CAC Perspectives: Can Modern Art and Religion Get Along?
The December issue of Chicago Artists’ News contains another installment of “Perspectives,” a column in which invited artists, critics, gallerists, and other art-world figures weigh in on an issue or phenomenon that has caught their attention.
This month, James Elkins of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago addresses what he takes to be the “largest issue in art education”: the lack of dialogue between contemporary art and religion. We’d like to know what ArtStyle readers think about this issue. Is there space for genuine religious content in contemporary art? Or is contemporary art inimical to sincere religious expression? How might art writing accommodate religion? What exactly accounts for the gap between modern art and religion?
Jeremy Biles, Editor
Chicago Artists’ News
Bridging the Gap Between Modern Art and Religion
by James Elkins
As a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I’ve noticed that art students who make work with religious or spiritual significance often can’t get interesting criticism. Their instructors will often shy away from religious or spiritual themes, and talk instead about safe things like color and form. At the professional level, if artists make work that is infused with religious themes, they typically cannot get shows in the main art galleries, or places in biennales or art fairs.
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987, Cibachrome, silicone, plexiglass, wood frame 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm); framed: 65 x 45 1/8 inches (165.1 x 114.6 cm) ASE/N-42-A-PH. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery.
On the other hand, if their work is critical of religion, they often can participate in the international art market. Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano, and Maurizio Cattelan are only the most famous of a large number of artists whose work is seen as openly critical or skeptical of organized religion and therefore nominally acceptable in the art world. In general, if an artist practices a non-Western religion, or a tribal religion, or if the religion is private or otherwise hidden, it can be acceptable; otherwise, the work has to be critical of religion.
So I have become concerned that the very large number of student artists, throughout the world, who are exploring religious or spiritual themes are cut off from serious, engaged criticism; and when they become professional artists, they are marginalized by an art world intent on skepticism, hermeticism, ambiguity, and many other things — but not the direct expression of faith.
St. Sebastian by Baleison and Canavesio
I think this problem is at least in part attributable to a gulf of misunderstandings, or differences, between two groups of scholars. One group I’ll call the “religionists,” using the word that academics tend to use to identify practitioners of any sort. They would include not only scholars of religion and the history and philosophy of religion, but also scholars who write about religious themes in relation to art, such as Mark C. Taylor. They would also include art historians who work in religion departments, or theological unions; and they would definitely include art critics who are engaged with contemporary religion, spirituality, or “New Age” (NRM, New Religious Movement) art. The common ground of this first group is the sense that religion, or spirituality, has always been an accompaniment of modernism, and that modern art is, in many ways, a site of the partial recuperation of such themes.
Christ en Majeste, Isenheim Altarpiece, Grunewald
The second group includes art historians who believe more or less the opposite: that modernism is predicated on a secularism that often springs from political convictions, and often expresses itself in various formalisms. In that second point of view, an artist like Kandinsky is an exception, and an artist like Rothko who speaks openly about religious issues is fundamentally misguided about his or own work (which is valued for any number of non-religious reasons).
The differences between these two groups of scholars are encapsulated in a pair of quotes. One is from John Updike: “Modern art is a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life.” The other is from the art historian T. J. Clark: “[I will not have anything to do with] the self-satisfied Leftist clap-trap about ‘art as substitute religion.’” These quotes served as epigraphs to my book The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. After its publication, I started getting invitations from Christian colleges. Those experiences have been salutary. I’ve discovered that at least some Christian institutions are very open to discussion on these points. And in those same four years, I have gotten only one invitation from a secular institution. MIT held a conference called “Deus (ex) historia,” on religion and art, and I gave a paper there — but that conference had no “religionists,” and only a few artists, all of whom practice private or non-Western religions — ones acceptable in the art world, and in academia.
Flight and Failure of Saint Anthony,
left panel, by Bosch
But I’d like to see both groups represented, and to find a way of speaking that can accommodate them. This past April, the SAIC hosted an event entitled “Re-Enchantment,” which was an attempt to work on these problems. I tried to invite people from both sides of that question. I failed. Several people (whom I won’t name) said that just sitting down at a table with people who will talk about religion and modernism would itself be too unpleasant.
Despite the disproportionate representation of people willing to talk about art and religion, we had a good conversation, which has been transcribed for the book Re-Enchantment (which I’m co-editing with David Morgan). Here we will try again to redress the problem by inviting some thirty people who were not at the April event to write comments on our conversation. Our hope is that the book will continue the attempt to speak across the gap, and to be of use to art students and artists who need ways of articulating their religious practices.
I think that the misunderstandings between “religionists” and others is the single largest issue in art education. It’s not like religious issues in the real world, which everyone knows are crucial: in the art world religion is belittled or hidden, and that makes these problems even harder to solve.
James Elkins is E. C. Chadbourne Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, and also professor of Visual and Critical Studies, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His most resent books (edited) are Visual Literacy and Visual Practices Across the University.
Re-Enchantment is forthcoming from Routledge Press in 2008. The transcript of the panel discussion is available on request from jameselkins@fastmail.fm.
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Church has been a provider for artists, although the subjects had to be in context with their view. It was the only way of making a living. I’m an atheist and think all religions are elevated above the mystic and give opportunities to proceed in the name of it, even killing. However if there are artists who feel the need of painting religious subjects they are free as those who do science fiction or fairy tales. The artist should be free to express himself. He has the choice. Even though I am atheist I painted religious subjects as history stories. It does not keep me from creating.
Zaki
I personally feel that the most important thing for an artist to do is to be him/her self, and express themselves and who they are; their beliefs, or disbeliefs, their strong feelings, emotions, their likes, their dislikes, their joys, their pain, and so on. I feel that the absolute best art is the art that makes up an artistic autobiography of the artist, who he/she is and their life on canvas. As artists faithfully express themselves, they are expressing present history, because each artist is made up out of his/her present environment and his/her present history. To hide the artistic expression of either a person very religious, or the expression of an atheist is to falsify history, or falsify the true present state of the world. Throughout history there has been both sides and there will continue to be both sides. If we really want to consider our present society a free society, then out of absolute necessity, both sides must be totally free to express themselves, and their artwork should be allowed equally in galleries, art museums, art exhibits and art shows.
Although Professor Elkin’s perspective on the relationship between art and religion certainly has some credence, I believe the true meat of his opinion is consecrated wholly in the last paragraph. Professor Elkin’s states, “It is not like religious issues in the real world…in the art world religion is belittled or hidden…” Here exists acknowledgment of the bifurcation between the “real” world and the “art” world. The ramifications of this division should not be understated, as they draw art out from its original place within life, and place it in a sphere that is both linguistically and intellectually defined as an “other.” Some people view this as an elevation of art to a type of religious significance, while other people regard it as denigration of expression to a separated realm where those in the “real” world need not bother themselves with questions of artistic merit. Whether it is positive or negative, once this definition takes place, a distance forms between this other (art) and the real (experienced) world. Hence, we get to the heart of why religion can’t be found in art: if art is not part of the “real” world, then how can religion, which is undeniably part of the “real” world, be identified with artistic expression, which does not exist as part of “real” life. I know it sounds like the twilight zone, but I hope it makes a little sense.
This identification of art as other is responsible for the lack of religious (and generally moral) critique in art criticism today. If I understand Dr. Elkins correctly, he is perturbed that the religious voice is not given the same platform in art criticism as it is in other cultural criticisms. I agree with him, but feel he has traced the roots of this suppression of the critical voice insufficiently. When he identifies modernism as “a secularism that often springs from political convictions” he is giving the modernist (especially the formalist) critic too much credit. The goal of modern criticism from Frye to Greenberg to Fried has been to free artwork from the political and cultural underpinnings us in the “real” world know it to be attached to, and establish an environment (the “art” world) where their formal agendas, no matter how detached from “real” experience they are, may be advanced. When one regards their sly intellectual tactics as “political convictions” they are missing the point. To be sure, their actions are political in so far as they advance a formalist agenda, but if there are indeed moral political convictions driving modern art criticism, I ask what they are.
Hence, modern critics are not merely a voice that must co-opted into the discussion of religious art. They are THE perpetrator of the critical oppression in the first place; they placed art in the realm of the other to begin with. This is why so many people were unwilling to talk about modernism and religion at the same table. Religion is modernism’s kryptonite. This is illustrated, as Elkins poignantly indicated, by artists, like Rothko, who refuse to check their religious baggage at the door and are consequently referred to as “fundamentally misguided.” Barnett Newman comes to mind as well.
Perhaps I am missing Professor Elkins’ point. One point of confusion for me is the professor’s propensity to vacillate between the word modern and references to contemporary artists. I’m really not sure what he was speaking about, as he uses the word “modern” in the title and in the quote from John Updike, and then goes onto identify contemporary examples of a lack of religiously based criticism (“I’ve noticed that art students who make work…”). This lack of historical and theoretical context aside, I would like to thank Dr. Elkins for bringing up such a poignant topic, and invite him (and others) to respond to my comments.
To remedy this gap an art instructor could invite clergy into the classroom that have some background studies in art. The average teacher has been trained to shy away from initiating a conversation on religious themes. Currently, it is acceptable to address questions that students bring up about religion. Perhaps today’s student is more detached from their spiritual upbringing than say 10 or 20 years ago. Try seeding the class with people with strong convictions and beliefs. This will assure you a healthy religious discussion.
as wm. james covered in his book, varieties of religious experience, there is internal religion, external organized religion, or religion imposed from the outside, that is, POLITICAL religion: (if you want to get to heaven, you do things MY f***ing way). is it surprising that artists want little to do with the latter?