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Mary Clerkin Higgins
Director
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Fri May 2nd, 2008 03:57 pm |
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From the May ARTnews Magazine, written by Robert Rigny for the ARTTALK section:
Let There Be Light
The Roman Catholic Church still knows how to lure artists. The venerable patron has most recently attracted the likes of such high-profile figures as Gerhard Richter, Neo Rauch, and Markus Lüpertz to design stained-glass windows for German churches in styles ranging from abstract to Socialist Realist to expressionist
Richter was first, with his controversial abstract windows for Cologne Cathedral, Installed last year. For that he was publicly criticized by the Cologne archbishop Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who objected that Richter’s computer-based design lacked representational religious content. Richter, who doesn’t profess any religion, said that he got the idea from his 1974 painting 4096 Farben (4095 Colors), and that he was trying to convey the existence of “divine order behind seemingly random occurrence.
Next came Rauch, known for his surreal, sometimes comical scenes of stiff Socialist Realist men and women engaged in inscrutable tasks. Rauch, who is based in Leipzig, was asked by the foundation of the Naumburg Cathedral to illustrate the life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Rauch’s figures wear uniform jackets and lace-up boots, and their blocky forms coexist with the cathedral’s more traditional representations of other church figures. Rauch decided to limit himself to just two colors—red and white—to suit his windows’ small dimensions (approximately 4 1/2 feet by 1 1/2 feet). They were completed late last year. Rauch refused to accept a fee.
Lüpertz, a Neo-Expressionist painter, who is president of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is installing three windows in the Dominican church Sankt Andreas, not far from Cologne Cathedral, illustrating the story of Genesis. The windows, which are predominantly green, red, and yellow, feature plants and flowers growing out of abstract ornamental segments, in homage to the medieval philosopher Albertus Magnus, who is buried in the crypt of the church. The windows’ cost, more than $1.52 million, was financed by donations. The first window was installed in 2005; the cycle should be completed by December.
A convert to Catholicism, Lüpertz describes the windows as a “door to heaven” and says they are influenced by the windows of Marc Chagall and 20th-century German stained-glass master Georg Meistermann. As with Richter’s windows, Lüpertz’s replaced plain, colorless ones that had been installed after Allied bombs destroyed the originals during World War II. -- Robert Rigney
There is also an illustration of Neo Rauch’s Krankenpflege
(Elisabeth Is Caring For Sick Persons), 2007, in the Naumburg Cathedral.
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