Burning Lights
Michael Schrauzer: The Revealed and the Concealed
THE PAINTED AND CONSTRUCTED ART of Michael Schrauzer draws on two complementary strands of Christian mysticism that originate from the Greek Orthodox Church: the kataphatic embodies a tradition that emphasizes divine beauty as it is revealed and apparent; the apophatic tradition dwells on divine glory that remains concealed, hidden from view. Word-portraits describing these contrasting approaches are found in two different poems by Henry Vaughan, the seventeenth-century British metaphysical poet. The first poem, The World, is kataphatic, portraying God and creation in images of light and brightness:
I saw eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d,
In which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.
Thus in the Christian kataphatic mystical tradition, God is seen through the prism of “the many”: Words, color, song, complexity, multiplicity of images and ideas all intertwine, mutually illuminating one another while celebrating the richness of beauty experienced in diversity In the apophatic strand of Christian mysticism, on the other hand, God is understood as “the One” — beyond Words and images, transcending every category in a radical simplicity beyond all human thought and idea. God’s uniqueness and grandeur so overwhelm our senses and minds that God is described as solitary, radically simple; even as hidden, invisible, or “dark”. Thus Vaughan’s poem The Night:
There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.
In Schrauzer’s art these two “ways”, the apophatic and the kataphatic, are held close to one another, and are often juxtaposed. His work attempts both to reveal divine purpose as it can be communicated in images, and also to conceal the ineffable mystery of the Godhead that image, form, and color can only distort.
THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF FIRE
The interrelatedness of the two ways of of revelation and concealment, light and darkness, is seen in The Different Kinds of Fire from 1994. As in many of Schrauzer’s pieces, this work divided into upper and lower realms, suggesting the earthly and the heavenly. In the lower, a distant fire burns at midnight behind hills seen only as black foreground. The fire is a red glow reflected off smoke and cloud that hang in a black sky.
In the upper realm the effects and power of fire are depicted. In the center is gray ash; to the left is a scorched rock, on the right is a white candle. Fire can transform, can reduce to the primal elements — ash. But if the subject of the flame is “hardened”, that is, untransformable, fire will only discolor — as in the seared and blackened stone. Finally, fire may illuminate: atop a soft wax taper hovering on a fragile wick, fire may become flame — in the Christian tradition a sign of faith, hope, and burning charity.
ALTARPIECE
The use of two realms contrasting heaven and earth, shadow and brightness, is seen even more clearly in Altarpiece, a work that the artist began in 1992 and completed in 1994. Both the title and the form of Altarpiece reveal a principal source of inspiration behind Schrauzer’s art, namely the monumental polyptych of The Adoration of the Lamb, made for the high altar of the Church of St. John, Ghent, Belgium. Painted and built by Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441), this masterpiece of the Flemish Renaissance is a series of hinged icons arranged in two rows, one over the other. At the center of the upper row Van Eyck placed a representation of Christ enthroned, crowned and vested, flanked on either side by the Blessed Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. To either side of the Virgin and Baptist are singing angels. Flanking the angels are Adam and Eve, at left and right respectively. This upper row of panels portrays at least two themes: first, Christ as celebrant and presider at an eternal and cosmic Eucharist; second, Christ as bridegroom at the Heavenly Wedding, that is, at the final union of all creation — masculine and feminine, human and angelic — with God. Van Eyck’s lower row of panels portrays the celebration of the Eucharist and the adoration of the lamb: in the center is Christ depicted as the sacrificial lamb, his blood pouring into a chalice, surrounded and adored by angels and saints. Panels to either side expand the worshipping community to include martyrs, mounted warrior-saints, and prophets from all the ages of humankind. In Van Eyck’s altarpiece the upper panels depict the theosis or deification and union of humankind with God; the lower panels portray God’s active means of effecting this transformation. The achievement of Van Eyck’s polyptych is in its integral deployment of symbolism and vision which unites by sacrament the temporal and divine worlds.
In Schrauzer’s Altarpiece the eye is naturally drawn first toward the highest panel in which the upper realm is crowned by a square sheet of gold leaf. This simple, unitive use of elemental gold presents a transcendent and virtually imageless symbol of heaven. Below it, sun-drenched mountains rest beneath a clear blue sky that extends upward into the gold. Then the eye perceives that the hills are the extension into “heaven” from the lower row of panels. Here, on either side, a man and a woman dressed in dark clothing stand with outstretched, questioning hands, looking towards each other through a panel of composite elements, including tar and oil, that separates them from one another. Fallen humanity is depicted in shades of gray, caught in separation — separation from self, from others, and from God. Yet both the man and the woman are illuminated by white light descending, as it were, from the upper realm.
Like Van Eyck’s polyptych for the Ghent altar, Schrauzer’s work is made of hinged panels. With the panels closed, the sense of separation is felt even more keenly: the upper realm is transformed into a “middle realm” depicted principally in shades of gray. Above the man and woman a distant horizon glows white beneath dark, brooding clouds. But even with the panels closed there is hope: light from the horizon illuminates the man and the woman. When the panels are opened, however, the possibility of redemption appears: mountains bathed in light are the vanguard of matter moving into the realm of the divine.
In addition, Schrauzer’s Altarpiece portrays three traditional aspects of the soul’s journey towards God. In Christian mysticism of the fourth century the word praktike was used to describe the necessity to know one’s self and to work at spiritual transformation. Like the shadowed man and woman looking across the darkened, gritty panel at each other, the human soul must dare to see its own sinfulness and the forces that bind it in separation and self-absorption. God’s grace makes possible a purgation that allows vices to be left behind and virtues to be embraced. The second aspect or stage in the soul’s journey is the perception of God’s glory in creation — natural contemplation. In this middle realm the self, others, the surrounding world, and in a special way, the Sacred Scriptures are seen like the mountains of the opened panels — as bathed in God’s transforming light. The third aspect or phase is the soul’s movement beyond kataphatic multiplicity into the limpid perception of God’s simple love. The gold panel stands as crown and focus of the henotic, or union-effecting, experience in Christian mysticism. And it is a powerful symbol of hope as well; for just as the eye perceives an upward motion into light and simplicity, there is also in this work a sense of a potential downward movement: the size and shape of the two square panels suggest the possibility that the gold which now illuminates might also descend to fully replace the lower panel, ending both separation from and limitation in our divine destiny
THE SECRET
In Van Eyck’s Ghent polyptych the panels are hinged, enabling portions of the work, especially the center panels, to be alternately concealed or exposed depending on the Church season or the liturgical celebration. In Schrauzer’s The Secret from 1994, this feature of the hinged altarpiece is exploited in a subtle way. The hinged side panels contain on their inside a male and a female figure. When the panels are open the man and the woman are apart, but when closed — in concealment — they touch.
Between the man and the woman is a second image concealed by hinged panels. When opened they reveal the secret interior of the human soul: brain and heart symbolize intellect and feeling, thought and passion — two elements of the soul united in the self’s deepest center, yet experienced as distinct from one another. In this Work the complementarity of man and woman flanks a yet deeper complementarity in the depths of the individual soul. This was understood by the ancient hesychasts of the Byzantine Church who advised their disciples to repeat ceaselessly a prayer containing the name of Jesus in order to “bring the intellect down into the heart”. The unity of heart and intellect occurs in what the seventh-century mystic Dionysius the Areopagite called the “luminous dark”. In The Secret Schrauzer suggests an apophatic experience beyond image and words that literally happens invisibly, in the dark, when the hinged panels are closed by the viewer.
THE VIGIL
In The Secret union takes place in darkness and concealment: in contrast to this apophatic proclamation stands The Vigil, also a work from 1994. Here the portraits in the lower panels are of the masculine and the feminine asleep: the slumbering figures are literally clothed in shadow. Above them in the center of the work is a thistle, sharp and dry, yet sewing here as a symbol of the sun, and thus as a powerful yet delicate sign of the possibility for matter to be transformed and ennobled. In the upper panel portraying the “heavenly” realm light plays in the clouds at sunrise.
The title of this work points to its inspiration: the Easter Vigil is the liturgical culmination of the Christian church year. At midnight, an hour when the rest of the world sleeps, new fire is kindled from cold stone and a ritually-prepared candle is lighted to symbolize the risen Christ. In the light of this candle the Scriptures are read and the inner meaning of human history is revealed: contrary to all philosophy and expectation, the eternal Word of God has become flesh. The Word-made-flesh has suffered, been put to death, and is risen: now no pain, betrayal, or emptiness need keep humanity from God.
Illuminated by the Resurrection, all things can become means of union: each human experience can become a portal leading into the divine. Something as thorny, dry and common as a thistle can become a light to awaken slumbering humanity. In The Vigil our shadowed dreams, our brightest longing, is about to become real; and in the light of transformed matter a new age is dawning.
CONCLUSION
A whole spectrum of themes from the cycle of Christian mysteries may be found in Schrauzer’s other works. In Dark Wood/Annunciation of 1989/ 90, the poet Dante’s image of a dark wood wherein we all wander gives way, when the panels are opened, to the archangel Gabriel’s hand in benediction and the Virgin’s hands extended in welcome. Between them is a golden stone — divinity suffusing matter. In Triptych for the Last Day, 1990, two hands reach out of darkness on panels that literally cannot be opened: Christian faith is eschatological; that is, concerned with “the final matters”, and resting always on the unseen and hoped-for.
A closing observation about Schrauzer’s work is its counter-stance to the predominant currents of much modern art. There is nothing of mockery or cynicism in it. It is, rather, full of hope and dawning glory.
Instead of proclaiming alienation and meaninglessness to be at the heart of human existence, this art discloses the possibility of our transformation and hints at an ennobled, divinized humanity. In sharp contrast with an age that applauds the “courage” of those who embrace nothingness, and invites others to explore a downward, annihilating transcendence, Schrauzer produces an art of hope. In a word, his art affirms the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Christ. Without resorting to traditional iconographic elements — there are no winged figures or crucifixes here — the Medieval and Renaissance form of the altarpiece is utilized to offer us contemporary images and familiar elements to portray a message as old as St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (II Cor 3:18):
And we all, with unveiled faces,
reflecting the glory of the Lord,
are being changed into His likeness,
from one degree of glory to another,
for this comes from the Lord
Who is the Spirit.
NOTE: This article first appeared in the exhibition catalog for Burning Lights: Spirituality, Tradition, and Craft in Recent Art from the City of Angels, Laband Art Gallery, 1994.