COMMUNITY

Jean Charlot (Image: U of Hawaii news)

We initially began posting these articles on “The Artists of the Abbey” in September 2021, as a way to introduce and highlight the talented people behind so many of the works of beauty which surround us, not only in the monastery and the Abbey Church, but also in the classrooms, libraries, residential houses and the public spaces of our campus, both interior and exterior. The passage of time goes hand-in-hand with the passing of those in the Abbey and School community who had a personal connection to and ownership of our corporate or institutional memory spanning over one hundred years.

My own discovery of our art collection is sometimes supplemented by close, face-to-face interviews with the artists. Other details require excavating and mining of our archives. Two of our features this past year have even investigated the works of unknown individuals in the anonymous artisans and artists who crafted the stained glass now in the Stillman Dining Hall and illuminated Books of Hours handed down to us. While many of those we have featured are still living and active and occasionally grace us with their physical presence, others among that departed august group are present to us only through the tangible legacy of beauty they have left behind. In his 1997 book, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty: Art, Sanctity and the Truth of Catholicism, Fr. John Saward, a former Anglican clergyman, writes of that “iconic beauty in every church of the realm: in altarpieces and wall paintings, in shrines and portals, in stone and in glass.” To that short list of the varied visual media of the artist, we hope to add, over the coming installments, the works of Abbey musicians, poets, photographers and a carpenter or two.

Sadly, this month’s featured artist is no longer with us, his life having begun at the end of the 19th century in Paris. Much has been written about Louis Henri Jean Charlot (1898-1979). It was the most recently published article about Jean Charlot which made the blip on my radar that prompted this particular story. The August 9, 2022, issue of the glossy T: The New York Times Style Magazine which arrived that morning on the monastery’s reading table in the calefactory included a 3-page spread titled “A House for Hawaii,” by Matthew Dekneef, under the heading of “By Design.” The six color photographs accompanying the text reveal a spacious and airy midcentury residence in Honolulu, near Kahala Beach, replete with Charlot’s own artwork. Its design was a collaboration between Charlot and a local architect, George Wimberly.

Dekneef writes that, “In June, the house was returned to the artist’s family, who remain committed to safeguarding its cultural status.” One of those family members represents Charlot’s connection to Portsmouth, which dates to the mid-20th century when one of his four children, Jean Pierre, was a member of Portsmouth Priory’s Class of 1958. This son, now 81 and known as John, is professor emeritus of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. During the years of his residency at Portsmouth, his father gifted at least two original works of art to the Portsmouth art collection.
 

Flight into Egypt (Monastery Christmas Card)

One painting is titled “Flight into Egypt” and appears on an Abbey Christmas card (unfortunately undated), labeled simply, “gift of the artist.” I discovered it while cleaning out a former monastic classroom and, at first glance, thought it was an image by Diego Rivera. My assessment wasn’t too far off the mark, as you shall see. The second work, a colored woodblock print measuring 10” x 11”, is titled “Madonna and Infant Jesus or Mother and Child.” At least, that is the title typed on an inventory page by Fr. Damian Kearney, noting that the work was a gift to Fr. Aelred Wall in 1957. The entry notes of the work: “illustrated in Moma publication; similar print in MOMA collection” (The MOMA is the Museum of Modern Art in New York City). The line labeled “location on campus” tells us that it is, or was, in the “Monastery, Third Floor.” It doesn’t appear there now, hidden for the moment in storage after our renovations. Reproduced images of both exist, in our Christmas card and in our archive, and hopefully soon we will have their originals more readily visible to us.

Madonna and Infant Jesus, or Mother and Child (Charlot)

As for the Rivera connection, let’s return to Dekneef, who informs us that Charlot “played a part in the post-revolution Mexican mural movement as a contemporary of Diego Rivera’s.” One sees similarities in their work. Donald McVicker writes, “It is accepted that Charlot’s knowledge of fresco painting was critical in the development of the techniques favored by the leading muralists. Charlot’s own mural, ‘The Massacre in the [Aztec] Main Temple,’ painted on the walls of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoriais usually considered the Mexican mural movement’s first true fresco.” (yucatanadventure.com) Charlot was thus well acquainted with the founders of the Mexican muralism movement, notably by Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros – known as “Los tres grandes.” Dekneef notes: “But it was in Polynesia, as he became acquainted with the centuries-old customs of native Hawaiians and the people who still practiced them, that he developed a particular focus on nature. Before that, Charlot’s art had reflected his interpretations of Catholicism and Mexican Indigenous traditions, in which the material world is separate from the spiritual one.” According to Charlot, “With Christianity in Mexico, you reach God and truth through pain,” but in the Hawaiian worldview, “it’s through pleasure.” It will be a pleasure to have these works more visible again.

Charlot’s mural: Massacre in the Main Temple