Sanctifying Art. Deborah Sokolove
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when the standard survey course on the history of Western art gets to the sixteenth century, Michelangelo is a hero who is mistreated by a succession of popes, whose refusal to pay him on time is matched only by their desire to multiply magnificent buildings, sculptures, and paintings throughout the city of Rome. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Reformation are portrayed as uncultured barbarians, who destroyed important artworks out of an overwrought religious sensibility.
When the same period is covered in a Protestant seminary course on the history of the Western church, the Reformers are the heroes, desiring nothing more than to purge the ecclesiastical hierarchy of its wretched excesses. Chief among these excesses were the Pope’s penchant for luxury and sensuousness, as exemplified by Michelangelo’s magnificent nudes. It is somewhat startling to someone from the art world to discover that the sale of indulgences—a major point in Martin Luther’s critique of Rome—was intended (at least in part) to finance the Pope’s art patronage. In both cases, the Pope is the villain, but it is not clear how to reconcile my admiration for the work of the Reformers with my delight in Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I imagine that when this period is taught in a Roman Catholic seminary, the tensions are described somewhat differently.
However, the real issue that underlies this story is the question of by what criteria the church is to evaluate art. For the Pope in the story above, Michelangelo’s painting was good, both because it conformed to current Catholic doctrine, and because Michelangelo was celebrated as an artist by other artists and patrons—the art world of his day. For at least some of the Reformers, his painting was bad because it could lead to idolatry, regardless of what the art experts of the time might think. Should the criteria for art that is good for the church be defined by the art establishment? That is, shall the church simply accept as good whatever art is currently being bought by major museums or being hailed by well-known critics? Or, should the church develop its own criteria, such as adhering to certain theological positions or exemplifying certain virtues? This question of what is good art, who decides, on what basis, and in what situations, runs throughout this volume.
So, too, does the question of the relationship between art, spirit, and matter. About twenty years ago, I was installing a rather complicated piece of art in a small church. There I was, teetering on a ladder, trying to reach a pole across a six-foot gap without dropping the linked pieces of copper that were suspended from it. Suddenly, a member of the congregation walked by, saying, “Oh, I had no idea that art was so physical!” For my part, I had no idea that anyone could have thought otherwise.
From the prehistoric painters drawing by uncertain firelight deep in the caves at Alta Mira to Michelangelo aiming hammer blows at blocks of marble to force them to release the sculpture held captive within, every printmaker who ends each day with cramping hands and aching back after endless hours of bending over a work table, painstakingly chiseling fine lines into a hardwood block; every potter who stays up all night to tend the kiln, every muralist who scrambles up and down scaffolding to get a better view of the day’s work, every dancer who comes to the final act of a ballet with bleeding toes, and every guitarist who practices for hours despite the blistered fingers and throbbing shoulders, artists have always grappled with the sheer physicality of what they do.
For the church member who marveled at my balancing act, however, art was not physical, but spiritual. Art, she believed, was something ethereal, mysterious, sacred, a way of apprehending the holy. Art, she seemed to think, was made in an instant, a painting breathed onto the canvas, a sculpture formed by thought alone, with no effort or compromise between the moment of inspiration and its realization as object. Art, for her, was something set apart, an experience outside of normal life, a divine gift unsullied by human labor.
Although this book is addressed primarily to theologians and pastors, I am writing largely in response to that church member from long ago. In her offhand comment, she embodies the unexamined attitudes and assumptions that the church holds about art and artists. In investigating these attitudes and perceptions, and tying them to concrete situations and examples, I hope to demystify art, to bring art down to earth, where theologians, pastors, and ordinary Christians can wrestle with its meanings, participate in its processes, and understand its uses in a variety of situations.
In showing the commonalities and distinctions among the various ways that artists themselves approach their work, I hope to change the conversation, to help the church talk about the arts in ways that artists will recognize. The church needs to learn the language of art, so that it can understand the artists in its midst as well as the ideas, processes, and practices that inform their work and, in turn, help them to talk about God in ways that the church can recognize. In this way, I believe, the church will realize that the Word of God is more than words. The arts embody the Word as a living, breathing reality constantly transforming our lives through our senses as well as our minds. Like the Pope who believed that a beautiful church filled with great artworks would bring the people to faith, but didn’t pay the artist who clambered over the scaffolding in order to decorate the church ceiling, the church today often sanctifies art as an idea but ignores the hard realities of actual artworks made by actual artists. As a member of both the church and the art world, I want to bridge the gap between the habits of thought that inform the intellectual discourse of the art world, and those quite different ideas about art that are taken for granted by many Christians.
When we make clear distinctions between art as spiritual practice and art as scriptural interpretation; between the benefits of art to the artist and its benefits to the audience; and between art for its own sake and art for the worship of God, we will make better decisions about the role of art and artists in our seminaries, our churches, our lives. When art is understood as intellectual, technical and physical as well as ethereal, mysterious and sacred, we will see it as an integral part of our life together in Christ, fully human and fully divine.
1. Plastic, in this context, means malleable, or able to be shaped or formed. Materials as diverse as clay, bronze, or fabric may be described as plastic in this sense.
2 / The Problem of Art
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
—Ad Reinhardt2
Works of art are instruments by which we perform such diverse actions as praising our great men and expressing our grief, evoking emotion and communicating knowledge.
—Nicholas Wolterstorff3
The world is full of problems: war, homelessness, global warming, domestic violence, AIDS, hunger, drug abuse. The list goes on and on. In a world that seems to be always on the brink of disaster, there is an endless amount of work to do to help the earth heal from pollution of every kind; to insure adequate nutrition, housing, education, and health care to every person; to bring peace among the nations and in every city and village and home. And yet, if all of this is done, and there is no art, then the world will still be a sad, sorry, joyless place.
Still, in most of the developed world, and especially in those parts of the world most influenced by the Protestant churches, art is often treated as suspect, as Jeremy Begbie puts it “a luxurious ornament,”4 a frivolous frill that is easily discarded whenever resources are stretched and other needs seem more pressing. In the face of diminishing budgets and continual insistence on raising test scores, public schools in the United States are consistently pressured to reduce or eliminate time spent on music, dance, and drawing; the National Endowment for the Arts is repeatedly threatened with losing its funding; and local arts organizations constantly operate on the edge of budget disaster.
Some of the sources for this attitude may be found in the complex relationship that Christianity has had with the arts at least from Augustine onward, describing them at once as a good gift from God and as a distraction from true worship. Other sources are deeper, dating back to early Greek philosophers who posited a dualistic universe in which the physical, material world apprehended through