I'm grateful to Richard Davey for engaging in debate on these issues and for the ideas, questions and challenges that inform his second response:
1. Do you think that a comprehensive survey is possible? I think that you are setting yourself up for a fall by an ambition that sets out to be comprehensive. It seems to me a narrow focus would allow you a better chance to realise your desire to be thorough and at the same time to raise the fundamental questions that you are seeking to address. By striving to be comprehensive you are either going to have to be so broad that your project will be full of holes, or you will never finish.Clearly this is a real issue but one that faces anyone seeking to review a period of history or a particular movement over time. All the way through there are choices to be made about what to include and where and what to leave out and why. No history or art history is ever genuinely comprehensive, so the question is then how is it realistic or appropriate to be.
I think that a survey of the main movements within Modern and Contemporary Art showing Christian influences is eminently possible for the right person. The task is, after all, not significantly different from that of any other art history covering the same period, just coming with a different or relatively undeveloped perspective. I don't think that there is any one book or exhibition that has yet done this as fully as it could be done.
Rosemary Crumlin's excellent catalogue and exhibition
Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination would be the fullest survey that I have found to date.
The task is feasible in part because there are now a number of books and exhibitions have examined particular aspects of Christian influences of different Modern Art movements. To my mind there is now a substantial mass of such material that it would be feasible and useful to have a book that systematically summarised this material and that that could best be done as an alternative art history of the period.
I come at this as someone who is fascinated both by the way in which artists express their faith (when they consciously have one) and also by the way in which the heritage and legacy of Christianity continues to inform and influence our culture showing itself in a huge variety of ways in the work of artists who would not claim to have faith in any organised religion or to have faith per se. Encountering such artists and their works is an ongoing pleasure and, it seems to me, one that others might share if an accessible and reasonably comprehensive introduction were to be written.
Having said all that, that is not what I am setting out to do. This series is part of a personal development project, not a book project. As part of my own personal discipline of reading to feed my faith, I will be reviewing and extending my reading on these issues and posting summaries as I have begun to do. Learning from that reading and from responses to the posts is my personal aim but if in the process the value and feasibility of such a survey becomes clear then so much the better.
2. What do you mean by Christian influences? This is such a simple statement and yet so problematic. Do you mean influences that come from culture that are specifically Christian i.e.. the use of Christian iconography? Do you mean the essential themes that lie at the heart of Christianity- but what are those, and can we say that an influence comes from active 'Christian' influence or from the residual Christianity that underpins western society? Do you mean the faith of the artist? Or is it your own Christian faith that is being read into Modern and Contemporary art?By Christian influences I mean both the way in which artists who understand themselves as having a Christian faith express their faith through their work and wider artistic practice plus the effect that the Christian heritage of the West has on shaping and/or informing the work and practices of artists that do not claim Christian faith.
An example of the former would be
Maurice Denis who understood his destiny from an early age to be that of a Catholic artist. Denis was prominent and influential in the avant-garde of his day as a Nabi and a Symbolist and as an artist working for a contemporary revival of Sacred Art. As a christian artist he had an influence on the development of both Modern Art per se and also on Modern Sacred Art. His life and work seem to me to beg the question as to what was it about his faith that enabled and equipped him to be part of those movements and to have the influence that he had within his day.
An example of the latter would be the argument put forward by
Andrew Spira in
The Avant-Garde Icon that the Russian avant-garde from
the Wanderers to
the Suprematists (and
Kasimir Malevich, in particular) was heavily influenced by the Russian tradition of icon painting. Spira's argument is not that many of the avant-garde were Christians or that they painted icons but that their appreciation of icons, their creation and their meaning, affected the aspects of the development of their work, their artistic practice and their philosophical understanding of the meaning and value of their art.
I think that the above is relatively clear in terms of the various kinds of influence being claimed. I am not trying in these posts to unpack the complexities of those influences but am simply seeking to flag up artists and movement where I and others think they exist.
What is far more complex, and this is where I think your question leads, is how or whether there can be a definition of Christian, Religious, Sacred or Spiritual Art in Modern and Contemporary Art. There have been a number of different attempts to do so in terms of faith commitments, themes, practices etc. and a very interesting article could be written summarising, comparing and contrasting the various approaches suggested. I wonder whether holding the questions you pose in tension is the creative place to be, as opposed to attempting to tie the expression of Christianity in Contemporary Art to a particular definition or model.
3. Do you mean British, French, Italian, Spanish, American art. This may seem a strange point since so much contemporary and modern art transcends geographic borders, but I think this is important when addressing the subject of faith and Christianity, because in reality attitudes to faith are fundamentally different across these different contexts. American attitudes to Faith and Christianity are very different to British 'secular' attitudes, where faith is on the back foot. The recent American presidential elections highlight this with their strong influence of faith, whereas in the upcoming general election in Britain will faith feature, or will we once again have the Blair effect - where faith and public life don't mix? And then on the continent Christian art is often tied into a Roman Catholic spirituality and integration into liturgy that is fundamentally different to British Anglicanism.I will be trying to flag up national differences where this seems appropriate and don't intend to restrict my reading and summaries solely to Western Art. I fully accept your point that national expressions of Christian faith can differ in character and emphasis and that this is a complicating factor in examining Christian influences. Examples would include the differences and continuities between art produced out of the French Catholic Revival and that produced by self-taught artists from the American South. Again, in terms of the art historical survey that I think could usefully be written, this is an issue that should be faced by all who attempt to write history but also one to which sensitive historians can respond. It is also as well an issue that could add spice to and provoke interest in such a survey.
You echo Taylor's criticism of Greenberg, but I don't have a problem with Greenberg's approach - why is that? I suppose I know that when I write on an artist I am aware that I am going to be addressing it from the starting point of my own world-view, and that my reading will be coloured by that. However much I try to be open to the full range of influences that may be found in artist's work I can never achieve a truly objective stance, I will always see a spiritual perspective and this will obscure some of the secular perspectives that may equally legitimately exist in it as well.I agree that this is an issue for all in terms of our ability to understand deeply the worldview of another but the issue that Taylor is addressing is not solely about the response of the critic or viewer of the work. His point is that there are self-confessed spiritual preoccupations of the artists whose work Greenberg analyses which his criticism obscures. If this is so, and you seem to accept that part of the argument, then the question is whether this comes from an inability on Greenberg's part, because of his secular perspective, to understand these spiritual preoccupations (which is what you seem to be arguing and which would seem to me to call into question Greenberg's intelligence) or whether it comes from a more deliberate decision not to engage with these self-confessed preoccupations and, by implication, not to encourage his readers to engage with these preoccupations either.
That, I think, is what Taylor is arguing. I think that because these were self-confessed preoccupations of artists that Greenberg admired and promoted the conscious rather than unconcious decision not to engage is the more likely in this scenario.
If that is so, the result, for me, is that, to use your phrase, Greenberg is not fully showing respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings. When the embodied human being making the work of art says that spiritual preoccupations inform the work but these preoccupations are unaddressed in criticism then it seems logical to suggest that respect is not fully shown for, at least, the embodied human being who made it, if not the work itself.
Again, in your review of Traces du sacre your implicit criticism is based upon what I take as an objection to their position that argues that the secularization of society delivered artists from their subordination to the Church and that, as a result, the traces of spirituality found in both Modern and Contemporary Art are ones that stand outside of organised religion (and Christianity, in particular). I may not completely agree with the origin being secularisation but I think that they are fundamentally right.The curators are entitled to their opinion and argument. Their argument has real validity but in making it they sometimes ignore and sometimes misrepresent artists and arguments that counteract their argument. I don't think that an argument is strengthened by ignoring or misrepresenting opposing views. I think strong arguments are those which take on board counter arguments and show why on their own terms the counter arguments are insufficient. If the curators of Traces du Sacré had understood the influence of the French Catholic Revival in broader terms that just the art sacré movement of Couturier and had engaged with the Christian influences on, for example, Kandinsky and Malevich as well as those influences that were non-Christian and had then shown that, while these movements and influences existed, other influences were broader and represented the mainstream of Modern Art developments, then I would not have been able to argue as I did. Again, it comes down to the respect that you wrote about in your first email. If a telling of the story of Modern Art ignores or misrepresents aspects of spirituality that were there for some artists and movements of the time then, it seems to me, that a lack of respect is being shown to those artists and movements and to that history.
In my many years of doing research in this area the majority of artists I have met say very early on 'I am not religious', and you have to accept this position. They are very rarely church goers and often stand outside organised religion. If I had used Church membership, or adherence to a specific organised religion as a criteria for inclusion I would have had a very limited pool of artists of a quality worth addressing. My reflection over the years is that for artists their engagement with their faith and spiritual impulse occurs within the loneliness of the creative process, whereas non-artists do so within the parameters of organised religious practice and membership. The artists I have met who have an incredibly deep faith and highly developed spiritual awareness support Linda Woodhead's arguments that faith in the UK is becoming increasingly implicit rather than explicit, something carried out privately rather than within the bounds of traditional associational religion. Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion.Cecil Collins was an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly anti-religion. His friend, David Jones, was also an artist of incredible faith, but very explicitly pro-religion. As above, while it may be true that the overall trend is towards faith expressed outside of the bounds of traditional associational religion, if that argument does not deal with the reality of those artists who continue to express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion then it is weakened to the extent that it is unable to do so. A part of what I am doing is to point out that there are actually rather more artists who express their faith within the bounds of traditional associational religion than is often assumed to be the case.
I remember Peter Eugene Ball's frustration and anger at being labelled a secret Christian by Keith Walker in his Images and Idols book. Peters' reaction was, 'I am not a Christian, and I know that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection'. Yet Peter is a person of deep spiritual awareness and faith which shapes his life. Your comments about your friend Alan Stewart's reading of Andres Serrano bring this to mind. We should be honest in what we are doing. If we are doing theology through art lets say that, rather than trying to imply that our reading is necessarily implicit within the work. Is his reading true to the embodiment of the work? I think the work is what it is, an image of a crucifix suspended in a golden liquid, which we later discover is urine. That image says nothing more than that. The reading into that by the viewer is valid, but not embodied in the work. Similarly an image of the crucifixion is nothing more than paint pushed around a surface to make marks that depict a man on a cross. Any theological interpretation occurs in the viewer's mind not in the work. Paint cannot speak of resurrection, it can provoke emotions that can evoke a sensation of joy or despair etc, but resurrection etc and Christian theology are not emotions, they are concepts that are formed in the mind, constructs of theology. I actually am not certain that art can be 'Christian', it is the interpretation of the subject matter that is Christian.Your argument here about works of art seems reductionist in the extreme and, to me, seems to contradict your statement in the earlier email about "respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Embodied human beings making works of art are aware of and use (play with) the associations and emotions evoked by the materials and images used in the making. These associations and emotions are as much a part of the work of art as the materials and images (this is particularly so in conceptual and symbolist art, as both begin with the idea or concept) and are present whether the viewer or critic responds to them or not; in the same way that Biblical allusions exist in Shakespeare's plays whether contemporary students recognise them or not. In the same way in which Andrew Motion has argued regarding Shakespeare that our understanding and appreciation of the plays is reduced if we don't recognise the allusions, so our understanding of visual art that uses or plays with associations, emotions and ideas is diminished if we fail to respond. Again, the full work of art made by an embodied human being is not being fully respected or appreciated if these are not encountered.
As a result, I would differ from you in thinking that Christian concepts can be a part of an art work in being a part of the associations that the artist deliberately brings into play through the creation of the work, sometimes directly through imagery and sometimes implicitly through reference.
Having said that, I do think that the art work is an object in its own right once created and, as such, has a life beyond that which its maker consciously intended. Artists sometimes express this themselves when they talk about seeing more in the work as they live with it than they were aware of intending during its creation. For some, this is an indication of some sort of spiritual dimension or dynamic at play in the work.
Alan Stewart understands this sense of something more to also pertain to the viewer:
"An artist will of course set out to say something particular, but once their work becomes public, it assumes its own life. Therefore each fresh encounter will produce a new conversation between the art and the viewer, resulting in a whole host of possible interpretations, none less valid than the other. Appropriating our own personal meaning from another person’s work doesn’t diminish it, if anything it enlarges it. We might even want to say that in re-imagining and re-investing something with new meaning, we may in fact in some cases redeem it or re-birth it."
I agree with him that doing so enlarges the work and its significance. It also gives a creative role to us as viewers of art. However, I don't think that this means that anything goes in terms of interpretation. Interpretation, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work itself.
So, I think that there are three different dynamics at play which overlap to some extent. The artist and his/her intentions in creating the work, the work itself as an object in its own right that is part of a network of intentional associations, and the viewer who is able to interpret the work in ways that may differ from the artist's intentions but must fit with the form, content and associations of the work itself.
I suppose I am interested in the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work. I remember being at an ACE event chaired by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton where she asked the panel does an artist have to have faith to use Christian iconography or work for the church. The answer has to be no, and that is important, but what gets hidden is the possibility that artists with faith may explore the subject differently and that this needs to also be recognised. But we don't want to ask about an artist's faith. We are too influenced by the de-humanising debates that Dan Siedell is currently discussing on his blog, where we are suspicious of allowing an artist's intentions into a work of art. But there is a difference for me between artists having specific agendas which they want to put into a work, and the influence of the integral world view that an artist brings into the creative process, often without conscious thought.
I think your statement that you are interested in "the faith that an artist has, and how this is unconsciously reflected in the sensibilities that ripple the surface of an art work" raises important assumptions which I would want to question. Underlying this seems to be the argument that, as Robert Goldwater says regarding the work of Bernard and Denis, conscious specific agendas are detrimental to the work while unconcious sensibilities benefit the work. This assumption can deteriorate into a simplistic good/bad measure of a work's validity and can lead to the use of traditional icongraphy and imagery from literature and religion being dismissed as literary rather than visual. I would question whether the assumption has any real validity because there seems no basis, other than the subjective, on which the critic can make a judgement as to whether the imagery, associations, emotions etc. in an art work are conscious or unconscious.
Where did this denigration of an artist's faith begin? I think one place we can discern it is in Art Sacre, and their belief that the quality of an artist is more important than their faith. We see this recapitulated in Sister Wendy and Keith Walker who both use artists for their fame rather than their faith.
I'm not really sure where this is coming from. The main argument of Art Sacre seemed to be the one that you made above (and with which I agree) i.e. that an artist doesn't have to have a faith in order to use Christian iconography or work for the church. I also agree that works using Christian icongraphy or made for the church by artists without faith would be likely to explore faith differently from artists with a faith. This could be about creative dissonance but I don't se that that then leads to the denigration of the faith of those artists who have a faith. This, I think, comes much more from an over-emphasis on the art work as an object in its own right. There are those, I think, who, in order to emphasis the significance of the art work as an object in its own right, seek to divorce it from its creator and his/her creative intentions. Where this is the case then the faith of the artist is deemed to be irrelevant. This, I think, is reductive and fails your test of fully respecting "the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings."
Another question about the airbrushing for me is whether the airbrushing is about Christian influences themselves. Figurative art of a certain kind, abstract art of a certain kind, and other types of artistic practice and concern have also been airbrushed out. Beauty is treated with suspicion by art history and theory, the sublime has become secularised, mystery has been denigrated. Artists continue to address these themes but critical theory, which in the UK has been dominated by continental post-modern philosophy, finds them problematic. The visual has been denigrated by schools of art history and cultural theory dominated by philosophy, semiotics, psychology rather than visual aesthetics cf. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics which underpinned altermodern at Tate Britain recently. But artists exploring the spiritual tend to naturally explore these taboo territories of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc. I think art history ignores Christian influences not out of an anti-Christian agenda, but because the themes that underpin 'Christian' spiritual art, and that absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world fall outside the themes that are dominant in the art world at present, where the world is a hyper-real, space of irony - something which is antipathetic to a perspective intrigued by transcendent possibilities.This is interesting. Firstly, because here you are saying that airbrushing does occur whereas previously you argued that the issue was respect not airbrushing. Secondly, because I don't think I have argued (and certainly haven't intended to argue) that airbrushing of Christian influences happens because of an explicitly anti-Christian agenda. I agree with you that themes and mediums (such as, for example, figurative symbolism) which "absorb artists intrigued by a spiritual world" tend to fall outside of the themes and mediums that are dominant in the art world at present. I think too that, as you have argued previously, secularists are less likely to identify spiritual themes/imagery and, as a result, to ignore it. I also think that there is an historical issue which is the reality that Western Art was almost exclusively 'Christian' for a large part of its history and that its 'Christianness' in that period was heavily associated with illustrating the narratives of the faith. Because both of these are no longer the case, assumptions are made either that its influence has been lost altogether or that its influence only exists in figurative narratives.
An interesting challenge for those artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" would be to explore means of expressing their 'spiritual' themes coherently and with resonance in mediums which are dominant in the art world at present or to explore how Christian faith can be expressed in and through a world that is hyper-real and ironic. This latter challenge could well be one in which theologians and writers on the arts from a Christian perspective could give valuable support and ideas to artists. This, I think, is akin to
Dan Siedell's intentions. The reverse would be to argue that the two are totally antithetical to each other and that artists "intrigued by a spiritual world" should continue to be counter-cultural even if this means being ignored by the present art world which would, I think, be closer to the position that
Peter Fuller eventually took (although he had real success as well as opposition in presenting his arguments, including the value of the sublime, beauty, wonder etc., within the recently past art world itself). Which would you tend towards or should there perhaps be people of faith on both sides of the argument?
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Thea Gilmore -
Red White and Black.
