The Command to Rebuild the Temple

The ‘empty hand’ in Paul Neagu’s sculpture is a wooden construction, composed of small box-like cells, joined together using metal wire, and suspended in a solid wooden frame. Some of these cells are connected in rows, evoking pigeonholes stacked up together in a post room. Weighing less than a kilogram, the sculpture is scaled close to the size of a human hand.

The way this hand has been mapped out using these box-like structures is typical of many of the sculptures, drawings, and paintings that the Romanian-born artist made from the late 1960s onwards—of ‘cellular’ hands, faces, and bodies, divided up into interchangeable compartments. And these images match Neagu’s wider philosophical vision. Drawing on sources as remarkable as mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and Russian philosopher Pyotr Ouspenskii (1878–1947), Neagu articulated an understanding of reality according to which everything is interconnected: the part in the whole, and the whole in the part (Neagu 1974: 18). He was captivated by the idea that the human body with its interconnected cells is a microcosm, or miniature, of much bigger systems like human society, or even the universe (Radu 2022).

In Haggai 1, the prophet addresses the failure of YHWH’s people to rebuild his house following their return to Jerusalem from exile. The image of an empty hand carries connotations of loss and lack, and Neagu’s sculpture resonates with the losses of the Lord’s people in verses 4–6. These, having neglected the Lord’s house, find themselves having ‘sown much and harvested little’; they have eaten and drunk, while never feeling sated.

In the same passage, the prophet calls the people to ‘consider their ways’ (vv. 5, 7). Something is amiss; the people do not honour YHWH in the appropriate way (Foster 2020: 26–27). Neagu’s sculpture, which gestures to the interconnectedness of all things, helps the reader consider just how much these people must have lost their way, if the work of their hands—sowing, reaping, clothing, and feeding themselves—leaves them out of harmony with the world around them.

References

Foster, Robert L. 2020. The Theology of the Books of Haggai and Zechariah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Neagu, Paul. 1974. Generative Art Group [G.A.G.], available at https://paulneagu.com/instal/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GAG.pdf [accessed 22 October 2024]

Radu, Magda. 2024. ‘Paul Neagu: A Palpable Philosophy, August 2022’, www.independenthq.com [accessed 22 October 2024]

Phyllida Barlow’s work untitled: slidingupturnedhouse rises from the ground diagonally, up through a pillar constructed from plywood, and bearing a few sweeping paint marks. On top of the pillar sits a wooden ‘house’. The surface of the pillar has a very sharp incline, however, so that when viewers walk around the sculpture, they will see how the house finds itself precariously balanced. It looks as though it is about to fall off its support.

The house itself is covered in paint marks of different colours. It is boxy in character and is sandwiched between flat slats of wood, which are likewise teetering in different directions, pulling away from each other due to the sloping surface at the centre of the work.

Barlow has written about the ‘unforgiving’ nature of sculpture: how a sculpted work is not merely an image of something else, but has its own ‘reality’. Sculptures ‘demand space’ in terms of where they can be placed, and the way they perform and express themselves in that space (Barlow & Fecteau: 2013–14). In the case of untitled: slidingupturnedhouse, the viewer might remark that the dynamic of precariousness that it produces—the way it looks as if it will fall—is unsettling. If the work evokes a house, then surely no house could function if it were so constructed?

In Haggai 1, much of the action—both human and divine—revolves around precarious, unsettled, dwelling places. The ruins of the destroyed Temple, which was the house of God, act as a prompt for YHWH to demand action from his people. It lies there broken while they ‘busy themselves’ with their own houses. YHWH will bring drought to the land of his people, destabilizing their way of life, ‘blowing away’ the little they are able to bring home, until they get to work on rebuilding it.

References

Barlow, Phyllida and Vincent Fecteau. 2013–14. ‘Phyllida Barlow and Vincent Fecteau’, BOMB 126: 48–57

Paul Neagu’s Full Hand acts as a contrasting companion to his work Empty Hand. In this second sculpture, a large yet life-size hand composed of wooden cells is again encased in a sturdy wooden frame, except in this instance the cells are full blocks, as opposed to the hollow compartments of Empty Hand. The dark wood of the sculpture is grainy, and the work features some rough, uneven edges and exposed string. Each segment or cell of the hand is marked by a raised wedge, presenting an uneven surface texture.

On the human body, the hand is the part most associated with the sensation of touch, as well as with actions of shaping, moulding, working, and creating. And it was Neagu’s intent that his art should not merely be looked at, but should be open to active exploration by all of the human senses. In his ‘Palpable Art Manifesto’, released in 1969 alongside an exhibition of his work in Edinburgh, he asserted that the eye was surely losing its major role in responding to art and beauty in the world. The eye is ‘fatigued, perverted, shallow’, he wrote—its culture is ‘degraded’; it has been ‘seduced by photography, film, and television’ (Neagu 1969).

Given this ‘seduction’ and distraction of the eye, Neagu called for a reorientation of art away from a strictly visual emphasis and towards being ‘palpable’ and tangible instead. This is at the same time a call for art to be better and more fully integrated into social and cultural life.

In the text of Haggai 1, the prophet tells the people that they have busied themselves with their own concerns and turned fruitlessly away from the task of rebuilding the house of the Lord. A reorientation of their hearts and actions is needed. After YHWH declares to his people ‘I am with you’ (vv.12–13), the spirit of the people is stirred, and they go to work on the Temple. Their attention is drawn back to their God.

Neagu’s tactile sculpture prompts the reader to consider what it means to put one’s hands to work for a greater purpose, and to find them full.

References

Clayton, Eleanor. 2015. ‘Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture: Leeds’, The Burlington Magazine, 157.1352: 803–04

Neagu, Paul. 1969. ‘Palpable Art Manifesto!’, available at https://www.demarco-archive.ac.uk/assets/4631-p1969_document_page_14_palpable_art_manifesto_by_paul_neagup/lightbox  [accessed 22 October 2024)

‘Paul Neagu interviewed by Mel Gooding, for the National Life Stories project Artists’ Lives’, 1994–95, British Library Sound & Moving Image reference, C466/27