Art and The Postmodern Church

Thoughts on art and the postmodern church in four parts.

by Daniel A. Siedell

I. 
An increasingly important part of the life of a curator of modern and contemporary art is to attend art fairs, particularly those in Miami in December and New York in February.  The art fair brings art galleries from around the world to a convention center that enables museum directors, curators, critics and collectors from around the world to look at art without having to go to each of these galleries.  The fairs are a great place to meet artists, see collectors, re-connect with colleagues in the profession and chat with gallery staff.  But they are terrible places to look at art.  Each gallery sets up a booth that is crammed with art and during the course of the fair the cramped booth is crammed with people.  Both the cramped quarters of the booth and the crowded confines make the art impossible to look at.  The art fairs pose a huge problem for curators, whether they know it or not.  The problem is not necessarily the art fairs themselves, but that a growing number of curators are going to the fairs instead of making studio visits with artists, spending time with gallery directors in their galleries, and looking at art—either in the artist’s studio or in the gallery space.  Both the studio and gallery spaces are more conducive to in-depth contemplation and reflection.  But it’s hard and inefficient work.  If curators continue to go to artist studios, take the trouble to cultivate deep relationships with galleries and see their exhibitions, then the art fairs offer a nice, if sometimes overwhelming complement.  But when curators merely rely on the art fairs, their work becomes, over time, superficial.  It tends to produce exhibitions that look like every other exhibition, which lack the depth and texture that should characterize curatorial relationships with contemporary artists. 
    I was in New York two weeks ago for the art fairs in New York.  But, as is my custom, I spent as little time at the art fairs as possible, choosing to fill up my time meeting with collectors, making studio visits, talking with gallery directors, and looking at art, gleefully free of trendy crowds.  I did not see as much “art” or network with as many people if I’d merely camped out at the fairs.  But I had other work to do.  But, given my studio and gallery work as a foundation, my brief stays at the fairs were enjoyable.

II.
I am also writing a book on modern and contemporary art and Christian faith for Baker Academic’s new series, edited by William Dyrness and Robert Johnston, called Cultural Exegesis, and I am presently writing a chapter on contemporary art and the postmodern church.  Because I always seem to find myself in New York during Great Lent, I enjoy the opportunity to attend services at several churches in Manhattan.  One of my favorites is St. Thomas Episcopal on Fifth Avenue, which is just a few blocks from my hotel.  I was also invited to attend the Village Church, a PCA church that is located in Greenwich Village and meets in a beautiful old Seventh Day Adventist Church.  I have several friends in the artworld who worship at the Village Church.  By all accounts, it is a remarkable fellowship.  Just a cursory glance at the Village Church’s website reveals that it is nothing if not on the front lines of urban engagement (www.villagechurchnyc.com).  The site’s progressive visual aesthetic, its emphasis on searching, questioning, and exploring, all suggest that the Village Church, if not self-defining as “emergent,” is nonetheless a fellow traveler.   It is a very young church fellowship, many are students, young married couples, who are smart, attractive, engaging, and clearly committed to following Jesus.  It is an enjoyable, friendly, well-educated group.  I could have spent all afternoon with them. 
    Two days earlier, I attended morning Eucharist with barley twenty people at St. Thomas at 800 am.  Not a single person greeted me until I shook the Rector’s hand upon leaving the chapel after the Eucharist.  The contrast between my experience of the Village Church and St. Thomas could not have been sharper.  It would be easy to contrast them thusly:  one is full of joy and authentic praise and the other is rote habit for those who are legalistically following the rules of Christian religion and not the authentic relationship with Christ.  However, the Rector’s simple and short homily (and I mean short, like five minutes max) hit me like a ton of bricks.  He encouraged us during our Lenten fasts to fast from sin.  Why worry about giving up certain things like alcohol, chocolate, meat, etc. and still sin, making yourself a hypocrite as well as a sinner?  And as I left St. Thomas to meld into the hustle and bustle of midtown Manhattan on a Friday morning, I realized that it was only at such a liturgical, sacramental place, a place in which the parish was involved in various forms of Lenten observance, that the power of his quite un-liturgical, un-sacramental statement:  “fast from sin” could have such remarkable power.

III.
I concluded my first contribution to this site (“Aesthetic Practice and the Postmodern Church”) with the following:

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.

As I was going about my business in New York and since my return home, I still believe the emerging church or the emergent movement is, to my mind, the only place that art and the aesthetic can be discussed and debated in an open manner.  However, it will remain just that:  discussion and debate unless it is accompanied by the sustenance of a robust sacramental and liturgical life.  To put it crassly, the difficult, radical, and problematic discussions about art and the aesthetic have to take place at places like the PCA Village Church but for it to have any long-term impact, it has to be nourished by places like the Anglo-Catholic St. Thomas Episcopal Church.  It is spanning the space between these two churches that is the challenge.
    Let me state it the following way:  the liturgical and sacramental richness of the ancient faith makes it possible to worship God everywhere.  We don’t think in those terms, as influenced as we are by our non-sacramental, non-liturgical, rationalism that shapes our Christian lives.  But this belief saturates the Scriptures themselves, which is often overlooked by high churchers as well as the low.  We have to reconsider the fact that we can only utter such praises as Psalm 24 (“the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”) and Solomon’s temple dedication (1 Kings 8: 27) in which he testifies to the fact that nothing made with human hands can contain God, if we also recognize that God indeed wants us to worship in specific ways, in specific places.  We are too quick to quote Jesus’s statement to the Samaritan woman (John 4: 21-24) that God is worshipped only in “spirit and in truth” that we forget that Jesus can say this only after he has told her that she must worship in Jerusalem—that the Samaritans do indeed worship in ignorance. Solomon can praise God that he can’t be defined by a building only after he has built the Temple.  We can look forward to the New Jerusalem when there will be no need for the Sun because the Lord’s uncreated light will shine on us only when we follow Asaph and exclaim that we only know the truth of the world when we “enter the sanctuary of God” (Psalm 73).   
    How can we see Christ everywhere, as Alexander Schmemann once wrote, when we don’t first recognize that we see Christ in a special way via icons, and receive him in a special way through the Eucharist, and meet him in a special way at church?  The “everywhere” has meaning ultimately when there is a “somewhere.”  Our tendency is to embrace the “everywhere” without first respecting and assimilating the “somewhere.”  The Village Church is “everywhere” and St. Thomas is “somewhere.”  The former needs to recognize that God has indeed sacramentally and liturgically given specific ways to worship, ways that have been preserved by the Living Tradition of the Nicene Church.  But the latter needs to recognize that the “somewhere” does not limit where we see Christ, or, in the context of the visual arts, how we make art, but actually serves as the engine that pushes us out into the world, which, of course, is what the “Mass” actually means:  a recognition of the sacred space and at the same time an emphasis in the “going out.” We are “sent out” but we are “sent out” from somewhere specific.   

IV.
The art fairs are wonderful social occasions; they are the “everywhere” of curatorial work.  The galleries and artist studios are the “somewhere” of curatorial work.  But I cannot have the former without remaining committed to the latter.  In fact, the art fairs are only productive if the foundation of traditional ways of viewing art remain.  The problem is that the art fair isn’t really about art, it’s about social relationships that “art” generates.  My concluding impression of the Village Church and what I can extrapolate from other emerging churches and fellowships involved in one way or another in the emergent movement, is that they are filled with terrific people who love and want to follow Jesus, people with whom I want to spend an hour at the local coffee house or pub talking theology, art, politics.  But it’s not church.  It needs the sacramental and liturgical specificity of the Nicene church, in all its dogmatic, aesthetic richness in order to meet God.  My concern is that the emergent movement cultivates strong social situations occasioned by “God.”  I enjoy the Village Church as a meeting of followers of Jesus and brothers and sisters in Christ, but only after I worship at St. Thomas. Just as I worry that curatorial work will, over time, become more superficial and “socially based” through the influence of the art fairs, I worry that over time, the emergent movement will likewise remain shallow, not become “deep” as Jason Clark aptly observes, because of its focus on the social. The dialogue about the aesthetic and the visual arts must start in the postmodern church, but to have a deep impact, it will have to be sustained by the work of the premodern church, the Nicene Church, the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, not only as a spiritual, but earthly reality.

Comments

[Jason Hesiak]

Daniel,

Good post...and its good to hear from you again. I was wondering where you were heading with Part I, and then it all came together. This is definietly a struggle we face. Thanks,

Jason

[Tim]

Thanks for the pointed words. Though snapshots are beautiful, it seems the richness and fullness of God can be seen most clearly as a mosaic of the many parts of the body of Christ, rather than a snapshot of one local expression.

[Dan Wilt]

Solid post, all around. I do think that there is a recovery of the arts that could, and should, transcend the view of aesthetics held by the church of the seven councils.

For the aesthetic to be embraced as a vehicle to elevate God is one thing. For the aesthetic to gladly elevate God and human beings, without apology and in recognition that humankind was meant to be a magnifying lens of God and not an obscuring one, would be a higher view of aesthetics that the Church could embrace.

The assumption that human beings began in glory, and not in sin, would be a welcome expansion of the Church's historical aesthetic; innovation would be less suspect and personal excellence celebrated.

[len hjalmarson]

Great post overall, and I appreciate the paradox of "place." But I was puzzled at your reference to John 4; I can't find Jesus making the statement you attribute to him that worship must occur in Jerusalem. Are you assuming he made such a statement based on the woman's statement in verse 20?

[Grant Wahlquist]

The contrast that you speak of, between the local and the universal, the formal and informal, aggiornamento and ressourcement, it's something that really speaks to me. The difficult question is, how can we find space in our theology and in our church practice for both terms in each pair? Is it inevitable that we float in one direction or the other? The search for that balance point causes tension, but it's a good tension. Wonderful post.