Artists valued by theologians

I've recently been reading and re-reading several theologians who write about theological aesthetics. It's interesting to note those artists that they view as having synergies with their own work. I've posted previously about Paul Tillich and Expressionism and John Dillenberger and Abstract Expressionism but these theologians - Hans Urs von Balthasar, Calvin Seerveld and Cecilia González-Andrieu - are rather more eclectic, often valuing the work of artists without significant mainstream reputations.

Aidan Nichols writes that "Balthasar's beau idéal of a Church artist was the Swiss Hans Stocker" who he claimed "as representative of a 'new Catholic art in German Switzerland'." For Balthasar, "Stocker represented a pleasing contrast to the many artists claiming to serve the Church yet producing 'kitsch' ... Stocker would do full justice to the Kingdom of the Son in its redemptive economy; to the communion of saints; to the Church, her sacraments, her functions. Balthasar sees as paradigmatic Stocker's Sankt Gallen fresco of the open Heart of Christ with, arranged around it, scenes of the Old and New Covenants, the Angels, and the 'weeping Key-bearer, Peter'. This extended image testifies to an experience of the Heilskosmos, the 'world of salvation', that is central, not peripheral, and the will and capacity to represent it in an original way."

Calvin Seerveld has said of Gerald Folkerts that he "has the wisdom to let his Christian faith subtly percolate in the spirit of his painterly art by showing compassion for the problematic figures he treats": "Self-portrait shows Folkerts himself startled by the viewer's gaze, pounding a nail into the wrist of Christ on the cross lying on the ground. Curled lip, furtive eyes, aggressive hammer, tensed body, all under churning nest of vipers - it is a well-drawn almost melodramatic drawing of the guilt that lodges in the best of us."

"The engravings and paintings of Georges Rouault reinvest the Byzantine tradition with a sombre, stained-glass seriousness that is definitely biblical in its horror of modern dehumanising atrocities, and is truly compassionate in composition, colour, and gritty style that bespeaks Christian art, whether the topic be kings, prostitutes, or Jesus Christ's passion. The Nobel Prize winner for poetry in 1945, Gabriela Mistral of Chile, updates a Franciscan holiness and gives it a poignant, singing voice that casts haloes of comfort around girlish hopes, forgotten prisoners, and even the nest of birds. Canadian painter William Kurelek weds a love for the Bruegel world of low life with a Roman Catholic slant on the poverty of success gained without the presence of the cross; his mark of pristine folk happiness is normally touched by an existential sense of nuclear war apocalypse, so the careful observer can never rest easy. Significant about such varied Christian art born out of Catholic sensitivities today is its unchurchy, world-wide, sorrow-sensitive aura.

A more hidden, 'autonomous', or even tangential expression of biblical faith in art of the twentieth century deserves mention: the sculpture of German Ernst Barlach articulates with rough austerity a forceful cry in wood and metal for reconciliation with God and neighbour that so incurred the anger of the Nazi government it destroyed much of the work. The New York Jew Abraham Rattner not only conceived an enormous stained-glass wall of apocalyptic emblems for a major Chicago synagogue but also grappled time and again in painting with the crucifixion of Christ, trying to exorcise both Golgotha and Auschwitz, as it were, from Jewish experience. Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, 1982 Nobel prize winner for fiction, exposes small-town political corruption in South America with fantastic horizons that juxtapose real angels, supernatural forces, and the comic foibles of weak people.

The black spiritual song of American Civil War days takes on new evangelical fervour in the melodies and lyrics of Mahalia Jackson, whose simple Baptist roots act prophetically through the cascades of rhythmic beat and glorious sound. The paintings, prints and constructions of Henk Krijger body forth reminiscences of both Bauhaus and German expressionism muted and melded into strong, restfully honed shapes and expertly chosen colours that reveal artistry integrated by the Reformation perspective that ordinary life is a vocation to be lived directly before God and to be redeemed while sharing sadness, humour, and hope." (In The Fields of the Lord)

In Bridge to Wonder Cecilia González-Andrieu holds up as exemplars of the approaches she articulates the founder of modern Chicano theatre and film Luiz Valdés, the poet-playwright Federico García Lorca and the artists John August Swanson and Sergio Gomez.

La Pastorela, which González-Andrieu describes in the book, is performed biannually by El Teatro Campesino during the Christmas holidays, alternating with La Virgen del Tepeyac, in the historic Mission of San Juan Bautista, established in 1797. Pastorelas, or Shepherds Plays, originated in medieval Europe as religious dramas and were later brought to the new world and Alta California by the Spanish missionaries. La Pastorela recreates the long trek of those first pastores to the holy site of the Nativity.

González-Andrieu argues in Bridge to Wonder that the: "possibility of a religious reading of Mariana Pineda has been generally disallowed by Lorca scholars precisely because of political ideologies bent on bifurcating her self-sacrifice from her religious faith. Such an evasion of the complexity of Lorca's work continues even in the face of the playwright's own emphasis of the heroine's Christian identity."

"Even though his works are part of art collections from the Vatican to the Smithsonian, John August Swanson (American, b. 1938) routinely admits to feeling like an amateur, even after four decades as an artist. In one of his early works, the beautifully rendered visual story Inventor, he summarizes the work of the artist and the humility he feels every time he works. The eight panels present an artist, as the newspaper headline announces, who claims to have invented a machine that transforms junk into beauty. Juxtaposed between this claim and the last panel, Swanson presents the young inventor working and draws the beauty that emerges as swirling colors, spheres, concentric circles, and stars. The last panel reports, this time through an old radio, that “an amateur is someone who doesn’t know something can’t be done, so he does it.” ... In Inventor ... Swanson calls into question the image of artists as geniuses and of art as an elite pursuit." (Bridge to Wonder)


González-Andrieu has written that "Gomez's works also act like modern icons opening windows and doors into the depths of Spirit, where death never has the last word and the sacred beckons. In his passionate and passion-making art Sergio Gomez tells a community's story, raises a cry of pain, mediates a vision of hope, and points with care and reverence toward that eternal Other whose love the very beauty of these works brings into relationship with a thankful world."


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Mahalia Jackson - How I Got Over.