Arp and the art of re-membering

   















To Margate yesterday, and the Turner Exhibition 
Centre. 



The main attraction was Tracey Emin's unmade bed: My Bed famously features the Margate artist's own bed and gives a snapshot of her life after a traumatic relationship breakdown. Emin has chosen some of JMW Turner's seascapes and stormy skies to be displayed alongside the chaos of her bedroom. Apart from the vodka and tights (and Turner paintings) it reminded me of a scene from my flat before I got married...

The second exhibition was 'Arp - The Poetry of Forms': Hans Arp was a German / French sculptor, painter and poet. He was active either side of the 2nd WW and exhibited alongside Henri Matisse. You can see more of his work here (it's worth a click!).

I wandered into that exhibition without much expectation, but came away deciding to completely rewrite my sermon for today's Family Memorial Service in the light of how Arp had responded to his own experiences of bereavement and loss. 


What really grabbed me was a painting called 'Torn Drawing' (see below) and the story behind it. 

There were two periods in Arp's life – times of trauma and loss – when his art took a different form. One one occasion he lost his mother and close friend in quick succession – and in his grief he took some of his own material and tore it up, cutting it up into pieces and making something different with it...sometimes just letting the pieces fall to the ground to see what emerged.  His wife and fellow artist (Sophie Taeuber) painted 'Torn Drawing' to depict this. 

A few years later Sophie herself died in a tragic accident – part of Arp's response to that was to tear up some of her works and create something new from the pieces as a kind of last act of their work together. (Hard to know what she would have made of that…)

On my mind as I was wandering around the exhibition was the group of people that I knew I'd be speaking to today - those who have recently suffered bereavement and would be coming to remember their loved ones at our Family Memorial Service. 

Here's (part of) what I made of it this afternoon:

...maybe as people who are here this afternoon because you have lost someone you love, you can begin to imagine what was on Jean Arp's mind.

Bereavement and loss make their mark on us – sometimes very deeply indeed. To the point that we can almost say that we’re not the same people that we were before our loss. 

You’ve come to remember and give thanks for those who you have loved and lost. We’ve remembered them as their names have been read and we’ve lit a candle. They were and are still part of our life-story.

But remembering has another meaning – re-membering is the process of putting thinks back together again. Taking the members, the parts, and re assembling them when they have been torn or broken like a dropped plate or cup.  Picking up the pieces, is the way we sometimes describe it. In this kind of re-membering we begin to retell our story in the light of our loss, and slowly try to make sense of it. Our lives that feel torn and broken we begin to re- assemble - and something new slowly begins to emerge. We don’t get over a close bereavement – we learn to live with it and we’re changed in the process. 

I went on...

In the gospels we read that God re-members the world he made – he has stepped in at great cost to himself. In Jesus he has come to restore a broken world and put back together people who recognise their brokenness and come to him. 

In our reading we heard these words, spoken by Jesus  – ‘Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’  The gospel tells us that Jesus, God made man, laid down his life on a Roman cross.  At the foot of the cross his mother, his disciples, his family stood watching – confused and broken by events. What did Jesus’ death mean? – why was it happening?  – it wasn’t what they had imagined or hoped for. The last 3 years of their lives had been given to this man that they had got closer to and put more of their trust in. And now, death. The end of hope.

But of course there was an even more life-changing event to follow - Jesus’ death is followed 3 days later by his resurrection – God the Father remembering his Son and raising him from death to life.
Not the same but a new creation, and as Jesus steps out of the tomb on that first Easter morning he brings about a new promise of resurrection and restored lives for those who come to him.It was life-transforming news for those who had grieved at the foot of the cross. They themselves were not the same people following the death of Jesus, and even less so after they met the risen Jesus...

In Jesus, God bore our pain and suffering –  our brokenness – he did it not for his friends alone, but even for those who initially rejected and crucified him. He did it in order to re-member, to restore a broken world suffering because of its broken relationship with God.   God remembers the world he loves.
The good news for you and me – particularly in the face of loss – is that God longs to put back together broken people who come to him through Jesus. 

There was more...but that'll do for now.

I recommend a trip to Margate, and the Turner Contemporary!