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The Art of Worship

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KATY HASWELL, THE ARTCLUB: Hello. Welcome to THE ARTCLUB.

Well, the parties might be over, and the champagne might be running dry. But the most important date on the Christian calendar is only just beginning. Over the next 12 months, people from all over the world - from Lagos to Limerick, from the Vatican to St. Paul's Cathedral - will be celebrating the golden jubilee of the birth of Jesus Christ. So we've decided to devote an entire program to the art of worship.

(voice-over): In this week's show, supermodels, movie stars and a controversial statue in an exhibition of contemporary religious imagery. The Queen of England exhibits her personal collection of sacred art, and a journey from Barcelona to Brighton by the Maltese capital of Valletta on an ecclesiastical cultural tour.

(on camera): The Pope has decreed that the year 2000 should be a time when new people can visit churches, get to know Jesus Christ. Here, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in London, they have a whole series of religious celebrations planned for the entire year.

But if you're not too convinced by Christianity, a visit to a church could still open your eyes to some really magnificent works of art.

This magnificent statue of the Madonna is typical of the kind of imagery found in churches and cathedrals all over the world and for every kind of art genre from Byzantine to Brit pop. In the Catholic stronghold of Liverpool in the north of England, this relationship between worship and religious practice is being thoroughly explored, but not in a church - in an art gallery.

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(voice-over): Watching over the Liverpool docks is this statue of Jesus Christ. He'd be walking on water if the tide wasn't out. It's part of an exhibition called "Heaven," that's currently enjoying a wave of popularity. "Heaven" has traveled to Liverpool Tate Gallery from the Constala (ph) in Dusseldorf and is billed as an exhibition that will break your heart.

Well, it certainly upset a few people. Politicians and religious leaders have declared one of the exhibits "deeply offensive." And there's nothing like a bit of bad publicity to bring in the crowds. The work that everyone's talking about is this life-sized statue of the Madonna with the face of the former Princess of Wales.

LEWIS BRIGGS, DIRECTOR, TATE LIVERPOOL: The sculpture of Lady Di dressed as the Madonna is, if you like, on that edge between what might be art and what might be popular art. It's made by a studio which sells sculptures to the church in north Italy and made by craftsmen with a very long tradition of making religious statuary.

The point in using Lady Di as the model was to make sure that the enormous popular reaction to Diana's death was put in the context of religious movement, and there are people today who think that Diana should have been canonized and are still working for her canonization.

Now other people are very annoyed about that because they think that she was an imperfect woman, whereas a saint or Virgin Mary, obviously, in their view, has to be a perfect woman. But there are always those divergence of opinion when you talk about religion.

HASWELL: The controversy makes the show even more colorful and entertaining. This family of aliens inhabit a room alongside popular icons such as the angelic Kate Moss and Leonardo DiCaprio as San Sebastian. The same room also boasts these extravagant dresses by the fashion designer Thierry Mugler. The waist of the one on the left is so small that the model who wore it on the catwalk had to have two of her ribs removed.

The exhibition is an eclectic mixture of work. The more you see, the more wacko it becomes. Michael Jackson with his pet monkey by the American artist Jeff Koons are as kitsch as kitsch can be.

But there's a message in there somewhere. Is your idea of heaven the ultimate physique as displayed by this collection of photographs of bodybuilding transsexuals, or is it something more mysterious?

BRIGGS: The way in which people think about heaven today is secular, is much more about heaven is in Hollywood, heaven is a state of glamour. Very often people identify a particular figure from popular culture who, as it were, is the person who's going to intercede for them in arriving at that mental state which they think of as heaven.

So the exhibition identifies idols, contemporary idols, we talk about pop idols, people who elicit the devotion and the ritual which gets you to heaven.

HASWELL: Another of the show's more telling exhibits is this collection of pictures by the American photographer Gary Burns. He's been traveling to Graceland over the past 20 years documenting the pilgrimage of those who worship at the shrine of Elvis Presley.

BRIGGS: His photographs show the candlelit services. They show people praying in front of images of Elvis. They show people staying awake all night beside an effigy of Elvis Presley. So there are enormous parallels between the cult of Elvis and the cult of any other saint within established religions.

HASWELL: Whether you deem it paradise lost or paradise found, "Heaven" at the Liverpool Tate Gallery is a warming diversion to those cold winter months.

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(on camera): It was only a matter of years ago that the British royal residence at Windsor, just outside London, was ruined by fire. Well, it's all been refurbished now, and out of the ashes comes an exhibition of religious drawings.

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(voice-over): Windsor Castle is the home of the Queen's private art collection. From this collection 10 religious drawings depicting the life of Christ have been chosen for a special millennium exhibition. Here they are seen together for the first time before they go on show to the general public.

JANE ROBERTS, CURATOR OF THE ROYAL PRINTS: We decided to try to bring together a small group of powerful drawings, both powerful as works of art, but also with a powerful spiritual message. It was really a question of arranging the drawings in, if you like, a chronological sequence. So starting with the enunciation and going on to the resurrection, and seeing which drawings worked together.

This is the drawing by Castellione (ph), a 17th century Genovese artist, and it shows the Virgin and child, the nativity scene in a stable with some straw and hay being visited by heavenly visitors. This drawing was acquired in 1762 by King George III and has been in the royal collection ever since.

These two drawings are both by Michelangelo, this one dating from right at the end of his life, the mid 16th century. Michelangelo's drawings are often characterized as being either highly finished or very smudgy, and this drawing of the crucifixion is, I think, one of the most powerful drawings in the collection.

It shows Christ crucified. His face is hardly a face at all. It's almost as if the artist was unable to depict this very powerful figure. And then, at the bottom of the cross, you have the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist wrapped up in their grief horrified at the death of Christ on the cross.

On the right, the drawing of the risen Christ is a quite different image. It's almost equally powerful maybe, but it is powerful because of its highly finished quality. The surface modeling of Christ's body here is extraordinary, and I think that one would guess, if one didn't already know, that Michelangelo was a brilliant sculptor. You can almost feel the sort of - the polished surface of the white marble.

HASWELL: This exhibition will tour the United Kingdom throughout this year, starting in Belfast on the 28th of January.

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(on camera): Time now for us to take a short break. But coming up, we'll be going on a spiritual and culture tour of some of Europe's most famous churches where the avant garde and the scriptures sit side by side. So stay with us.

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HASWELL: Hello, again. Welcome back to THE ARTCLUB. We're looking at the art of worship. And in a moment, we'll be taking a cultural tour where we stroll around some of the great churches of Europe with an eye on architecture from Brighton to Barcelona.

But first of all, before we do that, let's get our weekly round-up of art news from around the world.

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(voice-over): Police investigations continue into the daring theft of a Cezanne painting on New Year's Eve. Thieves entered through the roof of the Ashmolean Museum in the English town of Oxford. The painting, "Auvers-sur-Oise," valued at over $3 million, is being hunted with the aid of the Art Lost Register.

JAMES EMSON, THE ART LOSS REGISTER: Well, we will register the loss on the database, and it will join the other 38 Cezannes - although, as you know, we got one back about a month ago, which was a great excitement. And then we will look out for it in all the sales around the world and respond to police and customs inquiries.

HASWELL: Fireworks marked the beginning of the Ice and Snow Festival in the Chinese capital of Beijing this week. Part of the Great Wall is also being used for the event, which features a huge number of innovative iceworks. Visitors can enjoy chilled-out replicas of famous buildings as well as trying their hand at some rather unusual winter sports, such as ice sailing. The festival continues until the end of February.

An artist in the Indian city of Nagpur has decided to make a clean break with tradition sculpture. He carves his many masterpieces out of soap. Sudhaker Shridhar Pathak says that he prefers soap to clay or stone because it provides more of a challenge.

SUDHAKER SHRIDHAR PATHAK, SCULPTOR (through translator): I have carved every kind of figure on soap cakes. Initially, I carved figures of gods and goddesses, which formed good wedding gifts.

HASWELL: Pathak has now started workshops to teach children the art of soap carving. Whatever you think of his work, it's certainly all good clean fun.

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(on camera): The skylines of most cities are not defined by the tile blocks of big business, but by the delicate and unmistakable architecture of the mosques, the temples and the churches. Imagine London without St. Paul's or Paris without Notre Dame. Even the smallest of towns wherever you might live has as its focal point the place of worship. So this week, for our cultural tour, our focal point is, indeed, the church.

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(voice-over): The influence of Antonin Gaudi can been seen all over the city of Barcelona. Gaudi was a withdrawn and a very religious figure. He died in 1926, leaving behind an array of eccentric creations. But even by Gaudi's extravagant standards, the Cathedral of La Sagrada Familia is an exuberant, ambitious monument.

It was begun in the 1890s, but it's still far from finished. Preparations have just been made to complete the roof. Gaudi himself worked on it for almost 30 years, and he got the job when the original architect fell out with the city fathers. They wanted a cathedral for the poor, and Gaudi turned their dream into a visual fantasy.

He took his inspiration from nature. He conceived the nave as a forest. His commitment to it was total. He lived on the site and is buried in the vaults. Gaudi used a team of sculptors to fashion the strange shapes and figures. Now one of Spain's greatest sculptors has inherited the task.

JOSEP MARIA SUBIRACHS, SCULPTOR (through translator): It differs because it's another era. Gaudi imagined this at the end of the 19th century. So it's a different style. Gaudi's was more rounded, and this one is more hard-edged. My style is Expressionist, and Gaudi's was Art Noveau.

HASWELL: Across the Mediterranean from Barcelona is the sacred island of Malta, an entire country absorbed in religious imagery. Veer off the beaten track and you'll find carefully crafted figures as bold and explicit as the sculptures in the biggest cities in the world.

But it's in the capital city, Valletta, at the Church of St. John's where you'll find the jewel in the crown. Here sits the only signed painting of the Italian master Caravaggio. This year sees the first anniversary since its return from a two-year period of restoration.

The painting, called "The Beheading of St. John," is a vivid and brutal depiction of a scene from the Bible. The potency of Caravaggio's work led to an unfortunate event involving kidnapping and ransom.

FATHER ZERAFFA: Caravaggio has been my agony and my ecstasy. I was involved in the recovery of the same gem (ph) that was stolen 12 years ago, and then the thieves got in touch with me, gave me a tape and asked for a ransom. And for eight long months, I was in daily contact with them by phone, and I wasn't allowed to contact the police.

We managed to trace the phone calls, and then we passed them onto the police and we caught them. I still have a piece of Caravaggio about that size because they used to send me bits of canvas to make us come to a decision. And even paid $8,000, which is lira, to have me kidnapped during the exchange. So Caravaggio means something to me.

HASWELL: The English seaside town of Brighton is more famous for its sea front than its churches. But here, many of them have become more than just places of worship. St. Bartholemew's Church is the tallest free-standing church in Europe. When it was built in 1872, it was referred to as "Noah's ark" because of its shape.

It contains some of the finest examples of the arts and crafts movement, which championed the individual craftsmen against the onslaught of mass production.

FATHER VICKERY HOUSE, ST. BARTHOLEMEW'S CHURCH: It's the tallest single-story building in England - 135 feet high. It's made of brick, which was an industrial material, not worthy, really, of churches. But when you actually come into the building, far from feeling somehow dominated, you actually feel liberated. Part of that has to do with the theology of the sacrament.

As you can see on the high altar, everything's focused on that. And people saw that this industrial material, however humble it was, when it was actually put together creatively, it gave a spirit to it. And somehow or other, the artistic process actually meant that the spirit somehow came out and met them, that they actually felt liberated by the whole thing, that the truth actually made them free.

HASWELL: The Church of St. Nicholas is the unexpected home of experimental music. The acoustics are the perfect home for the sculptural sounds of the composer Jonathan Harvey.

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JONATHAN HARVEY, COMPOSER: Music has always been connected with the deepest things I know, with the kind of mystical quality which interests very much in religion and in art. Trying to get to the bottom of things and to make contact with the mysterious god or other, whatever. And to address the problem of suffering or the question of happiness and how music can bring together things which are very conflicting and yet resolve them in a beautiful harmony, make things which are whole, make people whole.

HASWELL: The Holy Trinity Church in Brighton Town Center is also known locally as Fabrica (ph). It has an annual program to show the work of contemporary artists. This is an exhibition titled "Domain." It's by the Scottish-Japanese artist Kokaido Mukade (ph) and the local artist Steven Follen.

STEVEN FOLLEN, ARTIST: The architecture and the kind of detailing of the building, it's got lots of evidence of - it's deconsecrated so there's kind of traces left of when it was a church, things like traces of pews, fonts, the altar. So that idea of evidence of something that it was before was one of the kind of main starting points.

So everything's like this one, which were made from steel tacks to relaunch (ph) that one to a piece of wooden board and then nailed all the tacks into it and then brazed (ph) it together on the back.

HASWELL: A visit to your local church in the new millennium could reveal some unusual surprises.

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(on camera): The art world sometimes has a rocky ride with it mixes with religion. John Lennon was famously criticized when he said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. And Martin Scorsese was castigated for his film "The Last Temptation of Christ." So what are people going to think when they see the latest image of Jesus as a TV aerial? Well, they might say it's "Art-rageous."

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(voice-over): In Malta, every house is dressed with two distinct items - a religious symbol, as a gesture of faith, and a TV aerial. The local artist Antoine Camilleri has controversially put the two together. Jesus being crucified on a TV antenna plays a central role in his latest exhibition.

ANTOINE CAMILLERI, ARTIST: I am not very religious, but I am very Christian. I don't like to pray. I like to help. The religious people do hours and hours of praying. I prefer as a Christian to give, to do, to help.

And I like that subject because (INAUDIBLE) go on to preach from the roofs, and I found the symbol of the aerial you can get many, many thousands and millions of people. And now, I think of doing the dish. The dish is better than the aerial. But I haven't found a dish yet.

HASWELL: Asked if he checked out the antenna's reception, he said he didn't want to place such a sacrilegious image on his rooftop in case he made the Maltese cross. Art-rageous.

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(on camera): Well, sadly, that's it for us this week. But don't forget to tune in next week, when we'll be back with more art and culture with THE ARTCLUB, same time on CNN. Bye-bye.

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