Great Art

During a question and answer session at Wheaton College a few weeks ago, I was asked by an undergraduate if I had any advice for Christian art students. My response was, “make great art.” Unfortunately, I was not able to explain. Here is my explanation.

There are two frequent errors made about art. The first is that since a work of art reveals itself immediately to the viewer at a single moment (unlike literature, music, film, and theatre), then its “meaning” should appear just as immediately. Critic Thomas B. Hess once suggested that “it takes years to look at a painting.” Looking at a painting, like making a painting, is a process that takes time. It is a relationship that is developed over time. But this is not how we are trained to experience visual imagery. We tend to look at art like we look at advertising, television and Internet images, that is, in a superficial, distracted manner, assuming that what we see is disposable and, ultimately, forgettable. Unfortunately, too much art is also produced to be experienced in the same way, often due to the belief that art must “engage” and participate in the contemporary visual culture to be meaningful. Yet great painting asks more of the viewer as it relentlessly slows down the act of looking. That is what makes it great.

The second error is that painting is primarily about an “image,” about a “subject.” Painting, as Enrique Martínez Celaya often says, is the practice of making finer and finer visual distinctions. It is most definitely not about making an “image” or “subject,” although most paintings do have them. But it is not merely about a subject, or an image. It is a hypostatic union of form and content, or, as Martínez Celaya prefers to say, “presence” and “reference," between its identity as an artifact, a painting, and its function as a signifier. The so-called image, subject, or content, must affirm both.  Raphael in the early sixteenth century as well as Matisse in the twentieth respected and worked within the inextricable relationship between form and content, the presence of the work as a flat surface and the reference of the work to the world outside the artifact. The difference, for example, between Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch (1507) and Matisse’s Dance (1910) is one of degree, not kind.  Raphael’s goal is to expand and create open space on a flat surface and Matisse’s is to close that space and reassert its flatness. Every painter must simultaneously cover a flat surface with paint and refer to a world of experience beyond the flat surface. And what makes Raphael’s and Matisse’s paintings great is that both slow the viewer’s movement from flat surface to world of experience beyond the surface, literal to figural, form to content, presence to reference. It is slowing this movement that enables the work to rummage and knock about the viewer’s inner world of experience, as the content, reference, subject matter acquires this experiential texture.This makes the work intensely personal and thus inextricably a part of the viewer’s experience. But this is achieved, first and foremost, through the objective power of the work itself, its embodiment of the tension between form and content, presence and reference in the work. A bad Renaissance-like painting moves too quickly from form to content while a bad abstract painting moves too quickly from content to form.

That the experience of a painting is a deeply personal process often leads to the erroneous assumption that there are no objective criteria for the evaluation of a painting’s quality. But this confuses objective criteria with a single, “correct” meaning. Objective criteria can emerge through the process of experiencing and evaluating the tension between form and content, presence and reference over time. A great painting may become great, in fact, usually does become great over time. Melville died believing Moby-Dick was a failure. Yet he died believing he had at least tried to make great art.

But the challenge for the Christian artist is even greater. Unlike most contemporary artists, the Christian artist believes that art has meaning that transcends its function as an economic or ideological commodity, which is thus used as aesthetic currency for career “success.” However, the problem is that the Christian artist usually believes that the meaning of her work resides either in its “imagery” or her intentions. Both emphases make for bad art. The Christian artist too often rushes to depict or illustrate some kind of Christian imagery, an imagery, content, referent that too often ignores its relationship to the artifact's form or presence in order to make sure that the “message” is sent and received as clearly as possible. The viewer recognizes the image too quickly, thus wrenching it from its material presence in and as a painting. In addition, the Christian artist is often tempted to cultivate a story or narrative around the work of art, to which the work testifies as a visual illustration of some personal piety or a spiritual experience that somehow baptizes the painting as meaningful, as part of his or her spiritual life.

This approach reveals a lack of confidence in the work of art itself as the means of aesthetic experience. One of the easiest ways to detect a student’s insecurity with their own work is their desire to talk about the circumstances about and around their work, what they wanted to do, what they hoped to do, even sketching out an entire program or apparatus of “meaning” that they hope the work will somehow illustrate, as if the strength of their intentions will drag the work's carcass across the finish line. 

Indeed, an important part of artistic practice is the use of personal experiences and development of various disciplines and ascetic practices in the studio.  Yet these disciplines and practices do not legitimate the work of art. And I expect that the Christian artist will also participate in various spiritual practices and disciplines as well. Yet these disciplines and practices do not on the their own legitimate a Christian life. The proof is in the pudding. It is found in the quality of a work of art. It is found in the quality of a Christian life.

Specific experiences and intentions as well as particular practices and disciplines help generate the power that lies behind a great work of art. They are also the power that lies behind the desire to make a great work of art. But they are not its subject or content.

A great work of art, like a great life, is a trajectory, an aspiration, a goal. 

Comments

[Bruce herman]

Dan - this is a very refreshing and succinct credo above. As an artist, if I fail to engage your nervous system, your somatic life, it matters little how I address your intellect or your philosophy of art. One of my own difficulties with much of contemporary "art" is that there is often so little artifact in the art. Another way of stating what you've written above about "great" art is this - that a great work of art requires everything you have to give: good design, good concept, good materiality, and one step further for the Christian...good spirit.
The form (presence) must be real but the content (reference) does matter. Otherwise, why bother? Ultimately human beings are interested in human beings more than anything else, and a basically human thing is telling a story about what it means to be human. If a work of art ignores or trashes that story without any means of recovery, it is simply bad art. Melville's "failure" is our gain -- and it is precisely because of its deep human truths that it only gains in perfection as time rolls away.