Art that challenges modern wisdom

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 16

Art that challenges modern wisdom

ANGUS STEWART reviews a comprehensive collection of An-glo-Saxon art that has been drawing many visitors to the British Museum, in London. These craftsmen, he says, throw the gauntlet at education and schooling. The golden age of An-glo-Saxon Art: 9661066. This is a bright and cheering spectacle. An exhibition of soaring confidence, of the spirit ascendant. The works displayed are so positive that, if the viewer forgets they are from a wrecked ship of state, he could think himself in Utopia. On show is the religion of secular power, celebrated by the depiction of saints, by the worship of the Trinity. The power of kings and priests is shown through the light-fingered bodging of genial craftsmen. Sadly for the Anglo-Sax-ons, their artworks prove the transience of worldly power. Their reliquaries are now cenotaphs.

There are 275 exhibits from 40 collections in Britain, Europe, and the United States. The exhibition adds to its treasures with informative and delightfully expressed catalogue notes. The catalogue is as seductive as the collection it records. The individuals who have contributed to the whole have obviously found their reward on earth, for every detail is shaped with affection, obsession, and

learning. The Alfred Jewel, lent by the Ashmolean, is the pointer to this period. It is misshapen, playful, and kitsch; a pear-shaped toy of delight and fascination. The central figure, deeply coloured and contrasted cloisonne rimmed in gold, lies under a mound of crystal; the frame a crenellation of open work letters, the reverse panel a forest of interleaving incisions, held by overlapping teeth. The inscription reads “Alfred ordered me to be made.” But who is Alfred? The King? A commissioning agent? Is the depicted figure the king, a saint, or simply a man wielding two flowers? Flowers which might be sceptres. Many questions, but the answers are supposition. And that is where the ambiguity of these skills begins to tease.

The work is unsophisticated, but knowing. The execution a mite bumbling, but the results overwhelming. These objects disturb every tenet of the twentieth cen-

The Pensor censer-vessel for burning incense-coves. Of copper alloy, modelled in the form of a building, it is inscribed ‘Godric made me.’ Late 10th, early 11th century.

tury’s perceived wisdom. They throw the gauntlet at education and schooling, and ridicule the assumption that technical perfection, if attainable, is wanted. The exhibits well with

liberality, joy, and a plea-sure-giving snugness. The craftsmen were profligate with care and invention. Following the lines as they were, presumably, developed, leads to puzzlement; are the felicitous touches planned, or a gay acceptance that error is a ladder to perfection? The manuscript figurations are deft, extravagant, and infused with light and insubstantial gravity. Their colours fire from a semiopalescent ground into tense urgency.

Sinuous shaping of man, beast, and plant beckon the viewer into a world cloudy with unknowing. It is a magic, fairy tale land where the kings’ clothes have a function which is not to protect or warm, but to tease the mind into a different realm.

Sculptures in limestone swell out with the soft roundness of yeasty dough. Ivory cut away with cunning holds, in its solidity, movement in a moment of time. There is an ivory triangle from Winchester

with two upturned winged and robed angels confounding gravity, for in one way they respect its rules while simultaneously making their own.

The carver gestured towards the everyday by giving each angel two hands, but each one in front is delicate and in scale, each one behind is lumpen and scaled for several sizes grander.

The coins are a series of comic cut masterpieces, the monarchs’ heads have never rolled with such whimsy and slender respect. The portraiture is kindergarten style, and in that way kinder than we are to our sovereign. The reverses show a harlequin irreverence for the cross. The coinage suggests that Caesar has been rend-

ered his due, and that God is equally familial. Where precious metals have been used they lie on wood, lightly pinned and weightless. Into their sheen the craftsmen have incised the crucifixion, the evangelists’ symbols, and a seeming endless variety of whirls, branches, and plaited volutes.

The Anglo-Saxon might wonder what comparison could be made between this exhibition and the one devoted to his Norman vanquishers in the summer of 1984, at the Hayward Gallery. He could rest smuggly. He had taken from the Norman before the conquest, but for his own profit. After 1066 his influence walked through time, and

his waywardness enlivened the Norman tendency to overlay with tedious gravity.

The Normans had a point to make. The Anglo-Saxons were propagandists too, but they treated policy without solemnity.

It would be a churlish spirit which was not lifted among these Anglo-Saxon pleasantries.