The Angel of the North

Anthony Gormley’s The Angel of the North is one of the nation’s most prominent works of public art. Despite opposition to its construction from jockeying local politicians and newspapers, attempts have since been made to have it listed to preserve it. I was pleased to visit it this month and inspect it for myself, having only previously whizzed past in a car. At 66 feet tall and 177 wide, it is a genuine landmark, and shows the longsightedness of those who first conceived and commissioned it. Its rusty colour and utilitarian feel are not out of place for England’s North East, and its wings are angled 3.5 degrees forward to create, according to Gormley, "a sense of embrace”.

I had been warned that the sculpture would be smaller than I expected, and therefore liable to disappoint, but despite, or perhaps because of this, I was wowed by its scale. The whole thing reminded me of a vertical aeroplane. The encroaching dusk was cold and the wind bitter, but the giant piece stood firm, untouched and unperturbed.

Apart from its imposing appearance and its earlier ability to vex Liberal Democrat councillors, I saluted its ability to dispel those unhelpful images of angels we find in eighteenth-century art and traditional Christmas cards. Obese children, blonde women, humanoid butterflies: none of these depictions seem to chime with the Biblical record. The angelic beings of scriptures are invariably terrifying; some are fabulous in their extra-terrestrial design, while others seem to be gigantic by our standards. For example:

Revelation 10:5: The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven…

Revelation 18:21a: Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea…

Ezekiel 10:12: And their whole body, with their back, their hands, their wings, and the wheels that the four had, were full of eyes all around.

Ezekiel 1:10: As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle.

Although Gormley’s creation is unlikely to have been inspired by the Biblical record, it does belie the sentimental and romantic notions of angels that we are pleased to entertain. Angels are large, highly powerful and beyond our imaginations in their beauty and design. Yet I think they marvel at their Creator’s especial love for the weak and wearisome sons and daughters of Adam.