
A long-term hobby project of mine is to visit all of the places of worship in Simon Jenkins' essential England's Thousand Best Churches. (Or at least to go to nine hundred and ninety-nine of them, as at least one, I'm convinced, is a fiction to foil those who might flout Jenkins' copyright.) Wandering around one some years ago, the vicar saw that we had this guide with us. "Ah, the blessed Jenkins," he reflected, before bemoaning the parsimonious rating given to his building by the journalist and historian.
The book alone is worth celebrating on a regular basis, but so too are the blessed one's regular contributions to the Guardian, a pair of which on successive days shows why he is the best columnist writing today. Yesterday, he wrote thoughtfully and precisely about atheism, aesthetics and Easter, and on Friday he eloquently hymned the pre-Reformation murals in his beloved churches across the land, using as a peg Roger Rosewell's new book Medieval Wall Paintings. (The book's author has a new site to complement the publication here.)
Two more expressions of enthusiasm prompted by the Guardian. One is to delight in the way in which online Jenkins' piece was quickly complemented by knowledgeable comments extending his arguments and offering links to relevant images. (The one above comes from Kempley church in Gloucestershire, about which Jenkins is so enthusiastic, and is borrowed from the online developing catalogue Medieval Wall Painting in the English Parish Church authored by Anne Marshall.)
My other pleasure from the paper this week has nothing to do with Jenkins, but is Adrian Searle's column "Critical condition" about the art market and criticism. There's much that's wise here about all critical writing, including this:
Writing about art only matters because art deserves to be met with more
than silence... An artist's intentions are one thing, but
works themselves accrue meanings and readings through the ways they are
interpreted and discussed and compared with one another, long after the
artist has finished with them. This, in part, is where all our
criticisms come in. We contribute to the work, remaking it whenever we
go back to it - which doesn't prevent some artworks not being worth a
first, never mind a second look, and some opinions not being worth
listening to at all.