God in the Gallery: A Symposium, ch. 3

Today's engagement of Daniel A. Siedell's God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art comes from Bruce Ellis Benson. He is engaging chapter 3 entitled "Enrique Martinez Celaya's Thing and Deception: The Artistic Practice of Belief." Bruce Ellis Benson is Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL). He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion on Modern Idolatry (IVP, 2002), The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music (Cambridge, 2003), and Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith (Indiana, 2008). He is co-editor of The Phenomenology of Prayer (Fordham, 2004), Hermeneutics at the Crossroads (Indiana, 2006), Transforming Philosophy and Religion: Love’s Wisdom (Indiana, 2008), Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo (Brazos, 2008), and Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology (Fordham, forthcoming 2009), in which his essay “Chrétien on the Call That Wounds” will appear. He is an editor of the new Eerdmans book series titled “Envision: New Trends in Christian Theology” and Executive Director of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology (SCPT). He will be a visiting professor at the University of Leuven in the 2009-2010 academic year.

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Recently, a colleague from the English department at Wheaton made the point in conversation that a novel has a way of getting at the reality of ethical life in a way that philosophy generally cannot. In watching a character forced to make difficult ethical decisions—with all their varied gradations of “good” and “bad,” not to mention conflicting demands—one gets a much more profound sense of the complexity of trying to live virtuously than a philosophical theory can provide. One can, to be sure, cite a text like Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death as providing a particularly nuanced moral account. But, as if to prove my colleague’s point, Derrida needs the story of Abraham and Isaac precisely in order to tease out those complications.

In effect, Dan Siedell employs Enrique Martínez Celaya’s painting Thing and Deception to complexify such assumed binaries of belief and unbelief (as well as such opposites as banal and profound, truth and superstition—though here I will focus on belief and its supposed antonyms of unbelief or doubt). By observing what Martínez Celaya both does and says, Siedell shows us that defining “belief” and “unbelief” is, to say the least, complicated. One can hardly do Thing and Deception justice by way of description, so I urge readers to study the image for themselves. What is one to make of this veiled chocolate Easter bunny that has clearly been broken yet reassembled? That the words “Needed Proof” are inscribed below the bunny makes this even more complicated. Now, it’s important to know at the outset that Martínez Celaya is not just trying to be “clever.” As he says elsewhere: “So many contemporary paintings have this wink to say we’re both in on the joke. Any time I find myself being witty or clever, I paint over it” (see “Layers of Devotion (and the Scars to Prove It)"). So one needs to take Martínez-Celaya very seriously.

One of the complications here is that Easter bunnies are, in one sense, like Santa Claus: they are the secular counterpart to Jesus’s resurrection as Santa is the counterpart to his birth. But, since one can talk about “believing” in either Santa or the Easter bunny themselves, there are at least two levels of belief at stake in this painting. Siedell says that the words “needed proof” are “ironic, for who ‘needs proof’ when trading in the currency of chocolate Easter bunnies?” True, no “proof” is needed for the existence of a particularly chocolate bunny, but there is something like “proof” involved for the existence of the Easter Bunny. As it turns out, children do come to doubt both Santa and the Easter Bunny, so the secular symbol (if that is the right way to put it) can itself be doubted and thus be the subject of unbelief. Given this, it is interesting that the painting is titled Thing and Deception—not Bunny and Deception or Christ and Deception. We are not really sure what this “thing” is, and that makes the counterpart “deception” all the more enigmatic.

Yet now we face a further ambiguity, for Thing and Deception was first exhibited in an installation titled “Saint Catherine Watches Over Me.” That Saint Catherine is remembered for converting fifty pagan philosophers who were commissioned by a Roman emperor to convert her puts yet another spin on this piece. How exactly is Saint Catherine “watching over” Martínez Celaya? Is she trying to convert him? One might be tempted to ask who is trying to convert whom. It is significant that Martínez Celaya chooses a piece of kitsch related to his childhood “framed by kitsch” (as he puts it), though he later comes to see the painting as more about his future than his past. Siedell interprets this as moving from more explicitly religious subject matter to a more explicitly religious overall structure of his work and thought.

Martínez Celaya definitely sees Thing and Deception as part of a religious context, but then he wonders if it can find a place (to quote him) “in the new sanctitas of the Modern art gallery.” This raises the problem of the competing “religious beliefs” of the gallery and the church. In Martínez Celaya’s Guide (his own fictitious dialogue between an artist and an friend), it is telling that the friend (who is also a voice of Martínez Celaya) says the following to the artist: “For someone who claims not to be religious, you speak in a way that sounds very religious to me.” What are we to make of this “religiosity”? Siedell interprets Martínez Celaya as attempting to avoid being either a “believer” or an “unbeliever,” and Siedell characterizes Martínez Celaya’s work and thought in terms of both negative theology and spiritualistic (rather than “religious”) piety. Siedell draws a comparison to he takes to be high art’s way of belief by way of incarnation to the incarnation in Christianity. Instead of “believing” in terms of doctrines and propositions, Martínez Celaya believes by incarnational practice, what Siedell means by the “artistic practice of belief.” Analogously, Siedell claims that Christian icons and the Eucharist “not only require faith, they also generate and sustain it.” But, again, it is unclear to what extent “religious” or “artistic” belief is involved here.

One has to wonder how strongly Siedell intends to assert his closing observation that “Thing and Deception narrows the gap between belief and unbelief, banal and profound, art and religion, sacred and secular, truth and superstition, revealing each to be two sides of the same precious coin.” No doubt, these gaps are questioned and even narrowed by Martínez Celaya. Yet it all depends on what kind of “belief” and what kind of “unbelief” constitute each side of the coin. Clearly, there must be some genuine content to the belief in order for it to be the flipside of unbelief or doubt. Thus, when Siedell says that the painting and the Eucharist “require the eyes of faith to see what is truly present,” I am inclined to agree and yet also point out that what is present in the Eucharist is more defined than what is present in the painting. So the analogy only goes so far. Of course, given widely differing beliefs within the Christian community of what is “present” in the Eucharst, perhaps the analogy goes further than we might think.

In any case, once again, it is something other than a philosophical theory—here, a painting and the reflections on it by both its thoughtful painter and an astute art historian—that helps us get at the complexities of the daily reality of epistemological life, complexities that are no less real or problematic than those of the ethical life.

Comments

[Dan Siedell]

Bruce, I deeply appreciate your reflections. As you no doubt know, there are few gifts more valuable to a writer than an insightful reader. This essay was my first extended engagement with the work of Enrique Martínez Celaya as well as my initial attempt to reflect on painting as a Christian without devolving into standard Christian ways of thinking about modern and contemporary art.

My primary concern was to demonstrate how serious painting in general and Martínez Celaya's painting in particular, forces the viewer to rethink assumptions about belief and unbelief. What is true of painting is true of religion. To take painting serious requires belief, belief that the oil smeared on a canvas surface add up to something more. To take Christianity serious likewise requires belief, belief that, for example, that Christ's presence is mediated through the Church, through the Word and Sacraments. One way for a painter to strengthen his belief is to practice it. The same is true for the Christian. To shift the discussion to what kinds of belief and unbelief, as you suggest, is a quantum leap from much Christian and art discourse, if I may be so bold. I wonder if it is the Eucharist itself that forms the basis for "all things" to hold together in Christ (Col. 1: 17), even painting.

In closing, I would like to suggest that although I do agree with your Wheaton colleague about the power of literature (and art) to get at the complexities of life that philosophy cannot, I believe that the best philosophical work aspires to literature, to art.

[Jason Hesiak]

First of all - since I read much of the book, I have been meaning to look Celaya up. I was beyond intriqued, and frustrated at myself for not already knowing his work.

Dan - if you read this - you had mentioned him to me a while back, and I stupidly didn't look him up!

I just looked up Thing and Deception (finally saw it in color), and then saw some of his other works as well, and got chill bumps and almost got teary. So thank you Dan for pointing my way to a new friend and brother, mister Celaya (although he doesn't yet know that he has a new brother :)....neither do many of my other artist or architect brothers or friends :)

Anyway - although I do agree with your Wheaton colleague about the power of literature (and art) to get at the complexities of life that philosophy cannot, I believe that the best philosophical work aspires to literature, to art.

I don't know about this one. I think its more accurate to say that philosphy is inherently artistic, in that it speaks something forth into the world. Or, it did originally. Or, it does and philosophy is dead. Whatever, you get my point. Both art and philosophy are framing reality in the way that you, Dan speak of in your book, and I think they just do it through different mediums (speech, painting, sculptur, architectur), traditions, communities, ect.

[Jason Hesiak]

BTW - this issue of framing reality brings up another small minor beef i have with you, BROTHER dan :)

you mention, in the context of this idea that art frames our reality, or our way of thinking of or perceiving the world, the example of the painting of the cardboard box. You say that the cardboard box is not art, but that the painting of the cardboard box is. I don't know about that one, either. Both are art-ifacts, and both, even, frame our ideas and perceptions of reality in the very same way that you say the PAINTING OF the cardboard box does. To be fair, it seems fairly obvious in your book that you are explicitly and purposefully writing about the painting of the cardboard box. Sooo....maybe my beef is simply this....i wish you would have instead said that you are writing about the painting of the cardboard box, and you are not writing about the cardboard box. instead of saying that the cardboard box is not art.

which reminds me....in saying that the cardboard box is not art....you were quoting someone else...i forget who though.

:D

[Jason Hesiak]

OH...and Dan...part of my point about philsophy (not) aspiring to art...is....and i think we share the same concern here...i think we are on common graound, actually....i would hope to see art and philosophy remain on THEIR OWN grounds, instead of getting muddled. i wouldn't want to see philosophy read as a mere instrument for the artist any more than i would like to see art "experienced" as mere instrument for philosophical argument (or cultural criticism, for that matter).

:D

[Dan Siedell]

Thanks for your comments, Jason. First, I'm glad you find Martinez Celaya's work of interest. My comment about the best of philosophy aspiring to art is exactly as you put it: philosophy is inherently artistic, or has, as William Desmond would say, an aesthetic mindfulness.

I tend to think that this aesthetic mindfulness of the wonder of being is the source of art, philosophy, literature, science, etc. and that these practices, which have evolved and developed their own cultural embodiment and disciplinary frameworks, must continue to 'show' this mindfulness or it betrays its origins.
I think I was quoting or referring to Arthur Danto and the cardboard box.

[Jason Hesiak]

There was a chill bump giving quote on the "wonder of being"....silence and art and such....in my chapter :D

And I would agree with you about the need to "show" this midfulness, and about otherwise betraying origins (in general). I think I like this way of putting it better :) And whether they are "shows" or demonstrations or spectacles or whatever....you also get into that in your book....good stuff....

I also liked how somewhere you referenced the notion that art and religion share the same essence and can hardly, in fact, be distinguished!

[Dan Siedell]

Jason, This "mindfulness" is what makes certain philosophers and theologians better than others. It is what makes certain writers, like Melville, Nietzsche, and Derrida, for example, more "Christian" than more conventional Christian thinkers and writers in the sense that I sense and experience the wonder of being and its profound porosity. And I believe that much art made by non-Christians is more "Christian" than the standard fare produced by self-consciously "Christian" artists.

[Jason Hesiak]

I would often tend to agree. The pissed of non-Christian folks often tend to be much more aware of the....theft of these liberal arts, i guess we could call them....committed by commerce. Which you also speak about in my chapter, I think.

Even Einstein the scientist, btw, for me, produced this wonder of being. And I think he was aware of that in his work. And I think it often goes totally unrecognized by most of the Christian community.

And btw while we're at it, a good example of a modern artist with this mindfulness, but who is downright ignored and/or forsaken by much of the Christian community....due to his capacity to easily offend the soccer mom....is Rodin.

[Jason Hesiak]

oops The pissed of non-Christian folks ALSO often tend to be much more aware of the....theft of these liberal arts, i guess we could call them....committed by commerce.