Breaking the image: a 12th-century Ai Weiwei?

The Fall

My previous posts have set the scene in the part of West Sussex where the Sussex muralist worked and taught. By now you should have a pretty good idea where the three painted churches are, and a picture of the ways in which the area's Roman legacy was still very present in the early 1100's, when the frescos were being made. 

We'll turn now to look in detail at the murals themselves. I'll begin with a sequence of posts focussing on a painting which is probably most emblematic of all the challenging images which survive from this artist's brush: Hardham's Deception of Eve and Adam. It was audacious when it was made: the artist's own Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, and every bit as much a slap in the face for traditional art lovers of its day as Ai Weiwei's 1995 provocative sequence of photos, which showcased the wilful destruction of a two-thousand-year-old vase. 

The Deception of Eve and Adam
Hardham chancel wall

Ai Weiwei's unsettling triptych still provokes discussion concerning the monetised value of art, authenticity, and respect for cultural heritage. It seems the Sussex muralist knew very well what they were doing with their own carefully judged swipe at convention in The Deception of Eve and Adam. Other of the Hardham murals suggest that the medieval painter was fully aware of the possible consequences for challenging the accepted idea of what a holy image must be. 

Art-martyrs

The north wall/lower frieze in the nave at Hardham shows a sequence of historical martyrs who challenged attitudes towards the sacred image, turning their agonised gaze towards us as they endure appalling torture. These were once the first eyes that would meet ours, upon entering the church. Saint George is scourged on a wheel for refusing to worship Emperor Datian's idols, calling on God to 'utterly destroy these miserable images, even as wax melts at a hot fire' (Aelfric, c. 996). Further along the wall, the hands of notorious ninth-century art dissident Lazaros Zographos are scorched to the bone by red-hot iron plates. 

St George is tortured on the wheel for disrespecting the idols
Hardham nave, north wall, lower frieze

Lazaros Zographos has his hands mutilated with red-hot iron plates:
in the foreground stands the bowl of the torturer's brazier.
Hardham nave, north wall, lower frieze

Lazaros had continued to paint in contravention of an imperial prohibition on representational art during the period 815-843: Byzantine Emperor Theophilos ordered the mutilation of the recalcitrant artist's hands, so he would never be able to paint again. In spite of the Emperor's assault Lazaros survived, and found enough strength and fine control in his left hand (shown being seared in the Hardham portrait) to continue his work. It was with great pride that the Hardham artist placed their own unstoppable creativity and refusal to moderate their work in the company of this stoical welcoming committee, dedicating their challenging new mural composition to the memory of these brave historical art-martyrs. The Sussex muralist walked in their footsteps, following the same treacherous path, acknowledging the art-martyrs' fate as possibly their own.

'The only way to build a new world is to destroy the old one'

Above this roll-call of art-heroes on the north wall is a small cartouche, a rare depiction of the apocryphal story of The Fall of the Idols of Sotinen told in The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Ch. 22-23. It shows two temple idols in a before-and-after scenario. In the first frame, the figures are shown in their pomp, arranged proudly on a shelf. This sets the scene for the chaos to come in the frame below, when the shelf collapses. The idols now come to life as animated homunculi, tumbling helplessly to the floor the moment the infant Christ entered the pagan temple. Like the second frame of Ai Weiwei's photographic freeze-frame of the doomed Han vase, the inverted, flailing figurines in the second frame remain tantalisingly suspended in the air, about to be smashed to shards. 

The Fall of the Idols of Sotinen
(Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew Ch. 22-23)
Hardham nave, north wall, upper frieze

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (first two frames)
Ai Weiwei, 1995

For both artists, their work was about breaking idols. Alarming for us, however, is the dissonant thought that their iconoclasm didn't stem from a simple hatred of images. On the contrary, the image destruction of Ai and the Hardham muralist expresses instead a profound love of art: Saint George, confronted with the Emperor's idols, repeatedly refused to kiss the cherished images, yearning instead something more spiritual, more enduring than a flippant endorsement of Datian's pride and esteem. Ai Weiwei was placed under surveillance and threat of arrest as a 'deviant' for Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. Responding to furious criticism, Ai paraphrased Mao Zedong in words which echo George's condemnation: 'the only way to build a new world is to destroy the old one'. 

How would Hardham's innovatory paintings be received? Would the audacious frescos survive the critics, or was the Hardham artist about to become a 'deviant', earning their own place in the gallery of art-martyrs alongside Lazaros Zographos and Saint George? 

Why do you worship plaster and paint?

'I don't get it: what is so threatening about Hardham's Deception of Eve and Adam?' 

It's one of the best-preserved and most beautiful images of the whole composition, and seems to show just the usual figures: Eve, Adam, and the Serpent in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, offering forbidden fruit. Well, it's not the alluring central image that's the problem: it's those trompe l'oeil hooks, appearing to stick out from the wall, which will blow your mind. The scene has been painted to look like a cloth hanging, suspended by 'loops' which attach to those 'hooks' in the wall. 

What are we looking at? Is it Eve and Adam? or a painting of Eve and Adam? or a painting of a tapestry of Eve and Adam? The real presence of the saints in a holy icon recedes, fading until it vanishes, so all we are left with is plaster and paint: there's nothing behind that 'cloth' except the wall. Sometimes iconoclasts weren't necessarily trying to 'destroy icons'. This was something even more disturbing.

Detail from The Deception of Eve and Adam, showing the trompe l'oeil hooks and loops
Hardham chancel

Even as we think about the dilemma of biblical Eve and Adam and their gullibility in listening to the deceitful Serpent, we teeter on the edge of our own, new deception, about to make the same old mistake. We're in the world of Magritte's Treachery of Images (1929): are we going to carry on, falling for the allure of art, mistaking the treasured image for some sort of reality, or can we break out of the cycle? Like Banksy's Love is in the Bin (2018), the Hardham trompe l'oeil Deception draws attention to the fact we're looking at just paint on a wall: the image itself threatens to shred any sacred value, even as we look at it.

Love is in the Bin
The stencil by Banksy sold at Sotheby's London in 2018 for £1,042,000

This irreverent, often playful attitude to spirituality in art could drive orthodox believers round the bend. 'Why do you worship walls, and planks, and plaster, and pretty colours?' We can almost feel Patriarch Germanos II's spitting fury as, during his Lenten sermon in defence of the holy icons, he quoted the impudent words spoken to him by one these 'sons of destruction', an advocate of a twelfth-century artistic New Wave, before declaring anathema on them all as 'heretics'. Contemporary accounts can give a immediate sense of the simple head-spinning horror which an untethered painting like the Hardham trompe l'oeil could provoke among those invested in the traditional way of making sacred images imbued with the spirit of the saints, when faced with the disruptive work of a twelfth-century Ai Weiwei. Ask the martyrs on Hardham's north wall, like Lazaros Zographos, about their unwavering commitment to art as a powerful medium of change, and the very real threat facing the artist who used their work to question orthodox belief.

The Hardham fresco ensemble did indeed succumb to censorship, along with the artist's other work, when the challenging Sussex murals were all whitewashed within a few decades of being made. In doing so, the censor inadvertently conserved a unique record of this exceptional community, seen through the imagination of their remarkable spokesperson and artist. The revealed images can still be disturbing, even today: like the work of more recent disruptive artists, the Hardham muralist didn't paint to make you feel comfortable.

A detail from P. M. Johnston's tracing made from The Deception of Eve and Adam
showing the trompe l'oeil hooks and loops with greater clarity
V&A, 1900

Did we think there was anything behind a holy image, or special about a two-thousand year old utilitarian Han-era vase? The Deception of Eve and Adam pulls the plug on the sacredness of sacred art, so that a painting becomes a painting, nothing more, and nothing less. I'm going to devote a series of posts to unpacking the profound shockwave created by this exhilarating shift in artistic representation. 

Come and experience what all the fuss was about at these three churches in West Sussex, and follow the blog to get the updates which will show you around all the elements which make up these extraordinary and unique medieval art installations.