Two of Spain’s most celebrated masters have traversed the centuries to finally meet in Bishop Auckland’s Spanish Gallery.
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, known as ‘El Greco’, architect of the Spanish Renaissance in the Spanish Golden Age, can lay claim to a similar notoriety in his day to that of his twentieth century compatriot, Salvador Dali.
A new exhibition, Dali / El Greco: Christ on the Cross, juxtaposes each artist’s singular depiction of the crucifixion scene and poses the question: are we looking at the same thing?
The gallery’s founder, Jonathan Ruffer, spoke to the Bishop Press at the launch of the unique exhibition.
Mr Ruffer was keen to credit Scottish financier and patron of the arts, Sir Angus Grossart, who died in May of this year, with securing the loan of the Dali to the Spanish Gallery.
“He has been a real friend to us here,” said Mr Ruffer, who developed a close relationship with the former banker through their mutual connection to the world of finance.
“His day job was in finance but his life’s work was supporting the arts in Scotland and he very much warmed to what we were doing here in Bishop Auckland. ‘If you can get the Spanish Gallery open, I’ll get you the Dali,’ he promised.”
It was a promise kept, but as a result of the delay caused by the pandemic, one he was sadly unable to witness fulfilled.
El Greco’s Christ on the Cross, painted between 1600 and 1610, forms part of the permanent collection at the Spanish Gallery and, as Mr Ruffer explains, was one of the first depictions of what became an art industry.
Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, painted in 1951, bookends the subject as modern artists’ interest in the theology of Christianity waned.
As to whether they are images of the same thing, Mr Ruffer places the viewer at the centre of the question.
“Looking at a picture is an encounter,” he suggests. “The picture itself is unchanging, but our responses to it will be completely different.
“If you look at this El Greco, above his head there is a statement explaining who he was – the king of the Jews – in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
“Now here,” he says, gesturing at the scroll nailed above Christ’s head in the Dali. “There appears to be a similar statement, but look closer, and the scroll is blank.
“My own thought is that Dali is teasing us. He is inviting us to look at a picture that is painted today but in the same way as El Greco looked at the subject. But it can’t be done.”
Asked whether he likes the Dali, which has been a source of controversy for some over the decades – indeed it was attacked and torn in 1961 by a visitor to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, where it permanently hangs – he says: “What I don’t think it is intended to be is an object of piety.
“So, as opposed to the El Greco, if you are an old lady who gets a warm feeling inside when you look at it, you are probably missing the point.”
Dali’s departure from his iconic surrealist images to paint his version of the crucifixion, came after he had returned to his native Spain, then under the despotic rule of General Franco.
His decision to live under the dictator alienated him from his compatriots, but Mr Ruffer suggests that too may have been part of his idiosyncratic nature.
“Franco got his political support from the church, so by painting an old fashioned crucifixion, he was absolutely condemned by his fellow artists, most of whom would have been communists and socialists, but actually I think he was teasing them.”
The crucifixion would ordinarily speak to faith, and while Dali and El Greco’s paintings bookend its history in art, they also bookend that dialogue.
“For those who have trouble with faith, I want to encourage them,” says Mr Ruffer, “and for those with a strong faith, I want to unsettle them.”
This historic exhibition, on display until 4 December, encourages that friction.
Bishop Auckland's local community newspaper.
