The cross over the city
Michael Edmonds (1926- )

Polyester, brass and mosaic, relief panel

1962

Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, No.10

Commentary by Francis Hoyland

A late painting by the pioneering abstract artist Mondrian is called 'Broadway boogie-woogie'. It is a kinetic piece in which little coloured squares seem to jump about because the prismatic colours he used appear to interchange with one another.

The painting is about traffic in New York and boogie-woogie. In fact he exploited the way that the eye works and tires. Bridget Riley has made a lot of paintings which make use of the same process.

Although the units from which Michael Edmunds' piece is composed do not leap about like this, the procession of small coloured squares up the centre of the Cross do suggest lines of traffic which I read as ascending on the left and descending on the right.

The units of the Cross suggest a crossroad, and here it is worth remembering that one often sees a crucifix at cross roads in catholic countries.

The horizontal red units probably stand for houses, all identical and neatly lined up: and the gold? Perhaps this is there to tell us that even in a city, Grace can reach us, and even there are the everlasting arms.

The units from which the piece is composed are impersonal and suggest the depersonalisation of much of modern life as does the abstract idiom used by the artist.

The art of looking at works of this kind is to try to share the thought of the artist and to consider why he or she has used the materials that they have.

All visual art is made from materials that are quite distinct from what is depicted. An apple is not paint, paint is not an apple and so on, but figurative painting does have a direct relation to what we see.

The painted apple does look like an apple and for this to happen we must learn to draw, which is an activity that seems to carry its own reward for as we draw we see and feel more than before.

The conceptual artist asks us to share his or her thought - not his or her more primitive sensations of 'thereness', weight and space. Figurative art has a direct link with ice age art and I do not think this link will be broken.

But here we have another art form, it is a distinct activity. There is a sense in which all visual art is a metaphor - the image is not the thing depicted.

So in order to succeed an artist has to reach a deep level where his subject matter, his thought, his feelings and his materials are sensed to be interconnected or as a Christian artist would say, all are held in existence by the intention of Almighty God who 'made all things at night.'

When this deep existence is understood in some way the work will become beautiful since God is beauty, so it is fair to expect art to be beautiful.