CIVA

Contemporary Art and the Church, Edited by W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2017.

Summary: Essays from artists, theologians, and church leaders participating in the 2015 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) Conference exploring the conversation to be had between the church and contemporary artists.

The relationship between the church and the art world has often been a tense one, particularly on the contemporary art scene. Often, believing people don’t know what to make of contemporary art, or they may find it repulsive or even insulting when images of their faith seem to be denigrated. Contemporary artists sometimes come from church communities but have experienced rejection, or the disjunct between professed beliefs and lived experience. Then there is the group working in both worlds, and living in the tension between those worlds. These are the people represented by the essays in this book, which came out of a Christians in the Visual Arts conference in 2015, gathered to explore how a conversation might be had between these two worlds–a conversation made up of artists, critics, theologians, and church leaders.

There are three groups of essays, and then two concluding symposia and two final essays. The first group of essays explores what is meant by a conversation between the church and contemporary art. Wayne Roosa’s essay seems to maximize the differences, that this is a conversation between strangers that will involve a posture of close listening and receptivity to even understand each other. Linda Stratford responds that there are overlapping qualities between the two, commending as an example the late work of Andy Warhol, who turns out to have been far more religious than many would have guessed. Jonathan Anderson draws on Paul Hiebert’s work around bounded and centered sets and suggests the latter offers a model for intersection between the two conversation partners around shared concerns of ultimate value. The final essay, by Bowden and Lettieri explore examples of what is being done at a practical level through exhibitions in church galleries and other settings.

The second set of essays focuses on theology–God and contemporary art. Ben Quash opens with the provocative question, “can contemporary art be devotional art?” He considers three oppositions in this relationship, which he describes as a “marriage in mediation,” Taylor Worley responds by exploring how faith, hope and love shape our engagement with contemporary art. Christina L. Carnes Ananias explores some of the different ways one might understand silence and nothingness in the work of Yves Klein. Finally, in one of the most interesting essays in the collection, Chelle Sterns explores a “haptic pneumatology” (the experience of the Spirit through touch, physical sensation) in the installations of Ann Hamilton. If her work is ever in my town, I want to see (and participate in) it after Stern’s description.

The third section concerns art and worship, Katie Kresser, an art historian, explores some of the theory of visual and spiritual perception around images and makes recommendations for art in the worship context that expresses shared apprehensions of truth of the worshipers rather than a mere personal expression of the artist. W. David O. Taylor affirms this but presses further in asking, “Which Art, What Worship?” Allen Craft argues for an art that gives a congregation a sense of its “place” in the world. Finally, David W. McNutt contends that churches in the Reformed tradition shaped by Barth’s emphasis on Word and negative view of images, may find support in Barth’s ecclesiology for art in the church. I have to admit that I wasn’t persuaded, but that McNutt is far more knowledgeable about Barth than I.

The final section consisted of two panels, one moderated by Nicholas Wolterstorff, the other by Kevin Hamilton. The first might be described as “the way it was and how far Christians in the arts have come.” The second was a much younger group of artists working in public settings, describing much more, “the way it is.” This is followed by an essay by Calvin Seerveld giving advice to recent grads–apprentice, do imaginative work rooted in one’s humanness, and create works that reflect one’s vision of “the city of God” in all of life. Finally, he argues that artists are jesters and ventriloquists. Cameron J. Anderson explores both the embrace of calling and beauty in the pursuit of one’s art and the knowledge that grace alone saves the world.

This is a pretty high level conversation, where we overhear serious thinkers and artists exploring the conceptual and imaginary worlds of the church and the contemporary art world. Apart from Bowden and Lettieri’s essay, and the two symposia, there was less on practical program and more on exploring the first principles of such conversations. More important, it seemed to me a kind of rehearsal of how CIVA artists and church sympathizers might extend these conversations, both in the direction of the wider church, and the wider art community. This path-breaking work seems vitally important if a real conversation is to occur, one that fosters new-found appreciation for the concerns of artists, and one that explores how a contemporary aesthetic might open up fresh ways of apprehending the God we worship and God’s ways in the world.

The Faithful Artist, Cameron J. Anderson. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: Addresses the tensions between the world of modern art and evangelical faith, where opportunities for creative engagement might be found in tensions, and what values might shape the life of one sensing a call to be both faithful Christian and artist.

The world of modern art, and the world of faith, particularly evangelical Christian faith have often been at odds with, or not even in conversation with each other. This is the challenge the author has wrestled with since his teenage years as an aspiring artist who embraced the evangelical faith in which he was raised. In the introduction, he describes his own struggle with the absence of mentors, the disregard of his church for the visual arts, and the parallel hostility toward religious faith he encountered in the art world.

Much of this work explores these tensions between evangelical faith and modern art. He begins by tracing the post World War Two parallel rise of modern evangelicalism as an effort to “guard the gospel” and modern art, as an effort to throw off the shackles of tradition and the “double consciousness” artists struggled with, often by either muting faith, or lapsing into sentimentalized art appealing to their faith community. He uses My Name is Asher Lev to discuss one of the fundamental challenges facing the aspiring Christian artist in training: the practice of drawing the nude human figure, both central to the development of artistic skill and raising questions of whether this is proper, and deeper questions about the Christian understanding of the body, and our embodied existence. Building on this, he considers the senses, and how we think about this aspect of our embodied existence as we engage the arts.

He then turns to the conflicts between word and image that have been at the heart of some of the conflict between faith and art, whether it is the iconoclastic movements, ancient and modern, that favor word over image, and the inconsistency of a faith community that denounces icons while creating its own versions of these. He points toward a theology of word and image that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the incarnate Word. He also explores the radical doubts about language in post-modern thought and its appropriation by artists, sometimes portraying the deconstruction of language. Anderson gestures toward a theology in which word and image cohere, and for the possibility of meaning.

He also gestures toward the transcendental of beauty in art, once again contended territory, both by artists who seek to lay bare the exploitive ways beauty has been used, and an evangelicalism focused on goodness and truth to the exclusion of beauty. Against the art world’s often legitimate protest about the manipulation of beauty for tawdry or oppressive purposes, Anderson holds out the possibility of being beholders of beauty, and for the artist of faith, the seeing in beauty, even co-mixed with pain, evil, and suffering, the hand of the Creator. He acknowledges that this may be a quixotic, yet for the faithful artist, necessary endeavor.

Anderson contends that these collisions of faith and art may “reveal a third way, a great vista where biblical and theological reflection–especially the doctrines of creation and incarnation–become the wellspring of inspiration.” Each of his chapters includes models of this kind of biblical and theological reflection that serve, not to give definitive answers, but to point other artists who wrestle with the same tensions toward this “third way” in the practice of their art. Indeed, his conclusion is an invitation to both the church and artists to embrace this work, and for artists to give themselves as called people to the work of culture-making and good studio practice. He writes,

“…the artists whom most of us deem to be successful share a common trait–they do the work. At some point they set romantic ideas about being an artist to the side and commenced doing the artist’s work. Arriving at this place requires one to accept delayed gratification, the awkwardness that is sure to come from making bad art and the reality of negative cash flow. Pushing beyond distraction and discouragement, they accomplished something Herculean–they pushed beyond musing and imagining to establish regular studio practices, to take on habits of making” (p. 252).

Cameron Anderson is executive director of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and what he offers in this book is nothing less than an analysis of the recent history of the visual arts and the challenges and opportunities for Christians who are called to work in this field. It reflects his lifelong familiarity with the art world and his presence as an leader, teacher and thinker in the Christian community. I might add, both by way of disclosure and appreciation, that I worked closely with Cam in his previous role as national director of InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry, and owe twenty years in a job I love to his influence. I saw parts of an early version of this manuscript, kind of like the blocking in of shapes on a canvas that mark the beginning of a painting. It is a delight to see the finished work, which reflects the deep reflection on faith and art that I had come to appreciate in presentations by Cam, disciplined by extensive research and enriched by years of experience working with visual artists.

[This is the second work in the series Studies in Theology and the Arts. The first volume in the series, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture was reviewed earlier this year at Bob on Books.]

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.