When a painter chooses stained glass
Recently Westminster Abbey got a new window. You could see these pictures in media: grim and dark gothic walls, complex stained glass windows and proud David Hockney in front of his new creation: bright and happy, made in his signature childish style. The Queen’s Window was designed on iPad and apparently it “reflects the Queen as a countrywoman and her widespread delight in, and yearning for, the countryside”.
London is no stranger to eclectic, one would even say that mixing old and new is one of its main features. However, in this case, the combination doesn’t even look this controversial. Perhaps because in truth what we really want from the stained windows is the magic of dazzling light, the feeling of being inside a kaleidoscope and not the images themselves. After all, if you ever visited Sainte-Chapelle you surely remember the feeling, you’re probably quite certain about the color palette but what was pictured on these windows? Was it people or just some ornament? I personally have no idea.
Anyway, I decided to check which other relatively recent artists left their mark on the christian stained glass world. I started with the obvious: Pre Raphaelites. They loved religious plots, engaged in decorative art and enjoyed the mystery. Stained glass got to be an inevitable choice for at least one of them. And indeed, Edward Burne-Jones as a part of Morris&Сo designed a number of medieval-inspired stained glass pieces. His works are classically beautiful, human figures are very detailed and large enough to be easily recognizable. Every fabric fold, every face feature is carefully worked through. It’s really more like paintings placed on the glass surface.
Another artist who worked with stained glass while keeping mostly figurative style is Marc Chagall. For me, it was quite surprising, given the fact that most of Chagall paintings feature lots of wavy diffused lines, uncertain shapes and soft color transitions. His stained glass works maintain the same color scheme but look very different. Full of extremely emotional, even disturbing figures and rapid contrasts, they make you feel and doubt and question instead of simply enjoying the view. The medium is chosen perfectly: natural light brightens the color to the maximum, creating an even more expressive view.
What about non-figurative art? One of the most interesting examples can be found on the French Riviera. After being diagnosed with cancer, Henri Matisse underwent surgery which was successful but led to a long and painful recovery. During this period he developed a close friendship with a young nursing student, Monique Bourgeois. After she left the position to become a nun Bourgeois continued to visit Matisse and convinced him to help with the design of a chapel for the Dominican convent in Vence. It took Matiss about 4 years to finish this project but he was proud with the result. Matiss Chapelle looks somewhat offbeat for a Catholic church but at the same time, it feels very light and peaceful. All the colors have their meaning: yellow stands for the sun, green for the vegetation, blue for the Mediterranean sea, the sky and the Madonna.
Sometimes the absence of the work may be more interesting than its existence. So, for example, Etsy is full of Mondrian-like and Picasso-like stained glass, but neither of these artists used stained glass as a medium. Moreover, Picasso was very disappointed when he heard about Matisse working on a chapel — as a firm atheist and a communist supporter he found it absolutely wrong in terms of ideology. As for Mondrian, there is no common opinion but some say that he just didn’t like what light does to color. And if you look at his famous solid rectangles of primary colors, it makes sense. Meanwhile, one can find stained glass by Theo van Doesburg which looks somewhat similar to what Mondrian could have done (see). But the two artists had a lot of disagreements about the principles of Neo-plasticism exactly because van Doesburg was always looking for more movement, more variety while Mondrian insisted on keeping it strict and pure.
Getting back to figurative art, it’s important to mention Kehinde Wiley, an artist who has lately become known as the creator of the official portrait of Barack Obama. His stained glass works are a part of a larger project where he uses existing Western European masterpieces but fills them with the figures of modern-day black people. Wiley called it an “intervention”. The Renaissance art was incredibly beautiful and even if originally it didn’t feature people of color, it doesn’t mean it should stay this way forever.
