When was the last time you saw an explicitly religious work of contemporary art?

“When was the last time you saw an explicitly religious work of contemporary art?” Dan Fox asks in his November – December frieze editorial. Religious art, he argues, “when it’s not kept safely confined within gilt frames in the medieval departments of major museums, is taboo.”

Art about religion is totally kosher however; as are: “modernist dalliances with spiritualism;” the “obsessive cosmologies and prophecies” of ‘visionary’ or ‘outsider’ artists; and “a little dusting of Buddhism or Eastern philosophy.” But, “contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions are usually regarded with the kind of suspicion reserved for Mormon polygamists and celebrity Scientologists.”

Why is the art world wary of religion? Fox gives five reasons:

1. “For most of the 20th century, art aligned itself with progressive rationalist secularity and radical subjectivity; the ideas that have fed into art come from modern philosophy, liberal or radical politics, sociology and pop culture rather than theology.”

2. “It’s also a question of finance: the money that funds art doesn’t come from churches or religious orders like it did hundreds of years ago.”

3. “Religion is broadly seen by many progressive thinkers to be a cause of intolerance and war.”

4. “The early 21st century has been characterised by a dangerous return to faith-based political conviction, be it radical Islam or neo-conservative fundamentalist Christianity, neither of which has much sympathy for cutting-edge art or ideas.”

5. “Also, religious organisations aren’t, of course, exactly known for their forward thinking attitudes to women or sexuality: the moral teachings of many religious denominations can be at odds with the ways artists want to live their lives.”

His editorial goes on to question the taboo without fundamentally challenging these five perceptions and the content of this edition of frieze, as a result, tends to confirm the taboo rather than shatter it by focusing primarily on art about belief, Occult art, and art with a little dusting of Buddhism or Eastern philosophy. Accordingly, the religious or spiritual commitments highlighted by the articles in this edition include: hermeticism (Lorenzo Lotto), radical atheism (Slavoj Žižek and Simon Critchley), sikhism (Linder), and spiritualism (Hilma af Klint, Ethel Le Rossignol and Austin Osman Spare) together with several profiles of artists creating art about religion or belief (Kai Althoff, Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, Matthew Day Jackson, and Aura Satz, among others). Set against these, in terms of the dichotomy advanced by Fox in his editorial, is one article on the changing shape of the mosque in Britain and a book review exploring political theology.

The reasons Fox gives for the art world’s wariness towards religion can be challenged and, were those challenges to be engaged with, could open up a different engagement with religion. Taking them in order, we could say briefly, that:

1. Theological and religious contributions to modern art existed throughout the 20th century but were consistently overlooked and ignored (see my ‘Airbrushed from Art History’ series of posts for examples). There is great scope for rediscovering and re-examining these contributions in order to broaden our understanding of the development of modern art and to inform future creativity. What is needed, as Daniel A. Siedell suggests in God in the Gallery, is "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations."

2. Commission is a current exhibition claiming a contemporary renaissance of Church commissioning which could be critically reviewed (both claim and exhibition) by frieze. The Dictionary Corner in this edition of frieze contrasts curate and curator but does not mention the current experiments within emergent church communities which apply insights from artistic curation to the creation and oversight of alternative worship experiences (see Curating Worship by Jonny Baker).

3.  Significant research exists which suggests that religion increases wellbeing and makes people better citizens, as religious people are much more likely to volunteer and give money to charity. The linking of religion to intolerance and war has a tendency to ignore or downplay such findings and to do the same to religious teachings themselves, with their common strand which is the Golden Rule: 'Do to others as you would have them do to you'. This raises the question as to the extent of bias or prejudgement which informs such opinions. 

4. To see the 21st century return of religion in the sole form of religious fundamentalism is to see only part of the picture. The fact that struggles are occurring within Christianity and Islam between fundamentalism and liberalism means both that the future of religions is not settled in terms of fundamentalism and that other creative alternatives may emerge. This is potentially fertile ground for artists to explore.

5. Again, this is to focus on only one side of the debate within religions. There is potentially fertile ground for artists to explore in dialogue with people of faith who share forward thinking attitudes to women or sexuality.

It is worth noting that only two out of the five have significant links to Art per se, suggesting, as Fox points out, that "the art world is seen to be an open-minded and tolerant community in which to work ... until someone tells you casually that they regularly attend mass." 

Fox also rightly points out the belief which art and religion share when objects and images are invested with meaning and argues that a cognitive dissonance is experienced when this is ignored. Similarly, Jean Luc Nancy argues in his frieze interview that the destruction of the frameworks, or references, of religious and emancipatory politics have resulted in a society with fewer foundations that it had before 1968 and has unleashed the spirit of consumerism. We should respond, he argues:

“not with politics or economics but with thinking, with imagination, with what I call worship: a relationship to the infinite. We must stop believing that economic measures or political models can respond to what is happening. What is happening, in Hegel’s words, is the spirit of the world being transformed.”

This is reinforced by Simon Critchley’s argument in his interview that:

“To jettison [religious philosophical] traditions in the name of some kind of scientific rationality is simply philistine and counter-productive, so it becomes a question of inhabiting and mobilizing religion for interesting and radical ends.”

Or as Žižek bluntly states, “Christianity is too precious a thing to leave to conservative fundamentalists.”

So, frieze 135 talks the talk of critical engagement with contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions but doesn’t actually show us anyone genuinely walking that walk, although examples do exist in contemporary art (Breninger, Celaya, Fujimura, Howson, Nowosielski et al) and certainly have existed throughout the history of modern art (Bernard, Serusier, Denis, Nolde, Rouault, Gleizes, Chagall, Severini, Manessier, Jellett, Spencer, Jones, Sutherland, Piper, Congdon, McCahon, Smith, Hayman, Adams, Herbert et al).

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Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More.