Sanctifying Art. Deborah Sokolove
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a ten-foot banner for a science project, inventing new plaiting patterns for lanyards at summer camp, or even helping to lay out the junior high school yearbook were not considered “art,” either by me or by anyone else that I knew. Artists were people who drew and painted, effortlessly, with no instruction, as naturally as birds sing.
Drawing wasn’t effortless for me. It was, however, a challenge that I was determined to overcome. In my sophomore year in high school, I nearly failed all my classes because I was drawing, incessantly and obsessively. Mostly, I drew hands. Since it was always available, I would draw my own left hand, over and over, in a variety of poses, trying to make the result as lifelike as possible. Sometimes, if they would agree to sit still long enough, I would draw someone else’s hands. Hands seemed to me somehow more revealing than faces. A face could lie, but a hand was honest, no more and no less than itself. In drawing the same subject repetitively, I was training myself to see, to make may own hand record the small irregularities, the minute, yet infinitely differing relationships of knuckle and nail, of joint and ligament, of palm and finger that make one hand clearly belong to me, and another belong to you. Thinking back on this period now, I think that I was trying to understand both the difference and the connection between self and other. It was a way of knowing something that could not be known in any other way.
Yet even in this year of compulsive drawing, I never thought that I was, or could be, or even wanted to be, an artist. The only art class I had ever taken was one that was required in the seventh grade. Although I secretly longed to know the mysteries taught in the studio, I could not allow myself to admit it. Instead, I filled my schedule with the heavy academics that would lead to college. I worked hard at the things I was interested in, like Latin and geometry, and skated by with low Bs in the subjects that bored me, like biology and civics. Although I knew that I liked to make things, girls weren’t allowed to take drafting or print shop, and somehow I had internalized the message that art classes were for slow learners, those who couldn’t make it through the college prep curriculum. I listened with longing to other students’ tales of what they were learning in art appreciation class, but never could allow myself to admit that that was where I wanted to be. It was only in my thirties that I was able to confess that I wanted to go to art school.
What I learned when I finally got there, besides the technical mysteries of watercolor and lithography; of stretching canvas and kneading clay; of color theory and the elements and principles of design; was that art is a form of discourse, a means of communication, and a record of what humans believe about the nature of the world. Art, the historians in the department taught me, is visual philosophy. Today, I would add that is also visual theology, a way of thinking about the nature of God and the relationship of that God to humankind and to all creation.
Eventually, I earned an MFA and went on to teach art at a state university. Later, I also earned a master’s degree in Theology, and a doctorate in Liturgical Studies. For fifteen years, I was the Curator of the Dadian Gallery at Wesley Theological Seminary, where I now teach and serve as the Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion. In addition, I am an active member of a small, local church where the arts are an integral part of our worship life.
A Few Definitions
It is this immersion in both the world of art and the world of faith that leads me to question the ways that art is thought about in the church and its related institutions. As I read what theologians, liturgical scholars, church historians, and even self-professed Christian artists have been writing about art, I am frequently struck by the disjuncture between what Christian authors claim as the virtues of art, and how the art world itself views and values its own products and processes.
In saying that, I realize I need to provide some definitions. First, I need to clarify that when I say “the church.” I do not mean any particular church or congregation, or even denomination. Rather, I am referring generically to Christians and their institutions, primarily in the United States. I realize that such a generalization skates over a great many particular differences, but the arguments for and against the arts in worship and other moments in Christian life tend to transcend denominational lines. Influential writers from a variety of disciplines and denominational backgrounds who write about the arts and the church include Frank Burch Brown, Don Saliers, William Dyrness, Jeremy Begbie, Robin Jensen, and the late Doug Adams, just to name a few. While each of them has a particular viewpoint growing out of their experience of both the arts and the church, their writings like mine are generally addressed to the church at large, rather than any particular denomination.
Next, I must define what I mean by art, the arts, and the art world. By art, I mean primarily what are often called the visual or plastic arts1—painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and the like. Sometimes, however, when I say art, I mean it more generally, including dance, drama, music, cinema, and poetry, as well as the visual arts. I hope that the context will make clear which I mean.
While my perspective is shaped primarily by the visual arts, much of what I have to say is equally true of all the arts. For instance, any artwork, whether visual or not, whether as solid and lasting as a Greek kouros or a medieval cathedral, or as ephemeral as a single performance of John Cage’s “4’33”,” is an expression of its time and place. An artwork, regardless of medium, is, among other things, a record of the social, political, and historical context within which the artist functions. It is only in relatively modern times that art, regardless of medium, began to be understood as the idiosyncratic expression of the individual artist, or even (as is sometimes claimed) as divinely-inspired revelation.
When I say the arts, I am referring to a fairly elastic group of activities and products that includes painting, sculpture, music, literature, concert music, ballet, and other high arts, but may also be understood as stretching to include such applied arts as movies, interior decorating, and graphic design. Although there are many commonalities among the arts, it must be noted that there are very real differences as well. The technical processes and problems facing the printmaker are quite different than those facing the musician, actor, or writer. Nevertheless, regardless of medium, artists tend to recognize similarities that transcend technique, such as the difficulty of translating an interior vision into an external form that an audience can grasp.
Finally, when I talk about the art world, I am referring to museums, galleries, art schools, and journals devoted to the dissemination of ideas about art; and the artists, critics, patrons, and art historians who define themselves in relationship to these institutions. In fact, however, there is no longer anything that may be monolithically called “the art world,” in the sense that this was meant in the middle of the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 60s, that world was centered in New York, where contemporary, serious, important art of the Modernist persuasion was defined as what was shown in the Museum of Modern Art, and the art of other times and places was exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Today there are several art worlds, each with its own set of critical principles, standards, sources, and markets. While superficially similar as venues for the display of exemplary artwork, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Visionary Art in nearby Baltimore, MD, and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, for example, define art in very different ways. The art world, like so many other fields in this postmodern era, has splintered into many sub-specialties, each claiming the authority to decide what it values and promotes, or even to challenge the very concept of value. To make things more complicated, similar networks and distinctions exist in other artistic fields, such as music, film, and dance.
Despite this disclaimer, there is a field of human endeavor—however unclear its boundaries—that may be identified as art, and particular people and institutions—however loosely organized—that are principally involved in and concerned with that field. And within that field, those who make, critique, collect, exhibit, teach, and theorize about art as a form of intellectual or academic discourse are what I mean by “the art world.” And, until I found myself working and studying in a theological seminary, it was in that world that I had my primary professional identity.
Bridging the Gap
My theological study challenged many of the assumptions that I had taken for granted since art school.