Untitled 1946

Alfred Manessier made this untitled painting with oil on canvas sometime during his career. Manessier, a French artist, engaged with abstraction after the Second World War, and was concerned with the ways color and form could express spiritual ideas. This work’s organization into a grid evokes the stained glass of medieval cathedrals. The legacy of church patronage had diminished by the mid-20th century, and abstract painting provided artists with a new, secular means of making grand spiritual pronouncements. The ambiguous shapes in the image, combined with titles that often alluded to religious subjects, such as “Crown of Thorns,” challenge viewers to interpret the paintings according to their own beliefs and experiences. To understand Manessier’s work more fully, one might study the writings of French Catholic intellectuals or explore the shifting structures of art patronage in postwar France. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social context.