An Assemblage of Animals, Angels, and Wise Men: Reflections on Tomoaki Suzuki's Nativity Scene

Three figures from Tomoaki Suzuki's Crib (2006)

Photos by Stephen Alexander and Maria Thanassa (2023)

   

 

Everyone loves a good nativity scene - and what's not to love in this strange assemblage of animals, angels, and wisemen at the centre of which is a comely virgin and a baby believed to be the veritable Son of God ...? One might argue that such a scene is more out there than anything ever imagined by Jake and Dinos Chapman.   

And whilst I miss the crib by Josefina de Vasconcellos - which had stood in Trafalgar Square for many years each Christmas [1], before being damaged by idiots celebrating England's win in the Rugby World Cup in 2003 - I have to say that I do like the work that replaced it in 2006 by the Japanese artist Tomoaki Suzuki.   

 

Best known for creating urban scenes with small painted figures carved from lime wood, Suzuki's Crib is, in its simplicity, really rather delightful and betrays the fact that it was made by someone who comes from a non-Christian culture and had, in fact, to have the nativity story explained to him. 

 

The dozen wooden figures, about two-feet tall and housed within a clear (and protective) Perspex box rather than a traditional wooden stable, have an innocence and a lightness to them; they don't seemed to be weighed down by thousands of years of religious history and symbolism [2].

 

Working from live models, Suzuki initially created clay figures; these were followed by plaster versions, before the final wooden sculptures were made and painted. Interestingly, they are all well-dressed, which is explained by the fact that Suzuki collaborated with the fashion designer Jessica Ogden, who made the costumes worn by the models posing for the figures within the nativity scene.

 

Not that the human figures much captured my attention; the kneeling Mary, the chilled-out Joseph lying stretched out, and the three Maji are all perfectly fine, but I was more taken by the domestic animals, the golden-haired angel, and le divin Enfant born of heavenly order and earthly chaos (even though the latter is swaddled so tightly in his blanket that he looked as if he were an insect emerging from a cocoon).    

 

 

Notes

[1] In 1959 sculptor Josefina de Vasconcellos was commissioned by the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London to create a Nativity scene featuring life-sized figures. It became a much-loved part of the Trafalgar Square Christmas display until wrecked by England rugby fans. 

 

[2] That said, Suzuki's work reminded me of Piero della Francesca's unfinished Nativity (1470-75) and so I was pleased to discover in an article by Pamela Tudor-Craig that he was influenced by this painting when thinking about his own piece. As she notes: "It is not surprising that it should have appealed to Suzuki: the sparse shed and the empty spaces of the unfinished landscape would find an immediate echo in a Japanese mind." 

      Tudor-Craig also recognises the revitalising innocence (and purity) of Suzuki's work: "Not for the first time, Japanese art has come to the rescue of Western art when it threatened to congeal." See 'Piero via Japan - the new St. Martin's crib', in the Church Times (18 Dec 2006): click here.

 

 

Kinderpost

Frank Meisler: Kindertransport - The Arrival (2006)

Photo by Stephen Alexander (2019)

I. Opening Remarks

Kindertransport - The Arrival is an outdoor bronze memorial by the Israeli architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, who was himself evacuated from the Free City of Danzig as part of the Kindertransport programme, travelling with a small group of other children to safety in England (his parents, arrested three days after his departure, were eventually murdered at Auschwitz).   

Commisioned by World Jewish Relief and the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), the work was installed on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station in 2006 and commemorates the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution and arrived in London during 1938-39.

II. Nazi Pigeons

Pigeons, of course, don't care about any of this; they'll shit on anyone's history. 

It would be mistaken, however, to assume the bird in the above picture is displaying an avian form of anti-Semitism - indeed, the pigeon (or dove) has an important role within Jewish religious mythology and is usually regarded as a symbol of hope (think of Noah and his Ark). The pigeon was also an acceptable sacrifice to God for those who couldn't afford a more expensive offering. 

The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria may have found the birds a little overly bold and impudent, but, other than that, there's no enmity between them and the children of Israel.    

Having said that, it's true that the Nazis were also fond of pigeons - Heinrich Himmler was not only Reichsführer of the SS but also President of the German National Pigeon Society - and many trained birds were drafted into the Nazi war effort.

Indeed, so concerned were British secret services about the airborne threat posed by Nazi pigeons, that they became the subject of covert operations, with scores of pigeon lofts targeted for destruction in occupied Europe. MI5 even had its own trained force of falcons ready to intercept any Nazi pigeons that strayed into British airspace; they would patrol over the Scilly Isles and the Cornish coast for two hours at a time.

It's possible, therefore, that the pigeon pictured befouling the Jewish memorial is descended from a Nazitaube - though I would have thought this extremely unlikely and not something to be overly worried about; indeed, for me, of more concern, is the ominously glowing presence of the McDonald's logo in the background ...


III. Golden Arches

Instantly recognisable wherever you travel in the world, McDonald's Golden Arches probably shouldn't fill one with a similar sense of horror as that of a Nazi swastika - the stylised letter 'M' doesn't signify mass murder and malevolence - but, for some reason, it does.

Partly, that's due to the fact that even as I gobble down my Sausage and Egg McMuffin, I'm conscious of the true cost and devastating consequences of such deliciousness; for the natural environment and animal welfare, for example. Corporate capitalism isn't simply fascism with a smiley face, but neither is it the unequivocal force for good that its proponents like to claim and California über alles is just as troubling (in some respects) as the prospect of Deutschland über alles.

And partly, it's due to the influence of Jake and Dino Chapman upon my imagination. For everytime I see the Golden Arches, I can't help recalling their post-apocalyptic Nazi-McDonald's hellscapes (which is distracting, to say the least, when trying to reflect upon Meisler's work - even more so than the presence of a pigeon). 

Hello Dolly: On the Life and Work of Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer: Die Puppe (1936)

Despite the recent creations of the Chapman Brothers in this line, it seems to me that the dolls of German artist Hans Bellmer, constructed and photographed during the 1930s, still retain a greater power to disturb; they are somehow less comical and more creepy, more uncanny.

Opposed as he was to Hitler, Bellmer determined to make no work that could be appropriated by the Nazis or which might be interpreted in any way as supportive of fascist aesthetics. Thus his dolls, with their deformed and mutated bodies arranged in provocative poses, were consciously designed to challenge the prevailing idea of what constituted Aryan beauty and physical perfection.

This is not to deny, however, other sources of inspiration for his dolls project, both artistic and personal, including his love of pubescent girls and his pygmalionism. But it was undoubtedly his politics as much as his perversity which eventually brought him to the attention of the Nazis, who classified his work in a category designated degenerate art - i.e., work which insulted German sensibility and attempted to corrupt or confuse the forms of nature. To be fair, that's exactly what Bellmer wanted to do.

Forced to flee to France in 1938, Bellmer was welcomed with open arms by the Surrealists who had already published photographs of his dolls several years earlier. Briefly imprisoned as a German national during the early months of the war, he later aided the French Resistance during the occupation by making fake passports.  

Choosing to remain in France after the war, Bellmer lived in Paris until his death in 1975. Although he made no more dolls, he continued working into the 1960s, creating sexually explicit drawings, photographs, paintings and prints (mostly of young girls). Bellmer said of his own work during this period that it constituted an attempt to produce images that it would be impossible to think or describe in words.  

His place in 20th century art history is secured and his cultural influence has not been insignificant.

One final note: in 2006, the Whitechapel Gallery removed twelve of Bellmer's works from a retrospective exhibition. Ostensibly on the grounds of spacial consideration, the rumour persists that the action was due to the organizers concern that the pieces might be particularly offensive to the local Muslim population. Again, to be fair, Bellmer's work doubtless would upset Islamofascists for much the same reasons and in much the same manner as it did the Nazis, but one sincerely hopes there is no truth in this story ... 

California Über Alles

Jake and Dinos Chapman: California Über-alles (2003)

Why do those professional network hippies at LinkedIn feel the need to exercise so much control over whom their members may and may not establish connections with and so build what is effectively a wide but nonetheless gated community?

I know the official LinkedIn policy speaks about the need for establishing trust amongst members and providing security, but it feels like the kind of soft-fascism identified by the Dead Kennedy's: California Über Alles.

And so, whilst I understand the need to have regulations in place to try and stop abusive behaviour, I resent the constant threat of having my account restricted or deleted altogether simply because I might choose to invite a stranger into my world.

There doesn't seem much point in only forming virtual connections with the same people I already know in what remains of and passes for the real world. I want the freedom to cruise on-line and pick up who ever catches my interest in a random, promiscuous and anonymous manner. 

For ultimately, the most creative and most beautiful relations are ones solicited outside the gate and closed communities, no matter how elite the membership, become at best ghettos and, at worst, concentration camps.