours.

The year of Pierre Bonnard’s birth, 1847, saw the presentation of Japanese art to a Parisian public for the first time during the seventh Universal Exhibition of Art and Industry. Images and prints from the Land of the Rising Sun led to a wave of Japanism in Western art as new aesthetic principles and approaches influenced artists in Europe. From the late 1880s, Bonnard too, turned to Japanese work, finding himself not only inspired by the aesthetics of the ukiyo-e woodcuts, for example, but also the philosophy that underpinned this artistic vision. Part of this philosophical manner of viewing and rendering the world was the consciousness of the ephemeral aspect of life, and the will to contemplate and capture this essence in art.

While Bonnard never visited Japan, one art critic labelled him “the most Japanese of all French painters”. Alongside other artists that he met during his preparatory studies at the Académie Julian and then the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris – namely Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard – Bonnard embraced the Nabi Movement, becoming ‘Le Nabi très Japonard’.

Seeking to renew artistic vision, the Nabis (from the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ or ‘visionary’) were post-impressionists particularly influenced by Japanese art that favoured a calligraphic style, of fluid lines on a flat surface that largely rejected Western linear perspective based on relief and shadow.

In 1891, Bonnard’s poster France-Champagne - using colour lithography commonly used by Toulouse-Lautrec - caught the critics’ attention, as too did his work, Femmes au Jardin. This success marked a turning point in Bonnard’s life as he finally abandoned the law studies he had previously undertaken, in order to devote himself exclusively to art. A few years later, he went on to meet the woman who would be his main model in life – albeit not his sole muse or love – Marthe. It is she, the largely enigmatic Marthe ‘de Méligny’, who figures in most of his domestic scenes, appearing frequently in nude studies, yet rarely presented face-on, over their fifty-year relationship, ever present yet strangely elusive.

During his artistic career, Bonnard explored and revised the possibilities of colour and composition through his subjects – be they figures, landscapes, intimate interior settings or outdoors, whether in Paris, Normandy or the South of France. This desire to rework and relive his work – often altering and pieces created earlier -became an integral aspect of his artistic approach and his fluid vision of life itself and the creative process. In this respect, his stance resembles that of the ukiyo-e he so admired – ukiyo meaning ‘floating world’ – to the extent that his technique itself underlines the state of impermanence with each alteration.

One of the best examples of that are the four panels that form the Femmes au Jardin, initially started around 1921 but still being revisited some twenty-five years later! A fleeting quality that characterizes Bonnard’s work is also inspired by his interest in photography and his use of a Pocket Kodak to compose and frame his vision.

Yet, photographs enabled him to flee a restrictive representation of the reality of the present moment, not capture it slavishly.

Unlike his friend Monet, Bonnard rejected painting plein air, preferring to note impressions to help him recreate scenes from memory once back in his studio; “Before I start painting, I reflect, I dream”. In this way, an odd static quality in Bonnard’s work is present in both the vivid painting and the black-and-white studies. Colour, nevertheless, remained key to his work, with Bonnard admitting that he “sacrificed form to it almost unconsciously’.

Whilst such vibrancy set in unconventional compositions fills us with wonder and joy, Bonnard himself seemed to dismiss these as signs of jollity and light-heartedness, by remarking; ‘He who sings is not always happy’. Whether this was an allusion to his melancholic nature or not is hard to say but it certainly makes Bonnard’s art even more intriguing and unique.

Life and Loss...

The beauty of Nature often seems to be a shield or support against the natural events of life, with the integral facets of the living process...

Loss appears to be composed of a multitude of layers of old reality becoming a new realisation of a life without, yet each time one of these layers falls away, another becomes apparent, so that the ultimate acknowledgement of this revised existence is turned into a long process of tumbling downward but somehow never reaching the ground... acceptance.

How is it possible that a life is left or lost, and that what was so vital, living and whole is simply not there anymore? How do living beings suddenly no longer occupy part of our active lives? The questions are so basic and the answers so obvious and yet I cannot help but wonder over them again, again and again...

And then equally heart-wrenching and existentially baffling to me, is the idea of all identity being gradually eroded - or at very best compromised - at the end of a lifetime, stolen away by memory loss. How much are we made of our memories, of others and of our very selves? When do we cease to have a full identity if we can no longer remember who is who, or who or what we are or were?

This is not my own journey, but I have to watch on as this cruel process strips my father's memory away, so that now I can't even remember life with him before this illness. But there are precious moments to be lived and ones to be remembered - they just break your heart with sadness and gladness...