I've not seen this particular mural, but if you ever find yourself near an English country church in the middle of no where you will most probably find it unlocked, and inside, an ark of art built up over generations (now, often, sitting uncared for). Originally the the catholic churches would have been brightly coloured with statues and stained glass. The reformation led to the smashing of the glass and statues. You will find baptismal fonts with the faces of the saints chiselled off. And the whitewashing of walls. Occasionally you'll stumble on wall paintings discovered whilst stripping the plain white paint off. Duffy's "the stripping of the altars" provides a rich overview of the church before and during the Tudor reformation.
Thanks for your interest in the post! Hardham is definitely worth a visit if you're out and about near Arundel, Chichester, the wonderful Roman villas of Fishbourne and Bignor, etc. The Hardham frescos c. 1100 are some of the oldest in Britain. Their whitewashing happened within decades of their creation, so about 400 years before the Tudor reformation. The blog looks at the circumstances that may have caused this obliteration. Do come back for find out more about the murals and their artist.
I’m trying to parse the ‘shocking’ part of the Adam and Eve image. I think I understand pretty well why Ai Weiwei’s Han vase piece got the reaction it did, and what he was trying to do with it. But, I can’t help but feel our essayist here is holding back.
I’d be interested in some art historian’s perspectives on this — is there some controversy on the idea that this is a painting of a tapestry? If so, what’s the implication? What’s the shock part? I guess he’s perhaps trying to help us see it as a similar image of ‘breakage’ in which case, what, is this tapestry itself supposed to be hung in God’s or the devil’s house in the hamptons? Maybe the essay is just a bit of insider baseball, but I feel like I missed the hook.
Hi, thanks for your interest in my blogpost! It's great how much this forum seems to have warmed to the theme of my project. It's like giving a paper, and then the questions seem to anticipate where the research will go next
This is my first piece looking at the actual paintings. The Courtauld Institute puts a conservative estimate of thirty-nine on the number of individual scenes at Hardham: if you include the images which have been lost to architectural alterations it's in fact well over fifty. Plus there are two more ensembles at Coombes and Clayton from the same artist. So there's a wealth of material waiting to be reassessed. I'm not intentionally holding back, just going with the sequential blogpost format. Eventually it will, I hope, come together as a guide book to the three churches. atm it will build as an open access resource to help folk enjoy the frescos.
In the end it's religion, so not always easy to put your finger on why a someone might find something so repulsive, although poor Germanos II's meltdown is typical. That's why I'm going to use a few posts to unpick what's going on with the trompe l'oeil 'Deception' scene, starting with Greco-Roman antecedents, before looking at how these same ancient ideas were taken up by the Wachowski Sisters in their screenplay for The Matrix (1999). Do come back to find out where what the Hardham artist was up to!
Getting art is in a large part being overly impressible and seeing things. One guy may create a joke under some influence and thousands will interpret it through time as something daring mind-blowing meta-deepness. Humans just tend to do that. You swap water with wine, tell a couple of very cool stories and millenia later like wat??
The article seems to be arguing that this 12th century artist thought about their art in just the same way as contemporary artists. That seems unlikely somehow.