Where can you find an angel? With this question, the curators of the National Gallery in London, invited viewers to join an unusual treasure hunt, The Angel Trail. Until you really begin to look, it’s surprising just how often angels appear in Renaissance and Baroque artworks. As if these great religious dramas, depicted with such care and ingenuity, required angels to add a final touch of otherworldly fairy dust, beside serving their more immediate roles as witnesses, messengers, soldiers, and musicians. Most angels are depicted as beautiful, youthful figures with long shapeless gowns and bright multi-coloured wings, as in the painting below by Fra Angelico. Here the supernatural messenger, Gabriel informs Mary she is pregnant and will soon give birth to Jesus. Both angel and woman are illuminated with halos, as well as being framed in arches of the arcade, while their forward-leaning bodies and crossed arms mirror one another.

Angels can be solitary or can appear in great crowds or hosts, as in the painting by Francesco Botticini, which shows the nine ranks of angels welcoming the Virgin Mary on her ascent into the dome of heaven.

Could we extend the Angel Trail, the treasure hunt for angels, out of the art gallery and into our own communities? Where then we might we encounter angels or representations of angels? At a recent Talking about Art session, I asked this question, and the first suggestion was in a cemetery. Others suggested in stained glass windows, in the decorations in or on a church. The word decoration made someone think of a Christmas tree or a window display in a store. Many suggestions came all at once: TV shows, fashion shows (Victoria Secret), greeting cards.

What is the world’s largest angel statue and also its smallest? Antony Gormley is a sculptor famous for creating life-size body casts of himself and placing them as silent watchers at unexpected points throughout a city, often perched on high buildings, looking down in angelic fashion. It’s fitting that Gormley should have created the world’s largest angel, the Angel of the North in Gateshead, northern England. The red steel angel measures 20 metres tall, and 55 metres across (half the length of a football field). It looks a bit like a human form with airplane wings, though a friend mentioned the statuette for the Oscars. I prefer the study shown below to the monumental outdoor figure.

The hood ornament designed for Rolls Royce may not represent an angel exactly, though the outstretched arms and billowing cape strongly resemble wings. What I like about the figure is that it’s not a stationary statue but a figure seen from a moving car. In stories, angels often appear to needy or deserving individuals, but here they appear for the gratification of wealthy sport car enthusiasts, which demonstrates that everyone, even the rich and pampered, can use an angel. Here are a few more samples, showing the versatility and popularity of angels.

Two major themes of our Art Talks have been: 1) the transition from religious art to secular art as we move from the Renaissance into the present, and 2) the interaction between Fine Art and popular culture. When we take angels out of a church and place them in a Las Vegas hotel (good luck with your gambling) or on a runway (out of this world beauty) or baseball field (angels are rather playful, aren’t they?) this transition from sacred to secular becomes clear.

Where do we find angels in the Bible? Angels often appear in Bible stories that involve turning points in human history. Angels also appear before notable characters whose lives are about to dramatically change. Here are a few samples that readily come to mind:

These are all from the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the most familiar angel story may be the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary announcing the birth of Jesus.

Leonardo’s angel in a cave is not a story that appears in the Bible. It’s an apocryphal tale of the rescue of the infants Jesus and John the Baptist from the massacre of the innocents. The angel has brought this holy group to a secure hideout in the mountains. The setting adds mystery to the scene and reflects Leonardo’s love for the mountainous landscapes of northern Italy, where he grew up. Among Leonardo’s many writings, there are few references to his personal life. This is one of them: “Having wandered some distance among overhanging rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern… Two emotions arose in me: fear and desire. Fear of the threatening dark cavern and desire to see if there were any marvellous things in it.” In other writings, Leonardo contrasts time and nature. Nature builds forms up, time wears them away. “Oh, Time, swift despoiler of created things, how many kings, how many peoples have you undone in this winding and cavernous recess?” Leonardo’s painting is set in a dangerous and disintegrating physical world, with caves fearful to enter, yet inside we are find a scene of spiritual renewal that is marvellous and enchanting.

Among Leonardo’s group of figures, the angel points and Mary responds with a protective gesture–the same gestures Raphael used for his central philosophers in The School of Athens. The opening in Mary’s cloak, near her heart, echoes the opening at the mouth of the cave. The group are perched precariously on the edge of a rocky ledge. The angel’s left hand steadies Jesus from harm. This may be the first instance of the guardian angel theme in Western art. The theme gains a renewal of popularity in the 19th century in scenes that have nothing to do with Bible stories. The popular images below, reflect a vision of childhood innocence, flourishing in nature, worthy of divine protection, and suggest the influence of thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the poets William Blake and William Wordsworth.

In the 20th century, the guardian angel lives on, but in a new form. In the images below, Superman saves children from the dangers of modern life. Is the comic book superhero our modern day guardian angel? I see at least three similarities: 1) both angels and superheroes can fly, 2) they both have capes or long robes, 3) their identities are mysterious to the general public.

However, the medium that best depicts angels in the 20th century is not comics, paintings or sculptures, but cinema. A few examples: It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife, Michael, Wings of Desire. In each case, the angel is idiosyncratic and somewhat flawed. Clarence Oddbody in It’s a Wonderful Life is middle-aged, simple-minded and has no wings. Even he admits he’s an ASC, angel second class. Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife falls in love with another man’s wife and seems to enjoy tormenting the very person he’s been asked to save, all for the greater good, of course. Michael is played by an overweight John Travolta, who enjoys dancing and food and is easily distracted. In Wings of Desire, the angels are shadowy figures who can only observe humans, but not intercede on their behalf. The angels see what people cannot see, yet they envy humanity for their depth of feeling and experiences of love and loss. Envy may not be the right word. It’s more a desire for life, even if that life takes the flawed and limited courses pursued by ordinary people. In the end, some angels choose to become human, trading perfect equanimity for passionate and messy engagement.

This exploration of imperfect angels reaches its fullest expression with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story A Very Old man with Enormous Wings, published in 1968. It’s the story of a frail old angel who appears during a deluge. (After the angel is discovered, the deluge stops. Also a sick child suddenly gets well.) But no one quite notices these coincidences. The couple who find the angel discover he speaks an unintellible foreign language and can barely walk. They put him in their chicken coup, then charge townspeople money for the privilege of seeing their captive angel. So many people are attracted to the town that other vendors set up shop, displaying their own curious attractions. The couple who found the angel prosper, though the angel himself becomes seriously ill. After a tough winter, he recovers, grows back his wings and has just enough strength to fly away.

It’s a strange magical story. Marquis commented that he wrote it after he had gained fame as a writer. He found this fame difficult to handle, as shameless fans made impossible demands, taxing him to support their pet causes and to appear at celebrity functions. Marquis identified with the non-ideal angel who becomes a curiosity, attracting people with unusual problems: “The most unfortunate individuals on earth came in search of health. A poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers. A Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him. A sleepwalker who got up at night to undo all the things he had done while awake.”

Professor Adam Crowley comments: “One of the things this fiction is doing is it’s enjoying the fact that it’s fiction and we can enjoy the fact that it’s fiction. What a fantastical, imaginative world! –and this is the kicker–that very deliberately, very obviously, without any kind of artifice, allows us to imagine beyond the world that we live in everyday with absolute freedom.”

Commenting on the unusual appearance of the angel, so un-angelic, so powerless and uncommunicative, Professor Rebecca Balcarcel suggests: “Maybe the problem is that when God or the divine does erupt into our lives, we don’t know what to make of it and how to treat it and we don’t even recognize it for what it is.” Balcarcel worries that none of the characters in the story treat the angel well or seem interested in understanding who or what it is, but then she says, “So I feel that maybe it’s the reader who ends up growing and changing as we look at this story and we see what not to be.”

The story ends almost as magically as it began, with a woman watching the very old man with enormous wings departing: “Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she saw him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.”

Full text of the story here.

The Audain Museum in Whistler is itself a work of art. Designed by John Patkau Architects, the L-shaped building stands on stilts. It’s entered by a bridge that floats above a garden.

A long sun-drenched corridor links the entrance to the exhibit halls. All art inside is by artists from British Columbia, starting with traditional native artists and moving to contemporary native artists, photographers with billboard-sized images, generation of the group of seven and younger artists. All the big names are here: Bill Reid, Robert Davidson, Emily Carr, Jeff Wall, Brian Jungen.

When I’m in art galleries I like to take pictures of details. For instance I like how the crowded spiky seeds on the chestnut tree contrast with the delicate half-finished flowers and outstretched artist’s hand in the Lukacs image and the clothesline in the Emily Carr next to the red-mouthed totems.

Emily Carr painted this native village in 1912, one year after her 16 month study tour of France, where she was exposed to experiments in modern art. Emily’s style is fresh and assured, using broad strokes, bright colours and strong well-defined forms to depict these time capsules of village life. In the image above, she uses repeating totem poles to add rhythm and vertical thrust to the receding street. The dramatic presence and animal vitality of the totem poles capture our attention. Yet what’s most striking is how the poles are so intimately situated in the midst of houses, children and clotheslines.

An interesting side note to the Carr exhibition: while in France, Emily exhibited her work alongside the paintings of Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp in the Salon d’Automne, Paris. She was a daring young artist stretching her wings at the exact moment that they were also testing the limits of their craft–young lions together!

I wish I’d had time to take pictures of cars and street signs, but I had less than a day in the city. When I heard there was an off-site work by Austrian sculptor Erwin Wurm, I thought immediately of his fat car series.

Wurm’s one minute sculptures, where he asks people to balance an awkward pile of stuff–it’s impossible to hold the pose for longer than a minute–are also interesting. I was eager to learn what he had in store for Vancouver. Here’s his off-site work: two empty suits dancing.

I started this blog with masks so I’ll end with masks.

All artists balance tradition and revolt, political and personal, and this tension is evident in these unusual and challenging works.

In the work above, the garbage bag becomes a temporary mask obscuring the mask inside. It makes me think how objects and relationships of great value to some are too quickly discarded by others. In a review (Canadian Art, May 2019) of Beau Dick’s New York exhibit, Devoured by Consumerism, Julian Brave NoiseCat writes: “One of Dick’s last works, produced in 2016, was the carved yellow cedar Towkwit Head, wrapped in a black garbage bag, with a painted eye and horsehair brow peeking out from a hole in its crude cover. Towkwit is a feminine spirit who cannot be killed. In ceremony, a Kwakwaka’wakw spiritual leader cuts off her head, sets her on fire, resurrects her and repeats the process over and over again.”

“Our whole culture has been shattered,” says Dick in the documentary film, Maker of Monsters. “It’s up to the artists now to pick up the pieces and try and put them together, back where they belong. Yeah, it does become political. It becomes beyond political; it becomes very deep and emotional.”

It may be insensitive to say this, but I feel the same way as Beau Dick, my culture has been shattered also. To illustrate what I mean, here are pictures from three museums visits.

The cave paintings of southern France and Spain present one of the great mysteries of art. Why were these works created? The paintings are mostly of animals: bulls, aurochs, horses and bison. In the Lascaux cave, one of the giant bulls is 17 feet long. The animals, painted with earth-coloured minerals, appear to be in motion; none of them are grazing.

What is the meaning of this prehistoric art? We can only conjecture. The usual explanations touch on magical properties, hunting and religion, or having to do with initiation, ancestry and entertainment. Does any art in the 20th century deal with similar material? And can we learn anything from modern-day examples of herds, cattle and humans?

For example, Warhol’s cow wallpaper mocks the way landscape art, often featuring cattle, can become a piece of decoration in a room. The repeating heads of identical cows are absurd, yet powerful–the hypnotizing effect of mass media.

Perhaps the 20th century artist most associated with bulls is Pablo Picasso. “As a Spaniard it was inevitable that the bull, the bullfight, and eventually the Minotaur, would concern Picasso.” So writes Martin Ries in Art Journal (Winter 72/73).

Picasso draws and paints bulls in a variety of contexts. The bull could be a symbol of Spain, Picasso’s birthplace, or a symbol of sacrifice or death. Picasso portrays the minotaur as a monster, a lover, an embodiment of brute strength. At other times, the half bull-half man appears vulnerable, a homeless wanderer or uncomprehending actor in elaborate scenes of war and human suffering.

There is a dream-like quality to the image below that suggests a surrealist paradox: the violent solitary man lives under threat of being civilized. In his personal life, Picasso’s marriage had fallen apart–he couldn’t divorce because he was Catholic–and his mistress had just gotten pregnant.

Not bulls but cows. Canadian artist Alex Colville’s magic realist vision, with its pastoral theme, sense of deep space, luminance, and cool confrontation with the viewer, could not be more different from Picasso’s dark dramas. However Colville’s woman and Picasso’s Minotaur make similar gestures with their outstretched arms.

Standing before the Colville painting, the viewer feels like he or she is stopped in a car on a country road. The animals are momentarily in control and there’s not much to do about it. The young woman who makes the gesture is a cross between a modern-day shepherdess and a traffic cop. Perhaps she’s a stand-in for the artist–all artists want viewers to stop before their paintings. Are we being asked to slow down to share the world with the forces of nature we depend so much upon?

When I look at images, a question I ask is: can we learn more about a time and place from art, from ads or from pop culture? For me, the answer is all three. For instance, the McDonald’s ad above is an artifact of our fast food culture, firmly entrenched by the 1970s. It is not an ad for a restaurant–the information makes no mention of atmosphere or a sophisticated and varied menu. The food is to go and it’s an identical product wherever you buy it. The ad stresses “great” and “big” — (has to compete with whoppers). Its message is the opposite of the Alex Colville painting, Stop for Cows. The last thing a consumer needs to think about at McDonald’s is where did this food come from or were any animals involved.

The Marlborough ad features an action picture of a cowboy about to rope a steer. The image has the iconic appeal of the Old West, portraying a man who’s both free and engaged in work. It suggests a robust way of life, living outdoors, attuned to nature. The man is a skilled horseman and rancher; the young bull has no chance against him. In the unfolding scenario, which we’ve been primed for by a endless stream of related Marlborough ads, we imagine the man will shortly light a cigarette as the camera moves in for a close up of his handsome grinning face.

At the same time that Philip Morris Corp was running these cowboy ads, a few irascible filmmakers in Hollywood were causing a stir with their edgy Westerns. No film was more iconoclastic than Robert Altman’s satirical bio-pic, Buffalo Bill and The Indians, 1976.

Reviewers Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat describe the film: “The time is 1885. Colonel William F. Cody (Paul Newman) is the chief attraction in a show called “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: An Absolute Original & Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustre.” Around this vaudeville environment, Buffalo Bill and his entourage have packaged the history of the Wild West in circus stunts and carnival spectacles. When Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) asks Buffalo Bill why he doesn’t tell the truth in his shows, the superstar replies, “Truth is whatever gets the most applause.”

Throughout the film, Buffalo Bill wears fine clothes and is groomed to the max, but his flowing locks are really a toupee–he’s a manufactured icon who shamelessly turns the story of wild buffalo and native Americans into a show-biz hustle! The implication is that this pattern of false history and self-deception is deeply ingrained in American politics and public life.

Pop culture tends to focus on stories and personalities. Fine artists often go in for a more visceral and shocking impact. The Canadian conceptual artist, Jana Sterbak is best known for her blood red Meat Dress, composed of 50 pounds of raw steaks sewn together in a seductive and revolting garment. The artist called the work a “contrast between vanity and bodily decomposition.” Critic Deborah Irmas commented how “Sterbak likes to arouse discomfort” by using objects to trigger controversy and disgust.

The dress idea was revisited by pop star Lady Gaga, who wore a similar concoction to the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010. “Lady Gaga divides opinion,” Laura Roberts reported the next day for The Telegraph. “The singer collected eight awards while wearing the Franc Fernandez-designed outfit, complete with boots, purse and a hat made from cuts of beef. Cher, who presented the prizes, wrote on her Twitter account that as an “art piece it was astonishing! Everyone’s talking about it!” Lady Gaga later expressed to her friend, talk show host Ellen Degeneres, that sexual politics lay behind her publicity stunt: “I am not a piece of meat!”

The epic book project, Genesis, 2013, took photographer Sebastiao Salgado eight years to complete, as he documented parts of the world–rainforests, deserts, volcanoes, islands, and arctic regions–untainted by modern life. This photo of migrating reindeer in Siberia captures the mass movement of a herd of animals, on a 1,000 km trek to northern grazing grounds each spring. The human presence is so small (in the sled at top) it’s easy to miss at first glance.

In her review for The Observer, (14 Apr, 2013) Laura Cumming writes: “Salgado wants to go back to the beginning, to find a world that has not yet been ruined by mankind so that we may see the Eden that time forgot.” Redemption project and personal voyage of discovery, this Utopian photo-journalism, with its Biblical overtones, confronted present day fears of self-destruction, shame and loss of the natural world.

All of these works present different takes on the natural world, seen through lenses of war and peace, commerce and fashion, propaganda and history.

What do they tell us about the Lascaux cave paintings? Every device I’ve mentioned, from mass hypnosis to tribal identity (brand loyalty) to embracing a mobile “cowboy culture”, applies equally to both modern and prehistoric societies. Early humans relied on wild bulls for food and clothing. And I suspect some of the clothing used for special ceremonies was just as outrageous as the meat dress and may also have tested limits of what is revolting and what makes for a good story around a fire. The stories, no doubt, were always changing and turning into myths.

And finally, prehistoric nomadic societies, like the ones that passed through Lascaux, may have witnessed or caused or feared or heard of a few extinction events (loss of species) that would have deeply rocked their world. Their art, like ours, was a mixed bag of fears and dreams, expressions of tribal solidarity, affirmation of a mobile lifestyle–while dependent on other creatures, proud of their skill as trackers and hunters, fearful that they might be too skilled and overshoot their limits and natural laws.