All Saints Day: A Valley in France

Following All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day gives us the opportunity to remember all the saints of God - some who have been officially designated as saints, others who may not be known widely but are saints in our own lives. Near Carnoet, in the Brittany region of France, a valley is filled with statues of Celtic and Breton saints. A reference to the ancient menhirs and megaliths of Brittany, the valley installation is an open-air sanctuary dotted with sculptures of well-known saints like Patrick and Brigit, as well as less-widely known saints like Tugdual and Brieuc. The first statue was placed in 2008, and the hundredth statue several years ago. The only requirements for each statue is that it must be 10 feet tall and represent a saint who was in Brittany between the 3rd and 10th centuries. 

Visitors wandering among these saints keep their stories alive. 

For additional information on the Valley of the Saints, click here or here.

All Saints Day: On the Way to Holiness

Oh, Lord, we want to be in that number! When the saints go marching in, of course. And we are, at least symbolically, every time we walk into a church. The aisle(s) of a church offer us a way to think about the life of faith. Are we getting closer to our goal? Are we farther away? Of course, most of us are in the same place, the same pew, week after week, which might say something, too.

The church of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, is a basilica plan church (the footprint is a rectangle with a half-circle apse at the end opposite the door). The side walls (connecting the door wall and the apse wall) are covered with mosaic figures in procession toward the altar. On the left side the 22 female martyrs process from a representation of the city of Classe toward a group that includes Mary with the Christ Child on her lap and flanked by four angels. Their procession is led by the magi, identified by name as Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar. To the right is a procession of 26 male martyrs in a composition that echoes the opposite procession. These martyrs are led by Saint Martin as they move from the Palace of Theodoric toward a figure group that includes Christ seated on a throne again flanked by four angels.

(Top) South wall mosaics of male martyrs. (Bottom) North wall mosaic of female martyrs. Consecrated 6th century. 

Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. Ravenna, Italy.

The martyrs clothed in white and carrying their wreaths and palms may seem beyond our reach. Their exemplary lives of service and sacrifice and ultimate sanctification may seem unattainable. But these two mosaic processions do more than dishearten those of us living in this world. They also demonstrate for worshipers the idea of entering the building and, throughout life, moving toward the holy.

In the Reformed tradition, All Saints Day reminds us of God's work of sanctifying not just spiritual superstars but the whole people of God. We give thanks for the lives of believers whose lives were both ordinary and holy in this age and in every age. We give glory to God as we remember members of the community of faith who have died in the past year. And yes, we pray that we will be in that number when the saints go marching in.

For additional thoughts on All Saints, click here.
If you aren't focusing on All Saints this Sunday, see Art&Faith Matters' Facebook post about Ruth and Naomi.

A View of All Saints

Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian artist probably most widely known as the painter who created the first abstract watercolor. Even if he wasn't an active worshiper as an adult, he was raised in the Russian Orthodox church, and his work often shows the influence of liturgy and religious practice. That is certainly true with his various interpretation of All Saints Day.

The collection of images below represent several different compositions around the theme of All Saints. The top images - variations on All Saints I - also have elements of the Last Judgment (especially the trumpeting angel at the left) and the crucifixion (note the crucified Jesus on the hill in the background near the bell of the angel's trumpet).

Kandinsky. All Saints I. 1911. Munich: Lenbachhaus Gallery. (Left) Oil on canvas. (Right) Reverse glass painting.

 

(Left) Kandinsky. All Saints Day II. 1911. Lenbachhaus Gallery. Oil on canvas. (Right) Kandinsky. All Saints II. 1911. Lenbachhaus Gallery. Reverse glass painting. For the Lenbachhaus Gallery, see: http://www.lenbachhaus.de/

All four images share common symbols and persons. The trumpeting angels present in All Saints I are also in All Saints Day II in the upper right and left corners, though their forms are more abstract in II. All Saints II (lower right), includes the pair from All Saints I, whose arms are companionably around each other. They are central figures in I and much smaller but still in the center of II. All Saints II also includes folkloric references to the Zyrian shaman Pam who rows off in a boat in the lower left corner of All Saints II. 

Siberian folklore, the Last Judgment, the resurrection of the saints, color, glass, paint...all of these are part of Kandinsky's conception of All Saints. At this point in his career Kandinsky is moving toward abstraction. It is important to remember that for Kandinsky abstraction was not just a desire to dissolve recognizable subject matter or forms. Kandinsky was seeking to make a spiritual statement. He believed that if the paintings were too easily understood they were not adequate equivalents for the spiritual world. He was trying to create in visual art the same opportunity that existed in music - to create a spiritual meaning that was not tied to the symbolic objects that tend to drive humans toward narrative. The experience of the painting was to be the spiritual experience. The painting did not exist only to point toward a story of something spiritual. 

Kandinsky's interpretation stands in stark contrast to William Bouguereau's use of All Saints Day as subject matter. Bouguereau, a 19th-century French Academic painter, has placed two women in black at the grave of a loved one. Two very different approaches to the same observance. These two painters are a reminder of the richness of approach and experience of every one of the saints of God. For Bouguereau's painting, click on the Facebook link here.

For additional thoughts on All Saints, click here.