This article is little more than an anecdote about my discovery on campus, hidden in plain sight, of a series of abstract prints. The discovery has led me to an extended reflection on the nature of “archives.” I found myself considering several connotations of the term “archive”: (1) A place to store dusty old items for which we really have no present use; (2) An accumulation of historical anecdotes and trivia which we occasionally pull out and say, “Hm, interesting”; (3) Our roots and origins (Greek: arche), where we are from, revealing to us who we now are. Of course, I would like to choose “Door #3.” I hope any report from the “archives” serves some purpose, reaches beyond the status of trivia, and tells us something of who we are. Of course, I may also be saying this so as to excuse the present report’s lack of research, dearth of historical data, and brevity of scholarly information. 

In my stumbling around for a topic this week, I may have discovered something. At least that is was it felt like – the stumbling part, I mean. For I indeed struggled to determine a topic for this month’s archive, finding myself with just a few days for it and various other items on my agenda. I was reduced to perusing the dusty shelves in the faculty room for old tomes containing remnants of Portsmouth lore, anything to spark a story, when my eyes then strayed to the prints hanging on the wall there. Twelve abstract pieces, with no immediately visible theme emerging. But my archiving senses kicked in when I noticed two of the prints had yellowed labels, curled at the edges, stuck to the bottom of their frames, no doubt left there by the late Father Damian Kearney, Portsmouth’s last and perhaps only archivist. He had labeled two of them, which must have for some time been hung independently of the other ten. The full series is now available for viewing in the faculty room. Fr. Damian’s tattered note identified them as a series of lithographic prints by Alfred Manessier depicting “The Spiritual Canticle” of John of the Cross.

I thought immediately of Dom Peter Sidler (about whom The Current may have an article in the upcoming months): his graduate degree in art, his work, together with Dom Hilary Martin, on the aesthetic of the entire monastic grounds, its architecture, and its art collection. I thought of their interest in and encouragement of contemporary artists like E. Charlton Fortune, of the community’s encounter with George Nakashima, of their work with Pietro Belluschi. What had led them to Manessier’s work? Had these prints been procured by Fr. Peter? Donated in discussion with him? Our archivist Fr. Damian, perhaps Fr. Julian Stead, could have answered my question directly: now it would require research – though what time did I have for that? But I had at least found a hook. I was being drawn in, pursuing an uncertain path, with these prints serving as a beacon. The path seemed illuminated from two directions: who was this Manessier, that he should choose the message of John of the Cross as the subject of his art? And who was this John of the Cross, of whom I knew little beyond having encountered some of his writing briefly, years ago? I found myself utilizing time I did not have to pursue these questions. If I could gain insight there, I might understand better why Portsmouth monks acquired these prints, why they chose to hang them; why their message was deemed worthy of consideration. Was this an “archive” topic? 

Of Manessier, the Bechtler Museum tells us: 

It was Manessier’s 1943 monastically-inspired "commitment to religion,” which he described as a “conversion,” that captivated me. Our own monks had many of their own conversion stories, particularly the first generations. A commentator writes of Manessier’s “...life-transforming religious conversion in 1943, while on retreat at a Trappist monastery,” and quotes the artist’s subsequent understanding of his art-making as “...an act of hope and love…a way of living through events, using a form of expression which avoids indifference and despair.” Apparently, an encounter with John of the Cross, or with the journey to God depicted by the saint, had been significant to him in his retreat and in its aftermath, leading to Manessier’s subsequently more ascetic and prayerful way of life, and increasingly religious-themed art. It occurred to me that these twelve prints were themselves an archive, a spiritual archive of the journey of the artist’s own soul. What was their message? 

Surely he would like us to see the beauty of the writing of John of the Cross, the depth of his exploration of the soul’s desire for God, the intensity of his suffering, of God’s absence, of a perseverance in search of the hidden, in articulation of the ineffable. Such spiritual vitality as we find in the saint’s writing, I thought, must have provided for the substance of Manessier’s own conversion and religious life, or at least echoed it. It is no wonder he rejected the designation “abstract” for such a subject. The Bechtler notes: “Alfred Manessier did not describe his work as ‘abstract,’ refusing that adjective as it implied a dislocation from the physical world. He would accept ‘nonfigurative,’ but he preferred ‘intériorisation,’ his neologism that can be literally translated as ‘interiorization’ or ‘searching internally for ways to represent the external.’” How could he designate his artistic expression as “abstract” when he is seeking to bring to light the most crushingly “concrete” of experiences imaginable, or unimaginable – the soul’s very encounter with God? I began to see these indecipherable “abstract” images in a quite different light. I began to think that the “non-figurative” might offer the most direct way to visually express his own “dark night” and the searing search of his own soul for the “living flame of love.” 

Prompted by Manessier’s visual depiction of the Spiritual Canticle, I found myself seeking out the texts of the saint. What made his writings generate somewhere deep in his consciousness the production of these particular visual images? The Spiritual Canticle begins:

 ¿Adónde te escondiste;  amado, y me dejaste con gemido? 

Where have You hidden Yourself;  And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?

One commentator (David M. Odorisio) notes that the folio of these lithographs contains texts not only from “The Spiritual Canticle,” but from the “Dark Night of the Soul” and from “The Living Flame of Love.” We might then search through and with John of the Cross, and allow his poetry and his commentary to accompany our own journey. I began such a journey, not much more than a day side-trip, into John’s writing. The excursion struck me in this season as particularly Lenten. His portrayal of the soul’s search recalls Benedict’s own chapter VII, on the twelve steps on the downward ascent of humility. John writes: 

For Benedict, the twelve steps of humility will culminate in, “that perfect Love that casts out fear.” And from the Living Flame of Love: 

Does such suffering and longing lie hidden in this series of lithographs? Do they bring forth the “living flame”, the “perfect Love” that is the alpha and omega of the soul? John of the Cross left for us in his writings a literary archive of his journey. Manessier in his lithographs left us his visual archive. 

Next came the realization that our own monastic community’s artists selected such works for their collection. They placed them on display for the likes of me to consider. These elements, I thought, produce an additional archive. Each artist’s journey, each of their works, can never be said to be meaningful, except by those who encounter it, preserve it, share it. These twelve quiet prints, twelve apostles of a shared journey: a shared canticle, an archive not only of Manessier, but of the monastic community here that found meaning in his work. I realized that these lithographs were created by Manessier about the same year that our church was being produced (1958), our upper monastery grounds were being shaped, its aesthetic meaning being considered profoundly. It must have been at about that time or shortly thereafter that the prints became known to Peter Sidler or Hilary Martin, both in tune with much of contemporary art, particularly in the Catholic world. And as I sought out the texts of John of the Cross, I wondered if this was not the very intention, the very hope, of the monks who procured these prints, who selected these works for display: an encounter with Manessier, and also with “The Mystical Doctor” - and with that encounter, Who next? The artist and the Mystical Doctor both express a Desire that is distinctively monastic, contemplative: the pursuit of our own “Arche,” the Root of our being, the Desire of our souls.

 

 

Archival image of Dom Hilary Martin and Dom Peter Sidler

So, that became the topic for this month’s “Archives.” Perhaps more theological than historical; perhaps more imaginative than evidential. Perhaps not your typical archive, yet, through a mirror dimly, hopefully capturing something of our origins. 

* The title, in homage to the world of contemporary art from which Manessier’s work emerges, echoes Magritte’s famous work, and my own discomfort with this article as “Archive”.