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Wednesday 15 October 2014

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Report - Part 3

The Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (CFCE) have refused on two occasions the application made by the Chapter of Chichester Cathedral to commission Jaume Plensa's Together for installation in the Cathedral as the Hussey Memorial Commission.  The grounds for rejection are to do with the perception of significant change in the character of the space above the Arundel Bell Screen as a result of the installation.

It is undeniable that there would be significant change to this space as a result of the installation. The more complex question is whether the change that would occur is positive or negative, allowable or not. The chapter have argued that the change should be accepted and the CFCE have ruled that the change would be unacceptable. The commission has therefore come to an impasse because no basis for further discussion exists. This is because there are no objective criteria on which it is possible to discuss this issue or, in my view, the quality of art generally.

All of us routinely make judgements about the art that we encounter. Art is something which generally provokes opinions, whether positive or negative. However, when asked to explain the basis on which we make these judgements most of us would struggle to do so. Often we resort to saying things like, ‘I know what I like,’ which are ways of closing down the conversation without answering the question or examining our own assumptions. We tend to assume though that art professionals do have some more objective means of assessing the worth or quality of artworks. After all, they are constantly selecting work to show and attributing differing values, financial and otherwise, to that work.  

Jonathan Jones is an art critic for The Guardian who has acknowledged that the age of the art critic as an unassailable voice of authority is long gone due to the force of digital debate and the era of readers biting back. Entitled 'how I learned to look – and listen' Jones wrote that the way he thinks about art criticism has changed: "Criticism in the age of social media has to be much more playful and giving ... Criticism today is not about delivering truths from on high, but about striking a spark that lights a debate."

In the past, he argues, he and other art critics could speak in an "aggressive, cocksure, dismissive voice, determined to prove that my opinion was worth more than my readers" but "in today's more open forum – where people answer back, and where people often know more than I do – it becomes more and more absurd to claim such august authority for one's opinions." As a result, the way he thinks about his work, and about art, "is infinitely more plural and ambiguous than it was in 2006." Essentially, Jones is arguing that, while he can still express strong opinions, he is now much more aware that his opinions are essentially personal opinions and need to be acknowledged as such. The underlying implication is that there are no agreed criteria for assessing, evaluating and critiquing contemporary art.

Yet we continue to look for rules or talk as though these exist. Grayson Perry explored the issue of taste in the Channel 4 series All In The Best Possible Taste. He thought that "there will always be this barrier where there are people who are looking for rules. A lot of the lower middle class still need reassurance and clear rules, which they find in brands and in definite trends because they perhaps don't have the confidence to go on their own intuition and try something else out. So there's always going to be a large proportion of the population that have what they think is a very clear idea about what is good taste. But of course the good taste is just an illusion; it's just that they're obeying the rules of their tribe."

Within the art world, Perry suggests, the rule by which people work is that of consensus plus time i.e. “If it's agreed amongst the tribe for a fairly sustained amount of time, then it becomes good taste.” This is no different, then, to the seeking after rules which he criticizes in the lower middle class. On this basis, too, “good taste is just an illusion; it's just that they're obeying the rules of their tribe.” But many choose to work on this basis that, as artists, commissioners, critics, curators, gallery owners, historians or patrons, they know what good taste is because of consensus plus time. If one is in agreement with the consensus it is, of course, a safe place to be.

This does not mean that no criteria exist at all within the visual arts as there are clear technical criteria within each discipline that relate to whether or not the work is well made. However, these relate to the artwork as a craft object and do not provide us with answers as to the difference between a piece which has been competently crafted and one which demonstrates significant artistic vision or merit. Nor does it mean that particular groups, by consensus, do not have their own criteria. What does not exist, however, are any broadly accepted, and therefore objective, criteria.

In a dispute like that over the Hussey Memorial Commission, because there are no objective criteria on which discussion can be based, all that can be done to argue the case in favour of the commission is to demonstrate the consensus which supports it. That is essentially what the chapter did in response to the first rejection presenting significant support for the proposal from public consultation and written support from significant arts professionals; all this on the back of an initial well-run and broad selection process. Yet when the CFCE rules that they perceive a different consensus against the proposal, there is essentially nowhere else that the discussion can go because there is no objective basis for dialogue.   

What has happened in essence within the visual arts is that the action of Marcel Duchamp in exhibiting ready-mades and his arguing that the choice of the artist makes them art (now widely accepted as the most significant art event of the twentieth century) has opened floodgates which render rules or criteria for the creation and comparison of artworks superfluous.

As a result, we enjoy huge diversity in the visual arts. So, for example, I have been able to see a wide variety of styles and media of art and architecture in the sabbatical visits I have made. But the techniques required for each medium are often not transferable to other media, meaning that like cannot be compared with like. In this way, the variety of styles and media that exist within contemporary art limit the extent to which contrasts and comparisons can be made. As art can now be made of anything that the artist wishes, one blindingly obvious implication seems to be that the quality of a piece of video art by Bill Viola, for example, cannot be gauged by comparing it positively or negatively to a painting by Maurice Denis or stained glass by John Piper. Each is its own entity within a medium with its own techniques. As a result, widely accepted quality standards for works of art no longer exist. In addition, the techniques required for many of the traditional forms of Church art – stained glass, mosaic etc. – are no longer as widely understood as previously nor are these media generally viewed as cutting edge; a factor which impacts on the attention paid to church commissions within the art world.

The Church world and the art world, on the basis of Perry’s definition, are essentially different tribes with different tastes and fashions causing confusion for the emerging artist who is a Christian and those who commission art for churches. The dichotomy which is often cited between significant contemporary artists participating in church commissions and "self-styled 'Christian art' that though sincere and well-intentioned" is "often formulaic or decorative" and has "little or no standing within the art world," is essentially a debate about which tribe’s rules of good taste it is best to apply. Ultimately, that is a superfluous debate about illusions.

The way through this situation is, I think, what I perceive Sister Wendy Beckett to be doing in her art criticism, meditations and TV programmes. Sister Wendy is an informed enthusiast who applies the injunction in Philippians 4:8, to fill our minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise, to her writing and presenting. The kind of poring and praying over images that characterizes Beckett's best writing can be a distinctively Christian contribution to the plurality of art criticism and the experience of commissioning for churches. Beckett cultivates a prayerful attentiveness to the artwork through sustained contemplation in order to see or sense what is good and of God in it, regardless of whether the artist who made it has an international, national, regional or local reputation.

Early on in my sabbatical I gave a talk on visual art to the East London Three Faiths Forum in which I said that art, at its best, is epiphany and sacrament. In other words art takes the stuff of everyday life and transforms it so that we see it, ourselves and God differently. This was reiterated for me towards the end of the sabbatical in a talk by Rev. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on ‘Art and the Renewal of St Martin’s’ where he also spoke of the sacramental nature of art.

In a talk I gave to the Friends of Chelmsford Cathedral earlier this year I said: “To encounter the Gospel in contemporary art, diversity must be embraced. The traditional forms of expressing the Gospel in art – illustrating Biblical narratives and the lives of the Saints – remain, albeit sometimes in the newer forms of movements like Expressionism, while attraction and reaction to the meaning, impacts and influences of the Gospel also continue to inspire creative work by contemporary artists working in fields such as the abstract, conceptual, performance and relational arts.”

This has been the attitude and approach that I have sought to bring to my sabbatical art pilgrimage and the site visits I have made. There is no value in arguing for a difference in quality between an image by Maurice Denis and another by Bill Viola. What is of value is to reflect on the nature of each image (sacrament) and what that image reveals (epiphany). 

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