THIS seemingly childlike painting by Albert Herbert crept up on
me, and has stealthily taken hold. Indeed, if I had to select ten
images to convey the essentials of the Christian faith, this would
be one of them; for it goes straight to the heart of the matter:
our utter dependence on God's sustenance.
Albert Herbert (1925-2008) was Principal Lecturer at the St
Martin's School of Art, when he found himself increasingly out of
sympathy with the prevailing fashion for American abstract art,
which was all the rage with his students and colleagues. He was
capable of working in this style, and in fact produced a number of
attractive abstracts at this time, but he found that he could not
go on in that way. Yet he had also given up representative art; so
he seemed stuck.
It was a difficult time for him, and, as he wrote, he "used to
creep down to the etching room of St Martin's and work at these
little prints, literary, illustrative, with bits of theology hiding
behind childish jokes; all the opposite of what my modernist
colleagues were teaching on the top floor".
So he taught himself to draw again by looking at children's
drawings, and this led to his "drawing what I felt and knew rather
than what it looked like".
This artistic drowning and resurrection he explored in a series
of paintings on the theme of Jonah and the whale. The spiritual
insight of his work was recognised by Sister Wendy Beckett, to
whose discernment we owe so much; and Herbert's painting has also
been promoted by his gallery, England & Co.
Herbert clearly felt that he had to learn to see the world again
with something of a child's eye, and a child's capacity for wonder.
In this, there is a parallel with the Neo-Platonist artist Cecil
Collins, from about the same period, one of whose paintings shows a
fool walking along holding the hand of a little child who is
leading him. All Herbert's paintings have this seemingly childlike
simplicity, although the colour and composition are in fact subtle
and sophisticated.
A number of dramatic stories from the life of the
ninth-century-BC prophet Elijah appear in the Christian art of both
East and West, including this one. The icon of this scene has a
bearded Elijah, sitting on the ground against the background of his
dark cave, with the sharp peaks of mountains above. He is looking
over his left shoulder, gazing up at a raven perched on the ledge
of the cave. The raven is holding a round piece of bread shaped
like a eucharistic wafer in its beak.
Nicholas Mynheer, who has also painted this scene, is closer to
this way of depicting it than Herbert, who has his own distinctive
understanding.
First, Elijah is bald, beardless, and naked except for a
loincloth. He is exposed, frail, and vulnerable; in short, an easy
figure with whom to identify. Second, the long, looming dark clouds
and the threatening colours of the landscape clearly have their own
message. But so, too, have the bright horizon and the patch of
light in the sky above the clouds.
Especially interesting is the luminous church or temple, set
against the darkest part of the mountains, with its mysterious
entrance. Such a building appears elsewhere in Herbert's work, and
points to the need to make an interior journey. Then there is the
raven with the round wafer in his beak, almost as large as the
frail man.
Finally, another characteristic of Herbert: a coiled worm in one
corner, with a smile on its face, as though in the end we are not
to take ourselves too seriously.
Herbert had no early religious education or interest in
religion, but in 1958, he was received into the Roman Catholic
Church. Brought up in Bow in a very modest home, he had no cultural
background, either. It was when he was working in a library when he
left school that he saw an article on surrealist art in a magazine.
It came as a revelation, and made him realise that "art was about
revealing the marvellous."
His own paintings certainly do this, not least this one. For
Herbert, art was not about meaning, but about feelings. From this
point of view, it is not difficult to feel one's way into this
painting.
Frail and vulnerable as we are, with clouds of worry stretching
over our minds, we are pointed to God's miraculous, sustaining
grace, not least as this comes to us in the eucharist. But this
also requires us to enter into ourselves, to go into that
mysterious, luminous temple.
Yet, as the smiling worm says, there are also jokes. There is
fun to be had, provided we are not portentous about ourselves, even
about our spiritual journey.
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is the former Bishop
of Oxford, and the author of The Image of Christ in Modern Art
(Ashgate, £19.99 (CT
Bookshop £18 - Use code CT158 ); 978-1-4094-6382-5) (Books,
20 December). This Lent series is based on the
book.