As both a parish priest and through commission4mission, the group of artists of which I was part for 11 years, I have seen the value of promoting and publicising the artworks which churches have commissioned. Through the creation of Art Trails locally and regionally, I have been involved in providing churches with a means of publicity which has led to events such as art competitions, exhibitions, festivals and talks, community art workshops, guided and sponsored walks, and Study Days. Each brought new contacts to the churches involved and built relationships between these churches and local artists/arts organisations.
The commissions I saw on my pilgrimage spoke powerfully and movingly of the Christian faith and therefore inform the spirituality of those who see them. It has been my contention that to tell more fully the story of the engagement which the Church has had with modern and contemporary art could have similar impact on a wider scale. To do so could also have the effect of providing emerging artists from within the Church and the faith with a greater range of role models and approaches for their own developing inspiration and practice.
During my sabbatical I visited churches which seemed to have little or no regard for the artworks they possessed and others which were actively utilizing them in their mission and ministry by sharing what they had been given. Église St Michel, Les Breseux, is a church that has really engaged with the artworks it has commissioned and the visitors who therefore come to see those commissions. This church is aware that it now receives visitors who would not otherwise come but for Alfred Manessier’s stained glass and, therefore, takes their needs into account with simple but essential facilities provided and a small exhibition about the commissions, Manessier, and arte sacré more generally. Many larger churches do not do as much and Les Breseux is both an exemplar and an example as to why and how to cater for, share with and minister to those who visit to view wonderful works of art.
Metz and Chichester Cathedrals both have simple but effective leaflets which identify a prayerful route around their spaces taking in the most significant commissions and offering a brief prayer in response to each. Such leaflets encourage all visitors not simply to be tourists but worshippers as well. I know from personal experience, having created a similar leaflet for St Margaret's Barking, how much such simple initiatives are appreciated by parishioners and visitors alike.
An argument can be made that such approaches, like the information provided on labels in museum exhibitions, can direct viewers to see the artwork from one perspective alone. However, this does not have to be the case, as viewers often take that perspective as a starting point for then seeing others themselves. Additionally, providing no way in to perspectives on artworks, as curators have often found, can leave viewers unable to begin to engage with the artwork at all.
Taking the meditative nature of his Julian of Norwich series of paintings further, Alan Oldfield created a film of the paintings with Sheila Upjohn reading selected extracts from Julian's shewings. Upjohn would later make a similar use of extracts from Julian in the booklet based on the Stations of the Cross by Irene Ogden which can be found at St Julian's Church in Norwich. Jane Quail's Stations of the Cross based on the Beatitudes were installed in the grounds of the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham in 2001 and are much loved by pilgrims. As with the Stations of the Cross by Ogden, a booklet with meditations based on the images and texts has been published. These are imaginative artworks which make creative textual and visual connections between the events of the 14 Stations and scriptures not normally associated with those events. They integrate scriptures, creating a harmonious whole and opening up the scriptures to other interpretations and connections.
Metz Cathedral, like many other Cathedrals and churches, also has an ongoing arts programme centred on music and the visual arts. Similarly, and, as part of understanding that its commissions, had created for it a new and wider ministry, Tudeley Parish Church organizes an annual music festival. The Tudeley Festival, which specializes in period performance, was established in 1985 and the church also hosts concerts by visiting musicians and choirs at other points throughout the year. Tudeley also has an excellent website with significant information about its commissions and other initiatives. The range and quality of information on their website remains relatively rare, even among those churches and cathedrals which do feature their artworks, but another which provides a marvellous example of what can be done online is Berwick Parish Church in Sussex under the heading of ‘Bloomsbury at Berwick’.
As a result of its memorial commissions St Andrew Bobola in Shepherds Bush is a significant space for memory and memorial for those remembering Poles who died during World War II, but also, more generally, for the Polish community in the UK as a whole. The Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere with its murals by Stanley Spencer was specifically created as a memorial space. St Andrew Bobola and Berwick Parish Church, by contrast, incorporate a memorial function into their wider ministry by means of their commissions.
Adam Kossowski’s murals at St Benet's Chapel in East London have proved to be an excellent talking point in the Revd Jenny Petersen's ministry to students of other faiths, with Muslims in particular understanding the themes of judgement found therein, leading to a willingness to use the space for prayer. She has encouraged contemplation of the mural's themes by producing a series of cards exploring the imagery of each panel together with the relevant sections from the Revelation of St John.
At St Alban Romford their commissions have also given the parish a 'beyond-the-parish ministry' in that other parishes considering commissions are regularly recommended to visit St Alban's in order to see what has been achieved, be inspired, gain ideas and be put in touch with artists. Visits also come as a result of the parish participating in borough-based Open House and Art Trail events as well as school visits. As Chairman of Governors and Link-Governor for Art and Design at The Frances Bardsley School for Girls, Fr Roderick Hingley has played a significant role in the development of the School as a centre of excellence for the Arts including the Brentwood Road Gallery and commissions at the School by Patrick Reytiens and Mark Cazalet. This engagement, which has led to the School joining the Chelmsford Diocesan Board of Education Affiliated Schools Scheme, enables the School, Parish and Diocese to ‘support each other in the spirit of Christian fellowship and service’ finding ‘innovative ways of working together and learning from one another.’[i] One outcome was the inclusion of artworks by students which featured in the church as part of its Fan the Flame mission week.
In 2009 St Alban's hosted the launch of commission4mission which sought to encourage churches to commission contemporary art as a mission opportunity. St Alban's exemplifies all that commission4mission suggested that local church engagement with the Arts could and should provide:
- sharing works of art which speak eloquently of the Christian faith;
- shared reason to visit a church – something that was tapped with their Art Trail for the Barking Episcopal Area;
- shared links between churches and local arts organisations/ initiatives; and
- a focus for people to come together for a shared activity.
Artist-priest Alan Stewart believes that sharing, as in interpretation of and responses to a work of art, is an important element of the work’s reception and life:
‘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.’[ii]
Sister Wendy Beckett was an informed enthusiast who applied the instruction in Philippians 4:8, to fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise, to the writing and presenting that she shared with us. The kind of poring and praying over images that characterised Beckett's best writing can be a distinctively Christian contribution to the plurality of art criticism. This can be cultivated through a framework that encourages a sustained contemplation of the artwork and which notes our personal responses to each facet of the work as well as their cumulative impact. Beckett cultivated a prayerful attentiveness to the artwork through sustained contemplation in order to see or sense what is good and of God in it, regardless as to whether the artist who made it had an international, national, regional or local reputation.
Her instinctive approach to art criticism was that of a charitable hermeneutic. Jonathan A. Anderson has explained that the ‘idea of a charitable hermeneutic begins from the premise that reading and interpreting others’ works is a form of human relationship—a means of negotiating our sense of meaning in life with our neighbours, our fellow humans, including both the artists who made the works and those with whom we discuss them.’ So, he asks, ‘is there a way in which the writing of art criticism and the writing of history might function as love of neighbour?’
At the most basic level, he suggests, ‘a charitable hermeneutic demands that as I strive to make sense of any given work, I must … attend carefully to this particular work she has made, to receive it on its own terms (or at least in terms that are appropriate to it), and to try to name the ways that important human concerns, longings, joys, laments, failures, and so on are active in the work and have some bearing on me today.’[iii]
This was essentially the approach that Beckett applied to her writing. It is an approach that accords with the Biblical mandate given by God to humanity as outlined in the creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. This is to name (interpret and share) the essence of God’s good creation. This is to notice and then name the essence of God’s good creation. Imagination works by noticing and naming. We can all pay attention, so that we notice, and can all describe and define, so that we name. In other words we can all be artists and poets, whether as those who make or as those who pray.
The creation stories in the Book of Genesis are where we see the imagination of God most clearly at play, and by doing so see the way in which a movement between seeing, speaking and silence enables our noticing and naming.
The Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole begins in silence. Speech first happens in verse 3 when God says, ‘Let there be light.’ In the beginning there was silence and in the silence God saw that the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Before creation began God was there in silence and stillness, the Spirit hovering over and seeing a realm of possibility yet to be realised, a realm of possibilities waiting to bodied forth, shaped and named by imagination.
Silence enables sight because sight precedes speech. The child looks and recognises before it can speak and so it is here, in this description of the time before time. Therefore, we need to regularly return to silence in order to see afresh, as we will also see God doing in this story.
Then God speaks imaginatively, embodying possibilities, shaping and naming possibilities as realised and actualised entities – let there be light, let there be sky, let there be land, let there be seas, let there be vegetation, let there be creatures, let there be human beings, let there be … After the speaking, the shaping, the defining, the naming, after all those things there is rest; the return to silence and stillness in order to see. God saw all that had been made, and indeed, it was very good and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that had been done.
In the time of God’s sabbath rest, we are invited to become sub-creators – co-creators - with God to continue this pattern or process of contemplative creation. The Lord God brought every animal of the field and every bird of the air to humans to see what we would name them; and whatever we called every living creature, that was its name. We gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field.
God was no longer creating by bodying forth, shaping and naming, but, as he rested, wished to see how his creativity was shared and replicated within his creation. We were asked to co-create by naming all other creatures. Names in ancient times described the essence of the creature or object so named. That is what we did in this story. We looked for the essence of each creature and then named that essence. Naming is a key human speech-act. Describing and defining is a tool for navigating existence and is the basis of scientific discovery, and it all begins with seeing. In order to accurately describe or define or map, we have first to see what is there. That is the sequence within this story. God brought animals to us. We looked at each one and then described or defined each by naming them.
We come to know the essence of a thing by imaginatively exploring its various possibilities. This process of paying attention to an object and using our imagination to explore its possibilities in order to realise its distinctive essence is what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called instress. He called the essence that we identify the inscape. Ultimately, ‘the instress of inscape leads one to Christ, for the individual identity of any object is the stamp of divine creation on it.’ [iv]
When we do what Adam did – when we notice and name – we are being creative, we are artists and poets; we are fulfilling the potential God created in us when he made human beings in his image as creative beings. When we notice and name we are seeing sacramentally because we are seeing the divine essence in all things.
This is the purpose for which we were created and for which the creation itself is crying out. James Thwaites has suggested that this is what Paul, in Romans 8, suggests creation is crying out for from us as human beings (Romans 8: 19-22): ‘It must be crying out for its goodness to be fully realised and fully released. The creation cannot be good apart from the sons and daughters because we alone were given the right to name it; we are the image bearers who were made to speak moral value and divine intent into it. We were created to draw forth the attributes, nature and power of God in all things.’[v]
Instead of the selfish and wasteful exploitation of creation’s resources – the domination and abuse – which characterises human engagement with the world, we are intended to creatively realise the inherent possibilities, the essential goodness, of creation through our imaginative ability as those who notice and name. As God did when resting on the seventh day, it is as we return to silence in order to contemplate that we see more clearly and can notice and name once again.
Our task remains that of cultivating creation (to make it fruitful) and caring for it (to maintain and sustain it), just as God told Adam to work the ground and keep it in order. This cultivation of creation is a creative activity based on understanding the essence of each thing that we cultivate. Like Sister Wendy Beckett in her art criticism, we can explore the actual by looking for the good in our world and by naming the good when see it. We are also able to look for new possibilities in our world and to name these possibilities as we see them. Because we live after the Fall, our task is one of attempting ‘to change the world in the direction of its promised transformation, imaginatively grasping and realising the objective possibilities in the present which conform most closely to the coming Kingdom.’[vi]
We are not made to do this alone but in collaboration. Our creativity in naming the good and the possible is co-creation together with God, with each other and with creation. We are to be in conversation with God (prayer), each other and our world. Paul Ballard has said that ‘human beings can enter into a creative partnership with [God] in terms of [our] own powers over creation’ and that the ‘power to work is a God-given power that finds its place in relation to the service of God and man’s place in creation.'[vii] However, much of our creativity as human beings has been with our back turned to God - we have been ‘out of conversation’ with him - and, therefore, instead of caring for creation we have exploited it for our own selfish ends. To turn away from this blindness about ourselves we need to see that work is also about our own self-understanding or comprehension.
As we prayerfully and reflectively name what is good and what is possible, we develop our understanding of ourselves. By naming the good and imagined possibilities for each creature that God brought to him, Adam gained the necessary self-understanding to recognise Eve as the helper for which he had been seeking. Creativity is about collaboration – a prayerful conversation with God, each other and our world - in order to better comprehend or understand ourselves and our world and thereby to see the creative possibilities for developing our world and culture in line with the essence of its goodness.
Such prayerful interpretation or naming, to have validity, has to fit with and follow the shape, texture, feel, colour, images, content, associations and emotions of the work or creature itself. Richard Davey has a marvellous phrase for the network of relationships which form around any artwork; ‘respect for the work of art as an object itself made by an embodied human being for embodied human beings’.[viii]
Peter Phillips believes that ‘the Church in the West faces continued decline until it reverses its rejection of artists who can frame and present their own embodied experience and draw their audience into an embodied understanding of the world in which they live or hope to live.’[ix] This is because ‘everything we experience has to be embodied ... every experience we have can only be perceived, received, experienced by a sentient, embodied individual.’ Art also needs to be experienced; ‘the produced data (visual, verbal, aural, oral, plastic, moving, multimedia, monomedia) is usually meant to be experienced through the locus of embodiment.’
‘This was a truth which the medieval European Church understood’ that, at its heart: ‘religion is better understood as embodied experience than by rational assent. Think of all the sense images in Christianity alone: blood, wine, bread, flesh, sacrifice, baptism, circumcision, eating, drinking, purification, washing, meals, healing, touch, kiss, embrace, bite, devour, the word of God made flesh.’ Therefore, he argues, art embodied, whether ‘live’ or digital, ‘in all its forms offers an iconographic entry point into a multisensory embodied experience of Christianity itself.’[x]
Naming essence, seeing possibilities, embodying experience and creating signs of the kingdom are all necessary elements of prayerfully finding and sharing connections. We are isolated individuals until we experience ourselves in community where, by prayerfully naming our essence and that of others, we see and share our and others distinctiveness, together with aspects of commonality and connection. Equally, whether we contribute reflective interpretations of an artwork we have viewed or take part in a relational happening or create a temporary sign of the kingdom of God, our sharing in this contemplative activity as embodied human beings enlarges, re-imagines or re-invests with new meaning the work or sign. Our sharing therefore enables a sparking of the Spirit.
Explore
As Peter Phillips noted, there are many resonances between what are essentially art 'happenings' which involve the viewer as participant (indeed, which move those who are other than the artist from viewer to participant), the art created by 'relational' artists, and what happens in church services (as we began to explore in Chapter 4). The Eucharist is a happening which is only completed by the congregation becoming participants and which only has meaning as this occurs. The Eucharist can only proceed if the president receives responses from the congregation to the Eucharistic Prayer and the point and culmination of the Eucharist is when the congregation take the body and blood of Christ into their own bodies. A theological analysis of relationships at this point should conclude that the body of Christ has been both dispersed and gathered among and by the receiving church community.
There are interesting parallels to significant works of relational art, such as Rirkrit Tiravanija's shared meal installation. In 1992 Tiravanija created a landmark Relational Art exhibition entitled Untitled (Free) at 303 Gallery in New York, by converting the gallery into a kitchen where he served rice and Thai curry for free. This deceptively simple conceptual piece, invited visitors to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurred the distance between artist and viewer. No longer were you simply looking at art, but now were part of it—and were, in fact, making the art as you ate curry and talked with friends or new acquaintances.
As Christians we should similarly be seeking to create temporary signs of the kingdom of God which can be experienced by those in our community but are tasters for the fullness of the kingdom which is yet to come. This is how we pray embodiments of the kingdom into existence. The Eucharist is the central example of such signs which, as the artist-poet David Jones consistently stated, have to participate in the reality which is being signed in order to have validity and meaning. There are significant parallels here to Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of an endless succession of actions (or 'space-time elements') in which a temporary collective is formed, by means of which fairer social relations are permitted together with more compact ways of living and many different combinations of fertile experience.[xi]
Corita Kent has broadened these ideas to cover our daily lives because of her belief that we are all artists.[xii] To create, Kent notes, means to relate: ‘The root meaning of the word art is to fit together and we all do this every day. Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating – whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.’
Wondering
I wonder what you have noticed in the course of today.
I wonder what you named for yourself or others in the course of today.
I wonder how you express your creativity.
Prayer
Partnering God, I thank you for the trust you place in me by inviting me to co-create with you. I thank you for the gifts and creativity you see in me and ask that together I might know how to express my creativity in the opportunities you provide each day to notice and name the goodness in creation. Amen.
Spiritual exercise
Plan a walk during which you will concentrate on noticing the people, places, creatures, flora, fauna and other objects that you encounter. Ideally, you would record these in some way as you walk e.g. list, draw, photograph, memorize etc. Then, when home, seek to name them by describing what you saw of their essence. Again, feel free to do this naming using a format or medium that works for you.
Art actions
Read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire’ and ‘Burnt Norton’ from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’.
Read my Church of the Month reports on the ArtWay website at https://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=21&lang=en. These all come from the Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage.
Click here for the other parts of 'Seeing is Receiving'. See also 'And a little child shall lead them' which explores similar themes.
[i] https://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1927&lang=en&action=show
[ii] A. Stewart, Icons and Eyesores: Pickled Sharks and Unmade Beds, NTMTC lecture, 2003
[iii] J. Evens, ‘Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism’, Artlyst, 30 March 2018 - https://www.artlyst.com/features/jonathan-anderson-complex-religious-inspirations-behind-modernism-interview-revd-jonathan-evens/
[iv] Stephen Greenblatt et al., Ed. "Gerard Manley Hopkins." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. pg. 2159
[v] J. Thwaites, The Church Beyond The Congregation: the strategic role of the church in the postmodern era, Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001, p.222
[vi] R. Bauckham, Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making, Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1987, p.40
[vii] Industrial Committee of the Council of Churches for Wales booklet, 1982 cited in C. Schumacher, God in Work, Oxford: Lion, 1998, pp.59 – 61
[viii] Personal correspondence with Revd Davey - https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2009/05/responses-to-airbrushed-from-art_24.html
[ix] P. Phillips. ‘Embodying Art: Renewing Religion?’, Transpositions, 2012 – http://www.transpositions.co.uk/11225/
[x] P. Phillips. ‘Embodying Art: Renewing Religion?’, Transpositions, 2012 – http://www.transpositions.co.uk/11225/
[xi] N. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Les presses du réel, 2002, p.41
[xii] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, pps.4-5
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[i] https://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1927&lang=en&action=show
[ii] A. Stewart, Icons and Eyesores: Pickled Sharks and Unmade Beds, NTMTC lecture, 2003
[iii] J. Evens, ‘Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism’, Artlyst, 30 March 2018 - https://www.artlyst.com/features/jonathan-anderson-complex-religious-inspirations-behind-modernism-interview-revd-jonathan-evens/
[iv] Stephen Greenblatt et al., Ed. "Gerard Manley Hopkins." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. pg. 2159
[v] J. Thwaites, The Church Beyond The Congregation: the strategic role of the church in the postmodern era, Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001, p.222
[vi] R. Bauckham, Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making, Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1987, p.40
[vii] Industrial Committee of the Council of Churches for Wales booklet, 1982 cited in C. Schumacher, God in Work, Oxford: Lion, 1998, pp.59 – 61
[viii] Personal correspondence with Revd Davey - https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2009/05/responses-to-airbrushed-from-art_24.html
[ix] P. Phillips. ‘Embodying Art: Renewing Religion?’, Transpositions, 2012 – http://www.transpositions.co.uk/11225/
[x] P. Phillips. ‘Embodying Art: Renewing Religion?’, Transpositions, 2012 – http://www.transpositions.co.uk/11225/
[xi] N. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Les presses du réel, 2002, p.41
[xii] C. Kent & J. Steward, Learning by Heart, Allworth Press, 2008, pps.4-5
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Bruce Cockburn - Creation Dream.
