The brilliant warm light of a spring day casts dramatic shadows on the high rock wall surrounding the Menil Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. Looking up I see silhouetted a small building which has the outline of a Cypriot Chapel. To the eye the angles of the building are, however, decidedly modern. I wonder at this contrast. Walking up to the entrance of the building I pass a shallow black reflecting pool. The soft sound of a small fountain, light glinting off dark water, I feel my mood being manipulated by this space. I pass from a day full of natural light into a spiritual space imbued with a softly radiant ephemeral glow. I enter a world which is separate in time and space from my own.
I begin to realize that my journey to this spot began from a point far distant and converged to this central location. Inside the chapel modern architectural lines are again mixed with medieval proportions. I am immersed in a fluid experiential environment. Perhaps, as the great Erwin Panosky acutely observed, the use of geometry and perspective in art enables the human spirit to become a vessel for the divine. Within the house of these Holy Icons doors previously closed across my heart begin to open.
“In June 1983 the Menil Foundation was shown photographs of 13th century frescoes that had been cut into 38 pieces and removed from their original site near a Lysi, in the Turkish occupied section of Cyprus. They were going to be sold individually for profit and dispersed. Struck by the beauty of the photographs, the foundation asked its Washington attorney to investigate the origin of the frescoes and discovered that they came from Cyprus.
The Menil Foundation contacted both the Republic and the Church of Cyprus. With their knowledge and encouragement the foundation paid the ransom to the feeds and received possession of all 38 fragments which were then entrusted to an expert icon restorer in London,” From, A Byzantine Masterpiece Recovered, the Thirteenth-Century Murals of Lysi, Cyprus. Annemarie Weyl and Laurence J. Morrocco
The geometry of a building is first felt on an intrinsic level. By this I mean that we do not initially, consciously, think in terms of the geometry of the structure we have entered. Our first reaction is based on visceral feelings about the space and the light within it.
Kandinsky wrote, in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”
“…a child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame. And then it learns that light has not only an unfriendly, but also a friendly side: banishing darkness and prolonging the day, warming and cooking, delighting the eye. One becomes familiar with life by collecting these experiences and storing away this knowledge in the brain.”
Perhaps we might all agree that geometry and light within a space are one and the same. This is because architecture shapes the three-dimensional environment while affecting and presenting the light within it. This is done mainly through the placement of stained-glass windows. So in this regard I must also comment on the obvious, that light within a church is always rich with color.
Kandinsky goes on to say …
"In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.
The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key. Thus it is clear that the harmony of colors can only be based upon the principle of purposefully touching the human soul.”
The church is the temple where the soul communes with its eternal God. If the colored light of the spirit touches directly one’s soul, and the Creator pours his light through the windows, then doesn't the geometry, which forms the space, create a fitting vehicle to facilitate this exchange?
Perhaps we might refer to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Famous Last Words”, where he postulated about perspective in the following manner…
“…. man began to measure the universe in terms of his own direct experience of life and death, and then he went on to the great work of creating good and evil. In the light of day, he said ‘white’ and in the darkness of night, he said ‘black’ and always remaining at the center of things he created perspective. The world was seen in terms of vanishing points and points of view with respect to the position of man's eye at about 5 feet above ground level and from that point he created high and low.
Past and future, near and distant, profound and superficial, true and false, single and multiple, subjective and objective, static and dynamic, these are a few examples of the complex of antinomies that has grown up around the human being as the fruit of his mind. In constant and ever more gigantic expansion, the process began with the first men who walked the earth, and it has continued until today…”
The content of a constructed architectural space, one might say, is a subject matter introduced by intellect and feeling with meaning. In short, content is the meaning made visible. This is what Henri Matisse was getting at when he said that drawing is "not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods." So too the softly lit and warmly colored ambiance surrounding the icons in the Byzantine Fresco Chapel facilitates communication of the spiritual intent of the makers. Is there a high art, low art? What is art? Is art that which touches us deeply? Is it those things made by human hands, inspired by human hearts, which touch the human spirit, how we define art? If the human spirit is a part of the spirit of God then isn't the creation of art that loveliest of endeavors.
I have come to understand that there is central dispute among art historians and critics about who actually creates a work of art. The question being this, is it the artist or the viewer. I must ask, “Why so serious?” When in fact we must surely say it is the interaction of the three factors involved which is the creation of art.
In this tranquil space a viewer approaches the icons. She kneels before an alter. Immersed in this environment, surrounded by light, she is not alone. They are not two together but three as one. These three are artist, image, and viewer. The strength of this iconic gesture is almost overwhelming. The scent of this creation fills her being. All the rest fades away. All that remains is the image and the space enfolding them. In this moment its need becomes her need. She feels the beat of its heart and the strength of its life as her eyes embrace it, and through her eyes her soul. It is that mysterious primitive part which is unlike her, and yet completes her. She yearns for this which is not part of her to become her, like shining rain in a thunderstorm light spills and falls from one onto the other. Viewer, image, and maker are as one. For this brief time together they transcend the ordinary and enter the sublime. The world around is lost to her in those bright moments of pure bliss. Her deep overwhelming need finds its satisfaction. Her ecstasy uncoils from a hidden core. Starting deep within it blossoms like the warmest memory of all past forbidden pleasures. St Theresa understood this. This is what great art can achieve. And this achievement is done in concert. With out any of the three the one cannot flower. And it is in this flowering that the true intrinsic, unknowable, and unspeakable, beauty of the human situation is apparent.
As I leave the Menil Fresco Chapel I realize I have left another world behind. My body and spirit were in tenth century Byzantium, on the island of Cyprus. One thousand years ago I knelt in a small stone chapel, spiritually engaged with the myth of the Christ. I step out into the bright light of 21st-century America. Enveloping me is the perfume of an ancient, almost forgotten, time. I walk on into the day and that lingering sweet fragrance slowly fades.
I am left with a poignant longing to return to the chapel.
Joe
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