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| Should We Seek That Which has been Found Before. Canon and Creativity in Art from a Theological Perspective Alise Tīfentāle Let's start with one of the most notable events in contemporary art in early 2006: the first solo exhibition in Latin America by superstar, success-story and millionaire Damien Hirst, at the Galeria Hilario Galguera in Mexico City. | |
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Significant is the unusually long duration of the exhibition for a commercial gallery (24 February to 31 August) and Hirst's wish to show his works specifically in Latin America, where the Catholic tradition and way of life have become much more seriously rooted than in Western Europe. After all, the title of the exhibition - "The Death of God. Towards a Better Understanding of Life Without God Aboard the Ship of Fools" - might seem infuriatingly absurd to a true Christian, while some of the exhibits (such as a crucified sheep's carcase in a formaldehyde aquarium) are openly provocative. It might be regarded as a misunderstanding or a strange kind of joke - but since success, talent and value are all currently being measured in financial terms, there's no longer any reason to ignore Hirst. Even before the exhibition opened, the press reported that there were already buyers for 16 out of 28 exhibited works. For example, the Samsung Museum in Seoul had bought for 4 million US dollars a copy of "The wrath of God" - an immense shark in formaldehyde. Jorge Vergara, president of the vitamin company Omnilife, a successful producer of Mexican music and co-owner of the Chivas Football Club, is said to have purchased "The Sacred Heart of Jesus" (a bull's heart with silver needles in a glass cylinder) and "The Blood of Christ" (paracetamol tablets marked with blood, arranged in neat rows in a glass-and-metal case) for 3 million US dollars, to be exhibited at the head office of his vitamin company. And so on: there's still plenty of time until August. There's no doubt that in the world of contemporary art, such facts are received with curiosity, envy and fascination: look, there's million-dollar art and an artist who knows how to cash in the millions. The unmistakable references to Christian symbols and sacred things in Hirst's works also seem symptomatic: after all, dead animals in formaldehyde can be seen in museums of natural history and medicine, which actually offer the additional chance of observing some exotic pathology. But when these scientific-medical exhibits are given titles and thus also artistic messages, one obtains a product for which there's an astounding demand and one that's also astoundingly lucrative in financial terms. This leads one to ponder what these works are actually about? Is there some innate idea at work, in accordance with which art is seen as something important, something special, something rising above the ordinary, an idea that might have grown from a tradition long forgotten but preserved in the collective sub-conscious, from the times when art in Europe was only seen in the church, in a sacred space, and was an essential element of religious experience? Or is this an expression of the lack of sacredness in every-day life, which people wish to compensate, even if this takes the form of a reference to Jesus in the title of some dubious work of art? Does contemporary art cherish the hope of supplanting in this way the role of spiritual instructor, since it permits art viewers and collectors to imagine that they have succeeded in coming close to some great, sublime mystery? There are many different explanations as to why it's so important for contemporary art to play upon and utilise Christian tradition and symbolism - from gentle approaches and sensitive interpretations (some of Bill Viola's, videos, perhaps) to mocking denial (the oft-mentioned work by American photographer Andreas Serrano, featuring a plastic crucifix immersed in urine). In pop culture, too, mass recognition, in financial terms, has been won, for example, by "The Da Vinci Code", where concepts fundamental to Christianity are discussed in the context of literary fiction. The Pope has publicly condemned genetic experimentation (seen as an expression of Man's wish to liken himself to God) and the decadent narcissism of Western culture. The church, although often seen from outside as a conservative and reactionary institution, is to a much greater degree traditional - something different altogether. An unbroken tradition going back to the time of the Apostles is the foundation on which the traditional churches, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, continue to exist and act in the 21st century. Contemporary elements are also appearing in the church - as seen most clearly in religious architecture and art. One example worthy of discussion is the video installation "The altar", by Sarmīte Māliņa and Kristaps Kalns, shown at Easter, 14-16 April, in the Church of St Mary Magdalene. In place of the altar, there was a large screen with a video of a man lying motionless with a crown of thorns and the traditional white loincloth. On the morning of Easter Sunday, in the course of the service, he rises and disappears. In terms of content, it's a literal and easily perceived illustration of the message of the Resurrection. But does something of this kind have a place in a traditional church, whose liturgical rituals and religious objects have remained fairly unchanged for many centuries? These and other points of contact between secular and transcendental art were the subject of a discussion with Guntis Dišlers, docent of the Christian Academy of Latvia and author of the book "Religious Art in the Old Testament". Alise Tīfentāle: What is the view of a theologian on "The altar", featuring a video screen in a church? Guntis Dišlers: In the most ancient times, an altar took the form of a house, like one in which people live, but on the roof - for solar deities, reflecting the opposition between darkness and light, the underworld and the light of the sky. Later, it took the form of a table, and the Christian Eucharist - the Lord's Supper - has since the earliest times been celebrated over the bones of martyrs. This is an ancient tradition in the church: to emphasise in this way the mystery of death and the Resurrection, the unfathomable mystery of earthly remains and the resurrected body of Christ. The mystery is in the sacrifice, the relinquishment of visible, tangible, worldly, mortal flesh, revealing in its full force the immortal flesh of Resurrection, which is not optically perceptible to Man. This is the function of the altar in a church. The altar is the centre of liturgy - of the service - and so has a strictly determined function in the sacrament. I haven't talked to the people who created this Easter installation, but if I'm faced with a fact like this, then in my opinion liturgical elements in a church should not be specially modernised in some way. One of the trends in modern art is to provoke - to incite public discussion, to draw anything and everything from an advance of trust. It seems the church has this advance of trust because it is under the protection of its sacrament, but Postmodern society strives to draw it out into a discussion in the public sphere. That's why it is Postmodern: because it's not conscious of the essence of sacrament and so permits itself to question, challenge and somehow "humanise" something that it does not itself comprehend. I don't think matters of sacrament should be discussed in the public sphere in this way. A comprehension of the sacrament of the Body of Christ is one of the characteristics of social stability, and I don't think that public discussion of it could introduce any new dimensions into spiritual life. An installation of this kind shows an outsider, just like a safecracker at a safe trying to break the code behind the death and Resurrection of Christ. Each thing, including an altar, should be used for that which it was intended for - this is the essence of tradition. A.T.: How is it possible to tell, without talking to the creators of the installation, that they are outsiders, alien to Christianity? G.D.: We have the Gospel text describing the witnesses to the Resurrection, but not the event of the Resurrection itself - there are no witnesses to this. There are the women who met angels in shining dress by the grave. There's Peter, who went into the tomb and cried when he felt the empty shroud, and that's all. As far as I know - and this seems significant to me - the Easter video shows a person lying down, getting up and disappearing. You know, it reminds me of peeping through the keyhole in order to see that which is not intend-ed for others. Not everything needs to be handled, not everything needs to be tasted in order to convince oneself that it's real. Remember Doubting Thomas, who didn't make use of the chance to touch - this means going further than intelligence permits. A.T.: But how can one tell when contemporary developments correspond to the traditional code of the Church, and when they interfere? Many examples of religious architecture are very modern, avantgarde buildings. G.D.: I presume that an artist is guided by a wish to inhabit some empty element of space: he or she looks and sees an empty wall where something could be placed so that it moves, to provide something interactive - as on a computer monitor, when you make a movement with the mouse and a banner pops up. It seems there's a similar aspect in the installation, since the table of the altar, looking at it from the outside, is a monotonous block - inactive and static. All the action takes place ON it, but this is a spiritual matter, which has no image other than that which is perceptible through piety. In my view, it would all be fine, did it not take place in a church. Don't regard me as a medieval obscurant - by the Church, I mean in this case first and foremost the Mother keeping the memory of the suffering of the Son. These are sacred things, and peeping through the keyhole at them is unethical. But, as regards architecture, this has its own language, just like theology, which deals with Man's relationship to God. When these two languages meet, they augment each other, set each other off and clash, and here a variety of unexpected and stimulating approaches can emerge, lying at the boundary of verbal and non-verbal communication and touching on the mystical. If the language of religious architecture can be described as theology through geometry and light, then amazing things can emerge, with the proviso that the artist is conscious of the immense resources of sacred tradition. It appears to me that in Latvia people from art circles are not particularly knowledgeable in theology, and vice versa, and so we do not see interaction between these two languages, which is a shame. In place of the divine, we have humanised expression and originality, paradox and challenge, and that's not the same thing. A.T.: In historical terms, the whole of Western European art has, after all, developed from this interaction with theology. At least in the Middle Ages, churches, cathedrals and monasteries were the most progressive in terms of the application of various achievements and discoveries in architecture and art. Sacred art was the first to develop in Western Europe, since art was initially commissioned mainly by the churches. But is the separation of secular and sacred art and the dissonance between them exclusively a contemporary phenomenon? G.D.: A brief look back at history. Up to the 16th century, when the Protestant Era began, the church and state were joined. Along with Protestantism, a tendency began to reduce the heritage of Christian art to the Word. True, the Bible describes God as speaking through the Word, but this is only half of the truth, since there's also the image. The Protestant Church has lost the aroma of incense and oil used for anointing - actual substances that touch people and heal; the light and warmth of candles has been extinguished, the beeswax no longer melts. All this was thrown out of the church as idolatry, and service to God was reduced only to the Word. In Latvia, too, the majority of Protestant churches are built according to this paradigm - they are very ascetic and simple, and the preaching is didactic and moralising. This is only logical. After the 16th century, a whole string of systems of theological argumentation developed in which visual images were thrown out of the church. Protestant abstraction and Western European intellectualisation have assumed a radically alienated form, and that's not the spirit of the Creator. If we emphasise the Word alone, then liturgical praxis is impoverished. But let us remember that people feel themselves an organic part of a setting where they're also addressed visually, by the sense of smell and by the other senses. This is the way Man has been created - at one with existence. A.T.: So the appearance of the altar is so important that no changes are possible? G.D.: In the traditionalist denominations - Orthodox and Roman Catholic - the form of the altar does not change. Moreover, the Orthodox altar is set apart within the sanctuary, which is hidden from sight behind the iconostasis. Only the priest during the service can enter it, and usually the Royal Doors are closed. In other words, the altar as the table of the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ is very carefully guarded. Accordingly, in the old denominations, the concept of the sacredness of place has been retained: only those specially entitled may approach the altar. In Protestantism, the idea of the sacredness of place has been lost. The position of the altar may change, it is open to viewing, and for Baptists and Charismatics the concept of the altar is altogether quite nominal, since, quite logically, they don't have the mystery of the Eucharist. According to Baptist teaching, the Transubstantiation of the Body and Blood of Christ during the Eucharist, a belief held by Catholics and Orthodox, is pure superstition. Of course, this cannot but influence the concept and appearance of the altar. When you enter a Baptist church, you'll see the table of the presidium in place of the altar! A.T.: But many visual elements have changed in accordance with the taste and style of the age. The content is changeless, but the appearance is contemporary. Thus, we have the altarpiece by Helēna Heinrihsone in Mazirbe, or the painting by Laris Strunke in Stockholm, and so forth... G.D.: Of course, church art changes. However, what we're talking about are canons, and these submit unwillingly to the influence of the age. Thus, Leonardo's "Last Supper" has become a canon, after which countless copies have been made, some of them precise, some more remote. The Baroque room of the National History Museum of Latvia also has a minor Latvian painting with the title "The Last Supper": all the disciples are at the table, with Christ at the centre, half of the disciples in the light and half of them in the dusk. If you look carefully, you'll see that those disciples in the light have European facial features, while those shrouded in dusk are Jews, and, of course, the most Jewish of them all is the traitor Judas. By this example, I want to say that variations on the canon developed by Leonardo serve particular theological ideas. Judas betrayed Christ to his murderers, and the so-called "expulsion theology" of the Middle Ages included the view of Judas as the symbol of all the Jews. Thus, on the one hand, we have the canon, the changeless, abiding element, and on the other hand we have references to topical ideas. It's not necessary to depict Christ on a motorcycle or with a punk hairstyle - even within the frame of the canon, ideas current in the particular age may be expressed. I don't think the Church should do away with canons: after all, these are what make it the Church. For the record, I have to say that I'm quite aware that provocative antics in a church should not always be interpreted as a demand for replacement of the canon. Rather, it's a matter of "Let's give them a poke and see what they say". The provocations of contemporary art do not represent creativity deriving from within the tradition, and so it isn't and cannot be a bearer of sacredness. By looking at the mystery of Man and the Church from outside, one cannot call up something that would not be possible through what are known as the Church's "means of grace": anointment, confession and absolution, and the Eucharist. Russian Orthodox iconography, for example, is canonical. It's significant that no icons are signed: Rublev did not sign his name, neither did Theophanus the Greek or Dionysius, since the icons were created in the frame of a tradition that was regarded as being on a higher plane than the so-called subjective spiritual experience of the indivi-dual. Only a highly trained eye can tell which school it is, looking at the colour scheme and various nuances in the details of the composition. Likewise, those who learn to paint icons, such as the Bible Art students at our Christian Academy, say: anyone can paint an ordinary painting, but the most difficult thing is to join a tradition and progress within the frame of that tradition. But at the same time it's the most creative approach, since it includes a conversation with God. The secret of talent is not simply to learn particular formal elements, but to learn the way of life, the "ritual", which is not a mechanical repeti-tion of actions, but means instead adopting a way of life, a tradition, and progressing within it, affirming something greater than oneself. A.T.: In contemporary art, exactly the opposite is true: the artist comes first, the artist is the brand and his or her personal charm may even be more important than the work itself, apparent originality being a value in itself. What is the theological foundation for the canons of sacred art? G.D.: There's the original and main revelation described in the Gospels: the Resurrection. The apostle Paul writes: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (1 Cor. 15:14). If this basic tenet is cast aside, then all the rest will fall apart. The Gospels and the Epistles describe how the witnesses to this revelation received an impulse that made them tell this message to others as well, since it was shocking, and they could not keep it to themselves. The disciples who'd spent three years with Christ, wit-nessing his death on the Cross, went home to Galilee to resume fishing, as if nothing had happened. And the only woman who first received news of the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene, went and told them of it - a dramatic event in itself. The Gospel of Luke states: "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us" (Lk. 24:32) Thus, this "burning", impossible to formulate fully in words, is always an experience at the boundary between verbal and non-verbal communication. This quest led to the development of the canon, be it a painting or something else - such as the "Last Supper" of Leonardo, or the Apostles' Creed, which will not change to the end of the world. But then the question arises: what should they do, who live in a time when this formula is ready? How is it possible to seek that which has already been found - the canon? This question is posed by many people with an interest in Christianity. On the other hand, contemporary art, however blurred the concept, centres around personalities. Seekers. Seekers of originality, who sign their own work: it is their quest. But in Christianity, in the relationship with God, tradition and the continuity of the revelation come to the forefront. The personality in this original sense has no meaning. No, here we have a different understanding of creative activity, which is revealed in the humility of conforming to a tradition, and, with God's help, maintaining it. In this sense, a person becomes a bearer of sacredness, a kind of altar, by their way of life, a life that sees this kind of sacrifice, the killing of the previous person, death and the Resurrection of Christ. The artist's originality has no significance: your value lies in the degree to which you can bear out this stance: often quietly and unobtrusively, rather than loudly disputing and parasitizing on the folly and failures of others. This may perplex people of today who have grown up without criteria of sacredness, for whom the idea "I'll find my truth" is supreme. The delusions of Protestantism begin at that moment when such a seeker enters a church declaring that "my search for truth and God - this is one and the same", since "Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise", and so "God is with me". The theology of the altar teaches us to comprehend that a human life must be subordinate, that life is a school of humility and piety, and this is the most creative process. After all, God does not need my talent, since He himself is talented, so what can I add... If the truth-seeker and the idea of the quest are one and the same, then the result is a provocation, abuse and a conscious search for originality. A.T.: The need to dispute, parody and overturn: these are stable principles of activity in contemporary art. In a sense, perhaps, even its mission. Hasn't the human wish to protest always been topical? G.D.: This I can only discuss as a person of the present age, who cannot go outside my own experience, so it's a challenge of our century. I don't think that people are essentially interested in a cacophony. It seems to me that the culture of wittiness and provocation created in the Bohemian milieu serves that milieu: there it begins, and there it ends. After all, what is it that maintains a person's strength? It is the eternal possibility of resolving the mystery of the relationship between God and Man, and the Church is the frame for this mystery. Everyone has lived through years when he or she wishes to shout and provoke. Meaninglessness begins when teenage caprice becomes the lifestyle and paradigm of an adult, because the loss of piety makes the human spiritual body coarse. I don't think that every human conflict within a person and every split personality should be made public and declared to be a value of importance to society. An inner dispute is not a creative discourse; no constructive dialogue emerges. A.T.: Why do you think there's a general view that sacred art and everything connected with the Church is markedly old fashioned? And accordingly un-creative, since there are too many rules. G.D.: But who says this? People who themselves grow tired of all that is not-old-fashioned by living "interestingly". Living according to Church tradition is very creative, since you're confronted with the death and Resurrection of Christ - with the altar that we discussed at the beginning. The liturgy of St John Chrysostom is a millennium and a half old: when entering a Russian Orthodox church, a person seemingly looks into a deep well. But the person belongs to the 21st century. You are separated by 15 centuries, centuries during which the liturgy has survived unchanged. Of course, it's not possible to join it at a single moment: it requires an effort, and this, too, represents a small sacrifice on the altar. Because this sacrifice on the altar is made, the religious experience cannot be reduced to feelings. The initial experience is non-verbal: it's deeper than consciousness, than the human capacity for rational reflection. I mentioned already that this is an archetype: the Bible states that Man was made after the "image and likeness" of God. Thence it acts on all the senses. For example, the oil used for anointing in the liturgy: it has a particular formula, which must not be confused with cosmetics or perfume. When the oil is made that the church uses for anointment, it's traditional to add each time a little of the previous lot - and in this way a molecule of that which ends up on your forehead comes from the origins of the Temple of Jerusalem more than 3000 years ago. A.T.: Of course, this can in no way be compared with what a person can gain when going to an art exhibition. However, it seems at times that contemporary art, too, preserves an idea of art as some-thing sacred. Perhaps this is why artists so often make use of religious elements in their personal quests? G.D.: This really isn't the same thing, but art can direct a person towards faith. For example, the films of Tarkovsky. Many people of my generation came to an awareness of spiritual matters thanks to him in particular. Tarkovsky himself was not a Christian: he was a seeker, but many felt and experienced fascination and attraction, viewing his films as partial answers, allusions and mysteries. But art should not be mistaken for something it's not. That which a person gains from the liturgy, with all its richness, and that which he or she obtains, for example, from an exhibition by students of the Rozentāls School, is not one and the same. These are different functions. I want to emphasise once again that the paradigm of sacredness is the mystery of death and resurrection, which is experienced along with Christ by a person in church. A.T.: So, what is the essential difference between the art we see in church and that which we seek in galleries and museums? G.D.: There is the well-known saying that an icon is a window on eternity. But we should look at this saying the other way round: from which point is eternity being portrayed, so to speak? The angle of view changes: from the outside, from the lit Kingdom of God inwards to Man, shrouded in darkness. When coming into an Orthodox Church from outside, a person enters something like the Kingdom of Heaven, where he or she is regarded by the saints. An icon is not simply a picture painted by, say, a certain Petrov in the 17th century. First and foremost, an icon means true eye contact. Gazing into the eyes of the saints is the way of healing described in the Gospel: the Son of God looks, thus acting on the sick person and raising him from the sickbed, giving back strength to his bones. Looking into the eyes: this is the sacrament of Christ before the Eucharist. Christ turns his eyes on people and heals them. This is the function of sacred art. | |
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