Hope-giving Images
Last summer I arranged to see one of George Rouault’s ‘Head of Christ’ paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Being one of my greatest heroes, I hoped to see this painting only to find it was in storage. I constructed a great sob story and went up to the reception desk of the museum, ‘I live in Romania and only visit north east Ohio once a year and come especially to see Rouault’s work, and he is the biggest reason that I myself am an artist’. She looked at me as if she understood I must be a potential future Picasso and couldn’t imagine stunting my artistic growth. We arranged a time in a couple days when they would pull the three by four foot luminous ‘Head of Christ’ and then see the Rouault prints they could find stored in the print archives.
I became aware of Rouault’s work through a book called George Rouault, A Vision of Suffering and Salvation. As a theologian, the book was a real life study for William Dyrness on a Christian approach to art. As the title alludes, his basic thesis is that the Christian artist is one who brings together the suffering of the world with a vision of its redemption.
My jaw dropped when the entire Miserere et Guerre series done by Rouault was brought out for me to see a couple days later...see the rest of the text along with the Rouault painting at... http://incommunion.org/articles/previous-issues/issue-37/rouault%e2%80%99s-hope-giving-images
Last summer I arranged to see one of George Rouault’s ‘Head of Christ’ paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Being one of my greatest heroes, I hoped to see this painting only to find it was in storage. I constructed a great sob story and went up to the reception desk of the museum, ‘I live in Romania and only visit north east Ohio once a year and come especially to see Rouault’s work, and he is the biggest reason that I myself am an artist’. She looked at me as if she understood I must be a potential future Picasso and couldn’t imagine stunting my artistic growth. We arranged a time in a couple days when they would pull the three by four foot luminous ‘Head of Christ’ and then see the Rouault prints they could find stored in the print archives.
I became aware of Rouault’s work through a book called George Rouault, A Vision of Suffering and Salvation. As a theologian, the book was a real life study for William Dyrness on a Christian approach to art. As the title alludes, his basic thesis is that the Christian artist is one who brings together the suffering of the world with a vision of its redemption.
My jaw dropped when the entire Miserere et Guerre series done by Rouault was brought out for me to see a couple days later...see the rest of the text along with the Rouault painting at... http://incommunion.org/articles/previous-issues/issue-37/rouault%e2%80%99s-hope-giving-images
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