Allow be to preface this with the fact I’m not british, however, I am an immense fan of much the UK, first and foremost is your historical sights esspically the cathedrals and abbeys.

In 2018 westmimster abbey replaced a stainglass window with nothing short of an abomination of modern art, that looks so ugly and out of place, if I could post a photo of it I would but if you want an idea of how awful it is just Google hockney abbey window.

I’m asking to gage whether it is popular amongst people or if everybody hates it like me.

13 comments

  1. The stylistic gap between what is recognisably modern art and what might be not so much older, but which fits with a much older tradition, is very big.

    This is because there was a period in Victorian times when older stlyes were revived, esp Gothic and Classical.

    Modern art is always going to stand out in a building that old.

    I agree it takes a perceptual shift from the architecture but I do think as time passes, more people explore and appreciate the relationship between new and old- these reamin living buildings, not museums, so the idea is not to freeze them in time, but to express the link between then and now in them.

    In general, I do think Hockney is quite popular. In fact, we are shortly going to make a trip to see this:

    https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/people/david-hockney-biggest-ever-picture-capturing-a-year-in-his-garden-in-normandy-goes-on-show-in-saltaire-3678662

    Many years ago, I would have been 100% with you, but as I hve looked at more modern art in my lifetime, I have appreciated both it, and the relation between “ancient and modern” more too.

    It depends where you are from, ofc. If you live in a country and indeed in a continent, where there is tons of historic and indeed mediaeval stuff, then the Victorian stuff can look as wrong or as ugly as the Mediaeval stuff it is derived from. If you live in a younger country, where the Victorian stuff itself might seem relatively older, then you likely feel that rupture with modern styles more sharply.

    To me, a Victorian window in a church built before 1600, maybe just before 1800, looks as out of place as a modern window.

  2. I understand what you’re saying but some of the windows in Westminster Abbey are so densely packed with imagery they’re hard to “read”. Hockney’s window is stunning and vibrant and you can see what it is, it’s the countryside. Not only does it depict something that the Queen (it was commission to celebrate her jubilee or something) loves but it also depicts something that Christians believe God created. Many times over history (most notably in the Romantic period in the UK) artists and poets have viewed countryside and nature as the greatest connection to God, that it displays God’s power and might and beauty. I think Hockney’s window in its simplicity (especially compared to its neighbouring window) displays this clearly and in a way that’s more easy to connect with. Considering that stained glass in a church is supposed to aid/inspire worshippers to think about their faith, I think Hockney’s window is great.

  3. It’s not “a medieval abbey” in any meaningful sense. Like most churches hereabouts, it’s a palimpsest of centuries of continuous development, restoration and repair to what are working buildings. Very little of the extant stained glass is more than two or three hundred years old and there has been a continuous flow of additions since. If it were a “pure” medieval abbey still, it would be full of what you’d probably find quite lurid wall paintings, and not have Hawksmoor’s towers on the front.

  4. It could be worse but I agree with you that it looks crass in comparison with the rest of the Abbey.

    I think the patronising ‘you’d like it if you understood modern art like we do, you pleb’ attitude has been around for years and is really just about modern artists self-promoting in media and people who like to be part of an elite latching on to that

  5. Would you want to be denied something old and beautiful because someone in the past found it too modern and jarring at the time? You’ve been lucky enough to see things and judge them through the lens of history. Imagine if you’d never seen those things because they were removed centuries before you were born. What right do people in the past have to determine what we see? What right do we have over generations unborn?

    Art doesn’t belong just to the people who hate it and petition for it to be removed. It belongs to everyone, even people who don’t exist yet.

  8. I don’t have a problem with modern art in that context per se, but I was massively underwhelmed with the piece itself, and still am really. I’ve never seen it in person though, and I’d like to.

  10. I feel like there are more important things going on, both in my life and the world in general.

  11. Nah. I quite like it. The church is an architectural mishmash anyway—those towers are wrong—so it kind of works.

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