Push and Pull

Push and Pull Commentary by Zara Worth Cite Share Show Bible Passage The influence of Moorish Andalucía looms large in Derek Hirst’s Puerta Grande De Oro. The artwork’s title discloses both its form and its medium: brightly gilded, the simple composition includes forms that allude to hinges, a frame, and studs running down the centre line where the double doors meet. It is a ‘large golden doorway’. Notably absent from the construction are any kind of handles or knobs. The inference is that although entry is possible it is not at our discretion, but at the discretion of an unseen other. Reflecting on his time spent in Andalucía, Hirst mused: In spite of its many splendid, noisy public ceremonies and rituals, ancient and modern, Andalucía remains to me an enigma—silent and impenetrable, a world of closed doors and shuttered windows which can make one feel desolate from such total exclusion. Yet still as an artist and as a human being, I find it exhilarating and inspirational. (2007: 96) In Hirst’s work and words, we find a conflicting push and pull between denial of and desire for ingress. Hirst’s golden door is beguiling and evasive. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is similarly evasive when asked in the course of his teaching who will gain entry to the kingdom. Joseph Fitzmyer, in his reading of Luke’s Gospel, emphasizes how Jesus avoids giving a definitive answer to this question. As with Hirst’s handle-less golden door, permission to enter is granted from within and is not guaranteed, despite the desires of those seeking admission. In order to enter the door of the kingdom … one needs more than the superficial acquaintance of a contemporary; one has to reckon with the narrowness of the door and the contest-like struggle (= effort) to get through it. (Fitzmyer 1985: 1023) Like Hirst in Andalucía, those who are strangers will not necessarily succeed in entering through the narrow door. If dismayed to learn that few will be granted entry through (or will even succeed in finding) the narrow door that Luke and Matthew describe, we might take encouragement from Hirst’s own resistance to defeat on encountering Andalucía’s closed and impenetrable doors and windows. To Hirst, these closed doors retain a promise sufficiently inspiring to spur on his creativity. Comparably, the promise of the kingdom that lies beyond the narrow door may energize those who wish to enter through it to strive all the more eagerly to do so. References Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1985. The Gospel According to Luke, 10–24 (London: Yale University Press)