Have you had a time in your life when you had a moment of revelation; a time when something that was confusing you suddenly became clear or when something that you didn’t understand suddenly made sense or when things that had seemed disconnected suddenly came together or, more mystical still, when you had a sense of the interconnectedness of the world around you and you within it?
The disciples spent three years not understanding what Jesus was saying and doing before running away, deserting and denying him at the crucifixion. Then the Day of Pentecost happened and the coming of the Holy Spirit was the moment when it all came together for them, when they finally understood and both knew their part in God’s plan and could begin to play it.
When the Spirit came they could speak in languages they had never learned and were understood, they could explain the scriptures although they were uneducated and their explanations made sense, they could proclaim Jesus as Lord and Christ and people responded to their challenge, and they knew how to structure and organise the new community that grew around them in response to their message.
All that Jesus had said to them and done with them suddenly made sense and useful to them because the Spirit had come and brought clarity and revelation. That is what Jesus had promised them would happen. That is the work which the Holy Spirit comes to do in our lives. Jesus told the disciples that when the Spirit came he would lead them into all truth. In other they would have that experience of revelation, of clarity, of things making sense, coming together and connecting.
It is an experience that is common to artists. Some years ago I read a book called Written In My Soul, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others - felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and “came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.”
To my mind, this is an experience of the Spirit coming although it is often not recognised as such. Certainly that has been my experience both in creating and preaching. I will often reflect on or meditate on an experience, a song, an image, a Bible passage, by putting it in my mind, carrying it around in my mind over several days or weeks, reminding myself of it from time to time and just generally living with it for a period of time and when I do that then I find that at some unexpected moment a new thought or idea or image will come to me that makes sense or takes foward the experience or song or image or passage that I had been reflecting on.
To my mind that is the Spirit coming and making connections, bringing clarity, making sense. But it is not just something for artists or even for preachers, it is something that can happen for us all and not just in major life-changing moments of revelation but also in a series of minor everyday epiphanies.
Think about your own experience of coming to faith and growing in faith for a moment. What have been the moments when you remember growing into a deeper understanding of God and of your faith? Have there been moments when something from the Bible stood out as being a word specifically for you? Or something that was said in a sermon or by a friend or colleague? Have there been moments when you have had, like Mother Julian of Norwich, the sense that everything will be alright or that you will get through the difficulties or complications you were facing? Again, that was the Spirit coming and bringing revelation.
On Ascension Day, I posted that the disciples had to let go of Jesus in order that the Spirit was able to come. It is in letting go and letting God that the Spirit comes with revelation and clarity and truth. Through the Ascension Jesus seems to be saying to the disciples, “Don’t cling on to me. Let go of me as you know me because, when you do, you will gain a greater experience, less limited experience of me. Don’t cling on to me. Let me go, because then the Spirit will come.”
To let go of what is safe and familiar and secure in order to be open to encounter what is beyond is both scary and exhilarating. But it is what Jesus calls us to and it is the way in which we encounter the Spirit in our lives.
The title of a Madness song, ‘One Step Beyond,’ has been a catchphrase that has developed real spiritual meaning for some of us at St John's Seven Kings over the last few months by challenging us to go further in living out our Christian faith, to go one step beyond where we are now in the way that we live as Christians. The Ascension seems to challenge us to go at least one step beyond where we are now in our understanding of God. We must always move beyond the place, space, people and understanding that we have now because that is how the Spirit comes!
And when the Spirit comes then we experience that sense of clarity, of understanding, of coming together, of rightness, and things making sense that we have been speaking of this morning. That doesn’t mean that everything works out and life becomes easy – the disciples were equipped by the Spirit to take the message of Jesus to the whole world and as a result they faced riots, shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, and martyrdom. A Spirit-filled Christian life is always a challenge but when the Spirit comes that’s when we experience a sense of meaning and purpose that transforms the difficulties of the present because we know that God is with us in it all.
While the disciples waited between Ascension and Pentecost they gathered frequently to pray together and, if we wish to experience the Spirit in a new measure, then that is also what we must be about. In Ephesians Paul writes go on being filled with the Holy Spirit and that should be our prayer. Whatever measure of the Spirit we think we have received so far, we can pray to go one step beyond and pray to experience more of the Holy Spirit’s power, presence, filling and equipping.
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The Arcade Fire - Wake Up.
Sunday, 31 May 2009
C4M webpage update (9)
This week on the commission4mission webpage we shared the news that David Hawkins, the Bishop of Barking , was to exhibit at yesterday's Pentecost Festival exhibition together with Harvey Bradley, Rosalind Hore, Henry Shelton, Peter Shorer and myself. We then posted photos from the successful exhibition itself, the first that we have organised.
In addition we posted a link to the article about commission4mission in the current edition of the Church Times and congratulated commission4mission member, Martin Webster, on the announcement of his appointment as the next Archdeacon of Harlow.
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Sam Phillips - A Piece of My Bright Side.
In addition we posted a link to the article about commission4mission in the current edition of the Church Times and congratulated commission4mission member, Martin Webster, on the announcement of his appointment as the next Archdeacon of Harlow.
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Sam Phillips - A Piece of My Bright Side.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Faith leaders unite against BNP
My comments, and those of other faith leaders, urging people not to vote for the BNP at the European elections next Thursday have been reported in this week's Ilford Recorder. The church magazine article referred to can be read by clicking here. In it, I wrote:
"Just as, at Pentecost, God poured out his Spirit on old and young, men and women, so we see a diversity to our congregation here at St John’s and also among the Churches of Redbridge. That diversity is given to us so that we can proclaim the message of God to people of every ethnicity, age, gender, disability, sexuality and religion. And we need the Holy Spirit’s power, gifts and enabling to make that happen.
As the Early Church grew and as God’s message spread there were people who tried to restrict this wonderful new diversity. In the same way today, there are those in our society, like the BNP, who want to place restrictions on this diversity. The BNP are currently trying to convince people that they are persecuted like Christ. This is the ultimate irony because their message is the absolute reverse of all that Jesus taught and lived out in his ministry and death. In the coming European elections we must clearly reject the racist policies of the far-right in order to reflect and live in the diversity of Pentecost."
Click here for the national line on the issue as reported in this week's Church Times. For up-to-date information on the HOPE not hate campaign, which celebrates modern Britain and exposes the extremism behind the BNP, click here.
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The Staple Singers - Slippery People.
"Just as, at Pentecost, God poured out his Spirit on old and young, men and women, so we see a diversity to our congregation here at St John’s and also among the Churches of Redbridge. That diversity is given to us so that we can proclaim the message of God to people of every ethnicity, age, gender, disability, sexuality and religion. And we need the Holy Spirit’s power, gifts and enabling to make that happen.
As the Early Church grew and as God’s message spread there were people who tried to restrict this wonderful new diversity. In the same way today, there are those in our society, like the BNP, who want to place restrictions on this diversity. The BNP are currently trying to convince people that they are persecuted like Christ. This is the ultimate irony because their message is the absolute reverse of all that Jesus taught and lived out in his ministry and death. In the coming European elections we must clearly reject the racist policies of the far-right in order to reflect and live in the diversity of Pentecost."
Click here for the national line on the issue as reported in this week's Church Times. For up-to-date information on the HOPE not hate campaign, which celebrates modern Britain and exposes the extremism behind the BNP, click here.
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The Staple Singers - Slippery People.
Faith Regen Foundation event
Yesterday I attended the official opening of the Head Office and Learndirect Centre of Faith Regen Foundation.
Faith Regen is a Muslim-inspired multi-faith UK based charity with strong links to Government, third sector organisations and international bodies. They specialise in faith community and intercultural dialogue, capacity building and regeneration.
Working particularly with diadvantaged Black and Asian Minority Ethnic communities, they aim to address poverty, regenerate deprived areas, and provide a range of enabling services in culturally sensitive settings. Faith Regen also promotes greater understanding between faiths and identifies solutions for encouraging positive relationships within a multi-faith society based on a collaborative approach.
I have been proud to be involved with Faith Regen of the first eight years of its existence and to count its founder, Saif Ahmad, and current CEO, Dr Husna Ahmad, as personal friends. Yesterday's launch was typical of the organisation: welcoming, personable, enthusiatic and enabling.
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Inner City - Pennies From Heaven.
Faith Regen is a Muslim-inspired multi-faith UK based charity with strong links to Government, third sector organisations and international bodies. They specialise in faith community and intercultural dialogue, capacity building and regeneration.
Working particularly with diadvantaged Black and Asian Minority Ethnic communities, they aim to address poverty, regenerate deprived areas, and provide a range of enabling services in culturally sensitive settings. Faith Regen also promotes greater understanding between faiths and identifies solutions for encouraging positive relationships within a multi-faith society based on a collaborative approach.
I have been proud to be involved with Faith Regen of the first eight years of its existence and to count its founder, Saif Ahmad, and current CEO, Dr Husna Ahmad, as personal friends. Yesterday's launch was typical of the organisation: welcoming, personable, enthusiatic and enabling.
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Inner City - Pennies From Heaven.
Responses to 'Airbrushed from Art History?' (4)
I'm grateful to Richard Davey for engaging in debate on these issues and for the ideas, questions and challenges that inform his second response:
1. Do you think that a comprehensive survey is possible? I think that you are setting yourself up for a fall by an ambition that sets out to be comprehensive. It seems to me a narrow focus would allow you a better chance to realise your desire to be thorough and at the same time to raise the fundamental questions that you are seeking to address. By striving to be comprehensive you are either going to have to be so broad that your project will be full of holes, or you will never finish.
Clearly this is a real issue but one that faces anyone seeking to review a period of history or a particular movement over time. All the way through there are choices to be made about what to include and where and what to leave out and why. No history or art history is ever genuinely comprehensive, so the question is then how is it realistic or appropriate to be.
I think that a survey of the main movements within Modern and Contemporary Art showing Christian influences is eminently possible for the right person. The task is, after all, not significantly different from that of any other art history covering the same period, just coming with a different or relatively undeveloped perspective. I don't think that there is any one book or exhibition that has yet done this as fully as it could be done. Rosemary Crumlin's excellent catalogue and exhibition Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination would be the fullest survey that I have found to date.
The task is feasible in part because there are now a number of books and exhibitions have examined particular aspects of Christian influences of different Modern Art movements. To my mind there is now a substantial mass of such material that it would be feasible and useful to have a book that systematically summarised this material and that that could best be done as an alternative art history of the period.
I come at this as someone who is fascinated both by the way in which artists express their faith (when they consciously have one) and also by the way in which the heritage and legacy of Christianity continues to inform and influence our culture showing itself in a huge variety of ways in the work of artists who would not claim to have faith in any organised religion or to have faith per se. Encountering such artists and their works is an ongoing pleasure and, it seems to me, one that others might share if an accessible and reasonably comprehensive introduction were to be written.
Having said all that, that is not what I am setting out to do. This series is part of a personal development project, not a book project. As part of my own personal discipline of reading to feed my faith, I will be reviewing and extending my reading on these issues and posting summaries as I have begun to do. Learning from that reading and from responses to the posts is my personal aim but if in the process the value and feasibility of such a survey becomes clear then so much the better.
2. What do you mean by Christian influences? This is such a simple statement and yet so problematic. Do you mean influences that come from culture that are specifically Christian i.e.. the use of Christian iconography? Do you mean the essential themes that lie at the heart of Christianity- but what are those, and can we say that an influence comes from active 'Christian' influence or from the residual Christianity that underpins western society? Do you mean the faith of the artist? Or is it your own Christian faith that is being read into Modern and Contemporary art?
By Christian influences I mean both the way in which artists who understand themselves as having a Christian faith express their faith through their work and wider artistic practice plus the effect that the Christian heritage of the West has on shaping and/or informing the work and practices of artists that do not claim Christian faith.
An example of the former would be Maurice Denis who understood his destiny from an early age to be that of a Catholic artist. Denis was prominent and influential in the avant-garde of his day as a Nabi and a Symbolist and as an artist working for a contemporary revival of Sacred Art. As a christian artist he had an influence on the development of both Modern Art per se and also on Modern Sacred Art. His life and work seem to me to beg the question as to what was it about his faith that enabled and equipped him to be part of those movements and to have the influence that he had within his day.
An example of the latter would be the argument put forward by Andrew Spira in The Avant-Garde Icon that the Russian avant-garde from the Wanderers to the Suprematists (and Kasimir Malevich, in particular) was heavily influenced by the Russian tradition of icon painting. Spira's argument is not that many of the avant-garde were Christians or that they painted icons but that their appreciation of icons, their creation and their meaning, affected the aspects of the development of their work, their artistic practice and their philosophical understanding of the meaning and value of their art.
I think that the above is relatively clear in terms of the various kinds of influence being claimed. I am not trying in these posts to unpack the complexities of those influences but am simply seeking to flag up artists and movement where I and others think they exist.
What is far more complex, and this is where I think your question leads, is how or whether there can be a definition of Christian, Religious, Sacred or Spiritual Art in Modern and Contemporary Art. There have been a number of different attempts to do so in terms of faith commitments, themes, practices etc. and a very interesting article could be written summarising, comparing and contrasting the various approaches suggested. I wonder whether holding the questions you pose in tension is the creative place to be, as opposed to attempting to tie the expression of Christianity in Contemporary Art to a particular definition or model.
3. Do you mean British, French, Italian, Spanish, American art. This may seem a strange point since so much contemporary and modern art transcends geographic borders, but I think this is important when addressing the subject of faith and Christianity, because in reality attitudes to faith are fundamentally different across these different contexts. American attitudes to Faith and Christianity are very different to British 'secular' attitudes, where faith is on the back foot. The recent American presidential elections highlight this with their strong influence of faith, whereas in the upcoming general election in Britain will faith feature, or will we once again have the Blair effect - where faith and public life don't mix? And then on the continent Christian art is often tied into a Roman Catholic spirituality and integration into liturgy that is fundamentally different to British Anglicanism.
I will be trying to flag up national differences where this seems appropriate and don't intend to restrict my reading and summaries solely to Western Art. I fully accept your point that national expressions of Christian faith can differ in character and emphasis and that this is a complicating factor in examining Christian influences. Examples would include the differences and continuities between art produced out of the French Catholic Revival and that produced by self-taught artists from the American South. Again, in terms of the art historical survey that I think could usefully be written, this is an issue that should be faced by all who attempt to write history but also one to which sensitive historians can respond. It is also as well an issue that could add spice to and provoke interest in such a survey.
You echo Taylor's criticism of Greenberg, but I don't have a problem with Greenberg's approach - why is that? I suppose I know that when I write on an artist I am aware that I am going to be addressing it from the starting point of my own world-view, and that my reading will be coloured by that. However much I try to be open to the full range of influences that may be found in artist's work I can never achieve a truly objective stance, I will always see a spiritual perspective and this will obscure some of the secular perspectives that may equally legitimately exist in it as well.
I agree that this is an issue for all in terms of our ability to understand deeply the worldview of another but the issue that Taylor is addressing is not solely about the response of the critic or viewer of the work. His point is that there are self-confessed spiritual preoccupations of the artists whose work Greenberg analyses which his criticism obscures. If this is so, and you seem to accept that part of the argument, then the question is whether this comes from an inability on Greenberg's part, because of his secular perspective, to understand these spiritual preoccupations (which is what you seem to be arguing and which would seem to me to call into question Greenberg's intelligence) or whether it comes from a more deliberate decision not to engage with these self-confessed preoccupations and, by implication, not to encourage his readers to engage with these preoccupations either.
That, I think, is what Taylor is arguing. I think that because these were self-confessed preoccupations of artists that Greenberg admired and promoted the conscious rather than unconcious decision not to engage is the more likely in this scenario.
If that is so, the result, for me, is that, to use your phrase, Greenberg is not fully showing respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings. When the embodied human being making the work of art says that spiritual preoccupations inform the work but these preoccupations are unaddressed in criticism then it seems logical to suggest that respect is not fully shown for, at least, the embodied human being who made it, if not the work itself.
Again, in your review of Traces du sacre your implicit criticism is based upon what I take as an objection to their position that argues that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). I may not completely agree with the origin being secularisation but I think that they are fundamentally right.
The curators are entitled to their opinion and argument. Their argument has real validity but in making it they sometimes ignore and sometimes misrepresent artists and arguments that counteract their argument. I don't think that an argument is strengthened by ignoring or misrepresenting opposing views. I think strong arguments are those which take on board counter arguments and show why on their own terms the counter arguments are insufficient. If the curators of Traces du Sacré had understood the influence of the French Catholic Revival in broader terms that just the art sacré movement of Couturier and had engaged with the Christian influences on, for example, Kandinsky and Malevich as well as those influences that were non-Christian and had then shown that, while these movements and influences existed, other influences were broader and represented the mainstream of Modern Art developments, then I would not have been able to argue as I did. Again, it comes down to the respect that you wrote about in your first email. If a telling of the story of Modern Art ignores or misrepresents aspects of spirituality that were there for some artists and movements of the time then, it seems to me, that a lack of respect is being shown to those artists and movements and to that history.
In my many years of doing research in this area the majority of artists I have met say very early on 'I am not religious', and you have to accept this position. They are very rarely church goers and often stand outside organised religion. If I had used Church membership, or adherence to a specific organised religion as a criteria for inclusion I would have had a very limited pool of artists of a quality worth addressing. My reflection over the years is that for artists their engagement with their faith and spiritual impulse occurs within the loneliness of the creative process, whereas non-artists do so within the parameters of organised religious practice and membership. The artists I have met who have an incredibly deep faith and highly developed spiritual awareness support Linda Woodhead's arguments that faith in the UK is becoming increasingly implicit rather than explicit, something carried out privately rather than within the bounds of traditional associational religion. Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion.
Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion. His friend, David Jones, was also an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly pro-religion. As above, while it may be true that the overall trend is towards faith expressed outside of the bounds of traditional associational religion, if that argument does not deal with the reality of those artists who continue to express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion then it is weakened to the extent that it is unable to do so. A part of what I am doing is to point out that there are actually rather more artists who express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion than is often assumed to be the case.
I remember Peter Eugene Ball's frustration and anger at being labelled a secret Christian by Keith Walker in his Images and Idols book. Peters' reaction was, 'I am not a Christian, and I know that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection'. Yet Peter is a person of deep spiritual awareness and faith which shapes his life. Your comments about your friend Alan Stewart's reading of Andres Serrano bring this to mind. We should be honest in what we are doing. If we are doing theology through art lets say that, rather than trying to imply that our reading is necessarily implicit within the work. Is his reading true to the embodiment of the work? I think the work is what it is, an image of a crucifix suspended in a golden liquid, which we later discover is urine. That image says nothing more than that. The reading into that by the viewer is valid, but not embodied in the work. Similarly an image of the crucifixion is nothing more than paint pushed around a surface to make marks that depict a man on a cross. Any theological interpretation occurs in the viewer's mind not in the work. Paint cannot speak of resurrection, it can provoke emotions that can evoke a sensation of joy or despair etc, but resurrection etc and Christian theology are not emotions, they are concepts that are formed in the mind, constructs of theology. I actually am not certain that art can be 'Christian', it is the interpretation of the subject matter that is Christian.
Your argument here about works of art seems reductionist in the extreme and, to me, seems to contradict your statement in the earlier email about "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Embodied human beings making works of art 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. In the same way in which 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. Again, the full work of art made by an embodied human being is not being fully respected or appreciated if these are not encountered.
As a result, I would differ from you in thinking that Christian concepts can be a part of an art work in being a part of the associations that the artist deliberately brings into play through the creation of the work, sometimes directly through imagery and sometimes implicitly through reference.
Having said that, I do think that the art work 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 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 some sort of spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.
Alan Stewart understands this sense of something more to also pertain to the viewer:
"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."
I agree with him that doing so enlarges the work and its significance. It also gives a creative role to us as viewers of art. However, I don't think that this means that anything goes in terms of interpretation. Interpretation, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself.
Another question about the airbrushing for me is whether the airbrushing is about Christian influences themselves. Figurative art of a certain kind, abstract art of a certain kind, and other types of artistic practice and concern have also been airbrushed out. Beauty is treated with suspicion by art history and theory, the sublime has become secularised, mystery has been denigrated. Artists continue to address these themes but critical theory, which in the UK has been dominated by continental post-modern philosophy, finds them problematic. The visual has been denigrated by schools of art history and cultural theory dominated by philosophy, semiotics, psychology rather than visual aesthetics cf. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics which underpinned altermodern at Tate Britain recently. But artists exploring the spiritual tend to naturally explore these taboo territories of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc. I think art history ignores Christian influences not out of an anti-Christian agenda, but because the themes that underpin 'Christian' spiritual art, and that absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world fall outside the themes that are dominant in the art world at present, where the world is a hyper-real, space of irony - something which is antipathetic to a perspective intrigued by transcendent possibilities.
This is interesting. Firstly, because here you are saying that airbrushing does occur whereas previously you argued that the issue was respect not airbrushing. Secondly, because I don't think I have argued (and certainly haven't intended to argue) that airbrushing of Christian influences happens because of an explicitly anti-Christian agenda. I agree with you that themes and mediums (such as, for example, figurative symbolism) which "absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world" tend to fall outside of the themes and mediums that are dominant in the art world at present. I think too that, as you have argued previously, secularists are less likely to identify spiritual themes/imagery and, as a result, to ignore it. I also think that there is an historical issue which is the reality that Western Art was almost exclusively 'Christian' for a large part of its history and that its 'Christianness' in that period was heavily associated with illustrating the narratives of the faith. Because both of these are no longer the case, assumptions are made either that its influence has been lost altogether or that its influence only exists in figurative narratives.
An interesting challenge for those artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" would be to explore means of expressing their 'spiritual' themes coherently and with resonance in mediums which are dominant in the art world at present or to explore how Christian faith can be expressed in and through a world that is hyper-real and ironic. This latter challenge could well be one in which theologians and writers on the arts from a Christian perspective could give valuable support and ideas to artists. This, I think, is akin to Dan Siedell's intentions. The reverse would be to argue that the two are totally antithetical to each other and that artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" should continue to be counter-cultural even if this means being ignored by the present art world which would, I think, be closer to the position that Peter Fuller eventually took (although he had real success as well as opposition in presenting his arguments, including the value of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc., within the recently past art world itself). Which would you tend towards or should there perhaps be people of faith on both sides of the argument?
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Thea Gilmore - Red White and Black.
1. Do you think that a comprehensive survey is possible? I think that you are setting yourself up for a fall by an ambition that sets out to be comprehensive. It seems to me a narrow focus would allow you a better chance to realise your desire to be thorough and at the same time to raise the fundamental questions that you are seeking to address. By striving to be comprehensive you are either going to have to be so broad that your project will be full of holes, or you will never finish.
Clearly this is a real issue but one that faces anyone seeking to review a period of history or a particular movement over time. All the way through there are choices to be made about what to include and where and what to leave out and why. No history or art history is ever genuinely comprehensive, so the question is then how is it realistic or appropriate to be.
I think that a survey of the main movements within Modern and Contemporary Art showing Christian influences is eminently possible for the right person. The task is, after all, not significantly different from that of any other art history covering the same period, just coming with a different or relatively undeveloped perspective. I don't think that there is any one book or exhibition that has yet done this as fully as it could be done. Rosemary Crumlin's excellent catalogue and exhibition Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination would be the fullest survey that I have found to date.
The task is feasible in part because there are now a number of books and exhibitions have examined particular aspects of Christian influences of different Modern Art movements. To my mind there is now a substantial mass of such material that it would be feasible and useful to have a book that systematically summarised this material and that that could best be done as an alternative art history of the period.
I come at this as someone who is fascinated both by the way in which artists express their faith (when they consciously have one) and also by the way in which the heritage and legacy of Christianity continues to inform and influence our culture showing itself in a huge variety of ways in the work of artists who would not claim to have faith in any organised religion or to have faith per se. Encountering such artists and their works is an ongoing pleasure and, it seems to me, one that others might share if an accessible and reasonably comprehensive introduction were to be written.
Having said all that, that is not what I am setting out to do. This series is part of a personal development project, not a book project. As part of my own personal discipline of reading to feed my faith, I will be reviewing and extending my reading on these issues and posting summaries as I have begun to do. Learning from that reading and from responses to the posts is my personal aim but if in the process the value and feasibility of such a survey becomes clear then so much the better.
2. What do you mean by Christian influences? This is such a simple statement and yet so problematic. Do you mean influences that come from culture that are specifically Christian i.e.. the use of Christian iconography? Do you mean the essential themes that lie at the heart of Christianity- but what are those, and can we say that an influence comes from active 'Christian' influence or from the residual Christianity that underpins western society? Do you mean the faith of the artist? Or is it your own Christian faith that is being read into Modern and Contemporary art?
By Christian influences I mean both the way in which artists who understand themselves as having a Christian faith express their faith through their work and wider artistic practice plus the effect that the Christian heritage of the West has on shaping and/or informing the work and practices of artists that do not claim Christian faith.
An example of the former would be Maurice Denis who understood his destiny from an early age to be that of a Catholic artist. Denis was prominent and influential in the avant-garde of his day as a Nabi and a Symbolist and as an artist working for a contemporary revival of Sacred Art. As a christian artist he had an influence on the development of both Modern Art per se and also on Modern Sacred Art. His life and work seem to me to beg the question as to what was it about his faith that enabled and equipped him to be part of those movements and to have the influence that he had within his day.
An example of the latter would be the argument put forward by Andrew Spira in The Avant-Garde Icon that the Russian avant-garde from the Wanderers to the Suprematists (and Kasimir Malevich, in particular) was heavily influenced by the Russian tradition of icon painting. Spira's argument is not that many of the avant-garde were Christians or that they painted icons but that their appreciation of icons, their creation and their meaning, affected the aspects of the development of their work, their artistic practice and their philosophical understanding of the meaning and value of their art.
I think that the above is relatively clear in terms of the various kinds of influence being claimed. I am not trying in these posts to unpack the complexities of those influences but am simply seeking to flag up artists and movement where I and others think they exist.
What is far more complex, and this is where I think your question leads, is how or whether there can be a definition of Christian, Religious, Sacred or Spiritual Art in Modern and Contemporary Art. There have been a number of different attempts to do so in terms of faith commitments, themes, practices etc. and a very interesting article could be written summarising, comparing and contrasting the various approaches suggested. I wonder whether holding the questions you pose in tension is the creative place to be, as opposed to attempting to tie the expression of Christianity in Contemporary Art to a particular definition or model.
3. Do you mean British, French, Italian, Spanish, American art. This may seem a strange point since so much contemporary and modern art transcends geographic borders, but I think this is important when addressing the subject of faith and Christianity, because in reality attitudes to faith are fundamentally different across these different contexts. American attitudes to Faith and Christianity are very different to British 'secular' attitudes, where faith is on the back foot. The recent American presidential elections highlight this with their strong influence of faith, whereas in the upcoming general election in Britain will faith feature, or will we once again have the Blair effect - where faith and public life don't mix? And then on the continent Christian art is often tied into a Roman Catholic spirituality and integration into liturgy that is fundamentally different to British Anglicanism.
I will be trying to flag up national differences where this seems appropriate and don't intend to restrict my reading and summaries solely to Western Art. I fully accept your point that national expressions of Christian faith can differ in character and emphasis and that this is a complicating factor in examining Christian influences. Examples would include the differences and continuities between art produced out of the French Catholic Revival and that produced by self-taught artists from the American South. Again, in terms of the art historical survey that I think could usefully be written, this is an issue that should be faced by all who attempt to write history but also one to which sensitive historians can respond. It is also as well an issue that could add spice to and provoke interest in such a survey.
You echo Taylor's criticism of Greenberg, but I don't have a problem with Greenberg's approach - why is that? I suppose I know that when I write on an artist I am aware that I am going to be addressing it from the starting point of my own world-view, and that my reading will be coloured by that. However much I try to be open to the full range of influences that may be found in artist's work I can never achieve a truly objective stance, I will always see a spiritual perspective and this will obscure some of the secular perspectives that may equally legitimately exist in it as well.
I agree that this is an issue for all in terms of our ability to understand deeply the worldview of another but the issue that Taylor is addressing is not solely about the response of the critic or viewer of the work. His point is that there are self-confessed spiritual preoccupations of the artists whose work Greenberg analyses which his criticism obscures. If this is so, and you seem to accept that part of the argument, then the question is whether this comes from an inability on Greenberg's part, because of his secular perspective, to understand these spiritual preoccupations (which is what you seem to be arguing and which would seem to me to call into question Greenberg's intelligence) or whether it comes from a more deliberate decision not to engage with these self-confessed preoccupations and, by implication, not to encourage his readers to engage with these preoccupations either.
That, I think, is what Taylor is arguing. I think that because these were self-confessed preoccupations of artists that Greenberg admired and promoted the conscious rather than unconcious decision not to engage is the more likely in this scenario.
If that is so, the result, for me, is that, to use your phrase, Greenberg is not fully showing respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings. When the embodied human being making the work of art says that spiritual preoccupations inform the work but these preoccupations are unaddressed in criticism then it seems logical to suggest that respect is not fully shown for, at least, the embodied human being who made it, if not the work itself.
Again, in your review of Traces du sacre your implicit criticism is based upon what I take as an objection to their position that argues that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). I may not completely agree with the origin being secularisation but I think that they are fundamentally right.
The curators are entitled to their opinion and argument. Their argument has real validity but in making it they sometimes ignore and sometimes misrepresent artists and arguments that counteract their argument. I don't think that an argument is strengthened by ignoring or misrepresenting opposing views. I think strong arguments are those which take on board counter arguments and show why on their own terms the counter arguments are insufficient. If the curators of Traces du Sacré had understood the influence of the French Catholic Revival in broader terms that just the art sacré movement of Couturier and had engaged with the Christian influences on, for example, Kandinsky and Malevich as well as those influences that were non-Christian and had then shown that, while these movements and influences existed, other influences were broader and represented the mainstream of Modern Art developments, then I would not have been able to argue as I did. Again, it comes down to the respect that you wrote about in your first email. If a telling of the story of Modern Art ignores or misrepresents aspects of spirituality that were there for some artists and movements of the time then, it seems to me, that a lack of respect is being shown to those artists and movements and to that history.
In my many years of doing research in this area the majority of artists I have met say very early on 'I am not religious', and you have to accept this position. They are very rarely church goers and often stand outside organised religion. If I had used Church membership, or adherence to a specific organised religion as a criteria for inclusion I would have had a very limited pool of artists of a quality worth addressing. My reflection over the years is that for artists their engagement with their faith and spiritual impulse occurs within the loneliness of the creative process, whereas non-artists do so within the parameters of organised religious practice and membership. The artists I have met who have an incredibly deep faith and highly developed spiritual awareness support Linda Woodhead's arguments that faith in the UK is becoming increasingly implicit rather than explicit, something carried out privately rather than within the bounds of traditional associational religion. Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion.
Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion. His friend, David Jones, was also an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly pro-religion. As above, while it may be true that the overall trend is towards faith expressed outside of the bounds of traditional associational religion, if that argument does not deal with the reality of those artists who continue to express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion then it is weakened to the extent that it is unable to do so. A part of what I am doing is to point out that there are actually rather more artists who express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion than is often assumed to be the case.
I remember Peter Eugene Ball's frustration and anger at being labelled a secret Christian by Keith Walker in his Images and Idols book. Peters' reaction was, 'I am not a Christian, and I know that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection'. Yet Peter is a person of deep spiritual awareness and faith which shapes his life. Your comments about your friend Alan Stewart's reading of Andres Serrano bring this to mind. We should be honest in what we are doing. If we are doing theology through art lets say that, rather than trying to imply that our reading is necessarily implicit within the work. Is his reading true to the embodiment of the work? I think the work is what it is, an image of a crucifix suspended in a golden liquid, which we later discover is urine. That image says nothing more than that. The reading into that by the viewer is valid, but not embodied in the work. Similarly an image of the crucifixion is nothing more than paint pushed around a surface to make marks that depict a man on a cross. Any theological interpretation occurs in the viewer's mind not in the work. Paint cannot speak of resurrection, it can provoke emotions that can evoke a sensation of joy or despair etc, but resurrection etc and Christian theology are not emotions, they are concepts that are formed in the mind, constructs of theology. I actually am not certain that art can be 'Christian', it is the interpretation of the subject matter that is Christian.
Your argument here about works of art seems reductionist in the extreme and, to me, seems to contradict your statement in the earlier email about "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Embodied human beings making works of art 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. In the same way in which 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. Again, the full work of art made by an embodied human being is not being fully respected or appreciated if these are not encountered.
As a result, I would differ from you in thinking that Christian concepts can be a part of an art work in being a part of the associations that the artist deliberately brings into play through the creation of the work, sometimes directly through imagery and sometimes implicitly through reference.
Having said that, I do think that the art work 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 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 some sort of spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.
Alan Stewart understands this sense of something more to also pertain to the viewer:
"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."
I agree with him that doing so enlarges the work and its significance. It also gives a creative role to us as viewers of art. However, I don't think that this means that anything goes in terms of interpretation. Interpretation, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself.
So, I think that there are three different dynamics at play which overlap to some extent. The artist and his/her intentions in creating the work, the work itself as an object in its own right that is part of a network of intentional associations, and the viewer who is able to interpret the work in ways that may differ from the artist's intentions but must fit with the form, content and associations of the work itself.
I suppose I am interested in the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work. I remember being at an ACE event chaired by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton where she asked the panel does an artist have to have faith to use Christian iconography or work for the church. The answer has to be no, and that is important, but what gets hidden is the possibility that artists with faith may explore the subject differently and that this needs to also be recognised. But we don't want to ask about an artist's faith. We are too influenced by the de-humanising debates that Dan Siedell is currently discussing on his blog, where we are suspicious of allowing an artist's intentions into a work of art. But there is a difference for me between artists having specific agendas which they want to put into a work, and the influence of the integral world view that an artist brings into the creative process, often without conscious thought.
I think your statement that you are interested in "the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work" raises important assumptions which I would want to question. Underlying this seems to be the argument that, as Robert Goldwater says regarding the work of Bernard and Denis, conscious specific agendas are detrimental to the work while unconcious sensibilities benefit the work. This assumption can deteriorate into a simplistic good/bad measure of a work's validity and can lead to the use of traditional icongraphy and imagery from literature and religion being dismissed as literary rather than visual. I would question whether the assumption has any real validity because there seems no basis, other than the subjective, on which the critic can make a judgement as to whether the imagery, associations, emotions etc. in an art work are conscious or unconscious.
Where did this denigration of an artist's faith begin? I think one place we can discern it is in Art Sacre, and their belief that the quality of an artist is more important than their faith. We see this recapitulated in Sister Wendy and Keith Walker who both use artists for their fame rather than their faith.
I'm not really sure where this is coming from. The main argument of Art Sacre seemed to be the one that you made above (and with which I agree) i.e. that an artist doesn't have to have a faith in order to use Christian iconography or work for the church. I also agree that works using Christian icongraphy or made for the church by artists without faith would be likely to explore faith differently from artists with a faith. This could be about creative dissonance but I don't se that that then leads to the denigration of the faith of those artists who have a faith. This, I think, comes much more from an over-emphasis on the art work as an object in its own right. There are those, I think, who, in order to emphasis the significance of the art work as an object in its own right, seek to divorce it from its creator and his/her creative intentions. Where this is the case then the faith of the artist is deemed to be irrelevant. This, I think, is reductive and fails your test of fully respecting "the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."Another question about the airbrushing for me is whether the airbrushing is about Christian influences themselves. Figurative art of a certain kind, abstract art of a certain kind, and other types of artistic practice and concern have also been airbrushed out. Beauty is treated with suspicion by art history and theory, the sublime has become secularised, mystery has been denigrated. Artists continue to address these themes but critical theory, which in the UK has been dominated by continental post-modern philosophy, finds them problematic. The visual has been denigrated by schools of art history and cultural theory dominated by philosophy, semiotics, psychology rather than visual aesthetics cf. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics which underpinned altermodern at Tate Britain recently. But artists exploring the spiritual tend to naturally explore these taboo territories of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc. I think art history ignores Christian influences not out of an anti-Christian agenda, but because the themes that underpin 'Christian' spiritual art, and that absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world fall outside the themes that are dominant in the art world at present, where the world is a hyper-real, space of irony - something which is antipathetic to a perspective intrigued by transcendent possibilities.
This is interesting. Firstly, because here you are saying that airbrushing does occur whereas previously you argued that the issue was respect not airbrushing. Secondly, because I don't think I have argued (and certainly haven't intended to argue) that airbrushing of Christian influences happens because of an explicitly anti-Christian agenda. I agree with you that themes and mediums (such as, for example, figurative symbolism) which "absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world" tend to fall outside of the themes and mediums that are dominant in the art world at present. I think too that, as you have argued previously, secularists are less likely to identify spiritual themes/imagery and, as a result, to ignore it. I also think that there is an historical issue which is the reality that Western Art was almost exclusively 'Christian' for a large part of its history and that its 'Christianness' in that period was heavily associated with illustrating the narratives of the faith. Because both of these are no longer the case, assumptions are made either that its influence has been lost altogether or that its influence only exists in figurative narratives.
An interesting challenge for those artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" would be to explore means of expressing their 'spiritual' themes coherently and with resonance in mediums which are dominant in the art world at present or to explore how Christian faith can be expressed in and through a world that is hyper-real and ironic. This latter challenge could well be one in which theologians and writers on the arts from a Christian perspective could give valuable support and ideas to artists. This, I think, is akin to Dan Siedell's intentions. The reverse would be to argue that the two are totally antithetical to each other and that artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" should continue to be counter-cultural even if this means being ignored by the present art world which would, I think, be closer to the position that Peter Fuller eventually took (although he had real success as well as opposition in presenting his arguments, including the value of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc., within the recently past art world itself). Which would you tend towards or should there perhaps be people of faith on both sides of the argument?
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Thea Gilmore - Red White and Black.
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Crossrail Corridor Area Action Plan (2)
Here is a summary of the comments made during the recent consultation event at St Johns Seven Kings on the Crossrail Corridor Area Action Plan:
Individual comments and feedback forms are also welcomed and can be returned to the Council using the following freepost address: Crossrail Corridor Area Action Plan London Borough of Redbridge Freepost RSLR - JACE - HSUG Ilford IG1 1DD. You can also email at dpd@redbridge.gov.uk or fax at 020 8708 2062.
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Ben Harper - Excuse me Mr !!!!!!
- The Council has consulted on several ‘Action Plans’. Although residents and community groups are committed to consultation, the creation of Action Plans that do not result in action and change does lead to cynicism amongst local residents;
- The High Road has been run down for the last few generations, the Area Action Plan is 15 years too late;
- The area looks generally run down and needs better street cleaning; trees/flower displays;
- Important to have evidence to support need for new community facilities, so not simply a wish list;
- Joined up working is crucial - Highways, TfL, Crossrail, the PCT, Education and Leisure Services need to be fully consulted at all stages of the plan preparation so that work is complementary and not contradictory;
- Improve pedestrian crossing points along High Road, making safer at key points such as outside Seven Kings station and Barley Lane junction;
- Seven Kings centre is dominated by too many take-aways, no traditional cafes or meeting places for local residents;
- Have specific policies for different town centres and different parts of High Road, e.g. for building height, retail use;
- On-street car parking often obstacle and difficult for cyclists to negotiate;
- Car parking should be delivered as part of new developments;
- Important to encourage walking and use of bikes, this would be best achieved if there were more local shops and community facilities in the immediate area;
- Only one realistic option for swimming pool - current site;
- Tree planting would improve the look and feel of High Road - can be in tubs rather than planted if easier to manage with utilities infrastructure;
- Lorry Park Planning Brief has many good points, but need to ensure development is of a high standard of design as location next to railway track may not be ideal;
- New developments should be a high quality design;
- Need for a library should be highlighted and made clear in Plan. Recent library petition is evidence that there is a need for library;
- Would like to see a policy in place to allow change use in some cases to enable community facilities and services to be delivered in vacant retail outlets;
- Also look at using existing community building, such as schools and faith buildings for the delivery of additional local community services/facilities;
- Ensure all comments and responses to consultation are published and made transparent;
- Landowners, such as Tesco’s, should be consulted and any representations received should be published and made transparent;
- Police should be consulted, as they may require a new police station in the area.
Individual comments and feedback forms are also welcomed and can be returned to the Council using the following freepost address: Crossrail Corridor Area Action Plan London Borough of Redbridge Freepost RSLR - JACE - HSUG Ilford IG1 1DD. You can also email at dpd@redbridge.gov.uk or fax at 020 8708 2062.
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Ben Harper - Excuse me Mr !!!!!!
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Airbrushed from Art History? (7)
"Remember that a painting – before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of some sort – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, put together in a certain order".
The history to this famous statement of Maurice Denis begins with a visit made by Émile Bernard to Paul Gauguin in 1888. Bernard, a fervent Catholic, had worked out a theory of painting involving the autonomous use of colour applied in flat areas and separated, as in stained-glass, by a black line. While at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven, Bernard shared this approach with Gauguin; Gauguin later shared it with a student from Paris’ Académie Julian, Paul Sérusier. Sérusier then painted a local wood in this style on the back of a cigar box and took the painting back to the Académie where he showed it to his fellow students, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson and Pierre Bonnard. Realising the significance of what they had seen, the students christened the painting The Talisman and, adding Edouard Vuillard, formed themselves into a group, the Nabis, to pursue this new style.
In 1890 Denis published an article ‘Définition du Néo-Traditionnisme’ that played a crucial role in defining the new style thereby assuring himself of a place as an influential twentieth century art critic. He became known as the theoretician of the Nabis, a designation that has obscured much of the work that he produced as a Nabi and subsequently when he played a significant role in the revival of sacred art in France.
During the 1890s Denis painted bold pictures in which the rhythm, flat-tone colours, and composition infused the work with decorative force. Later, influenced by the art of classical Italy, he created larger, more classical compositions including several large decorative series'. In the inter-war period, as an important decorative artist, Denis received commissions to decorate theatres, churches and public buildings. The coherence of Denis’ work, as was noted in Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise, can be found “in the systematic and exclusive use of a picture's essential components (plane, colour, composition) alongside the demands of constantly changing subjects, be they linked to his Catholic faith, to a description of modern life or to the personal iconography he developed from the 1890s onwards.”
The Nabis’ desire to integrate art into life led them to emphasise decoration and to create wallpapers, fabrics, tapestries and furniture. A later Nabi recruit, Jan Verkade, summed up this aspect of their work in his statement that: "At the beginning of the nineties, a war cry rang from one studio to another: `Away with easel pictures! … let us have walls, that we may paint them over … There are no paintings, but only decorations.'" Throughout Denis’ varied life and practice he was faithful to this creed and, while Bonnard and Vuillard built their careers by creating paintings of interiors, he continued to seek out walls for decoration. Increasingly, he sought out the walls of Churches and his combination of sacred decoration was anathema to those who wished to tell the story of Modern Art in terms of successive avant-garde movements; leading to the significance of his later works and role being overlooked.
Denis had decided by the age of fifteen that he wanted to be a “Christian painter” confiding to his diary that “it is necessary that I become a Christian painter, that I celebrate all the miracles of Christianity.” He thought that painting was “a fundamentally religious and Christian art” which it was necessary to recover in his own “impious century.”
It is interesting to note these views and his remedy – “to restore the aesthetic of Fra Angelico, who alone is truly Catholic; who alone responds to the aspirations of devout, mystical souls that love God” – did not preclude his becoming a key figure in the avant garde of his day. That this was his intent is made clear by his statement, in 1919, that “we hardly see any contemporary work in visual arts that matches the vision of a Léon Bloy, a Paul Claudel, a Péguy or a Sertillanges.” He questioned then there was “any religious art that endorses the prestige of Catholicism with as much strength and freshness” as these writers but by 1933 was able to say that “Catholicism is in the vanguard of the modern movement” with “its place in the forefront of the arts and sciences alike” and with the characteristics of the new religious ar being “freedom and sincerity.” His definition of the symbolism he practised helps us to see how he could connect his faith inspirations with the radical artistic developments of which he was part: “Symbolism was ... neo-platonic. Writers and painters came to agree that natural objects are signs denoting ideas; that the visible is the manifestation of the invisible.”
Through these motivations, Denis was again in on the beginning of a new movement when in 1918, together with George Desvallières, he founded the Ateliers de l’Art Sacré or Studios of Sacred Art. A new atmosphere in French religious culture had begun to emerge from 1890 onwards and Denis became one of its key representatives.
Jean-Paul Bouillon describes Denis’ international influence in the catalogue for Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise:
“His paintings of the symbolist period, acquired by collectors as early as the 1890s, left their mark on the young painters of Germany and in Russia in particular, after neighbouring Belgian had begun to exploit this new resource: some of Kandinsky’s work and the very first Malevich show the influence of Denis. But the “second Denis,” that of the new classicism, resolutely ignored until very recently by art histories, perhaps held the most sway. It produced considerable “reactions,” in Switzerland and Italy, for example, while in England, Roger Fry saw him as contributing to the “modernist” advances. Denis went on, in the post-1920s period, to become a tutelary figure in the religious arts and more generally in the “moderate” movements of Art Deco, in his attachment to certain forms of realism. To say nothing of the third period, after 1940, where his spiritual mark, at least, remained very strong, both among his former pupils of the Ateliers de l’Art Sacré, either through a direct filiation (in Quebec, for example) or even when an artist took the opposite direction to his own, as was the case of the pére Couturier; and more generally among all those artists – and they were many – concerned with spirituality, and not just with “pure painting.””
Through his publications and travels abroad Denis facilitated significant artistic networking. He became “a major reference among the second generation of Russian Symbolist painters, whose work was assembled in 1907 at the Blue Rose exhibition.” After his “conversion to classicism” he found other followers in Russia including Kusma Petrov-Vodkin. Through Verkade, both Denis and Sérusier formed links with the Beuron School of the Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz, although Denis, unlike Sérusier, did not ultilise Lenz’s geometrically based painting principles.
In Belgium Denis was adopted by the coterie around the abbé Henry Moeller and exhibited with artists such as Georges Minne, Constant Montald, Albert Servaes, and Jacob Smits who shared similar aspirations. In Italy Arte Cristiana identified in Denis’ writings and works “the models to follow to achieve a renewal of religious art” while in Switzerland, through decoration of the Saint-Paul Church in Geneva, Denis developed a fruitful companionship with Alexandre Cingria and Georges de Traz who jointly founded the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice to “develop religious art.”
Through contact with musicians such as Debussy and the circle around Jacques Maritain, Denis contributed to the exchange of ideas on aesthetics and religious art in France. His decorative church work included works in Geneva, Paris, Reims, Rouen among others. The chapel of Le Prieuré, a collective work by the Ateliers d'Art Sacré, is reckoned to be the “purest manifestation of his aesthetic ideal.”
Alix Aymé, Paul-Émile Borduas, Albert Dubos, Edouard Goerg, Paul Jamot, Paul de Laboulaye, Pauline Peugniez and Augustin Rouart went on to gain independent reputations following time spent in the Ateliers d'Art Sacré. Albert Coste became a popular teacher in the Art College at Aix-en-Provence and part of the artists circle around Albert Gleizes. Henri de Maistre became Director of the Studios until their closure soon after Denis’ death. All were involved in the decorative work undertaken by the Studios.
Pére Couturier also trained at the Ateliers d'Art Sacré and it was from this time that he developed his ambition to revive Christian art by appealing to the independent masters of his time. Churches, he argued, should commission the very best artists available, and not quibble over the artists' beliefs. Couturier put this belief into practice by attracting artists such as Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz and others for the decoration of a new church at Assy. He then worked with Matisse on a chapel for the Dominican nuns at Vence and, in the years which followed, he and Pére Régamey worked together explaining and encouraging the breakthrough that had been initiated in the decoration of Assy and Vence.
As a result of his significant role in the revival of Sacred Art in twentieth century France, Denis stands alongside such figures as Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, Georges Bernanos, Olivier Messiaen and Jacques Maritain. His writings were significant and their influence was felt internationally. He was quoted approvingly by, among others, British Catholic artists such as Eric Gill and Gwen John.
For his input to the Nabi and Art Sacré movements, his art criticism and, most of all, the works of art that he created, Denis’ reputation as one of the most celebrated artists of his generation needs to be restored. He was dubbed ‘the Nabi of the beautiful icons’ for his combination of decorative beauty with spirituality. For Denis, the artist’s formal arrangement of his work was the source of its emotive and religious power and his skill as a decorative arranger enabled him to create beautiful icons throughout his career. Yet, his beautiful icons were not simply the works themselves but also the wider revival of Sacred Art to which he contributed so significantly.
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Runrig - Lighthouse.
The history to this famous statement of Maurice Denis begins with a visit made by Émile Bernard to Paul Gauguin in 1888. Bernard, a fervent Catholic, had worked out a theory of painting involving the autonomous use of colour applied in flat areas and separated, as in stained-glass, by a black line. While at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven, Bernard shared this approach with Gauguin; Gauguin later shared it with a student from Paris’ Académie Julian, Paul Sérusier. Sérusier then painted a local wood in this style on the back of a cigar box and took the painting back to the Académie where he showed it to his fellow students, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson and Pierre Bonnard. Realising the significance of what they had seen, the students christened the painting The Talisman and, adding Edouard Vuillard, formed themselves into a group, the Nabis, to pursue this new style.
In 1890 Denis published an article ‘Définition du Néo-Traditionnisme’ that played a crucial role in defining the new style thereby assuring himself of a place as an influential twentieth century art critic. He became known as the theoretician of the Nabis, a designation that has obscured much of the work that he produced as a Nabi and subsequently when he played a significant role in the revival of sacred art in France.
During the 1890s Denis painted bold pictures in which the rhythm, flat-tone colours, and composition infused the work with decorative force. Later, influenced by the art of classical Italy, he created larger, more classical compositions including several large decorative series'. In the inter-war period, as an important decorative artist, Denis received commissions to decorate theatres, churches and public buildings. The coherence of Denis’ work, as was noted in Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise, can be found “in the systematic and exclusive use of a picture's essential components (plane, colour, composition) alongside the demands of constantly changing subjects, be they linked to his Catholic faith, to a description of modern life or to the personal iconography he developed from the 1890s onwards.”
The Nabis’ desire to integrate art into life led them to emphasise decoration and to create wallpapers, fabrics, tapestries and furniture. A later Nabi recruit, Jan Verkade, summed up this aspect of their work in his statement that: "At the beginning of the nineties, a war cry rang from one studio to another: `Away with easel pictures! … let us have walls, that we may paint them over … There are no paintings, but only decorations.'" Throughout Denis’ varied life and practice he was faithful to this creed and, while Bonnard and Vuillard built their careers by creating paintings of interiors, he continued to seek out walls for decoration. Increasingly, he sought out the walls of Churches and his combination of sacred decoration was anathema to those who wished to tell the story of Modern Art in terms of successive avant-garde movements; leading to the significance of his later works and role being overlooked.
Denis had decided by the age of fifteen that he wanted to be a “Christian painter” confiding to his diary that “it is necessary that I become a Christian painter, that I celebrate all the miracles of Christianity.” He thought that painting was “a fundamentally religious and Christian art” which it was necessary to recover in his own “impious century.”
It is interesting to note these views and his remedy – “to restore the aesthetic of Fra Angelico, who alone is truly Catholic; who alone responds to the aspirations of devout, mystical souls that love God” – did not preclude his becoming a key figure in the avant garde of his day. That this was his intent is made clear by his statement, in 1919, that “we hardly see any contemporary work in visual arts that matches the vision of a Léon Bloy, a Paul Claudel, a Péguy or a Sertillanges.” He questioned then there was “any religious art that endorses the prestige of Catholicism with as much strength and freshness” as these writers but by 1933 was able to say that “Catholicism is in the vanguard of the modern movement” with “its place in the forefront of the arts and sciences alike” and with the characteristics of the new religious ar being “freedom and sincerity.” His definition of the symbolism he practised helps us to see how he could connect his faith inspirations with the radical artistic developments of which he was part: “Symbolism was ... neo-platonic. Writers and painters came to agree that natural objects are signs denoting ideas; that the visible is the manifestation of the invisible.”
Through these motivations, Denis was again in on the beginning of a new movement when in 1918, together with George Desvallières, he founded the Ateliers de l’Art Sacré or Studios of Sacred Art. A new atmosphere in French religious culture had begun to emerge from 1890 onwards and Denis became one of its key representatives.
Jean-Paul Bouillon describes Denis’ international influence in the catalogue for Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise:
“His paintings of the symbolist period, acquired by collectors as early as the 1890s, left their mark on the young painters of Germany and in Russia in particular, after neighbouring Belgian had begun to exploit this new resource: some of Kandinsky’s work and the very first Malevich show the influence of Denis. But the “second Denis,” that of the new classicism, resolutely ignored until very recently by art histories, perhaps held the most sway. It produced considerable “reactions,” in Switzerland and Italy, for example, while in England, Roger Fry saw him as contributing to the “modernist” advances. Denis went on, in the post-1920s period, to become a tutelary figure in the religious arts and more generally in the “moderate” movements of Art Deco, in his attachment to certain forms of realism. To say nothing of the third period, after 1940, where his spiritual mark, at least, remained very strong, both among his former pupils of the Ateliers de l’Art Sacré, either through a direct filiation (in Quebec, for example) or even when an artist took the opposite direction to his own, as was the case of the pére Couturier; and more generally among all those artists – and they were many – concerned with spirituality, and not just with “pure painting.””
Through his publications and travels abroad Denis facilitated significant artistic networking. He became “a major reference among the second generation of Russian Symbolist painters, whose work was assembled in 1907 at the Blue Rose exhibition.” After his “conversion to classicism” he found other followers in Russia including Kusma Petrov-Vodkin. Through Verkade, both Denis and Sérusier formed links with the Beuron School of the Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz, although Denis, unlike Sérusier, did not ultilise Lenz’s geometrically based painting principles.
In Belgium Denis was adopted by the coterie around the abbé Henry Moeller and exhibited with artists such as Georges Minne, Constant Montald, Albert Servaes, and Jacob Smits who shared similar aspirations. In Italy Arte Cristiana identified in Denis’ writings and works “the models to follow to achieve a renewal of religious art” while in Switzerland, through decoration of the Saint-Paul Church in Geneva, Denis developed a fruitful companionship with Alexandre Cingria and Georges de Traz who jointly founded the Groupe de Saint-Luc et Saint-Maurice to “develop religious art.”
Through contact with musicians such as Debussy and the circle around Jacques Maritain, Denis contributed to the exchange of ideas on aesthetics and religious art in France. His decorative church work included works in Geneva, Paris, Reims, Rouen among others. The chapel of Le Prieuré, a collective work by the Ateliers d'Art Sacré, is reckoned to be the “purest manifestation of his aesthetic ideal.”
Alix Aymé, Paul-Émile Borduas, Albert Dubos, Edouard Goerg, Paul Jamot, Paul de Laboulaye, Pauline Peugniez and Augustin Rouart went on to gain independent reputations following time spent in the Ateliers d'Art Sacré. Albert Coste became a popular teacher in the Art College at Aix-en-Provence and part of the artists circle around Albert Gleizes. Henri de Maistre became Director of the Studios until their closure soon after Denis’ death. All were involved in the decorative work undertaken by the Studios.
Pére Couturier also trained at the Ateliers d'Art Sacré and it was from this time that he developed his ambition to revive Christian art by appealing to the independent masters of his time. Churches, he argued, should commission the very best artists available, and not quibble over the artists' beliefs. Couturier put this belief into practice by attracting artists such as Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz and others for the decoration of a new church at Assy. He then worked with Matisse on a chapel for the Dominican nuns at Vence and, in the years which followed, he and Pére Régamey worked together explaining and encouraging the breakthrough that had been initiated in the decoration of Assy and Vence.
As a result of his significant role in the revival of Sacred Art in twentieth century France, Denis stands alongside such figures as Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, Georges Bernanos, Olivier Messiaen and Jacques Maritain. His writings were significant and their influence was felt internationally. He was quoted approvingly by, among others, British Catholic artists such as Eric Gill and Gwen John.
For his input to the Nabi and Art Sacré movements, his art criticism and, most of all, the works of art that he created, Denis’ reputation as one of the most celebrated artists of his generation needs to be restored. He was dubbed ‘the Nabi of the beautiful icons’ for his combination of decorative beauty with spirituality. For Denis, the artist’s formal arrangement of his work was the source of its emotive and religious power and his skill as a decorative arranger enabled him to create beautiful icons throughout his career. Yet, his beautiful icons were not simply the works themselves but also the wider revival of Sacred Art to which he contributed so significantly.
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Runrig - Lighthouse.
Responses to 'Airbrushed from Art History?' (3)
Richard Davey writes:
I'm finding this conversation really fascinating and helpful, particularly because I am currently trying to re-write my PhD thesis for publication, and many of these questions lie at the heart of what I was then, and am still, addressing - the taboo surrounding an artists' faith.
Fundamentally I think your project is worthwhile and important, and my comments arise on that fascinating edge where differences in nuance and emphasis can lead to development and transformation. Your considered and thoughtful responses to my own comments have provoked further reflection both about specific points and more generally.
None of the books and exhibitions that I have cited so far comprehensively address Christian influences on Modern and Contemporary Art and I am unaware of any book or exhibition that seeks to do so.
1. Do you think that a comprehensive survey is possible? I think that you are setting yourself up for a fall by an ambition that sets out to be comprehensive. It seems to me a narrow focus would allow you a better chance to realise your desire to be thorough and at the same time to raise the fundamental questions that you are seeking to address. By striving to be comprehensive you are either going to have to be so broad that your project will be full of holes, or you will never finish.
2. What do you mean by Christian influences? This is such a simple statement and yet so problematic. Do you mean influences that come from culture that are specifically Christian i.e.. the use of Christian iconography? Do you mean the essential themes that lie at the heart of Christianity- but what are those, and can we say that an influence comes from active 'Christian' influence or from the residual Christianity that underpins western society? Do you mean the faith of the artist? Or is it your own Christian faith that is being read into Modern and Contemporary art?
3. Do you mean British, French, Italian, Spanish, American art. This may seem a strange point since so much contemporary and modern art transcends geographic borders, but I think this is important when addressing the subject of faith and Christianity, because in reality attitudes to faith are fundamentally different across these different contexts. American attitudes to Faith and Christianity are very different to British 'secular' attitudes, where faith is on the back foot. The recent American presidential elections highlight this with their strong influence of faith, whereas in the upcoming general election in Britain will faith feature, or will we once again have the Blair effect - where faith and public life don't mix? And then on the continent Christian art is often tied into a Roman Catholic spirituality and integration into liturgy that is fundamentally different to British Anglicanism.
You echo Taylor's criticism of Greenberg, but I don't have a problem with Greenberg's approach - why is that? I suppose I know that when I write on an artist I am aware that I am going to be addressing it from the starting point of my own world-view, and that my reading will be coloured by that. However much I try to be open to the full range of influences that may be found in artist's work I can never achieve a truly objective stance, I will always see a spiritual perspective and this will obscure some of the secular perspectives that may equally legitimately exist in it as well. Again, in your review of Traces du sacre your implicit criticism is based upon what I take as an objection to their position that argues that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). I may not completely agree with the origin being secularisation but I think that they are fundamentally right. In my many years of doing research in this area the majority of artists I have met say very early on 'I am not religious', and you have to accept this position. They are very rarely church goers and often stand outside organised religion. If I had used Church membership ,or adherence to a specific organised religion as a criteria for inclusion I would have had a very limited pool of artists of a quality worth addressing. My reflection over the years is that for artists their engagement with their faith and spiritual impulse occurs within the loneliness of the creative process, whereas non-artists do so within the parameters of organised religious practice and membership. The artists I have met who have an incredibly deep faith and highly developed spiritual awareness support Linda Woodhead's arguments that faith in the uk is becoming increasingly implicit rather than explicit, something carried out privately rather than within the bounds of traditional associational religion. Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion.
I remember Peter Eugene Ball's frustration and anger at being labelled a secret Christian by Keith Walker in his Images and Idols book. Peters' reaction was, 'I am not a Christian, and I know that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection'. Yet Peter is a person of deep spiritual awareness and faith which shapes his life. Your comments about your friend Alan Stewart's reading of Andres Serrano bring this to mind. We should be honest in what we are doing. If we are doing theology through art lets say that, rather than trying to imply that our reading is necessarily implicit within the work. Is his reading true to the embodiment of the work? I think the work is what it is, an image of a crucifix suspended in a golden liquid, which we later discover is urine. That image says nothing more than that. The reading into that by the viewer is valid, but not embodied in the work. Similarly an image of the crucifixion is nothing more than paint pushed around a surface to make marks that depict a man on a cross. Any theological interpretation occurs in the viewer's mind not in the work. Paint cannot speak of resurrection, it can provoke emotions that can evoke a sensation of joy or despair etc, but resurrection etc and Christian theology are not emotions, they are concepts that are formed in the mind, constructs of theology. I actually am not certain that art can be 'Christian', it is the interpretation of the subject matter that is Christian.
I suppose I am interested in the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work. I remember being at an ACE event chaired by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton where she asked the panel does an artist have to have faith to use Christian iconography or work for the church. The answer has to be no, and that is important, but what gets hidden is the possibility that artists with faith may explore the subject differently and that this needs to also be recognised. But we don't want to ask about an artist's faith. We are too influenced by the de-humanising debates that Dan Siedell is currently discussing on his blog, where we are suspicious of allowing an artist's intentions into a work of art. But there is a difference for me between artists having specific agendas which they want to put into a work, and the influence of the integral world view that an artist brings into the creative process, often without conscious thought.
Where did this denigration of an artist's faith begin? I think one place we can discern it is in Art Sacre, and their belief that the quality of an artist is more important than their faith. We see this recapitulated in Sister Wendy and Keith Walker who both use artists for their fame rather than their faith.
Another question about the airbrushing for me is whether the airbrushing is about Christian influences themselves. Figurative art of a certain kind, abstract art of a certain kind, and other types of artistic practice and concern have also been airbrushed out. Beauty is treated with suspicion by art history and theory, the sublime has become secularised, mystery has been denigrated. Artists continue to address these themes but critical theory, which in the uk has been dominated by continental post-modern philosophy, finds them problematic. The visual has been denigrated by schools of art history and cultural theory dominated by philosophy, semiotics, psychology rather than visual aesthetics cf. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics which underpinned altermodern at Tate Britain recently. But artists exploring the spiritual tend to naturally explore these taboo territories of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc. I think art history ignores Christian influences not out of an anti-Christian agenda, but because the themes that underpin 'Christian' spiritual art, and that absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world fall outside the themes that are dominant in the art world at present, where the world is a hyper-real, space of irony - something which is antipathetic to a perspective intrigued by transcendent possibilities.
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Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble - Parce Mihi Domine.
I'm finding this conversation really fascinating and helpful, particularly because I am currently trying to re-write my PhD thesis for publication, and many of these questions lie at the heart of what I was then, and am still, addressing - the taboo surrounding an artists' faith.
Fundamentally I think your project is worthwhile and important, and my comments arise on that fascinating edge where differences in nuance and emphasis can lead to development and transformation. Your considered and thoughtful responses to my own comments have provoked further reflection both about specific points and more generally.
None of the books and exhibitions that I have cited so far comprehensively address Christian influences on Modern and Contemporary Art and I am unaware of any book or exhibition that seeks to do so.
1. Do you think that a comprehensive survey is possible? I think that you are setting yourself up for a fall by an ambition that sets out to be comprehensive. It seems to me a narrow focus would allow you a better chance to realise your desire to be thorough and at the same time to raise the fundamental questions that you are seeking to address. By striving to be comprehensive you are either going to have to be so broad that your project will be full of holes, or you will never finish.
2. What do you mean by Christian influences? This is such a simple statement and yet so problematic. Do you mean influences that come from culture that are specifically Christian i.e.. the use of Christian iconography? Do you mean the essential themes that lie at the heart of Christianity- but what are those, and can we say that an influence comes from active 'Christian' influence or from the residual Christianity that underpins western society? Do you mean the faith of the artist? Or is it your own Christian faith that is being read into Modern and Contemporary art?
3. Do you mean British, French, Italian, Spanish, American art. This may seem a strange point since so much contemporary and modern art transcends geographic borders, but I think this is important when addressing the subject of faith and Christianity, because in reality attitudes to faith are fundamentally different across these different contexts. American attitudes to Faith and Christianity are very different to British 'secular' attitudes, where faith is on the back foot. The recent American presidential elections highlight this with their strong influence of faith, whereas in the upcoming general election in Britain will faith feature, or will we once again have the Blair effect - where faith and public life don't mix? And then on the continent Christian art is often tied into a Roman Catholic spirituality and integration into liturgy that is fundamentally different to British Anglicanism.
You echo Taylor's criticism of Greenberg, but I don't have a problem with Greenberg's approach - why is that? I suppose I know that when I write on an artist I am aware that I am going to be addressing it from the starting point of my own world-view, and that my reading will be coloured by that. However much I try to be open to the full range of influences that may be found in artist's work I can never achieve a truly objective stance, I will always see a spiritual perspective and this will obscure some of the secular perspectives that may equally legitimately exist in it as well. Again, in your review of Traces du sacre your implicit criticism is based upon what I take as an objection to their position that argues that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). I may not completely agree with the origin being secularisation but I think that they are fundamentally right. In my many years of doing research in this area the majority of artists I have met say very early on 'I am not religious', and you have to accept this position. They are very rarely church goers and often stand outside organised religion. If I had used Church membership ,or adherence to a specific organised religion as a criteria for inclusion I would have had a very limited pool of artists of a quality worth addressing. My reflection over the years is that for artists their engagement with their faith and spiritual impulse occurs within the loneliness of the creative process, whereas non-artists do so within the parameters of organised religious practice and membership. The artists I have met who have an incredibly deep faith and highly developed spiritual awareness support Linda Woodhead's arguments that faith in the uk is becoming increasingly implicit rather than explicit, something carried out privately rather than within the bounds of traditional associational religion. Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion.
I remember Peter Eugene Ball's frustration and anger at being labelled a secret Christian by Keith Walker in his Images and Idols book. Peters' reaction was, 'I am not a Christian, and I know that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection'. Yet Peter is a person of deep spiritual awareness and faith which shapes his life. Your comments about your friend Alan Stewart's reading of Andres Serrano bring this to mind. We should be honest in what we are doing. If we are doing theology through art lets say that, rather than trying to imply that our reading is necessarily implicit within the work. Is his reading true to the embodiment of the work? I think the work is what it is, an image of a crucifix suspended in a golden liquid, which we later discover is urine. That image says nothing more than that. The reading into that by the viewer is valid, but not embodied in the work. Similarly an image of the crucifixion is nothing more than paint pushed around a surface to make marks that depict a man on a cross. Any theological interpretation occurs in the viewer's mind not in the work. Paint cannot speak of resurrection, it can provoke emotions that can evoke a sensation of joy or despair etc, but resurrection etc and Christian theology are not emotions, they are concepts that are formed in the mind, constructs of theology. I actually am not certain that art can be 'Christian', it is the interpretation of the subject matter that is Christian.
I suppose I am interested in the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work. I remember being at an ACE event chaired by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton where she asked the panel does an artist have to have faith to use Christian iconography or work for the church. The answer has to be no, and that is important, but what gets hidden is the possibility that artists with faith may explore the subject differently and that this needs to also be recognised. But we don't want to ask about an artist's faith. We are too influenced by the de-humanising debates that Dan Siedell is currently discussing on his blog, where we are suspicious of allowing an artist's intentions into a work of art. But there is a difference for me between artists having specific agendas which they want to put into a work, and the influence of the integral world view that an artist brings into the creative process, often without conscious thought.
Where did this denigration of an artist's faith begin? I think one place we can discern it is in Art Sacre, and their belief that the quality of an artist is more important than their faith. We see this recapitulated in Sister Wendy and Keith Walker who both use artists for their fame rather than their faith.
Another question about the airbrushing for me is whether the airbrushing is about Christian influences themselves. Figurative art of a certain kind, abstract art of a certain kind, and other types of artistic practice and concern have also been airbrushed out. Beauty is treated with suspicion by art history and theory, the sublime has become secularised, mystery has been denigrated. Artists continue to address these themes but critical theory, which in the uk has been dominated by continental post-modern philosophy, finds them problematic. The visual has been denigrated by schools of art history and cultural theory dominated by philosophy, semiotics, psychology rather than visual aesthetics cf. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics which underpinned altermodern at Tate Britain recently. But artists exploring the spiritual tend to naturally explore these taboo territories of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc. I think art history ignores Christian influences not out of an anti-Christian agenda, but because the themes that underpin 'Christian' spiritual art, and that absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world fall outside the themes that are dominant in the art world at present, where the world is a hyper-real, space of irony - something which is antipathetic to a perspective intrigued by transcendent possibilities.
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Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble - Parce Mihi Domine.
Windows on the world (55)
Ditchingham, 2009
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Buddy Miller - Worry Too Much.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Angels & Demons
The fact that Angels & Demons the novel was written before The Da Vinci Code but filmed after enables Dan Brown and the filmakers to make the film an extended apology to the Roman Catholic Church for the furore caused by The Da Vinci Code.
First, the film sees Brown's central character, Robert Langdon, reaching a rapprochement with the Vatican which allows him access to its archives and enables him to solve the mystery which threatens to undermine that Church. This occurs in a fictional post Da Vinci Code context which mirrors the actual disapproval of The Da Vinci Code by the Vatican.
Then, the unfolding of the plot of Angels & Demons reveals the central mystery as fraudulent, the use of a supposed historical secret society for contemporary personal and political ends. This is, of course, the wider Church position on the supposed historical materials on which Brown based the plot of The Da Vinci Code.
The film itself is, like the book, a prime-time plot-driven thriller where what will happen next is the main (or only) reason for both watching and bearing with the unlikely twists and turns to the plot that Langdon uncovers and survives.
I'd read the book some time ago but didn't remember which character was the villain or the main twist on which the plot turns. That either says something sad about my memory or more probably about the pleasure of Brown's thriller format being found in the roller-coaster read to resolution rather than in any sense of substance in plot or character. I enjoy the occasional roller-coaster ride, just as I enjoyed Angels & Demons, but wouldn't want that experience to characterise my everyday existence or my usual reading.
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Nick Drake - Time Has Told Me.
First, the film sees Brown's central character, Robert Langdon, reaching a rapprochement with the Vatican which allows him access to its archives and enables him to solve the mystery which threatens to undermine that Church. This occurs in a fictional post Da Vinci Code context which mirrors the actual disapproval of The Da Vinci Code by the Vatican.
Then, the unfolding of the plot of Angels & Demons reveals the central mystery as fraudulent, the use of a supposed historical secret society for contemporary personal and political ends. This is, of course, the wider Church position on the supposed historical materials on which Brown based the plot of The Da Vinci Code.
The film itself is, like the book, a prime-time plot-driven thriller where what will happen next is the main (or only) reason for both watching and bearing with the unlikely twists and turns to the plot that Langdon uncovers and survives.
I'd read the book some time ago but didn't remember which character was the villain or the main twist on which the plot turns. That either says something sad about my memory or more probably about the pleasure of Brown's thriller format being found in the roller-coaster read to resolution rather than in any sense of substance in plot or character. I enjoy the occasional roller-coaster ride, just as I enjoyed Angels & Demons, but wouldn't want that experience to characterise my everyday existence or my usual reading.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Drake - Time Has Told Me.
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Responses to 'Airbrushed from Art History?' (2)
In his comments about the 'Airbrushed from Art History?' series of posts, Richard Davey wrote firstly that:
"You contradict yourself from the start. Christianity and religious influences have not been airbrushed from art history, as the books and exhibitions you cite demonstrate."
The books and exhibitions that I have cited to date in this series constitute a miniscule proportion of those that address Modern and Contemporary Art as a whole. None of the books and exhibitions that I have cited so far comprehensively address Christian influences on Modern and Contemporary Art and I am unaware of any book or exhibition that seeks to do so.
Books and exhibitions on particular movements will reference Christian influences, as with the books on Symbolism that I have cited thus far, but this is generally as part of a sub-set of influences and usually in terms that are somewhat disparaging e.g. Robert Goldwater's argument that the "clear religious message" of Émile Bernard and Maurice Denis is deterimental to the art or Michelle Facos' statement that the "Catholic revival in art and literature ... frequently descended into xenophobia."
Several of the authors that I have cited make the argument that I have summarised in the phrase 'Airbrushed from Air History.' For instance, in the second post I quoted Mark C. Taylor as arguing that the way in which the influential art critic Clement Greenberg defined the terms of debate "effectively obscures the self-confessed spiritual preoccupations of the very artists whose work he analyzes." In the third post of the series, I reviewed the Traces du Sacré exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, an exhibition about the exploration of spiritual themes within most of the major movements in Modern Art but one which argued that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). As Greenberg and Traces du Sacré tell stories of Modern and Contemporary Art in ways that obscure or ignore the Christian influences on the artists whose work they discuss, it seems legitimate to describe this as airbrushing Christian influences out of art history.
Other writers cited in the initial posts make essentially the same argument and I could cite a wider range of writers to support my point. James Elkins in On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art may well be the author who has made this argument most strongly:
"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. And that's odd, because there is a tremendous amount of religious art ..."
For these reasons I think it is legitimate to write of Christian influences as having been airbrushed from art history. To do so does not mean that there are no books of exhibitions where that influence is acknowledged but to say that particular ways of telling the story of Modern and Contemporary Art do underplay or ignore the extent of those influences.
"The problem is not that Christianity has been airbrushed out but that it has been understood and read from outside the parameters of faith."
The initial posts in this series reference the argument that the way in which the story of Modern Art has been told has had a secularising agenda. This is highlighted particularly in the first post where I quote Sally Promey writing that the "strongest determinant in this "modernist divide" regarding art and religion is the lingering paradigm of the secularisation theory of modernity."
I make use of this argument to explain why Christian influences have often been airbrushed from art history while Davey uses it to argue "that the recognition of these influences has come from a particularly secular and disengaged position." The two do not, however, need to be mutually exclusive. It is true that there are books and exhibitions which recognise these influences and I have cited several in these early posts but this does not negate my argument that there are others (of significance and in significant numbers) which ignore or downplay these influences.
Where books and exhibitions do recognise these infuences, as with Goldwater or Facos, I agree with Davey that "the interpretations of works which are informed by a position of faith, or employ christian iconography are largely made from a position of secular theology, which seems to offer a contradictory sensibility to the one the work itself seems to embody, or we feel before a work."
"Theology has airbrushed art out of its history as well. There are any numbers of books including David Brown, George Pattison, Richard Harries etc., which engage with art and use images to offer insights and reflections on theology and biblical studies, But what they engage with is iconography, they do not allow the work of art to be a sensuous embodied thing which offers its own knowledge of the world; providing a natural theology that may not sit comfortably within the confines of theological method and praxis."
I agree fully with both statements made here and don't see these arguments as invalidating the basis of my series, based as it is in art history rather than theological history.
In relation to Davey's first statement, in my second post I highlighted Mark C. Taylor's argument that throughout the twentieth century Christian theologians and philosophers of religion have been, for the most part, either critical or dismissive of the arts. Taylor places the blame for this on the influence of the dialectical theology of Karl Barth.
Davey's second point that, where theologians engage with art, what they often focus on is iconography rather the work as a whole is, I think, also largely correct. This is, I think, the major focus of Daniel A. Siedell too when he suggests in God in the Gallery that contemporary culture does not need the “Christian artists,” for which Protestant writers such as Francis Schaeffer and Hans R. Rookmaaker have argued, instead it needs “critics and curators who have a rich vocabulary from which to revive the sacramental and liturgical identity of human practice and to demonstrate that this identity finds its most complete and profound embodiment in the Nicene Christian faith.” His book was written to offer "a way to do a Christian approach to modern and contemporary art that could accommodate urinals and dripped paint on canvases and chocolate cubes." In other words, to engage as Christians with all art holistically and not just in terms of iconography.
"... just as we need to be careful of approaches that read a secular theology into works that are informed by a metaphysical theology, so we need to beware of reading our own faith into works that are essentially 'secular' [whatever that means]."
I think that this statement holds good in relation to my intentions in this series i.e. that in writing what is essentially art history I should beware of reading Christian influences into works where no evidence exists of such influences being a factor for the artist(s) concerned. However, if we are talking about the work of interpreting art for contemporary culture (the task that Siedell outlined above) then I would argue that interpreting essentially 'secular' (whatever that means) artworks in ways that inform our faith is legitimate as such interpretation is as much about the viewer's response as it is about the artist's intentions providing it responds to the "work of art as a sensuous embodied thing.".
My friend, Alan Stewart, has spoken of this in his 'Icons or Eyesores' presentation which ends by examining responses to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. He notes Serrano's motivation for the work of critiquing mass produced Christian icongraphy before suggesting that reflecting on the submersion of a crucifix in urine can lead to a profound reflection on the incarnation and crucifixion as a submersion in the detritus of human existence. This reflection is not based on the artist's intention but is nevertheless true to the embodiment of the artwork itself.
"... the real problem, the lack of attention to the work of art itself as something made by an individual with their own subjective space within the world. The issue is not airbrushing, but respect - respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
I think that this paragraph shows that what Davey and I are debating are nuances or emphases rather than fundamental differences. I would agree that where airbrushing occurs (and I continue to maintain that there are many examples, both by art historians and theologians) this shows a lack of "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings"
My intent in this series is to respond to the lack of respect shown to those works and their embodied human creators which are informed by a position of faith, employ christian iconography or are influenced the heritage of Christianity, when these influences/positions are ignored or downplayed. In seeking in a modest fashion through this project to carry that out, I agree that it is also vital that the same respect is shown to works and their interpretation which are essentially 'secular.' I agree that respect is the broader agenda but continue to think that responding to airbrushing where it has occurred is a necessary and legitimate task.
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U2 - Moment Of Surrender.
"You contradict yourself from the start. Christianity and religious influences have not been airbrushed from art history, as the books and exhibitions you cite demonstrate."
The books and exhibitions that I have cited to date in this series constitute a miniscule proportion of those that address Modern and Contemporary Art as a whole. None of the books and exhibitions that I have cited so far comprehensively address Christian influences on Modern and Contemporary Art and I am unaware of any book or exhibition that seeks to do so.
Books and exhibitions on particular movements will reference Christian influences, as with the books on Symbolism that I have cited thus far, but this is generally as part of a sub-set of influences and usually in terms that are somewhat disparaging e.g. Robert Goldwater's argument that the "clear religious message" of Émile Bernard and Maurice Denis is deterimental to the art or Michelle Facos' statement that the "Catholic revival in art and literature ... frequently descended into xenophobia."
Several of the authors that I have cited make the argument that I have summarised in the phrase 'Airbrushed from Air History.' For instance, in the second post I quoted Mark C. Taylor as arguing that the way in which the influential art critic Clement Greenberg defined the terms of debate "effectively obscures the self-confessed spiritual preoccupations of the very artists whose work he analyzes." In the third post of the series, I reviewed the Traces du Sacré exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, an exhibition about the exploration of spiritual themes within most of the major movements in Modern Art but one which argued that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). As Greenberg and Traces du Sacré tell stories of Modern and Contemporary Art in ways that obscure or ignore the Christian influences on the artists whose work they discuss, it seems legitimate to describe this as airbrushing Christian influences out of art history.
Other writers cited in the initial posts make essentially the same argument and I could cite a wider range of writers to support my point. James Elkins in On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art may well be the author who has made this argument most strongly:
"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. And that's odd, because there is a tremendous amount of religious art ..."
For these reasons I think it is legitimate to write of Christian influences as having been airbrushed from art history. To do so does not mean that there are no books of exhibitions where that influence is acknowledged but to say that particular ways of telling the story of Modern and Contemporary Art do underplay or ignore the extent of those influences.
"The problem is not that Christianity has been airbrushed out but that it has been understood and read from outside the parameters of faith."
The initial posts in this series reference the argument that the way in which the story of Modern Art has been told has had a secularising agenda. This is highlighted particularly in the first post where I quote Sally Promey writing that the "strongest determinant in this "modernist divide" regarding art and religion is the lingering paradigm of the secularisation theory of modernity."
I make use of this argument to explain why Christian influences have often been airbrushed from art history while Davey uses it to argue "that the recognition of these influences has come from a particularly secular and disengaged position." The two do not, however, need to be mutually exclusive. It is true that there are books and exhibitions which recognise these influences and I have cited several in these early posts but this does not negate my argument that there are others (of significance and in significant numbers) which ignore or downplay these influences.
Where books and exhibitions do recognise these infuences, as with Goldwater or Facos, I agree with Davey that "the interpretations of works which are informed by a position of faith, or employ christian iconography are largely made from a position of secular theology, which seems to offer a contradictory sensibility to the one the work itself seems to embody, or we feel before a work."
"Theology has airbrushed art out of its history as well. There are any numbers of books including David Brown, George Pattison, Richard Harries etc., which engage with art and use images to offer insights and reflections on theology and biblical studies, But what they engage with is iconography, they do not allow the work of art to be a sensuous embodied thing which offers its own knowledge of the world; providing a natural theology that may not sit comfortably within the confines of theological method and praxis."
I agree fully with both statements made here and don't see these arguments as invalidating the basis of my series, based as it is in art history rather than theological history.
In relation to Davey's first statement, in my second post I highlighted Mark C. Taylor's argument that throughout the twentieth century Christian theologians and philosophers of religion have been, for the most part, either critical or dismissive of the arts. Taylor places the blame for this on the influence of the dialectical theology of Karl Barth.
Davey's second point that, where theologians engage with art, what they often focus on is iconography rather the work as a whole is, I think, also largely correct. This is, I think, the major focus of Daniel A. Siedell too when he suggests in God in the Gallery that contemporary culture does not need the “Christian artists,” for which Protestant writers such as Francis Schaeffer and Hans R. Rookmaaker have argued, instead it needs “critics and curators who have a rich vocabulary from which to revive the sacramental and liturgical identity of human practice and to demonstrate that this identity finds its most complete and profound embodiment in the Nicene Christian faith.” His book was written to offer "a way to do a Christian approach to modern and contemporary art that could accommodate urinals and dripped paint on canvases and chocolate cubes." In other words, to engage as Christians with all art holistically and not just in terms of iconography.
"... just as we need to be careful of approaches that read a secular theology into works that are informed by a metaphysical theology, so we need to beware of reading our own faith into works that are essentially 'secular' [whatever that means]."
I think that this statement holds good in relation to my intentions in this series i.e. that in writing what is essentially art history I should beware of reading Christian influences into works where no evidence exists of such influences being a factor for the artist(s) concerned. However, if we are talking about the work of interpreting art for contemporary culture (the task that Siedell outlined above) then I would argue that interpreting essentially 'secular' (whatever that means) artworks in ways that inform our faith is legitimate as such interpretation is as much about the viewer's response as it is about the artist's intentions providing it responds to the "work of art as a sensuous embodied thing.".
My friend, Alan Stewart, has spoken of this in his 'Icons or Eyesores' presentation which ends by examining responses to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. He notes Serrano's motivation for the work of critiquing mass produced Christian icongraphy before suggesting that reflecting on the submersion of a crucifix in urine can lead to a profound reflection on the incarnation and crucifixion as a submersion in the detritus of human existence. This reflection is not based on the artist's intention but is nevertheless true to the embodiment of the artwork itself.
"... the real problem, the lack of attention to the work of art itself as something made by an individual with their own subjective space within the world. The issue is not airbrushing, but respect - respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
I think that this paragraph shows that what Davey and I are debating are nuances or emphases rather than fundamental differences. I would agree that where airbrushing occurs (and I continue to maintain that there are many examples, both by art historians and theologians) this shows a lack of "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings"
My intent in this series is to respond to the lack of respect shown to those works and their embodied human creators which are informed by a position of faith, employ christian iconography or are influenced the heritage of Christianity, when these influences/positions are ignored or downplayed. In seeking in a modest fashion through this project to carry that out, I agree that it is also vital that the same respect is shown to works and their interpretation which are essentially 'secular.' I agree that respect is the broader agenda but continue to think that responding to airbrushing where it has occurred is a necessary and legitimate task.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U2 - Moment Of Surrender.
C4M webpage update
This week's commission4mission webpage posts were both about forthcoming exhibitions.
There was a reminder about commission4mission's very first exhibition which will be in the Pentecost Festival on Saturday 30th May at Westminster Central Hall from 12 noon - 6.00pm. David Hawkins, Harvey Bradley, Rosalind Hore, Henry Shelton and myself will be exhibiting.
Also, there were photographs of St Andrew's Leytonstone where our summer exhibition will be held. St Andrews contains windows by noted stained glass artist Margaret Chilton, banners and a window by Hilary Davies and Stations of the Cross by Lewis Davies. Our exhibition will therefore complement a space in which art already plays a significant role.
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Mahalia Jackson - Come Sunday.
There was a reminder about commission4mission's very first exhibition which will be in the Pentecost Festival on Saturday 30th May at Westminster Central Hall from 12 noon - 6.00pm. David Hawkins, Harvey Bradley, Rosalind Hore, Henry Shelton and myself will be exhibiting.
Also, there were photographs of St Andrew's Leytonstone where our summer exhibition will be held. St Andrews contains windows by noted stained glass artist Margaret Chilton, banners and a window by Hilary Davies and Stations of the Cross by Lewis Davies. Our exhibition will therefore complement a space in which art already plays a significant role.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mahalia Jackson - Come Sunday.
Pentecost Festival
The Pentecost Festival begins on Tuesday and this is the most recent mailing about it from its organisers, SJI:
"Next week will see London become alive with over 100 events demonstrating the life, diversity, and relevance of the Christian faith today! And we want you to come along! So book your tickets (they're selling out fast!) plan your trip, and be part of this incredible festival in the heart of our Capital!
Book Now For Pentecost Festival Ticketed Events!
All tickets for Pentecost Festival are on sale now - and they are selling fast! Book now to avoid disappointment! Please note that tickets will be more expensive on the door! Our Reel Life film festival, featuring Veggietales, Walking on Water, Son of Man, and Invisible Children: Rough Cut, are also on sale at the Odeon website. Tickets are limited, so book your seat today!
You can also book tickets for Hope for Planet Earth, and the Film Stream on the Odeon website.
We Need Photographers!
During the festival we'll be needing budding photographers to be snapping about the place,capturing the colour, vibrancy and excitement of the day. Want to be part of our team? Contact us with your details and a couple of examples of your stuff. If you're successful, you'll get a press pass for the festival, as well as a free ticket to the event of your choice!
Festival Editing
We here at Pentecost Festival know that life right now is tricky and complicated, with a saturation of information coming from 24 hour news, Twitter, iPhone applications and now Pentecost Festival! And with 240 hours of entertainment at this years festival, you might not know where to start. Well never fear, as Pentecost Festival has created Festival Editing - your customised guide to this year's festival, steering you through the weekend and showing you the events to suit your needs!
Street Teams
Still want to be part of the festival? Then join the street teams! It only costs £8 to be a part of this year's Street Teams. We are looking for people to move out onto the streets, directing, talking to and praying with the people of London during Saturday 30th May, telling them, explaining to them and showing them what Pentecost Festival is all about! Join here!
Pray for the Festival
There are still ways you can be part of the festival, and this one is the most important: Pray for the Festival! We want to see people from all over London witness the Celebrations of Pentecost 2009, and know that the Christian faith is alive and relevant in their lives today! If you would like to receive prayer updates for the festival, click here.
Get Connected!
Follow us on Twitter here to get up to the minute changes in programme details, as well as festival updates on the week leading up to, and on the day of the festival! Find us on Facebook to connect with other festival goers and upload your festival photos!"
Don't forget that commission4mission will be exhibiting at the Festival on Saturday 30th May at Westminster Central Hall from 12 noon - 6.00pm. David Hawkins, Bishop of Barking, is to join Harvey Bradley, Rosalind Hore, Henry Shelton and myself as an exhibitor.
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Phatfish - There Is A Day.
"Next week will see London become alive with over 100 events demonstrating the life, diversity, and relevance of the Christian faith today! And we want you to come along! So book your tickets (they're selling out fast!) plan your trip, and be part of this incredible festival in the heart of our Capital!
Book Now For Pentecost Festival Ticketed Events!
All tickets for Pentecost Festival are on sale now - and they are selling fast! Book now to avoid disappointment! Please note that tickets will be more expensive on the door! Our Reel Life film festival, featuring Veggietales, Walking on Water, Son of Man, and Invisible Children: Rough Cut, are also on sale at the Odeon website. Tickets are limited, so book your seat today!
You can also book tickets for Hope for Planet Earth, and the Film Stream on the Odeon website.
We Need Photographers!
During the festival we'll be needing budding photographers to be snapping about the place,capturing the colour, vibrancy and excitement of the day. Want to be part of our team? Contact us with your details and a couple of examples of your stuff. If you're successful, you'll get a press pass for the festival, as well as a free ticket to the event of your choice!
Festival Editing
We here at Pentecost Festival know that life right now is tricky and complicated, with a saturation of information coming from 24 hour news, Twitter, iPhone applications and now Pentecost Festival! And with 240 hours of entertainment at this years festival, you might not know where to start. Well never fear, as Pentecost Festival has created Festival Editing - your customised guide to this year's festival, steering you through the weekend and showing you the events to suit your needs!
Street Teams
Still want to be part of the festival? Then join the street teams! It only costs £8 to be a part of this year's Street Teams. We are looking for people to move out onto the streets, directing, talking to and praying with the people of London during Saturday 30th May, telling them, explaining to them and showing them what Pentecost Festival is all about! Join here!
Pray for the Festival
There are still ways you can be part of the festival, and this one is the most important: Pray for the Festival! We want to see people from all over London witness the Celebrations of Pentecost 2009, and know that the Christian faith is alive and relevant in their lives today! If you would like to receive prayer updates for the festival, click here.
Get Connected!
Follow us on Twitter here to get up to the minute changes in programme details, as well as festival updates on the week leading up to, and on the day of the festival! Find us on Facebook to connect with other festival goers and upload your festival photos!"
Don't forget that commission4mission will be exhibiting at the Festival on Saturday 30th May at Westminster Central Hall from 12 noon - 6.00pm. David Hawkins, Bishop of Barking, is to join Harvey Bradley, Rosalind Hore, Henry Shelton and myself as an exhibitor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phatfish - There Is A Day.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Finding common ground in the credit crunch
People of faith form a huge constituency, can motivate people to action and are also part of rooted communities which in some instances are beginning to plan for greater economic resilience.
As such, the network of individuals and faith-based organisations that is Faiths in London’s Economy (FiLE) believes that people of faith should make their contribution to the current search for means of ameliorating the financial and environmental misery experienced around the world, in part because of the effects of the credit crunch.
FiLE has therefore facilitated a process for preparing a shared faiths response to the credit crunch which calls for: non-interest bearing transactions; mutual societies; business accountability to a wider range of stakeholders than shareholders alone; transparent and ethical business practices; and recognition of the role that artists and communities play in generating real wealth.
The overall process that has produced this shared faiths response is one that has included people from the Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jain and Jewish traditions in addition to representatives of faith-based and inter-faith organisations. We hope that our modest efforts will be a small part of a much wider process of reflection and restructuring needed to genuinely respond to the issues raised by the credit crunch.
Initial results show the impact that a modest initiative such as this can have. The document was picked up by the Faith Engagement Team in the Department for Communities and Local Government and posted on the G20 London Summit site as part of the Faith Debate section. The full text of our ‘Shared Faiths response’ is also being published in the forthcoming edition of the ‘Faith in Business Quarterly,’ an article on the document has been prepared for the Three Faiths Forum newsletter, and the document has informed a consultation on the issue undertaken by the East of England Faiths Council.
Producing a common statement from a diverse group of people was a considerable challenge and FiLE undertook this project as an experiment to see to what extent there were shared statements that could be made by different faiths on these issues. We found much common ground and the ability to understand similar concepts expressed in differing phrases. The use that has been made to date of our document indicates the wider value of such shared approaches.
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Beth Rowley - Beautiful Tomorrow.
As such, the network of individuals and faith-based organisations that is Faiths in London’s Economy (FiLE) believes that people of faith should make their contribution to the current search for means of ameliorating the financial and environmental misery experienced around the world, in part because of the effects of the credit crunch.
FiLE has therefore facilitated a process for preparing a shared faiths response to the credit crunch which calls for: non-interest bearing transactions; mutual societies; business accountability to a wider range of stakeholders than shareholders alone; transparent and ethical business practices; and recognition of the role that artists and communities play in generating real wealth.
The overall process that has produced this shared faiths response is one that has included people from the Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jain and Jewish traditions in addition to representatives of faith-based and inter-faith organisations. We hope that our modest efforts will be a small part of a much wider process of reflection and restructuring needed to genuinely respond to the issues raised by the credit crunch.
Initial results show the impact that a modest initiative such as this can have. The document was picked up by the Faith Engagement Team in the Department for Communities and Local Government and posted on the G20 London Summit site as part of the Faith Debate section. The full text of our ‘Shared Faiths response’ is also being published in the forthcoming edition of the ‘Faith in Business Quarterly,’ an article on the document has been prepared for the Three Faiths Forum newsletter, and the document has informed a consultation on the issue undertaken by the East of England Faiths Council.
Producing a common statement from a diverse group of people was a considerable challenge and FiLE undertook this project as an experiment to see to what extent there were shared statements that could be made by different faiths on these issues. We found much common ground and the ability to understand similar concepts expressed in differing phrases. The use that has been made to date of our document indicates the wider value of such shared approaches.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth Rowley - Beautiful Tomorrow.
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