WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
ICON: New Images of the Holy
ICON: New Images of the Holy
By Carolee Ross (copyright 1989)
Writers note: I first met and interviewed Father John Giuliani over twenty years ago, and my feature story was published in the Times Mirror Newspapers, Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate and several of their syndicate newspapers. Since then, Father John Giuliani has gone on to win numerous awards and see his artwork accepted unanimously by religious institutions across the board. Last year at the Vatican, Father John presented to Pope Benedict, his icon of Blessed Kateri, the Mohawk woman who is in the process of becoming the first Native American Catholic saint. The article is virtually unchanged, with the exception of Father Giuliani’s newest honors and his more recent work.
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| Holy Family with Lamb by Father John Giuliani all images courtesy of Hillstream LLC |
Benedictine Father John Giuliani has picked up the paintbrushes he
put away over thirty years ago.
Father John calls his icon paintings “windows of the holy, which point to the presence of God.” He uses no models. The works are reflections of the pictures he can visualize in his mind's eye.
There are however, visual surprises in store. For aside from the earliest examples of the artist-priest's more traditional paintings, the experience goes beyond what we recognize in Western culture as Christian icon. Blending the faces of Native American tribes, the Navajo, Lakota, Cheyenne and Hopi with the stylistic canons of classical holy Byzantine painting, the artist has created a dynamic synthesis, evoking symbolic and ritualistic references to the magic of totemic art.
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| Chocktaw Madonna by Father John Giuliani |
The works have been displayed in a variety of venues, including museums, galleries and churches across the country and in Europe. His work has been exhibited at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Marian Institute in Dayton, Ohio, the Basilica of St. Mary and at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. Several dozen of his works are in private collections throughout the country and in Italy.
The Native American icons vibrate with brilliant, undiluted colors and rhythmic patterns, displaying an intrinsic sense of design and a masterly ease of composition. They are not, however, merely portraits of a people, but embody the underlying spiritual essence of the subjects as well, similar to the mission of ritual art created by Native tribal craftsmen. The viewer is transported back to a mystical time when the artist was an instrument of communication between the world of soul and physical surface, icons the primary vessel, and spirituality the guiding philosophical force.
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| Lakota Joseph and Child by Father John Giuliani |
The son of Italian immigrants who settled in Greenwich, he recalled a creative family heritage, filled with craftspeople, carpenters, tailors, “all of them working with their hands, making forms. Even my brother Vin, (later to become a professional artist), was always hammering away at some old pieces of wood for an art project.”
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| Amalia and Nicola Giuliani Father John Giuliani's Parents |
Father John remembered his childhood and Greenwich of the 30's and 40's as a wonderful environment for an artistic child, with family and teachers constantly encouraging him to draw and develop his artistic gifts. And draw and paint he did, going on to complete undergraduate studies in Fine Arts at New York's Pratt Institute. Then, responding to a different calling, he earned an M.A. in Theology from St. John Seminary in Boston, and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1960.
That same year, Father John put his brushes away. “I willingly put the art aside because of my greater love for God's visitation in a new way,” he said. “But like all good things, it was to eventually return.”
He completed additional M.A. degrees in American and Classical Studies in preparation for a teaching career at local diocesan schools, and eventually served as chaplain at Sacred Heart University.
The closest association with the art world was a humanities lecture series on Film Appreciation at Fairfield University, where he surveyed American film through the eyes of sociologist. “We explored our times,” he says, “from looking at the violence of the 60's to examining the American character as portrayed by stereotypical male and female roles.”
In 1976, feeling a larger need to serve the community, he founded a chapter of the Benedictine Grange in West Redding, a religious order noted for their preservation of classical civilization during the Middle Ages, encouragement of learning, and their devotion to fostering hospitality. The Grange responded to community needs with the establishment of the Good Shepherd House soup kitchen in South Norwalk, worship services which are open to all, and the maintenance of a guest house on the serene site of the Grange property.
Shortly after the Grange was established on a hill overlooking the Redding countryside, Father John experienced an awakening of consciousness to the previous inhabitants of the land, the Native American civilization. A Franciscan sister of Lakota extraction paid the Grange several visits, and shared her belief that the property was a holy site. “She recognized the spirit of the Native Americans who had been here generations before, which was an affirmation of exactly what we were feeling,” said Father John.
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| Seminole Madonna and Child by Father John Giuliani |
“The Indian prayed to Brother Sun, and Sister Moon,” explained Father John, “and if you will remember, St. Francis of Assisi called the animals his brothers and sisters and wrote of Brother Sun and Sister Moon in his Canticle of the Sun.”
After these beliefs were integrated into his theology, Father John sought more time for personal meditation and solitude. “The more space we make within ourselves, the more capacity we have for sources of inspiration," he said. "We dip into it -- each soul is the well and the source of inspiration.”
He studied at the School of Sacred Art in New York City, where students are instructed in age-old techniques of Byzantine methodology. They prepare wooden surfaces with gesso, doing the meticulous sanding necessary for the flawless surfaces required, and are taught to observe the absolute dictates of color and form according to Byzantine iconography. There is little room for free expression within the art form.
“Just as when I was a young man at Pratt, I was told to forget everything I had ever learned and I tried to,” said Father John. “But I realized at the end of my studies that this was not quite what I wanted to express. I wanted a different way to render iconography, my own path to imaging the Holy.”
Searching for further sources of inspiration, he went back to contemplating his collection of American Indian portraits and artwork. Suddenly, he could visualize bright Navajo weavings swaddling the baby Jesus, or encircling the arms of the Blessed Mother.
“When I first started painting my early icons, many of them looked more like Quattro Cento Italian Mammas than elongated, delicate Byzantine Madonnas,” he laughed, pointing to an early Virgin and Child on display. “It must have been my Italian heritage coming through. And then, when I started using Indian faces, the energy just poured through me.” Shaking his head in amazement, he recalled, “I would come out of my studio, astonished that a whole day had flown by. The works you see here were done this summer in only three months of around-the-clock work.”
(Asked to explain his decision to portray the faces of the sacred as Native Americans, Giuliani explains:
“As a Catholic priest and son of Italian immigrants I bear the religious and ethnic burden of ancestral crimes perpetrated on the first inhabitants of the Americas. Many have been converted to Christianity, but in doing so some find it difficult to retain their indigenous culture. My intent, therefore, in depicting Christian saints as Native Americans is to honor them and to acknowledge their original spiritual presence on this land. It is this original Native American spirituality that I attempt to celebrate in rendering the beauty and excellence of their craft as well as the dignity of their persons.”
"Describing the work called Lakota Annunciation, Father John reflected, “This woman looks so much like my own mother - we really are all one.” He pointed to the large bird above the Madonna's head, explaining the imagery. “The Falcon was the holy bird for the Indian, so where the Christian iconography uses the dove as the holy spirit, I substituted the Falcon."
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| Hopi Annunciation by Father John Giuliani |
He paused again, considering another painting. “I first saw the costume in this work at a museum. The sleeves were outstretched exactly like this and I could see this was my pose for the Lakota Assumption.” The image which came to him after leaving the museum, was that of a young Lakota maiden, rising among the Sun, the Moon and the Stars of Heaven, as in the prayers that have been so successfully assimilated into Grange services.
A seated Lakota Virgin and Child sums up the artist's romantic concern with specific detail; the graphic rendering of beads, jewelry and feathers, the imaginative suggestiveness of halo. This is a Madonna whose ethnic traditions are part of her identity, represented with the solemn dignity reserved for the mother of a tribal chieftain.
The only stylistic remnant of Byzantine training which remains in these later works is the treatment of the hands, with the slender, almost ethereal fingers which seem more of the spirit than of the flesh. Otherwise, the figures are portrayed in robust, full bodied form and frontal presentation, confronting the viewer directly, as opposed to the softly curved, outwardly gazing compositions of classical icon painting.
“I have been very humbled by all of this," Father John concluded. “These hands that had not used a brush for so many years were liberated. It is with gratitude that I open these windows to the holy presence of the spirit in human form. I have been gifted with the love of God and the liturgy of creation.”
2 comments:
Carolee, you've painted a beautiful literary portrait of this artist and his work. This is a fascinating and updated perspective of an ancient subject matter.
Your wonderful story about this incredibly talented and deeply spiritual artist is so very well written, Carolee! If this comment actually posts this time, please read it knowing I am your ardent fan.