On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art

The strange place that James Elkins believes religion occupies in contemporary art is the place of the outsider. Modern religious art, he argues, is most prominent by its absence from museums and books of art history. His purpose in writing is to see whether the separate discourses of contemporary art and religion can be adjusted to make connections and develop ways of speaking about contemporary art that is religious. He begins by setting out working definitions, giving a potted history of the history of Western art and religion and summarising how some scholars have dealt with the question. As all this ground is covered in 27 pages, the emphasis is on the word ‘brief’.

The meat of the book is found in stories of five students each with a different approach to contemporary art and religion. After telling these stories, Elkins further explores the five approaches through the work of established contemporary artists that deal in religious themes and imagery and who feature on the radar of contemporary art discourses. He ends by tentatively suggesting some ideas and words that may enable talk between the worlds of contemporary art and religion. He concludes that wherever modern spirituality and contemporary art meet, one wrecks the other. But don’t let this pessimistic conclusion deter you from reading, as there is much of value to take in along the way.

The five categories that Elkins outlines are: conventional religious art; art that is critical of religion; art that sets out to create a new faith; art that burns away what is false in religion; and art that creates a new faith, but unconsciously. As with the book’s title, Elkins is seeking to be clear rather than the memorable in the labels he creates. The test of their clarity is the ease with which modern artists can reasonably be grouped under each heading. The artists that Elkins features as he expands on his understanding of these categories, (which include, among others, Marc Chagall, Andres Serrano, Odd Nerdrum, Anselm Keifer, and Tacita Dean) were all placed where I would have expected to find them given the categories used and, on a more pragmatic note, I have found his categories of use in helping shape The Big Picture 2, a course on faith and popular culture, that, together with colleagues, I am involved in delivering in the Chelmsford Diocese.

Bearing in mind the generalisations that all categorisation involves, these categories illuminate aspects of the engagement with religion found in the work of many artists and capture a broad range of differing approaches to that engagement. Most helpfully, they provide a vocabulary for discussing and distinguishing between art that celebrates, critiques or creates religion.

Unfortunately, Elkins claims a comprehensiveness for his categories which does not help his cause. He argues “that virtually all attempts to combine art and religion, at least since the end of international modernism around 1945, fall into one of these five categories.” [p.37] I would want to add religious art that critiques contemporary society as, at least, one additional category not covered by Elkins’ five.

Elkins’ arguments suffer somewhat from the brevity of his presentation. This makes the book an easy read but means that much of import in the recent history of religious art is overlooked. Significant figures as Albert Gleizes, Damien Hirst, Mainie Jellett, David Jones, Chris Ofili, Stanley Spencer and Mark Wallinger are completely overlooked while others such as Maurice Denis, Barnett Newman, Emil Nolde, Mark Rothko and James Turrell receive only passing reference.

Elkins seeks to justify such omissions through his assertion that art histories, journals and museums ignore the religious references and inferences of such artists but that claim seems to relate more to the height of modernism than to the plethora of voices we now hear within postmodernism. In this respect, the valuing of neglected voices that characterises postmodernity holds out more hope for religious art in the noughties than Elkins allows for in his conclusion and may provide, for those bold enough to grasp it, the opportunity for the true story of modern religious art to be told and heard.

James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Routledge, 2004. 136 + xii pp. £14.99. ISBN: 0-415-96989-1