Questioning the Stars

Questioning the Stars Commentary by Gianna French Cite Share Show Bible Passage What is the value of our work? Why does it matter to pursue goodness? What is the point of life if death comes for us all? These are questions we’ve asked collectively for generations, yet they still haunt us on a deeply personal level. With careful, sinuous lines, Italian artist Adolfo Wildt helps us to visualize this desperate seeking. Out to sea in a humble boat, two frail figures gaze upwards to the night sky, palms open. They are accompanied by an inscription on the left that translates: 'Souls in the night seek their path by questioning the stars'. Art historian Emily Braun draws our attention to the stars above, painted in gold, which bring a sense of whimsy to an otherwise sober scene. They are not simply a physical ‘illumination’ of the page, as in a medieval manuscript; metaphorically, they represent a spiritual illumination. She prompts us to consider how the material and compositional qualities of the work—the lack of colour, and the economy or even ‘severity’ of line—might reflect a sort of moral purity or ‘sanctity of spirit’ (Braun 2021). Consider this in light of Ecclesiastes 9:7–9, which urges us to celebrate God’s approval, to eat and drink with lightness and enjoy the company of those we love. Yet in our striving for spiritual nourishment, in our desperate reaching, we ignore this plea. Similar to Wildt’s seekers, we neglect our bodies and let them wither. We strip ourselves down, turn our backs on one another, and strain our limbs even further. Wildt demonstrated a masterful command of marble, yet his drawing practice remains little known. His early drawings consist of matted lines or expressionistic ink drawings, which evolved into precise incisions, as we see in a series of autonomous pen and ink drawings between 1912 and 1921. Ominous scenes such as cemeteries and haunting silhouettes were distilled into imagery that captures ideas fundamental to the human condition—loss, death, and suffering (Mola 2019: 38). Look closely, and you’ll see that the eyes of these ink-drawn figures are pupilless. They appear the same in a self-portrait that the artist drew in 1916. We witness an artist grappling deeply with his questions, desperately trying to discern the world around him despite a radical ‘sightlessness’ (Braun 2021). References Braun, Emily. 2021. ‘Visionary Line: The Drawings of Adolfo Wildt’, presented at Symposium on Italian Drawings from the Twentieth Century, hosted by the Menil Drawing Institute, 7 April 2021, https://youtu.be/qIGKeJKxfuA?si=ZxJCbsiDbBmlc0lb [accessed 6 February 2025] Mola, Paola. 2019. ‘On Wildt’s Drawings’, in Italian Drawing of the 20th Century, ed. by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, trans. by Christopher Adams (Milan: Silvana Editoriale), pp. 35–49