International Times: Seizing Control of the Dreamscape

Here's my latest book review for International Times, which is on The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars by Isaac Butler:

'Butler documents the way the culture wars played out in this period within the visual arts predominantly by telling the story of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities (NEA) and the conflicts that arose firstly from (or from perceptions of) its funding of specific artists and then from grants that were not awarded but which faced legal challenges as a result. These include works or exhibitions by artists such as Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, and Karen Finley, among others. The story takes place in the context of AIDS and its impact on the LGBT community, with its deadly effect informing a significant proportion of the work and the reaction towards it..'

See also my book review for International Times on The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s by Paul Elie:

'Paul Elie’s The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s is a survey of the culture wars that began in the US in the 1980’s viewed from the perspective of the religious aspects of the conflicts.

Many of the most famous confrontations in this period were between those defending a conservative view of their religion and artists utilising more progressive ideas and imagery in relation to that same religion. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, Madonna’s Like a Prayer video, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ are among the works caught in the crosshairs of the face-off between embattled sides.

 

Elie takes us through the decade highlighting the artists involved – from Andy Warhol through U2 to Toni Morrison – while also documenting the changing response to crypto-religious works.'

For more on: Warhol - see here; Scorsese - see here and here; U2 - see here, here, here, and here - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. For consideration of what to do when confronted with contentious culture see here, here, and here.

For more of my writing on music, see my article for Seen and Unseen entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion' and my co-authored book with Peter Banks, ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4. Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?

My earlier pieces for IT are: an interview with curator Jacquiline Creswell; an interview with the artist Alexander de Cadenet; an interview with artist, poet, priest Spencer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of singer-songwriter Bill Fay, plus reviews of:

• 'Moving Pictures' and 'Closeups' by Steve Scott, 'Never Mind the Ballads Here's Nick Battle' by Nick Battle, and 'Blank Arcades' by Andrew Rumsey
• Michael Takeo Magruder -Reconstructed Landscape{s}
• The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s
• In Another World: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk
• Hulda Guzman: Please awake - asked Nature kindly' at Turner Contemporary;
• 'Devotions' by Lucy Caldwell and 'Catholic Modernism and the Irish ‘Avant-Garde’: The Achievement of Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, and Thomas MacGreevy' by James Matthew Wilson;
• the 'Stations' project from Dunlin Press;
• 'William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy';
• Joseph Arthur in concert;
• installations by Chiharu Shiota and Yin Xiuzhen at Hayward Gsllery,
• U2's 'Days of Ash', Mumford and Sons' 'Prizefighter' and Moby's 'Future Quiet';
• 'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland;
• 'Lux' by Rosalía;
• 'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere';
• 'Great Art Explained' by James Payne;
• 'Down River: In Search of David Ackles' by Mark Brend;
• 'Headwater' by Rev Simpkins;
• 'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art' by Jonathan A. Anderson;
• 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art,
• albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey,
• also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku;
• 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley;
• Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel;
• T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone;
• Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition,
• 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller;
• 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt,
• the first Pissabed Prophet album; and
• 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published several of my poems, including 'Spencer Reece at Bemerton' which is based on the visit that I made to Bemerton in 2026 with Spencer Reece, 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.

I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

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Glen Hansard - Down On Our Knees.

'Piss Christ' and incarnation

Andres Serrano's Piss Christ - his 1987 photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine - was attacked last weekend in France by Catholic activists armed with blunt tools. The LA Times reports that:

"three people entered the Collection Lambert art museum in Avignon, France, over the weekend. One of them wielded a hammer at the photograph, breaking the protective glass. The photograph was apparently not damaged, though other works in the show were. Piss Christ was being displayed as part of a religion-themed group exhibition titled I Believe in Miracles.

Serrano told Libération: "I find it extremely sad, and unexpected. Frankly, I wasn't expecting something like this at all, especially in France, where I get a lot of support." Serrano also reiterated that he is a Christian artist and has no tolerance for blasphemy.

The Catholic bishop of Avignon, Monseigneur Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, has described Serrano's photograph as "odious" and has called for its removal.

Over the years, Piss Christ has generated a lot of heated rhetoric. The work was a central focus of the Culture Wars in the 1990s, in which politicians and arts supporters debated whether the National Endowment for the Arts should support works by Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe and other transgressive artists."

Despite this, Piss Christ is an almost perfect image by which to reflect on the reality of the incarnation. The incarnation saw Christ choose to immerse himself in the shit and detritus of human life to the extent of being treated, in his death, as being of no worth and entirely surplus to requirements. I can think of no other image that brings the scandalous reality so graphically to mind and, if that cannot be understood by those who smashed the image last weekend, one wonders what they actually understand of their faith.

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The Call - Walls Came Down/Scene Beyond Dreams.

Airbrushed from Art History (20)

The interviews which James Romaine carried out for Objects of Grace provide an interesting survey of artists expressing their faith in and through contemporary art and those that they view as peers or influences.

Dan Callis is a visual artist/educator whose work includes painting, drawing, and installation. Currently, his work explores issues of visual hybridization, arising from the interaction between artifice and ecology, spontaneity and the mediation.

When he spoke to Romaine, Callis explored connections between his work and that of Anselm Keifer:

"There is a strange sense of longing and mourning, also a sense of reckoning. The layering of imagery and material makes the work operate somewhere between memory and vision ... The work is so grounded in the history of painting and at the same time it transcends the issues that have hamstrung painters in the last two decades. This what I hope for my work. To acknowledge my traditions and use those traditions as a vehicle (or at least the fuel) to break free of the current orbital confines ...

Memory is made in place. Place is the ecosystem for memory. memory is story, individual and/or collective, and that occurs in place. This is history. That idea has been the common connection of all my work, the idea of memory, location (place) and community ...

I understand part of my role as an artist is to be a storyteller and I understand this role to be a redemptive act. I think that is one of the things that our works share: this belief in the redemptive quality of the art. The redemption comes, in part, from remembering. I would hope to evoke something forgotten, something important yet forgotten. I see that in Keifer's work. I also see in his work the role of the artist as a mediator or facilitator between memory and place ...

As a culture we are creating images at such a rapid pace and the bulk of these images are purely for consumption. Our memories are so meshed in the audio and visual drown of our commodity economy that we desperately need places to slow down, to reflect, to remember. And in this remembering there can be mourning, there can be celebration, and there can be reconciliation. I hope in some way my work locates or fixes the viewer in the space they are occupying and at the same time transcends that space. Keifer's work does that for me."

Callis thinks it is very exciting and dynamic time in the contemporary art world which is ripe with opportunity:

"With artists like Keifer, Robert Gober, or Kiki Smith, there are serious, spiritual questions being asked. It appears that we continue to be in a major period of flux and that means everything is up for question. As an artist of faith I believe it is paramount that we maintain a relevant place in the conversation. I think of the Southern California artist Tim Hawkinson, who showed in the 1999 Venice Biennial and ... Whitney Biennial. He and his wife, Patty Witkin (an accomplished painter and professor at UCLA) both are committed artists of faith and very active in the contemporary scene. I also think of Canadian artist, Betty Spackman, and her Austrian collaborator, Anja Westerfrölke. Both women are strong and committed believers and very active in the European art scene (including exhibiting their work at Documenta)." 

Albert Pedulla is a sculptor who makes mixed media installations and who has shown his work at museums and alternative spaces including the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, City Without Walls, and many college campuses across the North East of America.

Pedulla views his work as questioning some of the Enlightenment foundations of Modernism and its self-satisfaction at the same time that Modernism is still the vocabulary he has to use in order to be engaged woth or relevant to this time. One of his disenchantments with Modernism is:

"The idea that could be created in an autonomous sphere that has nothing to do with the rest of life ... The artist, like anyone else, has to consider the consequences of their work. I think that, to a certain extent, the Modernist artist has done a disservice to culture and the public by not giving back to culture something that is of use ...

a holdover from the Enlightenment and Modernism ... holds that the real truth is in analytic proof that can be factually verified. This reduces Truth to fact ... Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence for which is still unseen ...

What is seen is the subject; the content is hidden except to those who are willing to discern it. In Wall Object #4 (With Fire and Light), the fire which is unseen to the viewer creates the marks which are seen. The illumination is created by a light source which is unseen. The idea, the faith ... also relates to the act of art making in general. It suggests the prayerful attitude that an artist can bring to her work. The artist's work can be a visual manifestation of an invisible prayer. By faith, the artist's prayers may be seen."

As a younger artist, Pedulla was very interested in the work of Sol LeWitt:

"He does many of his works directly on the wall, and my work is also directly on the wall. I find his work to be optically very beautiful but LeWitt's work is less critical of Modernism. I think my work is arguing with him at the same time it is engaging Modernism."

One artist he is very interested in is Robert Gober:

"Even though his work looks very different than mine, he seems to have a similar ambivalence about Modernism and is engaged in the question of true spirituality as contrasted with the clinical, closed, spirituality of Modernism. So I feel a certain kindred spirit with his work. Yet, on the surface, I don't think people would categorize us together."

Tim Rollins says:

"What is funny is that artists like Serrano and Gober, and even Mapplethorpe, were maybe trying to transcend the limitations and boundaries of denominational organized religion by creating these critiques, in which they engaged and challenged church traditions and doctrines. Many people mistake critique for sacrilege. I often wonder what Christ would have thought of Piss Christ? I think he would have agreed with the ethos of it, to be frank. I mean, most people think Piss Christ is a glorious image, glowing, and they're just ready to shout and get down on their knees and pray until they do find out that it is urine. It is a critique. You have a cheap plastic crucifix that represents how Christ was sold and how Christ really had to suffer rejection and hung out with literally the scum of the earth. But the light that comes out of it, and how you can make something that beautiful. When I see particular works, like Piss Christ, I moved by the pathos of them. They're not just vandalizing, or attacking people's faith. It's an honest engagement of what these individuals have been though, often negative encounters with the church ...

Is there something they could say to the artist to persuade them that perhaps this isn't the most beautiful, or this isn't the way to engage with religion or with God? ... That's why it is very important for us to make things that are beautiful, that are glorious, but that can be critical and vital and political simultaneously. Only beauty - love made visible - can change things. I think that is the ethos of Jesus as well. People come to church and they want some of this. I see it in their faces when the choir starts singing and this glory radiates. I see their longing like, "There is something going on here that I have never felt before and I want to feel." We as human beings are biologically wired for spiritual ecstasy. And we try to get it in every form but a one to one connection with the Almighty. I think art is a way to summon that connection. The glory of God - this is what we seek to demonstrate in our art. This is what I feel in front of great works of art."

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The Blind Boys of Alabama ft Lou Reed - Jesus.