Nun's art show a beauty

When you think of the word "telegenic," you don't think of a goggle-eyed, buck-toothed, 67-year-old nun with a decided speech impediment.

So how do you explain the enduring appeal of Sister Wendy Beckett, the Roman Catholic nun from England who has built a following around the world by lecturing about art?

For the past several years, Sister Wendy has appeared on the BBC and PBS, offering insights into great paintings and winning a wide audience eager to learn more about Velasquez, Vermeer and Van Gogh. Now she is back with a five-part series titled "Sister Wendy's Story of Painting," tracing the history of putting color on canvas from cave paintings to Andy Warhol.

Hurried journey

As she bustles from England to Italy to Spain, her black habit billowing behind her like Batman's cape, you soon forget the huge glasses, even huger front teeth and Baba Wawa pronunciation because this woman obviously knows her stuff and has a way of conveying it to you through analytical allusion, clever comparison and tantalizing turns of phrase.

Describing the arms of mourning women in an Egyptian pyramid painting, for example, she calls up a sea anemone's tentacles gently waving in the water.

It's a hurried trip she takes through art history. Even with five hours to spend, she must rush from museum to museum to get it all in, and we race behind, breathlessly trying to keep up with her energetic adoration of paintings.

Delight and joy

And what an exuberant adoration it is. She delights in art and makes you feel the same exhilaration. Her bright smile and flashing eyes show how much she loves what she does. As a result, she restores meaning to that old expression, "art appreciation."

Of course, it is a little disconcerting to have a nun describe the various ways artists have drawn female breasts through the centuries, but she shows no such embarrassment. To her, the human body is God's work, and great artists praise His efforts.

Vulgarity is in the eye of the beholder, she seems to be saying.

Religious message

She is also saying more, somewhat seditiously for PBS. Underneath her narration runs a hidden vein of religious evangelization as she talks about the medieval nuns who cared for the dying, the Renaissance Church that supported the arts and the beauty of God's creation.

After all, for centuries, most art was about religious education, biblical scenes and spiritual lessons. By exposing a wide audience to those images, Sister Wendy is preaching as well as teaching.

The five hours offer a quick course in art for anyone who wonders why we should care about old paintings by dead white guys. (By the way, she also focuses on a little-known woman painter from hundreds of years ago, offering an insight into why her approach to a common Old Testament subject differs from her contemporaries.)

As she closes in on modern times, one of TV's oddest moments occurs: Sister Wendy, garbed in traditional habit and looking like someone visiting from the Middle Ages, stands in front of Warhol's repetitive painting of Marilyn Monroe and explains why it has meaning and value.

The series is a wonderful, whirlwind ride through the history of western art. Get on board and learn!

("Sister Wendy's Story of Painting" debuts on WMHT, channel 17, Sept. 7 at 9 p.m.)

(09-04-97) [[In-content Ad]]