God in a stained glass window

Writing about Graham Sutherland in 1950, the critic Robert Melville observed: ‘When one looks at a picture one finds oneself over the frontier or one doesn’t. Criticism has no power of making converts to an experience which occurs without the intervention of reason … Criticism considers the sensitive flesh of the image and discovers its spiritual stature: indeed, unless we pursue the meaning of the image as language, painting may well fall silent and rest content in the pride of its flesh.’

This quotation is of relevance here for several reasons: because one of my principal roles as a writer is to function as an art critic; because Melville rightly identifies the limitations of criticism; and because he also points out criticism’s ability to uncover the spiritual stature of a work of art. I see my brief as a critic primarily as a purveyor of information, a sort of animated signpost, attempting to point out something that readers should then judge for themselves. I hope my enthusiasm or censure will inspire others to look and think independently. It is the act of looking at art — of sharing in this fundamental but highly sophisticated activity — that means most to me.

At this time of year, my thoughts turn invariably to the spiritual in an attempt to counteract the avalanche of materialism impossible to avoid now in a British Christmas. Art can help, for art is not just about pretty pictures to break up the wallpaper, it is also about our relationship to each other and to the world we inhabit, and about the spiritual dimension that exists behind surface appearances. It is food for the soul as well as for the eyes, and nowhere is this more evident than in the art of stained glass.