Roger Wagner (born 1957) is an English artist and poet.
Biography
Born in 1957 in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, Roger Wagner won an open scholarship to read English Literature at
Lincoln College, Oxford in 1975. While a student he attended classes at the
Ruskin School of Drawing
The Ruskin School of Art, known as the Ruskin, is an art school at the University of Oxford, England. It is part of Oxford's Humanities Division.
History
The Ruskin grew out the Oxford School of Art, which was founded in 1865 and later became ...
, where he now teaches, and in 1977 edited The Oxford Art Journal, the forerunner of the present academic journal that began the following year. From 1978 to 1981 he studied at The
Royal Academy Schools
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
under Peter Greenham, and subsequently returned to
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
where he now lives and works.
In 1985 he had his first exhibition with Anthony Mould who has represented him ever since. Alongside the paintings were wood-engravings from his first book of illustrated poems ''Fire Sonnets''. An exhibition in 1988, ''In a Strange Land'', included a book of that title which included poems and a translation of
psalm 137
Psalm 137 is the 137th psalm of the Book of Psalms in the Tanakh. In English it is generally known as "By the rivers of Babylon", which is how its first words are translated in the King James Version of the Bible. Its Latin title is "Super flum ...
illustrated with wood-engravings of the London docklands. Several more recent exhibitions have included successive volumes of ''The Book of Praises: an illustrated translation of the psalms'', the first volume of which appeared in 1994. This was the year of his retrospective exhibition at the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, whose attendance figures broke all records. In 2004 the Ashmolean had a second exhibition of his work to celebrate the acquisition of his large painting ''Menorah'' which now hangs on permanent loan in
St Giles Church.
In 2012 he made his first stained glass window, opposite
John Piper’s window in St Mary’s
Iffley
Iffley is a village in a designated Conservation Area in Oxfordshire, England. It lies within the boundaries of the city of Oxford, between Cowley, Oxfordshire, Cowley and the estates of Rose Hill, Oxford, Rose Hill and Donnington, Oxfordshire, D ...
, followed by a font cover made in collaboration with
Nicholas Mynheer. Both were nominated for the ACE prize for art in a sacred context. In 2014 he painted the first portrait of the new Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby
Justin Portal Welby (born 6 January 1956) is a British bishop who is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. He has served in that role since 2013. Welby was previously the vicar of Southam, Warwickshire, and then Bishop of Durham, serving for ...
, which now hangs alongside
Thomas Lawrence
Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at ...
’s portraits in
Auckland Castle. In 2016 Oxford University Press published ''
The Penultimate Curiosity'' co-authored with
Andrew Briggs, the Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford.In 2019 The Canterbury Press published ''The Nearer You Stand, Poems and Images.'' In 2020 The Canterbury Press published ''The Book of Praise, Translations from the Psalms''. In 2022 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College Oxford.
Style and influences
Wagner’s work has been described as ''‘totally unlike any other modern artist’''. In 1988 the poet
Peter Levi
Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL (16 May 1931, in Ruislip – 1 February 2000, in Frampton-on-Severn) was a British poet, archaeologist, Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic. He was Professor of P ...
wrote of his second exhibition that ''‘Nothing could be less expected than his paintings; they are completely careless of fashion. In some ways they are very old fashioned indeed, but in the most important way modern. He has the power to create a myth’.''
An early influence was the painting of
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian
artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...
whom he met in Venice in 1973. Chirico described his own style as ‘metaphysical’ and though very different the same term could be applied to Wagner’s work. This has been described as ‘imbued with
Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro; February 18, 1455) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Vasari in his '' Lives of the Artists'' as having "a rare and perfect talent".Giorgio Vasari, ''Lives of the Artists''. Pengu ...
,
Blake
Blake is a surname which originated from Old English. Its derivation is uncertain; it could come from "blac", a nickname for someone who had dark hair or skin, or from "blaac", a nickname for someone with pale hair or skin. Another theory, presuma ...
,
Palmer
Palmer may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Palmer (pilgrim), a medieval European pilgrim to the Holy Land
* Palmer (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters
* Palmer (surname), including a list of people and ...
and
Traherne’, but it also often imbued with what
Samuel Johnson described as a characteristic of the metaphysical poets in which ''‘the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together’''. Thus
Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bish ...
has described Wagner’s ''‘fusion of Jewish and Christian symbols with the cooling towers of
Didcot power station
Didcot power station (Didcot B Power Station) is an active natural gas power plant that supplies the National Grid. A combined coal and oil power plant, Didcot A, was the first station on the site which opened in 1970 and was demolished betwe ...
– Jewish victims of the
Shoah
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ar ...
wandering in the neighbourhood of a distantly seen, conventionally depicted crucifixion, the background dominated by the immense towers arranged in the pattern of the ceremonial candlestick, the menorah that gives this 1993 painting its title.’,'' as this is ''‘very dense imagining indeed, but it manages a representation of the creatively and theologically uncanny that is haunting''’.
[Rowan Williams, The Guardian, Books 31 January 2004]
Collections
*NatWest Collection, London
*The Takeover Panel, City of London
*The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
*St Giles Church, Oxford
*Auckland Castle
*Dioezesanmuseum,
Regensburg
*The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
Bibliography
*''Fire Sonnets'', The Besalel Press 1984
*''In a Strange Land'', The Besalel Press 1988
*''The Book of Praises: A Translation of the Psalms,'' The Besalel Press 1994
*''A Silent Voice'', The Besalel Press 1996
*''Out of the Whirlwind'', Solway 1997
*''Art and Faith, in Public Life and the Place of the Church'', Ashgate 2006
*''The Book of Praises: A Translation of the Psalms'' (Book Two), The Besalel Press 2008
*''The Book of Praises: A Translation of the Psalms'' (Book Three), The Besalel Press 2013
*''
The Penultimate Curiosity'' (with
Andrew Briggs) OUP 2016
*'' The Nearer You Stand, Poems and Images '', Canterbury Press 2019
*'' The Book of Praises Translations from the Psalms'' Canterbury Press 2020
Further reading
*''Roger Wagner Paintings 1982-1994''. Chris Miller, The Ashmolean Museum 1994
*''Roger Wagner’s Visionary Landscapes.'' Rupert Martin, Image Journal Issue 10 1995
*''The Passion in Art''. Rupert Martin, Ashgate 2004
*''Forms of Transcendence: The Art of Roger Wagner''. Chris Miller, Piquant 2009
*''The Visionary Eye''. Laura Gascoigne, The Tablet 17 November 2012
*''The Image of Christ in Modern Art''. Richard Harries, Ashgate 2013
*''Master of Timeless Modernism''. Patrick Heren, Standpoint Magazine March 2019
External links
Standpoint MagazineRoger Wagner's websiteImage Journal : artist of the month : Roger Wagner
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Roger
1957 births
Living people
English male poets
Artists from London
Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford
Alumni of the Ruskin School of Art
Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools