This afternoon I worked for two hours on the Tree of Life over at the church. I like the freedom I have to show up on a regular time during the day time. Out of the 2000 pages or so of Cycles A, B and C liturgical readings presently adhered to the trunk, branches and roots of the tree, I have perhaps 50 pages remaining. I am going to use those for detail work and embellishment as I carry on now with the painting. The work should go with ease now that this part of the process is completed.
I was blessed to have attended an exhibit of Gustav Klimt’s works at the National Art Gallery in 2001. It was the summer that I met my beautiful niece for the first time and my sister and this amazing babe came along to enjoy this ‘magical’ collection of works. Here, I include my program cover and a few notes from my journals.
National Art Gallery 2001
Although the exhibit included many of Klimt’s more well-known paintings, the Tree of Life was not in this collection. It WAS a huge exhibit though with a vast sampling of Klimt’s themes, including a single room filled to overflowing with his landscape paintings. Because, at home, I was busy painting a landscape exhibit for the commercial art galleries, I was left breathless by this work.
It’s interesting though, in the end, I was moved most by a painting titled Irrlichter (Will-o-the-Wisps) painted in 1903. The connected information is written here.
“This painting was last exhibited at the Klimt retrospective of 1903 and has only recently been rediscovered. In German folklore Irrlichter were the fabled inhabitants of moor and marsh. Toward the end of the 19th century, the figure was revived as an erotic subject in Symbolist literature, a representative soul of nature in an increasingly urbanized society. Here Klimt depicts the Irrlichter floating through dark, undulating streams of water or the cosmos as guardians of some mystical crystalline light source.” The painting was luminous!
In Klimt’s approach to the Tree of Life, three worlds surrounding humankind are connected; “those are The Underworld, The Earth, and The Heavens. Its roots are deep into the earth, probably signifying that for life to be sustained, Mother Nature must be involved. The roots then come up to the aboveground and meet into forming the tree’s trunk that is on the earth. The tree’s branches extent to the heavens, and have various type of fruits and flowers on them. These fruits symbolize that life can be born from the tree.”
A beautiful painting, it involves the gilded detailing of Klimt’s Art Nouveau period.
Many Christians are inspired, warmed and in some ways experience a sort of conversion by viewing these works of art. The paintings have become iconic in their interpretations and are known as some of the greatest religious paintings of the contemporary world. This is a convincing argument for art speaking for itself, without context. One can be completely ignorant of the antics and disturbing ‘reality’ of the artist in the day. There has been great speculation and discussion about the sincerity of his later conversion to the Catholic church (probably politically convenient for the time). There are detailed autobiographical records of Dali’s dreams and fantasies captured in Andre Parinaud’s book, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali. These are both spectacular and disturbing. After reading this book, it was difficult for me to ever look at these religious icons, however beautiful technically and symbolically, in the same way.
I think that the following series of films really do justice to the background on the work, Christ of St. John of the Cross. I hope that my readers will take the time to view these.
Progress is coming along as I have finished the application of Cycle B of the liturgical readings and have begun Cycle C. I will use this cycle of readings for the embellishments of the root system at the base of the tree and for the detailed branching reaching up and around the crowd of angels, created by my students two years ago. I am feeling happy that I will be painting into the piece after another three or so sessions of collage!
