COLOUR • SPIRIT • SPIRIT of the TIMES?
Christian Art in the Opus of Wilhelm Buschulte
Expressionist pictures, white walls, plain geometrical architecture, an aesthetics dominated by museum presentation: these we encounter in the Apostolic Nuncio's residence in Berlin.1 The pictures are stained glass paintings. Their subjects are biblical, concordant with their place. An attempt by the Church of imitating a putative rival, "the Museum"? Not at all. The pictorial transposition of a typological vis-à-vis has been present in the arts for more than a thousand years, and the Church steadfastly holds to it. The Nuncio's residence, consecrated in 2001, optically represents contemporary, present taste; as to subject matter, it lives in a spiritual sphere of the eternal, in this case of Christian eternity.
Berlin,
The Nuncio's residence |
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Wilhelm Buschulte has never been reluctant to embody biblical themes in images because the significance of these stories is topical at all times. Furthermore, Buschulte's colour compositions are a fascination in themselves, and concentrating on their subject matter is hard work. True, the pictures in the residence follow – in exemplary fashion for many window cycles – a detailed program given by the client, yet it can by no means be maintained that Buschulte is slavishly illustrating Christian symbols devoid of artistic value. Preserving one's own artistic position is, here, a much more difficult undertaking than in the area of autonomous art. Buschulte had created two designs variants for the residence, an expressively coloured one and, in contrast, a version severely geometrical with black and golden lines.2 The artist preferred the latter, the client opted for colours. Pretty soon we are here involved in a situation created by basic human problems and an entirely modern view, as held by artists such as Buschulte for five decades. This modern view embraces the capability of working in a team, constructive collaboration, democratic consensus, installing the art work in space, preserving history and transferring it, without aggression, but securely, into the formal language of our times. The consensus between architects, parish council, parish community and artist produced tens of thousands of cycles of church windows in the second half of the 20th century alone. Quite certainly these are not all of inferior quality, on this the experts agree. On the other hand, one definitely cannot say that autonomous works of art are better or worse than works in, mostly, ecclesiastical architecture. These are simply quite different tasks with equal rights of existence and needing equal artistic talent. Hiltrud Kier notes, taking Hermann Gottfried as her example, but her remarks apply to all his colleagues in this field, " It may give him a little satisfaction to see that the efforts of a colleague, much beloved by the art market, to create the design of glass windows in St. Kunibert have, after ten years, not yet produced actually presentable results. It does not seem so easy to be a 'painter to the Church'." 3And yet, for the last five decades no art historian, excepting Suzanne Beeh-Lustenberger and Adam Oellers in Germany, has turned, in any noteworthy and, above all, analytical manner, to these thematics.4Such strict exclusion of the area of stained glass painting from the general field of the fine arts is not to be found in the USA and in Great Britain . Contemporary critics, such as, for instance Barbara Rose and Dale M. Lanzone on Dale Chihuly 5study the field of glass painting as a matter of course within an overall view of the painterly and sculptural opus. This is what the Deutsche Glasmalerei-Museum, too, endeavours to do through individual exhibitions of artists. No German art bookshop offers reflections on this problem. One must really ask why this is so. In Germany we truly do not have poor art historians nor ignorant critics, we do have outstanding artists in glass painting. Hence the answers must be sought elsewhere. These facts alone speak for themselves and make it necessary that national general art historians approach this subject – objectively, that is understood. The approach, quite certainly, will have to be through the relationship of art and Church, and the involved reservations of art scholars, critics, and mediators about 20th century art in a religious context. Such reflection may start with the many debates about the chapel at the 1912 Sonderbund-Ausstellung in Cologne . The artists concerned, Prikker, Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff and Nolde quite obviously had been given the imposition, "of slightly reworking the strongly abstracting representations of 'miracles' into ornamentation so that the 'wish of the clergy' could be met without resentment – perhaps even with relief." 6
How do we judge such incidents as when Buschulte was commissioned in 1953 by the Redemptorist Monastery in Bochum , and his pane had to be removed again, while the commission, already given, was annulled because the sponsor disliked the facial traits of the angel and the flagellation of Christ?7
Dominik Meiering studied the subject of "Art and Church" as early as 1997 with reference to the situation in Cologne . He reports a speech by Pope John Paul II, given at the German Bishops' Conference in the Hercules Hall, Munich , 1980. For the first time there are words about the autonomy of art in the context of a relationship of art and Church, "It [art] is an instrument of interpreting one's own epoch ... art and Church ought to find a 'new partnership, a trusting co-operation' in which each partner can and should inspire the other." 8The existence alone of such publications as Das Münster – Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft and the periodical Art Magazine, with its liking for scandal, trash and gossip in the, to put it cautiously, very 'ephemerally oriented' art trade, demonstrates how inimical the camps are in every respect. The Suffragan Bishop of Cologne and future Bishop of Würzburg, Dr. Friedhelm Hofmann, says in connection with Buschulte, "Irrespective of the discussion on the right of existence of "Christian" art, which has been going on for decades, his opus of drawings, designs, windows, small scale sculptures and oil paintings reveals itself as sacral. Buschulte's spontaneously jotted down ideas on present developments within the Church show distance, characterised by an ironically alienated vitality, and a sensitive humour." 9Somewhere else Hofmann applies the term "Christian artist" 10and thus, consciously or unconsciously, claims the man for the Church. It is exactly because of this procedure by the clergy that reservations about art of a Christian content occur which, in most cases, are not justified.
Unfortunately, the Church does not try to reach human beings. She expects, in her spirituality which is far removed from the world and life that the general public remains equally inflexible. Artists in glass painting have suffered most under this state. Even Hofmann admits, "Wilhelm Buschulte has certainly not been exempt from quarrels with church officials and art commissions. The gift of profound humour allows the artist to stand in sovereign freedom above everyday difficulties when confronted with the challenges mentioned."11
There is an interesting statement by Georg Meistermann when questioned about this subject in 1988:12
Andreas Mertin, Which task is appropriate (...) to art in the Church?
Meistermann, First, I am of the opinion that art, however it happens, is a kind of praise of God, conscious or unconscious. Even if Fernand Leger who was a Communist did not believe, what he created is believable because with the help of all possibilities of feeling, of analysing in his head what he has to do, how he has to do something, he works out a sum in the shape of a picture which is in itself a total unity that does not need the slightest correction. One can say that Picasso does things differently, but there are many kinds of truthfulness next to each other, I do not speak of truths, but of "truthfulnesses". Now as to the task of art in the Church: earlier, in the old Church, a low music was always being played during the sermon, this was called organon, the organ from which the voice, as an articulate, definite being capable of communicating quite certain contents, evolves. Art and Church therefore mean a bringing together of eyes and ears. In Catholicism there are still the odours, incense. When I am listening to a sermon, I have something of all of this, that is, I am sated in all senses and hear, from out of these, a voice saying something. Art, therefore, serves preaching the gospel by being simply present.
At the 36th Essen Forum on "Religion and the Frontiers of Art" in 2001, Paul-Johannes Fietz quotes Ludwig Feuerbach, the critic of religion, who nevertheless concedes to the Church "as moral person a right to honour". Fietz stresses with reference to the Church, "Neither lamb-like forbearance and selfmade secularisation, nor a withdrawal, mentally, into a beleaguered wagon train present an appropriate reaction to the challenge of a society growing more and more remote from faith, but not necessarily being hostile to faith. This is the basically identical view of all participants in the discussions of the Essen Forum."
13
The " Verein für christliche Kunst im Erzbistum Köln " deals in his 2003 publication with the relationship of art and Church from the perspective of the clergy. 14
Noteworthy is, here, the differentiation between "Christian" and "religious" art.
Justinus Maria Calleen has put forward unbiased fundamental ideas for an open discussion through his symposia at the Diocesan Academy Rottenburg-Stuttgart. 15Alfred Nemeczek remarks cautiously on the putative situation of rivalry between Church and museum. He rightly complains about the growing sales of church buildings. 16If this continues, what is going to happen to the windows? Which entrepreneur has, so to speak, put the cart into the sand? Blunt questions.
It is time for taking a deep breath and to intercede with "Just a moment"! Let us, swiftly and beforehand, save a few components of European art and culture and quickly document them. Is this possible? We are doing this – no question. Are we in a similar situation to the period of secularisation? Does, here, a changing view of the world emerge? Or does the art trade simply have the better lobbyists? And if so, why? The Belgian artist Wim Delvoye has, in his series "Chapel" created a number of pictures of lead glazings in the shape of church windows. These show X-ray plates of people. Demystification? "Merely" the usual provocation of present-day art?
17Or plain and simple "deconstruction" according to Jacques Derrida, just views of the world that cannot be unified – parallel, subjective images?
Incidentally, art trade and art critics have made things very easy for themselves and have simply pushed artists such as Buschulte, Gottfried, Klos, Poensgen, Schaffrath, Schreiter, von Stockhausen and others into the glass sector. They have written them off as mere craftsmen, ignored them or torn them to pieces in the press as the example of Hermann Gottfried in Groß St. Martin and St. Aposteln in Cologne shows. Which quarrel was fought here at the cost of artists? Is a church window compelled to be an "event"? Is this of any interest to the visitor? In the Johanniskirche in Düsseldorf the visitor is invited to a Bible reading, with lunch afterwards in the cafeteria in the entrance area of the church, exactly as in a museum. In which respect do these institutions still differ? Everywhere a desperate attempt to lead people towards culture, or is the whole thing just so much more sociable?
We leave the answers to the general public, and study, as conscientiously as we can in view of the capacities we have, fallow land of art history. But study can only take place against such background.
Undertaking such travels of discovery, we hit upon treasures that fill all of us who are occupied with glass painting with enthusiasm, not because these are Christian contents, but because we have to do with painterly works that are artistically extremely sensitive, in empathy with the commission, and executed in masterly craftsmanship. At this point I deliberately do not speak of glass painting, because I also do not speak of canvas painting and paper drawing!18
Stylistically the most varied differences are to be found. Each one of these specialised artists has his/her entirely personal development, inner reasons for painting in this or that manner. A contextualisation of the stained glass opus in the overall painterly oeuvre is, as stated before, indispensable.
Wilhelm Buschulte's roots lie in Expressionism. Petra Kemmler describes in detail his stylistic affinity to the "Brücke" and to the "Blaue Reiter". 19 Buschulte's graphics and early oil paintings from the 50s and 60s clearly demonstrate his concern with line and plane as carriers of expression, without becoming spatial. Man is their subject – in a biblical as well as non-biblical context.
Wilhelm and Maria Buschulte quite often met Erich Heckel in Hemmenhoven on Lake Constance . Maria Buschulte's cousin was a friend of Otto Dix', and for many years the Buschulte couple took their holidays in this region, which many artists were fond of visiting.
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The oils of the Buschultes of this period, the 50s and 60s, nevertheless show already a very individual style that differs strongly from works by Heckel and Dix and possesses a much higher degree of abstraction, measured by the standard of the times.
We see a heavy impasto application of colour, occasionally a scratched out linearity, as in the works "Angel who brought fire to earth", or "Man having come from the fire", both 1963. 20 Colour and line function exclusively as carriers of expression. Abstract faces are formed, and only the title of the picture refers to contents later. The oil paintings, too, are dominated by biblical subjects in predominantly dark shades. His manner of assimilating the war experience? Already the early generation of classic Modernism, above all Nolde, Beckmann, Meidner, Dix and Schmidt-Rottluff reacted to the horrors of war by using Christian themes.
After World War II Meistermann designs the Horsemen of the Apocalypse for the bomb-damaged town hall of Wittlich . This extensive subject of dealing with war experiences, particularly in German art of the 20th century, can only be touched upon. It is a fact that artists such as Joachim Klos and Hermann Gottfried related repeated images of the Apocalypse again and again to contemporary events. Johannes Schreiter produced "fire" collages after the war, and autonomous art throughout the world reacts to the horrors of war to this very day.
Wilhelm Buschulte's wild painting finds a contrast in a more orderly procedure in the designs for glass paintings. Here, Buschulte so far works out designs and cartoons that, when they are transferred to glass, no compositional changes take place. Quite often the artist himself applies black paint to genuine antique glass.
In
studio talks, Wilhelm Buschulte speaks of the "two souls in his breast" 21,
explosive colour and, the opposite pole, linear absence of colour.
These partly ornamental compositions by stroke in Buschulte's glass opus have nothing to do with abstraction without objects in Prikker's sense. They go back to the origins of Cistercian modesty, reticence and asceticism, just as much as the expressive representations take up the reduced formal language of the Middle Ages. Buschulte shows such contrary forms of representation again and again in all his creative periods.
The example cited above, namely of two design variants for the Nuncio's residence in Berlin is, therefore, no isolated case. For the windows of the galleries of St. Gereon in Cologne , there exist two entirely different visual concepts, too.22Here, too, the client chose the strongly coloured variant.23
For the two windows in Aachen Cathedral Buschulte offered several suggestions. They extend from dense black paint, applied by himself, to out-of-wall linear ornament that appears in positive and in negative, and was so executed.
Adam Oellers describes this "interplay of expressive colour and geometrically severe composition" as characteristic of Rhenish glass painting.24
Hamburg-Farmsen, |
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Churches built in the 60s and 70s, such as Maria Regina in Saarbrücken, St. Meinolf in Hagen, or the Church of the Holy Ghost in Hamburg-Farmsen offered possibilities of unfolding in large areas to glass painters and, especially, to Wilhelm Buschulte.
In Hamburg-Farmsen the visitor immerses himself in entirely abstract painting, executed in genuine antique glass, and of a size of c. 100 square metres. The themes of Sending the Holy Ghost and The Flood turn into a monumental experience of light and colour in a temporary rapture of the senses. In St. Maria Regina in Saarbrücken, ten years earlier, Buschulte takes up the structure of the wall in similarly large glass areas. Architecture and glass painting are equal partners.
All the more curious that reviews of this phase of architecture, and even books on Rudolf Schwarz, with reference to buildings specifically planned by the architect for a consonance of glass painting and architecture, do not offer the slightest hint at glass painting. All the more merit to an essay by Maria Schwarz about the co-operation of Rudolf Schwarz and Wilhelm Buschulte in Annette Jansen-Winkeln's publication.25
Many stories come up when Wilhelm Buschulte speaks, not only he, but also his colleagues, in studio talks. In the end, a deep gratitude towards the Church as sponsor can be sensed, despite bitter disputes in the course of decades of creative work because in most cases the artists were given full freedom of design and execution. What remains is an extensive artistic oeuvre, demanding great expenditure, that knew space long before secular space installations, and will, in all probability, outlive these by a long time.
Iris Nestler
(Dr. Iris Nestler, Head of the Deutsches Glasmalerei-Museum Linnich)
1 Die apostolische Nuntiatur in Berlin. Regensburg 2002
2 siehe Abb. Seite 64 unten
3 hier Zitat Hiltrud Kier aus Iris Nestler (Hrsg.:) Hermann Gottfried – Andere Welten. Bönen 2004, Seite 37
4 Die spezielle Fachliteratur zum Thema Glasmalerei des 20. Jahrhunderts existiert bisher in beginnender Bestandsaufnahme und ist in der Präsenzbibliothek des Deutschen Glasmalerei-Museums einsehbar.
5 Dale Chihuly Projects. New York 2000
6 Alfred M. Fischer in:
Die Expressionisten von Aufbruch bis zur Verfemung.
Ausstellungskatalog Museum Ludwig 1. Juni bis 25. August 1996, Seite267-273, Zitat auf Seite 271
7 Ateliergespräche von Christine Haße und Iris Nestler mit Wilhelm Buschulte. Der Künstler wurde nach
eigener Aussage in diesem Fall mit 150 DM vom Auftraggeber abgespeist. Buschulte erzählt dies als eine Erläuterung zur genannten Scheibe, die Bestandteil der Ausstellung ist. In den Akten der Firma Oidtmann, die sich zu diesem Bild im Museum
befinden, geht die Geschichte detailliert hervor, auf deren Details hier verzichtet wird.
8 Albert Gerhards und Frank Günter Zehnder (Hrsg.):
Dominik Meiering: Kunst im Dienst (an) der Kirche?
Bild – Raum – Feier. Kirche und Kunst im Gespräch. Band 1
Regensburg 1997, Seite 44/45
9 F. Hofmann in: A. Jansen-Winkeln: Wilhelm Buschulte – Künstler zwischen den Zeiten. Eitorf 1999, Seite 7
10 Friedhelm Hofmann: Zur Situation des zeitgenössischen christlichen Künstlers am Beispiel Hermann Gottfried.
In: Hermann Gottfried – Andere Welten. Bönen 2004
11 F. Hofmann in: A. Jansen-Winkeln: Wilhelm Buschulte – Künstler zwischen den Zeiten. Eitorf 1999, Seite 7
12 www.amertin.de/aufsatz/meistermann.htm
13 Die neue Ordnung. Jahrgang 55, Nr. 5/2001. http://die-neue-ordnung.de/Nr.52001/PF.html
14 Dominik Meiering und Karl Schein (Hrsg.): Himmel auf Erden. Festschrift zum 150-jährigen Jubiläum des Vereins für
christliche Kunst im Erzbistum Köln und Bistum Aachen e.V.
Köln 2003
15 Justinus Maria Calleen (Hrsg.):
• Der (Kunst-) Dialog als Ernstfall. Mit-einander reden heißt auch mit-einander streiten können.. Aschermittwochsreden 1997-1999 zum Verhältnis von Kunst, Kirche und Gesellschaft.
Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1998/99
• Was ist das: Kunst? Ein interdisziplinäres Symposium. Kriterien – Positionen – Zusammenhänge.
Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1998
• Mysterium oder Spekulation?! Gibt es eine „(un-)christliche Kunst? Ein interdisziplinäres Symposium
Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1998/99
16 O.g.: Der (Kunst-) Dialog als Ernstfall. Mit-einander reden heißt auch mit-einander streiten können..
Aschermittwochsreden 1997-1999 zum Verhältnis von Kunst, Kirche und Gesellschaft. Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1998/99, Seite 37ff.
17 Kunstforum International. Band 163, Januar bis Februar 2003, Seite 201
18 Wenn der Begriff „Glasmalerei“ doch stehen bleibt, dann aus Gewohnheits- und Verständnisgründen.
19 Petra Kemmler: Malerei mit Glas. Die künstlerische Entwicklung Wilhelm Buschultes. in: Farbe-Geist-Zeitgeist? CD-ROM zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung, Linnich 2004
20 siehe Abb. 11 und Abb. 05 in the section oil paintings
21 Gespräch mit der Herausgeberin im Februar 2004
22 siehe Abb. in the section trial panes.
23 www.stgereon.de
Das Verhältnis der Glasmalerei des 20. Jahrhunderts zur mittelalterlichen Kirche ist ein Thema für sich und sprengt an dieser Stelle den Rahmen. Auch die Situation betr. St. Gereon mit den
ausgebauten und stückhaft in Kapellen wieder eingebauten Chorfenstern von Wilhelm Teuwen, die durch Meistermann-Fenster ersetzt wurden, seien hier nur in der Fußnote erwähnt.
Wilhelm Buschulte hatte den Auftrag für die Erdgeschoß- und Emporenfenster und musste diesen Auftrag gegenüber Meistermann behaupten. Der verstorbene Wilhelm Teuwen konnte dazu leider nichts mehr sagen.
Ateliergespräch Wilhelm Buschultes mit Christine Haße, Vera Henkelmann und Iris Nestler im Juni 2004.
24 Oellers, A.C.: Glas und Licht. Bilderwelt der Fenster, in: Auf der Suche nach neuer Identität. Kultur in Rheinland im Nachkriegsjahrzehnt, Mainz 1996 (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission des Landtages für die Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz, Bd. 20, Seite 417-450, Zitat Seite 417
25 Annette Jansen-Winkeln (Hrsg.): Wilhelm Buschulte – Künstler zwischen den Zeiten. Eitorf 1999, ab Seite 16
