Two years ago, I wrote a  feature on the American artist Carl Schmitt (1889-1989).  What has prompted me to look at his work again is the publication of a beautiful book of his work called Carl Schmitt, The Vision of Beauty. Schmitt was a classically trained American artist who was a friend of Hilaire Belloc, who owned work by him, and who contributed a weekly column to Chesterton’s Weekly Review when Belloc was its editor. He was much travelled around Europe, but spent most of his adult life living in Connecticut. I like his still lives particularly see below and at www.carlschmitt.org). He was a faithful Catholic all his life and quite apart from his art his Catholic legacy is strong. He had 10 children who all kept the faith and one of whom was a priest. Descendants of Schmitt were involved at the instigation of Thomas Aquinas College in California and founded and still run Trivium School, an independent Catholic boarding high school with a great books curriculum. This is on the other side of the country and less than an hour south of Thomas More College, in Massachusetts. Sam Schmitt, who wrote this book and works for the foundation that works to preserve his memory is a scholar of chant and the liturgy and I met him before he took his current role when he was working with us at TMC. It was with great pleasure that I received this book to review.

What caught my eye at the time was this deposition. This is a good example, in my opinion, to study when considering how to balance the general and the particular characteristics of the person. For good sacred art, that balance has to be right.

Some time ago, I wrote an article (Is Some Sacred Art Too Naturalistic), about the tendency amongst modern naturalistic artists to paint sacred art in which the rendering, especially the faces, is too naturalistic and too particular to one person, like a portrait. The result is paintings that look like the next door neighbor dressed up in old-fashioned clothing in a staged Victorian tableau. In my assessment there was too much emphasis on the particular and not enough on the general human characteristics of the saint or person depicted. It is the general characteristics that enable us to relate to those aspects that we are supposed to be inspired by and imitate, such as virtue. By definition, we can only aspire to imitate those aspects that are common to us. It is not possible to imitate something that is particular to someone else.

The sacred art of baroque of the 17^th century (in contrast to 19^th century naturalism) always plays down the individual characteristics with skillful use of shadow, depletion of color and variation in focus. This is not to exclude the particular altogether; we must know enough to know who is depicted. It is a question of balance. An example of how a baroque artist described this is given here.

In a very 20^th century way, Carl Schmitt has done the same here. I like also the way that he has set up the composition. The circular sweep that contains the main forms is well handled, introducing enough variation (for example in the tilt of the heads of the women) to stop them looking to rigidly bound by the compositional form.

Some might feel that there is too much ‘general’ and not enough ‘particular’ for their taste (it is something that crosses my mind). Regardless, I think it is a useful thing for today’s artists to see how Schmitt has approached this problem, and at the very least avoided the pitfalls of so many current naturalistic artists.

I am delighted that this book features a large number of his very beautiful still lives. They show the same skillful balance of the general and particular and are reminiscent of the great French Master Chardin. You can read about him in an article I wrote entitled Cosmic Onions, What Does Still Life Have to Do with the Liturgy?. In these Schmitt demonstrates that he understands the baroque sensibility (developed in the century before Chardin) in which large areas of the painting are in soft focus and depleted of colour. This means that the hard edges, deep contrast and most brightly coloured areas correspond to those parts that we focus on naturally within the composition. He gives us information where we naturally seek it. This is how the naturalistic artist appeals to our natural way of look at the cosmos and delighting in it. The focus of the eye is sharp and coloured in the centre, but monochromatic and blurred in the extremes and when we look at the world around us, the intellect process this information so that what we see in our mind’s eye delights us. God made us this way so that we delight in the beauty of his creation, and the skilfull artist understands this and gives us visual information that corresponds to this natural desire of the intellect.

I show several of his still lives below.

The Pattern of the Liturgy is a Model for Design in Beauty that Will Draw People To Your Work

In his book the Wellspring of Worship, Jean Corbon talks about the significance of the numbers seven and eight in the liturgy. In the Old Testament, seven is the number that signifies God’s covenant and so time is ordered according to it with seven days in a week. The book of Genesis describes the institution of this, of course, in the Creation story; and the symbolism is reinforced with the appearance of the seven-colour rainbow in the sky when Noah is saved and the covenant with all the earth is reinstituted. Eight is the number of new covenant ushered in with the incarnation, life,death and resurrection of Christ. So the eighth day is Sunday, which is simultaneously the first day of the next week and the last, the eighth of the previous one. The transition of the old to the new is symbolized by the operation of adding one to seven. 

In thinking about this, it causes me to think of the progression through sacred time not as a linear passage, but rather a helical one. As each day moves forward in time, we can imagine a vector shift that is forward and upward and turns an angle, so that by the time eight days have progressed, a full circle has been turned and the eighth is directly above the first. We have traced out seven days of the week, and then the significant addition of another day takes us to another Sunday, sitting vertically above the previous Sunday which is a pitch of the thread beneath it. So although it has the same name it is a new day and marks simultaneously the end of the last octave and the beginning of the next. This way by following the liturgical weekly cycle  we trace a holy spiral,upwards to heaven. All we have to do is participate in the liturgical life and we are transported along this path. 

Corbon describes how in the context of the year Easter is at the centre of the year. To emphasize its importance there are eight consecutive eighth days in the Octave of Easter (and Christmas). It is in effect a week of Sundays. Prior to Easter there are seven weeks of Lent (although it is actually a couple of days short of a complete seven) and afterwards there are the 50 days of Pentecost. He describes how the 50 days are seven weeks of seven days, 49 days in all, that are brought to completion by the addition of an eighth eighth day at the end. 

This pattern of seven being resolved finally in eight is present within the structure of each day also. Quoting Psalm 118 in Chapter 16 of his Rule, St Benedict establishes the eight traditional Offices (seven daytime and one night time) and their hours in the Divine Office: ‘ “Seven times in the day,” says the Prophet, “I have rendered praise to You” (Ps. 118[119]:164). Now that the sacred number of seven will be fulfilled by us if we perform the Offices of our service at the time of the Morning Office, of Prime, of Terce, of Sext, of None,of Vespers and of Compline,since it was of these day Hours that he said,”Seven times in the day I have rendered praise to You” (Ps. 118[119]:164). For as to the Night Office the same Prophet says,”In the middle of the night I arose to glorify You” (Ps. 118[119]:62). Let us therefore bring our tribute of praise to our Creator ” for the judgments of His justice” at these times:the Morning Office, Prime, Terce,Sext, None,Vespers and Compline; and in the night let us arise to glorify Him.’ 

This means that the prayer of the Church, which is the prayer of Christ himself, ushers the world forward on a path of redemption through sacred time that is a triple helix. The tight daily helix spirals its way on the weekly helix, which in turn sits on a giant helix which rotates once in a year. 

Speaking in a sermon for Low Sunday, which is reproduced in the Office of Readings for that day, eight days after Easter, Augustine refers to how the Octave was anticipated in Old Testament: ‘This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the same body, but it was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he consecrated Sunday, or the Lord’s day. Though the third after his passion, this day is the eighth after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of the week.’ 

The psalms as we can see from the quotes of Benedict above, though placed in the Old Testament, anticipate the New also. This should be no surprise. For as St Thomas Aquinas tells us in his commentary on the psalms, this is a special book that contains all the content of theology: ‘The material is universal for while the particular books of the Canon of Scripture contain special materials, this book has the general material of Theology as a whole.’ Then in referring to their special place in the liturgy where they are to be sung he says: ‘This is what Dionysius [the Areopagite] says in Book 3 of the Celestial Hierarchy,the sacred scripture of the Divine Songs (Psalms) is intended to sing of all sacred and divine workings.’ 

This points to the psalms as a special source of wisdom, especially in the context of the liturgy. Given that the purpose of education is to instill wisdom, one wonders why more educational institutions do not have the liturgy of the hours, as well as Mass offered daily (as traditional universities used to). (I wrote about this value of psalms and the liturgy in education as a source of wisdom, here.) 

St Thomas goes on to explain in the same commentary that not only is the content containing all of theology but also the very structure of the book itself conforms to the symbolism of seven and eight: ‘The first distinction is that there are one hundred and fifty psalms; this is a mystery, because this number is composed of 70 and 80. By 7, from which 70 is named, the course of this time is signified, which is carried out in seven days; by 8, from which 80 is named, the state of the future life.   For the number eight according to the Gloss concerns those who rise from the dead; and it signifies that in this book there is a treatment of those things that pertain to the course of the present life, and to future glory. Again, by seven the old testament is signified. The fathers of the old testament observed that which is seventh: they observed the seventh day, the seventh week, the seventh month, and the seventh year of the seventh decade, which is called the Jubilee. By eight the new testament is signified: we celebrate the eighth day, namely the Lord’s Day, on account of the solemnity of the Lord’s resurrection; and in this book are contained the mysteries of the old and new testament.’ (The Gloss is the glossa ordinaria, a standard biblical commentary based upon comments of the Fathers, predominantly Jerome, Augustine, Bede and Gregory.)

I would add that this 7:8 structure seems to echo the lenten/pentecostal relationship that Corbon describes as well as the Old/New Testament convenantal relationship.

The proportion of this structure is appropriate to the book of psalms, relating as it does to the old and new covenant, and this lends a greater beauty to the book as a whole. We respond to this intuitively as we read it, and so the structure of it aids our understanding. Just as God offers wisdom through this book in a pattern appropriate to it, so we are made by Him so that this is how we naturally desire to take it in, and we respond to the beauty of it. When this is presented in its appropriate context, in the liturgy, which itself conforms to these patterns, the power is multiplied. 

If we talk of octaves in casual conversation, most people will assume we are talking about music and of course we find that the beautiful patterns of harmony in music correspond to this also. The musical scale is seven notes, and the eighth is higher still, simultaneously the last note of the previous octave and the first of the next. What is extraordinary is that the peculiarly human apprehension of this progression hears this eighth note as one that is at a higher pitch, yet of the same quality – for example a high and low C. One might think of this, perhaps, as a musical representation of Easter Sunday and Low Sunday!

How does this relate to design? Because number can be used to order man’s activity in time and space, potentially all human activity can be made to conform to this liturgical beauty. The symbolism of eight and seven is only one pair of examples that could govern it. So we could use eight sided geometric shapes to indicate this. Within music, harmonious relationships can be described numerically a different way by consideration of the relative lengths of pieces of string (or lengths of pitch pipe) that produce particular notes when plucked (or blown). To describe the interval of an octave you would have one string twice the length of another, so this means that the ratio 1:2 is another way of showing the harmony of an octave. You could have a picture, for example bounded by a rectangle, with one side twice the length of another. As many will know, the other fundamental music harmonies contained within the octave, the fourth and the fifth produce ratios of 3:4 and 2:3. So a simple design for a church with ratio 1:2:3 for the main structure of it, invokes the whole liturgical logic that lies behind it. There are many more proportions in the tradition beside these, but all point to and are derived from this liturgical principle. 

Man is made for liturgy, and it is liturgical man that is responding when we hear the beauty or the harmony in music or in the natural world, for these relationships echo the patterns of the liturgy and of heaven. The music to which the psalms are applied itself follows these patterns too through the intervals that it describes in the various modes.

As we know St Augustine said that he who chants his prayers prays twice. In reality, I would say, it is even more than that: a common pattern of beauty runs through the structure of the liturgy (daily, weekly, seasonal and annual), the text of the psalms and the music to which they are applied, and ideally even the church building in which we sing them.

What might seem at first the ordinary act of chanting a psalm to its simple tone while marking the Hour, is in fact invoking a whole host of intertwining harmonious relationships. We hear only one note at a time; yet it speak to us of something that is dazzling in its beauty and complexity. The wonder of all of this is that God made us all so that we can grasp this effortlessly: each hears monophony and apprehends symphony.

Below: the musical harmonies appear in the design of Attingham House, in Shropshire. The design of the house is simple – not much more than a square box with a Palladian/faux Roman portico stuck onto the front. It’s beauty is derived from the harmonious proportions in the stories going upwards, indicated by differing window size. They are two, four and six window panes high respectively, corresponding to the proportion 1:2:3. This is based upon the musical harmonies of the octave and perfect fifth respectively. This is not a sacred building, but it demonstrates how any house (it needn’t be as large or grand as this) can be a subliminal signpost to the liturgy.

Learn the Academic Method and Earn College Credit Whatever your preferred style of art, I always feel, if you are an artist who seeks to create beautiful work you must learn to draw. Drawing is the core discipline, the musical scale, of visual art and if an artist cannot draw then any correspondence of his art to his original idea is just a rare and lucky accident. I am approached all the time by people who wish to learn to paint icons and usually my first piece of advice is to learn to draw as well as studying the tradition you are interested in.

The best training I know is the academic method which is a systematic method of training hand and eye that was developed by Masters such as Leonardo and Michelangelo. I did a summer school in Florence in this style and in just two weeks my drawing ability improved by orders of magnitude (and I thought I was pretty good at art before I went!). You will produce a drawing of a cast in charcoal – I did the cast drawing you see left at the same atelier in my first month of full-time study there. My icon painting teacher encouraged me to go and as a result the quality of my icon painting improved dramatically as well. If you don’t like what I do now, all I can say is that you would have hated what I used to do before I studied in Florence!

Thomas More College of Liberal Arts has teamed up with the internationally known Ingbretson Studios, based in Manchester, NH to offer summer school. As well as the art instruction there is a program of lectures and museum visits that focus on an deeper understanding of the Western naturalistic tradition. At the end of the two week course I will give talks that place this in the context of a Catholic worldview.

Ingbretson Studios is run by Paul Ingbretson, who is one of the leading exponents of the academic style of painting around today and a Master of the Boston School (the father of the Boston School is the great American artist John Singer Sargent). One of his star former pupils is Henry Wingate, who residents of Front Royal, Virginia will know well and whose work I have featured in the past (it is his portrait that is in the poster below; I have also posted his Sacred Heart). Within 15 minutes of the TMC campus, Paul’s workshop has become a little epicentre of Catholic naturalistic artists. I know of four serious students at least who have begun long term study there as a result of recommendations from myself or Henry. Thomas More College students also go there for a weekly evening class during the semester.

For information on the summer school, go to the Thomas More College website here. For insight into what Masters in this style can produce today look at the work of Henry Wingate, here (I have also posted his Sacred Heart below); or one of my teachers in Florence at the Cecil Studios Matt Collins, who comes out of the same Boston line. His Christ Carrying the Cross is below.

Here are some photos of Br Tyler Tracey’s entrance into the Novitiate of the Fraternity of St Philip Neri at the Basilica of Ss Peter and Paul, Lewiston, Maine. This is an Oratory in Formation founded just last August and Br Tyler is their first novice. So it is a young community just beginning to establish itself and making a great start. There are three priests. I attended the ceremony which was last Friday afternoon and which was followed by Vespers and Benediction. I was especially glad to be able to make it as Br Tyler is a former student of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and I know him well. I have additional personal reasons for wanting to support this new community and that is that my experiences of the liturgy of the London Oratory was so influential in my conversion and my continued contact with the London Oratory and with the Birmingham Oratory has been so nourishing for my faith. Both are churches where the liturgy reduced me to tears…for the right reasons!

Mgr Caron, the superior of the community described proceedings as follows: ‘On Friday, May 3, at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston, Bro. Tyler Tracey was admitted as a member of the Fraternity of St. Philip Neri for the probationary period of one year in the course of a rite which was taken in part from the one prepared by Blessed John Henry Newman for the Birmingham Oratory.  It begins with singing the hymn to the Holy Spirit, Veni Creator. The postulant is questioned as to his desire to live according to the Oratorian charism, and all pray for him using the Litany of St. Philip, composed by Blessed JH Newman. After publicly stating his intention to life according to the statutes of the Fraternity for the coming year, he is given the habit of the community. Each member of the community offers him a fraternal sign of peace, and all venerate the relic of our holy father St. Philip. 

Last week I featured the first work produced by my students at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in their sacred geometry class. They did eight sided figures based upon an Islamic design. Just in case anyone has been wondering if this is an over adventurous pushing back the envelope of what appropriate in the context of sacred illumination, I thought that it would be interesting to show these images that I discovered on the British Library website (which is wonderful resource for images of ancient manuscripts). These are from a 14th century Palestinian gospel of St Luke.

I have no additional information as to why this particular design was chosen. All I can say is that I would have been very happy to see this in my bible because of the four-fold and eight-fold symmetry that exists in this. Four symbolises the world and four gospels were chosen by the Church so that the Word was carried to the four corners of the world by the four evangelists, each evangelists is symbolised by the four figures described as sitting around the throne of Christ in the book of the Apocalypse.

Regular readers will be familiar also with the symbolism of eight: it corresponds to the eighth day of Creation that ushers in the new covenant: the incarnation, death, resurrection of Christ. Sunday is the eighth day of the week. In the basic repeat unit, which is repeated like floor tiles, we have, geometrically portrayed, four versions of the Word in the gospels (four small octagons) spinning out of one large one, the Creator himself, enthroned and in glory. Pictorially, this would be Christ in Majesty surrounded by the Angel, the Lion, the Ox, and the Eagle. When you have four of the repeat units combined, there is long-range order which has a fourfold symmetry in which four large octagons surround the central, which is the broad design of this ‘carpet page’. There is a beautiful harmony to this, and it seems to me to reinforce the superabundant truth of Eucharist: that through the propagation of his gospel in a literary description of his life, Christ in Majesty is really made present in the world in the liturgy of His Holy Church.

I repeat, this is my personal reaction to this design, a meditation upon what I am seeing, so I could be reading more into this than the artist intended. However, as an artist, I would happily reproduce this design with the intention of incorporating this symbolism into my work. There is such a beautiful harmony to it, it seems.

Images: below the images of the 14th century gospel, I have given the Thomas More College, Christ in Majesty to illustrate the point, painted by myself.

The rich artistic fruit of the spirituality of charity and poverty. Following the excellent feature introduced by Shawn Tribe – the Sacred Liturgy and the Apostolate - on how liturgy is the ‘indespensable’ source of momentum for increased charity and social and cultural regeneration; and my own piece Should We Sell All the Art in the Vatican and Give the Money to the Poor?, I thought that I would explore a little further the part that sacred art and the beautiful decoration of our churches has to play in this. St Francis of Assisi is the figure to whom are encouraged to look in this regard, so perhaps the easiest way to think about this is to consider the effect he had in his day.

Here are some examples of geometric art produced by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts. They are their first projects for my Way of Beauty class. They were asked to produce an octagonal tile pattern that was based on a traditional Islamic design. I asked them to design the corners and the border and decide on the colour scheme. I encouraged them to use as few colours as possible, using only what was required to give contrast and allow clarity of design. I also insisted on the shape being described by a continuous piece of tape which wove an over under pattern. The colouring was deliberately muted and downplayed as this allows for less clashes of colour. On the whole, I prefer to use natural, earth colours for the same reason. These are difficult to get in the sort of coloured pencil sets that most of our students have, which tend to have very bright, artificial looking colours. If they used these alone then the result would look something like a bad record cover from the 1960s. This might have sold music in 1967, but it won’t cut it in traditional design (if only our liturgy musician realised that the same is true for the style of folk music of period)…anyway, back to these design. To try to eliminate the impression of psychedelic kitsch, they carefully built up the colour by overlaying it with lightly shaded layers of earth brown and grey pencil. Students are Isabelle Anderson, Theresa Scott and Katherine Blicharz.

In assessing these, remember that this is the very first project that I set them. They are intended as exercise before designing a church floor.

Holy cow! Its just like going for a walk in England! In my recent trip to California I decided to investigate the footpaths in the area. As usual, I tried to find the countryside that is the most beautiful – farmland –  and expected to be able to indulge in my favorite complaint: how all paths in the US are in specially created parks that aim to create the ‘wilderness’ experience, which means that you spend the whole day walking through forest, unable too anything further than the nearest tree trunk. To my surprise, I found that there are plenty of areas of beautifully farmed land to which the public has access.

In Britain, in common with most European countries, there is no wilderness left and the countryside is privately owned farmland. This doesn’t stop people being able to feel a connection with the land and enjoy it, however, for there is widespread public access to private land. It is the remnant of the traditional Catholic understanding of land as a ‘common good’. If you are surprised by this you can read about exactly how in an earlier article Farms, Country Walks, Private Property and the Common Good. I enjoy farmland because it is more beautiful than the wilderness, if farmed well. The New World obsession with the ‘wilderness experience’ as exposure to pristine beauty  (strongest of all in New Zealand in my experience) is a reflection of the New Age paganism, which sees man as an unnatural influence on a perfect Nature, rather than a positive influence that raises a fallen world up to something greater.

It is the same worldview that gives rise to the culture of death. When the activity of man is viewed as necessarily unnatural, then human activity is seen as something that should be limited. The easiest way to do so is to enforcing population control; and the obvious ways to achieve this are abortion and contraception.

As well as contributing to making my visit to the Bay Area very enjoyable, these parks are a small symbol of hope for me. I visited two areas. The first is called Briones Regional Park. I am always curious as to why we are allowed onto this land. This is preserved as pastureland because it is the watershed lands that fill the reservoirs that supply water to much of the region. The regional government that leases the land, as I understand it, insists also that there is public access. Trees would suck up too much water so the land is kept for pasture. It has been ranched for about 200 years (since the Spanish colonial days) and so the terrain has been formed by that. At this time of year there is a lot of rain and so everything is lush and green – even the locally produced descriptions remark on how like English countryside it looks. 

The second area is called Lucas Valley and it is in Marin County which is north of the Golden Gate bridge. Much of the valley is own by the film producer George Lucas, but I am told that the matching names are coincidence. What is interesting about this is that we have an arrangement forged between private landowners so that people can enjoy the scenery. I know this because at he beginning of the walk I saw the following notice (perhaps noblesse oblige isn’t dead after all!):

So here are some photos of the walk. First Briones Regional Park in the East Bay:

The second area is Lucas Valley.

In the height of spring both of these areas will be filled with wild flowers. It is a little early for the full display, but I took some snaps of some of those that I saw as well.

Taking place at Buckfast Abbey, a Benedictine monastery set in the beautiful Devon countryside, the Maryvale Institute has offering a short residential summer school that will take place in August and which offers you the chance to study Catholic traditions in art. Called Teaching the Catholic Faith Through Art it is held at Buckfast Abbey in Devon (there are more photos of the abbey in its setting at below). It is taught by Dr Caroline Farey and myself and those who attend have the option to deepen their studies afterwards by enrolling on the degree level diploma, Art, Inspiration and Beauty from a Catholic Perspective. The cost for the weekend including tuition and full board is just 275 GBP and the dates are August 15-18th.

Readers on this side of the pond who might feel that its too far to go need not be discouraged: as some of you will already know, this course is also offered in the US also. The residential weekend is in July at the Maryvale Center at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas. As well as this course about art theory, in Kansas they are offering a 5-day course in which students can learn to paint in the style of the illuminations of the English gothic psalters, such as the Westminster Psalter. Beginners and experienced artists welcome. Posters for all three are shown below, and from these you can get the contact details.

Below and top: Buckfast Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the Devon countryside.

I spent Easter Week in Berkeley, CA recently and so as I always try to do when visiting a town I went to visit the local art gallery. It is amazing what treasures even a local gallery can have sometimes. Berkeley is the home of hippies and is where the Sixties began, so I was ready also for plenty of whacky stuff. However, it is also the gallery of one of the most famous and wealthiest universities in the US which was founded well before this so hoped for at least something good. The website even mentioned that there was a Rubens in the collection.

It didn’t look to hopeful when we approached the gallery and the exterior looked like this…

There are some buildings that, like a pearl inside the oyster shell have beautiful interiors despite their exteriors. This wasn’t one of them. It was bare concrete on the outside and bare concrete on the inside. It really could have done with a few good pictures to spruce it up a bit. However, what we were presented with, for the most part, managed against all odds to make it even worse. The whole gallery was given over to an exhibition called ‘Silence’ which was based upon John Cage’s 1950s composition 4’33”. For those who don’t know this is a ‘composition’ in which the musicians sit in front of a blank score for this period of time and follow the instructions to do nothing, ie sit in silence.

As we progressed, it didn’t look too hopeful. For example there was I mime artist lying on the ground rolling around in slow motion. It wasn’t even interesting enough to affront. Not wanting to cause offence I just quietly walked past as though I hadn’t noticed he was there. Most of the rest of stuff is the sort of avant garde modernist stuff that I used to pretend to be interested in order to look arty. Isn’t all of this past it’s sell by date yet? The was some traditional art – this being the Bay Area lots of Buddhist art. I don’t remember any explicitly Christian art of course – they are liberal, but not that liberal. 

I was just beginning to wonder if the curator might have been better advised to have followed John Cage’s example and present us with  a series of empty rooms, when I turned the corner and saw a room of traditional Chinese landscapes on screens. 

The monochrome landscapes are worthy of study even by those who wish to work in the Western tradition. The skill in varying the focus, having some areas clearly defined and others hazy, yet maintaining a unified image is great.

What was interesting to me also was the fact that the reverse side of the big screen shown above had a geometric pattern on it, which could have come straight from a Romanesque tiles floor.

So while I can’t say that the exhibition is worth travelling a long way to see, these examples made it worthwhile crossing the town.