Wednesday 5 November 2008

Art and theology with Edward Knippers

The series on the paintings of Edward Knippers is now underway over at Theology Forum (including my own post), with plenty of nice pictures to look at. Here are the links so far, with a brief excerpt from each post:

First, Edward Knippers discusses his own work in relation to a theology of incarnation and embodiment: “I hope that my cubist-type language suggests a multi-dimensional world quite different from our own as it keeps the eyes in constant motion through transparent overlappings. I have tried to use this visual metaphor to hint at the movement behind the veil – to uphold the truth that for those in Christ there is glory beyond the edges of our comprehension.”

Next, Fred Sanders discusses the visual language of Knippers’ work: “Up close, a Knippers painting is a revelation: in your space, in your face, confrontational and aggressive. His pinkish giants don’t stay in a polite middle distance in his images, but crowd the foreground. A room with three or four of them in it feels more like a wrestling arena than an art gallery.”

Then I discuss representations of resurrection in Knippers’ paintings: “Above Lazarus stands the figure of Christ, with hands spread out in a gesture of creation, of forming. It is Christ who dissolves the formlessness of death, and brings forth the new form of sheer uncontainable life. The creative presence of Christ fractures and disrupts the world’s material order, bursting it open and reassembling it, wholly interpenetrating it with the flash and flame of God’s own life.”

Then David Buschart discusses physicality in Knippers’ work: “By omitting dress, Knippers deftly brokers the challenge of both universality and particularity, for the absence of dress in his human figures removes an excuse for someone to hold the images at a distance, and yet these are particular people.”

And finally, Edward Knippers responds to the posts.

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