Get Wisdom

Founded around 1213 and consecrated in 1306, the Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam has undergone many changes to its appearance throughout its existence. Most dramatically, during the iconoclastic fury of 1566, statues were removed or demolished and frescoes were overpainted.

Seeing the Oude Kerk as it appears today, ‘empty’ and devoid of decorations, contemporary Italian artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò (b.1979), accustomed to Catholic church interiors, could hardly believe it was still functioning as a living place of worship. Between 25 May and 23 September 2018, he created an installation alluding to the once-present images in the building. Titled Anastasis (Greek for ‘resurrection’), his work sought to explore what the effect of the return of these lost images (as though ‘from the dead’) would be (Oude Kerk 2018).

Anastasis was a temporary exhibition, in which all of the church windows were covered with red foil, and following which a semi-permanent installation in the Holy Sepulchre chapel replaced the clear window glass with coloured red glass. This chapel once housed a sculpture of the Entombment under its baldachin: a reminder of Christ’s Passion and of the blood shed on the cross. Calò’s red light alludes to this sculpture’s ‘presence’: once physical, now virtual in the eucharistic rituals which continue in the church.

The red light also evokes a photographer’s developing room, in the phase where captured images have not yet appeared on paper. Such images are as ‘in between’ as they are in the Oude Kerk: present and not present at the same time. In fact, during the exhibition period, the church literally functioned as a developing room for photographic prints Calò made of the only surviving pre-Reformation stained-glass window (Oude Kerk 2018).

Proverbs does not refer to particular nations or faith communities. There is a universalism to its use of light as a metaphor for developing wisdom (‘the course of the righteous is like morning light, growing brighter till it is broad day’; v.18).

Though its title draws from Greek Orthodoxy, Anastasis reflects this universalism, as ‘resurrection’ is translated into a more general visual language of light. By changing the light, Calò encouraged visitors of all backgrounds, whatever their particular experiences and quests, to transform their perceptions of what was in front of them (and what was once there but no longer). To see things in a different light.

References

Oude Kerk. 2018. ‘Giorgio Andreotta Calò–Anastasis’, www.oudekerk.nl, available at https://oudekerk.nl/en/programma/giorgio-andreotta-calo/ [accessed 25 January 2020]

In the nineteenth century, barn services were a frequent phenomenon in the Dutch countryside. Taking place in either the barn or another part of a farm building, the painter Hendrik Valkenburg (1826–96) harboured a longstanding wish to paint one.

It is likely that the group we see gathered in Edifying Hour in the Achterhoek is listening to a practitioner, who, walking a separate path from the official Protestant church, had a strict focus on—and an exemplary knowledge of—the Word (Kootte 2019). The practitioner is the Christian embodiment of the first verses of Proverbs 4, demanding attention for his teachings: ‘Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight; for I give you good precepts: do not forsake my teaching’ (vv.1–2).

Traditional settings for worship (framed by solemn but grand church architecture) have been replaced here by what seems to be the kitchen area in a modest farm house, with hay on the floor and smells that can only be imagined. Several elderly and young mothers are seated, while other participants in this service are standing at the back or leaning on the furnace. Instead of a psalm board (frequently hung at the front of a church to display the psalms that would be sung or recited by the congregation), a similarly shaped wooden board with a display of spoons hangs on the wall, underscoring the homely character of this scene.

One of this work’s concerns is the honouring of tradition, and a very particular idea of what this tradition entails is evident here. For this particular religious congregation, it means valuing the fundamental role of Scripture in their lives.

It may seem remarkable, then, that the painting won a gold medal in that showcase of progress, the World Exhibition of 1883 in Amsterdam. At such exhibitions, participating nations tended to display their most state-of-the-art technology and their most innovative art and design. At the Amsterdam World Exhibition, the Netherlands presented amongst other things this prize-winning painting, and it was immediately sold to a collector.

Whereas elsewhere in Europe, and particularly in France, the Impressionist style of painting was trending, this work embodies a wholehearted appreciation of a distinctly traditional approach to Protestantism. In the context of an international occasion of nationalist display, the Dutch publicly self-identified with a God-fearing, instruction-taking group of people—like the addressees of Proverbs 4.

References

Kootte, Tanja. 2019. ‘Een Stichtelijk Uurtje, 6 January 2019’, www.artway.eu [accessed 24 January 2020]

In Australian Aboriginal culture, to explore and know the land and its history is also to know oneself, one’s community, and its resources (Morphy & Carty 2015: 45–6). Purposeful movement is an important element in this active relationship, requiring both expertise and care for the pluriform layers of historical, natural, and spiritual meaning in walked landscapes. This embodied approach to knowledge of oneself and one’s surroundings is passed on from one generation to the next.

Such an approach is also reflected in the final verses of Proverbs 4.

Although the text’s fatherly advice is not addressed to daughters, women feature at various moments in Proverbs. Chapter 4 mentions the father’s mother (v.3) and includes the metaphorical figure of Wisdom as a woman (vv.6–9).

And this painting by Doreen Reid Nakamarra evokes the paths taken by ancestral women to a significant sacred site (Marrapinti Rock Hole), where they would camp. Its visual texture and the delicacy of its shading give it a radiant quality. In this way it reinforces the experiential and spiritual aspects of the women’s journey, which only emerge as experience and wisdom grow.

Wisdom ultimately resides in the heart, as Proverbs 4 states several times (vv.4, 21, 23). For the ancient communities who compiled Proverbs, the heart was regarded as the seat of intelligence and will, rather than of emotion (Whybray 1972: 33; Hunter 2006: 87–8). But (I would argue) for those who travel in the spirit of Reid Nakamarra’s women, the heart is an effective compass because it is a site of both intelligence and intuition.

Reid Nakamarra’s painting not only reflects the travels of the ancestral women, but also their remembrance and thus the significance of oral traditions and rites of passage through which knowledge (wisdom) is gained. The story of the painting belongs to Reid Nakamarra’s husband’s people, which Reid Nakamarra was only allowed to paint after she had been part of the community for a certain length of time (Cirigliano 2017). Wisdom requires growth over time. It is only with age and embodied experience that one is able to follow in ancestral footsteps (Morphy 2013: 100). The instruction ‘Look out for the path that your feet must take, and your ways will be secure’ (Proverbs 4:26) resonates here.

This artwork, like the book of Proverbs, illuminates our place on the bridge between ancestral pasts and spiritual presents.

References

Cirigliano II, Michael. 2017. ‘Curator Conversations: Exploring Contemporary Aboriginal Art with Maia Nuku’, 25 October 2017’, www.metmuseum.org [accessed 25 January 2020]

Hunter, Alastair. 2006. Wisdom Literature (London: SCM Press)

Morphy, Howard. 2013 [1998]. Aboriginal Art (London: Phaidon)

Morphy, Howard, and John Carty. 2015. ‘Understanding Country’, in Indigenous Australia, Enduring Civilisation (London: The British Museum), pp. 20–119.

Whybray, Roger Norman. 1972. The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible: The Book of Proverbs (London: Cambridge University Press)