Art and Religion Revisited, Again

I did not write God in the Gallery to answer the question of the relationship between contemporary art and Christianity, but to create a hub around which new questions and perspectives about the relationship between contemporary art and Christianity could be posed. The importance of this function for the book as a catalyst for new directions has become clearer during the last six weeks as I have had the opportunity to work with art students in their studios, present the main points of God in the Gallery, and participate in informal discussions with faculty and students at Biola, Augustana College (Sioux Falls), and Northwest Nazarene University. But it has been in preparing for two very different, but ultimately related, kinds of talks that have opened up a significant insight. The first kind of talk is the chapel talk, which I gave at Biola and more recently at Augustana College. The second kind is a public informal gallery walk-through at the Boise Art Museum. Both were given as encouragement to believers.

Art and religion both require belief for them to work.  For the religious believer, water sprinkled over the head of an infant is more than a hair washing, it is the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit; drinking a thimbleful of wine and eating a wafer is more than a snack, it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, what the Church Fathers called the "medicine of immortality." So it is with the believer in art.  For this believer, a clump of fired clay with pretty decorations on it is more than the sum total of its materials, it is something more, it is "art," an object with meaning and significance, an object that enriches one's life with beauty.  For the believer in art, a painting is more than the sum total of its banal and quite silly materials:  smelly oil paints brushed onto a canvas sheet. It does something.   

There are many who do not believe in religion. They think it is silly. They do not believe that water is a means by which the Holy Spirit saves or wine and bread the means by which Christ nourishes us.  But there are also many who do not believe in art. They think it is silly. They go to an art museum and do not find powerful experiences of beauty and transcendence, they find only clumps of clay with decorations on them, canvas sheets with oil paints smeared on them.  Art and religion are sacramental practices.  They both require belief on the part of their participants that elements of the material world: water, oil, wine, bread, canvas, clay, oil paint, paper, and graphite are the distinctive means by which the immaterial comes to us. The transcendent appears to us through the vehicle of the immanent. 

If art and religion require such belief to be efficacious; that is, for them to "work" on us, what are the implications for developing relationships and conversations between believers in art and religious believers?  Art, religion, science, and philosophy all come from the same source: they are attempts to celebrate and understand the mystery of being.  This requires that these practices must be reconceived as kin, not mortal enemies.  This is one of the directions that will occupy my thoughts in the coming months.

Comments

[Wendy Jane Bantam]

Once again. Bravo. I am immediately reminded of Emery Blagdon's "Healing Machines". He believed when he built them they would cure any ailment. Proving faith and perspective change the way we perceive the world.