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.

 

 

One for Sorrow ...

One for Sorrow (Or The Murder of Murgatroyd) 

Stephen Alexander (2023)

 

 

I. 

 

It's striking how the death of an individual creature can have far greater emotional resonance than news of an entire species dying out. 

 

Thus it is that when I came across the body of a dead magpie this morning it filled me with genuine sorrow, whilst discovering that the Chinese paddlefish was declared extinct in 2022 left me almost entirely indifferent. 

 

That's not because I value our feathered friends more than our aquatic ones, it's just due to the fact that death only becomes real (conceivable) when reduced in scale and given a face, as it were. 

 

This applies to people as well as animals; reports of atrocities involving multiple fatalities don't move as much as the image of a single dead child (a fact often exploited by those looking to influence or emotionally manipulate public opinion).   

 

 

II.

 

Magpies, of course, belong to the crow family - widely considered to be the most intelligent of birds - and are famous for their beautiful black-and-white colouration and (in the European imagination) the fact that they love to steal shiny objects, such as wedding rings and other valuables.      

 

They are also thought to have an ominous aspect; to be a portent of good or bad fortune. According to English folklore, one is for sorrow, two for mirth; three for a death and four for a birth. The popular nursery rhyme builds upon this ornithomantic idea, albeit with different lyrics:

 

One for sorrow, 

Two for joy, 

Three for a girl, 

Four for a boy, 

Five for silver, 

Six for gold, 

Seven for a secret never to be told. [1]

 

There are many variants of this, but the key fact remains - as any fisherman will tell you - that a solitary magpie is never a good sign ...

 

In Piero della Francesca's painting of the Nativity scene, for example, a lonely magpie can be spotted on the roof of a ruined stone stable presaging the pain and sorrow that lies ahead (aguably for all mankind, not just Mary and her son).     

  

 

Piero della Francesca The Nativity (1470-75)

Oil on wood (124 x 123 cm)
National Gallery (NG908) [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Like many of my generation, I know this version of the rhyme thanks to the children's TV show Magpie, (1968-80). Sadly, the popularity of this version - performed by The Spencer Davis Group as the programme's theme song [click here] - displaced many regional variations that had previously existed.

 

[2] Click here for more information on the work and its recent restoration. Keen-eyed birdspotters will doubtless also note the goldfinch - a symbol of redemption in devotional art - sitting in a bush on the left of the picture.

 

 

Reflections on the Virgin Mary's Pussy

 

Aubrey Plaza as the Virgin Mary holding 

Grumpy Cat as the Meowsiah (2014) 

lostmediawiki.com

 

There are no cats in the Bible. 

 

Neverthless, during the Middle Ages, they silently crept their way into Christian mythology and became associated with the Virgin Mary, as evidenced in the work of many great artists including Leonardo, Rubens, and Rembrandt. 

 

It's not really clear why the Madonna became associated with a feline companion, but one legend is that a cat had given birth to a kitten beneath the manger in Bethlehem and that Mary was deeply touched by the display of maternal tenderness that mirrored her own love for the newborn baby Jesus. 

 

Further, it's sometimes claimed that when Jesus began to cry due to the coldness of the stable in which he lay, the she-cat instinctively jumped into his make-do crib and comforted the infant with the warmth of her body and gentle purring.      

That's a nice story. However, I can't help imagining in my more diabolical moments what might have happened if the cat had sucked the breath away from Mary's bundle of joy and suffocated the Son of God ...

 

Would Joseph have strangled the creature in a rage? 

 

Would Our Lady have adopted the kitten in order to compensate for the loss of her child and become its blessed surrogate mother? 

 

Would the Three Wise Men have fallen down in worship before the kitten and recognised him as their Messiah? 

 

Would we celebrate the birth of a feline saviour each December?   

 

Would Nietzsche have written a work entitled Die Antikatze?

 

And would we now find the above photo of Aubrey Plaza an iconic and profoundly serious image, rather than an amusing and mildly blasphemous one?

 

 

Note: this post is for Gail Marie Naylor, whose picture of the Virgin Mary holding a cat inspired me to write it: