Airbrushed from Art History? (1)

One of the books I'm currently reading is Coming Home: Self-Taught Artists, the Bible and the American South which includes an interesting chapter on 'Visualising Faith: Religious Presence and Meaning in Modern and Contemporary American Art'. In it Erika Doss argues 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."

Doss agrees with art historian Sally Promey that the "Strongest determinant in this "modernist divide" regarding art and religion is the lingering paradigm of the secularisation theory of modernity." In this theory, "religion is viewed as childlike, immature, primitive, and group - or "sect" - oriented" and therefore opposite to modernism which "has been constructed as adult, sophisticated (or complex), innovative, and individualistic - or "self" - oriented."

As a result:

"Works of art that feature religious imagery are often disparaged as coercive forms of religious persuasion and relegated to the category of "religious" art: art that professes a certain faith in the vicinity of the holy - and to persuade nonbelievers of divine authority. As such "religious" art has been less critically engaged with modern art's supposed focus on formal issues and on artistic self-expression and, hence, has been considered "nonmodern" or even "antimodern."

Doss seeks to demonstrate 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." She cites Henry Ossawa Tanner, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Aaron Douglas, Joseph Cornell, Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Barnett Newman, Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, Bill Viola, Lesley Dill, Kiki Smith, Andy Warhol and Ed Kienholz as being "just a few of the twentieth- and twenty-first century American artists who explored the intersections of icongraphy, religious orthodoxy, and issues of faith" not simply by revealing but also negotiating those issues. This is without mentioning the self-taught artists that she also highlights as engaged in the same task.

Essentially, Doss is arguing that religious and/or Christian influences on modern art have been airbrushed out of histories of modern art. What is needed, as Daniel A. Siedell suggests in God in the Gallery, is "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."

In this series of posts I will aim to highlight at least some of the artists and movements (together with the books that tell their stories) that should feature in that alternative history when it comes to be written.

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