In the Art workshop held at St John's for the Barking Programme on Saturday we discussed the reality that Christian Art has, as a result of the Incarnation, been predominantly a representational art focused on the divine revealed in and through human form. With that understanding we saw what a break abstract art represents for the tradition of Christian Art and how, theologically, it is saying something very different to us.
Theologically, abstract art can say that God cannot be definitively captured in any representational image. God is beyond representation and is always more than the images that are used to describe aspects of God’s reality. In this sense, abstract art has affinities with the ‘via negativa’ which constantly reminds us that God is not as we have experienced or perceived him to be. As a result, abstract can also be equated with absence - the absence of representation equalling the absence of God – making abstract art the art ‘par excellence’ of a modernity which declared the ‘death of God.
The roots of abstract art lie in attempts to better express the essence of the spiritual in art and by exploring those roots in the workshop we found much that abstract art can reveal about the nature of God whilst also retaining its fundamental perception that God cannot be contained within our perceptions of his nature.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies).
2 comments:
Interesting post Jonathan, but it raises somes significant questions. 1. What do you mean by Christian Art - Is it art created by Christians, which can be of anything? Or, is it art which depicts Christian subjects? 2. Can any work of art be truly Christian? Or is it made Christian by the Word / theology which interprets it. Marks on paper that represent a cross with a man hanging on it are not Christian as such, they are marks representing a man hanging, what makes them Christian is the word that comments on them and applies them to Christ.
3. When you come on to Abstract art it becomes even more problematic. If God is just an old man in the sky then abstract art cannot represent him, but if God is love, and creator, and all those qualities which fill the OT, then actually art that represents human beings seems to me to be the limiting force. Colour and line are far better able to evoke these qualities than an image of a human being, for they provoke a bodily response and emotion that fits with what the artist is trying to represent. To me abstract art is not a via negativa but a via positiva that allows the true nature of God to be explored. The problem is in seeing abstract art as the absence of content or representation. I have real problems with the term abstract art. Art without recognisable figures can represent so much, it can 'figure all those things that realistic images that try and look like the world cannot - emotions and intangible qualities etc. But we are still caught up in a understanding of art that creates a division between realism and abstraction seeing Realism to be about the world, and abstraction to not be about the world but about art.
Read Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action about 'fittingness'.
Richard
Richard,
Thanks for these interesting and helpful comments.
I fully agree that there are all sorts of difficulties in defining 'Christian', 'religious' and 'sacred' art. There is, I think, a really interesting article yet to be written (perhaps you could write it) comparing and contrasting the different definitions that have been developed and published. Those of Jamies Elkins in 'On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art', Graham Howes in 'The art of the sacred' and Rowena Loverance in 'Christian Art' seem to me to be among the more interesting recent attempts.
In the workshop discussion I was talking specifically about art that has been commissioned by and for Churches on Christian themes and arguing that such art has predominantly been representational (although not always, by any means, realistic).
You very helpfully point out that abstract art can be understood in terms of the via positiva and I would certainly not want to argue with that. However, what I was wanting to point up in this workshop was the change that abstract art in an ecclesiastical context represents when set against the tradition of representation. Also to say that the most immediate difference apparent through that change - the absence of representation - can itself be understood theologically in terms of the via negativa.
I'm certainly not the first person to speak of abstract art these terms and, for example, quoted Pamela Schaeffer on the relationship between "the rich, dark, imageless canvases of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko" and "the apophatic tradition in Christian mysticism."
But, as well as speaking about Newman and Rothko in these terms, I also highlighted abstract works that do not derive from any sense of absence or the via negativa such as (among others): Kandinsky's abstractions from apocalyptic Biblical images; Gleizes' search for the rules governing the use of fundamental forms; and Kenton Webb's search for equivalents to space and place.
The workshop was essentially an opportunity for people to create and in my introduction I was attempting to suggest some practical ways in to beginning to create abstract works for those present using as examples some of the varied approaches listed briefly above.
I guess you may well feel that this too is still caught up in a understanding of art that creates a division between realism and abstraction, but what I was attempting to find were ways in to an appreciation of the abstract for those primarily used to seeing representational imagery in a church context.
Post a Comment