Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace

Ecclesiastical Encounters with Contemporary Art

Jonathan Koestle-Cate

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317178477
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Religious Art

A vibrant critical exchange between contemporary art and Christianity is being increasingly prompted by an expanding programme of art installations and commissions for ecclesiastical spaces. Rather than 'religious art' reflecting Christian ideology, current practices frequently initiate projects that question the values and traditions of the host space, or present objects and events that challenge its visual conventions. In the light of these developments, this book asks what conditions are favourable to enhancing and expanding the possibilities of church-based art, and how can these conditions be addressed? What viable language or strategies can be formulated to understand and analyse art's role within the church? Focusing on concepts drawn from anthropology, comparative religion, art theory, theology and philosophy, this book formulates a lexicon of terms built around the notion of encounter in order to review the effective uses and experience of contemporary art in churches. The author concludes with the prognosis that art for the church has reached a critical and decisive phase in its history, testing the assumption that contemporary art should be a taken-for-granted element of modern church life. Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace uniquely combines conceptual analysis, critical case studies and practical application in a rigorous and inventive manner, dealing specifically with contemporary art of the past twenty-five years, and the most recent developments in the church's policies for the arts.

1 Porch

At the end of the 1990s the theologian George Pattison had observed that the previous decade had produced ‘an enormous growth of interest in “art-and-religion,” an interest reflected both in the installation of new works in Churches and in an expanding theological and critical literature’ (1998: 188). Yet it was precisely his sense of a lack of coherent modern dialogue between art and theology that had first prompted him to write on this theme. Between the first edition of his Art, Modernity and Faith in 1991 and its second expanded edition in 1998, Pattison had noticed a distinct change in the cultural and theological exchange of art and religion, a trend which, in the new century, has continued to grow apace. In Britain the Anglican Church in particular is awash with proposals attempting to energise the aesthetic possibilities of sacred buildings or anxious to rephrase the language of religious principles in modern artistic terms. This exchange has prompted new connections for art and its sacred context, promising the (all too rarely realised) potential for art’s meaningful engagement with religious practice and religious spaces, often achieved through unorthodox means. New forms and media have been introduced, radically departing, formally and conceptually, from more familiar imagery. By challenging convention, they urge us to consider anew the role of these great ecclesiastical spaces, their relevance to contemporary society and their response to contemporary culture. Whatever the positive implications of this situation for art and the church, there are also disadvantages to an accelerating programme of art for ecclesiastical spaces. It has the negative potential to create new visual orthodoxies. One of the arguments I will make in this book is that church-based art is best served by occasional but intensive experiences than recourse to an events calendar filled with one art project following hard upon the heels of its predecessor, a tendency increasingly evident in a number of British cathedrals.

Contemporary art has become increasingly visible and the parameters of its public catchment greatly expanded. Prominently public art is in greater danger than ever of becoming little more than an extension of other forms of modern public pleasure. Blockbuster shows predominate in which attendance is the overriding concern (since the art itself can be so difficult to see through the crowds), once-difficult artistic genres achieve astonishing popularity, the proliferating art market gives birth to any number of fairs and biennales, and so on. In such a climate of art ubiquity, churches become a logical extension of the available sites for art, valued for their unique ambience, architecture and history. Central to the concerns of this book, therefore, is a critical engagement with the nature of the encounter between art installations and ecclesiastical spaces. In this context, the specific focus on contemporary art refers not only to art-making that is current but also privileges certain forms of art-making over others, which prompts certain questions. Can methods of art production like temporary installations, performance, video and site-specific work maintain a more significant relationship with ecclesiastical spaces than more permanent or traditional forms? Can the relationships between art and its spatial and sacral context, art and liturgical practice, or art and the worshipping community be extended to produce a viable forum for dialogue between the modern church and contemporary art? It is how art can work within the institution of the church that will concern us, in an age of dissolving or malleable institutional boundaries; a context in which art’s legitimacy continues to be contested at the same time that it is increasingly invited to take part in the life of the church.

A Fractious Embrace

Predictably enough, the catalyst for my particular interest in this expanding field was a work of contemporary art that has since been singled out by several writers as a key moment in the history of modern art and the church. This was Bill Viola’s The Messenger, commissioned for Durham Cathedral in 1996. This work has been acclaimed as a benchmark event by those attentive to the critical possibilities for art within the modern church. Yet, in the very same year that this ground-breaking installation brought the church as a venue for art to public attention (admittedly rather more through the provocations of media sensationalism than the quality of the art), a report commissioned by Art and Christianity Enquiry (ACE), the leading UK organisation in the field of visual art and religion, concluded that there continues to be an ‘estrangement’ between Christianity and the visual arts – partly due to cultural trends and partly to a decline in church patronage (Tanner 1996: 10). This disaffection has a long history, the church all too often retreating to the safety of what one writer once dismissively called ‘the saccharine bondieuseries which desecrate almost every religious building one enters’ (Cooper 1961: 30). Still today the language used to discuss artistic collaborations with the church assumes that it is sure to be an unsettling cohabitation, fraught with difficulties. Even among those who support such ventures, the sense that theirs is a reluctant or fractious relationship is not uncommon. This latter comment is taken from an interview with Fr. Friedhelm Mennekes, a curator-priest who envisages – indeed encourages – a difficult, agonistic, contentious and necessarily irresolvable tension in the relations between art and religion. His interviewer, Simon Morley, succinctly captures Mennekes’s view of the nature of art’s encounter with religion and religious spaces by proposing that they share ‘a close though sometimes fractious embrace’ (1998: 53). Such inferences act as a reminder of the conflicts common to the history of modern art and sacred spaces within the Christian tradition. Indeed, crucial to current debates is the anxiety that still governs the minds of many regarding the incongruity of modern art within churches, with its perceived predilection for transgression and sacrilege. Doing nothing to allay such fears, Mennekes has gone so far as to describe art and religion as enemies, while another curator-pastor, Rod Pattenden, has spoken of art’s inimical tendency to act as a provocateur: ‘an unruly and divisive congregation to be included in the life of the church’ (1999: 256). More recently, Mark Dean, artist and chaplain to the University of the Arts in London, shared with me his conviction that no easy relation can exist between contemporary art and religious faith, not least because there is no shared language with which to discuss it.¹ Whatever the merits of this argument, it is Mennekes’s contention that the problems of cohabitation or common language should not deter, arguing that they are, in fact, a positive aspect of an artwork’s relationship with the church, an inevitable aspect of their tenuous and fractious co-existence. He claims it is imperative that a work of art positively and non-passively engage with an ecclesiastical space, even fight with it if necessary, if it is to initiate a mutually enriching dialogue.

Critics of so combative a stance would no doubt complain that Mennekes is merely reaffirming (mis)perceptions that others have tried hard to overturn. Eleanor Heartney, for example, writing in 2000, refutes the persistent assumption that contemporary art and religion are inherently antithetical (Philbrick et al. 2000: 57–58). Her work specifically challenges Catholic denunciations of artists like Andrés Serrano and David Wojnarowicz, whose purportedly sacrilegious works are actually rooted in a Catholic corporeal sensibility.² A more characteristically Protestant complaint is that all too often the ‘two worlds’ of church and art are ‘mutually wary, sometimes even hostile, often with little understanding or appreciation for the other’, the hope being that ways may be found to assuage their mutual mistrust (Jensen 2004: ix). This seems a peculiarly modern grievance given the long-standing relationship of art and church, one that a handful of Chapters and individual clerics are working hard to remedy. Principally it signifies the difficulties prompted not by art per se, but by unfamiliar and non-traditional forms of art. Such difficulties aside, unsurprisingly it is more typically the secular art world that maintains the greatest resistance to any renewal of an art/religion alliance. It persists in seeing not only an unbridgeable gulf between the worlds of contemporary religion and contemporary art, but also expresses little or no desire to see that gulf bridged. As a number of critics have noted, making art about religion is perfectly acceptable, even welcome, but religious art is not. Instead, vague concessions to ‘spirituality’ have become a kind of surrogate religion for a post-Christian culture. Such opinions are frequently exacerbated by an ignorance of religious belief and practice on the part of the art world, and an ingrained suspicion and derogation of art on the part of the religious establishment. Thus, it is no surprise to find writers on this theme expressing the pessimistic (and ill-informed) view that ‘the aesthetic distance separating the expression of faith in the twenty-first century from its most fascinating and talented artists is too large a gap to imagine ever closing’ (Bjone 2009: 79). Whatever the consequences of this situation, what is refreshing about the approach taken by Mennekes, however impractical it may at times be, is his determination not to reduce the divide, but rather to use it. He adamantly maintains the independence of art and religion, not out of any desire to segregate them as two spheres that should be held apart, but in order to recognise their specific competences. In the hands of Mennekes, the Gesamtkunstwerk that results from his projects retains an intractable quality, as though art and religion really are ‘reluctant partners’ (Heller 2004), the title of an edited collection of texts that encourages the view that art and religion should be, and indeed are, in dialogue, yet not without misunderstanding, antagonism and tension.³

A rather different approach may be gauged from the work of Graham Howes and the aforementioned George Pattison, both early and pre-eminent voices in this field, who have sought to extend this dialogue to incorporate the matter of theology.⁴ Howes proposes that art and theology need not be seen as two separate ‘things-in-relationship’, co-implicated in a common goal, but as the same thing (1997: 670). He seems to have been inspired in this idea by Frank Burch Brown’s Religious Aesthetics, which in turn restates an earlier principle proposed by the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich ‘that at points religion takes the form of art, and art the form of religion; that whatever is considered ultimate in being and meaning can speak through both forms, and can call both into question’ (Brown 1990: 111). This is a rather different proposal from that extended in Howes’s The Art of the Sacred, which asks, as a central question, ‘whether in practice, as well as in theory, art is a way of seeing and knowing which is as truth-bearing and personally transformative as the language and message of theology’ (2007: 148).⁵ His earlier proposal sees art and theology as inseparable co-advocates of a spiritual or religious realm of whatever it is we consider to be ‘truth’; his later work implies that the one may be just as effective as the other in its communication or expression of that truth without diminishing either and without claiming the one to be the same as the other. In either case Howes seems to be motivated by a concern to see art and theology not so much in dialogue, but deeply invested in one another. Although this position reanimates, not without difficulties, a vital tension between art and religion, it can also set limits to the conditions of possibility for an art tied too closely to belief. Howes puts it better when he says that ‘the history of Western culture has been characterized by multiple, overlapping and shifting relationships between different kinds of theological and artistic modes of perception and expression’ (2007: 146). This idea seems altogether more suited to the mercurial nature of their contemporary expressions. For his part, Pattison has been among those prominently calling for art to be accepted on its own terms before it becomes incorporated as part of a larger religious aesthetics or Christian theology of art. His concluding words in Art, Modernity and Faith attest to this programme and could be taken as the springboard for this book. It is worth quoting him at length:

I have argued that art has to be justified out of its own resources, and has its own unique way of being present in the world. If art works, it works because of the way it works through the specific media of visual experience. If we are not moved by art in its own terms, we will not be moved to attend to it as part of a larger theorization of Christian self-understanding. However, Christian theology seems to be singularly ill-placed to allow art an appropriate autonomy, since it is congenitally reluctant to concede its privilege of judging art in terms of its relation to a (verbally determined) dogmatic meaning or narrative. This is true even of theology’s attempts to interpret important works of secular art: it is especially true of theology’s approach to art in and for Churches.

(1998: 177–178)

Pattison’s appeal for an art permitted to speak on its own terms rather than as the mouthpiece of doctrine has been largely heeded in the intervening years. Even so, the incorporation of contemporary art within an ecclesiastical domain brings about other challenges at the same time that it reveals the positive changes that have taken place since the 1990s. In the catalogue accompanying The Shape of the Century, an exhibition of sculpture at Salisbury Cathedral in 1999, Andrew Lambirth called for art to find new and wider audiences, especially if art and religion are to initiate any kind of meaningful dialogue today. As such, he supported the use of cathedrals and churches as a forum for such art-inspired dialogues, lauding them as ‘an unrivalled milieu in which to present art in such a way as to surprise people into creative thought’ (1999: 29). Despite a long and rich tradition of religious art, Lambirth regrets that sacred Christian spaces such as Salisbury’s splendid cathedral have been little explored as a setting for contemporary art, although he concedes that this is gradually changing. Indeed it is. Salisbury has since become one of the principal ecclesiastical advocates of contemporary art in this country through its regular programme of installations and exhibitions, not always to the benefit of either art or church, nor perhaps to ‘creative thought’. Here and elsewhere, all too often art installations do little more than utilise cathedrals as grand and elaborate gallery spaces, which benefits neither the work nor the space, and does little to encourage a more considered and sophisticated interaction of artwork and context.⁶ Some years prior to the Salisbury exhibition, Charles Pickstone, a frequent contributor to debates on art and the church, had pre-empted Lambirth’s idea, talking of the church or cathedral as ‘one of the few community buildings of any size where works of art can find a good showing’, going on to describe them as places ‘where artists can enter into dialogue with an ancient and objective set of iconographic traditions that stand over and above their personal expressiveness’ (1993: 49). Since that time, Pickstone’s and Lambirth’s hopes for a greater ecclesiastical engagement with art have become a familiar reality, often underpinned by such celebratory rhetoric. But can a case be made for a more cautious attitude?

In speaking of the works shown in Salisbury Cathedral, Lambirth raises the by-now commonplace supposition that every environment has a palpable effect upon the art within its spaces, conditioning the way a work of art is viewed and experienced, while the art has a definite physical or affective impact on its surroundings, and hence on subjective responses to both the art and the space. However, if encountering works of art in a cathedral allows the work to respond to the viewer and the space in entirely different ways from that of a gallery, it is also true to say that this is not without its problems and challenges, not only for the visitor or congregation, but also for the art itself. When looking at the results, one feels compelled to ask how viable these projects really are. Is it not more typically the case that most contemporary art is likely to be overwhelmed by such an environment, unable to compete with the context in which it finds itself? In this respect, Pickstone’s comment is somewhat ingenuous. Although it cannot be denied that churches and cathedrals are capable of offering an unparalleled aesthetic environment for art, they also confront art with a space whose religious history suffuses every nook and cranny, chapel and transept. When art enters the church, it encounters a canvas already replete with a visual heritage that artist and artwork cannot avoid and cannot afford to ignore. Apart from the hermeneutical challenges inherent to such contexts, art also finds itself competing with visible or audible distractions far greater than anything it might encounter in a gallery, as well as a viewing space rarely subject to the kind of environmental controls available to a gallery. Artworks in cathedrals are also privy to a whole new audience, often one almost entirely uneducated or inexperienced in contemporary work and frequently unreceptive to it. For those with eyes to see, as Sister Wendy Beckett puts it, the experience of contemporary art in the church can be unexpectedly and immensely enlightening, but for those whose eyes and minds are closed to new possibilities, the encounter may provoke only antipathy (1992: 10). For many who regularly use such spaces primarily as a place for prayer, worship or fellowship, art that is anything other than the traditional may be seen as an intrusion into, or disruption of, that space. Yet ideally, if Mennekes is to be believed, it is precisely the art that operates in this way that is most successful, for it is this very disruption that can engender a reflective response. Nevertheless, the criticism can and has been made that such curatorial agendas run the risk, in Morley’s words, of seriously ‘over-determining the way in which the viewer will “read” the work through placing it in such a charged context’ (1998: 51). Mennekes refutes this criticism, arguing that it is a positive aspect of the work’s relationship with the space. If the ideal of the twentieth-century gallery was that it retains a neutral and detached quality, placing all emphasis and attention upon the artwork and not the space, then seeing art in this heavily biased context, he argues, can cause us to reflect upon the ways in which:

all contexts are ideologically coloured, not least the ‘white cube’ preferred by the institutional art world, where, it can be argued, the art gallery or museum appropriates aspects of the religious symbolism of Protestantism, but replaces an uncluttered contemplation of the transcendent God by a cool and detached contemplation of the artwork.

(Mennekes, cited in Morley 1998: 52)

Renewed Ecclesiastical Encounters with Art

The precedents for the joining of such apparently immiscible forces as modern art and the church were principally established by the pioneering and persistent efforts of figures like Dean Walter Hussey and Bishop George Bell in this country, and Père Marie-Alain Couturier i...