CityLife

Ale and Arty: My gallery debut

The exhibition runs until January 11

FOR 30 years Stuart Brennan has believed that "culture" roughly translates as "beer and football". The chances of him changing now are pretty slim, but we at CityLife have set the MEN sports writer a task - not to find the new man but to at least discover the new Manchester.

This week he reluctantly sloped down to Manchester Art Gallery to take a look at the latest exhibition.
 
AN invitation to go along and see Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelites sounded like a good gig - I've always liked those groovy Sixties popular music combos.

But the Art Gallery sounded like an odd place for a Desmond Dekker tribute band to be wooooah-ohh'ing their way through somke classic tunes.

And when I waddled down Mosley Street and up the steps into the old gaffe, there was complete silence.

Only then did I discover the awful truth. Holman Hunt was a painter chappie, and the Pre-Raphaelites were his pals, a kind of 10th century Purple Hand Gang  but quite literally with purple hands.

I had to wander round and look at paintings for a hour or two. When I agreed to do this column, this was the bit I had dreaded.

It is with a sense of shame that I admit I have never been in an art gallery before. Don't get me wrong, I like to gaze on beauty. I could sit all day on a Lake District mountainside, just drinking in the view, and the same goes for Angelina Jolie, or a Best of George Best video.

It has always seemed to me that no matter how talented an artist, he or she can never come close to the colour, light and texture conjured up by Mother Nature in the original.

I can appreciate the genius of interpretation, but I am probably one of those Philistines who would have driven poor old van Gogh to distraction and aural disfigurement.

But that was not going to stop me heading in to the exhibition with an open mind and an unblemished eye.

A little bit of research reealed that old William Holman Hunt had been a bit of a rebel in his day. he and a couple of his art school pals, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Millais, had kicked up a bit of a fuss at the fusty old Royal Academy, with outrageous new ideas.

Pulse

Good start. Everyone with a pulse should love a rebel.

They set up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which, let's face it, is a crap name for a feisty bunch of painty rogues, ready to kick over easels and squirt poster paints into the beards of ther Establishment.

They took excepetion to another geezer called Raphael, a 16th century artist who had introduced a pretty dull, very decent and straightforward style.

They were the Rolling Stones to his Cliff Richard, and Victorian high society didn't like it.

Holman Hunt believed in paying great attention to detail in his paintings of nature, observing carefully the way light dappled through the leaves on a summer's day, or the precise way a vine would trail around a tree.

And then he would paint pictures heavy with symbolic meaning, loaded with hidden agendas, and packed with little clues, all a bit Da Vinci Code'ish.

It upset those stuffy old Victorians no end, pictures of rustic country folk with ginger hair and ruddy cheeks, frolicking on a grassy bank and such-like.

Luckily, the Art Gallery provide little info sheets for duffers like me, explaining the significance of the details in Holman Hunt's work.

Much of it had no meaning to anyone but him, until he told people, or let little secrets slip in letters to his pals.

Which begs the question of why he should do it in the first place.

Surely a work of art is like a joke - there's no point if you have to explain it to everyone.

Hence we find that The Hireling Shepherd, which depicts two of those lusty country folk canoodling, while in the background his flock of sheep wander into a corn field, where they are eating themselves to death.

Apparently, it was Holman Hunt's comment on the way that certain church people would spend hours in pointless theological discussions, while behind their backs their "flocks" were left to indulge themselves in sex, violence and other forms of fun.

As a painting of a bloke waving a moth under the nose of a woman with a passing resemblance to Liz McDonald off Corrie, in an idyllic rustic setting, it's pleasant enough. But old Hunt needed to stick labels of his own on the picture, and that would have just spoiled it.

Devout Christian

Anyhow, he went and spoiled himself by becoming a devout Christian after early life as an agnostic, and the centre piece of the exhibition is Light of the World, apparently pretty famous, and snaffled from St Paul's Cathedral for a few months so us barbarian Northerners can have a gander.

Now it must be because I never wasted my life in Sunday school, have never been to a church other than for weddings, funerals and the odd christening, and avoid religion like the plague, but I had never seen this painting before.

Apparently, it was hung on the walls of homes, schools and other God-bothering places the length and breadth of this country, and aso popped up frequently on Whit walk banners and stained-glass windows.

For those atheists, Satan-worshippers and cultural desert-dwellers out there, it depicts Jesus on what appears to be a Trick or Treat run. Carrying a lantern, he stands in a spooky spot, the full moon behind his head, and is knocking on a door which has no handle.

Meaning? "Jesus liked Hallowe'en" was my immediate impression. But no, it is another of those symbolic pictures of which old Hol was rather fond. The idea is that Jesus is out there knocking on your door, but the handle is on your side, so it's up to you to invite him in.

Personally, I never got the knock, but it's an interesting enough picture, and the stories and symbolism surrounding it are well worth a look.

Symbolism

Perhaps old Hunty's most baltant bit of symbolism is The Shadow of Death, which shows Jesus, in his loicloth, having a good old stretch after a hard day at the lathe in his carpenter's shop.

Mum Mary is looking in horror at his shadow, a premonition of his death on the cross, and again the painting is dripping with symbolism.

Perhaps Hunt should have taken a leaf out of old Leonardo's book when it came to subtlety - no-one is ever going to write The Holman Hunt Code, because Tom Hanks would have the lot solved in ten minutes flat.

Anyhow, the exhibition was interesting enough, especially the stuff about his travels to the Holy Land, accompanied by some very interesting photos taken by his pal James Graham.

In fact, I was engrossed enough to spend too long, and not have a chance to pop into the Beautiful Game - about football! - before I left. Bummer.

Next week Brennan will be going to see 'Great Expectations' at the Library Theatre.