God in the Gallery: A Symposium, ch. 6

The final engagement of Daniel Siedell's God in the Gallery comes from Kevin Hamilton. He will be talking about chapter 6 entitled "Art, Liturgy, and the Church." Kevin Hamilton is an artist and researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he heads the New Media Program in the School of Art and Design. He works in gallery and public settings in a variety of media, and also writes on interface history, mobility, creativity, and cybernetics. Past projects can be viewed at www.kevinhamilton.org, and he blogs at www.complexfields.org.

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Chapter 6 of Dan's book outlines an ambitious and urgent task, a radical proposition for a project that is without precedent in my lifetime. "The task then," writes Siedell, "is to articulate the expansive aesthetics of the church." Key here is that he chooses to use the word articulate, and not invent, create, or transform. Also crucial here is the inherent failure built in to the act of articulating something that is also "expansive." Unlike so many (academic) efforts at articulation or description, the project Dan outlines is one that will remain incomplete, transitional, contingent. 

At the risk of merely rehashing Dan's fine work, I would like to underline some of the ways in which this call is likely to be misunderstood. The radicality of Dan's project might be overlooked by those for whom the church is a restricted space and time, a set of rituals and practices, rather than an expansive, inhabited manifestation of the Kingdom of God. If, like myself, your spiritual formation has been lacking in Ecclesiology, you might easily miss the excitement, urgency, and relevance of Siedell's call. Here are some points I'd like to stress as a cheerleader for this cause - perhaps others will disagree with my take on Dan's sketch.

1. God in the Gallery does NOT call for a new aesthetic that will "set apart" churches from secular institutions in matters of branding, education, art collection, consumption, or commission. To ask of the Lord "How should we see, and how should we see together?" is different than asking "What should I look at?" or even "What should the church look like?" We start from the bodies we have, the sensory experiences granted us by God's revealed Word and the Church's sacramental postures. From these rhythms and habits of perceiving, the senses we utilize or neglect as we reach to serve God and God's beloved ones, we will explore the aesthetic of being the church. Since we best understand these sensations and postures by living with others who also sense and sense differently, we will discover the "aesthetics of the church" in conversation with other aesthetics. But we will not orient ourselves according to any aesthetic product or affect.

2. Dan's project is also not a call for a visible, aesthetic or stylistic influence by Christians in the secularized spheres of Contemporary Art. If the goal of inventing an aesthetic risks missing the improvisational revelation of the Holy Spirit, then the goal of transforming an aesthetic risks adopting the body of the colonizer, for whom the senses are dulled, instrumental, and lacking in empathy. The "expansive" aesthetics of the church do not confine themselves to sanctuaries, to daily prayer, to Sabbath time. But neither do they aspire to transform "other spaces" into the domain of church - because there is no space outside the domain of the church. In seeking to "articulate" the church's expansive aesthetics, we will move into multiple spheres of influence and exchange, where Christ is recognized as Lord to differing degrees, but where Christ is King nonetheless. We can neither withdraw as a church from participation in defining art, nor can we approach this process as one to be commanded for God. 

3. Lastly, I don't think Dan's call requires that church members embrace the languages and postures of Contemporary Art. As Dan's own critical/hermeneutic work on the artwork of Celaya demonstrates, we will discover the aesthetics of Christ's church throughout creation, wherever humans struggle to understand the potential of molded matter for communication, revelation, celebration. We will have to remain in relationship to multiple and diverse aesthetics. There is much to be discovered in this task through engagement with "low" culture as well, in the design of everyday consumer products, in mass media. Potential for discovery lies even in an individual church body's vernacular history of struggle with color, light, shape and form. I agree with Dan that many Christians have lost out in their ignorance of the worlds of Contemporary Art, where expert craftspersons have been learning for decades about how aesthetics emerge. But if the church is to remain in conversation with multiple sites of origin in the articulation of aesthetics, then the worlds of Contemporary Art will comprise only part of these important sites. In fact, one topic worth discussing is whether the church's most focussed engagements with Contemporary Art - organizations like CIVA or IAM - might be too narrow in scope (as broad as they are). Though I wholly concede that there is too little knowledge of Contemporary Art within the church, I submit that the church should avoid mimicking existing disciplinary structures. 

As a young art student first introduced to Modern Art as a collective process of invention and discovery, I was thrilled by the "blank slate" of it all. After Duchamp, it seemed, after Lenin's revolution, after Picasso, Pollock, or the Critical Art Ensemble, Art could be ANYTHING. Late-modern criticism of this project helped me better see the destructive nihilisms of this project, the impossibility of a blank slate. Even better, re-engagement with the church has shown me the strongest living example of humble discovery in relation, over hubristic invention from scratch. If, as Yoder said, "there is no scratch from which to start," then the project proposed in God in the Gallery stands to serve as a radical answer to modernism, and the current place of art in global commerce. 

There is a nagging, and ominous problem here, however. If there is no domain that is outside the church from the perspective of a body of people seeking revelation, there certainly are "outsiders" to such a body. The church can only be the church as its doors are open to all God loves - and so the project of "articulating the expansive aesthetics of the church" will only happen as the body is, well...expansive. For all kinds of reasons that are outside the domain of Dan's book, the church I know seems closed to many with whom we should be in conversation. I hope that humble confession and prayerful correction of this will be part of the project, as I approach it.

Comments

[Dan Siedell]

kevin, others might disagree with your assessment of my project, especially as it is worked out in this chapter on the art and the church, but i don't. i agree with dostoevsky and the tradition from which he comes, when he says that beauty will save the world. that most of us have a certain presumptions about what this beauty looks like is indeed the very problem that i tried to attack in the book and in the chapter on the church. one simply cannot be a christian, a follower of jesus christ, without an aesthetic imagination, without recognizing beauty, without seeing the face of christ shining in the faces of our fellows and the presence of christ in works of art--not art in general--there is a lot of talk on this blog about art in theory, art in general, but when it does get specific, it gets rather trite and silly.

and so perhaps the reason that this book has received so little discussion amongst the readers of this site have to do with exactly what my chapter on the church reveals. it seems that it is the aesthetic, whether in contemporary art or design, that seems to be the blind spot for the pomo church, despite the fact that there seems to be so much talk around and about art and the aesthetic. art and the aesthetic remain, in good enlightenment and protestant fashion, 'decoration,' some visual icing on top of the philosophical or theological cake: a little didactic help, like the sunday school felt board. or, for the truly sophisticated, a kind of leisure time activity, an indulgence of the 'goodness' of culture. bleh. i agree with tolstoy, art either is of the most important activities of life or it's nothing and shouldn't be bothered with.

art and design are inherently ethical practices, and they are so because they are aesthetic. the church fathers knew this. why don't we? the fact that pomo churches are designed, branded, and packaged in contemporary design fashions, that artists flock to this church or that, that pastors, emergent or otherwise, look like artists or creative directors at ad agencies, using a jackson pollock painting in a sermon, does nothing to demonstrate an understanding of beauty, of the aesthetic, and its ethical implications in the church and outside the church. this is why i am so anxious to read jamie smith's new book, 'desiring the kingdom.'

many people want to praise art and design and the aesthetic in general, in theory, but few, if any, can actually look at a work of art, or work of design and say, 'this is good' 'this is bad' and this is why. if you can't do that, you don't know art or design, because it doesn't exist in general. it exists only in specific manifestations, concrete artifacts.

[Dayton]

Fine response Kev. And Dan, your response made me smile.

It reminds me of a time I really pissed off a pastor in Philadelphia who had asked me to join in a discussion group tasked with trying to make his church more "arts soluble." He went on and on at one point, dancing around art and "artsy" ideas. Precisely the icing perspective. You nailed it in your second paragraph above.

Eventually I asked him what I thought was an obvious and constructive question: "Do you have any idea why art *ought* to be an essential part of the life of your church?" (the ethical question in a way, I think...) Perhaps it caused him to realize that his only answer at that point was that it might help the church maintain that particular neighborhood's hipster status quo. I dunno... but art was certainly important to him as an idea, rather than a concrete reality.

Months later he told me that the question really pissed him off, and that he'd been harboring resentment toward me for some time. Whatever. I think it's a good question.

[Dan Siedell]

It least your comments provoked a response. the perception, even among the most cultured and progressive is that art is something done as a leisure time activity, as if "i go to art museums" suffices as evidence that one takes art seriously, that one is "on the right side" (unlike those uncultured fundamentalists). most of our colleagues believe that art should be an important part of a christian's life, or a theologian's life, or whatever. but most have absolutely no idea what that means or what that would actually look like. and that's not good.

art is one of the rare cultural practices in which being an expert or specialist actually DISQUALIFIES one from exercises such expertise. and that occurs because most have received enough bad art education (like art is "self expression" and art's meaning is "whatever you want it to be" or that art illustrates a philosophical worldview or art is fun and affirms one's creativity and individuality) to render any contrary statements elitist because, of course, art's whatever you want it to be.

that is simply wrong. i get that from my 19yr old undergrads and i tell them it's wrong. much of what i have to do with my students is force them to unlearn what they think they know about art. that this is also the response of philosophers and theologians should surprise me, but it doesn't. because pomo and emergent or not, contemporary christianity remains over-intellectualized, dogmatized, and otherwise trapped in the prison house of enlightenment protestantism precisely (and perhaps only) by virtue of its inability to deal with the concrete reality of specific works of art.

pavel florensky once said that the greatest and most powerful apologetic at the disposal of christians is the following: the icon of the Holy Trinity by andrei rublev exists, therefore God exists. i think florensky, who was not only a priest and art historian, but a brilliant mathematician was right.

[Kevin Hamilton]

Hey guys, thanks for feedback. Though usually I'm the last one to try to bring things down to the practical, it feels like some suggestions might be in order. (Maybe it's just my syllabus-writing brain at work.)

When I think about how to bring this home to action, I keep thinking about how important regular, collective life with a particular artwork is to the task. One blog post, one small group meeting, one sermon spent in deep examination and contemplation of an artwork is a start. But to truly and corporately explore the contemplation of the aesthetic, the seeing and talking about seeing, it will take more regular contact.

Christians have this at least with what's in their churches, even if it's just the architecture. But perhaps there might be other ways to do this on the way to actually purchasing or borrowing an artwork for a church. A group of believers might decide to live with the same reproduction in their homes for a while, for example...or a monthly re-screening of the same film for a year or so.

Duration must have something to do with this, since we're talking about the durational, processional life of the church.

[Dan Siedell]

kevin, your suggestion to get practical is right on. i wonder what a syllabus/curriculum for churches, for divinity school chapels, etc. might look like. it takes work to look at art (painting, film, design, et al)and that work takes time. i think your suggestions are very good. Here are some others that might be helpful:

1-design structured and focused museum tours. my 11 yrs as a museum curator has taught me that there is a discipline in looking at art at a museum and the that discipline needs to be learned and will unlock a deeper experience of the work. letting people just drift around doesn't cut it.

2-design opportunities for students(pastors, theologians, etc.) to experience and participate in what goes on in a studio critique. instead of merely having the artist have an 'open studio' for members of the church, also have a critique. there is a way of talking about art in the context of a critique that is a remarkable experience, one that i find to be foundational for understanding art. i'm sure you both, dayton and kevin, can attest to the importance, challenge, and opportunities of the studio critique. and it is something very few people are privy to. it will, to my mind, transform one's understanding of art.

any thoughts?

[Eric Lee]

"...that discipline needs to be learned and will unloack a deeper experience of the work."

I think this is extremely important. Both in the first chapter of your book and then in the conclusion (pp. 161-4), you point out that people in our society tend to want unmediated, immediate access. Nothing less is dismissed as "elitist." I think, of the many extremely profound insights of your book, perhaps the one that sticks out the most to me is how you point out, whether implicitly or explicitly all throughout your book, that the discussion and production of modern art is itself a tradition. Cultured despisers do not want to have to do the work to enter into such a (or any, really) tradition. As you say above, "it takes work to look at art and that work takes time."

One thing I've been thinking about regarding how all discourses are traditioned would be to simply just point this out. For instance, people who are into theology/philosophy discussions know that their disciplines definitely come out of a tradition and so they must do the hard work to study those before them. Cynthia Nielsen often points out something similar in regard to jazz: you've always got to first learn the standards, the works of the masters, and then hone your chops on the structures of the chord progressions so that you can then improvise. But this applies to just about anything: computer programmers must learn languages (usually multipe ones with varying grammars); lawyers must go through the Bar exam and all the requisite schooling; scientists must learn the actual scientific method and spend many hours in the lab or in the field practicing their craft (see Michael Polanyi's work); etc.

A comment posted on this blog a few years ago even brings this out a bit:

I remember reading where Oprah told Toni Morrison that she liked her books but found herself consulting the dictionary sometimes in order to understand. “That, my dear,” replid Ms. Morrison, “is called reading.”

Therefore, perhaps it might be helpful to point out that the tradition of modern art and art criticism are traditions in analogous ways to how each of our own disciplines are traditions. The chapter on art criticism and the ensuing dialogues between Greenberg and Rosenberg helpfully showed that there are entire conversations around which entire disciplines are defined, for instance. Just ask any scientist about "science" and they'll quickly tell you that many of them disagree with each other (just witness the many Darwinisms in evolutionary theory: Gould, Dawkins, Simon Conway Morris all have divergent approaches).

I think here your emphasis on participatory language in the book is very helpful, too: you're calling for Christians to actually participate in this (pre-existent) tradition.