Index to 'Airbrushed from Art History'
1 - Introduction I
2 - Introduction II
3 - Traces du Sacré
4 - Symbolism I
5 - Gauguin and Bernard
6 - Vincent Van Gogh
7 - Maurice Denis
8 - Symbolism II
9 - Jacques Maritain
10 - Albert Gleizes
11 - Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes
12 - Couturier, Régamey, Bell and Hussey
12a - Victor Kenna, Moelwyn Merchant and Bernard Walke
13 - Expressionism I
14 - Expressionism II
15 - Reconciliatory art
16 - Australia and Poland
17 - Abstract art
18 - Ireland and Malta
19 - Divisionism and Futurism
20 - Contemporary artists
21 - Africa and Asia
22 - Icons
23 - Wallspace
24 - Albert Houthuesen
25 - Stained Glass
26 - Self-Taught artists
Comments on the series can be found here, here, here and here. Related posts can be found here, here, here, here and here.
This post brings the 'Airbrushed from Art History' series to a conclusion with some reflections on what I feel I have learnt through the series.
"Sooner or later, if you love art, you will come across a strange fact: there is almost no modern religious art in museums or in books of art history. It is a state of affairs that is at once obvious and odd, known to everyone and yet hardly whispered about ... a certain kind of academic art historical writing treats religion as an interloper, something that just has no place in serious scholarship ... Straightforward talk about religion is rare in art departments and art schools, and wholly absent from art journals unless the work in question is transgressive. Sincere, exploratory religious and spiritual work goes unremarked. Students who make works that are infused with spiritual or religious meanings must normally be content with analysis of their works' formal properties, technique, or mode of presentation. Working artists concerned with themes of spirituality (again, excepting work that is critical or ironic about religion) normally will not attract the attention of people who write for art magazines ... An observer of the art world might well come to the conclusion that religious practice and religious ideas are not relevant to the art world unless they are treated with scepticism."
So writes James Elkins at the beginning of On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Yet, as Elkins also notes, these attitudes are odd, because there is a tremendous amount of religious art created. Similarly, Erika Doss has argued that "issues of faith and spirituality were very much a part of modern art in America as artists of diverse styles and inclinations repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety." It may be this paradox which leads Timothy Potts to suggest, in Beyond Belief: Modern art and the Religious Imagination, that, “the pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art may at first seem to stand in contradiction to the secularization of so many aspects of life and culture during our times.”
The pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art can be demonstrated by means of an alternative history of modern and contemporary art focusing on artists, movements and themes that utilised broadly Christian imagery and themes.
The catalytic encounter of Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin in Brittany in 1888 resulted in Post Impressionist paintings exploring the Catholic soul of Breton peasants. Bernard and Gauguin shared their new style with Paul Sérusier who, together with fellow art students including Maurice Denis, formed the Nabis. Denis became one of the most significant artists in the French Catholic Revival, being prominent in the Nabis, as a Symbolist, and, through his Studios of Sacred Art, contributing to a revival of French Sacred Art. Denis’ influence was felt among Symbolists and Sacred Artists in Belgium, Italy, Russia and Switzerland, in particular.
A second circle of influence within the French Catholic Revival gathered around the philosopher Jacques Maritain. His book Art and Scholasticism was influential and he organised study circles for artists and others including the Expressionist Georges Rouault, the Surrealist Jean Cocteau, the Futurist Gino Severini, the Dadaist Otto van Rees and abstract art promoter Michel Seupher. His writings were also significant for the community of artists which formed around the sculptor Eric Gill at Ditchling, which included the artist and poet David Jones.
A third circle of influence gathered around cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes, including Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone (who played significant roles in the development of modern art in Ireland) and Australian potter Anne Danger.
A fourth circle of influence developed around the Dominican Friars, Marie-Alan Couturier and Pie Régamey, who insisted that the Roman Catholic Church call for the great artists and architects of their day to design and decorate its churches. The involvement of artists such as Marc Chagall, Férnand Leger, Le Corbusier, and Henri Matisse in churches such as Assy, Ronchamp and Vence was proof of the effectiveness of their approach and ministry. A similar approach was taken in the UK by George Bell and Walter Hussey which saw artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Hans Feibusch and Cecil Collins decorating churches.
Expressionist artists such as Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs and Albert Servaes painted biblical scenes with an emotional intensity that was often more than the institutional churches at the time could accept. Georges Rouault added to this expressionist intensity with a compassionate Christian critique of contemporary society. Italian Divisionism and Futurism also included a strong strand of sacred art through artists such as Gaetano Previati, Gerardo Dottori, and Fillia.
Wassily Kandinsky created abstract art by abstracting from apocalyptic biblical images and felt that abstraction was the best means available to artists for depicting an unseen realm. Kasimir Malevich was not only influenced by the tradition of Russian icon painting but also by the underlying principle of icons – the presence of an Absolute in the world – to develop the Suprematist aim of self-transcendence.
Daniel A. Siedell writes that “for these and many other avant-garde painters well into the twentieth century, including Russian immigrants John Graham and Mark Rothko, modern painting functioned like an icon, creating a deeply spiritual, contemplative relationship between the object and viewer.” The influence also went the other way too, as Abstract Expressionist William Congdon converted to Roman Catholicism and used this style to create deeply expressive crucifixions.
Iconographer, Aidan Hart, notes that a revival of traditional iconography occurred in the twentieth century; led in Greece by Photius Kontoglou, in Russia by Maria Sakalova and Archimandrite Zenon, and in Europe by Leonid Ouspensky and Fr. Gregory Kroug. More surprisingly, a Lutheran tradition of iconography has also developed in Scandanavia led by Erland Forsberg.
Evangelicalism found artistic expression through the folk art of the American South with artists such as Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan gaining significant reputations. Such artists have often been both naive and visionary in their style, an approach that also characterised the work of New Zealand artist Colin MaCahon and British artist, Albert Herbert. Other significant visionary artists using Christian themes and imagery have included Stanley Spencer, F.N. Souza, Betty Swanwick, Norman Adams, Roger Wagner and Mark Cazalet.
In response to the growth of Christian Art on the Asian continent, the Asian Christian Art Association was founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. Australia encouraged contemporary religious art through the establishment of the Blake Prize in1951. From that date until the present, its judges have reflected the move in Modern Art from the figurative to the abstract. One special aspect of Polish Art in the 1980s was its links with the Roman Catholic Church. Martial law forced the entire artistic community to boycott official exhibition spaces and instead places of worship hosted exhibitions. This period was marked by a profound interest in the whole question of the sacrum in art characterised by the work of Jerzy Nowosielski with its thoughts on the nature of religious art.
More recently, there has been extensive use of Christian imagery by BritArt artists such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Mark Wallinger, and Sam Taylor-Wood. In their work, Christian iconography and narrative is often use as a frame for the artist’s critique of contemporary life including politics and culture.
Although not comprehensive, by giving a significant number of specific examples of artists of diverse styles and inclinations from a variety of eras, movements and nations who have repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety, this alternative story demonstrates that issues of faith and spirituality have been and continue to be very much a part of modern art. This alternative story involves several of the key modern art movements and artists that were at the forefront of those movements plus artists who played key roles in the introduction of modern art to their nations, as well as including artists and movements that were tangential to the main developments of modern art. Histories of modern art are impoverished by overlooking this story.
Awareness of this hidden history - which has effectively been airbrushed from art history - has led curator and author Daniel A. Siedell to argue, we need "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." However it should be noted that, while an alternative history of modern art could be written which tells this story and sets it in context thereby adding necessary texture to any history of modern art, it is not suggested that the telling of that story would radically alter the trajectory and arc of modern art history.
There are several perspectives to be considered in establishing the reasons why religious contributions to the history of modern art have effectively been airbrushed from art history.
The first perspective has been articulated recently in articles on art and faith published in freize and Modern Painters. Tyler Green's Modern Painters article demonstrated the art world’s indifference toward religion and concluded: "Given that the American people are conflicted about religion, it shouldn’t be a surprise that our artists and art institutions are too." Dan Fox in his freize editorial wrote “contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions are usually regarded with the kind of suspicion reserved for Mormon polygamists and celebrity Scientologists.” Similarly, Erika Doss has argued that, "Until recently, issues of religion were largely overlooked in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century American art because of critical misunderstandings of an assumed separation of modernist avant-garde from religious inquiry and of modernism in general from religion." The more recent statements by Green and Fox indicate that this separation continues to exist and to influence response.
Such attitudes lead both to a downplaying of the input and influence of artists with a religious affiliation and to a reluctance among artists to declare a religious affiliation unless working primarily within a religious context. This feeds directly into the way in which histories of modern art are often written, as the religious work or motivations of many of those artists highlighted above are routinely downplayed by, for example, ignoring their religious work altogether or suggesting that their religious art comes late in their careers after their more radical work has been completed. Given that this has been and to some extent continues to be the case, it is surprising the extent to which issues of faith and spirituality have been very much a part of modern art as artists of diverse styles and inclinations have repeatedly turned to the subjects of religious belief and piety. Countering the suspicions which Green and Fox note is one significant reason for telling this alternative story of modern art.
A second perspective involves the difficulty of defining 'Christian', 'religious' or 'sacred' art. Do we mean by these terms the use of religious iconography or an engagement with the essential themes that lie at the heart of a specific religion or the (un)expressed faith of the artist or are we simply reading our own faith into the artworks we view? “The religious underpinnings of so much Western art before [the twentieth] century – from its subject matter to its sources of patronage and its devotional purposes – are obvious and uncontentious,” Timothy Potts has written, but with the art of the twentieth century the religious dimension becomes “altogether more subtle, often more abstract and inevitably more personal.” Spirituality, while continuing to be pervasive, becomes less obvious and the perception grows that it is “not relevant to the art world.”
These questions of definition often come coupled to an ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ understanding of the artwork which, in its purest form as articulated by the art critic Clement Greenberg, “rejected the notion that there is any higher purpose to art, or any “spiritual” point to its production”:
“Art only does what it does: its effect is limited and small. It is there to be aesthetically “good.” Only the “dictates of the medium” – pure paint and the flatness of the picture plane – were held to be worthwhile concerns for painting. The very idea of content was taken to be a hindrance and a nuisance, and looking for meaning was a form of philistinism. The work is a painted surface, nothing more, and its meaning is entirely an aesthetic one.”
On this basis, the artwork is simply itself, the embodiment of its media, and all discussion of content, religious or otherwise, is interpretation which is extrinsic to the work itself.
A third perspective highlights the confusions and conflicts within Christian or religious responses to modern and contemporary art. W. David O. Taylor has posted that there is a whole ton of arts and faith related initiatives happening but it is "ad hoc and isolated", "parochial, even in the best sense of the term", and with "divergent views of how we should go about promoting the arts" (leading to fierce fights). Responses to the two perspectives above tend to divide along doctrinaire lines which mitigate against understanding between those on either side of the divides. The kind of divides which are commonly found include: local or regional reputations vs national or international reputations; art for the church’s sake vs art for art’s sake; traditional iconography vs contemporary iconography; figurative realism vs abstract or conceptual; popular culture vs high culture; technique vs concept; sentimental or unoriginal imagery vs ambiguous or obscure imagery; popular approval vs academic or establishment approval.
There is essentially no means of arbitration in these debates or in resolving the issues raised by the three perspectives above because there are no universally agreed quality standards for the visual arts, either in or outside of the Church. The technical qualities which underpinned figurative realism have been by-passed by the development of conceptual art and its consequent infinite expansion in the materials and media of art. Similarly, much that was formerly considered ‘outside’ of the fine arts - such as folk art, self-taught art etc - has in more recent years been brought in to the mainstream of gallery and museum exhibitions. Current reputation also offers no sure fire guide to long-term significance within the broader sweep of art history. The story of art is littered with those who were lauded in their own day, either by the establishment or the people of their time, but are considered of minor significance today. Within the Church, priests and theologians have often argued that artists working in and for churches should be subservient to Christian doctrine as understood by its priests but many effective commissions have come through artists resisting such pressure and challenging received understandings and iconography through their personal vision.
In Has Moderism Failed? Suzi Gablik poses the question, ‘Art for Art’s Sake, or Art for Society’s Sake?’, a question which neatly juxtaposes the two key opposed aesthetic arguments of late modern and contemporary art. This is a question which, in a Church context, could be rephrased as ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ or ‘Art for Churches Sake?’ Gablik, in addressing the opposed positions of Socialist Art and aesthetic formalism, suggested that what “is required is some sort of reconciliation – not a fixture at either pole”; in other words, to “find a position of equilibrium between the two extremes.” One such ‘position of equilibrium’ could be found by applying a Trinitarian aesthetic to visual art.
Conceptions of the Trinity have often been expressed in artistic terms and Trinitarian conceptions have been helpfully applied to the Arts and other aspects of society. Both C. S. Lewis and Stephen Verney, for example, have written of the inter-relations within the Trinity as being a kind of dance. Dorothy L. Sayers, within The Mind of the Maker, described the creative act itself in the Trinitarian terms of Idea (Father), Energy (Son), and Power (Spirit). A similar approach - in terms of Plan (Father), Do (Son), and Evaluate (Spirit) - was later adopted by Christian Schumacher for his creative consultancy work of restructuring workplaces.
A different approach to understanding and applying the concept of inter-relations within the Trinity was developed by Colin Gunton in The One, the Three and the Many. Gunton used his theology of creation to identify three concepts that he called (drawing on the thinking of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) ‘open transcendentals’. That is, “possibilities for thought which are universal in scope yet open in their application.” Gunton’s three open transcendentals are: relationality (“all things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation”); perichoresis (“all things are what they are in relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things”); and substantiality (all things are “substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in the face of their relationality to the other”).
Gunton argues that these open transcendentals “qualify people and things, too, in a way appropriate to what they are.” In sum, he suggests, “the transcendentals are functions of the finitely free relations of persons and of the contingent relations of things.” These are, therefore, notions which are “predicated of all being by virtue of the fact that God is creator and the world is creation.” As such “they dynamically open up new possibilities for thought” enabling Christian theology to make “a genuine contribution ... to the understanding and shaping of the modern world.” If this is so, then art criticism would be one arena in which the concept of open transcendentals could be explored.
Exploring the substantiality of an artwork could involve describing and assessing its distinct and particular existence; what it is as, for example, pure paint and a flat picture plane. We could talk, for example, in terms of ‘truth to materials’, a phrase that emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement through its rejection of design work (often Victorian) which disguised by ornamentation the natural properties of the materials used. The phrase has been associated particularly with sculptors and architects, as both are able to reveal, in their way of working and in the finished article, the quality and personality of their materials; wood showing its grain, metal its tensile strength, and stone its texture.
Henry Moore wrote in Unit One that, “each material has its own individual qualities … Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh … It should keep its hard tense stoniness.” Juginder Lamba is an example of a contemporary sculptor for whom ‘truth to materials’ is significant. Many of his works began as he searched through piles of joists and rafters looking for salvaged timber that would speak to him of its creative potentialities. His sculptures retain the personality and characteristics of the salvaged wood even at the same time as they are transformed into characters and forms of myth and metaphor.
Exploring the substantiality of an artwork is to recognise that an artwork is an object in its own right once created and, as such, has a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended. Artists sometimes express this sense themselves when they talk about seeing more in the work as they live with it than they were aware of intending during its creation. For some, this is an indication of a spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.
Exploring the relationality of an artwork could involve describing and assessing the many and various forms of relation by which the work was constituted. Among these could be the relationship of the artwork to: the artist who created it; other artworks formed of similar materials or with similar content; the space in which it is being exhibited (both the physical and social space); and those who come to view it.
Artists have their own intentions when creating and are aware of and use (play with) the associations and emotions evoked by the materials and images used in the making. These associations and emotions are as much a part of the work of art as the materials and images (this is particularly so in conceptual and symbolist art, as both begin with the idea or concept) and are present whether the viewer or critic responds to them or not; in the same way that Biblical allusions exist in Shakespeare's plays whether contemporary students recognise them or not. Just as Andrew Motion has argued, regarding Shakespeare, that our understanding and appreciation of the plays is reduced if we don't recognise the allusions, so our understanding of visual art that uses or plays with associations, emotions and ideas is diminished if we fail to respond.
The reality of the art work as an object in its own right once created and, as such, with a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended also hands a creative role to those who view it. Accordingly, Alan Stewart has written:
"An artist will of course set out to say something particular, but once their work becomes public, it assumes its own life. Therefore each fresh encounter will produce a new conversation between the art and the viewer, resulting in a whole host of possible interpretations, none less valid than the other. Appropriating our own personal meaning from another person’s work doesn’t diminish it, if anything it enlarges it. We might even want to say that in re-imagining and re-investing something with new meaning, we may in fact in some cases redeem it or re-birth it."
Interpretation, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself. Richard Davey has a marvellous phrase for the network of relationships which form around any artwork; “respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Exploring the perichoresis of an artwork could be to recognise what the artwork is in its relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things. Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics - art which takes “as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space” - is particularly helpful here in suggesting that “Art is a state of encounter” and that the role of artworks is that we learn “to inhabit the world in a better way” through participating in “arenas of encounter”, created by the artworks themselves, in which momentary micro-communities are formed:
“Today’s art, and I’m thinking of [artists such as Gonzalez-Torres, ... Angela Bulloch, Carsten Höller, Gabriel Orozco and Pierre Huyghe] as well as Lincoln Tobier, Ben Kinmont, and Andrea Zittel, to name just three more, encompasses in the working process the presence of the micro-community which will accommodate it. A work thus creates, within its method of production and then at the moment of its exhibition, a momentary grouping of participating viewers.”
What such artists produce, Bourriaud argues, “are relational space-time elements, inter-human experiences ... of the places where alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out.” In other words, such artworks create “relations outside the field of art”: “relations between individuals and groups, between the artist and the world, and, by way of transitivity, between the beholder and the world.”
Critiquing artworks in terms of substantiality, relationality and perichoresis could create a means of reconciling formalist and relational aesthetics. It could form a position of equilibrium between the two extremes and the conflicts/oppositions noted earlier both within and without the Church. It could also form a fascinating and distinctively Trinitarian approach to art criticism acknowledging, as it does so, the spirituality inherent both in work which makes use of religious iconography and that which does not.
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The Innocence Mission - You Chase The Light.
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