The Agony in the Garden
circa 1455-6
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/
It’s the rabbits that get me every time – I can’t help but smile, knowing full well that they are here for a very serious symbolic reason.
Religious paintings are like short films – moving tableaux is the term some people use. The longer you spend with them, the more animate they become. You bring some of your ideas and the canvas reveals itself in turn with every genuine step of engagement it can sense from the viewer. Everything but static, religious paintings have always spoken to me in a way that no other type of art has ever managed.
I’d even make the claim that painting trains our minds and souls to be more patient and cultivates our inner instinct for meaning-making in a way that digital media can’t (and will never replace). I am by no means a Luddite, but I believe the analogue format and process of painting and appreciating artworks generate a different way of thinking that returns us to a more embodied experience of reality.
You know that feeling of discomfort you feel when you can’t get through the first page of a book? That feeling of having to exert yourself physically when you have one kilometre left in a marathon? That feeling of helping an elderly relative as they smile in a way that goes against all the bland expressions you see every day on the underground? The awkwardness of confronting something above and beyond expressed in a human, present form that can’t simply be closed or discarded – that’s the first step towards growth.
Parables, tales, myths, stories by the brothers Grimm, church frescoes in small Florentine chapels – all these hold more wisdom and truth about human nature and the human soul than any form of generative AI. There is a unique presence of a dead artist outliving his creation through you, the viewer. It was a unique creation of circumstances, time, human obstacles and raw process.
We are reminded of who we are, and could be and why we shouldn’t get too cocky – even if we end up smiling to ourselves with a certain existential pleasure as we walk away from one of our favourite paintings. Switch off all devices and enter the National Gallery as if it were a banquet for your hungry soul.