Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1960s

This is Part 8 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s.

• In 1960, Sainte Marie de La Tourette at Eveux-sur-l'Arbresle by Le Corbusier is completed.
• In 1960, William Kurelek has his first exhibition at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto. It is an immediate success. In 1963, Kurelek paints Dinner Time on the Prairies.
• Around 1960, art dealer Larry Borenstein meets Sister Gertrude Morgan while she is preaching in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He invites her to perform and exhibit work in his art gallery.
• Revelations is the signature work of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which premiers an extended version of the work in 1960, when Alvin Ailey is 29. Set to spirituals, gospel, and blues music and influenced by the choreographer's own Christian upbringing, it presents a vision of the historical African American experience from a church-inspired perspective.
• Igor Stravinsky composes A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961), which is based on biblical texts, and The Flood (1962), which mixes brief biblical texts from the Book of Genesis with passages from the York and Chester Mystery Plays.
• Francis Poulenc’s Gloria is premiered on January 21, 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus Pro Musica under conductor Charles Münch with Adele Addison as soloist. In 1962, he completes Sept répons des ténèbres (Seven responsories for Tenebrae, 1961–62) and writes, "I have finished Les Ténèbres. I think it is beautiful. With the Gloria and the Stabat Mater, I think I have three good religious works. May they spare me a few days in Purgatory, if I narrowly avoid going to hell."
• The Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture is founded in October 1961 by Alfred Barr, art critic and founder of the Museum of Modern Art, theologian Paul Tillich, and Marvin Halverson, an American Protestant theologian and author of a 1951 booklet, Great Religious Paintings. Among the more than 300 Fellows of the Society have been Mircea Eliade, Denise Levertov, Sallie McFague, Cleanth Brooks, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, and John Updike.
• In the early 1960s, Greenwich Village poet Robert Nichols asks Al Carmines if Judson Church can host productions of experimental theatre pieces, including his own short plays. Judson Church becomes a venue from which "Off Off Broadway" develops. The productions are done on a shoestring and admission is by contribution, with most plays presented in the church's balcony space. The first play is Joel Oppenheimer's 'The Great American Desert' in November 1961.
• In 1961, Graham Sutherland paints an altarpiece Noli Me Tangere for the Chapel of St Mary Magdalen in Chichester Cathedral. Kenneth Clark speaks at the unveiling. Leonard Bernstein composes the 'Chichester Psalms' in 1965. John Piper designs a Tapestry for the screen behind the High Altar which is installed in 1966.
• In 1961, after many years of deliberation, George Mackay Brown is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
• In 1961, Elizabeth Jennings’ Every Changing Shape considers, from a Christian poet's perspective, how religious or mystical experience informs the imagination. Christianity and Poetry (1965) considers the influence of religion on literature.
• Nicholas Mosley writes ‘The Life of Raymond Raynes’ (1961) and ‘Experience and Religion: A Lay Essay in Theology’ (1965).
• St Vincent ArchAbbey Library’s ceramic tile mural, measuring 22 feet by 11 feet, is designed, glazed and fired by Roman Verostko, while a monk at St Vincent. The mural is installed in 1961 and dedicated in 1962. In 1966 he begins experimenting with electronics and creates ‘The Psalms in Sound and Image’ consisting of four 15 minute units with collage photos, drawings and brief texts flashed in sequences on two screens and timed with original soundtracks. These audio visual psalms are created as 20th Century songs of praise and wonder of the experience of life. Verostko becomes a pioneer of algorithmic art.
• In 1962, the new Coventry Cathedral by architect Basil Spence is consecrated, with artworks by Ralph Beyer, Elizabeth Frink, Hans Coper, John Hutton, John Piper and Graham Sutherland, among others.
• In 1962, The Crucifixion by Geoffrey Clarke is unveiled during the dedication ceremony for the chapel of the Bishop Otter College. It is later followed by Jean Lurçat's Aubusson Creation tapestry.
• In 1962, F.N. Souza paints The Crucifixion (now in the Methodist Modern Art Collection).
• Eric Smith wins the 1962 Helena Rubinstein Scholarship with paintings which are a return to the structural concentration of his 1955 religious paintings.
• In 1962, Sadao Watanabe holds a one-man show at the Portland Art Museum.
• In 1962, Sister Corita Kent, as a teacher in the art department at Immaculate Heart College, introduces her students to the Los Angeles debut of Andy Warhol’s pop art Campbell’s soup cans. Asked to create a mural for the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Kent produces a 40-foot-long banner updating the Beatitudes, the blessings pronounced by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, with quotes from Pope John XXIII and John F. Kennedy. Kent’s screenprint "Powerup" (1965) melds a sermon on spiritual fulfillment by an activist priest, Daniel Berrigan, with the advertising catch-phrase of the Richfield Oil Corporation. Also in 1965, IBM ask Kent to design the Christmas window display for its Madison Avenue showroom. Kent and students from her lettering and design course at IHC create a display of 725 cardboard grocery boxes adorned with quotations, silkscreens, and photographs focused around the theme of “Peace on Earth.” Kent appears on the cover of Newsweek in 1967.
• Jean Cocteau dies in 1963. At the time of his death, he is preparing to decorate the chapel at Fréjus. He left so many designs and drawings for this work, that his adopted son Edouard Dermit was able to carry out the work in 1964.
• In 1963, David Alfaro Siqueiros paints Cristo del Pueblo and Mutilated Christ.
• In 1963, Doctor Cicely Saunders buys Marian Bohusz-Szyszko’s Christ Calming the Waters for the St Christopher’s Hospice Sydenham.
• Peter Schumann co-founds the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963 in New York City. The theater is named for its combination of puppetry shows with free freshly baked bread. Among the notable Bread and Puppet Theater shows directed by Schumann are "Nativity 1992" and "The Divine Reality Comedy".
• In August 1964 Colin McCahon resigns from the Auckland City Art Gallery to take up a position as a lecturer in painting at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. He teaches there for six years, influencing a generation of artists.
• In 1964, Béla Kondor paints Iron-sheet Corpus. In 1968 his panel painting depicting the legend of Saint Margaret is placed in Margaret Island, Budapest.
• In 1964, Thomas Merton's Message to Poets is read at a meeting of the “new” Latin-American poets – and a few young North Americans – in Mexico City.
• Jazz Vespers starts in 1964 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York. Revd John Garcia Gensel realises that most musicians can’t make a Sunday morning service given that they only get home around 4/5am. The Jazz Vespers service is introduced at 5.00 pm each Sunday.
• Elimo Njau champions the arts of East Africa by founding the Paa-Ya-Paa (‘The Antelope Rises’) Gallery in Nairobi in 1965. As the first African-owned art centre in East Africa, Paa-Ya-Paa becomes a key forum for local artists and intellectuals, hosting exhibitions, workshops and debates.
• Founded by the Church of Sweden Mission, Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre starts producing weaving in 1965. Rorke’s Drift becomes a centre for arts and crafts, including fine art, printmaking, pottery and weaving, located in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It has been described as "the most famous indigenous art centre in South Africa". The Centre produces some of southern Africa's most renowned artists and printmakers, including Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Dan Rakgoathe, and Bongiwe Dhlomo.
• In 1965, the Staple Singers premiere ‘Freedom Highway’, for a live recording at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, a few weeks after the beginning of the Selma to Montgomery marches in the US.
• In the second half of 1965 Colin McCahon begins work on what was to be his largest public commission – the design and painting of clerestory windows in a new convent chapel being built for the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, in Upland Rd, Auckland. It is a project that will prove critical in determining the course of his future career, stimulating a renewed interest in religious subjects and their symbolism. In the windows McCahon uses traditional Christian (Catholic) symbols, both pictorial (the Cross, the dove, a crown of thorns, wheat and the chalice) and textual (IHS, XP), as well as newer symbols of his own devising.
• In 1965, Patrick Pye completes commissions for Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick; Church of the Resurrection, Belfast; Convent of Mercy, and Cookstown, Co. Tyrone.
• Duke Ellington’s first two Sacred Concerts (1965 and 1968), John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965) and Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity (1965), Spirit’s Rejoice (1965) and Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe (1969).
• Olivier Messiaen's La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ occupies him from 1965 to 1969 and the musicians employed include a 100-voice ten-part choir, seven solo instruments and large orchestra. Its fourteen movements are a meditation on the story of Christ's Transfiguration.
• George Seferis’s final collection, Three Secret Poems (1966), is his most mystical work, imbued with his experience of reading and living with the Revelation of St John the Divine.
• Recording since 1966, first as a lead singer for the group People! and then as a solo artist, Larry Norman becomes a pioneer of Christian rock music. In 1969, Capitol Records release Norman's first solo album, Upon This Rock.
• Barnett Newman’s The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani (1958-1966) is exhibited for the first time in 1966 at the Guggenheim Museum.
• In 1967, “An Evening with God” takes place at the Boston Tea Party, a rock music club, and features performances, music, conversation, and an informal communion meal of store-bought bread and wine. The event is planned by Corita Kent, the priest Daniel Berrigan, the musician Judy Collins, and the Harvard professor Harvey Cox.
• John Coltrane’s funeral is held on 21 July 1967 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue and 54th street in Manhattan. The service features readings, including Coltrane’s friend, the trumpeter Calvin Massey, reciting the former’s poem “A Love Supreme”, and musical performances by Coltrane’s saxophonist-peers Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman.
• Arvo Pärt’s first overtly sacred piece, Credo (1968), is a turning point in his career and life; on a personal level he reaches a creative crisis that leads him to renounce the techniques and means of expression used so far; on a social level the religious nature of this piece results in his being unofficially censured and his music disappearing from concert halls.
• Dylan’s Gospel by The Brothers and Sisters, a choir of Los Angeles session singers including Merry Clayton and Gloria Jones, is released in 1969 on Ode Records. This rare and sought-after album finds the California collective covering a clutch of Dylan classics in the era’s revolutionary gospel style.
• In 1969 Henk Krijger moves to Chicago to become Master Artist for the Institute for Christian Art (ICA) — later Patmos Workshop and Gallery (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
• Christopher Fry’s Curtmantle is performed (1962). Dennis Potter’s Son of Man is broadcast (1969).
• Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away (1960), Julien Green’s Chaque homme dans sa nuit (1960), David Lodge’s The Picturegoers (1960) and The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), Anthony Burgess’ The Wanting Seed (1962), J.F. Powers’ Morte D’Urban (1962), Morris West’s The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), Heinrich Böll’s The Clown (1963), Caroline Gordon’s Old Red and Other Stories (1963), Jean Sulivan’s The Sea Remains (1964), Anticipate Every Goodbye (1966), Eternity, My Beloved (1966) and Death’s Consolations (1968), Shusaku Endo’s Silence (1966), Elizabeth Jennings’ The Mind Has Mountains (1966), Michel de Saint Pierre’s The New Priests (1966), Geoffrey Hill’s King Log (1968), Brainard Cheney’s Devil's Elbow (1969), and Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede (1969) are published.

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Arvo Pärt - Credo