God in the Gallery: A Symposium, ch. 2

Today's second engagement with Daniel A. Siedell's God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art comes from Matt Milliner, who writes on chapter two entitled "A History of Modern Art." [Part I by James K. A. Smith may be found here.]  Matthew J. Milliner is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Princeton University. His blogger profile continues: "In a previous life he graduated from the same town's Theological Seminary. In the life before that he was a Youth Director at Media Presbyterian Church (PA). In the life before that he went to Wheaton College (IL). In the life before that he went to Haddonfield Memorial High School (NJ). In the life before that he was born and raised mostly in Jersey. In the life before that he did nothing, because the Origenist doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul was condemned in 553AD." Matt blogs at http://millinerd.com.

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The fact that I have no authority to make grand pronouncements will not keep me from doing so: God in the Gallery is the starting point for the future of the Christianity and art conversation, at least (or especially) in the North American evangelical, not to mention post-evangelical, milieu. I am consequently grateful to participate in this forum which, following James’ opening remarks on the importance of informed engagement, now proceeds to the topic of “modern” art, which I understand to be distinguishable from postmodern or contemporary art (beginning c. 1960), a topic which Siedell addresses in later chapters.

An analogy to describe Siedell’s aim in this chapter can be found in the task of historians, such as Edward Grant, who seeks to show the undeniable, but normatively ignored, Christian backdrop of modern science. But while there are many scholars at work correcting the doggedly secularized narrative of science, there are far fewer, if any, doing the same for the history of art, let alone the history of modern art. Siedell seeks to fill this lacuna, describing his agenda as follows: “A history of modern art can be written that reveals that Christianity in all its myriad cultural and material manifestations is never absent from the modern artist.”

To accomplish this, Siedell begins by relating modern art’s introduction to the American public in Manhattan’s 1913 Armory Show. He then takes two figures who bookend modernism - Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Alfred J. Barr Jr. (1902-1981) – and highlights the overlooked Christian aspects of their given perspectives. Likewise, Siedell marshals Peter Berger’s post-secular sociology, and theologian Graham Ward’s contention that “the saeculum [has] no autonomous existence” to buttress his transcendent reading of modernism. Siedell has just scratched the surface. We can hope that he, or someone inspired by his account, will extend this traditionally religious (not merely “spiritual”) reading of modernism into the book length treatment it deserves. New Republic art critic Jed Perl seems to already be moving in that direction, as has Steven Schloesser with his book Jazz Age Catholicism (albeit in a way that encompasses literature and music as well as art). However the religious account of modern art is broached, an inevitable discovery awaits: A double-barreled attempt to reconcile Christianity (specifically Catholicism) to modern art has long been on offer in the careers of Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson.

And yet, these figures have long been outside the Protestant purview, making Siedell’s Protestant reading of modernism unusual. Perhaps overly determined by the more negative Protestant perspective (Siedell seems to have Hans Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of Culture in view), God in the Gallery aims to actively oppose it. Siedell contends that when Christians adopt a negative stance towards modernism, they play into secular hands: “Neither secular scholars nor conservative Christian critics want Christianity in the history of modern art.”

Still, as Siedell unfurls his more positive take on modernity, he does not strike a Tillichian bargain, that is, he refrains from writing a theological blank check to high culture. Instead, Siedell actively opposes the Liberal Protestant paradigm that he has criticized in this forum before. To use a familiar analogy, Siedell founds his cultural engagement upon the rock of the Seventh Ecumenical Council’s iconic Christology, in contrast to vague theologies of culture which have, in retrospect, proven to be houses built on sand. In practice, this means Siedell both permits a quintessentially modern artist such as Mark Rothko only an “undetermined iconicity,” while allowing Rothko’s participation in the economy of the icon nonetheless. While some might suggest this is not dissimilar to Maritain and Gilson’s modernist reconciliation strategy, the case could also be made that it constitutes an improvement.

Refreshing as I find Siedell’s perspective to be, I conclude with a criticism: A student who reads this chapter and plunges into (what’s left of) the world of modern art in search of - to use the book’s guiding analogy - altars to an unknown god, would be like a young evangelical who reads his way into Anglicanism through the poetry of George Herbert, only to then open last week’s newspaper. St. Paul may have found one agnostic altar amongst literally thousands of Athenian idols, but Siedell seems to take this exception to be the rule. He cites Augustine and Origen’s strategy of “despoiling of the Egyptians;” but it should also be noted that heated debate with Varro (constituting a hulking chunk of City of God) and Celcus (Origen’s longest treatise) were their more normative modes of cultural engagement. Many modern artists knew exactly what God they were seeking to offend. Accordingly, an equally appropriate exemplar to illustrate Pauline engagement of modern art would be not only the altar to an unknown God from Acts 17, but an approximately contemporary creation: The famous “ass-Christ” graffito, (beating Serrano to the punch by two millennia), instructively inscribed, “Alexamenos worships his god.”

But to press this point too hard would be unfair: Siedell, who has himself admitted “sharp sympathy pains” with those who dismiss the art world wholesale, anticipates it. He is, of course, aware of modernism’s anti-religious strain, but suggests we don’t take the bait: “Even as rejected, [Christianity] lingers to haunt the avant-gardist, for it will not be rejected completely. Ultimately, it cannot.” Still, the Christian must reserve the right to reject some strands of modern art (due, perhaps, as much to boredom as offense). This is to say, Siedell’s positive perspective should be read alongside, not in replacement of, the previous, more dismissive accounts of modernism that he seeks to correct – accounts which, I like to think, retain their value.

Please note: My more full-length review of God in the Gallery can be read at First Things.

Comments

[Dan Siedell]

Matt, your comments put your finger right on the pulse of my project, not merely the book that is the subject of this symposium, but my entire project as a curator, critic, art historian, and Christian.

I find your example of the young evangelical powerful and illuminating. My only response is to suggest that my book was written for someone already in the middle of the messy art world and the messy church, already on the inside, whether as an undergraduate or graduate student, young artist or faculty member, someone who needs poetry, in art and in the church, who needs to be reminded that amidst the muck and mire there is reason for hope and a reason to believe that God has put them in the art world for a reason.

I wrote this book from the inside, having completed a doctorate in modern and contemporary art, curated dozens of exhibitions, written dozens of articles and a few books. This book was an attempt to assemble all of my resources as an art historian and curator as well a Christian to produce an artifact that could prove to myself that God has a plan for my life in art, that I am where God wants me to be.

I plead guilty to being critical of Protestant writing on art--especially evangelical and Reformed writing. Yet I am critical for only one reason.

They just didn't help me, neither as a curator and critic nor as a Christian.

[geoffrey holsclaw]

matt and dan,

thank you for this discussion. it's great. i also was one of those who read Rookmaaker and Schaeffer's "escape from reason" blah blah blah, but I was always enamored by modern art (rothko, jaspers, pollock, etc).

looking forward to more.

[David L. O'Hara - Augustana College, SD]

Matt,

Thanks for this review. Like Siedell, you obviously recognize that writing about beauty ought to be beautiful itself. I agree with you: this is the book all of us who care about visual culture need to read right now.

Let me offer one minor criticism: Diogenes Laertius tells us that there was not just one altar to the *agnosto theo* but many. We don't know how many were still in Athens in Paul's day, but they may have been numerous. Likewise, while there may have been thousands of Athenian idols, there was a small pantheon and likely only hundreds of statues and altars in the vicinity of the Areopagos and only a few of them of significance (though of course there were likely thousands of idols in homes and groves surrounding Athens, especially if we include all the two- and three-dimensional representations of deities and demi-gods in pottery, funereal sites, etc.)

Nevertheless, the ratio of large altars to known gods to large altars to unknown gods in Athens may not have been as great as you suggest; such may also be the case in contemporary art. I chose to assume the ratio in contemporary art to be small, since that has the practical effect of making it easier for me to see the ways in which contemporary artists are trying to propitiate the God whose name they do not yet know.

I look forward to reading more of your writing - and of Siedell's.

[Dan Siedell]

Dave, thanks for your historical insights. I think another biblical picture that is becoming more relevant for me is the book of Jonah and the mysterious conversions of the pagan sailors and the miraculous repentance of Nineveh, which make the contemporary art world seem pretty tame by comparison.

Geoff, I always got the impression of a certain kind of "distance" from most Protestant and Evangelical writers on art. Most were theologians, philosophers, or literary critics who approached art as outsiders, who would take day trips to museums and galleries as part of their participation in culture as a leisure time activity. As a critic and curator who was being paid by an art institution and for whom paying attention to art was my livelihood, not my hobby or pastime, I wanted something that had something more. What i discovered was that "something more" was either found in the work of poets and writers who weren't Christians or theologians writing within the Eastern Church, where paintings had developed a liturgical and sacramental role in the spiritual formation of the Christian, not just an expression of a "cultural mandate."

My take on most Protestant and Evangelical writing on the subject is simply that it wasn't enough for me. It might be enough for others. But my book is written primarily for those who sense that it's not enough.

[millinerd]

That is fascinating about Diogenes Laertius which I did not know. I stand happily corrected.

Although Schaeffer and Rookmaaker may not have been enough, without them we might not be having this conversation. Is it too flaky to suggest they're how we got this far? Furthermore, isn't this (outgrowing an earlier generation's ideas) how scholarship should work?

Speaking of Schaeffer, it's fascinating that the Maritains had a sort of L'Abri before L'Abri, hosting artists and strung out seekers at their home to discuss issues of the day, many attendees later becoming rather influential (such as the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev).

For the sake of Dan's project, it would be nice to know the extent to which Berdyaev influenced Maritain with Orthodoxy, if at all.

[Dan Siedell]

A gaping hole in my project, which has been pointed out several times by my Anglican friends in the UK, is the Catholic revival with Maritain and French Catholic thought in general. However, my book was helped along a bit with Rowan Williams and it was deeply influenced by Cardinal Schonborn book on the icon. I must admit that my reticence with addressing the French Catholic revival was simply that I did not find artists like Chagall and Rouault important participants in the historical narrative of modern art I was developing.

I can only imagine that Paris had to be an important meeting ground for Catholic and Orthodox theologians at several key moments in the twentieth century and very much worth looking into.

At the risk of belaboring my protracted ambivalence with Schaeffer and Rookmaaker and speaking only for myself, I encountered both of these writers at the tail end of writing my doctoral dissertation, three years after working with the critic Donald B. Kuspit at Stony Brook (New York) on an M.A. And so I can pretty safely say that their work played no role whatsoever in inspiring me to work with modern and contemporary art.

Yet I can also say that my feeling of dissatisfaction with their perspectives did inspire me in some way to develop different ways to think about Christian faith and modern art. They were very helpful in a purely negative way.

But there's a bigger problem that the readers of this blog should recognize: the remarkably thin literature on Christian faith and modern and contemporary art. For you philosophers out there, imagine a situation in which you are obliged to treat Francis Schaeffer as a serious philosopher who was an "influence" on Christian philosophical thought and the primary textbook offered for the study of modern philosophy in a Christian context is something entitled "Modern Philosophy and a Death of a Culture," which were originally given as talks to InterVarsity students and you have, in a nutshell, the challenges of thinking and writing about modern-contemporary art in a Christian context.

[David L. O'Hara - Augustana College, SD]

Matt, Diogenes Laertius is sort of a mix between Copleston's history of philosophy and /People/ magazine. Not extremely reliable historically, but often he's the best we have. You can find his account of the altars under his chapter on Epimenides, available online. Also, if you google my name and "Epimenides" you can find a chapel talk I gave on the Areopagos several years ago. It's interesting to note that the man who built those altars is the very man whom St. Paul quotes when he writes "in him we live and move etc."

[Tracy Shier]

In light of the foregoing, thought this might make an interesting conversation piece.

Article here:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6723980.ece?&EMC-Bltn=9CQC3B

[millinerd]

For better or for worse, the bait has been taken:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5922797/Pope-condemns-Bible-vandalism-exhibition.html

[Jason Hesiak]

Seems to me that the issue at hand in the book is less about REJECTING the Protestant reading of modern art than about moving past the protestant reading of contemporary art as "MERELY instrumental"...and like someone said...trying to engage art on its own terms....which is, yes, VERY refresing!

.....example....My take on most Protestant and Evangelical writing on the subject is simply that it wasn't enough for me. It might be enough for others.

I always got the impression of a certain kind of "distance" from most Protestant and Evangelical writers on art. Most were theologians, philosophers, or literary critics who approached art as outsiders, who would take day trips to museums and galleries as part of their participation in culture as a leisure time activity.

Amen. Frustrating. Enough said, as far as I'm concerned. For now.

where paintings had developed a liturgical and sacramental role in the spiritual formation of the Christian, not just an expression of a "cultural mandate."

This is the refreshing part. As someone who has actaully been formed quite deeply by my experiences with art and various artifacts of our culture, past and present, I just don't understand how art gets treated the way it does in Protestant circles. I guess its the iconoclasm, which, Dan, you mention in the book quite a bit. But so then I never really understood where these Protestant friends of mine thought they got them-selves from. I guess its its supposed to be as if those words "sin" and "redemption" form us from the infinitely-thin ether of heaven with no medium.

did inspire me in some way to develop different ways to think about Christian faith and modern art. They were very helpful in a purely negative way.

LOL - the refreshingly blatant statement that was missing in the book!! :D (from what I've read so far :)