Chapter 4 of Dan Siedell's God In The Gallery, Embodying Transcendence, Material Spirituality In Contemporary Art

I think the most basic and driving force behind Chapter 4 of Brother Dan's book, which is quite impressive and enjoyable, by the way, is, properly, found in the quote that introduces the chapter, from Augustine: You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.  Later in the chapter he notes the connection between this famous quote from Augustine and "the analogical worldview", in which our being is contingent upon that of a creator.  Here there is a sense of something beyond the self, something greater, something other, a sense of something in which we "live and move and have our being," but there is also a sense of that same something which gives us....well....us.

Because God created all things (that we desire), desire, even carnal, plays a part in this analogical worldview, and is even part of what leads us to God.  When properly placed within the framework of this "worldview", such desires become part of the same deep spiritual urges that lead us to God.  Sidell quotes Klaus Ottmann:

There is a need for an art of silence, an art that leaves, in Kierkegaard's words, 'the ironic nothingness' for a 'mystical nothingness' rooted in terrains of silence that make us listen to the innerness of our being, relate the myths of creation, and place us within the original purity and sincerity of the beginning of all things.  A silence that restores art to the world by restoring its meaning.

For me a good example of this union of the erotic and spiritual desires is the very ancient and very traditional medieval chanting of your average Dominican monk.  I can hear the world being recreated anew as the words flow forth from deep recesses of the great well from which we all draw the waters of our speech.  And yet it is undeniably carnal and erotic, in the way the sounds and rhythms sway back and forth, like lovers moving apart and back together again.

I greatly appreciate this drive of Siedell's book, and in particular this chapter, and I identify with it deeply.  An example in modern art that he talked about, which I found to be particularly fascinating, was the late drip painting of Jackson Pollock.  Because the painting is utterly flattened and looses all possible reference to any recognizable object outside of the surface being painted and the paint itself as it is applied to the surface, it becomes a purely physical thing in the world.  At one moment simply paint and physical surface. 

And yet the next moment the whole thing seems to be in flight.  Unlike a traditional painting with a sense of perspective, with some semblance of a foreground and background (even in Miro’s work, for example), there is simply no optical guide for the movement of the eye.  The whole painting takes flight on some undefined plane with no beginning and no end.  Interestingly, the cultural construct that leads to the uneasiness of the eye as it is faced with a Pollock drip painting was the Renaissance “invention” of “perspective.”  At the time, the “vanishing point” of the perspectival construct was referred to as the “point of flight.”  This is where man looses himself, and disappears.  It is either death, or my life hidden in Chirst. 

So there is an ethical dimension to this rising, this edification of man through the medium of this artistic construct.  Siedell doesn’t get into it much, but he makes repeated reference to the ethical dimensions of this deep inner drive of true art to connect to the origin of all things.  In some former life where I wasn’t stressed by deadlines, I had let Pollock lead me to such points of simultaneous meditative flight and grounding (the vanishing point in perspective painting is on the horizon), but I had forgotten these meditations long ago.  I appreciate Dan for reminding me.

Now to be fair to the title of the chapter, Jackson Pollock isn’t exactly contemporary.  Siedell spends a lot of time in the Chapter on contemporary artists whose works embody this desire for some kind or form of return to origins or beginnings.  One good example, speaking of disappearance, is James Lee Byars The Death of James Lee Byars.   No it is not his suicide, but it was originally a performance of his death, in which he would be covered in gold, and then lie down and disappear into a sea of the exact same gold.  He would disappear, he would “die.”  There the performance would end, and he would be swept up into the holy sea of silence out of which we all move and speak.  This sea that was, by the way, the golden background of medieval icon paintings. 

Also notably, this urge toward union with our beginning is, I think the target point for Siedell’s goal of getting past the typical contemporary Christian’s attitude toward “high art,” which is to either ignore or reject it.  Siedell talks a lot about the traditional hesitancy of the Western church to fully embrace the icon for what it is and can be, and briefly traces this hesitancy through the didactic approach of Luther to the downright purely iconoclastic bent of the modern Anabaptists.  I think that getting past this typical Christian attitude could safely be said to be a basic goal of the book, as well, so I would say that the fundamental drive of this chapter – to reunite with our origins - seems to move in the direction of fulfilling that goal.  And I would say that he was successful in achieving his goal, where success there would probably not be measured by the number of Christians who change their attitude toward art as a result of his book or this chapter, but by the “worldview” or framework that it sets up for them to begin to view art in a different, new (for them), and superior way that they had not previously considered. 

Horray for that.  Clap Clap for Dan Siedell.  Seriously.  I thoroughly enjoy the book, as well as my chapter, and consider Dan a kind of brother.  Thank you Dan for taking the time and care to live your life in such a way that this book could flow from it.  There is so much more to it that I unfortunately don’t have the time or space to get into, but I hope I have done the most basic point a little bit of justice.  Suffice it to say, to justify calling this a “chapter review” and to wear the hat of “critic” for a moment, I have been blessed by this book and this chapter, and I think that it will be a blessing to others as well.

Also, congradulations to me for, until now, mentioning neither Tarkovsky nor Florensky in my post.  Both Dan and I love both of them, and both were mentioned repeatedly in this chapter.  Yet I managed to refrain from bashing the head of my audience with their names even more than I already have in the past.  You are welcome, my dearest audience. :D

Comments

[Dan Siedell]

Jason, you put your finger on the aesthetic and ethical implications of the icon, which too often drained of these associations in philosophical discourse. The icon's very existence, as it developed in the Church and was articulated in Nicea II, the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the eighth century, testifies to the union of the aesthetic and the ethical, the beautiful and the good. And this union is not merely theoretical, it is brutally practical, material, physical: the good is enacted, the ethical emerges when paint is spread on a flat board.

Now, it can easily be said that painting an icon, that is a depiction of one of the Church's saints within the framework of the faith and practice of the Church, painted by a follower of Christ is a lot different than a drip painting by Jackson Pollock. And this is true. And yet. Perhaps the icon forms the ground for the drip painting, that the tradition that underwrites Rublev enables Pollock.

The icon teaches the faithful to see the world through the eyes of faith, to see the face of Christ shining in faces of all human beings. And this is one important aspect of the ethical potential of art.

Another ethical aspect, which I did not develop in the book, is the ethical dimension infused in the process of painting itself. The blank canvas on its stretcher possesses its own integrity (i.e., unified identity) as an artifact, an object in the world. Once the first mark on it is made, this integrity is completely destroyed. The ethical challenge of the painter, then, is to fix this destruction, resolve this problem, to participate in returning integrity to the artifact, but transformed as a painting, a work of art--not merely to impose an image on the surface which does violence to the integrity of the artifact and is thus unethical--which ultimately realizes the potential of the artifact, the object, as a work of art.

The aesthetic and ethical dimension of the world, created and redeemed in and through Christ, is exemplified in the hypostatic union of the beautiful and the good in the icon and that union, like all of God's blessings, slosh outside the bounds of His Church. And so the paintings fo Pollock and the performances of James Lee Byars partake, however imperfectly, in the truth revealed in the icon.

[Jason Hesiak]

And this union is not merely theoretical, it is brutally practical, material, physical: the good is enacted, the ethical emerges when paint is spread on a flat board.

I totally agree. It is practical, in that it is practiced, by both actor and audience of the icon. Here actor and audience could be painter and museum goer or Jesus and the believer. My concern, however - and this is a very new concern for me - is that this particular practice is too divorced from the average blue collar working american for whom our office is currently designing, for example, a bus maintenance garage. Interestingly, however, the ground breaking ceremony featured an impromptu band made up of the members of the future "electronic shop" of that very bus garage! The music was good too, in that it was capable of returning ME to MY beginnings! Yet the actors, in that instance, would in all likelihood have no idea what was going on when presented with the contents of this conversation. They play music, but who is Pythagoras?

I guess this is your concern too, though, Dan - and hence the mostly-accessible nature of it.

Perhaps the icon forms the ground for the drip painting, that the tradition that underwrites Rublev enables Pollock.

Again, I would totally agree. Trace and palimpsest. BUT - we are talking about TRACES here. You mentioned, in the section on "environments" (I think in that section, and if not in that section, then very much related to it), that contemporary artists have to frame their own environment in which their work can be experienced, because the unified context for giving meaning that existed when the Church provided that is gone. What are left are unholy fragments of the bricoleur.

I was fascinated when you said that Orozco goes around in a Uhaul full of collected artifacts!! But then at the same time, I thought to myself: "MAN, that would be such a BURDEN to have to keep up with all that stuff, even in your MEMORY! (and not just physically the truck and all its contents)!"

The ethical challenge of the painter, then, is to fix this destruction, resolve this problem, to participate in returning integrity to the artifact, but transformed as a painting, a work of art--not merely to impose an image on the surface which does violence to the integrity of the artifact and is thus unethical--which ultimately realizes the potential of the artifact, the object, as a work of art.

My professor helped the architect design "The Inn at Middleton Place". Middleton was an old southern plantation that was burnt to the ground by Sherman. On the grounds of it is now an "inn," as well as the original garden.

http://www.theinnatmiddletonplace.com/content.asp?catID=6295

My professor was going down the Ashley River on the way to the site with the architect, W.G. Clark, and the concrete slab for the building was either being poured or had just been poured, leaving a very strong and particular fragarance in the air. W.G. and my professor looked at each other in silence, until W.G. said simply, "the smell of sacrifice."

Ethically, I think they did OK :D
BUT - interestingly - considering the fact that the Inn is on the grounds of the ruins of an old and previously flourishing plantation - on flickr a lot of the photgraphs are FRAGMENTARY.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=middleton+inn#page=0

ALSO - I was recently having a conversation with a friend, who is a very intelligent marketer, about William Christenberry and Anselm Kiefer - and the friend mentioned that Kiefer's work is "dark and depressing and pessimistic." My response was that pessimism and optimism are secular terms, and that I prefer to think of his work as being about sacrifice and redemption. His resonse to THAT was to say that he didn't believe in sacrifice, that basically everyone is out for themsevles, and no one truly sacrifices anything for anyone else!! I didn't even know where to begin to respond to that! I was left dumbfounded and speechless!!!

[daniel a. siedell]

Jason, Not only does Rublev enable Pollock, he also enables cabinet makers, motorcycle mechanics, et al. One of the problems I detect with much "blue collar" or "Joe the Plumber" criticism of the arts, especially abstract painting, is simple disbelief in the capacity of material to evoke or be a means of transcendent grace. I am currently reading Matthew Crawford's book, "Shop class as Soulcraft" and it is remarkably relevant to studio practice. Western painting since the Renaissance has been concerned to distance itself from its origins in the mechanical arts as it ascended to the realm of the liberal arts. Some currents of modernism are attempts to undo this.

My inclination is to believe that "average" blue collar guy who mocks Pollock or abstract painting,doesn't believe in art's capacity to embody transcendence and also doesn't believe in the transcendent nature of his own trade.

For the Orthodox Christian, Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity is beloved and venerated not only by art historians with Ph.D.'s but by car mechanics and plumbers.

Now, that is interesting.

Thanks for the thought-provoking review and posts, Jason.

[Jason Hesiak]

For the Orthodox Christian, Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity is beloved and venerated not only by art historians with Ph.D.'s but by car mechanics and plumbers.

OH MAN YES that IS interesting! ggrr i'm jealous of this cool place called Russia! maybe it is the way you say because there they touch and kiss their icons and such (in general).

Western painting since the Renaissance has been concerned to distance itself from its origins in the mechanical arts as it ascended to the realm of the liberal arts. Some currents of modernism are attempts to undo this.

What exactly do you mean by "the mechanical arts"? and practically what did this difference entail?? interesting....because it was right about that time when buildings started to LOOK mechanical rather than be edified by machines. and what currents in modernism were you referring to?

and "Shop class as Soulcraft" sounds really interesting too!

One of the problems I detect with much "blue collar" or "Joe the Plumber" criticism of the arts, especially abstract painting, is simple disbelief in the capacity of material to evoke or be a means of transcendent grace.

Amen. But why the difference between here and the East in that regard? this is my new life question.....

and you are welcome for the thought-provoking review and posts....thank you for....well....the way you live your life....like i mentioned :)

[Dan Siedell]

Jason, It's not Russia, per se, but the Christian tradition that does not see painting or art as a leisure-time activity of the cultured and well read but a fundamental part of the Church.

In the Middle Ages painting was understood to be a mechanical art, that is, an art that could be learned by any male, free or slave, and one which did not possess a "theory" but was learned through doing, through the apprenticeship system. In the Renaissance, with the invention of linear perspective, Alberti's "theory" of painting, there develops the notion that painting participates in the 'liberal arts,' that is, those arts with a theory (theology, philosophy, mathematics, etc.) and which only free males could practice.

Painting was elevated above sculpture because it was, well, less messy and "workmanlike."

In the West painting has lost its vital connection to the Church and so there exists a split. However, I don't think it is merely in the arts, but in all of the arts of making, high, low, or otherwise.

[Jason Hesiak]

OK well that was one of the more interesting things i've heard in a long time. and i'm a LITTLE embarrassed that i didn't already know about all this theory/apprenticeship stuff! although i had an inclination about it....i didn't really know the history of it explicitly like that! thank you, sir dan!

so that brings an interesting thought to mind....the "blue collar workers" who participate in the "mechanical arts" now....do not believe that "the arts" have the power to be a means of grace, truth or transcendence....because....well for the same reason that italian peole eat more spagetti than rice. it sounds rather unfortunate....if you think of all the circumstances and beliefs behind such an outlook. reminds me of Pink Floy's "Us and Them". yes you are welcome for the greatly sophisticated Pink Floyd reference.