Review: Easter in Art – Ropetackle, Shoreham

Easter in Art is an inspired film to coincide with the Easter celebrations. It's produced by Brighton based Phil Grabsky, whose Exhibition on Screen films are becoming legendary.

Easter is celebrated by chocolate eggs, bunnies and chicks. Grabsky's new film, Easter in Art, puts a new slant on the story. Through paintings produced by artists going back to the 4th century, what the occasion really means. Services all over the country will honour the event this Easter Sunday.

Easter in Art was screened at Shoreham's lively Ropetackle Arts Centre last Wednesday, 13th April.

Artists, whatever their repertoire, have painted the crucifixion and this film brings them all, from Giotto's painted stories in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, to Salvador Dali and dozens in between. We're informed by curators and historians in galleries; paintings are explained: Judas's kiss of betrayal; the Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1495–1498); Christ suffering on the cross; being taken down; the Entombment and the painting where he's about to ascend into heaven.

The fascination is the many different ways this world-changing event is depicted: the shape of Christ's body - some muscular, some lean; ravaged; clean - the varieties are endless, yet they're all saying the same thing. Christ was mocked, tortured, made to carry his own heavy wooden cross, a crown of thorns piercing his head - and brutally nailed, arms outstretched and nails hammered into his feet. Gruesome, brutal, sometimes bloody, sometimes serene, no senses spared. It isn't pretty.

Grabsky travelled to The States, Jerusalem and all over Europe to film the paintings - works ranging from Byzantine mosaics, stained glass windows and works by well-known as well as obscure artists, from the 4th century until the 20th, including a very modern work with the dead Christ wearing a watch! Caravaggio, Rembrandt, El Greco, Holbein, Manet, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens, Titian, Velasquez - the list is huge. Some familiar, some obscure. It seems every worthwhile painter has brought to life the Crucifixion at some point.

The action opens and closes with a midnight Russian Orthodox service; we enter galleries and meet art experts who comment and react to the artworks.

The film is accompanied throughout by what I can only call soothing 'ambient' background music, that just goes alongside the narrative.

Four eloquent narrators read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and assorted experts discuss the works and how the story has filtered down into the 21st Century, to be as valid now as it was through the ages. It is the greatest story ever painted. Anybody who is interested in art, anyone who is interested in visual culture, HAS to be interested in the Christian story.

There is so much to learn from it - we need to understand where we've been, in order to understand where we're going.

Next Exhibition on Screen film is Pissarro: Father of Impressionism, at the Ropetackle, 25th May, 7.30pm. £12

For more information: https://exhibitiononscreen.com/films/pissarro/

The Ropetackle is a lively arts venue at the end of Shoreham's High Street, just before you get to the bridge. Its programme booklet reveals a variety of great performances in every genre. Telephone: 01273 464440

Review by Janet Lawrence