SISTER WENDY'S




Story of Painting



 

SISTER WENDY BECKETT

(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

born 1930, South Africa

South African-born British nun, who appeared on a series of popular television shows and wrote a number of books as an art critic. Nicknamed the “Art Nun,” she offered eloquent and down-to-earth commentary that made art accessible to everyone.

While still a child, Beckett moved with her family to Scotland. From an early age she wanted to be a nun, and at age 16 she joined the Sisters of Notre Dame. In 1950 she enrolled at the University of Oxford, graduating (1954) with top honours in English. After attending a teacher's college in Liverpool, England, she returned to South Africa, where she taught for 15 years. Faced with poor health, Sister Wendy asked to pursue a life of solitude. Her request was granted, and in 1970 she moved back to England, settling on the grounds of the Carmelite monastery in Quidenham, Norfolk. There she lived in a house trailer with only the most basic amenities, working two hours a day.

In the mid-1980s Sister Wendy, who had long been interested in art, began writing essays for British journals, using only postcards and books as her primary reference material. In 1988 her first book, Contemporary Women Artists, was published. It was while attending an art exhibit that a film crew overheard her comments and asked to videotape her. The piece caught the eye of a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) producer, and in 1992 Sister Wendy's Odyssey made its debut. The series followed a simple format: Sister Wendy stood next to an artwork and gave her reaction to the piece. With humour and a gift for storytelling, she brought life and drama to the work. The series was a hit, and Sister Wendy, a habit-wearing consecrated virgin with a speech impediment, became the most unlikeliest of stars. Two other series on art, Sister Wendy's Grand Tour (1994) and Sister Wendy's Story of Painting (1997), appeared on the BBC and were soon shown throughout Europe.

In 1997 Sister Wendy's series debuted on public television in the United States. Four years later Sister Wendy's American Collection aired, profiling six notable American museums. In addition to her work on the small screen, Sister Wendy continued to write art books, including The Story of Painting (1994) and Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces (2000). Maintaining her vow of poverty, she donated all her earnings to the Carmelite order. In 2001 poor health and a desire to return to a life of solitude led Sister Wendy to announce that she was retiring from the public eye.

 

"The Story of Painting" by Sister Wendy Beckett

 

INTRODUCTION

 

PAINTING BEFORE GIOTTO

 

Our word "history" comes, by way of Latin, from the
Greek word historien, which means "to narrate", and that
word comes from another Greek word, histor, "a judge".
History not only tells a story, but it passes judgment on it,
puts it in order, and gives it meaning. The story of painting
is one that is immensely rich in meaning, yet its value is
all too often hidden from us by the complexities of its
historians. We must forget the densities of "history"
and simply surrender to the wonder of the story.
The preface to our story opens with the earliest examples
of Western painting, created by our first artistic ancestors:
Paleolithic man. From here to Giotto - with whom the
story really begins - we pass through the ancient worlds
of Egypt and Greece, the great Roman Empire, and the
early Christian and Byzantine worlds, and we close
with the magnificent illuminated manuscripts
 created by European monks during the Middle Ages.

 

The First Paintings
 

That art is truly our birthright can be seen from its ancient beginnings. It does not begin in history, but actually in prehistory, thousands of years ago. Our Paleolithic ancestors, living between 30,000 and 8,000 bc, were small, hairy, and unlettered, and even archaeology can say little about them with certainty. But one thing is radiantly clear, and that is that these Stone Age cave dwellers were artists, and not only artists in that they could describe in visual terms the animals with which they came into daily contact -such art may be no more than illustration. Cave painting is much more than this: it is art in the grand manner, great art, manifested in works of subtlety and power that have never been surpassed.

 

The paintings on the walls of the Altamira caves were the first to be discovered in modern times, in 1879. The caves are near Santander in northern Spain. The discovery had such fundamental implications for archaeology that it was at first dismissed as a forgery. This great bison is painted on the ceiling of a long, narrow corridor leading from a subterranean cave in Altamira. It does not stand alone. A whole herd surges majestically across the roof, one animal overlapping another - horses, boars, mammoths, and other creatures, all the desired quarry of the Stone Age huntsman. They assert a powerful animal presence, despite the confusion.
 

Bison from Altamira cave, c. 15,000-12,000 BC, 77 in (195 cm) (bison length only)
 

Cave painting technique

The caves are fully underground, and therefore permanently in darkness. Archaeologists have discovered that the artists painted with the aid of small stone lamps, filled with animal fat or marrow. The initial designs were engraved into the soft rock, or thin lines of paint were blown onto the wall through a hollow reed. To make colored paint, the artists used ochre, a natural mineral that could be crushed to a powder that would yield red, brown, and yellow pigments, while black may have been made from powdered charcoal. Powdered pigments were either rubbed onto the wall with the hands,producing very delicate gradations of tone akin to soft pastel painting, or mixed with some form of binding fluid, such as animal fat, and applied with crude reed or bristle brushes. The means were simple, yet the effect, especially in the strange silence of the cave, is overwhelming.

 

Significance of the cave paintings

It is thought that these paintings had some deep importance to prehistoric society. The bison seems to be almost quivering with power as it displays its massive chest, dense hindquarters, and short, thin legs. It brandishes an aggressive pair of horns. Was this animal sacred to some ritual? We may never know the true significance of the cave paintings, but they almost certainly served a ritualistic, even magical function. How much the art was produced for its own sake - and this cannot be entirely ruled out - will remain a mystery.

The extraordinary naturalism and anatomical accuracy in the portrayal of animals in these paintings is believed to be connected with the purpose they served. The artists were also hunters, and their lives depended on the animals whose images they painted in the caves. Is it possible that these hunter-artists believed that by accurately depicting the

animals' power, strength, and speed, they would acquire magical power? With this they might be able to take control of the animal's spirit and remove its strength before the hunt. Many of the paintings show the animals wounded or pierced with arrows, and some examples even show evidence of actual physical attacks on the painted image.

 

The naturalism with which animals are painted and drawn does not extend to the portrayal of humans - perhaps for this very reason. People are rarely represented, but when they are, it is by the crudest recognizably human shape, or more often by symbolic forms, as can be seen in the image of the prostrate man in this startling painting, which dates from between 15,000 and 10,000 bc. It is in the most celebrated of all the sites of ancient cave paintings: the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne, France. The sticklike man is lying in front of a bristling, disemboweled bison. Below him is a figure that looks as if it could be a bird, or possibly a totem or banner displaying an image of a bird. The painting has an awesome power: we have to confess our ignorance of its meaning, yet this lack of knowledge does not affect our response - unless, indeed, it deepens it. In this alone, prehistoric art is representative of all art to follow.

Wounded bison attacking a man, detail from cave painting at Lascaux, France, c. 15,000-10,000 BC, 43 in (110 cm) (bison length only)