Cross Purposes.

Watson, Joseph Benjamin

Mascall's Gallery, Paddock Wood, Kent 5 March-29 May 2010

That 'this is one of the most remarkable exhibitions of paintings on a religious theme for many years' might seem a bold claim by Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, in his Foreword to the stylish catalogue for 'Cross Purposes: Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion'. A bold claim because the exhibition is not at one of our national galleries or at one of our high-profile provincial galleries or even at one of the capital's smaller galleries. Rather, this important show is in a small, relatively new gallery, which is part of Mascall's School, a specialist visual arts comprehensive school in the heart of rural Kent. The emergence of this exhibition will have taken more than one ACE reader by surprise and yet Harries' claim appears to be entirely justified for here is something, indeed, most remarkable.

Admittedly, function rules over form in the gallery space itself, which the curator, Nathaniel Hepburn, explained was built to national gallery standards (to allow for loans from public collections) on the floorplan of one of the school's classrooms. But the leadership of Mascall's School must be applauded for their vision in supporting such a space and employing an enthusiastic and thoughtful curator to direct it.

The exhibition itself is a striking collection of around twenty crucifixions, all created during the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Ranging from Gilbert Spencer and Eric Gill through to Tracey Emin and Maggi Hambling, the show is unusual in being united by its very specific subject matter (or even form, as Ben Quash suggests in the catalogue), rather than by artist, traditional genre or style. This opens the viewer to a series of different renderings of the crucifixion with very different stories to tell, usefully split into three sections: depictions of Christ as flesh; Christ as man; Christ as spirit. The first of those categories is the most visceral, providing much of the 'shock' referred to in the exhibition's sub-title in works by artists such as Graham Sutherland and F N Souza. Their bloody images create a fascinating pairing, with the bowed crosspieces of the crucifix in each emphasising the unbearable weight of the world's post-Holocaust sins bearing down on Christ's body; a contrast with the more human(e) accounts by Gilbert Spencer, Emmanuel Levy and Duncan Grant. Hambling, the late Craigie Aitchison and Robert Henderson Blyth are located in the Christ-as-spirit section of the exhibition, and while there may be 'contemplation' in these images, there is little uplifting to be found here. Blyth's painting in particular is a grim reminder of the sense of hollowness of spirit in the aftermath of World War II.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Ultimately, there is no escaping that this exhibition stands at the end of a war torn century and in the darkness of the shadow cast by the Holocaust. The relief from that darkness is provided by Chagall, whose sketches for the stained glass windows of the nearby church, All Saints, Tudeley, form the counterpoint to the unrelenting agony of these painted crucifixions. For out of the sorrow of a young woman's premature death (for whom the windows were commissioned), comes the joy, rhythm and unbridled beauty of Chagall's drawings and, at the nearby church, the light--literally--of his extraordinary stained glass windows.

If there is a criticism of Mascall's Gallery, it is that the works require more space to speak fully, for most of these crucifixion scenes were created to stand entirely alone and demand the viewer's undivided attention, even devotion. One also wonders how and if this demand is accommodated by students from Mascall's School, for whom this must be a very alien subject. But this is truly powerful art and perhaps the only way that the message of the cross can be effectively passed from one generation to the next. Where the naive, even trite Sunday School stories of our ancestors will fail to communicate any meaningful message to the sceptical and questioning generation that are coming of age in the 21st Century, this art might succeed.

Joseph Benjamin Watson is the Programme Manager (Practical Workshops & Events) in the Learning and Interpretation Department of the V&A and an Advisor to ACE

'Cross Purposes' tours to Ben Uri Gallery, London 15 June-19 September 2010.