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Rouault: “The ‘Clown’ Was Me” (Worship Leader, Sept. ‘09)

Administrator — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:22:25 +0000

Just as I was ordering my Big Mac, a woman came into McDonald’s yanking on the arm of a young child. Ugliness leaped from this slovenly woman. Dragging on a cigarette butt, she yelled at her kid: “Shut up and tell me what you want to eat, or I’m going to kick you from here to Kingdom come!”

But then I noticed this distinctive shape to her face …

Suddenly, I realized this face was identical to that of one of the prostitutes French artist Georges Rouault had once painted. This woman could have served as his model.

Dark Times

Though he lived from 1871 to 1958, Rouault’s most notable working years spanned WWI and WWII. Many artists of his day heard in the turmoil of their times the death-knell of Christendom and of the Christian faith. For Rouault, though, the times were proof of our need for Christ.

His art became the means of bringing together God’s story and our pain.

As a teen, Rouault had apprenticed as a stained glass artisan. He learned to tell a story through simplicity of line and color. In his early adult years he studied the realistic technique of Rembrandt, in quest of that master’s psychological depth. Rouault’s early work, not surprisingly, reveals an artist who has not yet found his voice.

Then, around 1903 when Rouault was in his early 30’s, he had a happenstance encounter with an off-duty clown. Everything changed. It is the moment, as he puts it, “that marked the beginnings of poetry in my life.”

Self Portraits

Rouault comes upon this old clown “mending his glittering and colorful costume.” He sees the jarring contrast of “brilliant, scintillating things, made to amuse us,” on the one hand, and the infinite sadness in the man’s unguarded face, on the other.

I clearly saw that the “Clown” was me, it was us. … This rich and spangled costume is given to us by life, we are all clowns more or less, we all wear a “spangled costume,” but if we are caught unawares, as I surprised the old clown, oh! Then who would dare to say that he is not moved to the bottom of his being by immeasurable pity.

Rouault begins to paint pictures that tell us the truth about ourselves: sorrowful clowns (“Who does not paint himself a face?”), imperious kings (“We think we are kings…”), self-absorbed bourgeoisie (“The well-bred lady thinks she has a reserved seat in heaven.”)

He drops his realistic technique for the look of the stained glass of his youth: thick, simple lines. Vivid colors. Simple but penetrating truths about ourselves.

Stained glass is above all the church’s art. Here’s where Rouault’s art becomes poetry. He uses his stained glass effect because, in pity, he would point us to Jesus, to him who had become “like us in all things, save sin” so he could redeem and heal us. In Rouault’s hands, one portrait of Christ looks as ugly as the sinners with whom he identifies, while another portrait is iconically transcendent, a promise of peace and resurrection.

Deeper Similarities

Standing at that McDonalds counter, I realized that despite all that made us different, this woman and I were the same. Same ugliness. Same dignity and beauty for which we were created, but from which we have fallen so hopelessly and seemingly irrevocably.

Then came the epiphany, unbidden. In a flash, I recalled Rouault’s famous Head of Christ. I think it was the shape of the jaw. In my imagination, the woman’s face morphed, first, to that of Rouault’s sad, angry prostitute, then second, to his sadder, compassionate Christ.

Art of any sort — from painting to music to worship design — has this extraordinary power: it can bring a whispered promise or a shouted call from another realm. The incarnation itself brings, after all, God’s permanent residence in our reality.

Rouault’s portrait of the prostitute said: “Doesn’t she look a lot like you and me?” His portrait of Christ said: “Didn’t he come for the likes of her and you and me?”

I should have talked to this “Fallen Eve” (a term Rouault sometimes used). But the words wouldn’t come. All I knew to do in that moment was pray: “Lord, have mercy. On her. On me. On this sad world you love. In your own time and in your own way, show yourself to this dear child of yours, and save her. And Lord, forgive my blindness to what, or rather Who, makes us one.” I pray for her still.

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Currently Pondering: Frame, Rouault, Medium & Message

Administrator — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:21:08 +0000

So, I’m thinking through what I’ve learned from my teacher and now friend and colleague John Frame about worship. About obedience to Scripture, when Scripture calls for wisdom. About beauty that’s measured by neighborliness.

Also I’m pondering what the French Catholic artist Georges Rouault has taught me about God’s wedding of medium and message. About a Christ who came bearing the likeness of angry prostitutes, sorrowful clowns, proud kings, imperious judges, self-feeding shepherds.

“Then in the fullness of time,
out of your great love for the world,
you sent your only Son to be one of us,
to redeem us and heal our brokenness.”

• From the Great Thanksgiving (Book of Common Worship).

Top Ten Reasons for Samurai Sword Training in Japan — Reason 7

Administrator — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:42:54 +0000

Reason No. 7: Two Rouault museums in downtown Tokyo.

Anybody who knows me knows that one of my working hypotheses is: “If you can’t make your point by quoting Bono or Dylan or C.S. Lewis — or if you can’t make your point by describing a Rouault painting, your point probably isn’t worth making.”

In downtown Tokyo there are not one but two museums given to the art of Georges Rouault, the Idemitsu Museum and the Shiodome Museum. The Idemitsu, in fact, is home to the gorgeous “Christ with Arms Raised” that graces the cover of With One Voice. So, I’ve been waiting for years to get to Japan to see firsthand my first Rouault paintings ever, and especially to admire “Christ with Arms Raised.”

You know where this is going.

Both museums, of course, were between major showings of Rouault’s works, so between the two museums there were but twelve paintings on display (which is exactly twelve more than I had ever been able to see except in art books). And naturally, “Christ with Arms Raised” will be “prominently displayed,” so we were assured, in the Idemitsu’s Rouault Retrospective which was to begin eleven days after we left Japan. Asked if there was any way we could see it anyway, we were politely rebuffed (everybody in Japan is exquisitely polite), “Sorry, it’s not even in the museum. It’s in our warehouse being prepped for the exhibition.”

But, my goodness, were the colors and the textures and the composition of the paintings we did get to see magnificent! I had no idea Rouault laid the paint on as thickly as he did. Or that his colors are really as vivid and as evocative as they are. Or that his clown faces could be as sad as they are up close. Or that his biblical landscapes could draw you in as effectively as they do.

My missionary friend Nancy Nethercott (she shows up in a later “Reason No. …”) and I talked about the attraction of Rouault’s vision for Japanese people — his sense of the way the sadness of life prompts hope for some sort of resolution from beyond, his sense of the way you can say more through less, something complex through simplicity of line and color. Maybe somebody needs to develop a series of lectures on “Georges Rouault and a Christian Apologetic for Japan.”

Why We Put the “Maundy” Back into Maundy Thursday

Administrator — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:17:55 +0000

People who know me know that I am a Georges Rouault fanatic. I love his ugly prostitutes, morose clowns, supercilious judges, predatory businessmen, vacuous bourgeoisie, imperious kings — and the here barbaric, there iconic Christ who came for them. Every once in a while a friend will risk a protest, “But his stuff is so sad!”“Sad?” I reply, “No, Rouault’s vision is a vision of joy.” I love Rouault for the same reason I love two other Frenchmen’s bluesy work: Pascal’s apothegms and Calvin’s theology.

In the Bible things are sweet and beautiful and good for all of two chapters. The rest of the book is colored by the unspeakable ugliness and uncleanness that intrude when Adam & Eve take the Serpent’s bait. From here on, the book is about the re-flowering of a deflowered race.

I love Easter. From Christ’s resurrection, death begins working backward — deaths are undied, treacheries reversed, whores re-virgined, wallflowers dragged onto the dance floor.

But as much as I love Easter, I have a special fondness for the few days before. Days in which we reconnect with the barbaric Christ — who came to best our ugliness by becoming disfigured, our bestiality by “becoming sin,” and our emptiness by hanging in utter nakedness.

In With One Voice I wrote about the way that Good Friday services at Northland (A Church Distributed, in Longwood, FL), the church of my first twelve years here in Central FL, sustained me during those years. Services that simply and starkly rehearsed Jesus’s seven words from the cross, the lights dimming a bit with each saying, until the lights went out with, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” Then lights coming up with the Apostles Creed’s, “… and on the third day …” By taking me into Jesus’s holy darkness, those services made his victory over the grave the more palpable to me.

In my five years at Orangewood Presbyterian (Maitland, FL), our senior pastor, Jeff Jakes, has urged this congregation to make our lives about “Christ and his Kingdom — it’s not about us.” It’s been nothing short of astounding to watch people “get it.” These people have built and restored houses. Suburbanites have gone into places of ministry that are not comfortable — and have stayed there. They go to Mexico and Turkey to support in person missionaries they support with their checkbooks. Twice in this past week individuals have told me about how well loved they have been: one who’s critically ill and who has had Orangewood people take him in, another whose marriage is crumbling but who has found church people acting like family. Week after week these folks set up and tear down a gym so it can become a sanctinasium. Week after week they take turns watching each other’s little ones so young moms & dads can worship. Week after week they honor each other’s wildly different tastes in worship music (we don’t do apartheid worship).

Because of the journey we’ve been on, this year we thought our Maundy Thursday service should put the “Maundy” back into Maundy Thursday. “Maundy,” after all, comes from “mandate” — it recalls the “new commandment” Jesus gives his disciples in John 13:34-35 to love one another the way he has loved them. How has he loved them? He’s just shown them, by wrapping himself in a servant’s towel and taken up a servant’s basin to wash their feet (Jn 13:1-17). To make the point as clear as he possibly can he has said, “… so ought you to do for one another” (Jn 13:15).

So, we thought, “Maybe it’s time we do what he told us to do.”

This year the pastors, elders, deacons, and some of the leading women of the church invited the congregation to allow their leadership to wash their feet: tokens of the kind of self-giving love Jesus embodied from incarnation to crucifixion, expressions of the church’s thanks for the lives of footwashing going on in our midst, and tangible urgings to do so all the more.

I’ll carry memories of this service with me for a long time. The most vivid was that of one of our elders — an exceedingly, exceedingly successful businessman who must wear his suit, starched white shirt and power tie in the shower — on his knees (in his suit, starched white shirt and power tie) on the one portion of our floor that was soaking wet because of a leaky basin. I caught him looking into the eyes of one of our middle schoolers, just getting her name so she could be reminded that Jesus loves her personally.

In her blog, Amy Pitsch shares some of her reactions — the discomfort she had to overcome was just like mine when a number of years ago I found myself unexpectedly dragged into my first footwashing.

As I write on Holy Saturday (listening to the Tavener-&-Mahler-&-Penderecki-laced soundtrack to Children of Men) my heart is full of grateful wonder. I marvel at the beautification of the ugly that was played out with basin and towel 2,000 years ago. And I resolve to take up my basin and towel because of the promise that one day the power of humility over pride, of love over hate, of lowliness over haughtiness, will re-light the globe, and the glory of Christ and his Father will outshine the sun itself.

“Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Alleluia! Alleluia!! Alleluia!!!”