International Times: Holing The Secular Ship

I've just had my first book review published by International Times. It's about 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord':

'Building on the editors’ Introduction, Jonathan A. Anderson adds to their mapping of the field with four useful interpretive horizons – anthropological, political, spiritual and theological – all grounded in specific examples of relatively recent exhibitions. Key contributors to the evolving debate such as Eleanor Heartney, Aaron Rosen and Daniel A. Siedell are included and take the opportunity to update and add to their distinctive contributions. Other significant interlocutors – Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, [James] Elkins ... Ben Quash and S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate – contribute in the colloquy which forms the Afterword.

While being of particular interest to practitioners and academics, the book – by summarising earlier research and through case studies of artists and exhibitions – provides an interesting and varied introduction to this field of study and practice; one which is increasingly featuring in the programmes of major museums and galleries.'

This book derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) which was called 'A Strange Place Still? Religion in Contemporary Art'. I contributed to a later ASCHA symposium and my paper can be read on the ArtWay site - click here. My Artlyst interview with Jonathan A. Anderson can be found here, my review of Daniel A. Siedell's 'God in the Gallery' can be found here, and my exhibitions for the Visual Commentary on Scripture, which is directed by Ben Quash, can be found here and here. 

Several of my short stories have been published by International Times, the Magazine of Resistance, including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's mudcub sculptures, which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford last Autumn. 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.

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Nick Cave and Nicholas Lens - Liturgy Of Divine Absence.

Seeing is Receiving: The art of contemplation (1)

Today I'm beginning a new series exploring the art of contemplation. This post introduces the series and I'll post the remainder of the series on a weekly basis.

Introduction - Seeing

This is a book about prayer. But it is not a book about prayer like any you will have read. Most books about prayer are about the words we should speak or, if they are books of prayers, give us the words we are to speak. This is a book using words to bring us to silence.

Why? Because when we fall silent is when we begin to see. All we do and all we stop doing begins and ends in silence. Silence wraps itself around our lives through birth and death but also all our activity and speech within life.

This is perhaps most evident when music is played. Music fills the spaces in which it is performed for the duration of the performance but there is silence before and after. It may even be that the purpose of the sounds is that when they end we notice the silence more acutely than before. That is the movement – lyrically and musically – of Van Morrison’s ‘Summertime in England’ – one of the most meditative pieces created within the canon of noise that is rock music. It may also be why – in his most famous work – John Cage gave us 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence structured as a musical composition. Morrison takes us on a lyrical journey from the Lake District through Bristol to Glastonbury picking up on the literary and spiritual references as we travel to reveal that what we find in nature, literature and religion is the opportunity to rest, to experience, to be, to see, in silence.

We are led into silence in order to see because seeing is foundational to understanding. Seeing precedes speech. That is the sequence of human development, one that we ignore at our peril. It is also the sequence of the foundational story in the book of Genesis where Adam names the animals. Naming is a key human speech-act. Describing and defining is a tool for navigating existence and is the basis of scientific discovery, but it begins with seeing.

In order to accurately describe or define or map, you have first to see what is there. That is the sequence within this story. God brings animals to Adam. He looks at each one and then describes or defines each by naming it. Names in ancient times described the essence of the creature or object so named. That is what Adam does in this story. He looks for the essence of each creature and then names that essence.

With God the sequence is the same but on a cosmic scale, as God is creator. The account of creation in Genesis 1 begins with the Spirit hovering over the waters. We do not know how long this state lasted - it was a time out of time, as time did not yet exist – but it is clearly a preparatory time without speech. God then speaks and the world comes into existence. But then God looks. God looks, and sees that it is good. Then he rests; in silence. The end of speech is silence. The end of creation is rest. That is where our co-creation with God begins, in contemplation.

The Bible is full of words and speech and action but we are told that God continues to look. He sees us in the womb; Psalm 139.15-16 tells us that our frames were not hidden from God when we were being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. God’s eyes beheld our unformed substance there. God saw into the hearts of Jesse’s sons - as also with each one of us - selecting David as the one after his own heart. He saw Jonah as he tried to evade God’s call on his life, he sees every hair upon our head to the extent that they can each be numbered, and he sees and numbers every sparrow that falls. The stories that Jesus told are often stories in which the central characters look for what is lost or hidden. The point of these stories is that we find by seeing what is lost, hidden or over-looked. The point is that we see, as God sees.

As seeing is fundamental to creativity, this book suggests that art and artists can teach us how to see. The inspiration for this book is an insight expressed by the art historian, critic and curator Daniel Siedell. He suggested that attending to details, ‘looking closely is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people.’ He then argued that, if ‘we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’[i]

Similarly, the philosopher Simone Weil said that attention - the kind of close contemplative looking that is fundamental to our experience of art – when ‘taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer’. That is because it ‘presupposes faith and love’. Therefore, ‘absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’[ii]

To explore this connection between contemplative looking and contemplative prayer I’m going to take us on two journeys. The first is an exploration of 7 S’s which aid our ability to genuinely pay attention in the way Weil suggests. We are aided in contemplative seeing by slowing down, sustained looking, surrendering ourselves to art through our immersion within it, staying with the silence inherent in much art, study of sources, the sharing of experiences, and openness to inspiration, the sparking of the Spirit. Many of these aids to seeing are practices shared by those who pray contemplatively. In particular, there are significant parallels to the rule of life practised by the Nazareth Community at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the members of which each shape a personal rule of life, containing individual and communal activities, using the practices of Silence, Scripture, Sacrament, Service, Sharing, Sabbath, and Staying With.

Be Still was a visual arts trail that was a wonderful example of the 7 S’s being surfaced and used. In 2016, Be Still celebrated Lent through the mindful reflection of art in six of Manchester’s most iconic venues. Contemporary installations, paintings, sculpture and live performances by internationally renowned and local artists uncovered moments where the sacred inhabits the ordinary. Each art work in the trail was accompanied by a reflection to help viewers engage spiritually and practically with stillness, prayer and mindfulness.

In the accompanying booklet Lesley Sutton, the Director of PassionArt, summarised the gift that artists offer to use in regard to attentive looking and contemplative prayer:

‘The gift the artist offers is to share with us is the mindful and prayerful act of seeing, for, in order to make material from their thoughts and ideas, they have to spend time noticing, looking intently and making careful observation of the minutiae of things; the negative spaces between objects, the expression and emotion of faces, the effect of light and shadow, shades of colour, the variety of texture, shape and form. This act of seeing slows us down and invites us to pay attention to the moment, to be still, not to rush and only take a quick glance but instead to come into a relationship with that which you are seeing, to understand it and make sense of its relationship with the world around it. This is a form of prayer where we become detached from our own limited perspective and make way for a wider more compassionate understanding of ourselves, others and the world we inhabit.’[iii]

The second journey is one to view some of the art commissioned by churches in the period since modern art began. For a significant part of its history the Church in the West was the major patron for visual arts. In that period, content ruled for the Church as art illustrated Biblical narratives and the lives of the Saints for teaching the faith, inspiring praxis, and facilitating prayer. But by the time Impressionism initiated modern art, art had already freed itself in many ways from the patronage of the Church and, as form not content became its primary focus, the developments of modern art led to an increasingly strained relationship between the Church and the visual arts.

The story of modern art has often been told with little or no reference to Christianity and yet, as Daniel Siedell has noted, an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art exists ‘revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations.’[iv]

Seeing art commissioned for churches as part of the twentieth century renewal of religious art in Europe, as I did as a Sacred Art Pilgrimage in 2014, enables reflection on the ways in which artworks in churches facilitate contemplation and prayer. On my pilgrimage I visited churches in Belgium, England, France and Switzerland and I’ll take you back to some of those churches in the pages that follow. The majority were connected in some way with the encouragement to commission contemporary for churches given by George Bell, Marie-Alain Couturier, Maurice Denis, Albert Gleizes, Walter Hussey and Jacques Maritain.

Near the beginning of the pilgrimage I sat in St Giles Cripplegate on a balmy summer’s evening in July. I was there to listen to The Revd. Dr. Samuel Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, speak about ‘Art and the renewal of St Martins’. I didn’t know it then, but within a year I would join the team at St Martin’s and become a colleague of The Revd. Dr.

I was nearing the end of one journey whilst being at the beginning of several others. At that point I was a Vicar in East London with a significant interest in the Arts and their connections to faith; more than that, an interest in faith connecting with the whole of life. Engaging with the Arts, with workplaces, with community life and social action; these had all been key motivations on my journey into ordained ministry and of my ministry in East London since ordination in 2003.

Sam’s talk, part of an International Conference organised by Art & Christianity Enquiry, was scene-setting for a journey that was part pilgrimage, part art trail; while wholly concerned with seeing and contemplating the connections between art and faith. After initial remarks on the theme of art as a plurality of possibility showing what could be by using form, media and idea for creation, appreciation and interpretation, he took John Calvin’s threefold office of Christ as a frame for speaking about art, St Martins and art at St Martins.

In speaking about the Prophet, he said that art holds up a mirror to society and asks, ‘Are you proud of what you see?’ Art can create a dream of society fulfilled and thereby the painful gap between the ideal and reality. Prophets often shock and some prophetic acts are shocking. The priestly dimension of it that it enables us to see beyond the stars; we can “heaven espie” through art and it can, therefore, be a sacrament. Through the arts the ordinary stuff of life speaks or sings of the divine. Artists are the high priests of creation. Finally, using the kingly dimension, art can show what humanity can be when we reach our full potential. Kingly art stretches us and is about glory, as with a road sweeper he had encountered who spoke of his love of opera as being “his glory.” Artists construct acts of worship. God is the great artist and each human life is an interpretation and improvisation on the creativity of God.

These were the exciting aspirations on which I reflected as I set out on my journey of discovery through an art pilgrimage. I hope they also excite you as we set out on our shared journey through the 7 S’s of contemplative looking in order to discover the place of silence where we see with prayerful attention.

Every journey needs to include points at which we rest, recuperate and reflect before moving on further. As such, each chapter on our journey ends with options to Explore, Wonder, Pray, and undertake a Spiritual Exercise or an Art Action. Explore is information enabling further exploration of the theme, usually through related artworks. Wonderings are open-ended while relevant to the theme of the chapter and the reader's experience. They are intended to move in the direction of entering the content of the chapter and your own lived experience more deeply. There are no right or wrong responses to wonderings. The prayers included seek to channel the main themes of the chapter into personal prayers. Alternatively, you may wish to write or pray your own. The spiritual exercises seek to suggest an activity to enable prayerful reflection on the themes in ways that could enhance your own spirituality. Finally, the Art Actions provide links to some of the artworks or art activities mentioned in the chapter.

Our journey together begins and ends with poetry:

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There is only here, there is only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

[i] D. Siedell - https://imagejournal.org/artist/daniel-siedell/
[ii] S. Weil, Gravity and Grace, Routledge, 2004, p. 117
[iii] L. Sutton in Be Still: PassionArt Trail 2016, PassionArt, 2016, p. 38
[iv] D. A. Siedell, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art, BakerAcademic, 2008

See also 'And a little child shall lead them' which explores similar themes.

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Van Morrison - Summertime In England.

Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Mariner’s Meadow

Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Mariner’s Meadow, 23 May – 13 July 2019, Blain|Southern London

The capacity of painting to create and sustain meaning is one of Enrique Martínez Celaya’s central concerns. This may be because Martínez Celaya is both an artist and also, formerly, a scientist.

As such he may well acknowledge Julius Colwyn’s recent assertion that art and science are ‘human efforts to comprehend and describe the world around us and our experience of it’. The one ‘searches for truth in subjective experience and the other in objective reality.’ Colwyn concludes that it is in the rift ‘between subjective experience and the objective reality where ‘art’ manifests.’[i]

Daniel Siedell has explored the reasons Martínez Celaya has given for ‘leaving his job as a top researcher at Coherent Medical and to begin selling his paintings in local parks’.[ii] What led him to this decision was the recognition ‘that my preoccupations, which revolved around messy and youthful questions of living, suffering, and the choices we make, would ultimately be better addressed in art.’ In other words, Siedell notes, Martínez Celaya came to believe that art, rather than science, could better serve ‘the larger purposes of understanding, self-awareness, and acceptance’. ‘It is in art’, he has said, ‘and not in religion or science, that I look for truth.’

Siedell suggests that for Martínez Celaya ‘each work is an effort to discern a stability and clarity that lies below the murkiness of experience—an order, or a structure, that he calls truth.’ Yet the order he seeks is ‘a whisper of the order of things that dismantles consciousness and suggests my place in the world.’ [iii]

As a result, ‘The impact of all paintings,’ Martínez Celaya writes, ‘exists in their uncomfortable relationship to the world.’[iv] The images in ‘The Mariner’s Meadow’ exist in an uncomfortable relationship with the sea; which is, at one and the same time, the fertile acreage in which the Mariner plies his trade and also relentless in its ability to surround and swamp all in its path.

Siedell notes a dialectical friction in Martínez Celaya’s work between the domestic and the epic, ‘the personal concerns of life played out against the backdrop of the impersonal universals of nature and time’. The stark, foreboding seascape of ‘The Generations’ Keeper’ is headed by the phrase ‘laugh at the ideals’. The darkest piece of the exhibition ‘The Returning Tale’ depicts a home circumscribed by the returning tide. The sea teaches us about our anonymity. It is ‘the end of all paths and the edge of all comings and goings.’ Our insignificance revealed in the face of nature's scale and relentless repetitions.

This dialectic of content is set within a further dialectic, that of presence and reference; ‘the presence of the painting as an artefact in the world—pigment smeared on a canvas—and its reference—the imagery or subject matter that invites memory and associations.’ The unpainted edges of his canvases indicate the limitations of painting and the existence of something beyond the image, even the image as ‘flashes from somewhere else, collective memories from a mysterious origin.’

‘The Prophet’ is an image which has undergone significant change in the making as Martínez Celaya sought a revelatory image. The edges of this painting are where traces of the earlier images are left, like lipstick on a collar. The final image sees a young girl posing with a dead shark recently washed up on the beach, one foot placed in awkward dominance on the stricken creature. ‘The Prophet’ reveals the unease of our unnatural attempts to dominate nature. ‘The Herald’ takes us deeper into our despoiling of nature by depicting an oil spill aflame; the title perhaps referencing a different maritime disaster, but one – The Herald of Free Enterprise - which named the imperative driving our dominating, despoiling actions.

By contrast with these images of our unthinking yet uneasy attempts to dominate the enduring chill of the ocean and its depths, in ‘The Name’ the sea is backdrop to the endurance of a carved wood statue depicting a prayerful angel and another depicting flowers. Here, the images endure as the sea endures; art and belief mirroring the unchanging nature of nature.

The sea is sometimes a mirror, at other times a window, and occasionally a letter, while the birds that fly in these canvases sing songs that are messages from our forgotten places. As a whisper of the order of things that dismantle consciousness and suggest our place in the world, art manifests itself in the equivalent of the sea’s swells, the space between subjective and objective reality. These images see Martínez Celaya participating in our human effort to comprehend and describe the world around us and our experience of it. As in his life decisions, he values the subjective truth of those glimpses into identity and meaning that art provides above and alongside the exacting measurement of the material that science delivers.

[i] https://issuu.com/artsciencecsm/docs/maas_class_2019_catalogue_clean_pdf
[ii] ‘On Martinez Celaya’ by Daniel A. Siedell in On Art and Mindfulness, published in 2015 in collaboration with Anderson Ranch Arts Center.
[iii] Quoted in “The Prophet” (2009), in Enrique Martínez Celaya, Collected Writings & Interviews 1990-2010 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), p. 231-32.
[iv] Enrique Martínez Celaya, “On Painting” (2010), in Collected Writings & Interviews, p. 243.

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Corinne Bailey Rae - The Sea.

Mark Dean: Color Motet

In his book God in the Gallery: A Christian Approach to Modern Art Daniel Siedell suggests that many works of modern and contemporary art are ‘poignant altars to the unknown god in aesthetic form.’ He makes this claim because such works manifest the priestly function of ‘yearning for a liturgical reality that reveals the world as gift and offering.’ These altars/artworks become a ‘place in which the visible and invisible creations, the tangible and intangible creations, are linked together.’

Mark Dean made his first looped film appropriation work in the 1970’s while studying photography and painting; in the 1980’s he began working with musical loops in bands and as a DJ; he eventually combined these practices in the methodology for which he became recognised as a video and sound artist. The ‘votive’ implications of Dean’s work took on new significance when he was ordained in the Church of England in 2010. He is not seeking to make images of God, however, but rather the representation of personhood; that is, the experience of being a person in a world where there is a God. His practice has synergies therefore with Siedell’s citing St John of Damascus in identifying humanity as the ‘place in which the visible and invisible creations, the tangible and intangible creations, are linked together.’

In 2017 Dean began to incorporate actual altars into his work when his 14 Stations of the Cross videos were projected onto the Henry Moore altar in St Stephen Walbrook church during an all-night Easter vigil. With Color Motet (2019) he is projecting onto a relatively new altar, in blood red Venetian plaster, created by the ceramicist Julian Stair as part of the re-ordering of St Augustine’s Hammersmith. The RIBA award-winning refurbishment of the church, was undertaken The Order of St Augustine as the first phase in redeveloping its headquarters in Hammersmith. Fr Gianni Notarianni, parish priest and artist, commissioned the architect Roz Barr together with craftspeople and designers such as Stair and John Morgan to transform the building. Stair’s altar now sits below a large cast iron circular light fitting surrounded by a hand-painted fresco incorporating gold leaf on the rear wall of the altar.

Dean’s piece is a new video and sound work which combines film extracts of Sister Corita Kent’s pop art Mary’s Day celebrations, with footage taken from wedding videos where people are fainting. Additionally, Thomas Tallis’ 40-part Renaissance motet plays over them. The work continues the artist’s investigation into the liturgical potential of his art works, in this instance with video functioning as an altar frontal.

A motet is a polyphonic sacred choral composition, usually unaccompanied, in which ‘the fundamental voice (tenor) was usually arranged in a pattern of reiterated rhythmic configurations, while the upper voice or voices (up to three), nearly always with different Latin or French texts, generally moved at a faster rate.’ Dean’s piece is also polyphonic as it fuses and collages its two videos and mixes two versions of Spem in Alium – Tallis’s motet and a plainchant setting of the same text:

I have never put my hope in any other
but in Thee, God of Israel
who canst show both wrath and graciousness
and who absolves all the sins
of humanity in suffering
Lord God
Creator of Heaven and Earth
Regard our humility

It is likely that Tallis designed Spem in Alium ‘to be heard ‘in the round’, with the audience seated within a circle of singers.’ ‘Beginning with a single voice, the composer deploys as many effects as he can, displaying a mastery of counterpoint and scoring all 40 voices together at four key moments.’ In a similar way, the Mary’s Day processions organised by the art department of the Immaculate Heart of Mary school in Los Angeles and led by Sister Corita Kent, were designed to be immersive happenings. Such immersive liturgical rites can be overwhelming, as with Dean’s second video in which people faint or collapse during services. Color Motet celebrates such rites and the connection between heaven and earth, the human and the divine, that they attain.

As a priest, Dean mediates between creation and Creator. Alexander Schmemann has asserted that the priest: ‘stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God—and by filling the world with his Eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with him.’ With Stations of the Cross, Stations of the Resurrection, Pastiche Mass and now Color Motet, Dean is exploring the extent to which his art can also become a ‘place in which the visible and invisible creations, the tangible and intangible creations, are linked together.’

Color Motet is exhibited by Austin Forum as part of HF ArtsFest (Hammersmith & Fulham Arts Festival). Austin Forum aims to re-establish a strong and creative relationship between the Catholic Church and the Arts, especially within contemporary visual art. In the twentieth century, the Catholic Church invited its members to “read the signs of the times”. In response to that, Austin Forum is working with artists whose artistic expressions say something about the world and the human condition today. Austin Forum celebrates the creativity and practice of emerging and established artists and invites them to engage and respond to the sacred space thereby enhancing worship and contemplation in the church.

Mark Dean - Color Motet, 1-9 June, Mon-Fri: 9-11.45am, 2-7pm, Saturday: 2-5.30pm (please note: closed Saturday morning), and Sunday: 2-6pm. https://www.austin-forum.org/mark-dean-color-motet. Mark Dean - the artist - https://tailbiter.com/.

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Thomas Tallis - Spem In Alium. 

Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism

As Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness note in Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism, I have for some time been arguing that, as Daniel A. Siedell suggested in God in the Gallery, "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art" is needed, "revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." In my Airbrushed from Art History and Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage series of posts I have highlighted some of the artists and movements (together with the books that tell their stories) that should feature in that alternative history when it comes to be written.

In Modern Art and the Life of a Culture Anderson and Dyrness, part of IVP's Studies in Theology and the Arts, also argue that there were strong religious impulses that positively shaped modern visual art. Instead of affirming a pattern of decline and growing antipathy towards faith, the authors contend that theological engagement and inquiry can be perceived across a wide range of modern art—French, British, German, Dutch, Russian and North American—and through particular works by artists such as Gauguin, Picasso, David Jones, Caspar David Friedrich, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others.

Gregory Wolfe writes that this book provides a 'nuanced and sympathetic view of the religious aspects that truly did haunt modernism in the visual arts' noting that, after a couple of introductory chapters, 'the book moves into a sequence of historical surveys ranging from Van Gogh to Andy Warhol, with many stops in between.'

Dryness notes: 'Van Gogh is often recognized as a deeply spiritual artist, but usually he is pictured as having given up his childhood (Reformed) Christian faith. But closer examination shows this not to have been the case. Others, like Gauguin, who are largely regarded as irreligious, turn out to have had deep and formative experiences with (in this case) the Catholic faith. Still others, like Malevich, inherited sensibilities from their religious contexts which made deep inroads into their art. So there is no single story to be told.' 

Anderson says: 'The research for this book was full of surprises for me. The religious backgrounds of these artists, as well as the ongoing theological content of their work, are sometimes buried deep in the academic literature and primary sources, but once you begin to dig you find extraordinary things. Van Gogh was actually a fascinating theologian, and his paintings were theologically oriented all the way to the end. Mondrian completed his art training in the thick of the best neo-Calvinist thinking of the day. Until researching for this book, I hadn’t realized just how deeply Kandinsky was preoccupied with the book of Revelation. Warhol’s sharp social commentaries were oriented by his lifelong Catholicism. And so on: the surprises abound.'

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Van Morrison - In The Garden.

Bread for the World: Paying attention through art

Here is my reflection from tonight's Bread for the World Informal Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The artist Grayson Perry told this story in the last of his Reith Lectures: “Recently a friend told me that she was working on an education programme at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and at the beginning of the project she asked the children, she said, “What do you think a contemporary artist does?” And this very precocious child, probably from sort of Muswell Hill or somewhere like that, she put her hand up and she said, “They sit around in Starbucks and eat organic salad.” Now it was probably quite an accurate observation of many fashionable artists in East London, but I thought … you know anyway. So then after this, they spent some time looking at what contemporary artists did. And at the end of the project, she asked them again, “What now do you think an artist does?” And the same child, she said, “They notice things.” And I thought wow, that’s a really short, succinct definition of what an artist does. My job is to notice things that other people don’t notice.”

Noticing things that other people don’t notice; that thought is one area of overlap between the Arts and Christianity, because in his letter to the Philippians, St Paul encourages to look out for see those things that are true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4. 8) and, as we know, from the latest Christmas Appeal, Simone Weil says that to pay attention is prayer.

As a result, the art historian Daniel Siedell suggests that the Arts can help us with looking and paying attention. He says, “Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?”

Problems come, as he notes, when we dismiss what we see or when, as Jesus said, we are people who see but do not perceive, who hear but do not listen (Matthew 13. 12 - 14). Some more stories from the Arts can help us think more about how that happens.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician, and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

There are then different ways of looking and different ways of seeing and so, as Daniel Siedell suggests, the experience of looking at art can help us learn how to really see. So, what can art teach us about looking and seeing? The point of the story about the art historian was that he paid attention to the painting. To what might he have been paying attention?

An art historian or critic is likely to look at and think about an artwork in relation to four different facets. The first is the artwork itself as an artefact, in other words to look at what it is as an object in its own right. This is always the starting point and the thought to return to when looking at art. So, the first question to ask ourselves is, what is the essence of this artwork; what are the things that make it unique and differentiate it from other things? It is a question we can ask of anything or anyone that we see; what is unique about this thing or person?

Next, it is helpful to consider the ideas and influences of the artist. When God created human beings, we were said to be made in his image. As a result, something of the maker shows up in the thing which has been made. By knowing something about the artist, we may be able to see more in the artwork than we otherwise would. St Paul says the same thing about God in his letter to the Romans when he says that ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made (Romans 1. 19 -20).

Then, the art historian or critic may think about the relationship that the artwork has with its historical and art historical context. At St Stephen Walbrook we will, during Lent, be showing a digital installation by Michael Takeo Magruder called Lamentation for the Forsaken in which the artist evokes the memory of Syrians who have passed away in the present conflict by weaving their names and images into a contemporary Shroud of Turin. This installation can’t be understood without reference to the current refugee crisis. We also understand each other more by observing how we react and respond to events around us.

Finally, we might think about our own response and that of others to the artwork. With works of art, we can often read articles, books or reviews about the work and with other people we are always hearing other people’s impressions or views of those they have met or whom we know. Paying attention to those impressions or views can help us shape our own impressions.

Thinking about each of these four facets can help us genuinely pay attention to art, to people and to the things around us. Thinking about these four facets can help shape our overall response to a work of art, a person or an object; often in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise expect or realize.

As we know from the latest Christmas Appeal, Simone Weil famously said that “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” When we pay attention in this way, we are also following St Paul’s advice to look at and think about those things that are true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise.

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Gordon Gano (feat. Mary Lou Lord) - Oh, Wonder.

Art as epiphany and sacrament

Here is the sermon which I preached at today's commission4mission's service celebrating the Arts held at St Stephen Walbrook as part of an Arts in Worship event:

Please look at The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’ Daniel Siedell (http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month/daniel-siedell)

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Siedell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

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Steve Scott - Sun Poem.

Paying attention to sacraments and epiphanies

Tonight I led the evening service at St Peter's Bradwell with Peter Webb of commission4mission and Café Musica led by Peter Banks, with whom I co-wrote The Secret Chord. 70 - 80 people filled the chapel to participate in a liturgy which celebrated the Arts, view artwork by commission4mission artists, and be led in song by Café Musica. Click here to see photos of the artwork in the Chapel.

Here is the sermon that I preached:

Take a look at Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus by clicking here and ask yourself three questions: What is central in this picture? How does the artist point us to what is central? Why are those things central?

At the centre of this picture and at the centre of the story it depicts is a very simple and ordinary action; breaking bread or tearing a loaf of bread into two pieces. Although it is a simple and ordinary thing to do, it becomes a very important act when Jesus does it because this is the moment when Jesus’ two disciples realise who he is. They suddenly realise that this stranger who they have been walking with and talking to for hours on the Emmaus Road is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead. They are amazed and thrilled, shocked and surprised, and we can see that clearly on the faces and in the actions of the disciples as they are portrayed in this painting.

Something very simple and ordinary suddenly becomes full of meaning and significance. This simple, ordinary action opens their eyes so that they can suddenly see Jesus as he really is. That is art in action! Art captures or creates moments when ordinary things are seen as significant.

When our eyes are suddenly opened to see meaning and significance in something that we had previously thought of as simple and ordinary that is called an epiphany. Caravaggio’s painting is a picture of an epiphany occurring for the disciples on the Emmaus Road but it is also an epiphany itself because it brings the story to life in a way that helps us see it afresh, as though we were seeing it for the first time.

The disciples realise it is Jesus when the bread is broken because Jesus at the Last Supper made the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine (the Eucharist) into a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible sign of an inward grace and so it is something more than an epiphany. In a sacramental act there is a connection between the symbolic act and the reality being symbolised, which does not need to occur in an epiphany. So, an epiphany is a realisation or sign of significance, while a sacrament is a visual symbol of an inner change. For Christians the taking of bread and wine into our bodies symbolises the taking of Jesus into our lives. As a result, art (or the visual) can symbolise inner change and be sacramental.

This understanding of epiphany and sacrament is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation; the belief that, in Jesus, God himself became a human being and lived in a particular culture and time. Jesus is an epiphany because he is the visible image of the invisible God. For the Church this has been the primary reason why we have such a strong tradition of figurative art. As Rowan Williams has written, ‘God became truly human in Jesus … And if Jesus was indeed truly human, we can represent his human nature as with any other member of the human race.’ But when we do so ‘we’re not trying to show a humanity apart from divine life, but a humanity soaked through with divine life … We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus; we show a life radiating the life and force of God.’

Williams goes on to write that it is when ‘we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration’ that ‘the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates [the] light and force’ of God. He is implying therefore that an important element of prayer is paying attention.

In 2007, the Uffizi Museum in Florence lent Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation to the Tokyo National Museum for three months. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the museum every day to see the renaissance masterpiece. A number which, when divided by the museum's opening hours, equates to each visitor having about three seconds in front of the painting - barely long enough to say the artist's name, let alone enjoy the subtleties of his work.

By contrast, a well-known art historian, observed as he entered the first room of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, went nose-to-nose with Leonardo's The Musician (1486), and there he stayed for about 10 minutes, rocking backwards and forwards, before moving from side-to-side, and then finally stepping back four paces and eyeing up the small painting from distance. And then he repeated the exercise. Twice.

The 10,000 visitors per day visiting the Tokyo National Museum during those three months wanted to see Leonardo’s Annunciation, but did they really ‘see’ it? They certainly didn’t see it in the same way that the art critic saw Leonardo's Musician.

Art historian Daniel Siedell has said: ‘It is a cliché, but I would suggest that one must approach contemporary art with an open mind … Attending to … details, looking closely, is a useful discipline for us as Christians, who are supposed to see Christ everywhere, especially in the faces of all people. If we dismiss artwork that is strange, unfamiliar, unconventional, if we are inattentive to visual details, how can we be attentive to those around us?’

The Bible is full of encouragement to reflect. The words, reflect, consider, ponder, meditate and examine, crop up everywhere. God encourages us to reflect on everything; his words (2 Timothy 2.7), his great acts (1 Samuel 12.24), his statutes (Psalm 119.95), his miracles (Mark 6.52), Jesus (Hebrews 3.1), God's servants (Job 1.8), the heavens (Psalm 8.3), the plants (Matthew 6.28), the weak (Psalm 41.1), the wicked (Psalm 37.10), oppression (Ecclesiastes 4.1), labour (Ecclesiastes 4.4), the heart (Proverbs 24.12), our troubles (Psalm 9.13), our enemies (Psalm 25.19), our sins (2 Corinthians 13.5). Everything is up for reflection but we are guided by the need to look for the excellent or praiseworthy (Philippians 4.8) and to learn from whatever we see or experience (Proverbs 24.32).

Clearly all this reflection cannot take place just at specific times. Just as we are told to pray always, the implication of the Bible's encouragement to reflection is that we should reflect at all times. We need to make a habit of reflection, a habit of learning from experience and of looking for the excellent things. We can do this by paying prayerful attention to all that is around us – what we see, do and experience. Everything around us can potentially be part of our ongoing conversation with God, part of which is reflection. This is a style of prayer that seems to go back at the very least to the Celtic Christians, who had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, together with the sense that every task can be blessed if we see God in it.

David Adam writes that, ‘If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God.’

Attending to details in the way Daniel Seidell suggests is the outworking of St Paul’s words in Philippians 4. 8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Philippians 4. 8). We are called to look for and look at these things as we go through life. This is an excellent approach to bear in mind when also looking at art.

Then, as Rowan Williams writes, visual images will be to us ‘human actions that seek to be open to God’s action’ and which can ‘open a gateway for God.’ If we pay prayerful attention, art can truly be epiphany and sacrament to us.

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Tom Jones - My Lord Did Trouble Me.

The Image of Christ in Modern Art

For some time I have been arguing that, as Daniel A. Siedell suggested in God in the Gallery, "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art" is needed, "revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." In my Airbrushed from Art History series of posts I have highlighted some of the artists and movements (together with the books that tell their stories) that should feature in that alternative history when it comes to be written.

Richard Harries has recently published The Image of Christ in Modern Art which is a contribution towards the piecing together of this alternative history. The book is based on a series of lectures given through Gresham College and suffers from insufficient editing of the lecture format resulting in much cross-referencing to earlier sections, something which works against the cohesion of its essentially chronological format.

As Rowan Williams wrote in his review of this book, "The art of our age is by no means as secular as some think." Similarly, Harries puts the argument for a comprehensive alternative history of the kind noted above clearly and succintly:

"Interest in contemporary art with a spiritual dimension or religious theme is keener today that it has been since Victorian times. Cathedrals hold exhibitions and commission works, and indeed so do some parish churches. Some of the biggest names in the art world often draw on or refer to a religious theme or seem, to the viewer, to have a spiritual dimension to their work.

It might once have been thought that the advent of modernism before World War I had put an end to art with any explicit religious reference. That has proved not to be the case."

Possibly for this very reason he is also clear about the limited scope (despite the comprehensive claim of its title) of The Image of Christ in Modern Art. He writes in the book's Introduction:

"Apart from one very brief reference to Barnett Newman, there is no art from America. There is also no art from outside Europe included, though I am aware of a rich field to be surveyed, for in every culture where the Christian faith has gained a place there have been artists who have wanted to express their faith through art. Christ for All People: Celebrating a World of Christian Art indicates some of this richness and variety, as does Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination. There is Christian art from Africa, China and South East Asia. There has been some particularly interesting work from India from people such as Jyoti Sahi, reproduced in Faces of Vision, and Solomon Raj. The focus of this book however, though it begins with the German expressionists, is primarily on Great Britain, especially the post-World War II period."

"The Image of Christ in Modern Art explores the challenges presented by the radical and rapid changes of artistic style in the 20th century to artists who wished to relate to traditional Christian imagery. In the 1930s David Jones said that he and his contemporaries were acutely conscious of ‘the break’, by which he meant the fragmentation and loss of a once widely shared Christian narrative and set of images. In this highly illustrated book, Richard Harries looks at some of the artists associated with the birth of modernism such as Epstein and Rouault as well as those with a highly distinctive understanding of religion such as Chagall and Stanley Spencer. He discusses the revival of confidence associated with the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral after World War II and the commissioning of work by artists like Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper before looking at the very testing last quarter of the 20th century. He shows how here, and even more in our own time, fresh and important visual interpretations of Christ have been created both by well known and less well known artists. In conclusion he suggests that the modern movement in art has turned out to be a friend, not a foe of Christian art. Through a wide and beautiful range of images and insightful text, Harries explores the continuing challenge, present from the beginning of Christian art, as to how that which is visual can in some way indicate the transcendent."

 

The Image of Christ in Modern Art is, therefore, a valuable addition to books, such as Art, Modernity & Faith, Beyond Belief, Christian Art, God in the Gallery and On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, which, to some extent, survey aspects of an alternative history of modern art revealing "that Christianity has always been present with modern art." 

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Lone Justice - I Found Love.

Faith and imagination resources

I was recently asked to recommend some resources on the interface between faith and imagination. Those I commended were: 

Art and Christianity Enquiry are the main organisation in the UK exploring links between faith and the visual arts. There are a small number of articles on the page about their journal. 'Art, Modernity & Faith' by George Pattison, 'God in the Gallery' by Daniel A. Siedell and 'The Art of the Sacred' by Graham Howes are all well worth reading. Daniel Siedell had a blog for a while on the themes of 'God in the Gallery' which has some interesting debate on it. Colin Harbison is also worth reading online.

'Contemporary Fiction and Christianity' by Andrew Tate is a good review of theological themes in literature as is 'The Poet as Mirror: Human Nature, God and Jesus in twentieth-century literature' by Karl-Josef Kuschel. George Steiner's 'Real Presences' is a classic text when it comes to literature arguing that a transcendent reality grounds all genuine art. Malcolm Guite makes a similar argument for poetry in 'Faith, Hope and Poetry'. In 'Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love' Rowan Williams sketches out a new understanding of how human beings open themselves to transcendence.

Steve Scott's 'Crying For A Vision' is worth a read and spans music, literature and visual art. My own co-authored book on faith and music (taking in aspects of literature and the visual arts too) is 'The Secret Chord'.

On imagination specifically, Walter Brueggemann's 'The Prophetic Imagination' is another classic text. 'Image' Journal sees itself as bridging faith and imagination. In Walking On Water, Madeleine L'Engle argues that the prime task of the artist is to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation. In The Mind of the Maker Dorothy L. Sayers explores understandings of the Trinity through the medium of human creativity. Finally, in The Book of God Gabriel Josipovici applies literary criticism to the texts of the Bible. 

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Bruce Cockburn - Creation Dream.

Art as activism

Theaster Gates is an artist, curator and urban activist whose work aims to galvanise communities and act as a catalyst for social change. He is currently exhibiting at White Cube Bermondsey and "has created a multi-faceted installation that investigates themes of race and history through sculpture, installation, performance and two-dimensional works."

Gates refers to his working method as ‘critique through collaboration’ but, as this exhibition demonstrates, the way in which Galleries operate tends to neuter what is at the heart of his artistic practice. My Labor Is My Protest is a fine exhibition which is well worth visiting but it is not a collaborative experience.

Art Galleries, while often presenting as radical spaces, are in reality rule-bound spaces with 'Do Not Touch' being the generally unspoken or unsigned but rigorously enforced fundamental prohibition. It is interesting to observe the way in which rules are also enforced even when participation is an element of an installation.

Eva Rothschild's film Boys and Sculpture created for the Whitechapel Gallery demonstrated this clearly. Boys and Sculpture shows a group of boys, aged between 6 and 12, each entering a gallery full of Rothschild’s sculptures. Slowly and tentatively the boys begin by looking, then touching. They proceed to totally dismantling the sculptures, revelling in the joys of play and of destruction. This is real collaboration between viewer and artwork but is not, for reasons of health and safety, insurance and other related factors, something that most Galleries will entertain. Therefore, as on issues of commerce and materialism, many galleries talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

This is illustrated most clearly for me in My Labor Is My Protest by the installation of a library borrowed from the archive of Johnson Publishing Company, the Chicago-based publishers of Ebony. This curated selection of books and magazines offer a history of black American culture but this is almost irrelevant as the majority of the items in this library cannot be touched, handled or explored. It may be that the installation is replicating in reverse the experience of exclusion from participation and collaboration endured by black people in America for many years but, if so, why are a small selection of books made available for viewing. This is the worst of possible worlds, it seems to me, for this work, as, if the work is primarily about exclusion then our exclusion from the collection should be absolute and if not, if it is about accessing black culture, then to limit our access neuters the work's meaning. My guess given that Gates' focus is described as being "on availability of information and the cross-fertilisation of ideas" is that the latter is the intent and that the force of the work has been neutered for reasons of insurance.   

The current edition of frieze has an excellent feature about the work of Gates as part of a thematic look at art as activism. Gates' work includes collaborative projects with other artists to purchase and rebuild homes in rundown areas of Chicago to teach carpentry and construction skills. This raises the question of what art is. In my ministry, for example, am I an artist when I read my poetry, show my paintings or use my meditations or is the whole of my ministry, including my involvement in community activism/projects, a work of art. Ultimately, it seems it would depend on whether I wish to describe it in those terms and whether others wish to accept it on those terms. We are all artists, at least if we wish to describe ourselves as such. As Ananda Coomaraswamy said, "The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist.”

Gates has written that he leverages "artistic moments to effect real change." Mark Godfrey writes in frieze that without cynicism Gates "employs the commercialism of the art world to regenerate deprived neighbourhoods":

"His performances are ... addressing real questions of economic inequality and political disenfranchisement affecting black people in the States. At the same time, he is genuinely interested in rituals, not just as historical ceremonies, but as ways of bringing people and thoughts together, just as he is sincere in his approach to incantation and religious music, testing even the most secular members of his audience to reconsider their ambivalence about the 'spiritual' in art."

The idea of art as activism is easy to mock and frieze includes a satirical piece doing just that  - peace achieved through impenetrable wall texts, poverty eradicated by carefully curated collateral events etc. Art cannot, of course, change the world but the activism of artists like Gates can impact positively on local communities.

His work is also of relevance to current debates about the usefulness or uselessness of art. Christopher Brewer and Daniel Siedell are currently in debate on this issue following an initial post by Siedell to which Brewer is responding. Siedell affirms Kant’s intuition that art is useless and states that “Taking seriously art’s uselessness is a way to preserve an aesthetic moment that defies the forensic structure of reality, a moment that testifies to an alien presence, grace.” Brewer begins his series of responses by suggesting that Siedell is setting up a false dichotomy in opposing the usefulness or uselessness of art.

Gates' work suggests clearly that art can be useful. Presumably, he would not accept the dichotomy which Siedell sets out and seems unafraid of engaging with the complexities of his practice and of his practice within both the "compromised situations of art practices today" and the inequality and disenfranchisement his work addresses. In speaking of his input to The Armory Show, Gates said, “If the belly of whales and fiery furnaces can render men or women unscathed, then surely, I can have a few conversations from within the beast. I want to make space for my friends and ensure that some new friends meet old ones. Holding court seems the best way to do this and a much better use of my time than the winter sale at Barneys.”

Gates has written: "I love when I go to new cities and I am taken to small, obscure spaces of beauty that I would never expect ... My hope is to grow the number of small acts of beauty and contemplation with the hope that the moments began to suggest that the place where I live is, in fact A PLACE. I want to enunciate PLACES that already exist and occupy those Places with happenings ... Everyone deserves to see and be a part of the transformation of their spaces into places. Beautiful objects belong in blighted spaces and creative people can play a pivotal role in how this happens. I want the young people in my neighborhood to look at the built environment and see the world as something worth critiquing, exploring and constructing."

This quote suggests that Gates is creating material signs for immaterial realities (sacraments); places, spaces or moments which convey critique or construction. In this way, his work could have resonance with David Jones' argument in 'Art and Sacrament' that "man’s makings have throughout all times incorporated both utile and gratuitous elements":

"The utile element of a making is purely animalic; wholly utile works – birds' nests and beehives, diesel engines and screwdrivers – are wholly mundane. On the other hand, the gratuitous element of a
making is seen by Jones as an engagement with ontological truth because the necessity directing that making is immaterial: there is no reasonable justification for making such works."

Jones is positing a continuum for making ranging from the utile to the gratuitous with art appearing towards the gratuitious end of the continuum while also containing elements of the utile. This would seem to me to capture better the real achievement of Gates' art activism than would the creation of a dichotomy between the useful and the useless.

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Theaster Gates with the Black Monks of Mississippi and the Journeymen for Christ - A Closer Walk with Thee (Speakers).