A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault

I've given an endorsement to A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault, edited by Wesley Vander Lugt. 

Many consider Georges Rouault (1871–1958) to be one of the most important religious painters of the last few centuries. Yet both the secular art world and the church have struggled to engage with his work, which is profoundly shaped by his Christian faith and also starkly explores the pain and darkness of human experience.

In this volume, a group of theologians, artists, and historians seek to bring Rouault out of the shadows. They offer a deeper understanding of the theological impulse of modern art and of Rouault's distinct contributions. Chapters explore how Rouault's unique work was influenced by his historical context, by personal suffering, and by biblical themes, especially the Passion of Christ. Essays are interspersed with original artistic responses to Rouault in the form of images and poetry, with contributions from Sandra Bowden, William A. Dyrness, Thomas Hibbs, Soo Kang, and others.

Rouault displays our need for mercy within a world of anguish. This book explores how his prophetic creativity continues to inspire artists and thinkers seeking to understand the powerful intersection of lament and hope.

The Studies in Theology and the Arts  series encourages Christians to thoughtfully engage with the relationship between their faith and artistic expression, with contributions from both theologians and artists on a range of artistic media including visual art, music, poetry, literature, film, and more.

My endorsement is as follows:

'As is noted in this volume, despite the mid twentieth century prominence that Rouault enjoyed, his work is now lesser-known than contemporaries such as Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, whose work and commissions often engaged with similar themes. The range and variety of engagements – both artistic and academic – with Rouault’s work found in this book serve as a corrective to the partial neglect of his work and achievements, including his legacy in artists engaging with Christian themes, by demonstrating the richness, depth and variety of his oeuvre and the many routes possible to connecting with it.'

See also my paper Rouault and Girard: Crucifixion and Resurrection, Penitence and Life Anew which was published by ArtWay and delivered at the ASCHA conference in Paris on Georges Rouault in 2022.

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Michael McDermott - Carry Your Cross.

The Artist as Truth-Teller and the Legacy of French Artist Georges Rouault

The Artist as Truth-Teller and the Legacy of French Artist Georges Rouault was an Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art symposium at Institut Catholique de Paris in honour of the recent 150th anniversary of the birth of French modernist Georges Rouault.

Many contemporary artists regard their work as having a moral as well as an aesthetic function. They conceive of the artist as a visual truth-teller who exposes social and spiritual injustice, and through their work these artists envision a more perfect world. This prophetic role for the artist can, in part, be rooted in figures of Jewish and Christian prophets, from Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah to John the Baptist, Stephen, and others. These prophets model a non-cynical intersection of spiritual purpose and material action that continues to inspire artists to work both within and beyond the studio/gallery/museum with a belief that art can call a reimagined reality into being.

The symposium featured presentations exploring the work of post-World War II artists whose work can be understood in relation to a Judeo-Christian model of prophetic social and spiritual action, such as that taken up by French modernist Georges Rouault. The presentations in the symposium focused on artists and theorists who extend and expand this legacy of Rouault.

The keynote presentation on The Artist as Truth Teller: From Georges Rouault to the Present was given by Prof. Jérôme Cottin (Université de Strasbourg). 

The other presentations included:

• Christine Gouzi (Université Paris-Sorbonne), “Georges Rouault, de la peinture à l’écriture: Soliloques d’un peintre”
• Denis Hétier (Institut Catholique de Paris), “L’ordre intérieur de l’artiste: Vers une réflexion théologique sur Georges Rouault et Pie-Raymond Regamey”
• William Dyrness (Fuller Theological Seminary), “Maritain and Rouault: Who Influenced Whom? A study of Literary and Visual Relationships”
• Julie Hamilton (Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts), “Georges Rouault’s Rebellion: Empathy as Social Critique”
• Pierre-Emmanuel Perrier de la Bâthie (Institut Catholique de Paris), “L’artiste comme prophète en son temps: Les références chrétiennes dans l’œuvre de Joseph Beuys”
• Jonathan Evens (Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry), “True Humility is Not Mediocrity”
• Monica Keska (University of Granada), “Go Down Moses: Biblical Imagery in the Works of Aaron Douglas”
• James Romaine (Lander University), “Validating Experiences: Romare Bearden’s Creative Purpose”
• Linda Stratford (Asbury University), “George Rouault’s Legacy of Artistic Mediation and Spiritual Purpose”

In my paper entitled ‘True humility is not mediocrity’ I explored the influence of Rouault on the life and work of André Girard. I discovered the work of Girard through Christianity in Art by Frank and Dorothy Getlein, a book which views Rouault as being ‘the twentieth century artist above all others who fused into one monumental testament all the elements of the social revolution and the new Christianity.’ Girard, as student and friend of Rouault, was seen by the Getlein’s as developing “the first move of Christian art toward the universal audience of today.”

Although he enjoyed considerable recognition in his own day and time, the reputation of Girard has diminished with time, unlike that of Rouault. As a result, his work is ripe for rediscovery. In this paper, in addition to highlighting key strands of Rouault’s influence on Girard such as humility and risk taking, I explored some of the reasons why Rouault’s work transcends his age, while that of Girard seems to remain within his. Additionally, I shared the contrasts in their work noted by their friend André Suares - penitence and affirmation.

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Erik Satie - Messe de Pauvres.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S., The moonlight was behind them...

“Great art is an instrument of God,” says Tim Rollins, founder of K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) who are exhibiting at Maureen Paley Gallery until 12 November. This is so, Rollins states, because you have to “bring faith to art as you do to God” and artists imitate “the penultimate creativity of God.”

However, you won’t see overtly religious imagery if you visit The moonlight was behind them...; in part, because the title of this exhibition finds its root in the gothic novel Dracula by Bram Stoker with an ominous darkness that Rollins and K.O.S. think relates to our current political and social condition.

Rollins’ collaboration with the members of K.O.S. takes the form of drawings, sculptural objects, paintings on canvas and paper. They highlight quotes from books, plays, operas and prose with which they engage as they relate the stories to their own experiences or to politics. Their art is created directly on these inspirational texts.

In this exhibition: “Gretchen am Spinnrade (after Goethe and Schubert) reflects on the swooning for Faust by Gretchen, distracted by her treadle. With the Brothers Grimm tale Rumpelstiltskin, the spinning of straw into gold hints at the blind pursuit of material splendour in a late capitalist period that might be seen to discourage critical thought. Tim Rollins and K.O.S. also revisit George Orwell's Animal Farm, with the relevance of the allegorical narrative only becoming more potent since its original publication. Other work makes reference to Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774.”

Although they have engaged, on other occasions, with religious texts and imagery – as with I See the Promised Land or The Temptation of Saint Anthony – the religious underpinning of their work is not primarily found in their use of symbolism. Rather, it concerns their processes of creation.

These involve reading and researching inspirational texts in order to find images that make literature visible. K.O.S. artist Robert Branch has spoken of this process as one which involves struggle in a social experience. He says, “Art making doesn’t come with written instructions, with a step-by-step process.” Instead, you “just kind of feel it out” because art “is a process of faith.” In this way, Rollins suggests, you “become an instrument for something that cannot be articulated any other way.” “Like the paint, you’re a medium” for “some spirit … making something manifest.” This process of faith, Rollins says, is about making “the invisible visible, vision becoming visible, and making hope material, power manifest, and Spirit sensuous.”

Rollins is “an active member in the music, arts, and HIV/AIDS ministries at Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem” and draws deeply on his church experiences in discussing art as a process of faith. He speaks about Holy Ghost moments saying that people “underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit”: “We don’t make this work. It is not like speaking in tongues. It is the Holy Spirit present … Painting is capable of rapture. Our paintings are ecstatic utterances made material and visible.”

So, if you want to experience rapture, spiritual ecstasy and, even, the “glory of God,” then this exhibition based on horror, fairy tale and political allegory may be just the place to go.

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The Voices of East Harlem - Simple Song Of Freedom.

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.