angel of the north
My heart falls through my stomach every time I see this emerge over the skyline.
(Edit: Ever since the first time I saw it, it has left me gobsmacked not only by its beauty, but by the stunning effect of its location. Driving up from the South, first you see it down in the dip, and register "oh, there he is!" . Then you drive down and around the corner and he disappears again. But the next time you see him he is not down in the dip at all, but up on the skyline, so much bigger and more impressive than you realised at first.
The Angel, according to the artist, has three "functions" – one, to mark the memory of generations of miners who worked down under the ground in the darkness for a couple of hundred hears. Two, to represent a future hope for the area over which he looks. Three, to engage anyone who sees him with their own hopes and fears.
This weekend, for the first time, we not only drove past but stopped and went up close to look at him properly. He is vast, and was warm from the sun. He has an air of hope, stability, and some kind of non-specific spiritual "blessing" about him. )
My son is rather pleased to find that the Angel is the same age as he is.
11 Responses to “angel of the north”
Comments
-
author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
-
Search
-
-
Hello Maggie
I hope your well. Why does your heart sink every time you see it?
Warm Regards
John
“my heart falls through my stomach”
I’m not sure if you mean that in a good or a bad way.
I love it. I hated it when it first went up but now it makes me quite tearful everytime I head home. It seems to protect the land and the people.
Bet telly reception is rubbish there though :-\
oh, positive! absolutely! The angel is so stunning, beautiful and impressive that I never get used to it, and even though I know it’s just about to happen, I still get that feeling of my insides falling out when I see him.
When he first arrived we called him Kevin. But he seems to change his name every time Newcastle employs a new manager. We’ve had so many recently I’m not sure what he’s called now. Mr Gormley doesn’t like the idea of him representing a real angel but he is our angel. He’s what we want him to be – thank goodness for postmodernism.
I really want to see the Angel. Funnily enough I always think of “him” as a her – the body and the arms-flung-wide-open-to-hug-the-world gesture someho1w strike me as quite feminine (if you’ll please excuse the the gender stereotypes!)
We stopped to look at it “close up” en-route to Lindisfarne last year and it was every bit as good as I had hoped it would be, I think it appeals to the frustrated engineer in me. Before we left I said to Helen “Take a photo of me standing in front of it with my arms spread out”. I now use that photo on MSN Messenger and for a while logged in as “THE Angel of the North”. The funny thing was that as we walked away I looked back and there was a queue of people waiting to have their photo taken in the same pose!
I always think of the angel as a she too and had wanted to see her for ages. She’s absolutely huge – I don’t think anything can prepare you for just how big she is when you actually get to stand beside her. Just think, if that’s a man-made angel, how big is a God-made one? Brings to mind the train of God’s robe filling the Temple. Our God truly is an awesome God!
A woman! This is the North East people – stop your androgenous nonsense. If he was a Geordie woman, she’d have much bigger muscles and a mobile phone in her hand.
Mr Gormley states that he used himself as the model for the angel. (he wishes)
I recall Gormley stating that he used his own body as the original model for the angel (and for a number of his other artworks). But actually (without wishing to be indelicate) if you look at the Angel in profile, it’s pretty obviously not a girl…