Aesthetic Practice and the Postmodern Church

Daniel A. Siedell has an M.A. from SUNY-Stony Brook and Ph.D. from The University of Iowa in modern and contemporary art, art criticism, and theory. He has for ten years worked as chief curator of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska and is currently writing a book on contemporary art and the Christian faith to be published by Baker Academic.

Aesthetic Practice and the Postmodern Church.

Nietzsche once wrote that the extent to which one should be a philosopher was embodied by the old women in the market in Turin who looked to find for him the sweetest grapes (Ecco Homo, II).  The traditions of the ancient church in the East and the West understood this.  The postmodern church needs to get out of the seminar room (even if that room is in a bar or coffee house) and into the market looking for the sweetest grapes. Everything, it seems, turns on the aesthetic, on what you see, touch, and taste.  Let me suggest that despite its effective and necessary critique of Enlightenment, Modern, and Reformational thinking, the postmodern church remains firmly Western, Modern, and Protestant in its aesthetics and this limits its effectiveness.  This might seem counter-intuitive, for the postmodern church, particularly those emerging communities, like Peter Rollins’s Ikon, the arts are embraced like none other.  But I think this is deceptive.  Both Jamie Smith in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism and Peter Rollins in How (Not) to Speak of God believe that the Church, in order to be fully postmodern, must go back, must embrace the ancient practices and traditions of the undivided Church.  This is as true of art and aesthetics as it is of theology and practice.  In Crossing the Visible (Stanford, 2004), Jean-Luc Marion makes this observation:

The image-affirming doctrine of the Second Council of Nicaea concerns not only nor first of all a point in the history of ideas, nor even a decision of Christian dogma:  it formulates above all an—perhaps the only—alternative to the contemporary disaster of the image.  In the icon, the visible and the invisible embrace each other from a fire that no longer destroys but rather lights up the divine face for humanity (87).

Since coming across Marion’s enigmatic comment, I have been much occupied with its implications for my work as an art critic and curator of contemporary art.  The Second Council of Nicaea of 787, the seventh and last of the Ecumenical Councils, declared that the veneration of icons was not merely to be tolerated, but was the necessary practice of orthodox dogma.  However, and this is where I believe Marion was going, it also clarified the implications of the incarnation of the Word for all image-making and aesthetic form, of which icons were simply the most fundamental or explicit part, given its role in the Divine Liturgy, which is the Church’s aesthetics and poetics and, I would argue, thus the ground for all aesthetic and poetic work.

The Western Church was largely uncomfortable with the declaration of this Council, preferring to tolerate icons for their educational value and not as an object of veneration, such as touching and kissing, and thus not as a means of communion.  This only became intensified with the Reformation, as Luther tolerated images only as tools for communication and education, stripping images of the remaining vestiges of mysticism that they might have still had in the Medieval Church.   And the Reformed and Anabaptist communities rid their churches of all images. 

An icon is not simply a tool of “communication,” a visual illustration of a thought, message, or doctrine.  It is a means of communion through contemplation.  The icon, through its distinctive manner of “forming” the spiritual, thus can “work” on us in different ways, toward different ends.  There is thus not a single “meaning” that is communicated by the image to all in the same way.  And that is precisely what bothered the Reformers.  As a means of communication, the icon, and by extension, art, is unreliable.  Read Joseph Leo Koerner’s book, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago, 2004) for an excellent study of the transformation of visual imagery in the Lutheran Reformation, and its influence on modernity.

This is all, I hope, relevant for my observations Rollins’ book.  Despite Jamie living and working and having his being in a confessionally (Reformed) Protestant community, his is a position that is not exclusively Protestant.  In contrast, despite his own claims that it is neither Protestant nor Catholic (as if the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn’t exist), Rollins’s is, to quote Jamie’s comment on the Queer service, “remarkably Protestant.”  Smith finds it in the intellectualism of the service and, given his description of the service and Rollins’s discussion of it, I suggest that it is “remarkably Protestant” because of the way that the aesthetic is used, used in the service of the intellectual, used to decorate the ideas.  That is quintessentially Western, Modern, and Protestant, despite Rollins’s interest in mysticism, which he seems unaware that the Eastern Church has had a long and robust tradition of mysticism as well as offering a stringent critique of Western rationalism and scholasticism.  And that the emerging church and its adjacent communities must not merely develop a different way of thinking philosophically, but also of living aesthetically.  I am tempted to suggest another version of Jamie’s book:  one that features the work of three artists rather than three philosophers.

Let me suggest that while we continue to plumb the depths of contemporary philosophical discourse, we do the same with the visual arts, really take them seriously.  After touring the Ikon website, I have to admit that it to me bears much resemblance to the savvy look of any other evangelical ministry that uses a certain aesthetic “look” to brand itself as “arty” and thus progressive.  Like Marion, I believe that it is only by exploring the implications of the Second Council of Nicaea that these currents will be sufficiently understood.  But they must be understood, for the postmodern church must re-think its art while it re-thinks its philosophy.  Unless it takes the aesthetic as seriously as did the Church of the Seven Councils, the postmodern church will never be anything but a footnote to the Western, Modern, and Protestant tradition.  But it is only in the emerging church, whatever and wherever it is, that such a possibility even exists.

by Daniel A. Siedell.

 

Comments

[adrian walker]

Dear Daniel,

Bravo. Your beautifully written post gets to the heart of the issue that has been at stake in our discussion of Rollins' book---and that from a fresh angle. First, the substance of your postition is right on, and I would add only that the possibility of painting the incarnate God goes hand in hand with the possibility of making irrecovable true doctrinal statements about him (with both things coming together at Nicea I). Second, your method is right on, too: you take the pre-Reformation Church's doctrinal tradition seriously and show how that tradition does a better job of securing the legitimate concerns of the emerging church than a simple straightforward adoption of postmodern philosophy as the touchstone of non-fundamentalist Christianity.

Thanks again.

Cordially,
Adrian

[Jason Hesiak]

I think I too am down with this post. I have a couple other additional thoughts. I don't think Daniel was trying to imply as much, but it's not like the Medieval and its remnants disappeared at the line in the sand of the Reformation. I mean, as far as I can tell, from the little I do know of even Descartes, there was still some Medieval left in that guy!...at least if you consider him in comparison to later Enlightenment developments. I also have another thought...I wonder who the three artists would be in the re-write; interestingly, I have a feeling that they would all, or at least two of the three, would be from a generation prior to Derrida, Focault and Lyotard. And if any of the artists on the list were of the same generation, they, I would imagine, would be very connected to the generation of artists prior. I also wonder if McLuhan would be included in the list of philosophers or artists? :)...and I also wonder which generation in which he would be considered to belong...he sort of seems to be THE "post", the "turn", the end and the beginning, or at least "right on", or right "at" that turn, or post...

Jason

[daniel a. siedell]

Adrian, I appreciate your comments. I agree with you about docrinal orthodoxy, as expressed in Nicea I, and I wonder if we haven't simply assumed that doctrinal orthodoxy tends to limit artistic expression when it might be the exact opposite, especially since the Incarnation, which Nicea takes as a radical transformation of the human person.

My own curatorial and scholarly work has been focused on suggesting how some contemporary artists (since 1960) manifest a liturgical and sacramental world view, an embodied spirituality, as it were. That none of these artists are professing Christians offers a challenge to my own Protestant, evangelical, and fundamentalist roots.

I look forward to continuing this conversation.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

daniel,
Along with Jason, I am also curious who the three artists would be and why.

Also, your suggestion that contemporary art hints at a sacramental/liturgical worldview is very interesting. I would love to hear more about that.

[daniel a. siedell]

Jason, i appreciate your enthusiasm for my perspective, which given my own professional and ecclesial locations often results in isolation. I'm anxious to discover how my participation in this group can extend my thinking on this subject.

Radical Orthodoxy has helped me think through, from a Western perspective, the birth of modernity from Medieval Scholasticism. But the Eastern Orthodox tradition has offered an even more comprehensive, if more polemical view of the development of Western Christendom. It is easy to idealize the Eastern Orthodox tradition, but it is has been very helpful in gaining some kind of perspective on the challenges, theological, philosophical, and aeshtetic that we face in the West. The Eastern church has its own problems, they are just different.

Actually, in thinking about an artistic alternative to Jamie's book, I think i'd confine my three artists to those working at this "turn" in the sixties. I'll give it some thought and post my three artists, or, perhaps more provocatively, i'll post three works of art...

One artist that i've been fascinated by is Marcel Duchamp. However, i'd love to find a way to include Andrei Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity in the book! The Russian Orthodox priest and theological Pavel Florensky once said that the most powerful apologetic tool at the disposal of Christians is the following: "Andrei Rublev painted the icon of the Holy Trinity, therefore God exists." I don't think I go a day without thinking about that.

[Jason Hesiak]

Daniel,

Funny...Florensky went through my mind as I read your post.

And Geoff, or Daniel, you may appreciate (in terms of sacrament):

http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/11572

(Hejduk was Catholic, I think...in practice)

complimented by:

http://www.wallhouse.nl/Members/javiermarchan/whenahousemeltswithin/

or, Hejduk's pupil:

http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/words/index.html?ID=38

Also interestingly, the John Hejduk fanclub is pretty isolated ("the world is split in two by John Hejduk"). And last night's sermon was on the life/story of Elijah.

:)

[Jason Hesiak]

Oops...lets try that first post again:

www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/11572

See if that works...

[Jason Hesiak]

No...all right, you'll have to piece the parts together on your browser:

www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/

/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/11572

[daniel a. siedell]

Have any of you guys seen Andrei Tarkovsky's movie, Andrei Rublev? it was made in the sixties and was censored by the Soviet Union. It's a beautiful movie about faith and doubt. Interesting, Rublev is NEVER seen painting.

I'll check on Hejduk...

I heard Daniel Liebskind lecture at the opening of his new wing for the Denver Art Museum in October.

Alexander Schmemann's liturgical theology has been helpful to my thinking as well. His "For the Life of the World" was my gateway drug to Eastern Orthodoxy.

[adrian walker]

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for your response. My comments doubtless sounded somewhat oblique, since I was referring to issues discussed here over the last few weeks---which I think your post sheds light on in a big way.

I think aesthetics in the sense you mean it is indeed crucial. Not as illustration, but as incarnation; not as ornament, but as going to the core of things. Yes.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that we have to be narrowly churchy. What I would say is that the fact that there are non-Christians we can learn from is something the best ecclesial tradition has always known and felt to be compatible with Christian orthodoxy---a point I emphasize only because I am concerned about what I take to be an unhappy dialectic often surfacing in post-evangelical circles between universal humanness and Christian specificity.

I don't want to start us down another path, but I have found that much of Orthodox criticism of the West is too determined by polemics. But the Orthodox are tremendously helpful when they are explaining their stuff positively.

I, too, would be interested in hearing about the artists---lay it on us.

Cordially,
Adrian

[adrian walker]

Tarkovsky is great in all of his films. Do you know Schmemann's journals? They're superb exemplifications of the sort of sensibility that we need: ecclesial, not churchy; worldly, not secular; aesthetic and eschatological at once.

a.

[daniel a. siedell]

Adrian, i didn't take your comments regarding doctrinal orthodoxy as too narrow or restrictive at all. I've been reading the posts for quite some time, lurking out there, until i could figure out how to participate intelligently. I have this uneasy feeling that our aesthetics have lagged far behind our theology and philosophy. Somehow, we've come to the point where we can work through Nietzsche but we cannot, under any circumstances, take Marcel Duchamp or Robert Gober seriously as anything other than nihilistic jokesters.

Eastern Orthodox thought in the 20th century can be so polemical as to be tiresome. And Florensky can get old in his criticism of the Renaissance and all things Western. Art for him is identical to icons and so "naturalism" is, in some way, too humanistic.

I think, following Marion, that the theory and practice of icons can be the ground that opens up artistic form, proving the anchor without all form having to look like icons.

Your comment about doctrinal orthdooxy made me think about Zizek claiming to be a "Protestant." A Greek Orthdox priest friend of mine said that all his parishioners were "Protestants" even if they were cradle Orthodox. Perhaps to be Western and modern is, in some way, to be Protestant.

I'm not sure whether to be fascinated by the observation or regard it as another reason to think that being a Protestant is not something to be too proud of.

Have you read David Bentley Hart's book, The Beauty of the Infinite? For him, Christianity is first and foremost about the aesthetic, because it is aesthetic.

[daniel a. siedell]

i am familiar with Schmemann's journals. they are wonderful. His published radio addresses, called "Death Where is Thy Sting," are also wonderful, which make me thing about Pelikan's oft-quoted phrase about Tradition being "the living faith of the dead."

[rodney neill]

Hello Daniel,

Thank you very much for your very interesting post.

Whilst I agree
Protestantism is severly impoverished by its lack of appreciation of art,icons etc surely a meditation, reflection,good preaching or a personal life story shared can inspire/encourage/educate us in our faith journey. Could we not have a unified intergrated whole of reflection,art, icons and meditations in our services etc rather than either icons or words. Certainly having attended many alternative worship services (at a Christian festival called Greenbelt) which have adopted this approach I have been challenged and uplifted in my Christian faith.

I know very little about art but was very inspired by some Rothko paintings I saw in London - he is probably one of the most famous painters which the average non-arts person like me would recognise as having a sacred dimension to his work. I would be interested in your opinion of him.

Rodney

[rodney neill]

Hello Daniel,

Thank you very much for your very interesting post.

Whilst I agree
Protestantism is severly impoverished by its lack of appreciation of art,icons etc surely a meditation, reflection,good preaching or a personal life story shared can inspire/encourage/educate us in our faith journey. Could we not have a unified intergrated whole of reflection,art, icons and meditations in our services etc rather than either icons or words. Certainly having attended many alternative worship services (at a Christian festival called Greenbelt) which have adopted this approach I have been challenged and uplifted in my Christian faith.

I know very little about art but was very inspired by some Rothko paintings I saw in London - he is probably one of the most famous painters which the average non-arts person like me would recognise as having a sacred dimension to his work. I would be interested in your opinion of him.

Rodney

[adrian]

Dear Daniel,

As a Catholic participating in a largely Protestant web discussion, I'm hesitant to venture criticisms of Protestantism, but I would agree with your priest friend's remark, which I think is true that least of most American Christianity, regardless of the denomination.

I do believe that the Reformers rediscovered an important element of Christianity, namely the immediacy of the encounter with the living Word, esp. in the event of preaching (which is an essential, though not exclusive element of the liturgy in the best traditional Catholic and Orthodox understanding and practise). The problem in my view is that they then isolated this element from the catholic whole; in particular, they set it in opposition to the aspect of sensuous mediation(s) expressed in icons, liturgy, etc. The result was a onesided concentration on a too rationalized Bible---itself ironic, since even preaching is a sensuous mediation through human presence, voice, and gesture. Indeed, even Bible reading is not exclusively a silent head-act on the best traditional account: think of Gregorian or Greek chant, or Jewish cantoral singing, or even Islamic Qu’ranic recitation.

The logic of this rightly inspired, but wrongly executed rediscovery of immediacy with the Word at the expense of sensuous ecclesial mediation is anti-incarnational (I speak of the logic of the thing, not of the individual faith of Protestants). The result is indeed a situation in which we think of Christianity as a content to be grapsed with the head and then put into practise or explained or illustrated “out there” in the world---rather than as a being taken up into the Incarnate Word in one’s whole being as embodied spirit.

Going hand in hand with this is a privatization of beauty in the culture at large, which is of course the flipside of an uglification of the world, which is in turn nihilism. One’s approach to beauty is determinative for one’s experience of the basic quality of reality as such. So I couldn’t agree more about the centrality of aesthetics, as well as of the need to take art, including modern and contemporary art, seriously, although I would have questions about the relation between form and infinity in some a-figural or a-representational art. I haven’t read Hart, but I am a big fan of von Balthasar and his theological aesthetics.

A final point. It seems to me that Rollins rightly wants to critique the rationalistic immediacy I mentioned above, but the question would be whether or not he thinks that the only alternative is a non-rational immediacy----rather than paying more attention to the intrinsicality of sensuous mediation to the structure of Christian truth as incarnation of the Word. Geoff and James Smith have raised a similar question from the point of view of the liturgy, which, of course, is the supreme concentration of Christian aesthetic. It seems to me that the whole question of dogma can be dealt with best within this perspective, as a form of mediation analogous, for example, to the icon---which is also a liturgical reality.

Cordially,
Adrian

[daniel a. siedell]

rodney, i agree with you about a fully integrated experience with art and words. I think it is a mistake not only to pit make the visual conform to words, but it is also a mistake to regard the visual as superior to the words. I think that the ancient Church, especially in its Divine Liturgy, as a model of integration. As a curator and art critic i struggle with how words can expand rather than restrict aesthetic experience.

I am very interested in Rothko. In fact, I'm taking a group of our museum collectors on a trip to Houston in a few months and two of the more important destinations we'll visit will be the rothko chapel and the Menil Collection of byzantine frescoes.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[daniel a. siedell]

Adrian, Perhaps the fact that I am still a Protestant, although in church membership only, might allow me to be critical of Protestantism while at the same time recognizing that such a critique remains a self-critique. But I think you are right that the Reformers provided an important service to the Church in reasserting the primacy of the preached Word.

What concerns me about Protestantism is that it has forgotten that the preached Word was found in the Latin and Greek Churches through the 16th century. And it takes its de-emphasis in the Middle Ages as due to, in some way, aesthetic distractions that it pits against preaching. So, when I read, like you did, that Rollins's alternative to rationalism is an irrationalism, he's being, to my mind, very Protestant.

My book project is attempting to use the theory and practice of icons as a foundation for abstract art, non-objective art, and art that has been regarded as anti-humanistic.

Books & Culture just printed a review of mine today on a book on abstract art. It's not an in-depth review, but it at least sketches some ideas I'm hoping to work out in my book.

Can representational icons form the basis for an anti-representational art? I think it can, but who knows?

[Jason Hesiak]

Hey Daniel, Adrien, Rodney, whoever,

Call me a subjectivist, but I think if one is going to think of anything at all as symbolic or iconic, then pretty much all art will be iconic...whereas if everything has meaning insofar as it is scientifically true, then no art will be iconic besides MAYBE the icons of Medieval Cathedrals, but even those will really be "just icons".

And, as far as representation goes...I think, of course "nonrepresentational" art can be iconic. I do think, though, that...in questions of poportional degrees, the less recognizable the figures in a painting, the less easily art can be inscribed within a whole with words.

Also, interestingly, I said, "call me subjective" earlier, but I also think that, despite the "objective" strength of the stillness at the root of both iconostasis and iconoclasticism, in art when the figures are most unrecognizable they most lend themselves to both ONLY subjective questions of "what it does for me" (the only way that most people will filter Rothko), and scientific questions of experimental observation (take Joseph Alber's studies of the square for example).

Compare Albers and Rothko for example, or Thomas Moore, to Picasso's "Pregnant Woman" or to Miro's "Lunar Bird". They help break our being "caught up in the spectral gaze", but yet they are recognizable enough to have a meaning, and an iconic one that points beyond themselves, to anyone whose ever been in relation to the moon, birds, or a pregnant woman.

:)

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Oh, forgot to mention...in thinking of the question as to whether non-representational art can be iconic, I also think that art (and "abstract" art) can and does iconically point to the question itself of representation (and I also think that any art at all woudl have a rather difficult time NOT pointing beyond itself to this question; as Meister Eckhart said, "No sign is a representation of itself.")...because the world, as N.T. Wright says in a new book, is an "echo" of Chirst.

Jason

[daniel a. siedell]

Jason, I think that it's possible to say that since the incarnation all art is indeed iconic in a way it wasn't before. And I also think that everything is indeed iconic. But, the key is to revive a way of exegeting the world that is analogical, allegorical, typological, etc.

Since Schaeffer and Rookmaaker in the early 1970s concentrated their efforts on the need for "Cristian artists," less attention has been paid to how art--all art--is discerned, experienced, interpreted, etc.

I think it's also important to mention that art is not the sum total of its content--what it depicts, its image, as it were. That is, however, a popular notion, that art always "about" something and that something is what matters. That's why, i think, that an illustrator like Thomas Kinkade can be so successful. He puts an image anyway, on anything, shirts, mugs, etc. and it still "works."

But art is about form, it's about how line, form, and color are related.

The question of subjectivism in looking at art is a problem I've long thought about, particularly in my business and how I not only relate to art collectors but to high school and college students I talk to....And I've thought about this in relationship to the Ancient Church's admoninition that the icon is and must be seen "through the eyes of faith," or "seeing the face of Christ" in others. We could say that that is merely subjective, merely a way of looking at things, a way among other things. But we can also say that it is objective. It is actually objectively true, whether we notice it or not.

Perhaps the task of art criticism is to notice, whether in a Rothko or an Albers.

Great stuff, Jason.

[Jason Hesiak]

Daniel,

Interesting...the task is to "notice". I finally just recently broke down and started reading Heidegger's Sein and Zeit, after hearing lots of discussion on Heidegger and being in the dark. And one thing that was VERY interesting to me, is that Da-sien's understanding of itself is part of what constitutes the Da-sien. I think that to modern's that sounds "subjective", but for Heidegger, in the bigger picture of what he was saying, it was just Greek ("pre-ontologically" so). But to modern's, there's that expression, "It's all Greek to me."

Thanks for a good conversation!

:)

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Oh, and speaking of representation and "noticing"...once I was standing in front of a Corbusier painting of a woman and some birds. I "noticed" out loud to my professor that it was a painting in which Corbusier appears to be "wrestling with angels". My professor's response was that Corbusier "notices" that I then appear to be engaging with Corbusier's wrestling with the angels, thereby myself werestling with the angels. "I recieve, and then I give..." is a line from Corbusier's "Poem of the Right Angle". Was he speaking of himself, or the canvas? Corbusier also says in a famous book of his that a building is not just an object, but a living organism.

:)

[adrian]

Dear Daniel and Jason,

Thanks for this exchange. Noticing is the task, not only of the critic, but of man tout court.

May I try out on you guys a theory about aboutness and art? It seems to me that it's impossible for anything man makes with some level of conscious participation to be about nothing at all, or to have nothing of aboutness in it. Perhaps one should therefore say that art is never a copy of something, but is always a presentation that plays with the mystery of the difference and identity between the artistic medium and the everyday surfaces of the world. Which means that what art is primarily about is the mystery that appears on the surfaces of the world. Perhaps what the best a-figural art can do is emphasize as far as possible the difference between art and surfaces in order to let the mystery be experienced in its infinity. At the same time, I myself have been growing more partial to Renaissance and Baroque stuff again---not because it is a more faithful copy of the surfaces, but because it emphasizes both the identity and the difference between the medium and the world's surfaces in a way that brings home experientially the incarnation of the infinite in the finite.

Do you guys think this makes any sense or has any merit? Don't be afraid to be ruthless.

Cordially,
Adrian

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Adrian,
it seems that your theory echoes Descartes doubt: If I doubt everything, then all I'm left with is that which is doubting; which is ME.

but in your case it is: if I depict Nothing, then all i'm left with is the "depiction of Nothing"; which is still something.

You also say that "what art is primarily about is the mystery that appears on the surfaces of the world." Scientism, or reductive naturalism, only thinks about the surface of the world, as if it had no depth or height. The Lie is that the world is ONLY a surface; but art, especially abstract/non-representational art, rejects this lie.

My only cavill is that while talking about art, you can talk about art on one side, and the world as a surface on the other side. But really there is never merely a surface, a world of facts or objects. But of course you will probably agree.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

but i have a question, bringing this into church practice:

How do you actually train up, or transition, a church into a place of equal appreciation for the Word spoken and the Word depicted? How do you relate preaching and paintings?

Let me set the stage a little. At our church we art displayed all throughout the sanctuary, some modern, some classical, some secular, some sacred, changing according to the liturgical year. On top of that we have indigenous artist who create works. Also, we have a worship service that is much more liturgical than most evangelical are used to.

So a typical conversation among our volunteers and staff goes: "We need to explain the liturgy. We need to explain the art" vs. "No, just let people be immersed in the liturgy. Let people experience the art. The service is getting TOO WORDY!.

So what should we do (or not do) to lead our congregation into a more worshipful engagement with art in particular, and art generally?

[Jason Hesiak]

Adrian,

My thought on your theory is that if a theory is going to speak in terms of surface and depth, instead of in terms of images and extension, it needs to make an account of the relationship between Ground and Infinity, rather than seeming to assume that the relationship between the things that are truly in play in an actual artifice is constituted by a meaning given in the phrase "infinite in the finite".

And Geoff,

I certainly don't have an answer for you, but my thought that is the beginnings of one is "rhythm", "eurythmia"..."temporality"...music, both in terms of the mathematical measures OF and/or IN the visual art itself, and the mathematical mesures that regulate the auditory music that might constitute the atmosphere in which the visual art is "experienced", that might help "set the stage", or constitute the "ontic field". Us humans are made of the same stuff, modulated the same way as music (and the mathematics involved in the "visual arts")...that's part of its justification...Pythagoras. In my thinking here, I suppose it doens't matter whether there are explanations or not; the point would be that they are ordered within the primary order of the rthythm. Of course there would be a degree of more or less explanation to be decided upon, but in the end, if you/we "get it right", you will have people saying, "that was powerful, but I'm not sure exactly what it was...even though it was explained really clearly and concisely..."

Jason

[adrian]

Dear Geoff,

Thanks. I guess I expressed myself obscurely, because my point was precisely that the surface of the world expresses a depth, and that, say painting, is a surface revealing a depth, and that there is a relation of identity and difference between surface-depth1 and surface-depth2, so that surface2 is and is not surface-revealing-depth in the same way that surface1 is. Is that any clearer?

As for the inverse Descartes thing, one could say that, but one could also describe it as a way of saying that the surface-revealing-depth mystery that is the world is so basic, so rich, so full, etc., that it determines how we deal with it to such an extent that we can never get completely away from it, even when we travesty it, etc.

Cordially,
Adrian

[adrian]

Dear Jason,

Of course. I'm not suggesting starting with a theory about finite and infinite and then trying to incarnate it. I'm trying to describe, at the level of a second order reflection, what happens when I perceive a tree as alive and then what happens when I see a painting "of" a tree. The second order language is not the thing, but just that, second order language about the thing.

Cordially,

Adrian

[geoff holsclaw]

adrian,
yes, I like how you put the surface-depth in parallel for both art and world. That fits perfectly.

[Jason Hesiak]

Adrian,

I think I was clear on your not trying to incarnate (or "apply") a theory...of any sort. I'm just saying that - whatever the relation between thought and actuality - if you're talking in terms of surface and depth, then you are talking in terms of Ground (maybe a theory), tilling and culture (a whole complex and appropriate analogy of art and farming in which the SURrealists were heavily engaged).

Whereas if you are talking in terms of the Infinite, then you are speaking mathematically in terms the length of extension of our vision (whether physical or "meta").

I mean, Versailles and its gardens, pathways and "hall of mirrors" are a product of the mathematical "discovery of", and engagement in calculations of infinity, through calculus. All very visual and all very much extended out from the mind of the human subject (although I realize, again that you aren't speaking in terms of "application").

Maybe, then, you were making this very distinction by saying what you said about not incarnating a theory. I'm just saying, though, that if you are going to actually use the LANGUAGE of finity and infinity, and also of surface and depth...in a sense two different languages spoken in two different worlds, then I think you need to do some translating - translation that would occur in the same language of the theory in which you are speaking of infinity and finity, surface and depth. Which, again, maybe that's exactly what you were doing by saying that you aren't "incarnating" a theory.

:)

Jason

[adrian]

Dear Jason,

Maybe more than translate, I would need to explain, since I don't think that anyone has a monopoly on the terms surface, depth, finite, and infinite. For me the key is that, say, what I experience of a tree is the outside-turned revelation of an inexhaustible (="infinite")depth that belongs first and foremost to the tree (and so is not God), and that art is always somehow doing the same/not the same thing.

So the point I was really making is that aboutness, in the sense of referring, is not just a matter of messages about something that art would then illustrate, but that the depth refers to itself in the appearing/surface/whatever you want to call it. Things are symbols/icons/sacraments of themselves, and that is a kind of aboutness, but not a message-y one.

Gotta get to bed.

Cordially,
a.

[adrian]

Dear Jason,

Maybe more than translate, I would need to explain, since I don't think that anyone has a monopoly on the terms surface, depth, finite, and infinite. For me the key is that, say, what I experience of a tree is the outside-turned revelation of an inexhaustible (="infinite")depth that belongs first and foremost to the tree (and so is not God), and that art is always somehow doing the same/not the same thing.

So the point I was really making is that aboutness, in the sense of referring, is not just a matter of messages about something that art would then illustrate, but that the depth refers to itself in the appearing/surface/whatever you want to call it. Things are symbols/icons/sacraments of themselves, and that is a kind of aboutness, but not a message-y one.

Gotta get to bed.

Cordially,
a.

[adrian]

Dear Jason,

Maybe more than translate, I would need to explain, since I don't think that anyone has a monopoly on the terms surface, depth, finite, and infinite. For me the key is that, say, what I experience of a tree is the outside-turned revelation of an inexhaustible (="infinite")depth that belongs first and foremost to the tree (and so is not God), and that art is always somehow doing the same/not the same thing.

So the point I was really making is that aboutness, in the sense of referring, is not just a matter of messages about something that art would then illustrate, but that the depth refers to itself in the appearing/surface/whatever you want to call it. Things are symbols/icons/sacraments of themselves, and that is a kind of aboutness, but not a message-y one.

Gotta get to bed.

Cordially,
a.

[Jason Hesiak]

Dear Adrian,

I'm with you. I like that. I guess you are right; no one has a monopoly. That's partially why I said "I think you need to", but at the same time, I dunno, I think maybe there was some "monopolizing" going on in my assumptions (not necessarily my own monopoly, but more monopolies of traditions)...

God bless,

Jason

[joel hunter]

Daniel, this is really a wonderful and thoughtful group of reflections. I see the conversation on them has taken a couple of pretty well-defined paths; may I pause to exit at the "scenic overlook?"

Firstly, kudos for engaging Marion. I'm guessing you're already familiar with "Idol and Icon" in God Without Being? If you haven't checked out In Excess, you might want to see if Marion's concept of the saturated phenomenon provokes further reflections.

Secondly, in the quote you selected, Marion speaks of "the visible and the invisible embrac[ing] each other" in the icon. This, I suppose, is an allusion to Merleau-Ponty's unfinished ontology sketched out in the "book" which carries the title The Visible and the Invisible. I am a huge fan of MMP's aesthetics. Another helpful figure for sorting out the probably decadent dialectic of image vs. text or visible vs. spoken is Jean-Luc Nancy (a h/t to your opening Nietzschean illustration--an insight that we needn't "bring to church" in order to appropriate). But enough of that for now: you have called for us to get out of the seminar room and I agree, in spite of the fact that that is where I make my living!

Thirdly, the problem of aesthetic practice for protestants cannot be overestimated, and you are right to sound the warnings to those who are both (a) aware of their aesthetic astygmatism and (b) conceptually handicapped to "correct" it. It is not enough to reintroduce things we can see, hear, smell and touch into worship. In point of fact, this gesture does absolutely nothing to contest the historical framing of the artful object. It is just here that Heidegger, in spite of his ridiculous romantic assessment of technology, is very helpful. Why lower the ambient lighting and set up a table of candles? To produce something, to effectuate a mood, to declare one's opposition to anaesthetic protestant communities? But this is just treating the candle as a technology. And the historical framing (worldview?) of Western society as essentially technological is advanced thereby rather than challenged.

Or consider images, paintings. Again, this may be a legitimate expression of rejecting iconoclasm and serve a prophetic role. But in any event, it cannot be done context-free. How does the gesture of setting up paintings or statuary to delimit the space of corporate worship really function aesthetically, here and now? Isn't the Western context of the museum, the culturally authorized space in which curators determine which artful products embody the desired "message" of the institution, overlapping here with the liturgical context, and needing to be disambiguated?

In one of your comments you referred to the challenge of an "embodied spirituality" you perceive in the work of some non-christian artists. This is an excellent phrase and a helpful observation. In my view, the way to challenge our complicity with the beauty-aesthetic of the West is not going to be achieved through tinkering aesthetically with our worship and worship spaces. Maybe I'm just too implicated in a Reformed outlook on these matters, but my own thoughts right now are that the first site of our aesthetic practice should be in the neighborhood, the city, the broader community. What I have in mind here is cooperative ventures with others in our community, including and especially non-christians, to "embody (our distinctive christian) spirituality" in the civitas in works that act to reveal truthfully both our sin-sickness and paths of shalom. That would be my proposal for intentional, servant-oriented, paths for aesthetic practice and maturity. These are concrete ways in which the church can support her artists as a God-given redemptive, restorative vocation.

So although the only statement of yours with which I would take exception is the last one of your post, I think you're sounding many of the right notes, and I offer these thoughts only as possible coloratura to your solid melodic line.

[M. Leary]

Daniel,

I am happy to see a Christian finally broaching the subject of abstract art at a technical level. And I can understand that in terms of historical trajectory, the icon is an excellent place for this "Christian" conversation to take place.

But I wonder if the formal rhetoric of icons (or Marion's understanding of Nicaea II) is the best locus for the formation of our perception and practice of abstraction. As an alternative, it is possible to bypass the problematic aesthetics of early Christianity and dive straight into historical-theological readings of creation and incarnation for an explication of the passion for composition, material, and craft that have historically defined the paramaters of "abstraction." In this case, abstraction is more "Christian" in scope than other aesthetic practices because it is in touch with the materiality of creation, the creativity of authorship, and the subjectivity of physical experience.

I am just thinking off the top of my head here about treasured abstractions. We could point to the work of someone like Stan Brakhage, who implicitly criticized the static nature of Christian icons in some of his later work, suggesting that the ontology of film is far more appropriate for the sort of contemplation you ascribe to early Christian icons. Likewise Cornell's boxes can be read as icons, dramatically personal icons of an age that forces individuals back into the refuge of privatized narratives. This is completely the opposite of Christian icons that contemplatively linked their viewers with the metanarrative of the Christ-event. For Cornell then, abstraction enacts a disassociative or exclusivizing narration (very clearly paralleled in his personal biography).

The way Brakhage and Cornell became so influential was that they altered our perception of materials: Brakhage and film, Cornell and found objects along with handcrafted industrial items. I do like the thought that we can read contemporary abstraction in light of the function of early iconography. But it seems that a theological explication of why abstraction is so important will have to come from somewhere else.

That being said, awesome post. I am on pins and needles for your book.

[adrian]

Dear Joel,

Your remarks about how attempts to re-aestheticize worship could end up being complicit in the technological framing of "art" are spot on. Thanks.

It seems to me, though, that cooperative ventures in the civitas, however important, flow from something else for Christians: liturgy.

The traditonal, Catholic/Orthodox liturgies are themselves already a beautiful work (leit-ourgia) that is anything but the recreation of a museum in church, and that is indeed the very opposite of any technological enframing: worship of the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Indeed, the whole point is that it is a work that is ours, but, while being ours, is experienced as a total gift, a participation in the consummated work of the Trinity. This is why, in the above mentioned traditions, esp. in the East, there is such an emphasis on the liturgy just being what it is, a form we enter into rather than re-create constantly in order to engender experiences or preach messages.

Cordially,
Adrian

[adrian]

Dear M. Leary,

You may be right that the theology of iconography is incompatible with the "theology" of abstract art. It will indeed be interesting to hear Daniel on that score. But why do you think that abstraction is "in touch with the materiality of creation, the creativity of authorship, and the subjectivity of physical experience" in a way that---presumably---the icon is not? And, if that is indeed, the case, then why is that better than what icons do? Or, put another way, it seems to me that the prior question that we would need to address here is what is meant by the "materiality of creation, the creativity of authorship, and the subjectivity of physical experience"---if there is a difference between icon-theology and what abstract art does then it might not be so much because the one embodies those values and the other does not, but because they mean different things by them. But then again Daniel may show that icon-theology's understanding of those things actually accounts best for what abstract art does.

Cordially,
Adrian

[Jason Hesiak]

M. Leary,

I don't really know the work of Stan Brakhage, but to me cinema - in itself - is not necessarily any more "moving" than an icon, nor is cinema really - in itself - a public affiar that takes place in a public arena, that can help heal the exclusivity and privitization of contemporary narratives. I just looked up Brakhage online, and from what I read (keep that in mind...haven't seen any films), it seems like Brackhage understands montage (montage is not just a technique, a succession of images framed with the cameara at a certain angle/s)...AND the proper relationship between motion and stasis. Soo...I think cinema CAN do the kinds of things of which you speak, but I also think that cinema, as a medium in itself, can and does work against us in relation to the questions/problems of which you speak (just like Medieval icons).

I mean, Brackrage was a modern man engaging in a modern medium "to try to save his own life", as he said. Icons were the same thing for Rublev, in a sense, in a different time; and Rubleve was a different man. Certain questions of motin/stasis and privacy/publicity had not arisen at the time of Rublev as issues or questions to be addressed within the human soul. AND, I'm saying, that the medium of cinema doesn not and cannot, in itself, be the solution to those problems. I mean, the very fact that montages have to be crafted a certain way to do what they can do within us - in terms of uniting us with a bigger narrative and a contemplative center - points to cinema's essential privacy and temporal/sequential nature as a medium.

In other words, all I'm saying, is that cinema - in itself - doesn't seem like a better medium than medieval icons - in themselves - for our base/starting point of questioning. Rather, both were trying to do the same things really in their particular historica contexts. And I think they need to be/should be viewed that way...rather than saying that one IS a better base point. I suppose, to me, it would be good/right to say that one is a better starting point of questioning for a MODERN man...

I am reading Built Upon Love, by Albero Perez-Gobez. It's basic idea is to get past the break between ethics and aesthetics that took a fork in the road at the Enlightenment. It talks about how the pathos to this re-union is the Eros that drives all art. Eros is always defined by a LACK that is in constant tension with the fulfillment of what is lacking. "Eros inhereted the qualities of his parents: cunning intelligence from Metis and Poros, and poverty and want from Penia. He is always in need: never settled and forever in transit, always scheming to obtain what is beautiful and good...In a somewhat veiled manner, Socrates' Eros recalls aspects of its original Orphic incarnation [paralleled in Hesoid's Theogony]. Eros's inability to be satisfied by worldly things points to the beyond: this lack is a vehicle for self-understanding and higher ethical aims."

I think the quote applies to the beauty and longing in a Rublev icon as well as, probably, the beauty and longing in a Brackradge film. And I also think that the question is of the longing, and you can't pinpoint one medium or the other as the place of its fulfillment. Rather, our condition as beings who are in a state of longing itself "points" to the "iconic" nature of any art or ritual that "points beyond". In that sense, my point is that the point is that cinema and icons are both iconic. And the point is that things are iconic, not whether the mediums of icons or cinmea are better base points for the question of our fulfillment.

That said, I appreciate your comment, and I think it brings up important questions that relate heavily to the topic at hand. Such issues/questions of temporality, motion and stasis, and public and private, actually came up in my mind as I was originally reading Daniel's post. Thanks,

:)

Jason

[M. Leary]

Adrian:
“...we would need to address here is what is meant by the "materiality of creation, the creativity of authorship, and the subjectivity of physical experience"---if there is a difference between icon-theology and what abstract art does then it might not be so much because the one embodies those values and the other does not, but because they mean different things by them.”

Yes, I think that Pollock’s understanding of the “materiality” of the artistic process would be vastly different from that of Rublev’s. (I just use him as a convenient example.) For Rublev the physical icon is a means of the spiritual, the material by which the spiritual is engaged (which is right in line with Tarkovsky's thought as well). For Pollock, abstraction is a means of contact with a specific line, a specific process, a specific finished product. I am simply suggesting that someone like Rothko’s understanding of the process of abstraction is sufficiently distinct from the process of both creating and viewing icons that to speak of both in the same way verges on becoming a category mistake. Rothko is about the contemplation of space, rhythm, the formal process of visualization. The same sort of think could be said about Mondrian, whose artwork may be read as an “iconography of urbanization,” but Mondrian implored us to read his work as a formal statement rather than an ideological or narrative one. They simply aren’t icons.

Sorry to pull out so many examples, I am just trying to be faithful to my source material!

Jason:
“Rather, our condition as beings who are in a state of longing itself ‘points’ to the ‘iconic’ nature of any art or ritual that "points beyond". In that sense, my point is that the point is that cinema and icons are both iconic. And the point is that things are iconic, not whether the mediums of icons or cinema are better base points for the question of our fulfillment.”

I haven’t yet heard anyone argue that one medium is more iconic than another, but there is bound to be an interesting discussion there. There is, however, a lot of abstract cinema that is simply interested in its own material properties. Such cinema would suggest that not all abstraction has to do with iconography, and thus there may be alternate theological sources available to the Christian intent on articulating the importance of understanding participating in abstract art. (I had no intention of getting hung-up on cinema here, sorry if I gave that impression. Brakhage just came into mind at the moment.)

Sorry for being long-winded, take it as a credit to your thoughtful responses.

[Jason Hesiak]

Dearest General Unknown Audience (and especially Adrian, you will see what I mean),

I wanted to share a quote from that book. It mentions Jean-Luc Marion, who everyone here seems to "love". I think it was Geoff in another post who mentioned a distinction between "a hermeneutic of sin" and "a hermeneutic of finitude".

"We forget that love and death, pleasure and pain are inextricably linked through our embodied consciousness. We go even further and tend to deny the very existence of love (as technology may wish to deny the existence of death). Fragmented into multiple emotions in our materialistic culture, the cynic and intellectual alike have truble acknowledging love in view of our modern difficulty to grasp it as a gift, often contradictory since it is BEYOND the rules of economic transactions. My wager, with Jose Ortega y Gasset and Jean-Luc Marion, is that love not only exists but is crucial to our humanity; that despite its contradictions it is of a piece, and can indeed be spoken about."

Adrian, I figured the part you would like was the extra umph on the additional "and can indeed be spoken about."

"In the icon, the visible and the invisible embrace each other from a fire that no longer destroys but rather lights up the divine face for humanity"...from the book I'm reading, Built Upon Love: "Hiding in Gaia's bosom, Kronos (Time) grabs the genitals of Ouranos and castrates him with a sickle. The blood of Ouranos falls onto the earth and his genitals fall into the sea. This violent act separates the earth from the sky, the feminine from the masculine and thus marks the beginning of human space-time. In daylight the division between earth and sky is now visible to all: the human world under the light of speech (logos). At night, however, when the horizon disappears and the sky again unites with the earth, their earlier primoridal state seems to return, reminding humanity of a potential wholeness pregnant with creative force. After this primordial phase of Eros comes to an end, his is reincarnated in his more familiar guise as Cupid, a character who operates between the two sexes. He accompanies Aphrodite..."

Interestingly, I think the main way that the specific language of Architecture participates in this iconic lighting up of the divine face in its uniting of visible and invisible is through Architecture's serving as a meaning point, meeting point, hinge, connection...between earth and sky.

Both in the sense that buildings themselves serve as points of union between earth and sky:

http://www.zugmann.com/online_exhibitions_viewer.php?exhibition=scarpa&id=9

Such unions also occur in rain puddles :)

And this relating between earth and sky occurs in Architecture in the sense that the elements of architecture represent earth and sky and their interactions...whether through light and shadow - gravitos and levitos - or through shape and form, through which, for example, circular forms might be reminiscent of the spherical shape of the heavens:

http://www.zugmann.com/online_exhibitions_viewer.php?exhibition=scarpa&id=10

(this next link you will have to do some cutting and splicing - to use a film analogy - on your browser):

http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/mellin/arch671/winter2004/

student/Condoroussis/condoroussisassign3/assign3.html

From the previous link: "Architecture is a vessel for the ceremony taking place within it, a vessel that must do it justice. ([Peter] Zumthor)"

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

But M. Leary,

Isn't all iconography also, although not so exclusively as with abstract art, "simply interested in its own material properties", at least to a degree? And on the flip side, isn't Pollock's: "abstraction is a means of contact with a specific line, a specific process, a specific finished product" an engagement with a narrative...in the same way that engagement with a narrative structure (embodied in iconography) is "a means of contact with" the "finished product" of the world itself? I mean, I think I see what you mean about "verging on a category mistake", but...well, hence my questions, I suppose. And, I think also, hence Adrian's original tentativeness in offering his theory.

I mean, as with a comparison of icons and cinema, if you compare icons with abstract art, the abstract artists seem to have been responding to a set of conditions of their own time, AS the men who they were, formed by that time. Obviously, Rublev obviously wasn't in Pollock-mode, but also obviously, the process of the making of his iconography points to a specific line, a specific color, a specific (material) finished product (and not ONLY an "absent" narrative). Meanwhile, if, as Chompsky says, it was not true that "the physical world no longer exists" - as a result of the hiSTORY of our Western metaphysics and sciences - there not only would have been no Pollock, but Polluck would be meaningless...and "from left field".

:)

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

And isn't it ironic that, without the history of the building up of a "view from nowhere", there would be no Pollock, who appears to most folk to be "from left field"? Meanwhile irony too is essentially about the relationship between what does and does not appear. Meanwhile its ironic that most peole think of irony as primarily contingent upon a supposedly known meaning of something (that turns out to mean something that is different from what we so certainly knew!), whereas irony is really when, centrally and originally, we really don't fully know something but the irony is that we unfulfillingly think we fulfillingly know. Irony, like art and ritual, is really a path of the invisible to the visible. And hence the Eros of iconography and iconograpy of the Eros. And hence the irony-inducing lonigng for an external "meaning" in an ironic piece of specifically-Pollock.

:)

[Jason Hesiak]

And just for fun:

Robert Venturi the architect did a big-and-fat but short-and-stubby out-of-proportion (with itself and with humans) almost-recognizable-as-Ionic column, and called it the "Iconic, Ironic, Ionic Column" :)

Meanwhile the scrolls of an iconic column turn into, and out-from, an indefinite and unknown shadow-place:

http://www.scottishsundials.co.uk/Images/Ionic%20column.jpg

And if I remember correctly, partially what was ironic about the column was that in the place of the scrolls of a traditional ionic column (which set the finitude of life and knowledge of the human in relation to the knowledge and life of the gods) were just abstracted and funny-looking circles (not the temporal character of turning scrolls but x-ray like simulacrum sections of the perfect Platonic Sphere instantiated).

:)

[adrian]

Dear all,

I agree with Jason that it’s not so clear that icons do one thing and abstract art does another. Icons also have to do with particular lines, colors, etc., while abstract art is not simply about bare particularity, with no sort of referentiality beyond itself. One could say that the unique thisness of the line, or the color field, or the shape bears the weight of a presence that is more than the materiality of the line, or the color, or the shape as such, yet cannot be put into words, but only into the unique line, color, or shape.

It occurred to me that M. Leary---M., please correct me if I am wrong---might be thinking that the problem with icons is that they skip over the material, making it transparent to something immaterial, whereas abstract art is more incarnational, because it emphasizes the thisness of the particular line or whatever. What I would say in response, picking up from the preceding paragraph, is that even thisness is a form, hence, something that transcends just matter---but that this transcendence of matter, far from being a devaluation of it, is actually what makes it concrete. Without a form, matter is simply in-determinate, and the in-determinate is about as abstract as you can get. It seems to me that, in this regard, the icon is not at all a denigration or skipping over of matter, but a way of saying that this bit of matter, the body of Christ, the face of a saint, bears the weight of divinity---which, of course, can be said only if matter gives up its claim to be on its own in sheer indeterminacy and to receive form.

Let me conclude with something provocative, but prefaced with a disclaimer that I like a lot of abstract and sem-abstract stuff. To me it’s a bit like the difference between rock and classical. You can’t directly compare Dylan or the Pogues to Mozart or Bach, because the genres of music are doing different things. You can, though, make analogies: Dylan is for folk/rock on the same level that Bach is on in classical, etc. Still, I do think that you can say that one genre is more limited than another. And so I like and admire the genius of, say Mondrian or Kandinsky or Rothko or Miro or Stuart Davis, etc.---but I also wonder (and here comes the provocation) whether the sort of thing they’re doing isn’t more limited than what Rembrandt or Velazquez were doing. Now, more limited does not mean absolutely limited, because the more limited genre can do certain things better than the less limited one---the point is that there is a difference between brilliant specialization in color or line and an on-the-whole brilliance. Nor is this to say that what the above guys weren’t breaking new ground and exploring new things, etc.

For me the advantage of figural art as the more comprehensive genre is that it is more suited to the ordinary human way of perceiving. Again, I am not pleading for naïve realism, for copying surfaces exactly, etc. The classical guys were mostly hardly naïve realists. But the point is that the way Rembrandt or Raphael---so different as they were---played with the elements of perception did not try to bring to identity the weight of the ineffable and the intensity of particular sensible experience in the way that I read Rothko or Miro or a lot of people as doing. This means that Rembrandt and Raphael don’t achieve certain immediate intensities of experience in the same way that Rothko or Miro can. But by letting recognizable form mediate between the intensity of perceptible elements and the weight of Presence, they secure a unity between them that also allows for a distance between them. And this mediated unity and difference lets the Presence be present not just as event, as intensity, as immediate-being-struck, but also as eternal weight, as super-form, as Name. And both dimensions---not to jump to the theological---are needed for Incarnation to happen.

Cordially,
Adrian

[adrian]

alongside Rembrandt and Raphael one could also place Cezanne, Braque (esp. later), Matisse, Morandi, Giacometti (all favorites of mine)---so it's not just an issue of, say Renaissance vs. 20th cent.

Adrian

[M. Leary]

"It occurred to me that M. Leary---M., please correct me if I am wrong---might be thinking that the problem with icons is that they skip over the material, making it transparent to something immaterial, whereas abstract art is more incarnational, because it emphasizes the thisness of the particular line or whatever."

That isn't quite what I was thinking. Anyone who has seen a decent icon up close will have to agree that the particularity of form is given pride of place in their construction. Rublev has popped up a lot on this thread with just cause, seeing his icons in the exhibition setting is a rare and profoundly aesthetic experience in its own rite, notwithstanding his implications for spiritual formation. I am really drawn to his eye for composition and material before I even get to the theological substance of his work.

I am simply hesitant to posit icons as some sort of logical place to begin a Christian discussion about abstraction. From the point of view of the practitioner, of the actual artist, the iconographic process is something left up to the end-user of a material product. The difference between Mondrian and Rublev is that while both are producing objects designed to produce contemplation, they are intent on much different sorts of contemplation regardless of how an early 21st century Christian is able to comprehend both in one glimpse. The theological resources of value to the practitioner, for whom this discussion should be taking place, extend to the creational, incarnational, and missional metaphors of the biblical text.

It may be better to speak of a theological trajectory in the history of art that starts in the incarnation and the narration of Logos, extends through Christian iconography, and deposits us in the contemporary experience of abstraction.

(An aside: "the point is that there is a difference between brilliant specialization in color or line and an on-the-whole brilliance." There is a fantastic Picasso museum in Barcelona that may contradict this line of thinking. They have set his work up chronologically, demonstrating that by about age 17 he could faithfully imitate Rembrandt. As time goes on, his work becomes more concerned with matters of form and technique, in an apparent abandonment of his incredible traditional skill. Has he then become a lesser artist the older he gets? This seems to be the question posed to even the casual viewer by the gallery...)

Part of the problem with the Christian discussion of the fine arts is that it has been a step or two removed from both actual practitioners and extended readings of particular works of art. If discussion is to move forward, it seems that it will only do so by producing resources for actual artists who in turn will begin to embody all the rich aesthetic theory latent in Christian theology.

[adrian]

Dear M.,

Thanks for the clarifications. Just two quick points:

I agree that Picasso does not become a lesser artist. My point was just that the type of art he does later may as a whole be limited in the way a brilliant specialization can be.

In a way, I guess I am trying to criticize the idea that art is mainly about exploring form and materials for their own sake. Not that it is simply false, just that it is partial.

I don't know much about Christian discussion of fine arts, but I agree that any discussion of them has to involve intelligent engagement with particular works.

Cordially,
Adrian

[Jason Hesiak]

M. Leary,

I find it interesting what you say about Picasso. Reminds me of how John Cage mastered traditional music at 15...he wasn't always the experimental musician we now know. Matisse's first painting he ever did showed a greater level of skill than most obtain in a lifetime. This is also relevant to me as a practicing architect; it takes practice. Skill has to be developed. I also like what you say...that our logic should start with the Inarnation. As Christians that should probably go for anything that is up for discussion for formation...whether it be a canvas or our ecclesiology.

Jason

Jason