Sir Anthony Caro: Light for darkness at the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste
In May 1940, the German army moving across northern France, driving the bedraggled British Expeditionary Force towards the beaches of Dunkirk, laid siege to the small market town of Bourbourg. On the morning of the 25th the bell tower of the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste was struck by an artillery shell, and that afternoon a German fighter plane, hit in aerial combat, fell from the sky, shedding a tail of flaming petrol on to the roof of the church, transforming it within minutes into a blazing furnace. A photograph taken not long afterwards shows the extent of the damage inflicted on the beautiful Gothic choir: while its arches remain intact, the roof has vanished, its charred remains scattered on the floor, amid a sea of broken masonry and rubble.
In the years following the war, the roof was replaced, the rubble cleared. But the choir remained empty, sealed off from the rest of the church behind a high brick wall. 'It was like a legend,' Françoise Dubois, a curator from the French ministry of culture, says, 'as if the place had been sleeping for 50 years.'
This is how the British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro found it in 1999, when he was taken by Dubois to see the choir for the first time. 'I walked in and I said, what do you want me to do?' Caro remembers. 'And to my amazement they said, whatever you want. To be given a space like that and told you can do whatever you like, it's what every sculptor dreams of.'
Today the choir of Saint-Jean-Baptiste will be formally reopened, now transformed by Caro into the Chapel of Light. An extraordinary fusion of Gothic architecture and contemporary sculpture - of soaring stone arches, and monumental works in steel, wood and terracotta - it is the largest religious commission for a major artist in Europe since Matisse created the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence on the French Riviera, between 1948 and 1951. Its unveiling also marks the culmination of a nine-year struggle - a mini-war, if you like - between the forces of tradition and modernity that at one time threatened to inflict as damaging a blow to the project as a crashed German fighter.
Some 18 miles from Calais, Bourbourg is a sleepy town with a population of just 7,000, that seems to come to life only on market day, when the streets around the main square are clotted with stalls selling clothes and farm produce. The church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste stands just off the square, the heart of the town. Its foundations date from Roman times, the choir from the 13th century, the nave from the 15th. There is a bell from 1548 that is said to be one of the most important in France.
Although the choir was the oldest part of the church, and of the greatest historical importance, its restoration proceeded at a snail's pace. In the late 1980s new stained-glass windows were installed with money raised by a local organisation, les Amis de Saint-Jean-Baptiste. It was then that Dubois, who is the director of contemporary art for Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles (Drac), the arts council for the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, was charged with commissioning an artist of international stature to address the space in an original and imaginative way.
At that point, the outstanding job of restoration was the floor. The original Gothic flagstones had been removed by the German army during the war. 'In a church, the floor has its own significance,' Dubois says. 'You have graves, dates… I wanted somebody who would bring the idea of marking history.' She invited the British artist Rachel Whiteread to tackle the project. Physically and emotionally exhausted by the five years she had spent creating the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Whiteread declined. But Dubois says that their conversations made clear the project's potential to be about much more than simply restoring the floor.
In 1999 Dubois visited the Venice Biennale, where she saw The Last Judgement, the 25-piece sculpture in steel, wood and terracotta that Anthony Caro had made as a response to the atrocities of the 20th century. Dubois was immediately reminded of the medieval Flemish tradition of rétables - the lavishly carved wooden altar pieces depicting the life of Christ and the saints and stories from the Bible. 'I knew then that Anthony was the right person,' she says. When Caro first walked into the choir, she says, 'it was like seeing a captain walking on to his boat.'..
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
In the years following the war, the roof was replaced, the rubble cleared. But the choir remained empty, sealed off from the rest of the church behind a high brick wall. 'It was like a legend,' Françoise Dubois, a curator from the French ministry of culture, says, 'as if the place had been sleeping for 50 years.'
This is how the British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro found it in 1999, when he was taken by Dubois to see the choir for the first time. 'I walked in and I said, what do you want me to do?' Caro remembers. 'And to my amazement they said, whatever you want. To be given a space like that and told you can do whatever you like, it's what every sculptor dreams of.'
Today the choir of Saint-Jean-Baptiste will be formally reopened, now transformed by Caro into the Chapel of Light. An extraordinary fusion of Gothic architecture and contemporary sculpture - of soaring stone arches, and monumental works in steel, wood and terracotta - it is the largest religious commission for a major artist in Europe since Matisse created the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence on the French Riviera, between 1948 and 1951. Its unveiling also marks the culmination of a nine-year struggle - a mini-war, if you like - between the forces of tradition and modernity that at one time threatened to inflict as damaging a blow to the project as a crashed German fighter.
Some 18 miles from Calais, Bourbourg is a sleepy town with a population of just 7,000, that seems to come to life only on market day, when the streets around the main square are clotted with stalls selling clothes and farm produce. The church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste stands just off the square, the heart of the town. Its foundations date from Roman times, the choir from the 13th century, the nave from the 15th. There is a bell from 1548 that is said to be one of the most important in France.
Although the choir was the oldest part of the church, and of the greatest historical importance, its restoration proceeded at a snail's pace. In the late 1980s new stained-glass windows were installed with money raised by a local organisation, les Amis de Saint-Jean-Baptiste. It was then that Dubois, who is the director of contemporary art for Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles (Drac), the arts council for the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, was charged with commissioning an artist of international stature to address the space in an original and imaginative way.
At that point, the outstanding job of restoration was the floor. The original Gothic flagstones had been removed by the German army during the war. 'In a church, the floor has its own significance,' Dubois says. 'You have graves, dates… I wanted somebody who would bring the idea of marking history.' She invited the British artist Rachel Whiteread to tackle the project. Physically and emotionally exhausted by the five years she had spent creating the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Whiteread declined. But Dubois says that their conversations made clear the project's potential to be about much more than simply restoring the floor.
In 1999 Dubois visited the Venice Biennale, where she saw The Last Judgement, the 25-piece sculpture in steel, wood and terracotta that Anthony Caro had made as a response to the atrocities of the 20th century. Dubois was immediately reminded of the medieval Flemish tradition of rétables - the lavishly carved wooden altar pieces depicting the life of Christ and the saints and stories from the Bible. 'I knew then that Anthony was the right person,' she says. When Caro first walked into the choir, she says, 'it was like seeing a captain walking on to his boat.'..