Brehm Center

During the next few years a special exhibit of the graphic art of Georges Rouault (1871-1958) will be exhibited across the United States, including a stop at the new David Allen Library at Fuller. The exhibit has been curated by Sandra Bowden a well known Christian artist and collector, who was formerly President of Christians in the Visual Arts.

It is appropriate that the focus of this exhibit is on Rouault as printmaker, for it was specially in his graphic work that his religious vision took shape. The major portion of the exhibit is from his Miserere series, which he began during the somber days of World War I and finished by 1927. As Rouault liked to say: “One is never finished seeing and watching. Our eyes are the door of the spirit and the light of the mind.” He was always on the look out for some new range of human experience. And the anguish he felt at human suffering is achingly evident in the prints of this exhibit.

But the key to his faith, and a major theme of this exhibition, is the hope he was able to find in the suffering that he saw around him. In a 1939 article he reflected on the desperate situation in which so many people live: “Deep down inside the most unfriendly, unpleasant and impure creature, Jesus dwells.” He could see (in M4 left), Jesus in the tender touch of a father reaching down to encourage his son, “Seek refuge in your heart, poor wanderer”; or in the anguished woman in what looks to be a windblown landscape, M43 (right), reminding us: “We must die, and all that is ours.” The bowed backs of refugees, fleeing their homes with what they can carry reminded him of Jesus’ own exile—in “Exode/Exile to Babylon” (from the unpublished prints of Miserere).

Rouault is able to see these dreary figures without pity or despair because he saw beyond the surface of things. These lonely and despairing figures were part of a larger story; he was able to look into their suffering and see Jesus. What gave him hope was presence of Christ in the midst of life’s vicissitudes. Notice the opening image of the Miserere, M2 (left), where an outsized bowed head of Christ, with its crown of thorns, is entitled “Jesus humiliated”. This seemed to capture for Rouault the heart of what happened on the cross—Jesus was dishonored and spurned, like us! This is why so many of his images of Christ--always in a white tunic, show him in solidarity with his disciples, or the poor, the lonely. See the 1935 Black and White Aquatint “Christ in Faubourg”—Christ walks along with those trapped in this poor neighborhood. We too are exiled, Rouault wants to say, but there is hope for us, even beyond the grave. Look at M28(right) where a room filled with skulls opens to a niche with a cross standing on—piercing, a skull. The caption conveys Jesus’ words from John 11:25: “He who believes in me, though he be dead, shall live.” Because Christ is risen he continues to walk with the poor and lonely, offering a presence that neither pain nor death can overcome.

To read William Dyrness fuller response to the traveling exhibit click here.

And watch this space for further news about this powerful exhibit.

William Dyrness, Fuller Theological Seminary

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