by Dan Siedell
For most of us who participate in
this blog we share a commitment that art plays or should play some role
in the church and postmodern culture conversation. Yet I am sure
that for most art remains a vague generality. However, art does
not exist in general; it is neither a philosophical nor a theological
construct. It exists only in concrete manifestations, specific
embodiments in practice.
One such concrete manifestation and specific embodiment is Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). An international organization founded in 1979 and consisting of 1,300 members, it exists, according to its website (www.civa.org) "to explore and nurture the relationship between the visual arts and the Christian faith." And since 2002 it has been located on the campus of Gordon College, Wenham, Mass. CIVA celebrated its thirty-year anniversary just last week (18-21 June) at Bethel University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is one of the stronger and more innovative art departments among Christian colleges and universities.
The conference theme was "culture?" and it offered a means to reflect on art's participation in and responsibility to contemporary culture and, by implication, the church. The keynote speaker was theologian Miroslav Volf, whose 1994 essay, "Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation Between Church and Culture in 1 Peter," was distributed to a number of pre-conference seminar participants for discussion and which also served as the basis for his keynote address. Volf's focus on developing a strong center from which to move toward the fuzzy and porous edges encouraged artists to celebrate and push toward those edges, confident in a Christological center and the artist's prophetic role in culture.
The conference also included a handful of plenary speakers, such as artists Makoto Fujimura (New York), Kris Larson (St. Paul) and Kevin Hamilton (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign); art historians Linda Stratford (Asbury College), Wayne Roosa and James Romaine (Bethel), and Rachel Smith (Taylor); aesthetician Adrienne Chaplin (Adjunct, Institute for Christian Studies and Toronto School of Theology) and Charles Taliaferro (St. Olaf); and Debbie Blue, author of Sensual Orthodoxy (Cathedral Hill Press, 2003) and founding pastor of House of Mercy in St. Paul, among several others, including me. In addition to these plenary sessions, the conference also featured a number of subject tracks, including Art and Design; Art and Worship; Art Educators; Gallery and Museum Professionals; Scholars and Critics; and the Spiritual Formation of the Artist.
My remarks, which you can read here, addressed the sacrifice of producing great culture as part of living a self-sacrificial Christian: it is the pursuit of great art and a great Christian life, I argue, that is truly counter-cultural. I also participated in the Art and Design track, led by Kevin Hamilton, who approached ethical responsibilities of the artist through Walter Brueggman's categories of "orientation," "disorientation," and "reorientation" that he utilized in his book, The Spirituality of the Psalms (Augsburg, 2001). Hamilton forced us to reflect on how we orient, disorient, and reorient ourselves to culture through our work as artists, critics, and art historians. Hamilton's sessions modeled aggressive theological reflection as a means to work through the most pressing issues in the contemporary artworld.
In addition to my plenary remarks, participation in the Art and Design track, and an hour-long Q & A about my book, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Baker Academic, 2008), I also served as the juror for the conference exhibition. (Read my curatorial statement here.) This was not an insignificant activity because I have been suspicious of the idea of the "Christian artist" or, as it is often rephrased, "artist of faith," which to my mind allows artists either to rely on their spiritual stories to do the heavy lifting that their art should do or merely use or illustrate "Christian" subject matter and themes. Both approaches are a recipe for mediocre art, at best. And I feared I would get a heavy dose of both. I was pleasantly surprised. The exhibition I presented featured fourteen artists whose work represented the best of what contemporary artistic practice can look like with Christ as the engine that drives it. There are a number of artists that you should pay close attention to, such as Kevin Hamilton (see his blog, complexfields.org), Dayton Castleman (Trinity Christian College), Amanda Hamilton (Northwest Nazarene University), Jonathan Anderson (Biola), Duncan Simcoe (California Baptist), Jim Bockelman (Concordia University Nebraska), Joe Cory (Judson University), Karen Brummund, and Wayne Adams (New York).
Despite the many signs of Christians playing important roles in contemporary artistic practice, the conference revealed that there is still much work to be done to help artists (and art writers) understand the importance of developing more nuanced and sophisticated theological and philosophical frameworks. Usually referred to merely as "theory," there remains the assumption that artists make objects and it is the job of the critics and art historians to talk about them, using "theory" (i.e., philosophy and theology) and other "abstractions" to assign value or market the work. Artists (and critics) need to be reminded that, at their best, philosophy and theology are no more "abstract" than paintings. They are merely different embodiments of the mystery of being and that that the insights provided by theological and philosophical reflection can be helpful in artistic and critical practice.
An important part of my work is to show how and in what ways philosophy and theology can inform and shape studio practice from the inside, as it were. An artist who can develop a theological and philosophical mindfulness will make stronger, richer, deeper works of art.
Yet I would encourage theologians and philosophers who read and participate in this blog to engage in artistic practice more deeply, not to be content to refer to art in its broadest and most general way, but to engage it in specific, concrete ways with particular artists. In order to participate more actively and productively in the conversation around the church and postmodern culture, it is imperative that theologians and philosophers develop an aesthetic mindfulness hewn not by reading aesthetics but from experiencing works of art. Join CIVA, follow one or several of the artists mentioned in this blog, or pay closer attention to what is going on in the art departments of the institutions in which you work or study. Looking at the art produced by artists involved in this organization and participating in discussions with them will nourish and strengthen the aesthetic dimension of your work as philosophers and theologians. And the artists and art writers associated with CIVA need your conversations to strengthen our own work.
Illustrations:
Installation photograph of CIVA exhibition,
Bethel University. Artists represented in photograph are Jim Bockelman
and Duncan Simcoe.
I'm grateful to Dan for his measured assessment of the conference, and certainly for posting the image of Jim and Mine's work (s).
I appreciated your conclusion Dan, which reminded me of the criticism Dorothy Sayers made decades ago in 'The Mind of the Maker' regarding the non-communication between the artist and the theologian.
As I was also a participant/spectator in the Art & Design Trak, I would like to offer a few comments to what I feel was a very well-prepared and 'dense' session.
I did experience a sense of disorientation in regards to the linkage between 'disoientation' and the Paslms. I had read B's book a few years back and was struck by the relative absence of formal analysis of the Psalms as an artform. If considered as works of art (which of course, they are), then what strikes one is their enduring conventionality (orienting function), due to the centuries long stbility of both the auditory forms and, perhaps more importantly, the metaphorical universe that they created and drew from. Even when a given composer was working out from/articulating a 'disorienting' situation/feelings, it was framed within an inherently orienting idiom (how disorienting can Od Nerdum's work really be?). Now, wedged inside of the black leather covers of the CHURCH's book, has their collective role as 'orienters' been lessened? As an artist, I feel/think that form and context lead the subject in the dance of content. In fact, one of the recurring jobs of an artist/teacher is to knock out of the heads of their students the notion that art is identical with the subject. On the other hand, there would be no difficulty whatever in conducting the kind of long-range sonar 'ping' created by the examples of contemporary performance art and works in the 'Younger than Jesus' exhibit, if the bottom that is being felt for is composed of the Prophetic voice. If the acts, language, media, intentions and relationship between dominant and sub-dominat cultures and audience exemplified by this voice are considered, then Dan's articulation/search for forms of 'sucessful failure' snap into place, from Isaiah to St. Paul and Kevin's search for archetypes of disorientation ends.
Posted by: Duncan Simcoe | July 04, 2009 at 05:54 PM